17 July 2014 News

 

"He'd previously been called a "spokesman" for Hamas, and criticized for "a pro-Hamas rant" by media critics sensitive to an anti-Israel bias.

It's also entirely possible that the network felt Mohyeldin's objectivity had been compromised after witnessing such tragic violence up close. Or, fearing post-traumatic stress, felt he needed, emotionally, to be extricated from the war zone. But if that's the case, NBC should say it, rather than broadly claiming "security concerns."

The network has not responded to a request for comment."  NY Magazine

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"A spokesman for Hamas?"  What more do you need to know?  pl

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/nbc-ayman-mohyeldin-pulled-gaza-palestinian-kids.html

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"A Malaysian airliner crashed over eastern Ukraine Thursday, killing all 295 people aboard and sharply raising stakes in a conflict between Kiev and pro-Moscow rebels in which Russia and the West back opposing sides.

The total number of dead in the crash near the Russian border includes 23 U.S. citizens, a Ukrainian interior ministry aide said. No other independent confirmation of the total was available. "  Chicago Tribune

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The lunatic "yellow" US media has immediatedly leapt into pursuit of the theory of a missile shootdown by rebel forces aligned with Russia.  Like Obama and the R2P Harpies they seem to have no concept of the risk of provoking Russia into an irrationally hostile act towards the US.  US DoD has stated that in spite of continuous surveillence of the scene they have no indications of the cause of this event.  I will observe that we now have seen two Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft that have come to an ill end at approximately the same altitude.  pl  

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-malaysia-plane-ukraine-20140717,0,3092919.story

Comments

[The beaver]

Colonel

Double down to save face :
http://www.jpost.com/Operation-Protective-Edge/IDF-intensifies-Gaza-attacks-with-artillery-fire-air-strikes-363289

[Fred]

Col.,

Why is anyone flying any aircraft over the disputed region of Ukraine? Just who's running Malaysian Airlines? It looks like gross negligence coinciding with a false flag operation. Just how many wars do the R2P crowd want to get us involved in at once?

Gaza? Well as NY Mag reports "Engel's accompanying producer has never covered Gaza from the ground and, according to the Intercept, does not speak Arabic." I'm sure there are plenty of courageous journalism majors with no experience or language skills willing to go. Isn't that the kind of thing Samantha Power started out doing? Look at the wars she has helped, ah, well I guess she hasn't stopped any, has she?

[Charles Dekle]

Col Lang,

And so it starts:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/geraldo-putin-has-blood-of-airline-passenger-on-his-hands/

By tomorrow these idiots in the media will be clamoring for military action against Russia. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail.

This is a little out of my field but would not an AA missile large enough to reach 30,000 feet leave a sizable contrail behind on the way up. So far, I have seen no reports of such.

Regards,

[Charles I]

God help us, just what we need for policy makers, more banana peels made of coincidences and dead civilians

[Charles I]

A big R.I.P to Johnny Winter, dead at 70, played his last show last Saturday.

[toto]

"The lunatic "yellow" US media has immediatedly leapt into pursuit of the theory of a missile shootdown by rebel forces aligned with Russia. "

There is indeed one lunatic who immediately claimed that the rebels downed the plane. His name is Igor Strelkov.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fvk.com%2Fwall-57424472_7256

Hey, An-26, B777, same difference.

His claim was then reproduced by "the yellow US media", namely ITAR-TASS:

http://en.itar-tass.com/world/741164

I'll be interested in reading how Russophiles (or Novorussophiles) explain these.

Right now the only thing everyone agrees on is that the plane was indeed shot down. I suppose the dust will settle after a while.

[kao_hsien_chih]

It seems uncanny too that both disappearing Malaysian airliners involve rivals of US that many seem eager to turn into real enemies.

Who knows what happened with the current missing airliner... Both Russia and Ukraine are heirs of the old Soviet Air Defense Forces who were supposedly both trigger happy and incompetent...although Ukraine has more recent history of "accidentally" shooting down civilian airliners (in 2001), I suppose.

[Medicine Man]

Post-traumatic stress? Is that a sly way of saying that Ayman must be imbalanced?

[tunde]

Crikey, Col,
A whirling dervish of events. Can't keep up.
Talk about crisis room multiple-tasking.

