Edward Bernays and George Orwell would be so impressed. It seems the U.S. government and their media mouthpieces already know that Russia is responsible for the downing of the Malaysian jet and it is the people in Gaza who are responsible for the slaughter of civilians in Gaza by Israel. The storylines are pre-written. Facts don’t matter. The ignorant masses will believe anything they are fed by their keepers. Those who question the official story must be anti-American. Time to tune into the “experts” on the Sunday morning propaganda news networks as they discuss evil Putin and the dastardly Palestinians. I’m guessing they won’t be showing footage of dead women and children in Gaza or the Ukraine. Remember:
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984
For an alternative viewpoint let’s see what Paul Craig Roberts has to say:
What Happened to the Malaysian Airliner?
Washington’s propaganda machine is in such high gear that we are in danger of losing
the facts that we do have.
One fact is that the separatists do not have the expensive Buk anti-aircraft missile system or the trained personnel to operate it.
Another fact is that the separatists have no incentive to shoot down an airliner and neither does Russia. Anyone can tell the difference between low-flying attack aircraft and an airliner at 33,000 feet.
The Ukrainians do have Buk anti-aircraft missile systems, and a Buk battery was operational in the region and deployed at a site from which it could have fired a missile at the airliner.
Just as the separatists and the Russian government have no incentive to shoot down an airliner, neither does the Ukrainian government nor, one would think, even the crazed extreme Ukrainian nationalists who have formed militias to take the fight against the separatists that the Ukrainian army is not keen to undertake–unless there was a plan to frame Russia.
One Russian general familiar with the weapon system offered his opinion that it was a mistake made by the Ukrainian military untrained in the weapon’s use. The general said that although Ukraine has a few of the weapons, Ukrainians have had no training in their use in the 23 years since Ukraine separated from Russia. The general thinks it was an accident due to incompetence.
This explanation makes a certain amount of sense and far more sense than Washington’s propaganda. The problem with the general’s explanation is that it does not explain why the Buk anti-aircraft missile system was deployed near or in a separatist territory. The separatists have no aircraft. It seems odd for Ukraine to have an expensive missile system in an area in which it is of no military use and where the position could be overrun and captured by separatists.
As Washington, Kiev, and the presstitute media are committed to the propaganda that Putin did it, we are not going to get any reliable information from the US media. We will have to figure it out for ourselves.
One way to begin is to ask: Why was the missile system where it was? Why risk an expensive missile system by deploying it in a conflict environment in which it is of no use? Incompetence is one answer, and another is that the missile system did have an intended use.
What intended use? News reports and circumstantial evidence provide two answers. One is that the ultra-nationalist extremists intended to bring down Putin’s presidential airliner and confused the Malaysian airliner with the Russian airliner.
The Interfax news agency citing anonymous sources, apparently air traffic controllers, reported that the Malaysian airliner and Putin’s airliner were traveling almost the identical route within a few minutes of one another. Interfax quotes its source: “I can say that Putin’s plane and the Malaysian Boeing intersected at the same point and the same echelon. That was close to Warsaw on 330-m echelon at the height of 10,100 meters. The presidential jet was there at 16:21 Moscow time and the Malaysian aircraft at 15:44 Moscow time. The contours of the aircrafts are similar, linear dimensions are also very similar, as for the coloring, at a quite remote distance they are almost identical.”
I have not seen an official Russian denial, but according to news reports, the Russian government in response to the Interfax news report said that Putin’s presidential plane no longer flies the Ukraine route since the outbreak of hostilities.
Before we take the denial at face value, we need to be aware that the implication that Ukraine attempted to assassinate the president of Russia implies war, which Russia wants to avoid. It also implies Washington’s complicity as it is highly unlikely that Washington’s puppet in Kiev would risk such a dangerous act without Washington’s backing. The Russian government, being intelligent and rational, would obviously deny reports of an attempted assassination of the Russian president by Washington and its Kiev puppet. Otherwise, Russia has to do something about it, and that means war.
