This article is a translation of "Wordt MH17 ons 9/11? (25) De overheid, de media en de generaal"
General Wilfred Rietdijk, an adviser to the Dutch ministry of defence, in an interview last week has suggested that the authorities and the ‘important media’ work together to ensure that fake news will no longer or not as easily reach the public. The general calls MH17 an example of disinformation with which ‘Moscow’ manipulates Dutch citizens.
A first reaction might be that the collaboration between the authorities and the media is up and running already, because most information on matters like MH17 has been completely synchronised. With the blanket surveillance meant to make it possible not only to snoop on us but to allow the police to look over our shoulder from the moment we switch on the laptop, alternative information can be tracked down at an early stage, so why worry?
That I am reasonably well informed about MH17, is not owing to the ‘important media’, and even less courtesy the Dutch authorities. On the contrary, without the supply of alternative information I would still have to assume that the plane was downed by pro-Russian rebels with a Buk missile supplied by Russia.
Of course there is also an ample supply of fake news on the Internet, but from the plausible explanations and the evidence supplied there one can construct a far more realistic account than the official point of view.
‘MH17 has saved Ukraine,’Poroshenko declared more than a week ago. That is spot-on. At least, once we read, for ‘Ukraine’, the ultra-nationalists who seized power in a violent coup d’état in February 2014, and we take into account what was at stake on the date of 17 July of that year. In that case, the president-oligarch who was elected in May to provide the coup regime with a veneer of legitimacy (and who increased his wealth sevenfold in 2015), is entirely right.
Because, on 16 July, president Putin and Chancellor Merkel reached agreement in principle on an integral deal settling the Ukraine crisis. The agreement would have ended the civil war, recognized the integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation, and would have obliged Ukraine to drop its aspirations to become a NATO member in exchange for Russian acceptance of Kiev’s association with the EU. In addition, Russia committed itself to a large-scale rehabilitation programme for the Ukrainian economy that included the supply of cheap gas, a paragraph entrusted to Dmytro Firtash, the oligarch usually considered the representative of Gazprom in Ukraine.
Putin and Merkel conferred in Brazil, where the Russian president and the other heads of state of the BRICS bloc put their signature under the charter for a BRICS bank, which was intended to serve as an alternative to the IMF and the World Bank (little may have come of this, but this was not yet known in advance); Merkel was in Brazil because of the finals of the football world championship.
Still on July 16, the US issued a new round of sanctions against Russia. These were intended to enlarge prior punitive measures aimed at making gas supplies to Europe more difficul, whilst blocking the planned South Stream pipeline under the Black Sea.
For EU countries, however, these sanctions were particularly harmful. Trade between the EU and Russia is ten times the size of trade between the US and Russia; in addition, many countries are dependent on Russian gas, especially Italy and Germany. Seen in that light, it is no miracle why Merkel was keen on a settlement of the Ukraine crisis with Russia.
That night, 16 to 17 July, there was intensive telephone traffic between the American vice-president, Joe Biden, Merkel, and Poroshenko, and Merkel also spoke directly with Obama. In the course of the 17th, we know from an alternative (pro-government) source in Ukraine, there was palpable impatience in Kiev concerning EU agreement to the American sanctions, and unrest over the Putin-Merkel ‘Land for gas’ agreement with its recognition of the Crimean secession must have been alive as well.
Later that day Putin flew back to Moscow via Warsaw, half an hour after MH17 had passed over that city as well. But the Malaysian Boeing had then turned south and eventually was downed near the Russian border in eastern Ukraine at the end of the afternoon local time.
The Dutch authorities (including the official bodies investigating the disaster) and the ‘important media’ know who did it. But according to more credible experts operating via alternative media because they are ignored by the ‘important’ ones, such as Max van der Werff, Hector Reban, and others, that cannot be established with certainty. Thanks to the circumstance that General Rietdijk is only testing the waters, we are still able to compare the two information channels without restrictions.
It is then not so difficult to establish that Van der Werff, Reban c.s. have the strongest arguments.
According to Mark Leonard, founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, without MH17 it would have been very difficult to find sufficient support for the new round of sanctions against Russia; according to Poroshenko, as noted already, Ukraine was ‘saved’ by the downing of the plane, because the negotiations between Putin and Merkel were shelved immediately.
I don’t know who downed the plane, but there can be little doubt about what and who were saved by the tragedy. If we also take into consideration that Ukraine demanded the guarantee that nothing would become public from either the technical safety or the criminal investigations without the prior consent of Kiev, we get very close to an answer to the question of responsibility.
Do we owe this alternative information to Moscow, which supposedly is trying to manipulate us? Nothing can be further from the truth. In the propaganda war over MH17 between the West and Russia, the Kremlin has amply demonstrated it is unable to get a consistent narrative together, let alone that it can influence public opinion here. That I have been able to write my book on MH17 and the new Cold War, which will come out in German translation with PapyRossa in Cologne, after that in the English original with Manchester University Press, and next in a Portuguese translation with Fino Traço in Belo Horizonte (Brazil), I owe mainly to alternative sources and certainly not to the Dutch government and/or the ‘important media’.
For these continue to stubbornly repeat the most improbable scenarios and therefore it is mandatory that the supply of information is not restricted to these official providers of fake news.
Because that is the real problem with the proposals and the state of affairs as presented by General Rietdijk: they are simply wrong.
