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UPDATE: Russian media reported two weeks ago the Russian-backed rebels had taken control of the very anti-aircraft missiles many suspect shot down the passenger plane, killing all 295 on board.
Even worse, the rebel “Defense Minister,” a known Russian agent, claimed credit for the shootdown earlier today.
legion wrote:The best thing we can hope for here is the idiots with weapons stop using them.
I find the immediate politicising of the tragedy distasteful. Give an idiot a missile and he will use it. Putin and Hilary should shut the fuck up for a while unless their message is stop shooting.
The downing of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on Thursday catapults the crisis there onto the global agenda.
More than half of the 298 victims were Dutch, with others from Malaysia, Australia, Indonesia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Philippines, Canada and New Zealand. At the time of writing, there were still 20 unverified nationalities.
The UN Security Council will meet in New York today. An international investigation has been called for to determine exactly what happened to the flight that crashed en route to Kuala Lumpur from Amsterdam . The story dominates television news all over the world.
Given the realities of continued fighting on the ground, and the very high political stakes involved, the investigation will not prove easy. Yet, even before it has started in earnest, accusations have been made. The possible scenario most widely discussed in the global media is the downing of the plane by Donetsk insurgents.
The story currently gaining the most traction boils down to this: after the Kiev government had moved massively against the separatists, and drove them out of their stronghold in Slavyansk, Russia stepped up cross-border supplies of heavy armaments to the insurgents, in an effort to restore the balance. This has since resulted in the downing of several Ukrainian military aircraft. It is possible the Malaysian Boeing could have been shot by the rebels, by mistake.
Publicly, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has already blamed the Russia-supported separatists, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has put the blame on the Ukrainian government's resumption of the military operation in the east of the country. Actually, these statements may be less contradictory than they appear, but this is small comfort.
Whatever the final result of the investigation, Russia is likely to face a major political and media campaign reminiscent of the 1983 shooting of the Korean Airlines off Sakhalin Island, which ushered in the most dangerous period of the Cold War after the Cuban missile crisis.
The coming Security Council debate is likely to be emotional, and acrimonious. The US Congress may press US President Barack Obama to ramp up the sanctions which he had only announced less than 24 hours before the MH17 tragedy.
The gap between the US and the European Union approaches to anti-Russian sanctions may now narrow. Russia's outreach to Asia beyond China may be compromised. This will put Moscow in a difficult spot, and prompt a reaction on its part.
The only sensible step now would be to stop the fighting in Ukraine immediately and begin a political process, under the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) auspices and led by the US-led "contact group".
The tragic and sudden loss of so many innocent lives should put a final point to the armed conflict. But it may still put the international conflict over Ukraine on a much higher and more dangerous level. The choice is still to be made, but the time is running out fast.
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Some Dutch people living in Japan take that flight. I hope among the dead is nobody I know...
legion wrote:http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-crash-joep-lange-among-up-to-100-aids-researchers-and-activists-on-board-flight-mh17-9613821.html
If this doesn't give pause for thought nothing will. A bunch of people dedicating their careers to saving lives killed by a lack of intelligence.
Taro Toporific wrote:Some Dutch people living in Japan take that flight. I hope among the dead is nobody I know...
https://twitter.com/hashtag/MH17?src=hash
MH17 passengers:
189 Dutch; 29 Malaysia; 27 Australia; 12 Indonesia; 9 UK, 4 Germany; 4 Belgium; 3 Philippines, 1 Canada; 1 N. Zealand
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Wage Slave wrote:Although the Separatists' and Russia's attitude is appalling and they couldn't lie straight in bed, they did make one valid point.
Russell wrote:Wage Slave wrote:Although the Separatists' and Russia's attitude is appalling and they couldn't lie straight in bed, they did make one valid point.
OK, so, what was their point again?
That they should punish those civilians that happen to fly over a zone that they want to separate from Ukraine?
Wage Slave wrote:Russell wrote:Wage Slave wrote:Although the Separatists' and Russia's attitude is appalling and they couldn't lie straight in bed, they did make one valid point.
OK, so, what was their point again?
That they should punish those civilians that happen to fly over a zone that they want to separate from Ukraine?
No. But it is not beyond imagination that it was not actually their intention to shoot down a civilian airliner. I would have thought given the earlier comments about peace you would like to think the same. If Malaysian Airlines insist on flying over a war zone then there is an inevitable risk associated with that. That's all.
Two cabin crew swapped shifts so they would not be on the doomed Malaysian airliner downed by a missile in eastern Ukraine, after raising concerns about the safety of flying over the war zone.
Other senior pilots and cabin crew had flagged up fears about the flightpath in the weeks leading up to the tragedy, although Malaysia Airlines last night denied ignoring crew concerns.
Some staff are reported to have refused to fly over the airspace where the passenger airliner was downed because they deemed it to be too volatile and dangerous, especially after two Ukrainian planes, a fighter jet and a transport aircraft, were shot down by rebels.
