‘Some 1,129 people have been killed and nearly 3,500 wounded in eastern Ukraine since the start of the Kiev’s military operation in April, according to UN estimates.
The report also states that these are the minimum casualty toll estimates by the UN monitoring mission and WHO.
The report says that the cause of the rising death toll is intensified artillery shelling of the civilian residential areas and the so-called “collateral damage” of the armed actions in the heavily-populated areas.
Also, 100,000 people were forcibly displaced in eastern Ukraine.
The Kiev authorities are using heavy weaponry and artillery in strikes on residential areas, while the armed rebels are firing back, the report states.’
On Friday, Human Rights Watch alleged that Kiev is using indiscriminate Grad missiles to attack densely populated areas in Donetsk, which violates international humanitarian law, and also blames the militia for taking cover in the same areas.’
This admonition comes from the same HRW that blamed hideous deeds by those groups that had staged a coup against Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and have attempted to overthrow Maduro…on the Maduro government. It is the same organization that received a letter from several Nobel peace prize laureates, and 100 human rights activists, and scholars, urging independence from the US government, so you be the judge. But from all I’ve read, those folks fleeing the carnage headed for Russia.
The bombing and shelling of citizens in Eastern Ukraine has been bloody and ugly; people have been burned alive in buildings, whether under the uniforms of the Ukrainian military, or Right Sektor/Svoboda nazis. No matter how you come down on Lugansk and Donetsk declaring their independence from Ukraine, Kyiv’s many atrocities should be tied as war crimes. But of course they won’t, not least because the US and several deep state NGOs full back, and partially funds these fiends in the name of Democracy for some™, apparently.
From Veterans Today’s Jim Dean, bless his heart: ‘The People of Donbass have something to say: “Why? What did we do to you to deserve this, America and EU?”
‘The general use of artillery and bombing attacks on civilian areas has been met with total silence by the Kiev Junta’s Western allies. It gets even worse for the towns captured from the East Ukraine resistance, atrocities and summary executions have take place.
Even the UN says nothing, not even about investigation or having monitors with the Kiev units to stay on top of what they are doing. The Oligarch funded units, formal terror brigades, are fighting behind a Western approved “anti-terror” smokescreen. This stain will never wash off, of them or us, as it has not on all those who have preceded those doing it now’.
Videos showing the results of these bloody deeds abound, but are difficult to verify, given language barriers, questions of dates, and the potential for propaganda. The Saker has a team of translators dubbing in English for many of them, and I do hope they are straight up with their translations; given what we’ve seen live-streamed, I tend to credit their translations.
RT’s ‘250 civilians killed in Ukraine’s Lugansk during last two months – OSCE’ highlights the organization’s death toll numbers from June and July, and provides videos that require warnings for the brutal carnage depicted. My guess is that again, actual numbers were higher.
Clearly the teeth-gnashing rhetoric from the US State Department, Obama himself, and the loudest neo-cons in Congress has blamed Russia for the downing of MH 17 from the start, but have provided no evidence, just anonymous ‘intel reports’.
This is the State Department flack Marie Harf on July 22, fielding questions as to the veracity of those claims, and especially as opposed to statements made by Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov. The dialogue is funny on its own, but this op-ed from washingtonsblog.com has great art to go along with it. He characterizes it this way:
‘U.S. State Department Says: We’re the Good Guys, and Russians Are Liars … So Just Take Our Word for It’, State Dept. Deputy Marie Harf essentially saying on July 21, “We’re the good guys who tell the truth, and Russians are liars. Forget Iraq … that’s ancient history. Just trust us.’
And yet, on July 23, this from the Guardian:
‘Senior US officials said intelligence supports the theory that rebels shot down MH17 “by mistake”, but that there is “no evidence of direct Russian government involvement“. They said Russia maintains a “training facility“ for rebels to learn how to operate heavy weaponry in the country’s south-west.’
In the same piece, the squabbles with the EU over enacting more sanctions against Russia really were funny, from France’s pending €1.2bn deal to send warships to the RF, to energy needs, etc., causing one to wonder if that may have led to the back-pedaling from “Putin shot down the plane!” Or had the US PTB seen the intel provided by those damned Russians, and the ten questions they were asking? Even the WSJ carried some of it (with their own spin, naturally). Early on, a number of experts and op-ed writers were asking ‘cui bono?’, as in: ‘how the hell would it benefit Russia, or even the separatists to shoot down a passenger plane?’ (Some of that is covered here, in a rather sloppy fashion, sorry to say.) But included is the fact that the BBC did report, as Pepe Escobar had heard from his sources, that Ukraine’s SBU had indeed confiscated the taped communications between the air traffic control tower and the plane.
