By Bernhard, editor of Moon of Alabama
The Ryanair incident: another opportunity for the West to strut around smugly, blackening the image of a Russian ally, but the truth is currently buried by many layers of deception.
This is an update to yesterday's post By The Book - What Really Happened With The Ryanair Flight In Belarus. That piece analyzed the timeline of the Ryanair bomb threat incident in Belarus and the response from Belorussian officials.
As part of that post I discussed the possible manipulation of a screenshot of the bomb threat email by the editor of the western financed opposition media Nexta:
Protonmail, from where the email was received, is a encrypted web-email service hosted in Switzerland which allows more or less anonymous traffic.
An alleged screenshot of the email currently gets peddled around by the Editor-in-Chief of NEXTA:
Tadeusz Giczan @TadeuszGiczan - 11:59 PM · May 26, 2021
Not that anyone had any doubts but ‘Hamas email’ was sent to Minsk airport 24 minutes after Belarusian air controllers warned Ryanair pilots there’s a bomb onboard.
Highly probable fake note by Hamas
Giczan is right in that the time shown in the screenshot is inconsistent with the timing of the Ryanair flight in the Belorussian airspace.
That however proves nothing. Time stamps in emails are notoriously unreliable as they depend on various computer timezone settings and several other variables.
Clocks, computers and phones in Switzerland are currently set to UTC(GMT)+2 hours. Clocks, computers and phones in Belarus to UTC+3. A email sent at 10:57 Geneva time would likely show up as sent at 11:57 in Minsk time. However, if the timezone of the computer/phone that is used to look at the email is set to UTC+4 the email time would be shown as 12:57.
Nice trick Mr. Nexta but that screenshot is unconvincing.
It turns out that my timezone manipulation speculation, while technically correct, might not have been an issue.
Today the Investigative Committee of Belarus, the country's proscecution service, published a note about the case (machine translation, emph. added):
Investigation of a criminal case on a deliberately false report about the "mining" of the Athens-Vilnius flight continues
At the moment, the criminal case initiated on the fact of the "mining" of the plane, which carried out the flight "Athens-Vilnius", is being processed by the USC in the city of Minsk.
These days, through destructive and extremist channels, as well as various Internet resources and Western media, incomplete and unverified information is being disseminated aimed at manipulating public opinion in their own interests. For our part, we urge the public not to popularize innuendo and cynical speculation. We consider it unacceptable to assume that someone has a monopoly on the truth until the preliminary investigation is completed.
...
It has already been established, to which we draw special attention, that there were several messages about the "mining" of the aircraft received through the Swiss anonymous mail service ProtonMail - at 12:25 and at 12:56. At the moment, the records of conversations with the pilots of the aircraft are being studied and analyzed in detail, and numerous other investigative actions are being carried out. ...
So there have been, if the officials are to be believed, two bomb threat emails. The first one at 12:25 local time (9:25 UTC) arrived five minutes before the Ryanair flight at 12:30 (9:30 UTC) entered Belorussian airspace. That would have left enough time to contact the air traffic controller who then warned the plane. The email in the screenshot received at would have been the second one.
The Ryanair pilot was warned of the bomb threat at 9:30 utc but declared Mayday only at 9:47 utc. It took him several more minutes to change the course. The sender of the emails might have watched the plane's course on Flight Aware and prepared and sent the second email when the plane seemed not to react to the first one.
The Nexta's editor-in-chief had presented the second email as the sole one and insinuated thereby that the plane was contacted and informed about a threat before the warning of that threat arrived.
The logo visible in the screenshot of the email above is of the Dossier Center. Its purpose is to find and create dirt that can be throw at Russia. It is financed by the exiled oligarch and former Yukos raider Mikhail Khodorkovsky in London. The center seems to have intense contacts with western secret services.
If there were indeed two threat emails, as the Belorussian officials say, this Reuters headline is off.
Bomb threat cited by Belarus was sent after plane was diverted - Swiss email provider
A bomb threat cited by Belarusian authorities as the reason for forcing a Ryanair jetliner carrying a dissident journalist to land in Minsk was sent after the plane was diverted, privacy-focused email provider Proton Technologies AG said on Thursday.
...
Proton declined to comment on specifics of the email, saying that its encryption made it impossible to "access or verify the contents of the message.""However, we are able to see when the message was sent, and we can confirm that the message in question was sent after the plane was redirected," the Swiss company said in a statement.
