RT “Covers” the Shooting Down of MH17 (Updated)
RT “Covers” the Shooting Down of MH17 by Adam Holland, The Interpreter, Institute of Modern Russia
Operating a fake news channel to promote state propaganda comes with considerable intrinsic problems and contradictions. Propaganda and news reporting have contrary purposes that propagandists carefully work to obscure by various means. That’s the art of propaganda: blurring the line between reality and BS, creating false equivalencies between the two, and implicitly arguing that the BS is superior. That’s easy for the propagandist when he can cherry-pick what he covers and restrict the information that enters into the conversation. But occasionally events overtake the propagandist’s ability to control the message. The mask slips, and he is revealed as being what he was all along: a craftsman of untruths.
That’s exactly what’s happened very suddenly and clearly yesterday at Russia’s RT news agency. As the wreckage of MH17 burned in the streets and yards of a small town in Donetsk Region in Ukraine, and as the bodies of its 298 passengers and crew lay where they were strewn, unburied and still warm, the people at RT and other Russian propaganda outlets rushed to fill the void between rapidly unfolding reality and the needs of those in power in Russia…
Also see:
Russia Today London Correspondent Resigns in Protest at 'Disrespect for Facts' Over Malaysian Plane Crash by William Turvill, Press Gazette
A Tweetbot Caught the Russian Gov't Editing Flight MH17 Wikipedia Info by Robert Sorokanich, Gizmodo
Hat Tip to Matt Armstrong and Crispin Burke.
Gee, for some reason I have an urge to go read about ngos and gongos and democracy promotion. (This source recommends the Lantos Institute. Funny story on that and the Modi visa denial. After the election, I did a little researching. Good intentions, badly executed.)
Terrible human tragedy. What a heartbreak. Those poor people and their families. Russian propaganda has been terrible.
But I no longer trust many in our Western system to tell the truth either. Note, I am not making an equivalency argument between systems but that too many have an agenda. Who does a person trust for simple, factual information?
Mister Holland’s perspective reads a lot like Iranian newspaper perspectives, in the aftermath of the USN shootdown of Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988.
BW/Dayuhan—this is part of the game that we are not even in the game on—Putin has offered multiple times since the shot down to assist in the investigation and stated public that that must be an open and thorough one naturally to place the blame on the Ukraine but then these SBU intercepts released today indicate;
1. Moscow is in touch with the terrorists which they have repeatedly stated they are not and
2. they are trying to cover up evidence and the black boxes
If we were in the game then we could and should release supporting voice intercepts that we both know the NSA has.
Listen to the intercepts and then ask the simply question—we should really believe anything coming from Putin?
http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ssu-356979.html
Militant groups of self-proclaimed Donbas People’s Republic might already be in possession of at least two Malaysia Airlines Boeing’s flight recorders and are keen to get ahold of all the evidence from its crash site, citing “interest” from Moscow. The conversation shows that the separatists are intent on obstructing an international investigation under way.
The alleged intercepted phone conversations are between Oleksandr Khodakovskyi, commander of the Kremlin-backed separatists’ Vostok Battalion and two militants identified only by their first names. The conversations show that the militants working at the site of deadly air crash of Malaysia Airlines Fight MH17 are given a task of getting ahold of all the evidence they can locate and keeping it away from anyone else. The ill-fated flight from Amsterdam-Kuala Lumpur flight on July 17 crashed after a missile struck it from separatist-held territory, killing almost 300 civilians
At one point during the conversation, Khodakovskiy points out that two “black boxes” have already been obtained by a militant nicknamed Khmuryi, identified in the conversation as the head of intelligence of Igor Girkin (Strelkov), DNR’s military commander.
The preliminary results of investigations conducted by both U.S. and Ukrainian authorities show that the Malaysia Airlines Boeing was shot by a surface to air missile fired from the territory controlled by Russian-backed sepaparatists.
The primary focus is on “black boxes,” Khodakovskyi instructs a militant named Andriy during the alleged phone conversation, but the rest of the evidence is no less important.
“All that you find must not come into someone else’s hands,” he said.
Either a comment of mine disappeared into the “system” or somehow it was deemed offensive. I can’t think why, but okay.
This incident is being used in many ways by different parties based on their own interests in the proxy war between Russia on the one hand, and the US/EU/NATO on the other- with all of the local fault-lines being exacerbated and local brokers involved for their own reasons. I don’t mean to minimize local factors.
