{"id":165147,"date":"2015-07-11T02:10:49","date_gmt":"2015-07-11T02:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=165147"},"modified":"2015-08-03T23:49:17","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T23:49:17","slug":"journalists-complicity-in-hiding-those-guilty-for-mh17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/journalists-complicity-in-hiding-those-guilty-for-mh17\/","title":{"rendered":"Journalists’ Complicity in Hiding Those Guilty for MH17"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse<\/span><\/p>\n

Robert Parry headlined on July 9th,\u00a0\u201cMH-17 Case Slips into Propaganda Fog,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and he wrote: “Many investigative journalists, including myself, have been rebuffed<\/span><\/a> in repeated efforts to get verifiable proof about the case or even informational briefings.\u201d His phrase \u201chave been rebuffed\u201d was linked to a July 3rd article by nsnbc\u2019s Christof Lehmann,\u00a0\u201cMH17 \u2013 The Methodology of an International Cover-Up,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0which included the following:<\/span><\/p>\n

The Firewall against Transparency<\/i><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Numerous journalists, the\u00a0author included, have made\u00a0considerable efforts to elicit independently\u00a0verifiable evidence\u00a0from all of the involved parties. This includes\u00a0mails and phone\u00a0calls to relevant ministries in Ukraine, the USA, UK,\u00a0Russia,\u00a0Australia, Malaysia, and the Dutch Safety Board in The\u00a0Netherlands.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

All requests to provide\u00a0independently verifiable data have\u00a0remained unanswered. That includes\u00a0requests for a certified\u00a0copy of radar data released by the Russian\u00a0Ministry of\u00a0Defense, certified copies of communications between\u00a0Ukrainian Air Traffic Controllers and the flight crew on board\u00a0the\u00a0downed Boeing 777-200, and not least a certified copy of\u00a0the Comma\u00a0Separated Variable (CSV) file from the downed\u00a0Boeing 777-200\u2019s flight\u00a0data recorder.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

To mention but a few\u00a0examples that demonstrate the\u00a0significance of the need for full\u00a0transparency. The DSB\u00a0<\/i>[Dutch Safety Board, which is running the entire investigation]\u00a0published a \u201ctranscript\u201d of ATC \u2014 Flight Crew communications. Investigative journalists have, in other words, no\u00a0possibility to\u00a0see whether the audio has been tampered with or for that\u00a0matter, if the voices even are consistent with those of the flight\u00a0crew.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Lehmann then dropped a bombshell, just in passing, a communication from a representative of the investigation-team, which communication had been made individually to Lehmann:<\/span><\/p>\n

Sara Vernooij from the Dutch Safety Board implicitly provided\u00a0the key to\u00a0the puzzling question why non[e] of the involved parties\u00a0is forthcoming\u00a0with regards to independently testable and\u00a0verifiable data and evidence\u00a0by stating to the author:<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe investigation information is protected by Dutch law (Dutch\u00a0Kingdom Act).\u00a0This act determines that only the\u00a0information issued in the Final Reports is public; sources\u00a0and files containing investigation information are not\u00a0publicly accessible.\u00a0\u2026 The Kingdom Act concerning the Dutch Safety Board\u00a0excludes\u00a0investigation information from<\/i>\u00a0[being covered under]\u00a0the WOB<\/i>\u00a0[Open Government Act]. There is<\/i>\u00a0[consequently]\u00a0no\u00a0possibility to get any access to investigation information\u00a0by the Dutch Safety Board if you are not a member of the\u00a0investigation team.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026\u00a0That is \u2014 no independently testable and verifiable information\u00a0will be made available to the public.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