[steve]

For what it's worth, apparently journalists are being evacuated from the beachfront hotel as a result of the ground invasion.

https://twitter.com/peterson__scott/status/489862890485448705

[robt willmann]

Obviously not much airplane traffic over Ukraine right now -- 5:38 p.m. on 17 July -- as flights are skirting around the eastern side of it and staying in Russian state territory, as shown on flightradar24.com--

http://www.flightradar24.com/48.05,9.8/4

[Matthew]

MM: He probably has lost the ability to "balance" GOI propaganda with his own lying eyes.

[Stephanie]

I am sure that if Mohyeldin had withdrawn voluntarily the network would have said so up front. I’m reading that he protested and that many of his colleagues are angry.
There is the possibility that Richard Engel, who is senior to Mohyeldin, simply bigfooted him out of the assignment. Engel does speak Arabic. But the timing is awfully suspicious.

I see several big airlines have now announced they will reroute to avoid eastern Ukraine, which means that till now they’ve been blithely sending their planes right on through. What could go wrong?

[crone]

well, we wouldn't want to have any journalists witness the forthcoming atrocities, now would we?

[crone]

Ayman Mohyeldin reports from Gaza City on killing of four Palestinian boys by Israel (credit: NBC News)
Ayman Mohyeldin, the NBC News correspondent who personally witnessed yesterday’s killing by Israel of four Palestinian boys on a Gazan beach and who has received widespread praise for his brave and innovative coverage of the conflict, has been told by NBC executives to leave Gaza immediately. According to an NBC source upset at his treatment, the executives claimed the decision was motivated by “security concerns” as Israel prepares a ground invasion, a claim repeated to me by an NBC executive. But late yesterday, NBC sent another correspondent, Richard Engel, along with an American producer who has never been to Gaza and speaks no Arabic, into Gaza to cover the ongoing Israeli assault (both Mohyeldin and Engel speak Arabic).
Mohyeldin is an Egyptian-American with extensive experience reporting on that region. He has covered dozens of major Middle East events in the last decade for CNN, NBC and Al Jazeera English, where his reporting on the 2008 Israeli assault on Gaza made him a star of the network. NBC aggressively pursued him to leave Al Jazeera, paying him far more than the standard salary for its on-air correspondents.
Yesterday, Mohyeldin witnessed and then reported on the brutal killing by Israeli gunboats of four young boys as they played soccer on a beach in Gaza City. He was instrumental, both in social media and on the air, in conveying to the world the visceral horror of the attack.
Mohyeldin recounted how, moments before their death, he was kicking a soccer ball with the four boys, who were between the ages of 9 and 11 and all from the same family. He posted numerous chilling details on his Twitter and Instagram accounts, including the victims’ names and ages, photographs he took of their anguished parents, and video of one of their mothers as she learned about the death of her young son. He interviewed one of the wounded boys at the hospital shortly before being operated on. He then appeared on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, where he dramatically recounted what he saw.

http://nwo-patriot-link-news.blogspot.com/2014/07/nbc-news-pulls-veteran-reporter-from.html

[jon]

There is every reason at this point to believe that the jet was downed by an arm of the putative Donetsk People's Republic, using a reasonably sophisticated SAM supplied from the looted stores of the Ukraine government, or supplied by Russian parties. The shoot down was likely the result of misidentification, and not a governmental or command decision.

DPR elements apparently previously declared that they were in possession of BUK SAMs. At the time of the shootdown, another DPR person communicated that they had successfully hit a Ukrainian jet transport. The plane fell within rebel held territory, and rebels claim to have possession of flight data recorders, which will be provided to Russia for analysis. The Ukraine has recently lost several fighter planes, one to a ground launched missile perhaps a MANPAD type, another asserted to be a missile strike from a Russian fighter jet.

I expect that there is a wealth of data, electronic monitoring, and visual observation. What will be released, and the veracity of that data is yet to be seen. We are certain that there has been a tragic loss of civilian life high over a conflict zone.

Perhaps I lack sufficient imagination, but I don't see any benefit accruing to the Russian or Ukrainian governments for this action, or to the rebels. A blunder of immeasurable stupidity seems far more likely.

[ked]

a great loss to American music. Second Winter... one & a half sides - what a concept! now he's on Hwy 61 forever.

[Aka]

And here Ukrainian Defense Minister two days ago saying that rebels do not have missiles that can go above 6500m.

http://wbponline.com/Articles/View/32666/ukraine-sees-russia-behind-plane-downing-troubled-talks-ahead

and Ukrainians needs to explain how separatists managed to fixed that "disabled" Buk system.

That being said, separatists may be at the top of the suspect list.

[G. I. Hazeltine]

Does the airliner shootdown seem to anyone else to have more than a faint odor of the Ghouta chemical weapons attack?

