What We Know Now About the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Evidence on the Malaysian Airliner Shootdown

U.S. discloses intelligence on downing of Malaysian jet

Greg Miller

Washington Post, July 23, 2014

The Obama administration, detailing what it called evidence of Russian complicity in the downing of a Malaysian airliner, on Tuesday released satellite images and other sensitive intelligence that officials say show Moscow had trained and equipped rebels in Ukraine responsible for the attack.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials cited sensors that traced the path of the missile, shrapnel markings on the downed aircraft, voiceprint analysis of separatists claiming credit for the strike, and a flood of photos and other data from social-media sites.

The officials also for the first time identified a sprawling Russian military installation near the city of Rostov as the main conduit of Russian support to separatists in Ukraine, describing it as a hub of training and weapons that has expanded dramatically over the past month. The officials said that tanks, rocket launchers and other arms have continued to flow into Ukraine even after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which killed 298 civilians.

Analysts at the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies are continuing to examine information about the crash, but the officials said the intelligence assembled in the five days since the attack points overwhelmingly to Russian-backed separatists in territory they control in eastern Ukraine.

The senior intelligence officials said they have ruled out the possibility that Ukrainian forces were responsible for the attack.

Intelligence documents show the location of the downed jet. (U.S. Intelligence Community)

“That is not a plausible scenario,” said one senior U.S. official, who noted that American intelligence agencies have confirmed that Ukraine had no antiaircraft missile system within range of the Malaysian flight at the time it was struck.

The official was one of three senior U.S. intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity during a briefing arranged for reporters in Washington to provide more detailed information on the assertions made by administration officials in recent days, as well as to rebut Russian claims.

“We are seeing a full-court press by the Russian government to instruct affiliated or friendly elements to manipulate the media environment to spread Russia’s version of the story,” the official said. “What this looks like again is a classic case of blaming the victims.”

Russia has denied that it had any role in the shooting down of the Malaysian plane or that it has provided the Ukrainian rebels with SA-11 antiaircraft missile batteries. Moscow has instead blamed the Ukrainian government for the crash. On Monday, Russian Defense Ministry officials claimed that a Ukrainian military jet was flying less than three miles from the Malaysian plane just before it was shot down.

The U.S. intelligence officials, who included experts on Russia’s military and its relationship with separatists in Ukraine, said they do not know the identities or even the nationalities — whether Russian or possibly defectors from Ukraine’s military — of those who launched the missile from an SA-11 surface-to-air battery.

Nor have U.S. spy agencies reached any conclusions on the motive for the attack, except to say that the reaction among separatists recorded on social media indicates they believed they were targeting a Ukrainian military transport plane.

In part, the officials said, that may have been because the rebels operating the missile battery were poorly trained and did not have access to other radar systems and equipment that ordinarily accompany an SA-11 system and are designed to help distinguish military targets from civilian planes.

Images claim to show the movements of a surface-to-air missile launcher and build up of Russian military activity across the border.

U.S. officials said earlier that they had seen “indications” of advanced antiaircraft systems being moved into eastern Ukraine from Russia and being removed after the jet was shot down.

A War over Energy in Gaza?

Allison Good

July 22, 2014 

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"Israel is not using Operation Protective Edge to steal the Gaza Marine gas field from the Palestinians..."

Israel’s current offensive in the Gaza Strip is by no means an energy war, but that has not stopped conspiracy theorists from alleging that the IDF’s Operation Protective Edge aims to assert control over Palestinian gas and avert an Israeli energy crisis. Indeed, Israel is nowhere close to experiencing an energy crisis and has no urgent or near-future need for the natural gas located offshore Gaza. While Israel gains nothing for its energy industry by hitting Gaza, it stands to lose significantly more.

A recent post published on The Guardian’s website by Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, a self-proclaimed “international security journalist,” employs shoddy logic, evidence and language to prove that Protective Edge intends to prevent the Palestinians from exploiting their own resources while integrating them “into the adjacent Israeli offshore installations.” Hamas, Ahmed claims, is “the main obstacle” to the finalization of this purported “gas deal.”

It is certainly true that Israel is concerned about the potential for the Hamas leadership to exploit the Gaza Marine field, which holds 1 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This resource could, as The Washington Institute’s Simon Henderson wrote in March, “provide more reliable electricity to the Gaza Strip and boost the revenues of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.” Mismanagement of revenues by the Palestinian Authority, however, could enable Hamas to control and exploit that money.

Nor is there any doubt that the legal status of Gaza Marine is unquestionably murky. The Gaza-Jericho Agreement of 1994 divided the area offshore the Gaza Strip into zones of maritime activity that extend twenty nautical miles from the shore, but exploiting the gas requires maritime activity beyond that distance. The Israeli navy has certainly increased its presence in that area of the Mediterranean Sea since Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, but defining maritime borders requires a final peace deal between Israel and a state of Palestine.

