Posted on 07/22/2014 9:40:35 AM PDT by nikos1121
Did you know Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was full of corpses when it took off from Amsterdam? Did you know that, for some darkly inexplicable reason, on July 17, MH17 moved off the standard flight path that it had taken every time before, and moved north, toward rebel-held areas outside Donetsk? Or that the dispatchers summoned the plane lower just before the crash? Or that the plane had been recently reinsured? Or that the Ukrainian army has air defense systems in the area? Or that it was the result of the Ukrainian military mistaking MH17 for Putin’s presidential plane, which looks strangely similar?
Did you know that the crash of MH17 was all part of an American conspiracy to provoke a big war with Russia?
Well, it’s all true—at least if you live in Russia, because this is the Malaysia Airlines crash story that you’d be seeing.
As the crisis surrounding the plane crash deepens and as calls for Vladimir Putin to act grow louder, it’s worth noting that they’re not really getting through to Putin’s subjects. The picture of the catastrophe that the Russian people are seeing on their television screens is very different from that on screens in much of the rest of the world, and the discrepancy does not bode well for a sane resolution to this stand-off.
Western media has been vacillating for days between calling Putin a murderer and peppering their coverage with allegedlys, telling the heart-rending tales of the victims, scrounging for anonymous leaks to link the Russians to the downed jet, and punditizing about exit ramps.
But in Russia, television—most of it owned or controlled by the Kremlin—is trying to muddy the water with various experts who insist that there is no way that an SA-11 missile system could possibly have downed a plane flying that high. And, mind you, this is not part of a larger debate of could they, or couldn’t they; this is all of Russian television and state-friendly papers pushing one line: The pro-Russian separatists we’ve been supporting all these months couldn’t have done this. Watching some of these Russian newscasts, one comes away with the impression of a desperate defense attorney scrounging for experts and angles, or a bad kid caught red-handed by the principal, trying to twist his way out of a situation in which he has no chance.
And that’s when they’re not simply peddling conspiracy theories, which have become a kind of symbiotic feedback loop between state TV and the most inventive corners of the Internet. The best of the bunch is, of course, an elaborate one: MH17 is actually MH370, that Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared into the Indian Ocean. According to this theory, the plane didn’t disappear at all, “it was taken to an American military base, Diego-Garcia.”
Then it was taken to Holland. On the necessary day and hour, it flew out, bound for Malaysia, but inside were not live people, but corpses. The plane was flown not by real pilots; it was on autopilot. Or take-off (a complicated procedure) was executed by live pilots, who then ejected on parachutes. Then the plane flew automatically. In the necessary spot, it was blown up, without even using a surface-to-air missile. Instead the plane was packed with a bomb, just like the CIA did on 9/11.
The theory also notes that the passports of victims at the crash site all look brand new even though there was an explosion and a fire. “That is, the passports were tossed in [after the crash].” And, most damningly, all the victims’ Facebook pages were created in one day and the media is not showing any of the victims’ families, just the crash site. Though this is not true of Western media, Russian television has not featured any of this. “There’s very little talk about the human cost of this catastrophe,” says independent television analyst Arina Borodina, formerly of the prominent Russian daily Kommersant. “Instead we’re seeing these unbelievable versions. For example, that someone had actually been hunting for the president or that some of the locals saw parachutists coming down from a height of 30,000 feet.”
But though it may look unconvincing to us in the West, that is because we have seen and read other things that contradict it. The Russian media space has become so uniform and independent voices so cowed and marginalized that there is no counterweight and, when there’s no counterweight, if you repeat a thing often enough, it becomes the truth.
Right.
Always a tough call - do I believe Putin or Obama? I tend to see a lot more motive in Obama to lie than Putin to shoot down the plane.
...interesting that no one is responding to your post. I think they know they’re defeated.
Prepare yourself — the Kremlin will soon unleash a corps of MH17 Truthers.
A point I was trying to make is that while Putin has managed to consolidate almost all Russian media in his hands, including likely responsibility for assassination of journalists, here in US there are still widely different views expressed in a number of places.
I guess my question would be, winning what?
Hearts, minds, wars, peace and not necessarily in that order. I am completely at a disconnect in regards to your thinking our lame-stream isn't better than Pravda in propaganda. Where do the majority of Americans receive their news? Answer ... the lame-stream better than Pravda media. Am surprised you think all Americans listen to and view other alternate media sources. Americans listen to the sources of information they have the time to tune in. That usually involves thirty minutes each night with one of the three, four or five lame-streams. It would be wonderful if Americans researched to see where the truth lies but that does not happen. My apology for ranting. I thought you knew these facts.
Why would anyone disagree with his post? It states quite clearly that all of the Russian explanations are whacko conspiracy theories, that the Russian-backed rebels shot down the plane (probably because they misidentified it) with Russian-supplied weapons, and that Russians are rallying around Putin because he is seen as a strong leader domestically and Obama is the definition of a weak leader. What’s there to argue with?
YEP...that appears to be the case.
I don’t disagree with your evaluation of American news seeking behavior. What I was saying is that here there are more opportunities to seek out different viewpoints even if most do not. On the other hand, Putin has made it almost impossible to get alternative viewpoints in Russia.
Agreed putin is a dictator’s dictator. Also we have a guy that wants to be a dictator’s dictator. Our lamestream media is comprised of (classified) but they (our lamestream) does have facts they refuse to share with the public. M A N Y F A C T S. Is one thing to have the facts and a dictator says you may not state those facts or you will disappear. Is an entirely different matter when a media has the facts and are free to report those facts but for the sake of an agenda those facts are thrown in the shredder then emptied into the waste paper basket or is our lamestream media being put under the same threats of disappearing? Might want to do some research and discover some of our media people too are disappearing. Maybe not through death or imprisonment but rather off the air.
And that’s the way we like it! — Russian population
Dan Rather and Bill Maher come to mind, but I don’t think it was liberals who got rid of them.
Two while we lose dozens or more. Not winning in that synopsis. Maybe is time to do better for all trying to get the truth out.
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