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Similarly to this article on Newrepublic, Slate also compares the incident to the Lockerbie bombing:
If it has done nothing else, the crash of Flight MH17 has just put an end to the “it’s not a real war” fairy tale, both for the Russians and for the West. Tragically, this unconventional nonwar war has just killed 298 people, mostly Europeans. We can’t pretend it isn’t happening any longer, or that it doesn’t affect anyone outside of Donetsk. The Russians can’t pretend either.
Without the fairy-tale pretense, some things are about to become clear. For one, we are about to learn whether the West in 2014 is as united, and as determined to stop terrorism as it was 26 years ago. When the Libyan government brought down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, the West closed ranks and isolated the Libyan regime. Can we do the same now—or will too many be tempted to describe this as a “tragic accident,” and to dismiss what will inevitably be a controversial investigation as “inconclusive?” It is insufficient to state, as President Obama has now done, that there must be a “cease-fire” in Ukraine. What is needed is a withdrawal of Russian mercenaries, weapons, and support. The West—and the world—must push for Ukrainian state sovereignty to be reestablished in eastern Ukraine, not for the perpetuation of another frozen conflict.
We will also learn something interesting about the Russian president. So far there is no sign of shock or shame in Russia. But in truth, this tragedy offers Vladimir Putin an opportunity to get out of the messy disaster he has created in eastern Ukraine. He now has the perfect excuse to denounce the separatist movement and to cut its supplies. If he refuses, then we know that he remains profoundly dedicated to the chaos and nihilism he created in Donetsk. We can assume he intends to perpetuate it elsewhere. And if we are not prepared to fight it, we should be braced for it to spread. Source
It is difficult, however, to convincingly lay blame for MH17 at Ukraine's door, because the pro-Russian rebels are the ones who have been shooting down aircraft in the area: They have no warplanes of their own, and anti-aircraft weapons are their only way to counteract the government forces' supremacy in the air. Ukraine's military, by contrast, have nothing to shoot at that has wings.
The Russian propaganda machine is struggling to deal with this simple fact. So far, the following versions have surfaced:
· The Ukrainians launched a missile hoping to shoot down Putin's own plane. "A source in the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency" told the Interfax news agency that the Malaysian jet and Putin's specially modified Il-96 briefly passed the same spot 10,100 meters over Poland yesterday, and the two planes look alike from a distance: both are big and decorated with red, white and blue stripes. "Considering the schizophrenia in Kiev political circles, this version does not appear absurd," pro-Putin TV host Vitaly Tretyakov wrote on Livejournal.
· The residents of Grabovo, a village near the crash site, saw a warplane in the sky "several minutes before the crash." They also saw it "launch several missiles." Then debris started raining down. Other Russian media quote rebel representatives saying with certainty that a Ukrainian fighter plane was responsible.
· The other Malaysian Airlines loss, Flight MH370, which mysteriously disappeared in March, was hijacked with a view to staging a provocation against Russia and now, finally, has been used. The bodies at the crash site are those of MH370 passengers: they're partially decomposed and the European passports found strewn on the ground are suspiciously new.
· A Spanish air traffic controller working in Ukraine said on Twitter that Ukrainians shot down the plane. The Ukrainian authorities then threatened him so he wouldn't disclose the truth. (Twitter closed down the account after ascertaining there was no such air traffic controller in Kiev).
I may have missed a few other colorful myths, but the general plan is clear: to sow doubt in the minds of ordinary Russians. "The more versions, the less clear it is, the less clear it is, the more time there is to work out the final version that will later become canonical," columnist Oleg Kashin wrote on svpressa.ru.
To outsiders, Russian media coverage of the Ukraine crisis may seem far-fetched, conspiracy-laden, and contradictory. But it’s effectively convinced Russians that the Ukrainian rebels need their help to fight brutal repression by Kiev. “Aggressive and deceptive propaganda, worse than anything I witnessed in the Soviet Union,” is how Lev Gudkov, director of the Levada polling group, described it to the BBC last month. Indeed, Levada surveys show that most Russians think their country should be doing more to support the rebels, including direct military intervention in Ukraine.
