02/21/15 ~ The Raw Story

Saturday, 21 February 2015

Rosetta dips low into comet 67P's alien world

On Saturday, Valentine's Day, the Rosetta spacecraft dipped down low over the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. How low? At one point, it was less than from the surface!

Given that the comet is 4.3 kilometers long and shaped like a rubber ducky that's been sitting in the Sun for 4 billion years, this was a pretty low and gutsy pass. It was done to get extremely high-resolution pictures of the comet, of course, but the spacecraft will also be making a series of more distant passes to sample the environment the comet at different locations.

Around the time of closest approach, the lower resolution NAVCAM instrument was used to snap photos of the comet. One of them showed the very, very weird Imhotep region of the comet, and, well, see for yourself:

© Photo by ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM

Fantastic high-resolution image of the surface of the comet seen from less than 9 kilometers away.

Yeesh. What a mess! Imhotep is the name given to the broad, flattish area on the outer part of the bigger of the two lobes. The resolution on this image is staggering; it's about 0.76 meters per pixel. A human standing on the surface would be just under three pixels long.

As you can see, the surface is ragged, littered with boulders, some the size of houses. There are two features in particular I want you to see.

That's a closer view of the flat area at the upper left of the big picture (bear in mind I am not a cometologist, so I'm speculating a bit here; hopefully we'll hear more from the Rosetta scientists about these features). This may be where ice under the comet's surface is turned into gas when warmed by the Sun. As the gas escapes the comet, it leaves behind dust and gravel that can flow around; this may be a low spot in the surface that has been filled. Note the smooth area stops on the left just like water at a shoreline. But it's not like a liquid, really; note the sharp step in the middle, a scarp that may be a slight collapse feature, where the ground suddenly gave way. It looks to be a few meters high.

The cliff-like region at the upper left looks very much like it's been eroded, but not like it happens on Earth. There's no water flow! In this case, it seems more likely that as ice turned to gas, the material erodes back, into the cliff, leaving behind the rocky material. Also, those boulders may be chunks that have fallen and rolled into place, or been exposed as icy material around them turns into gas and blows away.

Another fascinating area is this one:

Note the layering! On Earth or Mars (y'know, normal places) I'd wager a feature like that is from sedimentary action; deposited season after season by rains and flooding bringing sediment into a lake. But on a comet? I'd guess that this represents the exact opposite: As the comet orbits the Sun on an ellipse, it gets farther and nearer to our star. When it gets closer, the ice near the surface turning to gas will drop the surface down a bit, and that stops as the comet moves away from the Sun. Then the cycle starts up again, over and over. The plateau is probably rockier material, exposed more and more every orbit as the ice goes away. Note also the circular crater-like features to the right. Those almost certainly aren't impacts! More likely they are where gas is escaping the comet, the pits forming and growing over time as the area around the venting region loses ice.

Comets are really strange. They have extremely low gravity, their orbits determine their seasons, their erosive properties are backwards. That's why I want to be clear with my caveats about not being a comet scientist! Places like this are hard enough to interpret by the experts, and my guesses might be wildly wrong. What I'm hoping to do here is to get you thinking about what you're seeing, and to understand that we've never seen a comet's surface in detail like this before. .

There's a huge amount to learn, and it's essentially all virgin territory, all alien and bizarre. Shakespeare was right: There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

I've always interpreted that to mean Nature is more clever than we are, and we will always be surprised by what we find when we explore the Universe ... but we're clever too, and just because we didn't imagine something doesn't mean we can't figure it out .

Here are the photos of Nature's imagination. Now we let the science get to work.

If Congress doesn't act before February 27, the Department of Homeland Security is going to run out of money and go into a partial shutdown. (Eighty-five percent of employees would still be working, but they wouldn't be getting paid.) Congress doesn't appear to have a plan for action; as of last week, before it broke for recess, House and Senate lawmakers were each telling each other to do something. Meanwhile, politicians in both parties have already skipped to the step where they blame the other party for the possible shutdown — making them seem pretty resigned to it happening. House Speaker John Boehner said on Sunday he's "certainly" ready for a DHS shutdown.

It helps that both parties think they can win on the politics of a shutdown. Democrats see this as a replay of the government shutdown of 2013, when congressional Republicans tried to undo a major Obama administration policy (then Obamacare; now the president's executive actions on immigration) as a condition of keeping the government open. Republicans, for their part, appear to believe that because the Senate's Democratic minority is filibustering their funding bill, Democrats will take the blame — though there's little indication that they would become willing to roll back all of Obama's executive actions to end a shutdown. It's also not clear if Republicans could get a critical mass of support within their own party for anything less.

But the nonchalance with which both parties are treating the prospect of a Department of Homeland Security shutdown raises a big policy question: why does the department even exist?

The answer is that it shouldn't, and it never should have. DHS was a mistake to begin with. Instead of solving the coordination problems it was supposed to solve, it simply duplicated efforts already happening in other federal departments. And attempts to control and distinguish the department have politicized it to the point where it can't function smoothly — and might be threatening national security.

This isn't to say that DHS should be fully liquidated. The argument is there's no reason for it to exist as its own department when it can be reabsorbed into the various departments (from Justice to Treasury) from which it was assembled.

Since neither side is fighting to make the case for DHS, it's as good a time as any to look back over the agency's decade-plus-long history, and assess how the department's actually worked. The answer appears to be that the problems built deep in the department haven't aided national security — and might have damaged it.

DHS was doomed from the start

© Mike Theiler/Getty

Tom Ridge, the first DHS secretary, looks like he's about to high-five President Bush — but the White House left him hanging in more ways than one.

"I don't think (George W.) Bush was ever excited about the department," former Democratic member of Congress Jane Harman told The New Republic in 2009. But because it was "politically expedient," his White House went ahead with building a proposal for the new department in spring 2002 — and rushed the process, possibly to distract from revelations that the intelligence community could have prevented 9/11 if it had coordinated the information it already had.

If the point of DHS was to consolidate disaster prevention (whether natural or terroristic) and response under one roof, it failed miserably.

The process for deciding which existing agencies would be moved to DHS, and which ones would stay in other departments, was haphazard at best. According to a 2005 Washington Post article, the agency that supplies prosecutors in immigration court cases was moved to DHS; the agency that supplies immigration court judges, on the other hand, stayed in the Department of Justice. (The reason: the person in charge, a Harvard security expert working for Secretary-to-be Tom Ridge, simply hadn't known immigration courts were a thing, so hadn't looked for them.) When the White House team wanted a research lab for the new department, one of them phoned a friend to ask which of the Department of Energy's labs they should take — according to the Post , the team "did not realize that he had just decided to give the new department a thermonuclear weapon simulator."

The department's biggest problem, however, was that it completely failed to address the single biggest pre-9/11 counterterrorism failure. In fact, it made it worse. The 9/11 Commission Report (which came out after the creation of DHS) cited failure to share counter-terrorism intelligence and strategy as one reason the attacks succeeded. According to a 2011 Cato Institute report, the two primary agencies it singled out were the FBI and the CIA — neither of which was moved to DHS. (The FBI is still part of the Department of Justice; the CIA is still an independent agency.) So now, counterterrorism work is being done by agencies in three different departments.

A department of copycat programs

© Jim Watson/AFP

Just like this image of the US, counter terrorism responsibilities are cobbled together from a bunch of departments in the federal government.

This hasn't stopped DHS from trying to develop its own security capacity. It just means that whatever DHS does is already being done elsewhere in the government. And that duplication and fragmentation has made the national-security apparatus even harder to manage.

Take the example of equipment grants to state and local law enforcement. There were already two different federal programs to help police departments get equipment: the Department of Defense's 1033 program, which sends out surplus military gear to law enforcement (and requires they use it within a year), and the Department of Justice's Byrne grant program. But DHS now has its own set of grants to allow police departments to purchase military and other equipment. It's supposed to be used for counterterrorism, but (just as with the other grant programs) police often end up using the equipment for routine drug enforcement.

