What The Hell Just Happened Over The Skies Of Ukraine? Ctd

#Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko calls crash of #MH17 "an act of terrorism." interfax.ru/world/386444—
Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) July 17, 2014

FAA Prohibited U.S. Airliners From Flying Where Malaysian Plane Was Reportedly Shot Down @TPM talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/faa-p…—
Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 17, 2014

A reader adds:

Reading the coverage and the collection of tweets on your blog, I think it’s worth pointing out that whatever the rebels and anyone else might say, the rebels themselves were touting that they had the Buk system less than three weeks ago!

Another:

After reading this remarkable post on the Guardian site, I discovered a report from only hours ago on the ITAR-TASS site about a Ukrainian military craft being downed by rebels (an An-26 mentioned above). It’s too early to conclude anything, of course, but the evidence so far sure seems to point to a fuck up of horrible dimensions on the part of the rebels.

But another urges caution:

I got home from work early and am a bit of an airplane nut, so I turned on the TV to see if there was anything on about the Malaysian Airlines flight. I’m flipping through channels and I see wall-to-wall coverage of this crash. Why? I’ve been watching an ABC News Special Report and you have Ray Kelly talking about terrorism, you have Richard Clarke talking about terrorism, you have (the normally more composed) Martha Raddtz talking about how this is the scariest time in the world that she can recall.

What the hell are these people talking about???

The only story here is that a passenger plan may have been shot down IN THE MIDDLE OF A MILITARY CONFLICT where there were warnings for commercial flights not to pass through the area. There is NO suggestion of “terrorism.” There is NO connection to anything occurring in Israel/Gaza, Syria, Yemen, or Iraq. There is NO connection to ISIS. So why is the media treating these current events as if they are all connected and that the connection is that they all pose an immediate threat to the United States?

There is an interesting story here, particularly for ramifications for Russia’s relations with the EU and how the Ukraine situation is handled in the future. But this is not going to cause the U.S. to become involved in World War III with the Russians. Though it’s hard to think that the U.S. media doesn’t want that.

The hysteria is completely out of control and incredibly irresponsible. I’m not sure there is anything that can be done about this, but covering these kind of events as if they were 9/11 all over again is going to cause the same post-9/11 mistakes and overreach to be made all over again.

We are tracking the coverage and will post credible updates as soon as we get them. Update from a reader, who responds to the most recent one above:

Terrorism doesn’t begin and end with 9-11 and the Middle East or threats to the United States. I guess I understand how many Americans don’t know about much of the past 50 years of activity of ETA, IRA, Red Army Faction/Baader-Meinhof Group terrorism throughout the world. Even that leaves out terrorism by states such as bombing of Venezuelan commercial airline flights by the CIA. Many people around the globe took to America’s post-9/11 propaganda technique of calling their military opponents “terrorists.” This isn’t anything new.

Another reason this is being called “terrorism” is because the Ukrainian government has called these Russian special forces troops masquerading as separatists “terrorists” from the beginning of the conflict. When Ukraine announced the downing this morning, they immediately called it an act of terror. The only difference between these Russian special forces troops and IS (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda besides affiliations is probably suicide missions. IS is no more deadly than when Russian forces were operating in Chechnya. As was previously reported, these same guys in Ukraine have been doing the same thing for years in Georgia and elsewhere. For a good idea on just what types of scheming Russia is doing to regain some territory lost after the fall of communism check out this Foreign Affairs article. Estonia dealt with the exact same pre-op setup with Russians claiming mistreatment of Russian Estonians and fake protest rallies. Most of the protesters in that situation were undercover Estonian security operatives. Estonia never allowed things to progress to a Crimea or Georgia level.

Another:

If this video posted by the Ukrainian security services isn’t a fake, it is a smoking gun:

Essentially you have rebel commanders bragging about shooting down a plane, happily acknowledging it is a civilian one, and subsequently discovering it is Malay.