The factual existence of gas in Gaza, however, does not mean that Israel needs it to meet its own domestic energy demand. It is true that Gaza Marine was considered a potential short-term solution to an impending gas shortage as Israel’s Mari-B field began to dry up in the late 2000s. This changed, of course, with the discovery of the Tamar and Leviathan fields offshore Israel in 2009 and 2010. Combined, they hold an estimated 30 trillion cubic feet of gas, 60 percent of which has been reserved for domestic use.

GOING AT IT IN GAZA: NEW REALITIES IN AN OLD CONFLICT

Jacob Stoil

July 21, 2014 

Hamas needs a game changer, while Israel’s military doctrine is undergoing one. The effects of the Gaza blockade and the closure of the Egyptian border and many of the tunnels under it have driven Hamas’ decisions since the latest outbreak in the Hamas-Israel conflict on June 27. Hamas relies on its finances to help maintain its support in Gaza by providing support to the local populace, engaging in some degree of governance, and paying other local power brokers to remain on side. However, recently it has suffered from a severe curtailment of its cash flow. Hamas first attempted to solve its financial woes through the establishment of the Palestinian unity government. This, however, failed to alleviate the problem. The Hamas financial crisis has been building for over a year and the day before the first salvo of rockets from Gaza last month, workers hired by the Hamas administration in Gaza went on strike over a lack of pay. Now Hamas has made a bet that renewed war and subsequent ceasefire negotiations can accomplish what a unity government failed to achieve. The primary goal in these negotiations was a lessening of border restrictions and an end to the crackdown on smuggling, which might have rescued Hamas’s position in Gaza.

Egypt’s effective closure of the border also rendered resupply difficult for Hamas, providing additional motivation for Hamas’ decision to continue escalation. With the closed border and Egyptian activity against the tunnels that run underneath it, Hamas has had trouble adding to its considerable stockpile of long-range, heavy munitions, ammunition, and other military supplies or raising additional revenue from taxing commercial goods brought across or under the border. Without an alteration of the border situation, Hamas will see its effective military capabilities degrade over time. This removes the motivation for holding forces in reserve — Hamas might as well use what it has to achieve a result while it can. This explains Hamas’ willingness to employ its full range of capabilities, including UAVs, offensive tunneling, long-range rockets, and amphibious assault teams. The twin pressures of finance and supply explain why, at each phase of escalation, Hamas has made the decision to double down and go for broke. Early on in the current round of the conflict, a long-term ceasefire that addressed the border situation might have been sufficient to end things; however, as the pattern of Gazan rockets and Israeli strikes continues, for Hamas, such an agreement will no longer suffice.

Hamas is not immune to the logic of mission creep and escalation. These contribute to changes in the ceasefire terms Hamas will seek. As the clash escalates, Hamas needs a bigger visible payoff in the ceasefire negotiations to justify its actions and the damage suffered in Gaza. Whether a result of organizational chaos, indecision, or the logic of escalation, Hamas’ rejection of the terms of the original Egyptian ceasefirehave raised the bar even higher. Should Hamas accept something resembling those terms, it would need to justify any damage to Gaza or loss of life that took place after the initial ceasefire attempt. Hamas would also have trouble projecting the image of being a victorious resistance organization and its reputation might suffer, especially relative to more radical competitors. The ineffectiveness of its operations against Israel has exacerbated this dynamic. Increasingly, Hamas risks looking impotent — its amphibious teams were killed, its infiltrations countered, and its rockets have yet to cause major damage to Israel, or disrupt its economy significantly. As a result, Hamas needs a long-term ceasefire that will, at the very least, allow it to save face as well as resolve its financial and logistical problems. In short, because of its logistics, finances, and the real potential of waning support in Gaza, if Hamas does not want to lose big, it must score a big win.

To achieve a big win, Hamas has few remaining options but to hope for a major Israeli incursion. Like a forward trying to draw a foul, Hamas successfully drew Israel into an invasion. The general rule of these situations is the bigger the fight, the bigger the ceasefire compromise. Knowing that Israel does not wish to remain in an indefinite reoccupation of Gaza and that a large-scale invasion may erode the relative support Israel has received from the international community in the operation thus far, Hamas could hope that after an Israeli invasion, the border might open and money might again flow into its coffers, with Hamas being perceived as a victor for surviving.

Inside the Battle to Crush Ukraine’s Rebel Capital as Dutch Search for MH17 Clues

07.21.14 

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Fighting raged in the center of Donetsk on Monday as Dutch investigators examined the MH17 bodies. 

DONETSK, Ukraine — Heavy fighting broke out in downtown Donetsk, the industrial capital of eastern Ukraine, at about 10:00 this morning. Much of the combat centered on the Zapadnaya railway and bus stations. Rebels blocked the roads. Constant artillery blasts could be heard in the residential area around the station. 