The second explanation is that the extremists who operate outside the official Ukrainian military, hatched a plot to down an airliner in order to cast the blame on Russia. If such a plot occurred, it likely originated with the CIA or some operative arm of Washington and was intended to force the EU to cease resisting Washington’s sanctions against Russia and to break off Europe’s valuable economic relationships with Russia. Washington is frustrated that its sanctions are unilateral, unsupported by its NATO puppets or any other countries in the world except possibly the lap-dog British PM.
There is considerable circumstantial evidence in support of this second explanation. There is the youtube video which purports to be a conversation between a Russian general and separatists who are discussing having mistakenly brought down a civilian airliner. According to reports, expert examination of the code in the video reveal that it was made the day before the airliner was hit.
Another problem with the video is that whereas we could say that separatists conceivably could confuse an airliner at 33,000 feet with a military attack plane, the Russian military would not. The only conclusion is that by involving the Russian military, the video doubly discredited itself.
The circumstantial evidence easiest for non-technical people to understand is the on cue news programs organized to put the blame on Russia prior to the knowledge of any facts.
In my previous article http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/07/17/sanctions-airliners-paul-craig-roberts/ I reported on the BBC news report which I heard and which was obviously primed to place all blame on Russia. The program ended with a BBC correspondent breathlessly reporting that he has just seen the youtube video and that the video is the smoking gun that proved Russia did it. There is no longer any doubt, he said. Somehow the information got on a video and on youtube before it reached the Ukrainian government or Washington.
The evidence that Putin did it is a video made prior to the attack on the airliner. The entire BBC report aired over National Public Radio was orchestrated for the sole purpose of establishing prior to any evidence that Russia was responsible.
Indeed the entire Western media spoke as one: Russia did it. And the presstitutes are still speaking the same way.
Possibly, this uniform opinion merely reflects the pavlovian training of the Western media to automatically line up with Washington. No media source wants to be subject to criticism for being unamerican or to find itself isolated by majority opinion, which carries the day, and earn black marks for being wrong. As a former journalist for, and contributor to, America’s most important news publications, I know how this works.
On the other hand, if we discount the pavlovian conditioning, the only conclusion is that the entire news cycle pertaining to the downing of the Malaysian airliner is orchestrated in order to lay the blame on Putin.
Romesh Ratnesar, deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek, provides convincing evidence for orchestration in his own remarks of July 17. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-07-17/the-malaysia-airlines-shootdown-spells-disaster-for-putin?campaign_id=DN071814 Ratnesar’s opinion title is: “The Malaysia Airlines Shootdown Spells Disaster for Putin.” Ratnesar does not mean that Putin is being framed-up. He means that prior to Putin having the Malaysian airliner shot down, “to the vast majority of Americans, Russia’s meddling in Ukraine has largely seemed of peripheral importance to U.S. interests. That calculus has changed. . . . It may take months, even years, but Putin’s recklessness is bound to catch up to him. When it does, the downing of MH 17 may be seen as the beginning of his undoing.”
As a former Wall Street Journal editor, anyone who handed me a piece of shit like Ratnesar published would have been fired. Look at the insinuations when there is no evidence to support them. Look at the lie that Washington’s coup is “Russia’s meddling in Ukraine.” What we are witnessing is the total corruption of Western journalism by Washington’s imperial agenda. Journalists have to get on board with the lies or get run over.
Look around for still honest journalists. Who are they? Glenn Greenwald, who is under constant attack by his fellow journalists, all of whom are whores. Who else can you think of? Julian Assange, locked away in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London on Washington’s orders. The British puppet government won’t permit free transit to Assange to take up his asylum in Ecuador. The last country that did this was the Soviet Union, which required its Hungarian puppet to keep Cardinal Mindszenty interred in the US Embassy in Budapest for 15 years from 1956 until 1971. Mindszenty was granted political asylum by the United States, but Hungary, on Soviet orders, would not honor his asylum, just as Washington’s British puppet, on Washington’s orders, will not honor Assange’s asylum.
