“Reports” of Russian Plane Being Shot Down, As British “Greenlight” Shooting Down Russian Aircraft

If there’s any doubt left in the credibility of the mainstream media, recent allegations of a Russian jet being shot down in Turkey should have brought confidence in their objectivity down to an all-time low.

The Daily Mail wrote:

According to Daily Express, one journalist tweeted that three Turkish planes had been responding to ‘mysterious’ lock-ons from MIG-29 jets, which are used by Putin’s forces.

There is one glaring error in the above statement, even if we were to accept the rumor: first off, the Russia did not deploy MIG-29 jets in Syria, and instead has the more modern Sukhoi Su-34 and Su-24SM jets flying bombing missions there.

I would also like to point out that when a large mainstream publication decides to publish rumor as fact, these days they get away with putting zero research into determining the authenticity of the rumor- especially when it deals with Russia. A glaring error like the one spotted above should have been enough to prevent the Daily Mail from publishing the matter, but they still did so anyway, to the detriment of all their readers.

Then, one has to wonder at the credibility of the journalist who had made the tweet to begin with, and how honest these journos really are.

In the aftermath of the lie, fake photographs “proving” that a Russian jet had been shot down in Turkey turned out to have been simply copied from a much earlier incident in 2011 where an Afghan Mi-17 was downed– so far no evidence of a Russian jet being shot down has been found.

In other Daily Mail news, the Yeti was mauled by a Russian truck, because pictures have surfaced of a large dead hairy animal on the side of a road. The evil Russians claim that the large hairy animal was in fact just a moose, and that the truck was not even one of theirs, as the photo taken in Canada. The Daily Mail issued a statement declaring that the Russians were conspiracy theorists.

Of ALL the times to sensationalize rumors, this is probably not it; the US, Russia and even China have folks in Syria, and such rumors might just provoke an “overreaction” on the part of any one of these great powers… leading to very real consequences for all of us.

In fact, one other rumor that has been making the rounds has led Russia to “overreact” by summoning its British diplomat, over apparent changes to the RAF’s rules of engagement. Perhaps the intention of these “unresearched” articles  are exactly that-to scare the Russians into making a misstep.

The IB Times:

Russia has summoned a British defence attaché in Moscow over media reports that Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots have been given the go-ahead to shoot down hostile Russian military jets when flying missions over Syria. “The Russian government sought clarification over inaccurate newspaper reports concerning RAF rules of engagement in Iraq,” a Foreign Office spokesman said.

The Russians had probably seen the British mainstream media article claiming that British jets had been armed with air-to-air missiles and green-lit to respond to Russian “aggression” with deadly force. The article cites… nobody as the source of its information. This either means they had a private conversation with someone in the know… or more likely, they pulled the info out of their a**.

Jet fighters can either be equipped with air-to-air ordnances or air-to-ground bombs. To specifically arm jets with air-to-air ordinances would decrease the jet’s capacity for bombing ISIS- and make Russia the only feasible target for attack, as ISIS has no planes.

Rumors of Russian jets being shot down, as rumors of the RAF equipping their jets with air-to-air missiles take flight… Thankfully, these are only rumors after all… but the Russians are clearly feeling a little nervous anyway, particularly after being threatened by the Pentagon.

In a day and age where the US’s best spy-satellites simply “cannot” determine who was to blame for disappearing and blown up Malaysian passenger planes many times larger than a jet plane, it seems that any claims over whom was to blame for a downed Russian jet and the circumstances surrounding such an incident would hinge entirely upon social media “proof”.

Russia  understands that if one of its jets went down, even if it had proof of who was in the wrong, it can do very little over its loss beyond remaining silent in the face of the deafening mainstream social-media “proof”… or actually declaring World War 3.

Sources: Daily Mail, The Aviationist, IB Times, Daily Star

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