As stated before, we are so late in the game now, it is hard to imagine any significant international 'event' as not being a piece of the end times puzzle. We already know that the U.S. and Russia are in another cold war and the financial part of this has already started with Russia and China rallying more and more countries to abandon the petrodollar. The Ukraine story has been evolving but taken to page 2 of the news, as the Israel-Gaza conflict took center stage.
The implications of Israel beginning the ground war into Gaza are obvious. Will this conflict spread? We have already seen more missiles coming in from Syrian (Golan Heights) and Lebanon (northern Israel). When the photos of the Israeli incursion along with the inevitable Palestinian casualties begin to circulate, it is hard not to imagine greater involvement from the usual surrounding terrorists, but only time will tell.
The airline explosion is quickly being blamed on Russia and Putin specifically. It would seem obvious that Russia had nothing to do with this - as Russia would have nothing to gain by shooting down a commercial airline in mid-air. One would even assume that the so-called "Russian Separatists" wouldn't have anything to gain by this action - thus obviously a huge mistake was made as the aircraft was mistaken for a military craft.
However, the key to watching this will be how Russia will be demonized and what that will lead to. It has already started:
Sen. John McCain said Thursday that he is withholding judgment on the Malaysia Airlines crash, but vowed that there would be “hell to pay” if the plane was shot down by the Russian military or separatists.
“To leap to conclusions could be very embarrassing and really inappropriate until we have more information,” the Arizona Republican told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell shortly after reports that a commercial flight carrying 298 people was shot down in the eastern part of Ukraine.
But McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, cited previous reports of Ukrainian fighter planes being shot down by Russian separatists.
After again noting that he has not yet arrived at any conclusions, the senator said: “But if it is the result of either separatist or Russian actions mistakenly believing this was a Ukrainian war plane, I think there’s going to be hell to pay and there should be.”
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH 17 was flyingfrom to Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur and was hit by a Buk launcher missile, according to adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister Anton Gerashenko. The plane was reportedly flying at an altitude of 33,000 feet and was shot down in eastern Ukraine.
McCain said that the incident could be part of the greater “pattern” of separatists that have the capability of shooting down a plane.
The Arizona senator has long been critical of the White House’s handling of the situation in Ukraine, accusing President Barack Obama of projecting weakness to Russian President Vladimir Putin and failing to adequately support the Ukrainian military and government.
On Wednesday, the administration increased its sanctions against Russia. In the announcement, Obama said that “Russia has failed to take any of the steps” toward reducing tensions against Ukraine and said that Putin has not demonstrated a commitment to ending the conflict.
Julia Ioffe, writing for the New Democrat propaganda centerpiece New Republic, insinuates separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine are responsible for the shoot down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 earlier today.
Ioffe, a Russian-born blogger, appears regularly on Mockingbird media venues such as MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, and Forbes. She specializes in anti-Russian propaganda.
After noting the downing of Ukrainian military aircraft and the alleged transfer of Buk antiaircraft missile systems from Russia to the separatist rebels, Ioffe writes that the incident elevates the conflict to a new and dangerous level:
Make no mistake: this is a really, really, really big deal. This is the first downing of a civilian jetliner in this conflict and, if it were the rebels who brought it down, all kinds of ugly things follow. For one thing, what seemed to be gelling into a frozen local conflict has now broken into a new phase, one that directly threatens European security. The plane, let’s recall, was flying from Amsterdam.
She then says “that there’s only one place that rebels can get this kind of heavy, sophisticated weaponry” and ties it to a new round of sanctions imposed on Russia on Wednesday. It also follows an especially strident denunciation of U.S. foreign policy by Putin.
CNN, legendary for its work with the Army’s Fourth Psychological Operations Group, is already tilting the narrative to blame the separatists and implicate Russia:
If separatists using Russian firepower or Russian forces brought down the plane, the United States and European Union would come under pressure to take tougher steps against Moscow.So far, they have imposed sanctions and provided aid including limited military equipment. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama announced further sanctions due to Russia’s failure to take steps to end the Ukraine conflict.“This would have the most profound repercussions,” McCain told CNN of possible Russian responsibility, calling for much stronger sanctions and more military help for Ukraine than he has advocated.
Cui bono – who benefits from the shoot down? Certainly not the separatists and Russia. The tragedy, however, does make the argument for additional serious sanctions now undoubtedly waiting in the wings to be imposed on Russia.
Economic sanctions figure prominently in the plan by the global elite to scale back the power and influence of Russia. Installing a quasi-fascist regime in Kyiv and forging agreements – including NATO membership – with other Eastern European nations has nothing to do with democracy. It is about geostrategic brinkmanship. Russia and China are outside the orbit of the IMF-World Bank operation and are now talking about establishing their own development bank.
As The Washington Post notes, there is a long-standing dissatisfaction with Bretton-Woods institutions that has moved BRICS towards a “developing-country alternative to global development finance,” a move that is highly provocative and alarming for the global financial elite and dangerous for their plans for world domination.
Ms. Ioffe and the New Democrat intelligentsia are doing their part in an orchestrated propaganda offensive designed to demonize Russia and thus prepare an effort to further undercut its influence in Eastern Europe and its economic and energy clout in Western Europe.
An airliner carrying 295 people has crashed in a conflict zone in east Ukraine, with all on board presumed dead.
The Malaysian Airlines flight, from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, disappeared from radar screens at approximately 16.20 Kiev time according to Ukrainian authorities.
Early reports indicate it was carrying Dutch, French, and US citizens among other nationals, with several airlines suspending flights to the region in response.
The Russian, Ukrainian, and US leaders, as well as the EU foreign service, quickly put out statements of condolences.
