Air Disaster 530


Grief is the only appropriate reaction to the death of so many people on Malaysian Airlines flight MH-17. The point scoring and guessing games are macabre. Of course, some people have to suppress grief and get to work urgently to secure the crash site from interference so there can be a proper investigation of what happened.

We have no idea what evidence lies behind the various statements as to who did or did not shoot down the plane. There is no evidence I have seen that it was shot down at all. This could relate to Ukrainian violence, it could relate to MH 370, it could be an unrelated incident. We really don’t know yet.

What is particularly ghoulish is the false grief, what I might call the triumphalist shroud waving, of those seeking gleefully to blame the side they do not support in the Ukrainian conflict. In the current total absence of evidence, this is abominable behaviour.


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530 thoughts on “Air Disaster

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  • Ангрысоба

    This looks like a claim of responsibility, by someone called Igor Strelkov:

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bswg7UGCQAAtv47.jpg:large

    In this tweet he seems to be bragging about shooting down an An-26. The tweet, and I think the account was deleted once they realized what they had actually shot down.

    http://www.news.com.au/world/prorussian-separatist-commander-igor-the-terrible-strelkov-allegedly-appears-on-mobile-phone-video-of-mh17-crash-saying-that-was-a-blast/story-fndir2ev-1226993406156

  • Mary

    The most sensible and pertinent comment is Sofia’a.

    ‘Cui bono?

    Let’s see which parties seek a thorough independent investigation and which try to derail it.

    Right now it seems only the perpetrators really know the answer for sure.’

    I hope Nuland, McCain, Ashton, Biden and the rest are feeling chastened this morning. What goes around, comes around. McCain was one of the first to leap in with some unfortunate comment on this tragedy and Biden later.

    After a very frightening night here from 1am onwards with a violent electrical storm, I feel shattered physically, stunned too and greatly saddened by all this awful news. Gaza is almost forgotten.

    The vortex sucks ever louder and stronger.

  • Tim

    Mistakes happen, such as the USS Vincennes(see Wiki)

    In 1996, the United States and Iran reached “an agreement in full and final settlement of all disputes, differences, claims, counterclaims” relating to the incident at the International Court of Justice.[7] As part of the settlement, the United States agreed to pay US$61.8 million, an average of $213,103.45 per passenger, in compensation to the families of the Iranian victims. However, the United States has never admitted responsibility, nor apologized to Iran.[8]

    To this day, Iran Air still uses flight number IR655 on the Tehran–Dubai route as a memorial to the victims, contrary to the informal convention amongst many other airlines that discontinue flight numbers associated with tragedies.

  • Mary

    ‘In the last two weeks, the plane flew roughly the same path 14 times, traversing the diagonal length of Ukraine to the Sea of Azov close to Crimea. But Thursday’s route deviated slightly. The Boeing 777 went farther north than typical. It’s unclear why.

    A map shows the flight path Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 typically takes between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the path it took when it went down in Ukraine July 17, 2014.

    http://cbsnews2.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2014/07/17/09f87e72-014b-4da7-b17a-2bbb27efcec6/thumbnail/620×350/216c1356877e71c27f31923afe9f6e81/malaysia-flight-17-peguesmap.jpg

    Because of the conflict in the region, on April 3 the Federal Aviation Administration issued what’s called a “notice to airman” prohibiting U.S. commercial flight operations in the airspace over Crimea and portions of the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. But the notice did not cover the airspace where the Malaysia Airlines jet crashed.’

    /..

    http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-17-deviated-slightly-from-typical-flight-path/

  • Briar

    The BBC keeps asking if anything similar has happened before. The “experts” mention North Korea, but not one has yet breathed the words, “USS Vincennes”. Strange.

  • Mary

    Ref above. Craig’s source says the weather conditions caused the route change.

    The plane was flying at an altitude of 10kms, that is 1km below the range of the stratosphere 11kms-50kms above the earth’s surface.

    Any meteorologists here?

  • Mary

    Briar They can’t be worse than Sky who had that repellent warmongers’ stenographer on from the early hours intermittently. The TV is off and is staying off.