And of course by now, there have been a number of deep analyses brought to bear, most concerning the military planes accompanying the MH17 777, the crazed change in flight plan, its over-correction just before it crashed, etc., including this one by Andre Vltchek. Add others as you will.
But whoa, then the rhetoric began to heat up again: US intelligence knows that Putin is about to send heavy armaments over the border, Putin DID send in the BUC missile launchers, and the terrorists were trained to use them in Russia; the commanders in the Dobass are all Russkies, etc. And a new wrinkle was added a few days ago, via Geoffrey Pyatt’s Tweets and Retweets:
Plus Colin Powell at the UN evidence of the same (the Guardian has a few more, and even their report evidences a bit of skepticism, imo.)
Then came the evidence we had all been waiting to hear, and as predicted on the 21st by Miz Marie Harf: from the same article:
‘Tensions have run high in the region since Russia seized Crimea in March and Washington has been highly critical of the behaviour of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. More recently, US intelligence officials have said they have what they call a solid circumstantial case that pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine are responsible for downing the Malaysia Airlines plane.
Citing satellite imagery, intercepted conversations and social-media postings, officials say a Russian-made SA-11 surface-to-air missile hit the plane on 17 July.
‘Moscow angrily denies any involvement in the attack.
US officials said they still did not know who fired the missile or whether Russian military officers were present when it happened. But until Sunday they were unwilling to share proof that the separatists had the technology to down a plane.’
Zo. Obama sent military ‘advisors’ and more equipment to Ukraine, the EU has said it will soon, and tra la la, we may be off to the races. Drumbeats for war? Surely you think I’m over-reacting, and I may be, given that both potential ‘sides’ are nuclear powers, and that Putin has done his damnedest not to get pulled into war. But when I read this piece at Common Dreams, and remembered that most often, it’s the top military brass who are apt to advise against war, I changed my mind a bit:
‘Hours after the U.S. State Department on Thursday claimed (though failed to describe) new evidence that Russia’s military was both increasing the flow of arms to rebel fighters in eastern Ukraine and firing artillery at Ukrainian Army positions across its border, Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey elevated the rhetoric against Russian President Vladimir Putin and directly invoked the idea that a new Cold War-like posture is now being taken by the U.S. military.
Speaking from the Aspen Security Forum, a defense industry conference in Colorado, Dempsey said Pentagon planners are now looking at military options “we haven’t had to look at for 20 years” and warned that Putin—whom he characterized as escalating the crisis inside Ukraine—“may actually light a fire” he cannot control. And not just in Ukraine or eastern Europe, Dempsey said, but globally.
Drawing a dramatic historical comparison, Dempsey equated Putin’s alleged involvement in eastern Ukraine to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Poland in 1939.
“It does change the situation. You’ve got a Russian government that has made a conscious decision to use its military force inside another sovereign nation to achieve its objectives. It’s the first time since 1939 or so that that’s been the case,” Dempsey said. “They clearly are on a path to assert themselves differently not just in Eastern Europe, but Europe in the main, and towards the United States.”
Yes, ‘Every US War Starts With A Lie’, or a series of lies.
Oh, and the author also covers: Ukraine PM resigns amid parliamentary turmoil: Arseniy Yatsenyuk quits after collapse of ruling coalition, saying squabbles were hurting fight against separatists’ the reasons for which are reported differently, but perhaps concern the Rada’s not passing the package required by the IMF. But at least the Communist Party in Ukraine has been disbanded and outlawed. Whew; thank goodness.
Hard choice on which of these to leave you with, either Jen Pasaki’s “The Russians have mastered the art of saying one thing & doing another,”says @statedeptspox on cease-fire in Ukraine pic.twitter.com/3yAM4oe0kc’ or Madeleine ‘it was worth it’:
It’s hard to know how to end this, since there’s no end in sight for the wars, proxy wars, and assassinations of those folks around the planet who are in the way of the Empire’s designs. Perhaps this, because we can’t stop imaging and promoting peace. Out on the edge of darkness we can see the light of the Peace Train. Sing it in your heart when you’re able, and send loving thoughts to the friends and relations of those being killed all over the world.