And as a recent White House report pointed out, having three different departments giving resources to local police has made it harder to track how those resources get used. If the Department of Justice, for example, finds out that a police department has been misusing funds or violating the constitution, it can cut off DOJ grant money — but the police department can turn around and apply for help from the Department of Defense and DHS.

Or think of "fusion centers," regional hubs supported by DHS to share information among multiple federal agencies and between state, local and federal law enforcement. The fusion centers aren't limited to sharing information about terrorism (they're also supposed to monitor other types of crime), but it's definitely a big component of their mission. The problem is that the FBI already has Joint Terrorism Task Forces to investigate terrorism, and Field Intelligence Groups to share information about it. In a 2013 study, the Government Accountability Office looked at eight cities, and found that the fusion centers in all eight cities overlapped at least partially with the FBI's counterterrorism work — and in four of them, there was nothing the fusion centers did that the FBI wasn't already doing. (There are also other things within DHS that overlap with fusion centers' other purposes.)

That means that at best, DHS' coordination work is redundant: a 2012 report from Republican Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) found that over a quarter of terrorism-related fusion center reports "appeared to duplicate a faster intelligence-sharing process administered by the FBI." (That's in addition to the reports that were based on publicly available information.) Because of that redundancy, dismantling DHS wouldn't necessarily help civil liberties — anything DHS is doing that infringes on them is also being done by other departments. But, just like with police grants, consolidating the agencies that might be infringing on civil liberties will at least focus efforts to hold them accountable.

At worst, DHS' work with fusion centers is actually hampering information sharing. A 2007 ACLU reporton fusion centers explained how this would work:

Most likely what is taking place is a power struggle in which federal agencies seek to turn fusion centers into "information farms"—feeding their own centralized programs with data from the states and localities, without providing much in return. The localities, meanwhile, want federal data that the agencies do not want to give up. For federal security agencies, information is often the key currency in turf wars and other bureaucratic battles, and from the days of J. Edgar Hoover they have long been loathe to share it freely.

Those turf wars also happen between federal agencies, including between the FBI and DHS. In 2009, a Homeland Security Today column warned that "we're operating the way things were before 9/11, where we uncovered the dots, but don't connect them in time."

Resistance from Congress and from its own employees

DHS has managed to distinguish itself from the other government agencies doing similar work — by becoming extremely politicized, both in its dealings with Congress and internally. It's become part of DHS' structure — again, in ways that have threatened national security.

The department has had to deal with so much congressional "oversight" that it's become unproductive. As of fall 2014, more than 90 congressional committees and subcommittees had some sort of oversight responsibility over some portion of DHS. For comparison, the Department of Defense has about 30 committees or subcommittees with oversight responsibility.

DHS officials need to spend enormous amounts of time preparing for congressional hearings and delivering research reports to members; that's time that can't go into directing DHS strategy, or managing the department. As former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a 2013 Annenberg Public Policy Center report, this can actually defeat the purpose of congressional oversight: "either the department has no guidance or, more likely, the department ignores both because they're in conflict. And so the department does what it wants to do."

But what does the department "want to do"? That often depends on whether "the department" means officials in Washington, or agents in the field. At DHS, the two groups are often in open conflict. Throughout President Obama's presidency, for example, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been vocally opposed to any effort from DHS leadership to reduce the risk of deportation for some unauthorized immigrants. So when DHS leadership tried to target immigration enforcement by issuing memos to ICE field offices about who they should and shouldn't "prioritize" for deportation, the offices often resisted or ignored those instructions — preventing the administration from actually being able to implement its policies. (As I've written before, this is arguably the biggest reason that the administration's shifted to granting "deferred action" to unauthorized immigrants, in 2012 and again in 2014.)

This intra-agency tension is likely a big reason that DHS agencies routinely rank near or at the bottom of the federal government in employee morale. (In the latest survey in December 2014, DHS ranked lowest among "large agencies," and ICE and two other DHS agencies shared the bottom three slots among all 314 agencies.) But it's also a security problem.

After repeated security breaches in fall 2014, former Secret Service agent Dan Emmett wrote for Vox about the problems with the agency's culture. The culprit he identified: the move from the Department of the Treasury to DHS. After that move, he said, the agency got politicized — and Secret Service leadership stopped telling White House staff when letting the president do something (like participate in a landing on an aircraft carrier) was a bad or unsafe idea.

DHS' "essential" employees aren't at department headquarters

At least one member of Congress, Rep. John Mica (R-FL), is talking openly about dismantling DHS. That's partly a smokescreen for a fight about the labor rights of DHS employees — which has been ongoing since Congress passed the Homeland Security Act in 2002, and decided the creation of a new department justified stripping a bunch of rights from the workers who'd be staffing it. (Many of DHS' labor regulations were later struck down in court.)

But Congress shouldn't let a partisan battle over labor relations distract them from taking a hard look at whether they still believe DHS is necessary. After all, the attitude of many members of Congress suggests that, while they're committed to many of DHS' functions, they're not as committed to the bureaucracy that oversees them.

Sure, when it's time to blame the other party, members of Congress are playing up DHS' importance: Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) called the shutdown fight "parliamentary ping-pong with national security," while Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) suggested building coffins outside the offices of Democratic Senators if a terrorist attack happened during the shutdown. But when they're talking about the actual consequences, Republicans, in particular, emphasize that over 85 percent of DHS employees would keep coming to work as "essential" government workers even if the department were shut down. "It's not the end of the world if we get to that time," Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) told Politico, "because the national security functions will not stop."

Those 85 percent are mostly front-line government workers: border agents, TSA screeners, etc. They're employees of the agencies who existed before DHS, and would continue to exist if DHS were dissolved. The employees at DHS headquarters, providing the centralized bureaucratic glue that's supposedly so important to coordinating our national security strategy? They'd be staying home in the event of a shutdown. The department's plan for the 2013 government shutdown had only 10 percent of the staff of the Office of the Secretary and the Office of the Undersecretary for Management "exempted" from the shutdown; 50 percent of the office of Analysis and Operations; and 57 percent of the National Protection and Programs Directorate (which didn't exist pre-DHS but encompasses a few pre-DHS offices).

Either those offices are fundamental to "national security functions," or they're not. Given the department's track record since its formation, Diaz-Balart is probably accidentally correct: it's not actually essential to national security that DHS, as a department, be running on a daily basis. But if he and other members of Congress are really so convinced that that's the case, they need to seriously consider disbanding DHS for good.

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Control of Debaltseve was important to the east Ukrainian militia. As a key railway junction it interfered with communications between the two rebel republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. It was also an obvious launch pad for a new government offensive aimed at cutting the militia controlled areas off from each other.

It is impossible to see how Debalsteve was comparably important to the Ukrainian government. The very things that made Debaltseve important to the militia guaranteed that in the event of renewed fighting the militia would aim to capture it. A glance at the map shows why in that event, given the balance of forces, it was indefensible.

So it proved. By Monday 9th February 2015, even Western journalists were admitting the militia had encircled Debaltseve and the Ukrainian troops there were cut off. The Ukrainian government however denied it.

The denial reached farcical levels during the negotiations in Minsk. Half the 16 hours of negotiations were reportedly taken up with attempts to get Ukraine's President Poroshenko to admit the obvious, that his troops in Debaltseve were encircled. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko refused to do so, refusing to order his troops to retreat and rejecting all offers from others to arrange this.

There is no logic behind this denial of reality. No military objective was achieved by continuing to defend Debaltseve when its capture by the militia was just days away. As commander in chief President Poroshenko owed it to his men to agree the terms of their withdrawal when it was clear their further sacrifice was in vain. At an earlier stage in the war militia commander Strelkov withdrew his men from Slaviansk when it had become clear Slaviansk was undefendable and that no purpose was served sacrificing the lives of his men defending it. That is the basic duty owed by every commander to his men.

President Poroshenko failed in that duty.

The result is scores of Ukrainian soldiers (thousands by some counts) who might be alive are now dead.

