Ekaterina Kudashkina interviews Paul Craig Roberts

Why did President Obama look so lost Monday while trying to make a case against Russia in the downing of the Malaysian Boeing in Ukraine? And how come the US journalists seem to know more than experts and intelligence agencies investigating the case? The Burning Point is discussing it with Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant secretary of the US Treasury, currently the chairman of The Institute for Political Economy. Download mp3.

Mr. Roberts, the shooting down of the Boeing passenger airplane in Ukraine is really making headlines. But sometimes it seems that many media outlets already know everything about what appears to be still a mystery to experts.

This is Washington’s propaganda show. They have seized on the opportunity to demonize Russia, especially President Putin. Washington is disturbed by a number of things – one is the rise of Russia and China as powers. This is inconsistent with the Wolfowitz doctrine, which is the basis of American foreign policy. The Wolfowitz doctrine requires that the US prevent the rise of other powers. So, that is the big backdrop, the big background of it. And what Washington is doing, they have seized on this airliner catastrophe, whoever is responsible, whatever is the cause, in order to blame Russia. And so instantly as soon as the world learned that the Malaysian airliner had gone down, Washington was controlling the explanation. It was out with the story that Russia did it, or the Russian government helped the ‘separatists’ in Eastern Ukraine do it. And that it seemed to be orchestrated. And such an orchestration requires advanced effort, advanced timing and that almost implies that the US was involved in the catastrophe. So, what we have heard is accusations and insinuations from the US government, the American media and as far as I can tell much of the European media. There is no evidence, but the accusation and insinuations are repeated over and over, and this is a propaganda trick to establish the truth by repetition. There has been no evidence presented by Washington and no response from Washington to the Russian government’s pleas to look at evidence, to have a non-politicized expert international investigation. It’s only the Russian government that has released any evidence; they have released the satellite photos of the Ukrainian missile batteries in place; they have released the flight path of Ukrainian jet, which approached the Malaysian airliner prior to its demise. And they repeatedly asked for evidence and Washington provides not.

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John Pilger

John Pilger first made the film 'Palestine Is Still The Issue' in 1977. It told how almost a million Palestinians had been forced off their land in 1948, and again in 1967. Twenty five years later, John Pilger returned to the West Bank of Jordan and Gaza, and to Israel, to ask why the Palestinians, whose right of return was affirmed by the United Nations more than half a century ago, are still caught in a terrible limbo - refugees in their own land, controlled by Israel in the longest military occupation in modern times.

"If we are to speak of the great injustice here, nothing has changed," says Pilger at the start of the film, "What has changed is that the Palestinians have fought back. Stateless and humiliated for so long, they have risen up against Israel’s huge military regime, although they themselves have no army, no tanks, no American planes and gunships or missiles. Some have committed desperate acts of terror, like suicide bombing. But, for Palestinians, the overriding, routine terror, day after day, has been the ruthless control of almost every aspect of their lives, as if they live in an open prison. This film is about the Palestinians and a group of courageous Israelis united in the oldest human struggle, to be free."

Pilger distills the history of Palestine during the twentieth century into an easily comprehensible struggle for land - the loss of seventy-eight per cent of that belonging to Palestinians when the state of Israel was founded in 1948 and their claim to only the remaining twenty-two per cent, which had for thirty-five years been occupied by Israel.

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Kevin Barrett

Israel is strong, mighty, invincible. Israel has truckloads of nuclear weapons. Israel has cluster bombs, DIME munitions, white phosphorous, and other illegal or experimental weapons with which it can kill and maim as many Palestinian civilians as it likes.

Israel is especially proficient at mass-murdering children. Israel constantly reminds us that it can exercise the "Samson option" and drop nuclear weapons on the capitals of Europe and the Middle East. Israel has even colonized America, the world's most powerful nation, exacting billions of dollars a year in tribute. What a stunningly prepotent entity! The world stands in awe of the great and terrible Israel.

That, at least, is what the Israelis would have us believe. But it is just an illusion. Israel is not behaving like a confidently powerful nation. Instead, it is desperately lashing out like a cornered rat in the final throes of rabies.

Israel's genocide against the people of Gaza is sparking a seismic shift in world public opinion. Former New York Times journalist Philip Weiss, a noted Jewish critic of Israel, recently wrote: "There are more signs today that what the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2008-2009 did for the left, the latest assault is doing for the mainstream: solidifying a perception that Israeli leadership has lost its moorings, opening the floodgates of criticism."

Netanyahu's decision to crucify Gaza has backfired. Israel has attained none of its announced strategic objectives: It cannot destroy Hamas, cannot stop the rocket fire, cannot stop Gazans from digging tunnels. In short, it cannot stop the Palestinian resistance from building on Hezbollah's accomplishments in its 2006 victory over Israel.

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