Beth Kelly • SIMULPOST WITH CYRANO’S JOURNAL TODAY
John Oliver’s HBO show Last Week Tonight operates outside of the advertising constraints that hamstring other editorial news programs. Without the concern of alienating potential sponsors, and using his comedic gifts to great effect, Oliver has done what few news anchors have been able to do: he has spurred people to action.
Last Week Tonight takes on topics that typical news shows fear to address: net neutrality, climate change, poultry farming, student debt and more. While there are underground magazines and websites that do confront these controversial issues, none has the reach or power to motivate that Oliver’s program has exhibited. The show has attracted a number of high profile guests in its year and a half on the air, including journalist Fareed Zakaria, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, comedian Kathy Griffin, and recently, CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden, in a special interview in Russia that managed to be hilarious and enlightening at the same time.
Oliver’s long segments explore complex issues in a way that other news shows are simply incapable of. In an era of fast paced programming and audiences with short attention spans, the show respects its viewers and trusts them to follow Oliver’s lengthy, convoluted rants to their conclusion. Untethered to corporate interests, Oliver and his writing team can take aim at any target they wish, and his show works both as informative journalism and a satirical assault on the corruption and greed that creates the current media bias.
The infusion of humor helps to pace the long segments and disarm viewers who might otherwise find the material too negative or overwhelming. The use of silly metaphors and sarcastic asides, coupled with Oliver’s terrific deadpan delivery, creates a sense of optimism and hope in topics normally fraught with despair. Take the seemingly endless battle for net neutrality – a fight to keep the Internet open and free from the constraints that service providers seek to impose on the speed of data transmission, even as fiber optics are allowing bandwidth capabilities to increase many times over. Oliver’s segment not only delineated the struggle in simple terms and laid bare the corporate interests that threaten free speech, but encouraged viewers to comment on FCC.gov in such numbers that part of the website crashed.
Similarly, a segment on poultry farming has created a response that lawmakers believe could help influence a crucial upcoming vote in Washington. The freedom that Last Week Tonight has to tackle issues normally kept well out of the public spotlight makes it an important step in the right direction for television news. Large companies with lots of money will do everything possible to keep their abuses of power out of news broadcasts, and they hold tremendous sway over any news show where their advertising dollars comprise a large portion of that show’s profit. If the trend of Last Week Tonight continues, however, even streaming services like Hulu and Netflix could find themselves producing news programs outside the influence of corporate interests, and usher in a new age of objective reporting. It’s something that’s already been started by Huffington Post with their popular Huffington Post Live channel, available only online.
At a point in time when so much of our country’s population is overworked and distracted to the point of apathy, activist journalism is an exceptionally difficult field to find success in. Last Week Tonight has set a promising new template for the intersection of pay cable, comedy, and the treatment of controversial topics. Hopefully, other networks will follow Oliver’s lead and seek to bring objective coverage of sensitive issues into the mainstream, to the benefit of an informed and grateful electorate.
Remember: All captions and pullquotes are furnished by the editors, NOT the author(s).

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WE OPENED OUR COMMENT WINDOW TO ACCOMMODATE THIS EXCEPTIONAL CRITIQUE BY OUR COLLEAGUE PAUL CARLINE:
I was glad to see the article on MH17. It’s fairly solid … as far as it goes, which is to seriously undermine the absurd Western accusations that somehow Russia or Russia-backed separatists had anything to do with it.
But for dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy factists like myself it barely scratches the surface. There’s a mountain of – in part extremely bizarre – evidence that Henningsen doesn’t mention, or is perhaps unaware of. I’ll list just a few of the things I’ve come across in my reading and viewing:
1. Conflicting accounts of the extent of the debris field: the propaganda account is that the debris was spread over a very wide area (50 sq. km I seem to recall). The excellent new RT film released on the anniversary features a German journalist who personally visited the site and who flatly contradicts the ‘wide debris field’ assertion – which is essential to the claim that the aircraft disintegrated in mid-air as a result of a missile strike which blew it up.
2. The same RT film has another German expert saying categorically – on the basis of precise knowledge of ground-to-air and air-to-air missile technology (especially their explosive power) – that a single missile of the type alleged would not bring down a big Boeing.