Some of the blame must lie with German Chancellor Merkel and French President Hollande. A report published by confirms that they launched their peace initiative in part in order to save the lives of the Ukrainian soldiers trapped in Debaltseve. Given that this was so, they owed it to these trapped men to make President Poroshenko face reality and see sense.

When he threatened to storm out of the meeting they should have called his bluff by warning him that if he did so they would put the blame for the failure of the talks on him. Had they done so, it is likely he would have come round.

The main responsibility for the debacle must however lie with President Poroshenko. Not only did his refusal to face reality doom many of his soldiers to certain death but ludicrously, following the disaster, he has declared victory, claiming his soldiers' sacrifice was necessary to "prove" to the Western Powers the Russian military's involvement in the war.

This is preposterous. Not only does the disaster do no such thing. What Poroshenko was "proving" is no more than what the Western powers have always been saying. He did not need to sacrifice his soldiers to "prove" it to them.

In reality President Poroshenko sacrificed his men because he did not want to incur the wrath of the war party in Kiev by ordering their retreat.

When a commander sacrifices his men for such a reason he has failed in his duty and it is time for him to go.

Today is the first anniversary of the deal made between Yanukovich and the "opposition" and guaranteed by foreign ministers Radosław Sikorski of Poland, Laurent Fabius of France and Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany. As we all know, the deal resulted in a withdrawal of the security forces from the Kiev city center immediately followed by an armed insurrection which overthrew the government. Predictably, Poland, France and Germany did not object. I won't recount all of the events which happened since this infamous day, but I think that it is important to look at what has changed in a year. I think that it also makes sense to compare what I had predicted might happen with what actually happened simply to see if a person if a person with no access to any classified data and who is using only "open sources" for his analysis could have predicted what happened or if this was all a huge and totally unpredictable surprise.

So let's look at my predictions in a chronological order.

November 30th, 2013: in "The Gates of Hell are Opening for the Ukraine "

The supposedly "pro-Russian" Eastern Ukrainians

They have no vision, no ideology, no identifiable future goal. All they can offer is a message which, in essence, says "we have no other choice than sell out to the rich Russians rather than to the poor European" or "all we can get from the EU is words, the Russians are offering money". True. But still extremely uninspiring, to say the least.

The future of Yanukovich

I am beginning to fear that this will all explode into a real and very dangerous crisis for Russia. First, I am assuming that the the Eurobureaucrats and the Ukrainian nationalists will eventually prevail, and that Yanukovich will either fully complete his apparent "zag" and reverse his decision, or lose power. One way or another the the Eurobureaucrats and the Ukrainian nationalists will, I think, prevail. There will be more joyful demonstrations, fireworks and celebrations in Kiev, along with lots of self-righteous back-slapping and high-fiving in Brussels, and then the gates of Hell will truly open for the Ukraine.

The real risks for Russia

Being drawn into the inevitable chaos and violence with will flare up all over the Ukraine (including the Crimean Peninsula), stopping or, at least, safely managing a likely flow of refugees seeking physical and economic safety in Russia and protecting the Russian economy from the consequences of the collapse of Ukrainian economy. Russia will have to do all that while keeping its hands off the developing crisis inside the Ukraine as it is absolutely certain that the Eurobureaucrats and the Ukrainian nationalists will blame Russia for it all. The best thing Russia could do in such a situation would be to leave the Ukrainians to their private slugfest and wait for one side or the other to prevail before trying to very carefully send out a few low-key political "feelers" to see if there is somebody across the border who has finally come to his/her senses and is capable and ready to seriously begin to rebuilt the Ukraine and its inevitable partnership with Russia and the rest of the Eurasian Union. As long as that does not happen Russia should stay out, as much as is possible.

Sarajevo on the Dniepr
Right now, all the signs are that the Ukraine is going down the "Bosnian road" and that things are going to get really ugly.

It is hard to tell, but my sense is that when the local authorities in the southeastern Ukraine threaten not to accept any regime change in Kiev they probably do really mean it. This very much reminds me of the repeated warnings of the Bosnian-Serbs that they would not accept to live in an Islamic state run by an rabid fanatic like Itzebegovich. At the time, and just like today, nobody took these warnings seriously and we all know how that ended. The big difference between Bosnia and the Ukraine is first and foremost one of dimensions: Bosnia has an area of 19,741 square miles and a population of 3,791,622 while the Ukraine has an area of 233,090 square miles and a population of 44,854,065. That is a huge difference which make a direct foreign intervention a much more complicated endeavor.

© AFP Photo / Dimitar Dilkoff

People sing the Russian national anthem as they celebrate in Simferopol's Lenin Square on March 16, 2014 after exit polls showed that about 95.5 percent of voters in Ukraine's Crimea region supported union with Russia

And Russia in all that?
I can only repeat that Russia should stay out of whatever happens in the Ukraine. The Russian government should prepare for an influx of refugees and the Russian military should be placed on high alert to avoid any provocations or cross-border violence. A special goal for Russia should be to use all the means possible to avoid any violence on the Crimean Peninsula because of the presence of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol which can find itself in the position of the 14th Army in Transdniestria when it simply had not other choice than to get involved due to the high number of officers with relatives living in the republic. If, God forbid, the nationalist try to militarily take over the Crimean Peninsula or Sevastopol I don't see how the Black Sea Fleet could stay uninvolved - that is simply impossible and this is why that situation needs to be avoided at all costs.

January 26th, 2014: Yanukovich's latest move might make a partition of the Ukraine unavoidable :

The partition of the Ukraine is inevitable

This has, of course, not been reported in the western Ziomedia, but the eastern Ukraine is now also bubbling with political actions. To make a long story short, the folks in the southeastern Ukraine have no desire whatsoever to let folks like Iatseniuk, Klichko or Tiagnibok rule over them. In fact, several local assembles - including the Parliament of Crimea - have adopted resolution calling on the President to restore law and order and warning that they would never accept a "regime change" in Kiev.

March 1st, 2014: Obama just made things much, much worse in the Ukraine - now Russia is ready for war

Russia is ready for war

Something absolutely huge has just happened in Russia: the Russian Council of the Federation, the equivalent of the US Senate, has just UNANIMOUSLY passed a resolution allowing Putin to use Russian armed forces in the Ukraine, something the Duma had requested earlier. Before the vote took place, Russian senators said that Obama had threatened Russia, insulted the Russian people and that they demanded that Putin recall the Russian ambassador to the USA. I have never seen such a level of outrage and even rage in Russia as right now. I hope and pray that Obama, and his advisers, stop and think carefully about their next step because make no mistake about that RUSSIA IS READY FOR WAR.

April 23rd, 2014: The US plan for the Ukraine - a hypothesis

The US will try to force Russia to intervene in the Donbass

The eastern Ukraine is lost no matter what. So the junta in Kiev have to pick on of the following options:

a) Let the eastern Ukraine leave by means of referendum and do nothing about it.

b) Let the eastern Ukraine leave but only after some violence.

c) Let the eastern Ukraine leave following a Russian military intervention.

Clearly, option 'a' is by far the worst. Option 'b' is so-so, but option 'c' is very nice. Think of it: this option will make it look like Russia invaded the Eastern Ukraine and that the people there had no say about it. It will also make the rest of the Ukraine rally around the flag. The economic disaster will be blamed on Russia and the Presidential election of May 25th can be canceled due to the Russian "threat". Not only that, but a war - no matter how silly - is the *perfect* pretext to introduce martial law which can be used to crack down on the Right Sector or anybody expressing views the junta does not like. That is an old trick - trigger a war and people will rally around the regime in power. Create a panic, and people will forget the real issues.