I think the administration is using this incident to build a case for increased sanctions toward Russia and to pressure other European nations. In that case, the case will be built around the perceived needs as opposed to what might really be happening.
I hear almost nothing around here on the refugee crisis caused by the Kiev offensive in the East and its humanitarian ramifications. As with Afghanistan, we have the larger proxy war, the local regional ramifications (just what are various other Eastern European countries doing in terms of their intelligence in that part of the world?), and the Ukrainian internal governance struggles. To focus only on Putin blinds us to the complicated nature of the situation, just as focusing only on the US, or the Pakistani Army or Karzai or the Taliban causes us a problem when all factors and narratives must be considered.
Our system cannot do multifactorial for some reason.
Does the Washington Post read this site or the comments here? Ha ha, just kidding.
Today, the Washington “State Department” Post has an article on Russia’s proxies in Ukraine entitled “Putin’s Grand Strategy is Failing”, Monkeyblog.
Does the Washington Post/State Department really want to go down this path in argumentation? Because State’s inherent Russophobia is very different from its historic Pakistanophilia (as a client state, as a source of post-government income of some, and for its elites) and this had an adverse effect on our Afghanistan campaign, India relations, etc.
In Afghanistan, both external proxies and bad governance by Karzai are supposed to be problems, but when it comes to Ukraine the cozy relationships between Washington, Urkanian oligarchs, genuine western-oriented democratizers, and so on, is easily deleted from the proxy situation.
How we Americans took on the NATOist and Atlanticists attitudes and habits of their elites, while their elites took on bad habits of ours. The shared cultures that have developed are a bit toxic, no? I think it’s the difference in my training and that of the PhD intellectual class that makes it such a culture clash between me and so much of what I read around here. If someone smokes, and the smoking causes a cancer, for me to point out that smoking causes cancer doesn’t mean that I am morally condemning a patient. So too, when I point out the their are multiple factors to be considered in the proxy war in Ukraine.
The Indians must be rolling their eyes at the suggestion that they have double standards on proxies when the US and the UK and NATO have aided and abetted Pakistani proxies for, well, ever. Perhaps without meaning to, but for sure their democracy promotion in South Asia has hurt a lot of people.
Violating sovereignty comes in flavors and shades and arming proxies is the most egregious. Doesn’t mean lesser forms of involvement doesn’t disturb societies too, and prevent healthy balances.
Brennan, the Kiev offensives and the Pakistani Army offensives. Is it a good thing for our State Department and CIA to push so hard internally in societies, dear wonderful WaPo? I should just post this at their site but I am too naturally indolent….I like to blame having MS but sometimes it is just a convenient excuse. Or maybe not. It’s sort of a sonofabitch to deal with, at times. Probably one reason I am fascinated with the physically strong, surely some of the weird vibe the military gets from civilians is fascination which is not entirely healthy.
From Peter Hitchens blog:
Sarah Montague introduced this hugely significant story (with which – in my view – the programme should have led its bulletins) saying :’Senior American intelligence officials say they have no evidence of direct Russian involvement in the shooting down of the Malaysian airlines plane over Ukraine.’
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk
And the things Victoria Nuland said on British television this past winter….
Funny that I should post his stuff around here but I agree with his commentary on the expansionary nature of the EU and its funny effects on the US, European countries, the UK.
Funny because isn’t he a “we should have held onto the Empire or India and not let the Americans screw us” guy?
Or am I getting that wrong? All those trained Indian guys coming back from WWII, that insurgency would have made Vietnam look like patty-cake, maybe.
At any rate:
1. A divided Ukrainian society in many different ways….
2. Ethnic and language divisions – Russian, Ukranian.
3. Competing oligarchs.
4. EU compétition.
5. US, Germany, UK, France, etc. competition.
6. NATO as an expansionist bureaucracy as well as security alliance.
6. Proxy wars on multiple levels. It’s three dimensional chess.
Any counterunconventional warfare, or diplomacy, or any military discussion, that looks only at Russian arms is just asking for the US to make the same mistakes we already have in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Why is it so hard for people to do this? The deaths on all sides are horrifying and heartbreaking. The poor Ukranians – look at Kashmir and look at Afghanistan before you decide to get in on that kind of game. You’ll destroy your own nation and outsiders will do the “helping”. What a tragedy all around.
Senior moment when I posted comments about the urban ISR article on this thread. My apologies to the confused.