    Thoughts with the relatives of those killed and wounded in Gaza and with the relatives of the those killed in the plane. What a waste of precious life.

  • Yonatan

    Mary wrote: (possibly quoting someone)

    “In the last two weeks, the plane flew roughly the same path 14 times, traversing the diagonal length of Ukraine to the Sea of Azov close to Crimea. But Thursday’s route deviated slightly. The Boeing 777 went farther north than typical. It’s unclear why.”

    The plane was 200 km north east of the normal route route at the time of the crash. That is hardly a slight departure, especially when it means the plane entered a zone of known military activity. A flight controller, #Spainbuca on twitter, working at Kiev Borispol also states that radar indicates that the plane was accompanied by 2 military fighters up to about 3 minutes before the crash, when it was traveling at 33,000 feet (~ 11 km).

    The only ground-air missile systems known to be in the militia’s possession are MANPADS and Strela-10, with ranges of 5km and 3.5 km respectively. The obviously could not have hit the airliner. The Ukrainian army is known to have Buk systems which can reach altitudes of > 14 km. The fighters accompanying the airliner would be capable of carrying air-to-air missiles, which would have no problem hitting an undefended civilian aircraft.

    As always, cui bono?

  • Yonatan

    Ooops, a typo in above message. I meant to write

    “The plane was 200 km north east of the normal route at the time of the crash.”

    Also I forgot to include a useful link summarizing multiple threads of evidence relating to the MH 17 incident.

    A third possibility for the speculators. Perhaps this was a Pan Am 103 false flag operation rather than a missile strike. Aircraft wreckage reconstruction should help distinguish between an internal luggage bay explosion and an external missile strike.

  • Mary

    It was a CBS report Yonatan dated at 9 hrs earlier when I posted the link.

    If the implications in your comments are true, is it not chilling that 300 lives can be sacrificed so easily? Is it normal for a civilian aircraft to be accompanied by two military fighters?

    This morning Flight MH17 left Amsterdam as normal. Weird. Can’t imagine it was very full.

  • Ангрысоба

    This is apparently Igor Strelkov’s VK account, now deleted:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20140717155906/http://vk.com/strelkov_info?w=wall-57424472_7256

    And this is Donetsk’s People’s Republic’s claim to have been in possession of a “Buk” anti-aircraft missile system, now also deleted:

    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NF6E5FCKFNEJ:https://twitter.com/dnrpress/status/483248037629018112

    And then Putin goes and blames Ukraine for the military operations which he says led to this happening.

    Instead of all this swivel-eyed “cui bono”-ing, which suggests some supernaturally intelligent manipulators of the world, maybe it is better to use a bit of common sense.

  • Brendan

    Ah ffs the MSM reaction has been dismal. My current fav: “We knew Russia had invaded Ukraine. We just didn’t care.”

    That’s a headline. In an actual newspaper. Presumably they have journalists, sub-editors, and editors. How the fuck this passes muster is beyond me. It’s a simple, verifiable fact that Russia did not invade Ukraine. Didn’t happen. Not true. Factually wrong. Bullshit. And yet there it is, a headline in one of Australia’s largest media organs. It could well have been The Onion.

    As soon as those Ukranian fascists took vital roles in Government, it was clear that this was going horribly wrong. I’m not a foreign policy wonk, yet I – like most people here – knew fine well this was a fuck-up. Never. Ever. Trust. A. Fascist. That’s History 101. And yet our elected leaders ignore this obvious fact. Doesn’t take a genius to know why.

    Currently, Oz idiot Tony Abbott is wibbling about crimes. He didn’t say war-crime, to my knowledge, because he knows what NATO has done in … everywhere. He merely said ‘crime’. A more gutless use of language is hard to imagine. Abbott is another one of … Blairpaths. Alas.

  • Ангрысоба

    Brendan: “Currently, Oz idiot Tony Abbott is wibbling about crimes. He didn’t say war-crime, to my knowledge, because he knows what NATO has done in … everywhere. He merely said ‘crime’. A more gutless use of language is hard to imagine.”

    You don’t think the blowing up of a civilian airliner merits the word “crime”?