As for the USA - it also knows that the Eastern Ukraine is gone. With Crimea and Eastern Ukraine gone - the Ukraine has exactly *zero* value to the Empire, to why not simply use it as a way to create a new Cold War, something which would be much more sexy that the Global War on Terror or the really old War on Drugs. After all, if Russia is forced to intervene militarily NATO will have to send reinforcements to "protect" countries like Poland or Latvia just in case Putin decides to invade all of the EU.
Bottom line - the freaks in power in Kiev and the USA *know* that the eastern Ukraine is lost for them, and the purpose of the imminent attack is not to "win" against the Russian-speaking rebels or, even less so, to "win" against the Russian military, it is to trigger enough violence to force Russia to intervene. In other words, since the East is lost anyways, it is much better to lose it to the "invading Russian hordes" than to lose it to the local civilian population.

So the purpose of the next attack will not be to win, but to lose. That the Ukrainian military can still do.

Two things can happen to foil this plan:

The Ukrainian military might refuse to obey such clearly criminal orders (and becoming a target of the Russian military might help some officers make the correct "purely moral" choice).

The local resistance might be strong enough to draw out such an operation and have to come to a grinding halt.

Ideally, a combination of both.

So let's summarize the above:

Yanukovich will be overthrown. Check

The Donbass will rise up. Check

The Ukraine will be partitioned. Check

A civil war will break out. Check

The US will try to pull Russia in. Check

Russia will protect Crimea. Check

Russia will say out of the Donbass. Check

Russia will have to deal with refugees. Check

The US/NATO will not intervene like in Bosnia. Check

The Ukrainian economy will collapse. Check

There is one point which I did really get wrong: the people of Novorussia. I saw them as very passive, interested only in getting paid (in Hrivnas or Rubles - doesn't matter) and with very real Russian national identity. Here I got it very wrong, but in my defense I would say that the Russian identity of people of the Donbass was awakened by the huge military assault of Ukrainian military and by the clearly russophobic and neo-Nazi rethoric and policies of the junta. But setting aside the motivations of the Novorussians, I did predict that the Donbass would rise up, and it did. In fact, it looks to me like my predictions resulted in a score of 10 out of 10.

My point is not to congratulate myself (I sincerely wish my pessimistic predictions would have turned out wrong), but to demonstrate that anybody armed with a) basic knowledge of Russia and the Ukraine b) access to open sources information c) basic common sense could have made all of these predictions.

There are, however, also events which I completely failed to foresee: the amazing inability of the Ukrainian military to get anything done. On July 1st, 2014, in a post entitled "Novorussia - Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and settle for anything in the middle" I wrote:

The worst which can happen is that a lot of Novorussian defenders get killed, that the towns of Slaviansk, Kramatorsk, Krasnyi Liman and others will get basically flattened and most of their inhabitants killed, that the road between Donetsk and Lugansk gets cut-off by the Ukies and that Ukie forces enter deep inside these two cities.

I have to be honest here, there is a pretty good chance that all of the above will happen in the next 24 hours.

If that happens, I would like to remind you all that entering into a city is one thing, taking control of it is quite another. Think Beirut, think Grozny, think Baghdad, think Fallujah, think Gaza, think Bint Jbeil. Even if Poroshenko announces that Donetsk and Lugansk have "fallen", this will be only a empty statement on par with Dubya's "mission accomplished". What will *really* happen is that the type of warfare taking place will change. Not only will it change, but the new (urban) type of warfare will almost completely negate the current huge advantage in aviation, artillery and armor of the Ukie side. So if these cities "fall" - please do not despair.

I hope that Novorussians will be able to resist the Ukie attack, but I also know that by all accounts the kind of firepower the junta is using now is truly huge - we are dealing with a merciless and massive attack with everything the junta could muster and we have to accept that the Novorussian Defense Forces might have to retreat deeper into the cities or even go underground. While heroic for sure, it is not smart to stay in the open when your enemy is using Smerch and Uragan MRLS against you or even the building you are in. During the first Chechen war the Chechen retreated deeply inside Grozny and did not even bother defending the outskirts, in part because the city center buildings were far stronger than the flimsy houses in the suburbs. I never studied the layout of the cities of Lugansk and Donetsk, but if they are typical of the way the Soviets liked to build, then retreating into the city center and giving up the suburbs would probably make sense.

The first defensive option is to let the Ukies enter the suburbs and then cut them off, envelop (surround) them, and then attack them. If that works, great! But if the Ukies clear the way with massive sustained strikes and flatten their way in, then it will become necessarily to switch to "plan B" and retreat deeper into the cities. If the Ukie advance is multi-pronged and too fast, or if the city center defenses were not adequately prepared (for whatever reason), then plan "C" is to go more or less underground and switch to an active mobile defense centered on short but intense ambushes followed by immediate retreats.

What really happened took my by complete surprise: initially the Ukrainian forces did move in, but soon they were bogged down and then gradually surrounded by the Novorussians. In fact, both during the junta's summer offensive and during it's winter offensive the Novorussians succeeded in crushing the Ukrainian forces even in open terrain: steppes, hills, fields and forests. The other amazing thing which happened is that for the first time in the past 200 years there were more combatants killed on the Ukrainian side than civilians. The German intelligences sources estimate the number of victims of this war at about 50'000. That figure sure makes sense to me. That kind of outcome and these kinds of figures can only be explained by a huge, truly immense, difference in combat capabilities between the junta forces and the Novorussians. Unimpressed as I was by the Novorussian behavior in February-March I failed to imagine that this rather passive and peaceful folk would turn into formidable combatants who would so radically defeat a vastly superior force (at least on paper), not once, but twice. Even as late as October 24th, in a post entitled "What could the next Junta offensive against Novorussia look like?" I again failed to predict the almost immediate defeat of the junta's winter offensive. I wrote:

What the Ukies are preparing is rather obvious. They will pick several key axes of attack along which they will unleash a massive artillery attack. This fire preparation will serve to prepare for a push by Ukrainian armored units (this time around we can expect the Ukrainian infantry to properly defend their tanks and not the other way around). The Ukrainians will not push deep into Donetsk or Lugansk, but rather they will try to, again, cut-off and surround Donetsk in a pincer attack and then negotiate some kind of quasi-surrender by the Novorussians. At most, they will try to enter a few important suburbs. I don't expect much action around Luganks - Donetsk is far more exposed. Now, if I am correct and this is what happens, then please understand and remember this: the correct Novorussian response to this plan is to begin by retreating. It makes no sense whatsoever for the Novorussians to sit and fight from positions which are densely covered by Ukrainian artillery strikes. During the first Ukrainian attack I was dismayed to see how many people clearly did not understand the importance retreats in warfare. The "hurray-patriots" in particular were adamant that the initial Novorussian retreat was a clear sign that, as always, "Putin had betrayed Novorussia" (when the NAF went on a long and brilliant counter-offensive, these "hurray-patriots" fell silent for a while until the moment when Moscow stopped the NAF from seizing Mariupol, at which point they resumed chanting their mantra). The fact is that retreating against a superior forces is the logical thing to do, especially if you have had the time to prepare for a two, possibly, three echelon defense. While I do not know that for a fact, this is what I expect the Novorussians have been doing during all the length of the ceasefire: preparing a well-concealed and layered defense. My hope and expectation is that once the JRF attacks the NAF will, again, carefully retreat, pull the JFR in, and then being to gradually degrade the attacking force. I particular hope that the Russians have finally send some much needed guided anti-tank weapons through the voentorg.

I was completely wrong. Not only did the Novorussians stop the junta offensive more or less along the line of contact, but they went on the counter-offensive where they seized the heavily fortified Donetsk airport and then the entire Debaltsevo cauldron. To say that I am extremely impressed is an understatement.

Military analyst always tend to be very cautious and assume the worst-case, and this is how it should be when lives are at stake, but I cannot explain away my complete failure to predict the Novorussian successes by some professional inclination. What happened is that I got the Novorussian mentality completely wrong by assuming that their initial passivity was a predictor of their ability to fight. A fundamentally flawed and mistaken assumption.

Still, I mostly got it right and so could have done all the advisors, analysts, area specialists, etc. working for the governments involved in that crisis and I bet you they did. But either the politicians did not want to listen, or they wanted precisely that outcome.