It added that "we have not seen credible evidence that the Belarusian claims are true and we will support European authorities in their investigations upon receiving a legal request."
Protonmail was only asked about the second email which had been distributed by the Dossier Center. It confirmed that it went out at the time the screenshot showed.
We can be sure that it will soon also be asked about the first one. The Investigative Committee note says: (machine translation)
To confirm the consistency of their aspirations, the investigation has already prepared and will soon send to the Swiss prosecutor's office a request for legal assistance in obtaining information about the user of the mailbox from which the message about the "mining" of the flight was sent.
Yesterday the Belorussian Department of Aviation had also invited international organizations to look into the case:
For further consideration of the circumstances the Department of Aviation has invited representatives of ICAO, IATA, EASA, and EU and USA Civil Aviation Authorities.
The United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has now agreed to investigate the incident.
When the Ryanair flight left from Minsk there were five passengers less on board than when it had landed. Roman Protasevich, the western government financed neo-nazi, and his Russian girlfriend were two of these. They were arrested. There had been speculation that the other three persons were KGB agents. However the people were found and interviewed. All three, one Greek and two Belorussian citizen, say that they had originally planned to fly from Greece via Vilnius to Minsk. They thus had no reason to reenter the plane.
Posted by b on May 28, 2021 at 18:20 UTC | Permalink
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"There had been speculation that the other three persons were KGB agents" The kgb died in 1991 I do believe. Thanks b Posted by: jo6pac | May 28 2021 18:38 utc | 2 jobpac: The KGB in Belarus retains its old name. Posted by: Stephen T Johnson | May 28 2021 18:54 utc | 3 "The kgb died in 1991 I do believe" In Russia. In Belarus it is still the KGB - in name and in function. I believe that Dossier Center actually confirms the timing of the first email with "at 12:25 pm Belarusian time, the administration of "Lithuanian Airports" received a letter with the threat of a bomb explosion on board the flight FR4978 by e-mail". This is by Google translation from the site https://dossier.center/bel-hamas/ It means that Vilnius received the email at the same time is Minsk says they received. It is unthinkable that Vilnius would have done nothing after receiving the bomb threat. It must have contacted Minsk about the email unless Vilnius new that Minsk got the same threat as well. According to the time line, that Minsk has published, Minsk air traffic control contacted the pilot after about 3 minutes from receiving the email threat. Posted by: Jan | May 28 2021 18:54 utc | 5 I think Protonmail was criminally negligent in their tweets. Someone just shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand and they helped him pull the trigger. Posted by: Petri Krohn | May 28 2021 19:02 utc | 6 Thank you Jan. It it very likely that Minsk airport received the email at the same time as Vilnius airport. The Belorussian prosecutor statement is then correct. There were two emails. Dossier Center misleads by saying that the threat email arrived in Belarus only at 12:26 local time. But that was the second email. The alarm was triggered by the first one. According to the Convention of International Civil Aviation Belarus has done nothing illegal.
Convention on International Civil Aviation Posted by: Down South | May 28 2021 19:48 utc | 8 I commented about the earlier email in the last thread:
I also included this translation from the Dossier Center:
Dossier Center offers no reason to believe the 12:25 pm email was not sent to Minsk too. The Reuters hoax, repeated in every Western media, adds two and two together (12:25 and 12:57 emails) and concludes that Minsk received no email at 12:57. At 12:30 Ryanair was still in Ukrainian airspace and only approaching the SOMAT waypoint at the border. We do not know when exactly the flight crossed the border. *** The legal difference between a hoax and a fabrication is that leaders and politicians are free to endorse and promote fabrications but promoting hoaxes makes them criminally liable under international criminal law. Capital crimes like this one – I believe – deserve the capital punishment. Posted by: Petri Krohn | May 28 2021 19:48 utc | 9 My instincts tell me that some clever people have successfully led some idiots a long way up a garden path and that they will now be made fools of. The icing on the cake is the capture of the smug little terrorist....a face that invites a punch. Posted by: foxenburg | May 28 2021 19:56 utc | 10 In April 2015 Mikhail Khodorkovsky visited Finland to meet Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb. I saw this as a very worrisome development and wrote about it on my Facebook page. Sometime in the last two years Facebook censored and removed the post (possibly on Khodorkovsky's orders). Luckily I had posted a copy on The Duran as part of my article: Is There a Plot to Expel Russia from UN Security Council?