The EU service also called for an “international investigation”, adding: “We call on all parties in the region of the crash to provide full access to the crash site, so that it can be secured immediately, to co-operate fully and to share all relevant information.”
In Israel:
With the ground incursion starting, predictably, we are now seeing the protesters lining up for the usual anti-Israel protests. You have to assume they are either completely ignorant of the reality of the situation in Israel or simply hate Israel and the reality is irrelevant - after all, Israel should continue to receive 100-150 missiles per day and do absolutely nothing about it:
Rallies in support of the Palestinian victims of Israel’s military onslaught were held across the world’s major cities this week. Thousands marched in France, Germany, Argentina, the US, the UK and other countries.
The British capital saw one of the largest turnouts with thousands of protesters rallying outside the Israeli Embassy on Friday. Demonstrators flooded the streets around the building waving placards that read“Gaza: End the Siege" and "Freedom for Palestine."
A group of 17 protesters brought traffic grinding to a halt on Kensington High Street when they scaled one of the city’s iconic double-decker buses. The activists suspended a banner from the vehicle, emblazoned with the slogan “Judaism rejects the Zionist state and condemns its criminal siege and occupation.”
The same took place in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.
In the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires, the Federation of Palestine Entities, the Committee of Solidarity with Palestine and other human rights groups gathered at the Israeli embassy to voice their protest at the rising death toll of Palestinians at the hands of the Jewish state.
With the recent Egypt-proposed ceasefire failing to have the necessary effect, fatalities continue to pile up.
The protesters chanted slogans, waved the Palestinian flag – even spray-painted the Swastika on the embassy’s fence outside. It was a controlled atmosphere as police kept watch.
In France, things got very real in several cities, including Lyon, Toulouse and the capital, Paris, where last Sunday saw more than 10,000 take to the streets – an event that started out peacefully, but ended in stone-throwing between pro-Palestinian supporters and Jewish protesters. Some Jews were holed up in two synagogues guarded by the police against a furious crowd.
Since that incident, the remainder of the protests to be held until the end of the week have been canceled by the police in several cities at the behest of the government, amid fears that a sharp escalation in civilian violence in France is otherwise inevitable. The country is home to some of the largest Palestinian and Jewish communities outside their homeland and their animosity towards each other is beginning to reflect that which is witnessed in the Israel-Gaza standoff.
The Times of Israel is liveblogging events as they unfold through Friday, the eleventh day of Operation Protective Edge. On Thursday night, Israel launched a major ground offensive on Hamas in Gaza, initially focused on Hamas’s under-border tunnels, after a day of ceasefire efforts in Cairo. The land operation was approved unanimously by the Israeli security cabinet. Hamas, which failed with a pre-dawn terror attack from a tunnel near a border kibbutz, and fired rockets into Israel throughout the day, is vowing that Israel will pay dearly for sending in its troops. (Thursday’s liveblog is here.) Remember, you can also follow @TOIAlerts on Twitter — we’re live-tweeting all the updates there as well.
Rockets continued to fall on Israel on Thursday both before and even after an agreed five-hour UN brokered humanitarian pause in fighting began at 10am, with over 100 rockets fired since the humanitarian halt in fire ended and before the beginning of the IDF's ground operation in the Strip.
After IDF ground troops entered Gaza, five rockets were intercepted over Ofakim, while two others fell in open areas. Shortly before 2am, rockets were fired at Ashdod. Three were intercepted by the Iron Dome.
A heavy barrage of rockets from the Gaza Strip was fired at southern and central Israel. The Iron Dome intercepted one rocket over the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, and five over Kiryat Gat.
Heavy barrages were fired at the Shfela area, as well as at Ashdod and Ashkelon. The Iron Dome intercepted 12 rockets, and another one fell in an open area, causing a fire. A soldier was lightly wounded in Hof Ashkelon from rocket shrapnel in his leg.
Earlier, 10 rockets fell outside communities in Eshkol and four fell inside communities in the regional council with one of them causing a fire and another causing damage to a power line. Three rockets fell in open areas in Sdot Negev, one fell in the yard of a house in Hof Ashkelon and caused a gas leak and two rockets fell in open areas near Ashkelon.
Two rockets were intercepted by Iron Dome over central Israel and two were intercepted over Ashkelon.
The IDF began a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip on Thursday night with the stated goals of dealing a blow to Hamas’s terrorist infrastructure, including destroying tunnels under the border with Israel, and harming the Hamas military wing.
The decision on the ground offensive was taken by unanimous vote of the security cabinet “several days ago,” said cabinet member Gilad Erdan (Likud). Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (Hatnua) said she did not back it lightly, but had no doubt that it was necessary.
“This is the second stage of the operation,” said IDF Spokesman Moti Almoz, referring to Operation Protective Edge, launched 10 days ago to stop Hamas rocket fire. He said large numbers of ground forces, backed by air and sea power and intelligence support, had been despatched to “tackle the [Hamas] tunnels, the terror infrastructure and the operatives.”
The IDF had spent the past few days making final preparations for the ground offensive, he said. “Our forces heading to their goals are determined and full of motivation.”
The ground offensive, he said, would expand as necessary.
A heavy artillery barrage began at around 9.00 p.m. local time and an hour later considerable numbers of troops had moved into the Hamas-controlled territory. Large numbers of infantry, tanks, and military engineers poured into the coastal enclave under the cover of darkness. Multiple flares could be seen floating across the sky lighting the ground below.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon gave the final order to send the forces into action, hours after the IDF thwarted an attempted terror attack via a Hamas tunnel near Kibbutz Sufa. “Through terror tunnels such as these Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israeli territory early this morning with the aim of carrying out mass terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens,” Netanyahu said.
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