The shameful and utterly disgusting fact is that everything that took place was completely predictable. In fact, Putin, Lavrov and many more Russians officials *did* try to tell everybody that the Ukrainian people were cheerfully waltzing straight into a precipice, but nobody was willing to listen. Instead, western politicians blamed the Russians for everything, which is just about the most intellectually dishonest and hypocritical thing they could have done.

The next Ukie president? In one year an entire country was destroyed, tens of thousands of people were murdered and millions are now left with nothing not even hope: the Ukraine is a failed state, having now gone through Dmitri Orlov's "five stages of collapse". Kiev is in the hands of a regime of incompetent Nazi freaks and the only alternative to them looks even worse.

Make no mistake, if the Donbass is now probably safe from any future junta attacks, the risks for the rest of the rump-Ukraine are still huge and an even bigger bloodbath could happen next.

What is evident is that Poroshenko is a "goner": this sad buffoon promised peace to the Ukrainian people and instead he gave them a year long bloodbath culminating in a strategic defeat which cost the Ukrainians about half of their more or less combat capable forces. The only thing which keeps Poroshenko in power now is the political support of the USA and the political recognition by the EU and Russia. But the rest of the freaks in power don't care one bit about the EU or Russia and I predict that they will try to eject him at the first possibility. When I look at list of freaks likely to succeed Poroshenko I get a knot in my stomach: if Poroshenko was a political prostitute and a spineless, incompetent imbecile, he was at least not clinically insane. Most of his likely successors are. As for Yats or Turchinov, I personally think that they are demoniacally possessed which is arguably even worse than being clinically insane.

In conclusion I will just say that if I believe that all the horrors of the past year were fully avoidable, I also believe that the horrors of the next, upcoming, year are not: the Ukraine has plunged over the cliff and is now heading for the very same future as Libya (another western "success story"). I hope that I am wrong and that I am missing something crucial, but I personally do not see any way to stop the implosion of the rump-Ukraine and my advise to anybody still living there would be to get out while you can.

In them meantime in Moscow there was a "anti-Maidan" demonstration planned for 10'000 people. 35'000-50'000 showed up to say "we will not forget, we will not forgive" and "no Maidan in Russia". This anti-Maidan movement which was just formed very recently has a very bright political future because after watching the horrors right across their border and accepting close to a million refugees from the Ukraine, the vast majority of Russians want nothing to do with a Maidan-like event in Russia. Combine that with the still 80%+ popularity of Putin in spite of western sanctions, and you will see that Russia is safe from the kind of events which happened in Kiev a year ago.

The virus which killed the Ukraine will act as a vaccine for Russia.

The Saker

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Parents seeking help with children with autism are turning to a "miracle" cure that involves giving the children enemas, using a dangerous industrial solution used for bleaching wood pulp.

According to , parents have turned to Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), containing sodium chlorite which is mixed with citric acid (i.e. orange juice) to make chlorine dioxide. According to the promoters, the solution, which can be taken orally or administered via an enema, can cure HIV, malaria, hepatitis, autism, acne, and cancer.

Miracle Mineral Solution is the brainchild of Jim Humble, who quit the Church of Scientology to form the Genesis II Church of Health & Healing in order to promote his "miracle" cure in Africa and Mexico.

The Food and Drug Administration disagrees with Humble's claims and has posted a warning on their website calling the product "dangerous" and "potentially life threatening," advising "drinking the amount recommended on product labels can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and symptoms of severe dehydration."

Additionally, the Environmental Protection Agency warns that chronic exposure to small doses of chlorine dioxide could result in reproductive and neurodevelopmental damage, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued guidance in the use of chlorine dioxide in the workplace.

Kerri Rivera, founder of the website CD Autism ("Autism: Avoidable. Treatable. Curable.") which promotes MMS, claims that autism is caused by yeast, parasites, viruses, and vaccines that can be flushed from the body.

On her Facebook page, Rivera — who identifies herself as a biomedical consultant and certified homeopath - keeps a running total of parents who have contacted her, saying MMS has "cured" their children of autism.

One parent wrote: "I just wanted to tell you great news we have received yesterday from bioresonance diagnostic treatment. We went there actually for the first time, just to check how we have improved with CD, which my 6 years old son has been using it for a year and a half now, and she said: I don't know what're doing but just keep doing what you're doing, because you're doing GREAT! She couldn't find viruses, bacteria, parasites, yeast; his body has been cleaned a lot, also from heavy metals, she did saw a virus of measles inside in the intestine, that's because of the vaccines he got we will try to treat that now and of course not stopping CD and parasite protocol. We are starting also with GcMAF in October and can't wait! We are really happy."

Other parents report that they are still continuing treatments despite extreme vomiting, kicking, and hysterics when enemas are being administered.

Despite Facebook tales of success, the Autism Science Foundation warns against online claims of cures that have not undergone rigorous clinical studies.

"It is important to remember that anyone can start a journal or post a study on the Internet to tout the efficacy of dangerous or useless interventions," ASF explains. "Healthcare fraud is a huge business in the US, and parents of children with autism are often targeted. Fringe treatment providers prey on desperation and fear, and deceive parents with numerous unfounded claims."

President Poroshenko failed in that duty.

The result is scores of Ukrainian soldiers (thousands by some counts) who might be alive are now dead.

In reality President Poroshenko sacrificed his men because he did not want to incur the wrath of the war party in Kiev by ordering their retreat.

When a commander sacrifices his men for such a reason he has failed in his duty and it is time for him to go.

Hello, and welcome to the first article in a new series on natural pet health (as featured on SOTT Radio Network's Health and Wellness Show). My name is Zoya, and I am a 4th-year veterinary student. During my studies, I have had the opportunity to observe and learn about various practices, recommendations, medicines and foods that aren't particularly beneficial or right for our pets' well-being.

So in this introduction to the series I'll briefly cover what I think are the 10 main lies told to us by the mainstream veterinary community, or in other words the 10 main issues misrepresented or presented to us incorrectly. These are lies that contribute to the development of various diseases and prevent your pets from having long, healthy and happy lives. Unsurprisingly, many of the issues are similar to the lies told by human doctors, and in many cases if you educate yourself on better nutrition and a better way of life in general, this knowledge can be applied to your pet as well. Of course, with some modifications.

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Dry vs. Raw food

Pet owners are often told that kibble or dry food is good for pets, particularly if it's a special diet, for example, some sort of metabolic bland or dry food for cats with kidney disease. Well, the reality is that it isn't true. My favorite counter-argument is - how would you feel after eating croutons all your life, no matter how tasty the croutons are? We are going to expand on this in further articles, but for now let me just say that as it turns out, dry food is one of the main reasons for many metabolic and hormonal diseases in the first place, and in many cases it also very expensive! So you end up paying twice, the first time for buying bad food and then for visit to a veterinarian. The solution - feed your pets with a natural, species-appropriate diet. This will be the subject of my next article.

Vaccines

Another issue is vaccines and the need to re-vaccinate every year. As it turns out, humans and animals have a similar physiology. And thank god we don't have to revaccinate every year. In fact, there is enough evidence that we don't need to vaccinate at all. But since in most the countries it's the law that you have to vaccinate your pets for rabies at least once, there is no way around it. But there is a very big lie in the veterinarian community that one has to do annual revaccinations for several common viruses or bacteria in order to maintain the same level of immunity. In a future article I will expand on this topic, help you understand how immunity works and how to ask your local veterinarian to test your pet's immunity next time he or she will remind you about revaccination.

Steroids

Another topic worth mentioning is steroids, when and how often it's OK to use them, for example, in cases of acute inflammation, skin diseases and other health problems. While steroids are considered miracle makers - they can promote rapid healing of inflammation and allergic reactions - they also have an insidious side that we all should be aware of. While they can stop the acute process, they also suppress the immune system at the same time. Owners of specific dog breeds, like poodles, should be aware that in some cases it may be enough for their dog to have just one shot of cortisone to acquire Cushing's disease. In future articles, I'll discuss some possible alternative solutions, or if steroid use is unavoidable, at least how to minimize the damage.