(cross-posted at My.Firedoglake.com)
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
once a person has overcome the brainwashing, it’s not hard to tell when they are lying to us. in fact it’s quite easy.
meanwhile Fukushima continues to spew radiation.
no, it’s not hard once you catch on to the brainwashing. in fact, i had a heck of a time editing this piece, both here and at my.fdl. one line that i had omitted to past in was ‘Yes, ‘Every US War Starts With A Lie’, or a series of lies’, with a link to this piece. did it come from bruce? i forget.
http://journal-neo.org/2014/07/24/malaysian-aircraft-incident-every-us-war-starts-with-a-lie/
this is post icewall containment at fukushima? to say the truth, i can seldom bring myself to read the updates. the hanford reservation containers are still leaking, as well. and was it you who gave a link to the central valley in CA’s crapped out aquifers that have also been poisoned by flawed fracking re-injections? oh, that process looked so fine to industry lovers, and ‘all of the above’ folks like obomba, didn’t it?
if we do survive, we will need to have some serious global efforts at poison-to-medicine directed thought and prayer.
Jesus on a fucking pogo stick.
Wendye and all. I sit here and just do not know what to say. This song is what I am playing over and over. Fucking Obamabot liberals and their legions of corporate apologists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntLsElbW9Xo
always nice to hear barry again. i was (perhaps) a sophomore in high school when my clock radio radio played it.
do please keep in mind that i could be entirely wrong about all this. (well, the drumbeats, really; not the rest, i reckon). an yet, we must find joy, laughter and beauty in each day as we can, yes? sleep well, michael cavlan, and miz cavlan, too.
Without the other who get it, like yourself Wendye, Juliana, mark and others here in Minnesot-ah I would just crumple up and give up.
i am now getting very intolerant of anyone spewing corporatist apologist bullshit from what ever party.
Yeah thanks. Mrs Cavlan and myself do have a beautiful thing and we know it.
Love-Respect-Solidarity
Love-Respect-Solidarity to you as well. yes, finding some balance between bearing witness and keeping ourselves psychically safe from the toxicity of it all is hard. knowing that our leaders are determined to aid this nation in eventual suicide is burdensome, isn’t it? and understanding that while the US pretends to be leading against climate change, but does the opposite, is ecocide. and it just doesn’t have to be this way, as shoot that arrow often says.
a few additions, and i’ll just stick them in…in one fell swoop:
A link to this Paul Craig Roberts piece just came in on the Liberty Underground newsletter. And my, oh, my, one is forced to agree, given no ‘offishull’’ statements from the State Department. It begins:
“Another State Department Hoax? Paul Craig Roberts
I have an email that purports to be from the State Department Press Office. It is dated today, Sunday, July 27, 2014 at 8:45 AM EDT It reads:
State Department Press Corps:
Sharing with you the attached document with DNI images — evidence of Russia firing into Ukraine.
Regards,
State Department Press Office
There is a 1.1MB file attached with pictures and a few words saying that the pictures indicate Russian firing into Ukraine territory.
As one with news and government experience, I am confident that information as important as this purports to be would not be released in this way. For several days reporters have been asking State Department press office spokeswoman Marie Harf for evidence to back her claims that Russian military is attacking Ukrainian forces. Harf has told the reporters that she cannot provide evidence. In other words, Harf’s evidence is like John Kerry’s evidence that he could never provide that Assad had used chemical weapons.
Suddenly the evidence appears in an email and is spread via social media. This is not credible. Such evidence if it actually exists would be released in a Washington press conference by top government officials with experts present to explain the meaning of the photos to the journalists and to answer questions. No real journalists, if any are left, are going to believe that such hot information would be released in an email. Moreover, the photos are meaningless to the uninitiated, and there is no way to judge their authenticity.
Additionally, it is not credible that such important information would be released at a news dead time–8:45 AM EDT on a Sunday morning when the West Coast is still asleep.”
From the Financial times: ‘Yukos ruling adds to Russia isolation‘
“The Kremlin came under intense pressure on Monday after an international tribunal ordered Russia to pay $50bn damages to former shareholders of the Yukos oil company, as the EU and US prepared to ramp up sanctions over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine crisis.
“A panel in The Hague made the biggest compensation award ever in an arbitration case after ruling that Russian authorities carried out a series of “politically motivated” attacks a decade ago, which were designed to destroy Yukos and to put its main shareholder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in jail.
Former Yukos assets today form the bulk of state-owned Rosneft, the world’s biggest quoted oil producer, which is now subject to US sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea and escalating support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. BP, the UK oil major with a troubled history in Russia, has a near 20 per cent stake in Rosneft.