Looks like Belarus is now going through this treatment. Posted by: Petri Krohn | May 28 2021 20:05 utc | 11 The pieces of the puzzle start to fit together, or the dominoes start to fall, depending on how you look at it. and
I'm just not agree with maintain Flight level for "Bomb Scare". Normally is flight to minimal flight level https://www.skybrary.aero/index.php/Bomb_Warning:_Guidance_for_Controllers Who did he talk to ? Normally, the base of any investigation. If we don't know any more about, it's an answer. Posted by: Rêver | May 28, 2021 at 20:00 "There had been speculation that the other three persons were KGB agents. However the people were found and interviewed. All three, one Greek and two Belorussian citizen, say that they had originally planned to fly from Greece via Vilnius to Minsk. They thus had no reason to reenter the plane." Interesting. Back when I lived in the USSA, the wife and I were on a plane that was made to divert and land at an airport that would have been our ultimate destination on the trip, but which we were only going to get to after making a stop at a further location. We were not allowed to deboard the plane and were threatened with arrest if we tried. This was about 10 years post-9/11. Mind you both destinations were within the continental United States. We were forced to land in Denver and then wait for our connecting flight to Albuquerque despite the unplanned landing was in ABQ. The same thing has happened to a couple different former co-workers. I hope the other 3 people got some of their money back and I'm glad that European airlines and airport security is different than in the USSA. Posted by: K_C_ | May 28 2021 20:30 utc | 13 Given Protasevich's earlier travels without incidents, as speculated earlier, he may have been targeted specifically because he was returning from the Delphi Conference. The rapidly authorized and blanket application of restrictions on the Belarus state airline without any evidence of wrongdoing as decried by Lukashenko seem to indicate an attempt to further attack Belarus. Belarus clearly adhered to the legal protocols for this event, and thus all the attacks on its airline have zero basis. Recall what happening in Ukraine after the failed first coup attempt in 2004--it was further destabilized to make the next attempt succeed. The same modus is now being applied to Belarus. The Kremlin has posted a partial transcript of the meeting between Putin and Lukashenko, where IMO it's made clear that Russia is doing quite a lot to stabilize Belarus's economy with Putin remarking "in the first quarter of this year, our trade grew by a considerable 18.4 percent;" but, their discussion about the "outburst of emotions" has yet to be made public. The fools are on overdrive with the MSM as their megaphone. They still call Protasevich and his doxxer lady "journalists" in spite of the toxic trail of pictures, sites and videos showing who these characters really are, but to no avail. As a side scandal and desperation symptom some hockey tournament that at first was supposed to take place in Minsk moved to Riga, and after the plane affair the official flag of Belarus was replaced in the central city square with the "bacon" flag, the white red and white used during occupation and for a brief period after the fall of the USSR. Well, now it is known that some US Embassy official hoisted it personally, what a lack of taste to say the least. Posted by: Paco | May 28 2021 20:46 utc | 15 MSM is a HOAX wrapped in a FABRICATION inside a FALSE narrative A friend on Facebook read my post about this Ryanair hoax and posted this.
I commented:
I made a grave mistake on Sunday. Something happened and I went to Google to look for "reliable" sources. I ended out with the Sidney Morning Herald. I then went on to congratulate Lukashenko on his well-executed revenge. But I did notice the narrative management operation and the fact that everything in the media originated from RFE/RL fraudsters. Moon of Alabama picked up my comment into a post, but left out the part where I cast doubt on the sources and later questioned the whole narrative. It later turned out the story was a RFE/RL fabrication. No Belarusian MiG fighter ever forced the Ryanair plane to do anything. The correct thing to do is to unsubscribe from all MSM. I found this out 10 years ago, when researching Libya. MSM propaganda invades your brain in so many levels from the factual to the emotional. Even if you filter out most levels something will still seep through. I only read filtered news. Social media is usually quite good in filtering out BS. Another good news stream is the comment section on Moon of Alabama. If something important happens, you will find a critical comment on it within a few hours.