As wrong as Russiagate in Washington, the ‘Revolution of Dignity’ in Kiev, and a lot more Alice in Wonderland stories that are nevertheless being repeated daily.
Kees van der Pijl
That I am reasonably well informed about MH17, is not owing to the ‘important media’, and even less courtesy the Dutch authorities. On the contrary, without the supply of alternative information I would still have to assume that the plane was downed by pro-Russian rebels with a Buk missile supplied by Russia.
Of course there is also an ample supply of fake news on the Internet, but from the plausible explanations and the evidence supplied there one can construct a far more realistic account than the official point of view.
‘MH17 has saved Ukraine,’Poroshenko declared more than a week ago. That is spot-on. At least, once we read, for ‘Ukraine’, the ultra-nationalists who seized power in a violent coup d’état in February 2014, and we take into account what was at stake on the date of 17 July of that year. In that case, the president-oligarch who was elected in May to provide the coup regime with a veneer of legitimacy (and who increased his wealth sevenfold in 2015), is entirely right.
Because, on 16 July, president Putin and Chancellor Merkel reached agreement in principle on an integral deal settling the Ukraine crisis. The agreement would have ended the civil war, recognized the integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation, and would have obliged Ukraine to drop its aspirations to become a NATO member in exchange for Russian acceptance of Kiev’s association with the EU. In addition, Russia committed itself to a large-scale rehabilitation programme for the Ukrainian economy that included the supply of cheap gas, a paragraph entrusted to Dmytro Firtash, the oligarch usually considered the representative of Gazprom in Ukraine.
Putin and Merkel conferred in Brazil, where the Russian president and the other heads of state of the BRICS bloc put their signature under the charter for a BRICS bank, which was intended to serve as an alternative to the IMF and the World Bank (little may have come of this, but this was not yet known in advance); Merkel was in Brazil because of the finals of the football world championship.
Still on July 16, the US issued a new round of sanctions against Russia. These were intended to enlarge prior punitive measures aimed at making gas supplies to Europe more difficul, whilst blocking the planned South Stream pipeline under the Black Sea.
For EU countries, however, these sanctions were particularly harmful. Trade between the EU and Russia is ten times the size of trade between the US and Russia; in addition, many countries are dependent on Russian gas, especially Italy and Germany. Seen in that light, it is no miracle why Merkel was keen on a settlement of the Ukraine crisis with Russia.
That night, 16 to 17 July, there was intensive telephone traffic between the American vice-president, Joe Biden, Merkel, and Poroshenko, and Merkel also spoke directly with Obama. In the course of the 17th, we know from an alternative (pro-government) source in Ukraine, there was palpable impatience in Kiev concerning EU agreement to the American sanctions, and unrest over the Putin-Merkel ‘Land for gas’ agreement with its recognition of the Crimean secession must have been alive as well.
Later that day Putin flew back to Moscow via Warsaw, half an hour after MH17 had passed over that city as well. But the Malaysian Boeing had then turned south and eventually was downed near the Russian border in eastern Ukraine at the end of the afternoon local time.
The Dutch authorities (including the official bodies investigating the disaster) and the ‘important media’ know who did it. But according to more credible experts operating via alternative media because they are ignored by the ‘important’ ones, such as Max van der Werff, Hector Reban, and others, that cannot be established with certainty. Thanks to the circumstance that General Rietdijk is only testing the waters, we are still able to compare the two information channels without restrictions.
It is then not so difficult to establish that Van der Werff, Reban c.s. have the strongest arguments.
According to Mark Leonard, founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, without MH17 it would have been very difficult to find sufficient support for the new round of sanctions against Russia; according to Poroshenko, as noted already, Ukraine was ‘saved’ by the downing of the plane, because the negotiations between Putin and Merkel were shelved immediately.
I don’t know who downed the plane, but there can be little doubt about what and who were saved by the tragedy. If we also take into consideration that Ukraine demanded the guarantee that nothing would become public from either the technical safety or the criminal investigations without the prior consent of Kiev, we get very close to an answer to the question of responsibility.
Do we owe this alternative information to Moscow, which supposedly is trying to manipulate us? Nothing can be further from the truth. In the propaganda war over MH17 between the West and Russia, the Kremlin has amply demonstrated it is unable to get a consistent narrative together, let alone that it can influence public opinion here. That I have been able to write my book on MH17 and the new Cold War, which will come out in German translation with PapyRossa in Cologne, after that in the English original with Manchester University Press, and next in a Portuguese translation with Fino Traço in Belo Horizonte (Brazil), I owe mainly to alternative sources and certainly not to the Dutch government and/or the ‘important media’.
For these continue to stubbornly repeat the most improbable scenarios and therefore it is mandatory that the supply of information is not restricted to these official providers of fake news.
Because that is the real problem with the proposals and the state of affairs as presented by General Rietdijk: they are simply wrong.
As wrong as Russiagate in Washington, the ‘Revolution of Dignity’ in Kiev, and a lot more Alice in Wonderland stories that are nevertheless being repeated daily.
Kees van der Pijl
According to a professor at MGIMO, the leading international relations institute, Poroshenko made his statement that ‘MH17 saved Ukraine’, directly after the downing. The report is on https://politros.com/politic/77886/. The source was Valery Solovey: http://ip.mgimo.ru/news-and-events/Prof--Solovey-interview-on-M-A--in-International-Relations/
BeantwoordenVerwijderenKees van der Pijl