Just days after the tragic crash of a Malaysian Airlines flight over eastern
Ukraine, Western politicians and media joined together to gain the maximum
propaganda value from the disaster. It had to be Russia; it had to be Putin,
they said. President Obama held a press conference to claim - even before an
investigation - that it was pro-Russian rebels in the region who were responsible.
His ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, did the same at the UN Security Council
- just one day after the crash!
While western media outlets rush to repeat government propaganda on the event,
there are a few things they will not report.
They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when
the EU and US overthrew the elected Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych.
Without US-sponsored "regime change," it is unlikely that hundreds would have
been killed in the unrest that followed. Nor would the Malaysian Airlines crash
have happened.
The media has reported that the plane must have been shot down by Russian
forces or Russian-backed separatists, because the missile that reportedly brought
down the plane was Russian made. But they will not report that the Ukrainian
government also uses the exact same Russian-made weapons.
They will not report that the post-coup government in Kiev has, according
to OSCE monitors, killed 250 people in the breakaway Lugansk region since June,
including 20 killed as government forces bombed the city center the day after
the plane crash! Most of these are civilians and together they roughly equal
the number killed in the plane crash. By contrast, Russia has killed no one
in Ukraine, and the separatists have struck largely military, not civilian,
targets.
They will not report that the US has strongly backed the Ukrainian government
in these attacks on civilians, which a State Department spokeswoman called "measured
and moderate."
They will not report that neither Russia nor the separatists in eastern Ukraine
have anything to gain but everything to lose by shooting down a passenger liner
full of civilians.
They will not report that the Ukrainian government has much to gain by pinning
the attack on Russia, and that the Ukrainian prime minister has already expressed
his pleasure that Russia is being blamed for the attack.
They will not report that the missile that apparently shot down the plane
was from a sophisticated surface-to-air missile system that requires a good
deal of training that the separatists do not have.
They will not report that the separatists in eastern Ukraine have inflicted
considerable losses on the Ukrainian government in the week before the plane
was downed.
They will not report how similar this is to last summer's US claim that the
Assad government in Syria had used poison gas against civilians in Ghouta.
Assad was also gaining the upper hand in his struggle with US-backed rebels
and the US claimed that the attack came from Syrian government positions. Then,
US claims led us to the brink of another war in the Middle East. At the last
minute public opposition forced Obama to back down - and we have learned since
then that US claims about the gas attack were false.
Of course it is entirely possible that the Obama administration and the US
media has it right this time, and Russia or the separatists in eastern Ukraine
either purposely or inadvertently shot down this aircraft. The real point is,
it's very difficult to get accurate information so everybody engages in propaganda.
At this point it would be unwise to say the Russians did it, the Ukrainian
government did it, or the rebels did it. Is it so hard to simply demand a real
investigation?
