Russian propaganda tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda published “evidence” that “proves” the CIA shot down Malaysia Airlines MH17 over Ukraine in July 2014. There is only one problem… it is so fake, and so poorly done that English speakers around the world are rolling around on the floor laughing about it.
The video alleges that CIA spies “David Hamilton” and “David L. Stern” spoke on July 25, only days after the tragedy. Both speak in broken, clearly scripted English, never interrupting one another, and leaving long pauses between turns.
The voices are reminiscent of the Radiohead track “Fitter Happier” on OK Computer, almost as if the men are reading from a fresh script they never read before.
LISTEN:
For example, the man playing “Hamilton”, tells “Stern” there cannot be any leaks.
“Stern” answers: “Nah. Don’t. Worry. We. Understand.”
The final giveaway is “Stern’s” accent. He wavers between British and Australian, but halfway through the recording, his accent is American.
“If you wanted to believe the CIA is responsible for downing MH17, now you’ve got the ‘proof,'” wrote “self-exiled” online Russian newspaper Meduza.
Meduza laughed at the video as much as English speaking outlets.
Galina Timchenko, the former editor-in-chief of Lenta.ru, edits the online newspaper. If the name sounds familiar, it is because she was involved in an incident with the Kremlin in March 2014 which started an avalanche of online censorship.
She resigned from her post, but her writers and editors claimed the Kremlin forced her out when she printed an interview with a Right Sector Party leader after the authorities warned her to trash it.
Flight MH17 crashed into a sunflower field on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people on board, including 193 Dutch, 43 Malaysians, and 27 Australians. Intelligence from America and Germany say the pro-Russians in east Ukraine shot down the plane with a Buk surface-to-air-missile. Dutch investigators claimed they found some fragments from a Russian made Buk missile at the crash site.
“These parts have been secured during a previous recovery-mission in eastern Ukraine and are in possession of the criminal investigation team MH17 and the Dutch Safety Board,” prosecutors and the Dutch Safety Board wrote in a statement.
The Australian government vowed to continue a push to prosecute whoever shot down the plane, even as Russia foils the investigation.
“We are absolutely determined to provide answers to those families,” declared Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
“The five nations – the Netherlands, Malaysia, Belgium, Australia, and the Ukraine – are determined to continue to find an alternative mechanism. We will be meeting again shortly and we will come up with a way that will hold the perpetrators of this atrocity to account.”