Pepe Escobar: A chessboard drenched in blood

``As much as Bashar al-Assad in Syria had absolutely no motive to "gas his own people" - as the hysterical narrative went at the time - the Eastern Ukraine federalists have no motive to down a civilian airliner. And as much as Washington doesn't give a damn about the current civilian slaughter in Gaza, it doesn't give a damn about the MH17 civilian deaths; the one and only obsession is to force Europeans to sanction Russia to death. Translation: break up Europe-Russia commercial and geopolitical integration. ''