What the Media Won’t Report About Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 – Article by Ron Paul
They will not report that the crisis in Ukraine started late last year, when EU and US-supported protesters plotted the overthrow of 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 have 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?
Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.
This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
4 thoughts on “What the Media Won’t Report About Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 – Article by Ron Paul”
Greetings. It should be noted that at least a part of his analysis is incorrect. Let me criticize the following quote:”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”. The rebels have already shot down several Unkrainian pursuit-planes before and are instructed by many Russian highly qualified professionals, even if Putin does not oficcially support the rebels. Moreover, there are many people from the KGB in Ukraine that are montoring every single important event here and thus, the Ukrainian side would have been busted easily had it been their fault. Finally,for the Ukrainian side there is no reason to shoot down planes because the rebels have no planes.
Greetings, Zviad.
I do not deny the possibility that the separatists may have received Russian training or that the downing of MH17 might have been a terrible accident, with the separatists mistaking the civilian aircraft for a Ukrainian military plane. However, I will also point out that the Ukrainian military uses the very same Buk anti-aircraft systems and has many more of them deployed than the possibly one or several that the rebels obtained. Furthermore, with regard to your comment that “Ukrainian side there is no reason to shoot down planes because the rebels have no planes”, there would be a more sinister motive for the Ukrainian government to shoot down a civilian aircraft filled with Westerners. To date, most Westerners, particularly Europeans, have been extremely reluctant to intervene in Eastern Ukraine. Even in the United States, the most Obama has been able to do was to impose a few economic sanctions on Russia (still bad in my view, but not nearly as much as the war-hungry hawks/Cold Warriors would have wanted him to do). Prior to the downing of flight MH17, there was simply no popular desire in the West to escalate the Ukrainian conflict from a local civil war to a global crisis. Now the Ukrainian government is helped by exceptionally preemptive anti-Russian rhetoric and threats from virtually every major Western government. One has to ask, as Marcus Tullius Cicero did, “Cui bono?” – “Who benefits?” Certainly, Putin had no reason to shoot down this aircraft or to order it shot down. If he has nefarious motives to supply the separatists and undermine the Ukrainian government, his incentive is to do so as quietly and inconspicuously as possible – attracting the minimal international notice and keeping the conflict local. On the other hand, the Ukrainian government scored a huge public-relations victory as a result of this crash – which also diverted public attention from the fact that the Ukrainian military and allied ultra-nationalist fighters have killed many more Eastern Ukrainian civilians than the number of people killed aboard flight MH17. Judging by the total lack of consideration for civilian lives that the Poroshenko/Yatseniuk government has shown, I would definitely not put such a ruthlessly cynical move beyond them.
But, I emphasize, nobody yet knows what really happened or who is responsible. This is why a rigorous, transparent, objective investigation is essential. So far, we have just heard thinly veiled saber-rattling from the governments of Ukraine and the West, preemptively blaming Russia based on “circumstantial evidence” only – while definitive proof remains absent. Just as the allegations that Assad in Syria used chemical weapons against his own people turned out false, so might the allegations that Donetsk separatists shot down the aircraft with Russian support (though, again, we cannot say in advance whether or not they will be). The key is to avoid, in the meantime, a catastrophic Western-backed crackdown from which there would be no turning back (including any weapons sent to Ukraine, which would be responsible for the deaths of thousands of more innocents).
Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II
There was no coup. Viktor Yanukovych was not forced from office. My friends and students who were active in Euromaidan were not and are not CIA stooges. Ron Paul is parroting Kremlin propaganda, and you are helping spread it. I’m not surprised Ron Paul is a shill for Putin, as he’s been in bed with Lew Rockwell for a long time. But I am surprised that you, an escapee from the USSR, are now joining the chorus of Putin apologists. It’s one of the most shameful things I have ever witnessed.
Dr. Steele,
It is not Kremlin propaganda to oppose the indiscriminate murder of innocent children by a government that wages war against its very own citizens. It is ironic that, as violently as the Ukrainian government wishes to prevent the secession of Donetsk and Luhansk, it nonetheless treats the ordinary, non-aligned civilians (how can children have political allegiances??) as second-class persons at best, and often as fodder for missiles, airstrikes, and the atrocities of paramilitary “volunteers”. And as someone who escaped from the former USSR, I can tell you that nothing in that part of the world since about 1953 was as horrific as what the “volunteer” units and regular military forces working on behalf of the Poroshenko/Yatseniuk government are inflicting on their own people. Dictators from Khrushchev to Putin committed their own crimes, but nothing on that scale of sheer wanton destruction. Peace under dictatorship is bad, but chaotic slaughter is far worse.
And yet Western governments are strangely silent about the fact that the Ukrainian “anti-terrorist” operation has now killed several times more innocent people than died aboard flight MH17. Major media sources are beginning to cover this only now, once the flood of images of grisly deaths of innocents has become impossible to ignore. Are some human lives less important than others, just because those humans speak Russian as their main language?
Whether or not the CIA has any role in Ukraine is irrelevant. The Ukrainian government is sending thugs against peaceful people under the guise of “liberating” them from separatists. They can do this on their own, and still be just as evil – and it would be just as morally irresponsible to endorse them.
There is nothing remotely libertarian about this, just as there is nothing libertarian about war, hateful nationalism, military conscription (which the Ukrainian government has now imposed for all adult males under 50), and the indiscriminate killing of thousands. If this is what Euromaidan helped bring about, then there is nothing libertarian about them, either.
No, what is shameful is the rhetoric of the hawks in the West, who seek any excuse to re-fight the Cold War and who consider the lives of Russian speakers to be of negligible importance compared to their absurd geopolitical objectives. (Tell me again why the US has any business or legitimate security interests whatsoever getting involved in Ukraine?) What is shameful is your own recent post on Unforeseen Contingencies, urging the Ukrainian government to “kill the enemy”. Are women, children, and the elderly now “the enemy” – just because they lived in the wrong place, at the wrong time, speaking the “wrong” language?
Sincerely,
Gennady Stolyarov II