[confusedponderer]

"two Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft that have come to an ill end at approximately the same altitude"

I take it that you allude to the possibility that this may simply have happened due to a technical defect, and no foul play at all?

If so, that will prevent nobody in Kiev or Washington from merrily blaming the Russians of the Rebels.

The Ukrainians are a pretty disorganised bunch and of such a remarkable fondness for outrageous Soviet style untruths that I don't trust them to conduct a proper crash investigation without planting SAM debris or some fun of that sort at the crash site.

We'll have to hope for Boeing and ICAO crash investigators.

[confusedponderer]

I wote 'plant debris'? I was wrong: They wouldn't need to that, since, if the Ukrainian military did this, they will have used Russian missiles anyway.

RT reports the Ukrainian army has deployed SAM to the eastern Ukraine.

http://rt.com/news/173636-buk-malaysian-plane-crash/

So all they'd need to do is lie brazenly, and stay on message. They have demonstrated amply that they are up to that task.

If Kiev does so, McCain will echo it frothing at the mouth. Facebook was evidence enough for Kerry to blame Assad for Ghouta, and for Mc Cain word of mouth from Kiew will be irrefutable evidence of Russian aggression.

[Florent]

hey jet fuel costs money!
let's not be overly cautious and hurt the bottom line, shall we?

[Ryan]

This airliner incident and the events in Gaza are connected in some way other than the usual gaggle of neocons commenting about both. By this I mean I see the same people who have been wrong about damn near everything that has passed the last 13 years showing up on cable tv and neocon talk radio to explain to the great unwashed about the two events.

Last night I got to see Bill O'Reilly bring on as an expert Bret Stephens. Like the previous fools I saw Stephens is sure that Putin is guilty as hell either as the firer of the weapon (if indeed this is the case; you can't believe these people on anything), or one of the "terrorists" opposing Kiev who fired it off. Well, Bret Stephens, huh? I'm really impressed. It this case by what wasn't said about Stephens background. He has written on the op-ed pages of not only the WSJ, but the Jerusalem Post as well. When he writes on the op-ed page of the WSJ he is your typical run of the mill neocon. One of his favorite subjects is complaining about Mikhail Khodorkovsky's treatment at the hands of Putin. When he writes for the JP he is a hard core Zionist who I suspect loves the idea of "transfer" of the Palestinians to other lands like Jordan.

The other guests I saw on cable tv weren't any better. Michael Rubin, John Bolton, John McCain, etc. All of them are in agreement that Putin is guilty and the US needs to place more sanctions on Russia's financial institutes.

Of course when asked about Israel and Gaza it's "all aboard" for these worthies. The US can't be involved deep enough to suit their fancy.

No, from listening to these people I can think of the story about Khrushchev standing beside the head of the USSR's air defense command giving the order to shoot down the U-2 that Gary Powell was flying. That's the way they came across to me. To this I can add I can see something else about the airliner and it is whether or not US citizens were aboard. If they were we have to do something to Putin according to them. I think of the Lusitania of 1915 fame. This stinks to high heaven.

I'd like to ask them how can they be sure that it wasn't someone from Right Sector who fired the missile? Cui bono, anyone?

[Ex-PFC Chuck]

This is admittedly the Russian turn in the game of "He said, she said," but an RT post that the Self Defense Force has only man-portable antiaircraft missiles capable of reaching planes only up to about 4,000 meters. MAL17 was up about 10,000.

http://rt.com/news/173636-buk-malaysian-plane-crash/

[steve]

Col. Lang:

"I will observe that we now have seen two Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 aircraft that have come to an ill end at approximately the same altitude."

Perhaps this may be of interest. I know zero about aviation and whether or not this is a particularly important notice, but in November, 2013, the FAA had some concerns about the vulnerability of Boeing 777's to hacking their computer systems:

"These special conditions are issued for the Boeing Model 777-200, -300, and -300ER series airplanes. These airplanes, as modified by the Boeing Company, will have novel or unusual design features associated with the architecture and connectivity of the passenger service computer network systems to the airplane critical systems and data networks. This onboard network system will be composed of a network file server, a network extension device, and additional interfaces configured by customer option. The applicable airworthiness regulations do not contain adequate or appropriate safety standards for this design feature. These special conditions contain the additional safety standards that the Administrator considers necessary to establish a level of safety equivalent to that established by the existing airworthiness standards."

https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/11/18/2013-27343/special-conditions-boeing-model-777-200--300-and--300er-series-airplanes-aircraft-electronic-system