• Everyone should know Russia didn’t shoot down Malaysian airliner—but they don’t.
By Paul Craig Roberts —
When I read that the report on the July 17, 2014 downing of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 (MH-17) passenger jet over Ukraine was being put in the hands of the Dutch, I knew that there would be no investigation and no attention to the facts. And there wasn’t.
I did not intend to write about the report, because Washington’s propaganda has already succeeded, at least in the Western world, in its purpose of laying the blame on Russia. However, the misrepresentation of the Dutch report by Western media, such as NPR [National Public Radio], is so outrageous as to make the media the story and not the report.
For example, I just heard NPR’s Moscow correspondent, Corey Flintoff, say that the missile that hit the airliner was fired by Ukrainian separatists who lack the technical ability to operate the system. Therefore, the missile had to have been fired by a Russian.
There is nothing in the Dutch report whatsoever that leads to this conclusion. Flintoff either is incompetent or lying or he is expressing his view and not the report’s conclusion.
The only conclusion that the report reaches is one that we already knew: If a Buk missile brought down the airliner, it was a Russian-made missile. The Dutch report does not say who fired it.
Indeed, the report places no blame on Russia, but it does place blame on Ukraine for not closing the airspace over the war area. Attorneys have stated in response to the report that families of those killed in the tragedy and the Malaysian airline itself are likely to file lawsuits against the Ukrainians for negligence.
Of course, there was nothing of this in Flintoff’s report.
As I wrote at the time of the airliner’s destruction, the Western media already had “the-Russians-did-it” story ready the moment the airliner was reported to have been shot down. This story was very useful to Washington in hardening its European vassal states into sanctions against Russia, as there was some dissent. What Washington has never explained and the Western media has never asked is: What motive did separatists and Russia have to shoot down a Malaysian airliner? None whatsoever. The Russian government would never allow such a thing. Putin would have immediately strung up those responsible.
Washington’s story makes no sense whatsoever. Only an idiot could believe it.
What motive did Washington have? Many. The demonization of Russia made it impossible for European governments to resist or abandon the economic sanctions that Washington is using to break economic and political relationships between Europe and Russia.
The Russian manufacturer of the Buk missile has proven that if a Buk missile was used, it was an old version that exists only in the Ukraine military. For some years the Russian military has been equipped with a replacement version that has a different signature in its destructive impact. The damage to the Malaysian airliner is inconsistent with the destructive force of the Buk missile in Russian service.
The reports were given to the Dutch, but no effort was made to replicate and verify the validity of the tests conducted by the manufacturer of the missile. Indeed, the Dutch report does not even consider whether the airliner was downed by Ukrainian fighter jets. The report is as useless as the 9-11 Commission’s report.
Don’t expect any acknowledgement of this by the Western media, a collection of people who lie for a living.
The reason that the West has no future is that the West has no media, only propagandists for government and corporate agendas and apologists for their crimes. Every day the bought-and-paid-for media sustains the matrix that makes Western peoples politically impotent.
The Western media has no independence. An editor of a major German newspaper has written a book, a best-seller published in Germany, in which he states that not only he himself served the CIA as a reliable purveyor of Washington’s lies, but that every significant journalist in Europe does so also. Obviously, his book has not been translated and published in America.
NPR, like all of Western media, has lost its integrity. NPR claims to be reader-supported. In fact, it is supported by corporations. Pay attention to the ads: “NPR is supported by xyz corporation working to sell you this or that product or service.”
The George W. Bush regime destroyed NPR by appointing two Republican female ideologues to oversee NPR’s public function. The two Republicans succeeded in making job security, not reporting integrity, the motive of NPR journalists.
As a person who worked with President Ronald Reagan to end the Cold War and associated nuclear threat, I am dismayed that the Western media has failed life on Earth by resurrecting the prospect of nuclear Armageddon.
Paul Craig Roberts was assistant secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of The Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for BusinessWeek, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are How AMERICA Was LOST: From 9/11 to the Police/Warfare State and The NEOCONSERVATIVE THREAT to WORLD ORDER: Washington’s Perilous War for Hegemony.