If Russia fails in legal challenges to the ruling and declines to pay the damages, Yukos shareholders could pursue the foreign assets of companies such as Rosneft and Russian state assets in courts around the world.
The Yukos decision came as momentum continued to build for wider sanctions against whole sectors of the Russian economy, which could be announced on Tuesday.”
Now mix in: “Moscow may walk out of nuclear treaty after US accusations of breach: Russia said to be on point of leaving 1987 treaty, after Obama administration said it violated the accord with tests of R-500”
yes, full court press on mother russia. she must be ground to dust.
Here is something To DO:
http://freedom4palestine.org/
Sadly, no one yet for Ukraine.
thanks, bruce. two very worthy organizations sponsoring it.
the state dept. just put up the transcript from jen psaki’s press briefing yesterday. if you care, just click on the ukraine/russia heading, it really i purdy darned funny. especially the questions about ukraine keeping the war going around the crash site of MH17, my stars.
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/dpb/2014/07/229855.htm
why don’t people like what P.c. Roberts has to say?
Do they read his columns, or just complain cause he worked for Reagan forty-five years ago?
both, i suspect, markf, from what i’ve seen on the boards, esp. at fdl. he did do a lot of damage as reagan’s deputy, and is credited as being the father of reaganomics, editor of the wsj, etc. we don’t know what turned him around, but neo-liberalism may have been a bridge too far, what his beliefs are on the ‘free market’, i dunno. and yet, ‘the left’ loves former military brass and security state specialists when they find common ground, then might pull support later.
i read him, and do sometimes find him engaging in over-the-top polemics as far as future predictions, but i certainly find him worth reading when i have the time. he sees some truths and patterns that are quite heterodox, as with the piece i quoted. are you thinking of desider over yonder? well, he lives in prague, used to wire houses for voice of america, takes what putin did to Chechnyans quite personally, so is quite the russophobe. we’ve bloogd along side each other for years, have been e-friends, then e-frenemies, i guess you’d say. and he loves the clintons; go figure. southerners. :)
that’s all i have…
yes, that’s the comment, but others as well. nakedcapitalism cites him.
People think like religious fundamentalists, the tolerance level is around zero for differences of opinion. And take one wrong position, and your wrong on everything.
can’t help thinking that all these foreign dustups are partly distractions from something bad brewing at home.
the commentariat at naked capitalism is quite varied, in my experience. yves allows, or at least cross-posts A at washingtonsblog. he is sometimes a bit on the fringe libertarian side, and while i check in with him often, i take some of his long-winded assertions and conclusions with a grain of salt.
i reckon i might be charged with your ‘take one wrong position and….etc.’ as far a juan cole, myownself. he just left a bad taste in my mouth. but then, i feel somewhat the same now with glenn greenwald, but my recent distaste for him is not only down to ‘positions’ (esp. past ones), but to all i wrote about earlier here.
in a similar way, i cringe each time ctuttle quotes long passages from ‘the estimable col. pat lang’. does his writing now absolve him from his past deeds? i dunno, but i would never quote him or trust him myownself. i suppose in the end, we go with what we’ve read, how a particular person seems to each of us in terms of ‘worthy’, and if their moral compasses and positions agree with our own.
for instance, yellownapdragon just handed my thread over yonder this youtube from the saker’s site:
The most heinous consequence of all this for US(SA) is that it now has 0 credibility; consistent with the vacuum formerly ascribed to USSR, wherein one cannot believe the regime until its official disposition … then know The OPPOSITE IS THE TRUTH!
Grate PRIMAL SCREAMS All Around!
heh; that’s one of the more persistent tweets and repeated memes: putin says one thing, does the opposite. dunno. but what do you mean by the US having 0 credibility? what am i missing? even after iraq, afghanistan, USians are believing all this, as far as i can tell. even around the globe, which alliances disbelieve? we had hoped that might be the sole good result of the nsa revelations, given that big whoop, the house might pass an ‘end the bulk collection’ yada yada. it’s not even clear to me how much other nations have decided that the US is indeed the Great Babylon. am i just being too cynical tonight, after two long hard days?
yes, this is a failing hegemon, desperate but clueless about its former power, and likely terrified about new alliances as they strengthen. i read different theories about which alliances make the most sense, and simply don’t know enough realpolitik to tell if they’re correct. but then, inside baseball stuff doesn’t solve our difficulties with the local oligarchs and security state threats, eh?