According to well-placed Malaysia Airlines sources, at least two cabin crew swapped shifts so they would not be on MH17, specifically because they were worried about the flightpath. The Mail on Sunday has been told worried pilots consulted air traffic controllers in Malaysia and also made an informal approach to the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). But still Malaysia Airlines did not divert the route, unlike other carriers.
British Airways as well as all US airlines, Lufthansa, Air France and Qantas, were already avoiding the war zone in Ukraine, adding an extra 20 minutes’ flight time, and there is growing pressure on Malaysia Airlines to explain why it did not follow suit.
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Wage Slave wrote:Russell wrote:Wage Slave wrote:Although the Separatists' and Russia's attitude is appalling and they couldn't lie straight in bed, they did make one valid point.
OK, so, what was their point again?
That they should punish those civilians that happen to fly over a zone that they want to separate from Ukraine?
No. But it is not beyond imagination that it was not actually their intention to shoot down a civilian airliner. I would have thought given the earlier comments about peace you would like to think the same. If Malaysian Airlines insist on flying over a war zone then there is an inevitable risk associated with that. That's all.
wangta wrote:
I also smell a rat although no doubt some of you might put this thinking in the nutty tinfoil hat box.
kurogane wrote:wangta wrote:
I also smell a rat although no doubt some of you might put this thinking in the nutty tinfoil hat box.
It's hard not to think you're getting a whiff of one, but let us remember some wise words before we start a run on tinfoil: never ascribe to ill intent what can be better explained by stupidity.
I think it might be Twain.
Malaysian Airlines is run by polyester pant wearing 62 year olds that lost their own F'in plane.
EDIT: it's called Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
Tsuru wrote:There is now talk from various sources of taking the crash site by military force. It certainly looks like its time to crack some cossacks' heads.
Russell wrote:Tsuru wrote:There is now talk from various sources of taking the crash site by military force. It certainly looks like its time to crack some cossacks' heads.
I have also read this in the Dutch media, but I think this is really a very bad idea. It would mean the US and its allies fighting directly against Russia on Ukraine territory, with the potential to escalate into a third world war.
No thanks.
One thing we should have learned in the past 100 years is that war is hell. We might also have noticed that, once begun, war is hard to stop and often takes shocking turns.
So those who began the current war in Ukraine – the direct cause of the frightful murder of so many innocents on Flight MH17 on Thursday – really have no excuse.
There is no doubt about who they were. In any war, the aggressor is the one who makes the first move into neutral or disputed territory.
And that aggressor was the European Union, which rivals China as the world’s most expansionist power, swallowing countries the way performing seals swallow fish (16 gulped down since 1995).
Ignoring repeated and increasingly urgent warnings from Moscow, the EU – backed by the USA – sought to bring Ukraine into its orbit. It did so through violence and illegality, an armed mob and the overthrow of an elected president.
I warned then that this would lead to terrible conflict. I wrote in March: ‘Having raised hopes that we cannot fulfil, we have awakened the ancient passions of this cruel part of the world – and who knows where our vainglorious folly will now lead?’
Now we see. Largely unreported over the past few months, a filthy little war has been under way in Eastern Ukraine.
Many innocents have died, unnoticed in the West. Neither side has anything to boast of – last Tuesday 11 innocent civilians died in an airstrike on a block of flats in the town of Snizhne, which Ukraine is unconvincingly trying to blame on Russia.
So PLEASE do not be propagandised by Thursday’s horrible slaughter into forgetting what is really going on.
Powerful weapons make it all too easy for people to do stupid, frightful things. Wars make such things hugely more likely to happen.
In September 1983, the Soviet air force, inflamed by Cold War passions and fears, inexcusably massacred 269 people aboard a Korean Airlines 747.
In July 1988, highly trained US Navy experts aboard the cruiser Vincennes, using ultra-modern equipment, moronically mistook an Iranian Airbus, Iran Air Flight 655, for an F-14 Tomcat warplane. They shot the airliner out of the sky, killing 290 innocent people, including 66 children.
All kinds of official untruths were told at the time to excuse this. In October 2001, bungling Ukrainian servicemen on exercise were the main suspects for the destruction of Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 over the Black Sea. Whoever did it, they killed 78 passengers and crew en route from Israel to Novosibirsk – though Ukraine has never officially admitted guilt.
Complex quarrels about blame for such horrors are often never resolved. I am among many who do not believe that Libya had anything to do with the mass murder of those aboard Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie in December 1988, very likely an Iranian-backed retaliation for the Airbus tragedy. All the evidence points to a terror group operating from Syrian-controlled territory, and none points to Libya.
But at the time of the prosecution, we were trying to make friends with Syria, which has since gone back near the top of our enemies list but may soon be our ally again, against the fanatics of Isis. Confused? You should be.
So, let us just mourn the dead and comfort the bereaved, and regret human folly and the wickedness of war. Let us not allow this miserable event to be fanned into a new war. That is what we did almost 100 years ago, and it is about time we learned something from that.
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kurogane wrote:Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
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