At almost the same moment, Dutch experts arrived in war-torn eastern Ukraine to investigate the MH17 catastrophe, but managed to make their way towards the crash scene to examine the victims' bodies. 

Clearly, all of the statements from Moscow and Kiev about a cease-fire for the period of the investigation have been forgotten. Rebels reinforced their positions in Donetsk, bringing tanks and armored personnel carriers closer to the railway station on Panfilova Avenue. Glass was blown out of the windows of five-story buildings on Slavatskaya Street. Local radio reported that the Ukrainian military blew up railroad tracks and blocked approaches to the city. 

Once again civilians paid the price of this ferocious war. Shells killed pedestrians running to try to escape into basements. A young woman's body was lying on the dusty road by a row of garages: Her head was destroyed, and both of her shoes had been thrown in the air by the shock wave of the explosion and had landed a few steps away from her motionless body. 

A lost-looking young man waved to us from under the trees in the next courtyard. He pointed at two more bodies: dead civilian men. “What to do with them?” he shouted. “Flies will cover the bodies. It is very hot.” 

The young man said his name was Yuriy Malkov, and he was trying to get back to his wife, who was alone and terrified. “I could hear the sound of five mortar shots in the direction of my apartment building and could not wait to see how she was,” he said. “I called her on the phone—she was safe, but she is hiding in the basement of our burning building right now.” 

We ran together across the deserted streets and yards. 

The Ghosts of World War I Circle over Ukraine

Robert W. Merry

July 22, 2014 

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Ukraine: a lingering flashpoint between Russia and America. It could get far worse.

We don’t yet know the details behind the tragic downing of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner over eastern Ukraine on July 17, but in one sense, the details aren’t going to matter very much in the global scheme of things. The geopolitical outcome is already known. World outrage has focused on Russian president Vladimir Putin to such an extent that Putin has suffered a huge accretion of moral authority. That, in turn, lessens his range of actions in his ongoing confrontation with the West over Ukraine and increases the likelihood that Russia will lose its traditional dominance over that split country that straddles Russia and the West.

If that happens, prospects for a rapprochement between Russia and the West will be dead for a considerable period. And the watchword in U.S.-Russian relations will be hostility. 

Thus, the downing of the Malaysian airliner is likely to be one of those hinge points that historians look back on as having deflected the course of world events. In these spaces the other day,Jacob Heilbrunn suggested a possible correlation between the Malaysia Airlines disaster and the assassination of Austria’s Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo, Bosnia, which set in motion events leading to World War I. It’s worth pondering, particularly an element of the Sarajevo story that could prove pertinent to our own time—namely, the mushrooming of seemingly isolated events into major geopolitical confrontations.

It is noteworthy how quickly the political passions leading to the Sarajevo assassination were overwhelmed by much larger and more profound geopolitical realities and tensions. The fate of the Serbs and their struggle against their Austrian overlords, a matter of intense political anguish in the Balkans at the time, evaporated in significance as Europe’s great powers grappled with complex alliance structures, far-reaching foreign-policy imperatives, internal political threats, and the exigencies of national honor.

Similarly, the emotions generated the past week at the thought of innocent air travelers getting blown out of the sky will soon be subsumed under much more significant geopolitical ambitions and maneuverings. As columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. wrote this week, “Miscalculation and thoughtless error have often sown chaos in the relationships among nations. The deaths of 298 innocent people . . . transformed the battle for Ukraine into a global issue.”

While nobody seriously believes the missile attack on the airliner was a purposeful effort to kill civilians with no stake in the fate of Ukraine, it appears that pro-Russian separatist elements in eastern Ukraine fired the missile that downed the plane and that they received the training for the weapon, if not the weapon itself, from Russia. And, since the United States considers the separatist insurgency in Ukraine to be illegitimate and Russia’s involvement even more so, it was inevitable that the July 17 tragedy would be leveraged for broader geopolitical aims.

It will work. World opinion is turning powerfully against Russia and President Putin, with a lot of help from important world leaders such as President Obama and his ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, as well as many others throughout America and Europe. The result is that Putin will lose much of whatever leverage he had in the matter of the fate and future of Ukraine. Whatever prospect he had of negotiating an end to Ukrainian bloodshed on terms acceptable to him will be lost in the storm of anger generated by that airliner attack.

The Ultimate Guide to the SA-11 Gadfly

Ivan Oelrich

July 22, 2014 

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Editor’s Note: Harry Kazianis, Managing Editor of The National Interest, spoke with Ivan Oelrich, a former vice president of the Strategic Security Program at the Federation of American Scientists, and presently as an adjunct professor of international affairs at George Washington University concerning the SA-11 Gadfly.

Kazianis: To begin, if you could, please describe in general terms the SA-11 Gadfly system. What it its primary role? How effective is it? What countries operate it? In general terms, does it have a good reputation in terms of combat capabilities compared to the competition?

