The moral bankruptcy of the Western powers banded together in NATO under Washington’s leadership was exposed by the recent publication of several separate news reports illustrating the hypocrisy of Western governments by the way issues are prioritized or left unconnected in their mainstream media, to the obedient service of propaganda of state and corporate power.

We think, first, of the investigation conducted by the Netherlands into the 2014 downing of Malaysia’s MH17 aircraft, which blamed Russia for the disaster in which the 298 people on board died.

That investigation, which lasted almost five years, never provided any credible proof of Russian culpability, yet the investigators belonging to an international investigative team (ECI) headed by the Netherlands, showed repeated accusations that Russia had supplied an anti-aircraft missile to Ukrainian rebels who allegedly flew the Boeing 777 from the air.

Although obvious failures in due process denied the ECI’s accusation’s credibility, Western governments and media led by the US, Britain and other NATO members asked Russia to accept the ECI’s “investigation”, defaming Moscow as guilty of causing the downing of the MH17.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad denounced the report as a “ridiculous rumor intended to serve the indictment against Russia”. Revealingly, these important comments by the Malaysian Prime Minister were virtually unreported in the Western media.

Russia, as well as pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels, vehemently rejected the allegations of their involvement in the MH17 disaster. Russia’s repeated offers to contribute information to the investigation were rejected by the ECI led by the Netherlands. However, Russia’s investigation uncovered radar and forensic evidence that an anti-aircraft missile fired at the passenger plane actually came from military forces under the command of Kiev’s rulers.

The Russian evidence was systematically ignored by Western media reports. Kiev’s political and intelligence authorities had been allowed to participate in the ECI investigation and set it up to frame Russia. The United States, the European Union and NATO support the Kiev-dominated neo-Nazi-oriented regime, both financially and militarily. It had seized power in a violent coup d’état in 2014. That should have been the real focus of the scandal in the history of the MH17.

In the wake of the MH17 mess, Western governments have continued to impose sanctions on Russia that have cost the Russian economy some $50 billion. The Western states and their media portray Russia and President Putin as a pariah, among other insults.

Attention is drawn to the undue priority given to the ECI’s dubious requests over other similarly published events recently. One of them was the terrible number of fatalities among Yemen’s civilian population inflicted by the war the Saudis are waging in that country with Western support. It is estimated that in the past four years more than 90,000 people have died as a result of the violence, and that the majority of civilian casualties have been caused by air strikes from Saudi Arabia.

It is an indisputable fact that the United States, Britain, France, Germany and other NATO powers have been arming the Saudi regime with warplanes, helicopters, missiles and logistics to carry out this killing of Yemeni civilians, making them complicit in war crimes. President Trump continues to pressure lawmakers to approve multimillion-dollar arms sales to Saudi Arabia, despite the killings.

The British government and its aspiring prime minister, Boris Johnson, claim that their arms sales are not implicated in the deaths of Yemeni civilians, a blatant denial of reality.

A British court recently ruled that arms exports from the UK violated its own alleged ethical codes that protect the lives of civilians in conflict zones. The British government is willing to appeal the court ruling and will probably ignore it anyway, given Britain’s systematic relationship in arming Saudi Arabia – the UK’s largest arms export market – year after year.

Western media report minimally on the scandalous human suffering in Yemen. All the barbarism and guilt of Western governments are largely silenced and omitted by the media controlled by these governments controlled by U.S. imperialism.

July 15, 2019.

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann.

- Manuel E. Yepe http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/

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