Chronic diseases/Cancer

These are very broad topics with many possible causes, like breed predispositions, bad nutrition, bad environment. And yes, even wi-fi can trigger the development of cancer or contribute to various chronic diseases. So we are going to talk about that too.

Herbal remedies

The next lie is that herbal medicine is useless and nothing more than pseudoscience. It's true that many veterinarians consider homeopathy to be nothing more than witchcraft, and those who practice it as charlatans. However, I study in an East European university, and one of the things that is surprisingly good here is that, because the university doesn't have a big budget for fancy equipment or drugs, they teach us how to treat animals using natural and herbal solutions, using things we can find in the forest or a field nearby. And I can tell you from personal experience that it does work. We will talk about this too.

Homeopathy

A separate article will be dedicated to homeopathy. I myself have no experience with it, but will do my research and share the results with you.

Spaying and neutering

For a very long time neutering was considered the most responsible thing a pet owner could to do in order to prevent overpopulation of stray dogs and cats. But now, more and more we hear how early neutering (when a pet is less than one year old) leads to various hormonal and metabolic disorders, skin diseases and problems with immune system in general. So now, being a responsible owner takes an entirely new form.

Surgery

Sometimes surgery is unavoidable, like in cases of accidents, various fractures, inbred disabilities or disorders. But that's what surgery should be: a last resort, or a last solution. But there are still many veterinarians that perform cosmetic surgeries, even if they are outlawed in many countries, surgeries like declawing, ear cropping, debarking or cutting of vocal cords. It's possible that many owners don't know how painful or uncomfortable such surgeries are for pets, so we are going to talk about that.

Fleas, ticks and worms

I will also discuss flea and tick protection, deworming, and poisoning in pets in general, because there are many solutions that are very effective but also very damaging for pets. If you put even one tiny extra drop or don't apply it correctly, it can lead to poisoning, not to mention the extreme sensitivity of some dog breeds like Collies and Shelties to the main active ingredient in deworming products. I will be sharing possible alternative and natural solutions in a future article.

I hope you found the information useful. If you have any questions or suggestions, you are invited to leave a comment.

Zoya Klebanova

Zoya Klebanova joined SOTT in 2007 as contributing editor while living in Israel for 20 years, and after waking up to her country's destructive and psychopathic nature. Her deep understanding of Israel's pathology provides her with unique perspective regarding world events. Zoya worked in wide variety of computer oriented jobs, and has background in research and investigation. She currently resides in Belarus and attends University studying veterinary medicine. Her research interests include health, politics, spirituality, high-strangeness, and all areas of science.

© US Army Staff Sgt. Johancharles V. Boers

Then First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton visiting US Army 'Eagle Base', Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, December 22, 1997.

It becomes a little less difficult to determine whether we have been informed correctly about Yugoslavia. Did they have a right to present the Nato war as "humanitarian"? Did the Great Powers have secret strategies? Were there media lies told and war propaganda spread?

We recommend that you take this brief Media test in order to have a clear view, and to test how your media is going to inform you in current and coming wars.

Media Quiz

How good is our information on the destruction of Yugoslavia?

1 Did the war begin in 1991 with the secessions of Slovenia and Croatia?

O Yes O No O Don't know

2 Did Germany deliberately provoke the civil war?

O Yes O No O Don't know

3 Did the US really remain 'passive and disinterested' during this war?

O Yes O No O Don't know

4 Did the World Bank and the IMF help destroying this country?

O Yes O No O Don't know

5 Did the media give a phony image of 'our friends' Tudjman & Izetbegovic?

O Yes O No O Don't know

6 Did the media hide the essential history and geography of Bosnia?

O Yes O No O Don't know

7 Was the topic 'Serb aggressors, Croat and Muslim victims' correct?

O Yes O No O Don't know

8 Did Serbia initiate a program of ethnic cleansing?

O Yes O No O Don't know

9 Did the media correctly report on Srebrenica?

O Yes O No O Don't know

10 Were the first victims of the war killed by the Serbs?

O Yes O No O Don't know

11 Was the famous image of the 'concentration camps' false?

O Yes O No O Don't know

12 Were we given the true stories on the three large massacres in Sarajevo?

O Yes O No O Don't know

13 Was the largest ethnic cleansing of the war committed by the Croat Army?

O Yes O No O Don't know

14 Did the US use depleted uranium weapons also in Bosnia?

O Yes O No O Don't know

15 Was the war against Yugoslavia the US's 'only good war'?

O Yes O No O Don't know

Answers

1. 1991 or earlier?

Did the war begin in 1991 with the secessions of Slovenia and Croatia?

NO. In 1979, the BND (German CIA) sent a team of secret agents to Zagreb. Mission: to support Franjo Tudjman, a racist who actively promoted ethnic hatred and did all he could toward the break-up of Yugoslavia. Germany supported and financed this Croatian Le Pen, and sent him arms before the war.

To what end? Berlin never acknowledged the existence of the unified Yugoslav state which had courageously resisted German aggression in the two world wars. By once more breaking Yugoslavia into easily dominated mini-states, Germany sought to control the Balkans. An economic zone it could annex in order to remove it from local authority, to export German products to it, and to dominate it as a market. And a strategic route toward the oil and gas of the Middle East and the Caucasus. In 1992, the Bavarian Interior Minister declared: "Helmut Kohl has succeeded where neither Emperor Guillaume nor Hitler could." (see the parallel maps 'Yugoslavia in 1941 - in 1991′, Liars' Poker, pp 68-69)

2. German will?

Did Germany deliberately provoke the civil war?

YES. At the beginning of the Maastricht Summit in 1991, German Chancellor Kohl was alone in wanting to break up Yugoslavia and precipitously to recognize the 'independence' of Slovenia and Croatia, in defiance of both International Law and the Yugoslav Constitution. But the rise of German power would impose this madness on all its partners. Paris and London fell right in line.

According to The Observer of London: "Prime Minister Major paid dearly for supporting German policies toward Yugoslavia which all observers said precipitated the war."

In effect, all the experts had warned that this 'recognition' would provoke a civil war. Why?

1. Nearly every Yugoslav Republic was a mix of diverse nationalities. Separating the territories was as absurd as dividing Paris or London into ethnically pure municipal districts.

2. By favoring the neo-fascist Tudjman and the Muslim nationalist Izetbegovic (who had in his youth collaborated with Hitler), it was certain that panic would be provoked among the important Serb minorities who had lived for centuries in Croatia and Bosnia. Every Serb family had lost at least one member to the horrible genocide committed by the fascist Croats and Muslims, agents of Nazi Germany in 1941-45.

Only Tito's Yugoslavia had been able to bring about peace, equality and coexistence. But Berlin, then Washington, wanted once and for all to break this country they saw as being 'too far to the Left' (see question 4).

3. A passive USA?

Did the US remain 'passive and disinterested' during this war?

NO. Lord Owen, special European Union envoy to Bosnia, and later a well-placed observer, wrote in his memoirs: "I greatly respect the United States. But in recent years (92-95) this nation's diplomacy has been guilty of needlessly prolonging the war in Bosnia."

What was its aim? While the Germans were busy taking control of Slovenia, Croatia and, eventually, Bosnia, Washington put pressure on Izetbegovic, the Muslim nationalist leader in Sarajevo: "Don't sign any peace agreements proposed by the Europeans. We will win the war for you on the ground." Washington then prolonged for two years the horrible suffering inflicted on all the people of Bosnia.

By what means?

1. Setting aside all the advantages Berlin had gained in this strategic region of the Balkans.

2. Dividing and weakening the European Union.

3. Installing NATO as the Continental European policeman.

4. Restricting all Russian access to the Mediterranean Sea.

5. Imposing its military and political leadership on all the other wars being prepared.

Because the war against Yugoslavia was at the same time a non-declared war against Europe. After the fall of the Berlin wall, US strategies were geared toward stopping, at all costs, the emergence of a European superpower. So everything was done to weaken Europe militarily and politically.