and mark, i’d forgotten to ask if you had any inklings of what all this might be in aid of covering up at home….
sleep well; i’m gonna shut down now.
oopsie; i forgot to leave this ‘special report’ that pyatt retweeted. too pooped to read it tonight.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/29/us-ukraine-crisis-arms-specialreport-idUSKBN0FY0UA20140729?feedType=RSS&feedName=worldNews
Just echoing Cavlan, that at least we Get IT here. Despite 0’s perpetual appositions, it’s one 0bamanable Donbass war; now followed by another USraeli IRON Dome-ass war, covering up equally complete calumny here in his Vaterland. Maybe a FOOL! still believes:
Just watched a really good “crosstalk” on rt with Stephen Cohen and Mearsheimer, concerning Ukraine.
host said it was best cross talk episode he’s had.
something about to explode, break down, economically.
people need to figure out which things they can probably agree on, and talk about those. and stop pounding on the things they will never agree on.
otherwise nothing will change.
yes, bruce, we get it here. and a few at my.fdl. ds wright finally got it after the commentariat clued him in, but he no longer overs it. yes, it’s all-gaza, alla-time now, and i admit i’ve wondered why that is. more msm coverage to rebut? more history at play, so folks dedicated to the issue? more casual russophobes?
so that’s the doobie brothers, eh? :)
mark, doesn’t peter lavelle say that often? (i think that’s his name) but i have appreciated cohen enormously, and he is a sober career russian analyst. is mearsheimer the former russian ambassador? well. i’ll try to watch, so many things cookin’ right now i’m havin’ trouble triaging chores and concerns.
whooosh, yes; bubbles are building again, apparently, now with foreclosed rental houses, subprime car loans, and lord knows what dark swaps and whatnot on commodities. there are almost enough new bits of info and speculation to deserve a new thread, even. perhaps i’ll have some time to weave one together.
but as to making common cause: yes, but divide and conquer has been a tried and true strategy by the oligarchs for so very long, no? one blogger said it’s known as GG &G. whazzat, i asked. ‘god, guns, and gays’ was the answer. but economic issues have huge chasms among ideologues of all stripes. will the foretold burgeoning higher consciousness truly begin when the next economic disaster strikes more than just the lower and middle middle class? maybe.
and michael cavlan, i swear i still intend to read your thread, sorry i haven’t yet.
My wife Mrs Michael Cavlan came home from work last night. she was upset. She asked me if i knew about the sanctions that the US was imposing on Russia. She said “Honey- this could lead to nuclear war can’t it?”
What could I say to her. I tried to tell her that there are ways out of this. She was not buying it. She just looked blank and said “This could be the end of it all. For all of us.”
I will try and allay her fears as best I can.
Love-Respect-Solidarity
More and moar doobious at home and abroad with the US Knesset’s unanimous profiles in porridge, backing the cluelessly Iron Dumb Israelites:
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-defense-prize-winner-shefer-iron-dome-is-a-bluff-1000954085; whose true (sea-)bottom line is their obfuscated Palesteapot Dome scandal of conquest of the Levant’s Leviathan Gaza gas resources. : http://globalresearch.ca/war-and-natural-gas-the-israeli-invasion-and-gaza-s-offshore-gas-fields/11680
no need to watch it, it’s much of what you already know, just like hearing someone such as Cohen talking about it.
nuclear war…. I expect there are people in the Pentagon who believe the US could survive a nuclear war.
old estimate, twenty million dead, I can hear it already ” it was a hard decision, but we think it was worth it”
so do i, mark. i’ll put it up with two from the real news, and a couple other links i’ll try to flessh out later. to say that i’m harried would be close to the mark (no pun intended): cooking for our daughter and her kids’ arrival sunday, repairmen for multiple appliance breakdowns jockeying for space with the local electric coop cutting down trees in the driveway, phones ringing…arrgh. need a bit of meditation time, don’t i? :)
michael cavlan, i’ve thought about your wife’s fear that all of this may lead to nuclear war; pc roberts and stephen cohen certainly believe so, as well. but when speaking of the sanctions, the only person i’ve seen mentioning nukes was in a discussion at ian welsh’s, and he imagined that it would be putin/the kremlin that would launch them. who do you imagine might/would?
it may just a huge failure of imagination on my part, but barring ‘accidents’, i guess the notion is so insane that at least for now, i don’t fear it. it’s more of an academic exercise for me, likely goofy of me, i reckon.