Propaganda is a scary thing. Western media is also subject to this in tone and detail of some news (very pro Israel news here for example) but Russia has gone full fabrication and lies. And it's not that people there are less smart, propaganda is just an extremely powerful tool nobody is fully immune to it.
Propaganda is even more powerful because of human nature. It makes people come out and try to set things straight which results in getting emotional and causing people believing the story to come out and defend it. You end up in a horrible deadlock where no news are worth anything or the propaganda has merit. It is just better not to engage the propaganda.
On July 19 2014 17:20 LegalLord wrote: Given the fact that Obama is making speeches rather than releasing real evidence, I don't think they found anything substantial as of now.
Which means we're no closer to finding out what happened than we were when this whole mess started.
They are building a case as we speak, no one should speak out of turn.
As a Dutchman the thing that is really agrevating to me is that the sepratists are absolutely ransacking the crashsite. There are reports of victims creditcards being used allready. We know the sepratist are controlling the crashsite atm. We have pictures of them going through all the belongings, seizing it their own personal gain. Destroying memories of the victims in the process. Absolutely disgusting whether they shot down the plane or not. I think it's apparent these barbarians just don't care about what happened.
On July 19 2014 17:20 LegalLord wrote: Given the fact that Obama is making speeches rather than releasing real evidence, I don't think they found anything substantial as of now.
Which means we're no closer to finding out what happened than we were when this whole mess started.
They are building a case as we speak, no one should speak out of turn.
As a Dutchman the thing that is really agrevating to me is that the sepratists are absolutely ransacking the crashsite. There are reports of victims creditcards being used allready. We know the sepratist are controlling the crashsite atm. We have pictures of them going through all the belongings, seizing it their own personal gain. Destroying memories of the victims in the process. Absolutely disgusting whether they shot down the plane or not. I think it's apparent these barbarians just don't care about what happened.
I'm really wondering about how that picture came to be..? Is it some sort of statement or something? I don't know, there's a lot of things we don't know and probably won't know through all the propaganda. Nowadays, can you even ask for real evidence, seems to me that I can only believe my guts. I do believe we have the technology to detect the missile launch with satellites though so that's pretty logical.
On July 19 2014 12:49 zlefin wrote: This must be quite a huge shock in the Netherlands. Looking at the stats online, the amount of deaths is around the annual homicide rate in their country. So that's a huge number for them.
It's like the biggest tragedy we've had in my lifetime.
A quick incursion into Russian media, there's a story being spread by the usual suspects (RT, Graham Philips, etc) that the recording of a conversation between Pro-Russia militiamen in which they discuss the downing of the aircraft (posted in this thread numerous times) is fake, as the timestamp says it was recorded a day earlier.
[...]on Russian TV’s most watch weekly debate show, terrorist ideologist Alexander Dugin claimed that he had “personally conducted a technical experiment, proving the video tape was made 1 day before the crash, thus proving it was all planned by the Kiev junta”.
Grozev debunked this by demonstrating that any video is seen as if `from the past' due to server times:
[See the Source. for pictures] Yesterday noon I recorded a short video using YT’s built-in webcam tool. Thus, there is no question that the creation date could have been earlier, as the webcam tool records in real time, and does not take an already produced file.
As you can see, the date/time is July 18th, 2014, 12:55 PM local time . (My time-zone currently is the same as Kiev. And as you can also see, my video content is of amazing quality)
Now let’s do the “Dugin experiment” on this video. I downloaded the file using the YT downloader plugin for Firefox, and ran a file analysis using ffmpeg. Here’s the result:
As you can see, the creation time of the video is exactly 14 hours earlier than the actual, local-time upload time. This is simply because of the difference between the YouTube’s server time, and the user’s (in this case my) time.
On July 19 2014 12:49 zlefin wrote: This must be quite a huge shock in the Netherlands. Looking at the stats online, the amount of deaths is around the annual homicide rate in their country. So that's a huge number for them.
It is. Everyone knows someone who knows people who were on that plane.
On July 19 2014 19:25 meatpudding wrote: Today I found out that my best friend was on this flight. Devastated. So sorry for everyone who lost friends and family. Such a tragedy.
Pfff. Sad to hear that, that's rough. My condolences with your loss.