Oelrich: The 11 is a mobile surface-to-air missile SYSTEM. The emphasis to say that it is not a rocket, it is a radar for finding targets at a distance, a command vehicle, a launch vehicle that carries the rocket and a tracking radar. So normally the big radar would detect potential targets at a distance and then assign the target to one of a few launch vehicles. He tracking radar is not as powerful so it is helped by instructions from the surveillance radar, telling it where to look. Now it is far from the preferred approach but the launch vehicle can operate autonomously, using its radar for both surveillance and tracking.

It is a Soviet system so some ex-Warsaw Pact countries still have but it was widely exported. The 11 is fairly old now. Most of the upgrades in air defense systems would be better resistance to jamming and other electronic countermeasures. The 11 would probably not be very effective against modern air forces, the US, Britain, France, and a few others but airliners don't have radar jamming equipment, even radar warning alarms, they fly straight and level at constant speed so even an old radar will be perfectly capable against such an easy target.

Kazianis: How much more capable is this system as opposed to say a shoulder fired weapons, or a MANPAD?

Oelrich: There are two major differences. First, by definition, MANPADS has to be light enough for a person to carry. This limits fuel and, hence, range and altitude. No MANPADS could reach the cruising altitude of an airliner. Second, MANPADS are not as tightly linked into an air defense net as an 11 should be but, in this case, probably was not.

Kazianis: In terms of air defense systems, there are other more advanced systems like the S-300 or S-400. What is the difference between the SA-11 and say the S-300?

Oelrich: There are a lot of systems more advanced than the 11. The Russians have upgraded the 11 to a more modern 17. The 300, and its latest version, the 400, are more sophisticated still and, again, a system. The 300/400, for example, combines missiles of different ranges, so some are optimized for long range attack but, if the attacker gets though that line of defense, it is engaged with smaller missiles optimized for close in defense.

Kazianis: There is also a updated version of the SA-11, the SA-17. What is the main differences between them?

Can Putin Survive?

By George Friedman

July 21, 2014 

Stratfor 

There is a general view that Vladimir Putin governs the Russian Federation as a dictator, that he has defeated and intimidated his opponents and that he has marshaled a powerful threat to surrounding countries. This is a reasonable view, but perhaps it should be re-evaluated in the context of recent events.

Ukraine and the Bid to Reverse Russia's Decline

Ukraine is, of course, the place to start. The country is vital to Russia as a buffer against the West and as a route for delivering energy to Europe, which is the foundation of the Russian economy. On Jan. 1, Ukraine's president was Viktor Yanukovich, generally regarded as favorably inclined to Russia. Given the complexity of Ukrainian society and politics, it would be unreasonable to say Ukraine under him was merely a Russian puppet. But it is fair to say that under Yanukovich and his supporters, fundamental Russian interests in Ukraine were secure.

This was extremely important to Putin. Part of the reason Putin had replaced Boris Yeltsin in 2000 was Yeltsin's performance during the Kosovo war. Russia was allied with the Serbs and had not wanted NATO to launch a war against Serbia. Russian wishes were disregarded. The Russian views simply didn't matter to the West. Still, when the air war failed to force Belgrade's capitulation, the Russians negotiated a settlement that allowed U.S. and other NATO troops to enter and administer Kosovo. As part of that settlement, Russian troops were promised a significant part in peacekeeping in Kosovo. But the Russians were never allowed to take up that role, and Yeltsin proved unable to respond to the insult.

Putin also replaced Yeltsin because of the disastrous state of the Russian economy. Though Russia had always been poor, there was a pervasive sense that it been a force to be reckoned with in international affairs. Under Yeltsin, however, Russia had become even poorer and was now held in contempt in international affairs. Putin had to deal with both issues. He took a long time before moving to recreate Russian power, though he said early on that the fall of the Soviet Union had been the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. This did not mean he wanted to resurrect the Soviet Union in its failed form, but rather that he wanted Russian power to be taken seriously again, and he wanted to protect and enhance Russian national interests.

The breaking point came in Ukraine during the Orange Revolution of 2004. Yanukovich was elected president that year under dubious circumstances, but demonstrators forced him to submit to a second election. He lost, and a pro-Western government took office. At that time, Putin accused the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies of having organized the demonstrations. Fairly publicly, this was the point when Putin became convinced that the West intended to destroy the Russian Federation, sending it the way of the Soviet Union. For him, Ukraine's importance to Russia was self-evident. He therefore believed that the CIA organized the demonstration to put Russia in a dangerous position, and that the only reason for this was the overarching desire to cripple or destroy Russia. Following the Kosovo affair, Putin publicly moved from suspicion to hostility to the West.

The Russians worked from 2004 to 2010 to undo the Orange Revolution. They worked to rebuild the Russian military, focus their intelligence apparatus and use whatever economic influence they had to reshape their relationship with Ukraine. If they couldn't control Ukraine, they did not want it to be controlled by the United States and Europe. This was, of course, not their only international interest, but it was the pivotal one.