This wasn’t the first time that the Dutch Safety Board has made clear that it will prohibit the public from having access to the evidence. The Dutch Safety Board had received its authority over the MH17 investigation by the Dutch Government. The Dutch Government had participated in the planning for the Maidan demonstrations and the overthrow of the prior Ukrainian Government<\/span><\/a>. On 24 August 2014, I had headlined,\u00a0“MH-17 \u2018Investigation’: Secret August 8th Agreement Seeps Out,\u201d<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and reported that,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding what caused the downing of the Malaysian airliner MH-17 in Ukraine on July 17th, the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, reported in <\/i>a brief Russian-language news story on August 12th<\/i><\/span><\/a>, that four days earlier (August 8th) a representative of that nation\u2019s <\/i>[Ukraine\u2019s] Prosecutor General office, Yuri Boychenko, had said that (as auto-translated by google), \u201cthe results <\/i>[of the investigation] will be announced upon completion of the investigation and with the consent of all the parties who signed the corresponding agreement.\u201d This UNIAN report said that, \u201cAs part of the four-party agreement signed on August 8 between Ukraine, the Netherlands, Belgium and Australia <\/i>[all of which nations are allies of the United States and are cooperating with its new Cold War against Russia<\/span><\/a>], information on the investigation into the disaster Malaysian \u2018Boeing-777\u2019 will not be disclosed.\u201d In other words: the official \u2018investigation\u2019 is being carried out by four nations that, as U.S. allies, are hostile toward Russia. One of those four nations, Ukraine, is \u2026 a prime suspect in possibly having shot this airliner down.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Any intelligent person understands that giving a suspect in a crime a veto-power over the \u2018findings\u2019 of the official investigation into the crime means that the \u2018investigation\u2019 is dishonest; it is corrupt. And yet journaliststs continue to play along with this game as if it weren\u2019t corrupt. Instead of publicizing its corruptness, they pretend that the official \u2018investigation\u2019 isn\u2019t corrupt. More is needed than merely to talk about \u201ctransparency,\u201d or \u201cpropaganda fog.\u201d The appropriate charge here is: \u201ccorrupt.\u201d The official \u2018investigation\u2019 is corrupt. It is dishonest.<\/span><\/p>\n

How, then, should investigative journalists deal with this matter?<\/span><\/p>\n

First of all, they need to publicize that the official \u2018investigation\u2019 is corrupt (not only as was just indicated, but in other respects also). Any \u2018investigation\u2019 into a crime, where a suspect in the crime possesses veto-power over the \u2018findings,\u2019 is corrupt, and cannot be trusted by a journalist who has integrity and basic intelligence. But furthermore, all four national \u2018investigators\u2019 were in league with this Ukrainian Government even prior to the downing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Secondly, it is crucial that journalists identify and point out what constitutes the highest-quality, least-likely-to-have-been-fabricated-or-tampered-with, item of evidence regarding this crime, and that they then build their theory of the case upon that item of evidence, by interpreting every other item of evidence only in ways that are consistent with what is proven to be so on the basis of that one highest-quality item of evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such a highest-quality item of evidence does, in fact, exist here, and it\u2019s already publicly available; and it is the side-panel of the cockpit right next to where the plane\u2019s pilot was sitting. That side-panel has an enormous gash shot through it, right where the pilot\u2019s belly would have been. This gash is a few feet in diameter, and its ragged edge shows that it was caused not by a huge object like a canonball but instead by a fusillade of much smaller projectiles that had been fired at the pilot and which ripped through the panel to his body, and killed him. This is shocking evidence. It demonstrates that whatever ripped into the pilot\u2019s body was fired sufficiently close-in so as to target him, and not merely target the plane itself, which, of course, is much larger than a pilot\u2019s belly.\u00a0Here<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0is that side-panel shown positioned onto the plane prior to the downing, so that you can recognize where it had been located on the airliner. And\u00a0here<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0is a view of this side-panel shown very close up, in high detail. And\u00a0here<\/b><\/span><\/a>\u00a0it is shown so that you can see the full side-panel and the enormous gash into it from those projectiles that had been fired at the pilot\u2019s belly.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, in order to see an analysis of what is proven by this side-panel, click\u00a0here<\/b><\/span><\/a>. That walks a reader through this and the other reliable evidence, so that you can make your determinations for yourself, rather than relying upon Robert Parry\u2019s statements, or Christof Lehmann\u2019s statements, or my statements \u2013 or anyone\u2019s. The case there is presented by me, but it constantly links directly to the actual evidence, and it interprets all of the other evidence in a way that is consistent with this side-panel as you see it in those photographs, all of which were taken within just hours of the shoot-down. This will enable you to make up your own mind about everything, entirely on your own, on a best-evidence basis, and with minimal reliance upon other people\u2019s statements, because your analysis will be<\/i> entirely upon a best-evidence-based analysis, which is the way that a jury in a court of law in a democratic country is supposed to reach its verdict about a crime.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, if you are reading this article for the first time, then you might first want to see the case presented in a different way, which points out the reason why the \u2018history\u2019 of this event, the cause of that crime, cannot be what the official versions of it say that it is: it cannot be a ground-fired missile that brought down this airliner 33,000 feet above. That \u2018explanation\u2019 isn\u2019t only false; it is actually absurd. However, that explanation includes stills from a Russian documentary about the standard ground-based-missile (\u201cBuk\u201d) \u2018explanation\u2019 of the shoot-down; and some people in the West have been so indoctrinated to disbelieve everything that comes out of Russia, so that they won\u2019t even want to see that<\/i> case, which is a preliminary case, demonstrating the U.S.-Ukrainian or Western theory of this event to be absurd on its face. If you want to see that preliminary case (of the absurdity of the U.S.-Ukrainian \u2018explanation\u2019), it\u2019s\u00a0here<\/b><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