On July 19 2014 12:49 zlefin wrote: This must be quite a huge shock in the Netherlands. Looking at the stats online, the amount of deaths is around the annual homicide rate in their country. So that's a huge number for them.
It is. Everyone knows someone who knows people who were on that plane.
It's the biggest tragedy for the Netherlands in a very long time for sure but that's just not true (the everyone knows someone thing). I just know this from my own experience of course but 300 people on a total population of about 17 milion makes that very unlikely. I don't think we're that social. Edit: I mean 200 people of course..
On July 19 2014 19:25 meatpudding wrote: Today I found out that my best friend was on this flight. Devastated. So sorry for everyone who lost friends and family. Such a tragedy.
On July 19 2014 19:25 meatpudding wrote: Today I found out that my best friend was on this flight. Devastated. So sorry for everyone who lost friends and family. Such a tragedy.
On July 19 2014 12:49 zlefin wrote: This must be quite a huge shock in the Netherlands. Looking at the stats online, the amount of deaths is around the annual homicide rate in their country. So that's a huge number for them.
It is. Everyone knows someone who knows people who were on that plane.
It's the biggest tragedy for the Netherlands in a very long time for sure but that's just not true (the everyone knows someone thing). I just know this from my own experience of course but 300 people on a total population of about 17 milion makes that very unlikely. I don't think we're that social. Edit: I mean 200 people of course..
What I said was in the second degree. For example You know 150 people, who each also know 150 people. So you probably know someone, who knew someone on that plane. Of course it's not literately true but I have several cases. Also people from my university etc.
On July 19 2014 17:54 Lokian wrote: I'm really wondering about how that picture came to be..? Is it some sort of statement or something? I don't know, there's a lot of things we don't know and probably won't know through all the propaganda. Nowadays, can you even ask for real evidence, seems to me that I can only believe my guts. I do believe we have the technology to detect the missile launch with satellites though so that's pretty logical.
That picture (of the separatist holding up the stuffed animal) was quite upsetting to me at first as well. However, then I saw the following video that shows more of the circumstances: (at around 1:00)
You see the separatist being photographed by multiple photographers, while holding up the stuffed animal. He doesn't appear to hold it as a trophy nor does he demonstrate any pride in this scene. Afterwards, he puts the stuffed animal back on the ground (rather than just tossing it away), takes off his cap, makes the christian cross-gesture (don't know the official English term for it) and shakes his head.
While I still think that the belongings of the deceased should be left alone, this scene doesn't give any impressions of a rebel celebrating a victory or looting the spoils, but rather someone who is also upset and showing the world what has happened.
The contrast between the pictures and the video clearly demonstrates how dangerous it is to take media reports at face value. The mood of a picture can be greatly different from what was actually going on. And with several sides having large political interests in how this situation plays out, it will be difficult to get unbiased views.
On July 19 2014 19:25 meatpudding wrote: Today I found out that my best friend was on this flight. Devastated. So sorry for everyone who lost friends and family. Such a tragedy.
Separatist fighters from the self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic" (DPR) have reportedly stolen 36 bodies of people killed in the downing of the Malaysian airliner, rbc.ua reported.
The press service of the Donetsk Region State Administration made the announcement, citing eye-witnesses.
The Interpreter has translated the statement:
"After the end of of the active stage of work at the site of the tragedy, representatives of the DPR arrived at the village of Rassypnoye and stole 36 bodies of victims of the air crash. Armed fighters drove away rescue workers and took communication devices from most of them. They loaded the bodies into a truck like sacks. According to the fighters, they intend to take the bodies to Donetsk."
We have no verification of the report, but the fact that the statement was made by a local state administrator adds a certain credibility to it. Source.
Don't really understand that move. Why would they "steal" decomposing bodies?
And further, the US and other highly militarized countries have satellites capable of reading my newspaper in the morning, why aren't all eyes on the crashsite?
Because they really don't have satellites that can read your morning paper. Geostationary satellites are way too far away, and satellites in an orbit low enough are so fast that they can only take fly by footage on every orbit (about once a day). And they need to be positioned first which can take hours up to a day and is a very expensive operation. Although you would assume that the NRO had at least one positioned in a Ukraine orbit anyway. But then even low orbit satellites have a resolution of decimeters - not enough to even identify a person.
EPT