Why the Ukraine separatists screwed up: Badly organized insurgents can’t master complex weapons systems

By Stephen Biddle and Ivan Oelrich 

21 July 2014

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Ukrainian rescue servicemen inspect part of the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on Sunday in Rassipnoye, Ukraine. (Photo by Rob Stothard/Getty Images) 

Stephen Biddle is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and an adjunct senior fellow for defense policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Ivan Oelrich is a former vice president of the Strategic Security Program at the Federation of American Scientists, and serves as an adjunct professor of international affairs at George Washington University. 

For many people, “nonstate actors” are supposed to be ill-equipped militias, warlord bands or Vietcong insurgents in black pajamas. Because they lack sophisticated weapons, so the common assumption goes, they resort to irregular guerilla tactics. But if they somehow got modern precision weapons, it is often argued, they would quickly become a grave danger to state militaries like the Americans’ – or the Ukrainians. In fact, the increasing proliferation of modern weapons to nonstate actors has given rise to a new category of “hybrid” threats – nonstate actors who combine irregular or terrorist tactics with precision firepower, and which many now see as a central defense planning challenge for the United States. 

This brings us to the problem of the Russian-designed SA-11 antiaircraft missile now widely believed to have shot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 on July 17. Many now assume that Ukrainian separatist rebels acquired at least one SA-11 TEL (transporter-erector-launcher), and used it to fire the fatal shot. The SA-11 is certainly a sophisticated weapon: a modern, radar-guided surface-to-air missile (SAM), it has a slant range of over 20 miles, a speed of about Mach 3, and is capable of tracking and engaging multiple high-performance aircraft simultaneously. How, then, could such a sophisticated weapon shoot down a civilian airliner? And what, if anything, does this tell us about the larger problem of how to assess the threat posed by advanced weapons in nonstate actors’ hands? 

In fact the real military capability conveyed by any given weapon is only weakly related to the weapon’s technical characteristics. Especially for nonstate militaries, the presence or absence of the institutional infrastructure needed to use complex systems effectively is a much stronger predictor of real power. Some nonstate actors are actually surprisingly mature on this score; others much less so. And the difference matters – a lot. 

Ukrainian Officials Say Russian Military Continuing to Reinforce Its Forces Deployed Along the Ukrainian Border

Matthew Luxmoore

July 21, 2014

Authorities: Russia continues firing at Ukrainian positions, moves 100 extra military units to border

Surveillance photos released by NATO between March and May show Russian troops massing on the border with Ukraine.

© http://www.dailymail.co.uk/'Made in Moscow'

Russian troops are not only refusing to draw back from their positions along the border with Ukraine but their numbers continue to grow, Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, said at a briefing in Kyiv on July 21. Russia furthermore has not ceased firing at Ukrainian positions from the Russian side of the border and supplying military hardware, the Defense Ministry notes.

“More than 100 units arrived in [Russia’s] Rostov oblast today. Every day their numbers increase,” Lysenko said. He did not reveal the origin of the reports.

In addition, he said there have been no signs of Russia attempting to facilitate an end to the conflict.

“Since [the Malaysia Airlines disaster of July 17 in which 298 people perished], Russia has not tried even once to stop arming the terrorists. It continues to supply them with arms,” he said.

According to Kyiv-based military expert Dmitry Tymchuk, over the course of July 20 Ukrainian forces positioned in Donetsk oblast near the border with Russia were targeted four times by Russian troops with mortars and mobile artillery. The attacks reportedly came from the territory of Russia’s Rostov oblast. A day earlier, on July 19, Ukrainian airborne troops were fired upon from Rostov Oblast in Russia three times, according to the Defense Ministry: with artillery fire at 1:45 p.m., grenade launchers at 4:30 p.m. and Grad multiple-rocket launchers at 4:45 p.m.

Of the 30 checkpoints in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts in eastern Ukraine, only 17 are operational, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine has reported.

Ukrainian forces gaining ground

Commenting on recent developments in the government’s antiterrorism operation to drive Russian-backed guerrillas out of Ukraine’s east, Lysenko said the Ukrainian military continues to gain ground.

UKRAINE ON THE BRINK - Meddlesome great powers like to fish in troubled waters

premen addy

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Ukraine is at the crossroads, its future uncertain, its ethnic faultiness dangerously exposed to the deepening turbulence in Russia-Nato relations. The country is a house divided, of conflicting identities — Russian in the industrialized East, non-Russian in the rural West — with combustible angles of vision on a fraught past. The country’s western region, the seedbed of uncompromising nationalism, with its fascist and pro-Nazi colourations, is best exemplified by Stepan Bandera’s wartime party and kindred groups that collaborated with Nazi occupation forces in the murder of Jews and Poles. These extremist elements are the ideological forebears of the present Pravy Sektor (Right Sector) and Svoboda (Freedom), both in varying degrees anti-Semitic and much given to railing against the “Jewish-Russian mafia” in Kiev. Pravy Sektor is in denial over its anti-Semitism (which it ascribes to Moscow propaganda), but says it is “nationalist, defending the values of white, Christian Europe”, that it holds multiculturalism “responsible for the disappearance of the crucifix and the arrival of girls in burqas in your schools”, a view with which Svoboda is in fervent accord. However, Pravy Sektor, unlike Svoboda, is against joining the European Union.