  • mark golding

    The downing of Malaysian Boeing 777 flight MH17 is understood to be beneficial to NATO and its proxy regime in Kiev as government forces succumb to the Ukraine resistance.

    NATO’s attempts to bait Russia into moving into Ukrainian territory and shift global opinion against Moscow have repeatedly failed and US sanctions against Russia prove impotent and fruitless.

    US, NATO and the West in consequence have resorted to deception, duplicity and disinformation. Secret services could essentially plant plastic explosives on the Malaysian aircraft in a number of ways including the ‘underwear bomber’ type scenario. This equates to the slyness of using poison to murder.

    Objective thinking reveals anti-government fighters using Man-Portable Air Defense Systems can’t reach the height flown(33,000ft) by MH17 at the location of the downing and sophisticated Buk radar guided, tracked-vehicle mounted, anti-aircraft missile systems that could easily be traced back to Russia also need extensive expertise to maintain, calibrate, track and fire.

    Russia’s strongest card thus far has been its restraint and NATO’s inability to implicate it in the chaos NATO itself started by backing armed Neo-Nazis during the “Euromaidan” or civil unrest in Ukraine, which began on the night of 21 November 2013 with public protests in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (“Independence Square”) in Kiev, demanding closer European integration.

    Cui bono? – – Russia would not throw that card away to pass along weapon systems to fighters that were already successfully downing Ukrainian military aircraft with man-portable missiles.

    That the downed aircraft is yet another Malaysian Boeing 777 the second one this year to be lost under extraordinary circumstances has covertly gained maximum attention for propagandists across the West. They have the world’s full and undivided attention with which to pin the blame on Russia and anti-Kiev fighters in eastern Ukraine.

  • Brendan

    “You don’t think the blowing up of a civilian airliner merits the word “crime”?”

    No. Do you?

  • MJ

    Why has it become accepted that the plane was brought down by a surface to air missile? They haven’t started analysing the wreckage yet. Not sure why a missile from another plane has been discounted already.

    If there were witnesses to a missile hitting the plane it would be useful to know how many missiles were seen. If it was just the one then it won’t have come from a BUKS launcher. According to a chap from Jane’s, interviewed by BBC Radio 5 last night, BUKS only fires missiles in salvos of two or four.

  • Ангрысоба

    Mark G: Objective thinking reveals anti-government fighters using Man-Portable Air Defense Systems can’t reach the height flown(33,000ft) by MH17 at the location of the downing and sophisticated Buk radar guided, tracked-vehicle mounted, anti-aircraft missile systems that could easily be traced back to Russia also need extensive expertise to maintain, calibrate, track and fire.

    Don’t you think that the fact the rebels have already bragged about capturing a Buk, the fact that the rebels have already shot down, and bragged about shooting down military planes, the fact that they bragged about shooting down this plane (then deleted their accounts), and the fact that they were recorded reporting that they had shot down the plane only to realize later what they have done, and the fact that Putin blames the Ukrainian government for the broader situation in which this happened rather than pointing at the Ukrainian government itself speaks volumes about what is the most likely scenario here?

    And as for the idea that extensive expertise is needed to fire the SAMs, some of the rebels themselves could easily be defectors from the Ukrainian military or be assisted by Russian forces.

  • Uzbek in the UK

    @Ben-LA PACQUTE LO ES TODO

    “RT is suggesting Putin was the target, but that would mean Igor has changed sides.”

    WTF you are talking about mate? Ukrainian military gave up part of their country and could barely defend another part and here you are supporting RT in claim that Ukrainians were about to shoot down putin’s airplane. Do you even realize what consequences would then follow? Pro-putin fighters have successfully been shooting down Ukrainian military airplanes, Strelkov has claimed that they have successfully shot down yet another Ukrainian military airplane (just before it turned out to be commercial airline and then removed this claim), pro-putin’s posting pictures of BUKs at their disposal and yet all they needed is deny that they have done it, and you bought it.

    Open your eyes. It is very hard to see black cat in dark room, especially with closed eyes and brainwashed brain.

