MH17 UPDATE – THE NEW UKRAINIAN GOVERNMENT IS NOW BETWEEN THE HAMMER AND THE ANVIL
By Eric Zuesse*
@bears_with
The Netherlands Government is resisting an effort by the families of the Dutch victims of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 to find out why, on July 17, 2014 – the day Flight MH17 was shot down when over the eastern Ukrainian civil war zone — this passenger aircraft
had been guided by Ukraine’s air-traffic control to fly through, instead of around the war zone (
as it instructed other airliners).
On October 1, 2019, now more than five years after
196 Dutch nationals were killed in that incident, the Dutch RTL News headlined (as auto-translated into English)
“Cabinet considers research into Ukraine’s role in disaster MH17”. RTL reports that “the cabinet will examine whether further research is possible on the role of Ukraine in the disaster with Flight MH17.” The cabinet was being pushed, RTL said, by “a proposal … for the investigation [which has] received the support of all Parties present in the second chamber” of the Dutch Parliament.
The RTL report added that “so far, the cabinet has not taken any steps against Ukraine. As far as we know, nothing is happening behind the scenes.” Furthermore: “Last year, the Netherlands, together with Australia, decided to identify Russia as the country culpable. For the liability of Ukraine, according to the cabinet, there was ‘no evidence’ and also ‘
no research needed’.” Moreover, Dutch Foreign Minister Stefan Blok said then that ‘we don’t see any reason for an investigation’ into that, because ‘the government is trying to maintain its relationship with Ukraine,’ and ‘because then both the airspace of Ukraine and that of Russia should be looked at,’ and because ‘there are still no indications that Ukraine can also be held liable.’”
In actual fact, from the very start of that investigation, there has been a secret agreement
not to blame Ukraine for anything to do with the incident. This agreement is kept secret from the Dutch people. Blok, in resisting an investigation of why Flight MH17 was guided over the civil-war zone, was simply adhering to the secret agreement the Netherlands had signed with Ukraine on August 8, 2014. If now he were to agree to the victim families’ demand, he still would be obligated, by Holland’s 2014 agreement with Ukraine, to decide that Ukraine was not a perpetrator in the downing.
But the Dutch families don’t know this.
As I reported back on
24 August 2014, the secret agreement signed on August 8, 2014, between
Netherlands, Ukraine, Belgium, and Australia, gave Ukraine veto power
over any finding that the four governments’ official “Joint Investigation Team” (JIT) would issue regarding the shoot-down of MH17. Initially, Malaysia was
excluded from the Team; it was finally admitted into the Team, after agreeing to the secret terms, including that there was to be no blame for Ukraine. Russia’s RT headlined on November 20, 2014, that
“Dutch government refuses to reveal ‘secret deal’ into MH17 crash probe”. This revealed that the Dutch Government
was refusing to comply with its own Freedom of Information law by keeping the agreement secret. On June 14, 2016, the website “What Happened to Flight MH17” headlined
“The vague role of Malaysia in the Joint Investigation Team”, reporting that the JIT had actually been formed officially on August 7, 2014, and noting that “in the limited number of public communications by JIT it is not mentioned what the role of Malaysia is in the criminal investigation.”
Malaysia, unlike the other four state members of the JIT,
isn’t a member of America’s core anti-Russia alliance, which includes NATO and Australia. Malaysia is instead a neutral nation and is therefore considered untrustworthy by the others.
Subsequently,
on July 21 2019, Max van der Werff and John Helmer revealed that Malaysia’s Government rejects the “findings” of the JIT which have blamed Russia, with no reservations, for downing the MH17. By declaring this position publicly, Malaysia isn’t violating the August 8, 2014, JIT agreement,
since Malaysia isn’t saying Ukraine is culpable in the incident. Instead, Malaysia is saying that
further investigations are needed, and that Malaysia possesses the black boxes and other crucial evidence.
The present report is an update of the evidence for the MH17 shoot-down over the breakaway Donbass region of Ukraine. The additional facts which will be reported here regarding the incident shock me. At the time of the incident I knew that US President Barack Obama had become desperate for something to happen which would persuade German Chancellor Angela Merkel to endorse added sanctions against Russia regarding Ukraine. But I had had no idea, until now, as to what direct involvement, if any, Obama had had in the actual set-up of the MH17 shoot-down. All of the evidence for the following can be clicked through to the ultimate sources by the reader: this is important to do for any reader who is skeptical and who wants to see the source evidence for any claim that seems outlandish. It’s important especially because the case which will be presented here stuns even me, who voted three times for Obama, first in his 2008 primary against Hillary Clinton; then once again in his 2008 general election contest against Republican John McCain; and finally, once more, yet again, in his 2012 general election contest against Republican Mitt Romney. Romney, incidentally,
right now is arguing for President Trump’s impeachment
and replacement by Vice President Mike Pence. Romney is famous for having said, during his 2012 campaign against Obama, that
“Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe”).
Then I knew that Obama was the lesser of two evils. Now I recognize I had had no idea of how evil that actually was. Here I shall report what I now know. This extensively documented reconstruction of the MH17 incident and of how it came about, seems to me to disprove the basic Western ‘historical’ narrative about how international relations work in our time, and to signal the necessity for a fundamental rewrite of the mainstream view of world history. At the very least, the MH17 case disproves the mainstream historical narrative as it’s being presented in our time. Whatever the truth may turn out to be, it certainly cannot be anything even approximating that narrative.