Among Svoboda’s priorities is the cultural cleansing of Russian influences in the country, which include banning the teaching of Russian in schools (the country has been, and is, bilingual), abolishing Russian street names, depriving Russian-populated Crimea its autonomy, and joining Nato for the acquisition of modern weaponry. Yulia Tymoshenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister, who fell out with President Viktor Yanukovych and was imprisoned for corruption, stood again for the presidency recently and lost. The country’s foremost political virago gave vent on camera to anti-Russian fury, advocating the use of nuclear weapons against Crimea’s Russian population. Yet, it was in Kievan Rus’ that the Russian state was born; both nations are tied by the umbilical cord of the Orthodox faith, culture and history. Nikolai Gogol, among the titans of 19th-century Russian literature, was Ukranian by birth but Russian in his choice of language. Thousands of Ukrainians today work in Russia — as do Georgians — and send back substantial remittances to their families and dependants.

Troubled waters are where meddlesome great powers most like to fish. Ukraine is where the United States of America and Nato chose to bait Russia; it was to be the post-Cold-War denouement to contain and encircle Russia: to break Russia’s resolve and capacity as an effective rival. Nato’s eastward expansion violated the solemn assurances of Western leaders to Mikhail Gorbachev, then Soviet leader, that no advantage would be taken if Soviet forces withdrew from Eastern and Central Europe. Jack Matlock, then US ambassador in Moscow has told how the end of the Cold War was a negotiation with the Soviet Union with no winners and losers in mind.

Recounting this recently in The Washington Post, Matlock deplored the consequent Western triumphalism and the expansion of Nato, which other hallowed veterans at the heart of the American establishment, such as George Kennan and Paul Nitze, warned against as needlessly provocative. But with the corrupt, drunk, incompetent Boris Yeltsin at the helm, the opportunity for the Clinton administration to act with impunity was too good to pass. Mikhail Gorbachev described his country’s foreign minister, during this period, as the US consul general in Moscow. Matlock further deplored Nato’s decision to bomb and destroy Yugoslavia, arbitrarily detach Kosovo from Serbia, invade Iraq and attack Libya as dangerous precedents from which there would be the inevitable blowback against what the late Senator J. William Fulbright, in the aftermath of Vietnam, described as the “Arrogance of Power”.

Straddling foundations, think-tanks, universities and such revered institutions as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Kennedy School at Harvard, the Woodrow Wilson Center, the Nitze School at Johns Hopkins, the Naval War College, Georgetown University, the Brookings and Carnegie Foundations, the departments of state and defense, not to speak of the National Security Council and Central Intelligence Agency, are where American grand-strategists gather and move seamlessly to and fro, regardless of party sympathies or affiliations, affirming through word, speech and deed the sanctities of “the indispensable power,” its “exceptionalism” and its “Manifest Destiny” as the planet’s “Liberal Leviathan” or preferred “benign hegemon”, which, an irreverent contrarian noted, is as fictional a construct as the unicorn since the hegemonic gene is more brutish than benign.

Maps and Photos Accompanying U.S. Intelligence Community Briefing on Malaysian Airliner Shootdown

July 23, 2014

U.S. intelligence states its case on the shoot-down of MH17

Washington Post,

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released various images and maps purported to show the movements of a surface-to-air missile launcher as well as evidence of a buildup of Russian military activity across the border.

Sources: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, News reports. The Washington Post. Published on July 22, 2014, 7:47 p.m.

15 Astounding Technologies DARPA Is Creating Right Now

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Bullets that can change direction in flight

Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) are the military's first smart, self-guided bullets.

EXACTO bullets are able to change their path during flight to correct for the movement of a target or any other factors that might have driven the bullet off course.

The bullets feature optical tips that can detect lasers on a target. Tiny fins on the bullets then guide the bullet towards that laser.

The Pentagon just successfully conducted a live-fire test utilizing these rounds.

High-energy lasers

The High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System (HELLADS) program is an ambitious DARPA project aimed at neutralizing surface-to-air missile threats that aircraft may encounter.

Generally, surface-to-air missiles are faster than a target plane, making it difficult for an aircraft to evade fire. The HELLADS program attempts to use lasers to disable incoming missiles.

DARPA is also planning on increasing the strength of the HELLADS laser in order to make it an offensive weapon capable of destroying enemy ground targets.

Flying trucks

The ARES program, a Skunk Works extension of DARPA's Transformer program, is an attempt to develop an actual flying car.

ARES will be a dual-mode vehicle capable of both driving on the ground and achieving high-speed vertical takeoff and landing. Twin tilting fans will allow the vehicle to hover and land. The vehicle can also configure itself for high-speed flight.

DARPA hopes that the ARES will be especially resistant to IEDs — while also being able to evade aerial threats, like air-to-air missiles.

Is Twitter Trolling Making the Israel-Palestine Conflict Worse?

Emily Shire

07.22.14 

From hashtags praising Hitler to Facebook groups demanding ‘revenge’ on Gaza, the social mediasphere has reached a new low. 

When you see #HitlerWasRight and #HitlerDidNothingWrong begin to trend, it’s a good time to question whether Twitter, Facebook, and social media have made a horribly painful, decades-long (centuries-long) conflict somehow even more painful. 

The crisis in the Middle East is worsening day by day. It goes without saying that political leaders have escalated a situation that already had civilians at an emotional fever pitch since the abduction and death of three Israeli teen boys, and the subsequent revenge killing of a Palestinian youth, in June. But while Benjamin Netanyahu, Mahmoud Abbas, and Sami Abu Zahri give the go-ahead to rocket fire and military offenses, people all over the world have taken to social media to voice their opinions. And—unsurprisingly—a large number of those posts involve trolling the conflict with things like pro-Holocaust messages. 

Since the recent violence has broken out between Israelis and Palestinians, Twitter and Facebook have become a parallel battleground. Inane and disturbing hashtags have been lobbed by those often far removed from the rocket fire. And it’s not just from random, anonymous civilians. A social media manager for the African National Congress, South Africa’s ruling political party, posted a messageon Facebook that featured an image of Adolph Hitler with the text “Yes man, you were right …I could have killed all the Jews, but I left some of them to let you know why I was killing them.” 

The conflation of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments is nothing new. The hate behind both have long bled into each other. But the flippant use of extremist hashtags only helps to validate the worst fears that anti-Semitism is alive and wellin too many parts of the world (in case thefirebombing of a Paris synagogue didn’t already do that). This, in turn, feeds into an outpouring of anti-Arab vitriol on social media. David Sheen reportedly translated tweets by Israeli teens calling for death sentences to Arabs. And just prior to the most recent outbreak of all-out violence, Facebook groups like “The People of Israel Demand Revenge” grew by the tens of thousand in response to the abduction and murder of the three Israeli teenagers. 

It might be easy to dismiss the disturbing tweets on both sides as shallow name-calling and social-media posturing with no real-world consequences. If it was true that Patrick Stewart’s and Natalie Portman’s social pleas to “unite for Syria” made little difference in halting Bashar al-Assad’s slaughter of his own people, it’s not impossible to think that Rihanna’s and Amar’e Stoudemire tweets to#FreePalestine may not have a huge impact on the Middle East’s decision-makers. 

Surviving on a Diet of Poisoned Fruit: Reducing the National Security Risks of America’s Cyber Dependencies

July 21, 2014 

Richard Danzig 

Reports 

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"Surviving on a Diet of Poisoned Fruit: Reducing the National Security Risks of America’s Cyber Dependencies" by the Honorable Richard Danzig offers key insights about how to improve U.S. national security policymaking to address cyber insecurity. In the report, the author examines existing information technology security weaknesses and provides nine specific recommendations for the U.S. government and others to cope with these insecurities.

Iraq conflict breeds cyber-war among rival factions

By Mark Ward Technology correspondent, BBC News 

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The conflicts in Iraq and Syria have a parallel cyber-element, research suggests 

A cyber-civil war is being waged alongside the armed conflict in Iraq, research by security firms suggests.

As well as using social media to rally supporters and spread propaganda, some factions are employing hackers to gather intelligence. 

Well-known attack programs have been re-purposed in a bid to to subvert routers and other systems inside Iraq.

More broadly, cyber-thieves are also using the conflict to help trick people into opening booby-trapped messages. 

Local conflict "The key parties are local groups within Iraq using malware for targeted intelligence on each other," said Andrew Komarov, chief executive of security firm Intel Crawler.

"It is very hard to confirm who is the author, as some of the malware is used from public sources," said Mr Komarov, "but it is very visible that it is used within Iraq, and not outside against foreign countries, which may explain the beginning of internal local cyber-war."

One malware program, called Njrat, was used in hundreds of incidents and had helped some groups create networks of machines they could control remotely. 

Once machines were infected with Njrat, attackers immediately started stealing files or using a computer's camera or microphone to monitor what was going on around it.

These attacks differ from those seen when malware similar to Njrat is used in other countries, said Mr Komarov. Instead of simply spamming out messages seeking victims from whom attackers can steal money, the cyber-activists in Iraq seem to target particular cities, groups and even families.

"All the attacks are very selective and affected mostly local conflicting parties," said Mr Komarov. 

In addition, he said, Intel Crawler had seen some civilians targeted but these might be relatives and friends of people more closely involved in the conflict in the region. 