If we are honest and have the strength to face reality, we will realize that the Soviet Union did not collapse. It simply moved, along with Mao and Pol Pot, to Washington and London.
The flaw in Putin’s diplomacy is that Putin’s diplomacy relies on good will and on truth prevailing. However, the West has no good will, and Washington is not interested in truth prevailing but in Washington prevailing. What Putin confronts is not reasonable “partners,” but a propaganda ministry aimed at him.
I understand Putin’s strategy, which contrasts Russian reasonableness with Washington’s threats, but it is a risky bet. Europe has long been a part of Washington, and there are no Europeans in power who have the vision needed to separate Europe from Washington. Moreover, European leaders are paid large sums of money to serve Washington. One year out of office and Tony Blair was worth $50 million dollars.
After the disasters that Europeans have experienced, it is unlikely that European leaders think of anything other than a comfortable existence for themselves. That existence is best obtained by serving Washington. As the successful extortion of Greece by banks proves, European people are powerless.
Here is the official statement of the Russian Defense Ministry: http://www.globalresearch.ca/mh-17-crash-in-ukraine-official-statement-from-russian-defense-ministry/5392000
Washington’s propaganda assault against Russia is a double tragedy, because it has diverted attention from Israel’s latest atrocity against the Palestinians locked up in the Gaza Ghetto. Israel claims that its air attack and invasion of Gaza is merely Israel’s attempt to find and close the alleged tunnels through which Palestinian terrorists pour into Israel inflicting carnage. Of course there are no tunnels and no terrorist carnage in Israel.
One might think that at least one journalist somewhere in the American media would ask why bombing hospitals and civilian housing closes underground tunnels into Israel. But that is too much to ask of the whores that comprise the US media.
Expect even less from the US Congress. Both the House and Senate have passed resolutions supporting Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians. Two Republicans–the despicable Lindsey Graham and the disappointing Rand Paul–and two democrats–Bob Menendez and Ben Cardin–sponsored the Senate resolution backing Israel’s premeditated murder of Palestinian women and children. The resolution passed the “exceptional and indispensable” people’s Senate unanimously.
As a reward for its policy of genocide, the Obama regime is immediately transferring $429 million of US taxpayers’ money to Israel to pay for the slaughter.
Contrast the US government’s support for Israel’s war crimes with the propaganda onslaught against Russia based on lies. We are living all over again “Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons,” “Iranian nukes.”
Washington has lied for so long that it can’t do anything else.
I appreciate that these are PCR’s OPINONS and I’m glad he has the intellect and experience to voice them.
But I will say in all honesty that the HARDEST leap – and the most painful – was coming to terms with how negligence and corrupt our media had become – the sense of betrayal had me in tears for a month.
Biggest Dutch Daily Calls For NATO Intervention To Protect MH17; Feinstein Tells Putin To “Man Up And Confess”
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/20/2014 13:26 -0400
Shortly after we first reported about the MH-17 tragedy, we said that the key variable would be proving who the shooter was, as the grand fingerpointing theater was about to begin. We also noted that the actual answer to “who did it” was irrelevant, for the great propaganda machine had already made up its mind and was on overdrive. It promptly led to such ridiculous comments from non other than the Pentagon which said that, on one hand:
‘STRAINS CREDULITY’ SA-11 FIRED WITHOUT RUSSIAN AID: KIRBY
and yet:
‘WE JUST DON’T KNOW’ WHO FIRED SA-11 MISSILE AT PLANE: KIRBY
So, “we don’t know who did it” as long as Putin did it.
As expected, the narrative that the jet was shot down over Ukraine by Putin promptly became the go to version of the western media, and in the absence of actual facts, the appeal to emotions took over and quickly hit a fever pitch. Below is a sampling of some UK newspaper front pages. Clearly, facts be damned, the media knows all already.