That link, for anyone who isn\u2019t simply closed-minded to Russian sources, is the best single summary presentation of the evidence on the MH17 matter, as I have been able to reconstruct the event.<\/span><\/p>\n

More recently, I have updated my account in order to deal with the second-most-reliable item of evidence on the case, which is the pilot\u2019s corpse, the autopsy on which is still being hidden, but the cover-up of which is consistent with what one would expect on the basis of my analysis. That update, concerning what would likely be the conclusive proof in the case if it were ever to become public, is\u00a0here<\/b><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

And what about the black box and the other items of evidence that are so much the foci of the public\u2019s attention in the West? Well, not only will that evidence never be made public, and so it\u2019s not a rational basis for the public to rely upon in whatever dubious form that might some day become publicly released, but, it\u2019s in the hands of an investigating-team that\u2019s committed to produce a report, if any, that will be acceptable to the Ukrainian Government, which is one of the suspects.<\/span><\/p>\n

By contrast, the cockpit side-panel was superbly photographed and uploaded to the Internet within only hours of the shoot-down. And no country, and no agent for any country, had had an opportunity to manipulate it before it was made public.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s extraordinary. It\u2019s golden. Trusting anything else as constituting the primary item of evidence doesn\u2019t make legal\/forensic sense. And, as the last-given link here opens by explaining, wikipedia\u2019s article about the downing of this airliner is deeply untrustworthy, because it altogether ignores the one best item of evidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, the complicity of even the best journalists about this hoax has been that they play along with the pretense that the official authorities on the matter are honest. They make this assumption, even where the authorities persist in hiding evidence from them. Instead, every reader should make up his or her own mind about the downing of this airliner, if a person is interested in the matter at all. Distrust has to be the default assumption for any reader, on this. But what that means in practical terms is: Start only with the least-likely-to-have-been-manipulated item of evidence, and then reason from there, by means of interpreting every other item of evidence on the basis of its consistency with that one, the most-reliable-of-all, item of evidence. And any \u2018evidence\u2019 that is inconsistent with it must be presumed to be likely manipulated; it\u2019s legal\/forensically inadmissible.<\/span><\/p>\n

The MH17 shoot-down occurred within the context of U.S. President Barack Obama\u2019s frustration at the EU\u2019s reluctance to increase economic sanctions against Russia, and the downing of this plane was used as the excuse for increasing those sanctions, and it worked \u2013 his (and Ukraine\u2019s) \u2018explanation\u2019 of the event was accepted right away (though the official \u2018investigation\u2019 still has not been completed, if it ever will be). So, this was one of the cardinal historic occurrences in 2014. Anyone seriously interested in the history of our times will need to determine for him or her self how that airliner was shot down. Understanding this event accurately will then open doors to an accurate understanding of our times, and of the world we live in. Not only the victims\u2019 families need to know the truth about this. We all do, actually.<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse Robert Parry headlined on July 9th,\u00a0\u201cMH-17 Case Slips into Propaganda Fog,\u201d\u00a0and he wrote: “Many investigative journalists, including myself, have been rebuffed in repeated efforts to get verifiable proof about the case or even informational briefings.\u201d His phrase \u201chave been rebuffed\u201d was linked to a July 3rd article by nsnbc\u2019s Christof Lehmann,\u00a0\u201cMH17 \u2013 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":165148,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,958,957,59,526,524,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-165147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-malaysian-airliner","15":"tag-mh17","16":"tag-military","17":"tag-propaganda","18":"tag-russia","19":"tag-usa-news","20":"tag-warfare","21":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}