4. World Bank & IMF

Did the World Bank and the IMF help destroying this country?

YES. In December 1989, the IMF imposed draconian conditions on Yugoslavia which forced liberal prime minister Markovic to beg for aid from George Bush Sr. This 'help' was aimed at destabilizing and bankrupting all large state-owned businesses. The World Bank dismantled the banking system, laid off 525,000 workers in one year, then ordered the immediate elimination of two out of every three jobs. The quality of life fell dramatically.

These policies and the growing incidence of work stoppages in solidarity with displaced workers in all the Republics heightened the contradictions among the leaders of the various Republics to whom Belgrade could no longer provide financing. To get themselves out of this mess, the leaders had to resort to divisive tactics and invested greatly in nationalist hatreds. This war was ignited from abroad. Like so many others.

The war against Yugoslavia was a war of globalization. All the great Western powers sought to liquidate the Yugoslav economic system which they found too Leftist: with a strong public sector, important social rights, resistance to the multinationals... The real reason for these various wars against Yugoslavia can be read in this reproach (this threat?) from the Washington Post: "Milosevic was unable to grasp the political message of the fall of the Berlin wall. Other Communist politicians accepted the Western model, but Milosevic went the other way." (4 August 1996).

5. "Our friends"

Did the media give a phony image of 'our friends' Tudjman & Izetbegovic?

YES. The hyper-nationalist Croat and Muslim leaders were presented as the pure victims, great anti-racist democrats. But their past as much as their present should have alerted us:

When he took power, Franjo Tudjman declared: "I'm happy my wife isn't a Jew or a Serb." He hurriedly renamed the streets that had carried the names of antifascist partisans, reinstated the money and the flag of the old genocidal fascist regime, and changed the Constitution in order to run off the Serbs.

During his 1990 electoral campaign, Izetbegovic reissued his 'Islamic Declaration': "There can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic religion and those social and political institutions that are non-Islamic." He set up a corrupt and mafia-ridden regime based primarily on the lucrative black market and the hijacking of funds from international aid. He called for assistance, with Washington's blessings, from Islamic mercenaries, most notably from al Qaeda.

Once the war had started, serious crimes were committed by all three camps, but by hiding these histories, the situation was rendered incomprehensible.

6. History & geography

Did the media hide the essential history and geography of Bosnia?

YES. We were made to believe that the Serbs were the aggressors, that they had invaded Bosnia from outside its borders. In reality, three national groups had been living in Bosnia for a long time: the Muslims (43%), the Serbs (31%), the Croats (17%). And one should not forget that 7% of 'Yugoslavs' were born of mixed marriages or preferred to eschew narrow national identities.

Dividing Bosnia according to nationalities, as the EU did, was absurd and dangerous. Because this diverse population was completely intermingled: the Muslims lived primarily in the cities while the Serbs and Croats made up the peasantry and were dispersed throughout the sub-regions. Bosnia could not be divided without civil war.

In fact, the Serbs of Bosnia did not fight to invade the territories of 'others', but to save their own lands and establish corridors of communication between them. It was an absurd and bloody situation, with all the ravages of a civil war, but this civil war was provoked by the great powers.

7. "Good guys" and "bad guys"

Was the presumption of "Serb aggressors, Croat and Muslim victims" correct?

NO. In command of the UN forces in Bosnia from July 1993 to January 1994, Belgian general Briquemont was well placed to declare: "The disinformation is total (...) Television needs a scapegoat. For the moment, there is complete unanimity in condemning the Serbs, and that in no way facilitates the search for a solution. I don't think one can view the problem of ex-Yugoslavia and of Bosnia-Herzegovina only from the anti-Serb angle. It is much more complicated than that. One day in the middle of the Croat-Muslim war, we gave some information on the massacres committed by the Croatian army. An American journalist said to me: 'If you give out that sort of information, the American public won't understand anything.' "

It is not a question of denying the crimes committed by the Serb forces. The ideology one finds in the writings of Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic is extremely right wing. But in reality, after the break-up of Yugoslavia, on all sides, certain criminal and political forces used the methods of war to seize territory and riches. In the three camps - Croat, Muslim and Serb - militias committed grave crimes. To the detriment of all the people. Thus, in August 1994, the Muslim nationalist leader in Sarajevo, Izetbegovic, attacked the Muslim region of Bihac, controlled by Fikret Abdic, who had distanced himself from Izetbegovic and wanted to live in harmony with his Serb and Croat neighbors. In this offensive, Izetbegovic was aided by six US generals.

Remaining silent to the crimes of 'our friends' but demonizing whoever resists us is classic war propaganda. Numerous media lies were totally fabricated by a US public relations firm, Ruder Finn. Colleagues of the famous Hill & Knowlton, who created the media lie about Kuwaiti incubators stolen by the Iraqis.

8. "Ethnic cleansing"?

Did Serbia initiate a program of ethnic cleansing?

NO. If one believes that ethnic cleansing was actually the program of 'the dictator Milosevic', one has to admit that this program was sadly ineffective. Because throughout the war years and still today, one of every five inhabitants of Serbia is a non-Serb. In Belgrade there are and have always been many minorities living without any difficulty: Muslims, Gypsies, Albanians, Macedonians, Turks, Hungarians, Gorans . . .

In reality, contrary to the image given by the press, Serbia is today the only state of the ex-Yugoslavia, along with Macedonia, that remains 'multinational'. On the other hand, all the NATO protectorates - Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo - practiced an almost total ethnic purification.

Milosevic objected to the excesses committed by the Serb militias in Bosnia. His wife made several declarations against them. An embargo was even applied by Serbia against Karadzic. Certainly, part of Serb public opinion was influenced by racist nationalism. But this was due precisely to Germany and the great powers having plunged the country into civil war and thus into hatred.

9. Srebrenica

Did the media correctly report on Srebrenica?

NO. First element. Even if it's a matter of condemning abominable crimes, historical truth - necessary for reconciliation - is not served by the propagandistic processes that unreflexively use the term 'genocide', by the obfuscation of the fact that that some of the victims died in combat or by the systematic exaggeration of the numbers. Inquests have determined that many of the 'victims' were found some months later voting in subsequent elections or even taking part in other battles with Izetbegovic's army. This information was and remains obscured. We won't here go into the argument over numbers which only serious historians will be able to sort out definitively.

Second element. Why did the media hide the events essential to an understanding of this drama? In the beginning, this region was inhabited by Muslim AND Serbs. The latter were run off in 1993 by an ethnic cleansing committed by the Muslim nationalist troops of Izetbegovic. French general Morillon, who commanded the UN force there, charges: "On the night of the Orthodox Christmas, the holy night of January 1993, Nasser Oric led raids on Serb villages. . . . There were heads cut off, abominable massacres committed by the forces of Nasser Oric in all the neighboring villages." (Documents of information from the French National Assembly, Srebrenica, t 2, pp. 140-154) The desire for vengeance does not excuse the crimes committed later. But why systematically hide the crimes of 'our friends'?

Third element. Like other so-called demilitarized 'safe havens', Srebrenica was in reality an area used by the forces of Izetbegovic to regroup, the UN protecting them from total defeat. Astonishingly, Oric's troops retreated from Srebrenica just a week before the massacre. French general Germanos: "Oric had widely declared that they had abandoned Srebrenica because they'd wanted Srebrenica to fall. The 'they' was Izetbegovic."

And why? It is interesting to return to a curious UN report, written a year and a half earlier by Kofi Annan: "Izetbegovic had learned that a NATO intervention into Bosnia was possible. But it would happen only if the Serbs forced their way into Srebrenica and massacred at least 5,000 people [sic]." A massacre predicted a year and a half before it happened! (UN Report of 28-29 November)

General Morillon also informed us that "It is Izetbegovic's people who opposed the evacuation of all those who had asked to be taken out, and there were many." His conclusion: "Mladic fell into a trap at Srebrenica."

10. First victims

Were the first victims of the war killed by Serbs?

NO. June 28, 1991, the Slovenian police executed (at least) two unarmed soldiers of the Yugoslav national army who had surrendered at Holmec, a post on the Austrian border. This was acknowledged by the newspaper Slovenske Novice. It has also been 'established from the very beginning' that three soldiers of this same Yugoslav army were executed at a post on the Italian border after surrendering themselves. (Facts and testimony reported to the ICY at The Hague, cfr Forgotten Crimes, Igor Mekina, AIM Ljubljana, 11/02/99).

11. Concentration camps?

Was the famous image of the 'concentration camps' false?

YES. Fabricated by Bernard Kouchner and Médecins du Monde, this image showed some 'prisoners' held, seemingly, behind barbed wire. One of them had terribly protruding ribs. Kouchner had pasted beside the photo a guard tower from Auschwitz and the accusation 'mass extermination'. To hammer home the message "Serbs = Nazis". He thus abetted a campaign of demonization launched by the US public relations firm Ruder Finn.

But the whole thing was faked and taken from a report by British TV channel ITN. The trickery became obvious when one viewed the footage shot at the same time by a local TV news crew. In reality, the British camera had been deliberately placed behind the two lonely strands of barbed wire that formed a fence surrounding an old enclosure for farming equipment. The 'prisoners' were on the 'outside' of the barbed wire. Free because they were refugees in this camp to escape the war and the militias who would force them to fight. In the complete film, the only prisoner who speaks English declares to the ITN journalist three times that they are being well treated and are safe. The man with the protruding ribs (gravely ill) was called to the foreground when all his mates looked to be in too good a shape. Kouchner's montage was a gross falsehood. (Cfr Liars' Poker, p. 34)

There certainly were camps in Bosnia. Not for extermination, but rather for the preparation of prisoner exchanges. Violations of Human Rights were committed here. But why were the UN reports on this subject hidden from us? They accounted for six Croat camps, two Serb camps and one Muslim camp.

12. Sarajevo

Were we given the true stories on the three large massacres in Sarajevo?

NO. Three times Western public opinion was shocked by these terrible images: dozens of victims blown to bits in front of a bakery or in the marketplace of Sarajevo. Immediately the Serbs were accused of having killed civilians by bombarding the city. This despite numerous contradictions in official communications.

But never was the public informed of the results of inquiries made outside the UN. Nor of the reports which accused the forces of president Izetbegovic. Furthermore, high Western officials knew about them but kept them carefully hidden. It was only much later that the editor-in-chief of the Nouvel Observateur, Jean Daniel, admitted: "Today I have to say it. I heard, in succession, Edouard Balladur (French Prime Minister at the time), François Léotard (Minister of the Army), Alain Juppé (Foreign Minister) and two 'high-ranking' generals, whose confidence I will not betray by naming them, tell me (. . .) that the shell fired on the marketplace was itself also from the Muslims! They would have brought carnage upon their own people! Was I afraid of this observation? Yes, the Prime Minister answered me without hesitating... "(Nouvel Observateur, August 21, 1995)

Why these manipulations? As if by chance, each massacre took place just before an important meeting to justify some Western measures: an embargo against the Serbs (92), a NATO bombing (94), a final offensive (95). NATO and Izetbegovic applied an essential principle of war propaganda: justify the offensive with a media lie, a 'massacre' to shock public opinion.

The official version of the siege of Sarajevo hides several points:

1. The Serb forces certainly committed serious crimes. But the civilians who wanted to flee through a tunnel that permitted them to leave the city were stopped by the Izetbegovic regime. He wanted to maximize the clientele for his black market, hijacking international aid money.

2. It was especially important to present a black and white image of a victim people and their aggressors. In reality, even in Sarajevo, Izetbegovic's snipers regularly killed the inhabitants of Serb sections of the city without anyone ever speaking of it.

3. Some equally grave atrocities went down, for example, at Mostar. But here they were due to fighting between the Croat and Muslim forces who had long before run off all the Serbs.

13. The largest "cleansing"

Was the largest ethnic cleansing of the war committed by the Croat army?

YES. On August 4, 1995, a hundred thousand Croat soldiers, a hundred and fifty tanks, two hundred troop transports, more than three hundred pieces of artillery, and forty missile launchers attacked the Serb population of the Krajina. More than 150,000 Serbs were forced to leave this region which they had inhabited for centuries. The worst atrocities of the war were committed: the Croat forces killed the elderly who could not flee, and burned 85% of the abandoned houses.

Clinton called the offensive 'useful'. His Secretary of State said: "The retaking of the Krajina could lead to a new strategic situation which might be favorable for us." Worse yet: the United States advised Croatia in carrying out its offensive, according to an admission by the Croatian foreign minister. Furthermore, it was Washington that took charge of the 'democratic' training of this army. (Liars' Poker, pp. 193-194)

14. Uranium Bombs

Did the US use depleted uranium weapons also in Bosnia?

YES. At an international conference, "Uranium, the victims speak", organized in Brussels in March 2001, a Bosnian doctor presented a Bosnian Serb forest ranger, a victim like many others of multiple atypical and fast moving cancers. after having been exposed to DU in areas of US bombardment.

A Bosnian health official laid out some statistics: the population of a Serb neighbourhood of Sarajevo bombed by US planes in 1995, (a population later expelled from that city), showed a five-fold increase in various types of cancer.

The weapons using depleted uranium allowed the US - but also France and Great Britain - to get rid of waste materials from their nuclear plants. These by-products seriously pollute the earth as well as the underground water table, causing cancer, leukemia and monstrous birth defects (including babies born to contaminated GIs). In short, use of these depleted uranium arms transformed several countries into nuclear waste dumps for eternity. (video and brochure "Uranium, the victims speak").

15. The only "good war"

Was the war against Yugoslavia the US's only good war?

NO. The United States tried to make-believe that it had fought a humanitarian war. And to present itself, for once, as a defender of Muslims. But in reality Washington and Berlin provoked this war. Deliberately. In the selfish interest of conquering certain strategic objectives: the economic colonization of the Balkans, gaining control of the routes for transporting oil, and the fight for world domination.

The USA has never fought a humanitarian war. And it was not the fireman in this war against Yugoslavia, it was the firebug. It was the most guilty of inflicting suffering on all the people. The USA can not be, on the one hand, the friend of the Muslims in the Balkans, and, on the other, their worst enemy in Palestine and Iraq. The US is the Muslims' enemy everywhere.

And the most dangerous enemy of all the people of the world. It threatens Syria, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and some day even China. Because its war strategy has no other goal than to maintain an unjust economic order, to dominate and exploit every country on earth to the end of further enriching a small handful of super-billionaires.

This is why it is so important to unmask all the media lies and to make the truth known about the war against Yugoslavia: It was a war of aggression.

In conclusion, an appeal.

We will not give you a 'score' to evaluate the degree to which you have suffered from media manipulations. That would be indecent. During this decade, too many innocents suffered and suffer still because of the disinformation orchestrated by the great powers in order to advance their imperialist domination.

And other people, closer to you, or yourself perhaps, have suffered another injury: knowing what was traumatizing you behind these orchestrated lies, but not being able to do anything about it. Such was the powerful indoctrination of the public consciousness.

The answers that we set forth here are the results of long research, which took a great deal of time and required detailed investigation to break out the truth. We would like only to show you that it is possible for each of you to escape the media's hypnotic spell meant to make us accept the unacceptable.

What to do? It's not enough, after the lies of each conflict, to say: "Never again!" We must search without ceasing to understand what is truly at stake economically and strategically in each war. To yank the curtain on the puppeteers who pull the strings from off-stage. To organize collectively, to investigate more rapidly. And to spread more widely the results of these 'media quizzes'.

You can help reinforce the effects of the media quiz by contacting us. We must never become inured to this horror and cynicism.

About the author

Michel Collon is the author of Media Lies and the Conquest of Kosovo, NATO's Prototype for the Next Wars of Globalization. He organised a network of civil observers in Yugoslavia and in Iraq and is a member of the anti-imperialist conference Axis for Peace. Visit his website here.

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