In fact, one needs do nothing more than listen to that supreme “the NSA spying is good for you” demagogue, Dianne Feinstein, to know that the “west” is by now convinced the propaganda was has been won. To wit, from Telegraph:
Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, has urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to “man up” and admit Russia made a mistake.
She told CNN: “I think this has become a huge human drama, and I think the nexus between Russia and the separatists has been established very clearly, so the issue is where is Putin?
“I would say, ‘Putin, you have to man up. You should talk to the world. You should say, if this is a mistake, which I hope it was, say it.
“I think the world has to rise up and say we’ve had enough of this.
“You cannot let this kind of thing happen, and Russia continues to prepare it for the next strike down of a civilian plane. There will be repercussions from this.”
But if the “facts” were so overwhelmingly against the separatists, why does it matter if Putin admits? After all it would surely assist the demonization campaign against Russia if the former KGB spy kept up his version of events.
So facts be damned, everyone in the west, from the most crony politician to the biggest tabloid has “undisputed” proof Putin did it. But what now: what is the endgame?
Once again the answer is simple: Western military intervention, this time in the conflict zone, under the guise of public anger against Putin, to reinforce the dwindling Ukraine army forces and to repel the separatists, in the process regaining the critical industrial regions of Ukraine which also are the location of vast natural gas deposits. Certainly showing to Gazprom just who was in charge of this key natural gas nexus wouldn’t hurt either. After all the west has already invested so much in the current Ukraine government, it can’t all be for nothing.
And we know that because a few hours ago, the biggest Dutch newspaper, Telegraaf, openly asked for military intervention by NATO to protect MH 17 and calls Putin a “KGB liar.”
So what happens next? Well, since no crisis should ever be put to waste (especially a crisis created by the same entities who end up benefiting the most from it) the big push over the next week will likely involve setting the stage for the Western arrival (led by NATO or some other grand Western alliance) to secure the MH-17 site, to repel the separatists, and to reinforce armed forces that, courtesy of extensive CIA intervention in recent months, are aligned with said “reinforcers”, all the while further provoking Putin and Russia, leading to even more sanctions and countersanctions.
To all those who see this as nothing but a deja vu of the Syrian fiasco scenario that unwound over the past two years with such unprecedented humiliation for the US State Depratment, you are not alone.
We know that MH-17 was sent on a flight path over the area of the conflict by Ukrainian air traffic control. So they deserve at least half the blame. If you think they did so with the hope that the pro-russian forces in eastern Ukraine would shoot at it then they deserve half the blame. If you think they did it as part of a coordinated Ukrainian plan to shoot the plane down and then try to put the blame on the pro-russian forces then the Ukrainians deserve all the blame but I don’t see how it’s not one or the other in this case.
Ketchup Boy says Russia done it, so it must be true.
http://www.newsmax.com/Headline/kerry-russia-missile-downed/2014/07/20/id/583746/?ns_mail_uid=62314509
I have no idea who shot that plane down.
But I do believe one thing – that Russia did not INTENTIONALLY shoot that sucker down. Accidentally – maybe. Their equipment – maybe.
Ukraine seems to have the most to gain from the plane going down, for what that is worth. Did they do it? I do not know. They could have done it either intentionally or accidentally. Both are possibilities.
But the Russians had nothing to gain and lots to lose by shooting that plane down. No way I see that is was done on purpose by the Russians.
The Air Traffic Control Tower tapes would go a LONG way to solving the mystery.
But the Kiev Ukie Secret Police confiscated the tapes, which haven’t been seen since.
Only GUILTY parties hide evidence.
NO ONE in the MSM asks the question.
The MSM doesn’t give a shit because the folks who own this country have already determined what the truth is ….. truth, as THEY see it … their truth which they KNOW most dumfuk Amerikans will accept as Gospel.
Wow, Feinstein says Putin should “man up”, just a few short weeks after Ketchup Boy tells Snowden to “man up”. Can’t the propoganda machine come up with something more original than challenging the manhood of everyone getting under the skin of TBTP?
Though I will say Feinstein is arguably the most masculine person of the four.