None of this ever happened. Except for the part where Protasevich believes that he would receive the death penalty if convicted in a court of law. I do not know how severe his political crimes are, but even there I would not take his word as a fact. On the same site I find this piece of hate speech:
All this reminds me of a quote by George Orwell:
Posted by: Petri Krohn | May 28 2021 21:23 utc | 16 Frankly who cares? The West has frequently downed airplanes in this fashion, starting with the Israeli downing of a Syrian DC3. There's nothing to say; everyone does it. If the west wants to make an issue out of it, no-one can stop them. Posted by: Laguerre | May 28 2021 21:24 utc | 17 Here's Stephen Karganovic's recap of Protasevich where he praises b's initial efforts: "These facts are featured in an extensive exposé posted on the German analytical website 'Moon of Alabama.' The hagiographical account in the 'all the news that’s fit to print' 'New York Times', the German analyst says, is noteworthy primarily for the key facts that it omits. It turns out that, far from being an innocent young democracy activist and precocious lyceum student who could not stomach the restrictions imposed by President Lukashenko’s government, as misrepresented by the Western media, Protasevich is in fact an experienced agitator with long-standing ties to the neo-Nazi fringe in the neighboring Ukraine." Karganovic sees this event as an op by Belarus forces but provides no evidence for that assertion. He's pleased at its success but also knows there're many more where Protasevich came from. Along with the Chinese government and its mouthpiece Global Times, IMO we should look more closely at the very many links the Outlaw US Empire has had since WW2 with Nazi and NeoNazi organizations and personages, while also examining the changing nature of its political economy to that of Parasitical Neoliberalism. There's also the Neoliberal Davos Reset to be included. IMO, there're many parallels between Fascism, Feudalism and Neoliberalism in that ownership is completely held by the small elite circle while the masses essentially have nothing of importance. The use of Terror by all three also binds them together. In case you missed it, here's the Global Times discussing the Outlaw US Empire's use of Nazi methods and great willingness to do so as often as needed: "No matter what Biden has in mind, the US government is generally up to something big against China. US executive bodies, Congress, intelligence departments, and public opinion are forming a crazy spiral. Their ultimate goal is to create and hold China accountable for the pandemic outbreak, making a new tool to severely thwart China's national interests. "This is a big lie. German Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels once said: 'Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.' The US' radical political elites are engaged in a fever of intense competition with China. In a bid to achieve the goal, they are increasingly Nazi-like in their belief and can do whatever it takes." Here at MoA, we've used that adage numerous times, but this is the first time I've seen it employed by a major news publication--and this publication reflects the views of China's government. IMO, the editor's use of it was okayed. The Forces of Reaction are always Dark, and this time is no different. Protasevich worked for the Dark Forces, knew it and enjoyed serving. A pawn certainly, but clearly a dangerous one. News from bellingcrap: Posted by: Wolle | May 28 2021 21:52 utc | 19 Something most people have missed: Today, Lukashenko personally delivered a briefcase directly to Putin containing documents related to the arrest of Roman Protasevich. What could possibly be so sensitive that any type of electronic communication would be too risky and required hard copies to be delivered personally? Why would the documents be so important to Russia? Very interesting if Protasevich's laptop or phone had some extremely incriminating evidence of a plot against Belarus and Russia. Posted by: Mar man | May 28 2021 23:12 utc | 20 Ryanair-gate would not be important if governments were denied the privilege of conducting its affairs in secret from those it governs and if governments were denied the privilege of sovereign immunity, which keeps the rest of the world in the dark. The private oligarch uses state secrecy and sovereign immunity to command its economic aggressions and conduct for private profit is foreign wars. So few changes in barricade type privileges associated to nation state power would make such a big difference to global humanity. Posted by: snake | May 28 2021 23:31 utc | 21 Protasevich could be a double agent who was found out and risked getting killed or imprisoned at the end of his trip. In that case, hastily inventing a bomb threat from "Hamas agent" and exfiltrating him by downing the plane would make sense. Posted by: CovertCalifornia | May 28 2021 23:34 utc | 22 Some dipshit gets pulled over for a busted taillight, Perhaps the dipshit called the threat in himself, out of a deep seated sense of remorse for having been engaged in blatant dipshittery in the first place? thanks b.. and thanks petri and others here for keeping the lines open on just what is what here.. clearly it is complicated with layers of deception going on.. cheers... Posted by: james | May 29 2021 0:50 utc | 26 |
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Selected Comments
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.”
― Walter Scott, Marmion
And some times the deception is a feint cover for more nefarious actions...how are things in Occupied Palestine?
Posted by: psychohistorian | May 28 2021 18:34 utc | 1