3. There appears to be solid evidence that the plane that took off from Amsterdam was not MH17. One of the apparent passengers (since 9/11 and the multiple faked passenger lists we have to be very cautious about accepting as fact passenger lists we are presented with) took a photo of the Malaysian jet on its stand before boarding. The code on the wheel flap is not the correct code for MH17. In his original photo there are yellow hoses on the ground under the plane leading away from the plane (connected to what we do not know). In the photo later published the hoses have been removed. This passenger’s story was just the kind to rouse public sympathy and also anger – a 50+ man who had met and fallen in love with a Malaysian woman and who had decided to sell up in Holland and move to Malaysia with her).
4. Very soon after the ‘crash’, pictures appeared on the web pointing out that the cabin window arrangement seen on a particular part of the wreckage did not match photos of MH17 (but did match the arrangement on the other ‘missing’ Malaysian jet, MH370). This is the kind of detail that plane spotters are good at detecting.
5. There are several eyewitness reports, both from the crash site and from the place to which most of the bodies were taken (I have seen a total of 198 bodies recovered – this is about 100 less than the supposed number of passengers), that some/many of the bodies were already decomposing and smelling very bad on the day of the crash and that there was no blood on them – but there was a strong smell of formalin. (The cockpit, however, was apparently spattered with blood).
6. It was also reported that many bodies were naked … and that many were of Asian appearance. It is significant that the relatives of those who are alleged to have died on MH17 were not allowed to see the bodies i.e. no positive identification has been made. German researcher Wolfgang Eggert discovered that the alleged MH17 passenger list was actually created on 27 March 2014.
7. Eggert also found a very strange warning on a Chinese site dating from 29 March 2014 (cf. http://www.epochtimes.de/Vorhersage-von-Gefahr-fuer-Malaysia-Airlines-MH-17-vor-drei-Monaten-im-chinesischen-Weibo-Updated-a1168152.html). A Dutch user going under the name HollandChinesischesNet posted this (my translation):
“If you value your life, then stay away from Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 / MH16 from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. Please persuade your Dutch and other friends to take out a big insurance policy and leave behind a will before they fly with Malaysian Airlines”. (Reminiscent of the German Embassy warning about the Lusitania).
8. Other reports stated that luggage contained cold weather clothing … quite inconsistent with the idea that the passengers were travelling to a hot and humid country. (This would make sense if the theory of a plane switch – MH17:MH370 – were true, as the latter was flying from a hot country to a cold one (China)).
9. The multiple round penetration holes found in the cockpit area of the wreckage are apparently inconsistent with a missile theory, but consistent with the theory that the plane was attacked by a military jet using its cannon.
10. The Donetsk region is controlled by the oligarch Kolomoisky, who has dual Ukrainian and Israeli citizenship. He certainly has the power and wealth to organise a false flag, perhaps with the help of Israel (the recent RT film points out that a number of Ukrainian military jets were fitted with an Israeli-manufactured air-to-air missile). Israel would have a motive for ‘punishing’ Malaysia because it hosts the international tribunal which had found Israel guilty of war crimes and genocide. There is evidence that an identical Boeing 777 – in Malaysian livery – was bought by Israel; it was photographed in a hangar at an Israeli airfield. There were suspicions at the time that it might be used in a false flag.
11. Some of this evidence lends weight to the suspicion that MH370 was not lost, but was hijacked, probably by remote control. It is known that it climbed steeply before it disappeared and there is a theory that the passengers and crew were asphyxiated as the oxygen ran out. I’m aware that it sounds crazy, but it is not beyond belief that the bodies found in Ukraine were in fact some or all of the passengers from MH370, their bodies having been kept in cold storage until being ‘deployed’ in the Ukrainian false flag. (This idea does not appear so crazy if we recall that in the case of 9/11 there is no evidence of hijackings by ‘terrorists’ and not a single body of any of the supposed passengers has ever been found; nor has a single piece of plane wreckage that could be tied to any of the allegedly hijacked planes been found at any of the three alleged crash sites – but the authorities managed to convince millions that four planes were hijacked and crashed).
12. The new RT film adds yet another scenario to the mix. Recently release radar film apparently shows that MH17 (or whatever its true designation was) did not even crash!
The recording shows two planes converging exactly over the crash site, with the one identified as MH17 continuing its journey.
13. There are voice recordings from separatist militias who arrived very soon after the crash which speak of eyewitnesses having seen at least two (some say three, others even as many as five) parachutists coming down in the area. The recordings also specifically say that a (Ukrainian) military jet shot down a plane and that the separatists had then brought down the military plane (that would be consistent with the report of two parachutists).
I’m sure there are many other pieces to this puzzle – but we can be sure that if the official report is ever released none of this information will be included (just as all the incriminating evidence was withheld from the 9/11 Commission Report).