  • Uzbek in the UK

    Mr Murray,

    I totally agree that Putin’s words speak for themselves. He for sure knows which side shot this airplane and if it was Ukrainian military his tone would have been very different. It reminds me Uzbekistan in 2005. Complete denial by putin to accept that people who were shot in Andijan were not terrorist but desperate people who had nothing to feed their children and got tired of corruption and unlimited power of local officials.

    It also remind me Assad’s tactics (no doubt mastered by putin) to deny having chemical weapons and then giving up huge quantities of it to the UN inspectors.

    Putin is a KGB officer. This people before reaching high ranks got their brand new brain free of any virtues and full of high spirit propaganda. This brain kept KGB going even when it was obvious that all the foundations of Communist state were mythical and failed to materialised and top of the government got corrupted. This brain keeps current FSB (former KGB) going despite the facts that Russia is today perfectly functioning Mafia state. Everything from top to bottom in Russia operates exactly like criminal organisation. Some of well known Russian Oligarchs have even well known criminal past not to mentioned well known Alisher Usmanov (some say one of putin’s best friends).

  • Ben-LA PACQUTE LO ES TODO

    Well Uzbek, you missed the point. That would be cognitive dissonance to believe based on the evidence that SBU collected regarding Igor’s recorded voice.

    But what do you make of MH17’s permission to fly over a war zone where warnings were given, and most flights scrupulously avoid that airspace?

  • Rehmat

    The Zionist-controlled western mainstream media, like in the case of 9/11 – accused some Muslims being involved in the disappearance of the Flight 370, based on the theory that “two of the passengers on the plane were Iranians”. But what about Nikolai Brodsky, the Russian Jew aboard MH370 or another Jew by the name “Andy” (reported by Israeli newspapers Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post) who traveled by the same flight one day earlier but was not allowed to board the return flight under the advice of his “observant Jew” travel agent. This reminds me the 2002 news item at the Jewish site Beliefnet – reporting how a “mysterious” Jew saved the lives of nine fellow Jews at the WTC on September 11, 2001.

    On March 11, 2014, Adam Taylor posted pictures of those two Iranian passengers at the Jewish Washington Post. However, the keen readers found out the two “terrorists” were carrying same bag, same shoes, same pants, standing in the same location on floor – which proves that the pictures were fixed.

    In order to cover CIA/Mossad foot-prints, western media yet came up with another story. It claims that the plane’s Muslim pilot could have committed suicide and took the crew and passengers with him. The CIA director, John Brenner, an Israel-Firster, said “the possibility that the plane had been brought down in a terrorist attack could not be ruled out. But no claims of responsibility over the missing jet had been confirmed or corroborated.”

    Brenner, however, was at loss to explain how come 14 countries, 43 ships and 58 aircraft which are involved in the search of plane have failed to locate it so far.

    http://rehmat1.com/2014/03/16/what-happened-to-malaysian-flight-370/

  • Ангрысоба

    Ben: But what do you make of MH17′s permission to fly over a war zone where warnings were given, and most flights scrupulously avoid that airspace?

    It’s fairly unremarkable, apparently, as many flights have been going through that airspace:

    British Airways has been avoiding eastern Ukraine for some time, the BBC understands. But many airlines continued to fly over it. According to Flight radar24, which monitors live flight paths, the airlines that most frequently flew over Donetsk in eastern Ukraine in the last week were: Aeroflot 86 (flights), Singapore Airlines 75, Ukraine International Airlines 62, Lufthansa 56, and Malaysian 48. It was not necessarily a risky approach. The chance of a rocket reaching above 32,000 feet was considered remote, says Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, author of Why Planes Crash.
    http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-28364306

  • Ангрысоба

    Rehmat: The Zionist-controlled western mainstream media, like in the case of 9/11 …

    Does anyone really read beyond opening statements like that?

    Or do many people only read posts that begin like that?

    Hmmm…

  • Ben-LA PACQUTE LO ES TODO

    “The chance of a rocket reaching above 32,000 feet was considered remote, says Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, author of Why Planes Crash.”

    Yes, Manpads only have a range of 2-3k.

    And yet the ICAO was uninformed that the separatists had Buks in their possession….

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