The essential background information regarding the MH17 must be presented at the start, and it’s accurately portrayed in an 11-minute video. The first news report to display in an easily comprehensible way all of the crucial facts necessary in order to understand the MH17 event and what caused it, was an 11-minute video compilation. It was uploaded to Youtube on March 12, 2014 – that’s to say four months before MH17 was shot down. Watch the film
here. In my opinion, after reviewing it many times and assessing it from many different perspectives, it is absolutely accurate. Beyond that, it provides the essential background information and context in which to understand the MH17 event.
This will be a summary to be followed by the evidence, each item clickable to each ultimate source. The first sentence of the summary will summarize the essential
background information to the MH17 event; I mean the background information that’s essential in order to be able to understand the information that is to be
newly introduced here regarding the MH17 event.
President Obama not only perpetrated the February 2014 bloody coup in Ukraine which he had started to plan no later than 2011 and then put into operation on March 1, 2013, inside the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. That was months before the democratically elected Ukrainian President whom Obama was to overthrow
decided for Ukraine not to accept the EU’s offer of membership. But Obama and his NATO allies were so determined to reverse the breakaway of
Crimea and
Donetsk, from Ukraine, which had resulted from the coup, that Obama and his NATO then set up the shoot-down of the MH17 airliner by Obama’s newly-installed government in Kiev with the objective of putting the blame on Russia and creating thereby a pretext for
the European Union to join the U.S. in escalating sanctions against Russia. What the most recent information shows is this:
Obama and his NATO were intending to use these manufactured false accusation against Russia as a pretext not only to hike anti-Russia sanctions but also to invade both Donetsk and Crimea in order to coerce those two regions back again into Ukraine. The reasons why that plan failed (was aborted) were, first, that Malaysia’s Government held in international law the unchallengeable right of ownership over the airliner’s black boxes; and, second, that there was one NATO leader in particular, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who judged that Obama was risking a new European war and therefore refused to join in Obama’s scheme. When Obama consequently decided against moving into a military campaign in eastern Ukraine without Merkel’s approval, the immediate risks to Europe were avoided. Furthermore, Malaysia’s
hold on the black boxes was a particular problem for Obama and NATO, because Malaysia’s Government suspected that preparation for a U.S.-NATO invasion of Donbass and Crimea might induce Malaysia to go public with what it already knew about the lies in the US-NATO version of what had happened to MH17. Try as he, the Dutch and the Australians did, Obama lacked the ability to prevent that response from Malaysia. So, not only Germany, but also Malaysia, held a decisive power in the situation, and Obama yielded to it.
Also noteworthy — especially for Dutch citizens and the families of the passengers on that airliner — the Netherlands Government had been one of the largest financial backers of the February 2014 U.S.-planned overthrow of Ukraine’s
democratically elected President. For example, the Dutch Government (“Embassy of the Netherlands”) was the largest single donor,
listed at $793,089, to Hromadske TV,
which was the leading station that advocated for forcing that President out of power. Whereas the U.S. Government had organized and ran the overthrow, and spent far more on it (
over $5 billion) than did any other nation or individual, the U.S. was only the second-largest donor to that station, at $399,650. So: Holland’s government had a significant investment in the post-coup regime, even before that post-coup regime shot down the MH17 plane and thereby slaughtered its 283 passengers, of whom 196 were Dutch.
A relevant early news report from me was published on June 7, 2015, titled
“Obama Sidelines Kerry on Ukraine Policy”. This noted that Obama supported the position of Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, in backing an all-stops-out, US- supported invasion of Crimea and Donbass by Ukraine’s Government, and that Obama rejected the position of her boss, John Kerry, the Secretary of State, who opposed such an invasion by Ukraine. “Kerry, for his part, now faces the decision as to whether to quit … or else for Kerry to stay in office and be disrespected in all capitals for his staying on after having been so blatantly contradicted by his subordinate.” Obama had arranged for
either Nuland or Vice President Joe Biden, or Geoffrey Pyatt, the US Ambassador in Kiev, to tell Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko t
o prepare in advance of any such invasion something that would compel the European Union to hike sanctions against Russia, so as to lay the international groundwork for it. Part of their instruction would have been the assurance to Poroshenko that the US Government would unreservedly back Ukraine in their accusations against Russia. This is why the JIT had on it only vassal-regimes of the U.S. That part of the plan worked. But then Malaysia got in the way.
The MH17 scheme wasn’t the only instance when Obama undermined Kerry’s work: he likewise did it when Kerry favored a US agreement with Russia that,
in a Syrian war ceasefire, not only ISIS but also Al Qaeda-led forces in Syria could continue to be bombed.
Russia was bombing both, America was bombing only ISIS; and Obama
refused to accept a ceasefire in which Russia would be allowed to continue its bombing of Al Qaeda, not only of ISIS.
He was determined to protect Al Qaeda in Syria. That was the ultimate humiliation of Kerry, and effectively ended his career in government.
My last major report on MH17 was on December 31, 2018,
“MH17 Turnabout: Ukraine’s Guilt Now Proven”. That was the conclusive checkmate against the US-NATO case for blaming Russia for MH17.
The Sputnik article is now on SOTT:
