9 December 2015. Today is the 40th Day After the Terakt Downing the Russian Airliner Over the Sinai… Remember Them in Your Prayers

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Orthodox Christians remember the dead forty days after their passing and often have Pannikhida served for them on that day. Do likewise… we’re Christians, that’s what we do…

This is 40 days after the terakt that downed Flight 7K 9268… they all had faces… they all had names… they all had those to mourn over them… NEVER forget that.

BMD

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A Study in Contrasts: How Russia and the West Respond to Violence in Different Ways

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Confirmation that a terrorist bomb brought down the Metrojet airliner that crashed in Sinai surprised no one. However, the episode highlights the contrast between the way Russians and the West go about doing things now. Last year, following the crash of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 over the Ukraine, the West rushed out accusations within hours of the crash, which meant that, from the outset, they skewed the investigation to fit a theory. By contrast, after the crash of the Metrojet airliner, Russians refused to speculate on a cause until they did a proper investigation. Therefore, the investigation was open, in contrast to the secrecy cloaking the MH17 investigation. Importantly, the Metrojet investigation consulted the proper experts… the aircraft’s French manufacturers. On the other hand, the MH17 investigation excluded relevant evidence from Almaz Antey… who manufactured the Buk SAM that the investigation alleged shot down the aircraft… they didn’t heed the firm’s opinions nor did they even mention them in the report.

Since the investigation into the Metrojet tragedy took place openly and objectively, it produced a conclusive finding within weeks of the tragedy. By contrast, after more than a year, the MH17 investigation produced an incomplete (and in parts, contested) report. Besides this, note the astonishing contrast in the reaction to the two recent terakts… the Metrojet crash and the Paris attacks… that recently took place. In re the Metrojet crash, the Western reaction was large-scale indifference. Nevertheless, Russians rushed to show sympathy and support for the people of France following the Paris attacks, but there was no like rush from the Western public to show sympathy and support for the people of Russia following the Metrojet tragedy. There were even some appalling claims… apparently, extending to US government officials… that by supporting the Syrian government, Russia somehow brought the Metrojet tragedy down on itself.

In the case of the Paris attacks, alongside proper and legitimate feelings of grief for the victims, Western officials responded with blind fury and elements of panic, with talk of war and a stampede to impose ever-more draconian restrictions on Western society, but with no coherent plan of what to do. This contrasts with the calm and purposeful way that… amidst feelings of intense grief… the Russian authorities and people responded to the Metrojet tragedy. We should say clearly that it makes no sense to say that by supporting the Syrian government that Russia brought the Metrojet tragedy down on itself, any more than it makes sense to say that by opposing the Syrian government France brought the Paris attacks down on itself. Such rationalisations of terrorism are both wrong and immoral. However, it’s legitimate to say… as President Putin said in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly… that attempts to manipulate terrorists to achieve geopolitical objectives are both wrong and immoral… and also extremely dangerous. If Western governments want to respond properly to the Paris tragedy, then, acknowledging that is a good place to start.

19 November 2015

Alexander Mercouris

Sputnik International

http://sputniknews.com/columnists/20151119/1030414109/different-way-russia-west-respond-violence.html

15 November 2015. No Comment Necessary Department… France, Russia is WIth You!

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The Age of Despair: Reaping the Whirlwind of Western Support for Extremist Violence

Our Real Enemy… “Financial Terrorism” in the USA

Sergei Yolkin

2011

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We, the West, overthrew Saddam by violence. We overthrew Gaddafi by violence. We’re trying to overthrow Assad by violence. Harsh regimes all, but they were/are far less draconian than our Saudi allies, and other tyrannies around the world. What’s been the result of these interventions? They created a hell on earth, one that grows wider and more virulent, year after year. Without the American crime of aggressive war against Iraq, which, by the measurements used by Western governments themselves, left more than a million innocent people dead, there’d be no ISIS, no “Al Qaeda in Iraq”. Without the Saudi and Western funding and arming of an amalgam of extremist Sunni groups across the Middle East used as proxies to strike at Iran and its allies, there’d be no ISIS. Let’s go back further. Without the direct, extensive, and deliberate creation by the USA and its Saudi ally of a world-wide movement of armed Sunni extremists during the Carter and Reagan administrations, there would’ve been no “War on Terror”… and no terrorist attacks in Paris tonight.

Again, let’s be as clear as possible… the hellish world we live in today is the result of deliberate policies and actions undertaken by the USA and its allies over the past decades. Washington led and/or supported the quashing of secular political resistance across the Middle East, to bring recalcitrant leaders like Nasser to heel, to back corrupt and brutal dictators who’d advance the US agenda of political domination and resource exploitation. The open history of the last half-century is very clear in this regard. Going all the way back to the overthrow of the democratic government of Iran in 1953, the USA deliberately and consciously pushed the most extreme sectarian groups to undermine a broader-based secular resistance to its  domination agenda. Why bring up this “ancient history” when fresh blood runs in the streets of Paris? Because that blood wouldn’t be running if not for this ancient history; and because the reaction to this latest reverberation of Washington’s decades-long bipartisan cultivation of religious extremism will certainly be more bloodshed, more repression, and more violent intervention. In turn, that’d inevitably produce yet more atrocities and upheaval as we saw in Paris tonight.

I write in despair. Of course, despair at the depravity displayed by the murderers of innocents in Paris tonight; but an even deeper despair at the depravity of the egregious murderers who brought us to this ghastly place in human history… those gilded figures who strode the halls of power for decades in the high chambers of the West, killing innocent people by the hundreds of thousands, crushing secular opposition to their favoured dictators… and again, again and again… supporting, funding, and arming some of the most virulent sectarians on earth. Moreover, there’s one further cause of despair. Although this historical record is there in the open, readily available from most mainstream sources, people now ignore it and will continue to ignore it, both the power-gamers and the public. The latter will continue to support the former as they replicate and regurgitate the same old policies of intervention, the same old agendas of domination and greed, over and over and over… creating ever-more fresh hells for us all to live in, and poisoning the lives of our children, and of all those who come after us.

13 November 2015

Chris Floyd

Counterpunch

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/13/the-age-of-despair-reaping-the-whirlwind-of-western-support-for-extremist-violence/

Editor:

The present terakt has “Made in Langley” stamped all over it. That’s why Victor Potapov is evil to the bone… he voluntarily and without compulsion became a slavish CIA minion as a propaganda specialist (“religious broadcaster”, my ass… Radio Liberty is a CIA front used to try to destabilise Russia). He advanced high enough in the dog’s service to merit a “red” official passport… that is, he was no spear-dragger underling; he was a responsible official in the American effort to undermine the USSR and the Russian Federation, a conscious abettor of the American war against Holy Rus. In short, he was a Sergianist (a cleric who sucks up to the political powers-that-be) and a “Chekist in a riassa” (a priest that willingly aids and advances the agenda of the special services) of the very worst sort.

Before we point fingers at others… we must clean up our own byre. I’d observe that it’s full of shit, but those who put that shit there tell us that it’s not there… we’re just “negative”; we have no right to “complain about our ‘betters’”. Many hands made the Paris terakt possible. Many were “respectable”, “conservative”, and “Christian”… fancy that. As I said, we have our own house to put right. Let no one attack “Muslims” or “terrorists”. In the words of Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us”. Think on that… it’s a meaty reflection…

BMD