Isis has been an adept user of social media and computer technology 

Attackers attempt to infect potential victims using social media, said Mr Komarov but they are also scanning the net within Iraq seeking routers that they can then subvert using their own tools. The majority of these attacks are concentrated on four Iraqi cities, Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and Erbil.

Anonymous asks Elite hackers to join them in a massive cyber attack on Israel

by Waqas

July 21, 2014 

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The online hacktivist Anonymous has a message for Israeli government in which the group has asked elite hackers from around the world to join them and conduct a massive cyber attack against the state of Israel.

A YouTube video message uploaded couple of days ago talks about Israeli air strike on Gaza and criticizes the killings of innocent children and women. 

We’ve been fighting Israel and their terrorist state for over 4 years, and we have not grown weary or tired. It has only made us stronger. Therefore, we are calling upon the anonymous collective, and the elite hacker groups to join our crusade, and to wage cyber war against the state of Israel once more. This Friday will be a day in where Israel will feel fear tingling in their servers, and homes. It will be a day of solidarity and resistance, according to the video message.

Watch the video below: 

You can read the complete transript of the message here.

This will not be the first time when hackers will conduct a cyber attack on Israel over ongoing conflict. Hamas already hacked Israeli channel 10 satellite communication and about a week ago several hackers targeted Israeli servers, claiming to leak highly confidential data belong to Israeli police and other government sites. The Turkish hackers also hacked official MSN Israel domain against Gaza attacks.

Let’s see how this cyber attack will proceed.

Can the US accept allies as equals?

By Stephen Kinzer

JULY 20, 2014 

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India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) talked to Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff during a summit in Brasilia Wednesday.

BY EXPELLING the CIA station chief in Berlin recently, Germany hoped to jolt the United States into paying attention. Germans are outraged by reports that American spies may have been working inside their security services. Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that hostile operations like this “contradict everything that I understand to be a trusting cooperation between friendly partners.”

Historical memory of the Nazi and communist police states makes Germans especially sensitive to government surveillance. Besides, Germany’s security services cooperate intimately with the CIA, so spying on Germany should be unnecessary. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, the grand old man of German politics, had it right when he called these operations “so dumb that you can only weep at the stupidity of it all.”

Taking this episode as simply a misunderstanding over privacy issues, however, would be to miss its larger importance: It also suggests that the United States is having trouble adjusting to a new age of more equal global partnerships.

Especially during the Cold War, the United States had the power to intimidate countries that we euphemistically called “partners” or “allies.” Sometimes we forced them to take steps that were against their own interests. Our relative power in the world has declined, but many Americans still find it jarring to make political and diplomatic compromises to accommodate our friends. We expect other countries to accept our worldview and defer to our agenda, not the other way around. This leaves us unable to adapt to the changing nature of alliances.

Troubling breaches have opened between the United States and the most important country in Europe, the most important country in Latin America, and the most important country in South Asia. All three — Germany, Brazil, and India — still want to remain friends with the United States, but only if the US changes its behavior.

Many Germans have been alienated by aggressive American policies in the Middle East and beyond. The recent surveillance scandal further strains the German-American alliance, which grew as a response to specific conditions — World War II and the Cold War — that have receded into history. Germany feels a natural pull back to its traditional Central European identity. To keep Germany as a close partner, we must take its concerns seriously. There is no sign we are prepared to do that.

United States Reforms to Its Higher Defence Organisation: Lessons for India Rajneesh Singh

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Democracies of the world have many similarities, notwithstanding the differences in the system of governance and the governmental structure. The decision making by the Higher Defence Organisation (HDO) and the government of the United States and India face similar challenges regardless of the threat perception and the role, size and the employment of the military. What is fascinating is the challenges faced by the elected representatives, bureaucracy, civil and military, and their response to the challenges are very similar. Hence, the structure of the United States HDO and the rationale of reforms undertaken have lessons for India.

This study focuses on the reforms undertaken by the United States, to its HDO and the military in order to draw lessons for India. The endeavour is to bring out the best practises from the reforms which have resonance to the requirements of the Indian HDO and the military. The lessons are conceptual and inspirational in nature and not 'hand me down solutions' for problems besetting the Indian defence management system.

This monograph is the second in the series of two monographs. The first deals with the reforms to the British HDO. The two monographs are stand alone and focused studies for those interested in the higher defence management and the study of the HDO. 

About the Author

Col Rajneesh Singh was commissioned in Infantry in December 1989 and has varied operational, staff and instructional experience. He has commanded a Rashtriya Rifles company and battalion in Jammu and Kashmir. He has been a military observer in Congo for a year. His staff experience includes tenure in the Military Operations Directorate and in Military Secretary's Branch. The officer has also been an instructor at the NDA, Khadakwasla and at DSSC, Wellington. Col Rajneesh Singh is presently pursuing PhD at the JNU, New Delhi. 

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