Malaysia Airlines MH370

none of those planes are over Donetsk where MA was shot down though

uh... yeah exactly my point.

3 days ago in Vice!
https://news.vice.com/article/downed-planes-and-burnt-corpses-in-eastern-ukraine

That writer's twitter is spooky: https://twitter.com/HarrietSalem

Argh more dead bodies in those links, watch out folx. (fuck Vice, geez)

Seems the 23 US citizens reported was false? Dutch number climbed to 173 deaths just now.

Colleague of a friend died in the crash. It's a very sad day.

The Guardian is now saying that as many as 100 AIDS researchers, including some global leading lights, may have been on the plane. It's a horrible tragedy regardless but that's just another level of human catastrophe.

Reports out of Baltimore that at least one Johns Hopkins AIDS researcher known to have been killed.

108 Leading HIV researchers lost as flight MH17 is downed in Ukraine

just awful

It's hard to think of a more concrete metaphor for how war robs us of all the good in life, and delivers precious little in return. What a terrible waste.

Russia has confirmed it won't be taking the black boxes and won't be formally investigating the crash.

Lavrov is still claiming it was a mistake / accident from the Ukrainian military and this seems to be the position Russia's going to stick with. The Russian press has gone into conspiracy theory overload (from the suggestion of a false flag operation to the idea that Ukraine shot down the jet thinking that Putin was on it) but the government hasn't attempted to put together a convincing narrative. Domestically, there's a lot of mention of the time in 2001 that a stray Ukrainian missile brought down a Russian passenger plane on the way to Israel but no real explanation of what Ukraine would have thought they were shooting at this time.

I heard that story about them shooting down the plane because they thought Putin was on it was doing the rounds in the Russian media. Fucking clowns. I wish he had been on it.

Apparently the flight was overbooked and a British family were turned away because there was only one seat available. I genuinely have no idea how I would react to that kind of escape.

You might go on to create an animated hit series known for stealing all of its jokes from the Simpsons

An emotionally exhausting day.

Have been assigned to cover grieving families instead of the press conferences this time around, which I hate - there's basically nothing you can say or ask that's not going to make everyone feel like shit.

One of my bosses, a former air steward whose cousins and aunt were on MH370, has now lost an ex-colleague who was part of the MH17 crew. Unreal.

Good friend of mine writes for Gu4rdian Au$ and shes on this story for the (suprisingly many) Aus on board. Its weighing her down.

Igor Strelkov answered questions about the crash of the Malaysian Boeing.

Question: There is a version of the story that the civilian plane was shot down by an SU-27.

Strelkov: There is such information. But I myself have not investigated the situation fully. Therefore I have not publicized this version (just like all others).

According to information from those who collected the bodies, a significant number of the bodies are 'not fresh' -- people died several days ago. I do not vouch for the full reliability of this information -- of course, an autopsy by medical examiners is needed.

There is more along those lines here:

http://www.interpretermag.com/ukraine-liveblog-day-151-who-shot-down-mh17/

The only note of caution there is that The Interpreter is run by Mikhail Khodorkovsky's son and is about as trustworthy as Russia Today or Komsomolskaya Pravda, though from the other side.

According to information from those who collected the bodies, a significant number of the bodies are 'not fresh' -- people died several days ago.

Isn't this from an episode of Sherlock?

I was thinking the same thing!

Reminds me of similar "speculation" by western media after Flight 655.

It's also part the plot of John Varley's time travel book Millennium.

xps to Shari

yeah I saw that, fair enough. at least they seem to support their translation with a trail of links for whoever has the ability to read the sources

the sheer front of Putin's response to the MH17 tragedy is unbelievable

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/18/separatist-links-malaysia-airlines-mh17-removed

xpost

it's completely consistent w/ putin's behavior over the past few years, no?

it's no 'we found the wmds'

thanks for elevating the discourse, mookieproof, i look forward to a robust and fruitful discussion of geopolitics on this thread

consistent yes, but since the initial ukraine events it seems now with a heightened sense of impregnability.

Putin wishes he was Stalin so bad

why is everyone talking about putin i though it was pretty clear the separatists shot this plane down. i'm confused

What's with the trolling dude?

putin is also confused

i'm serious what did putin do

Putin aids the separatists. They on his team. If they did this, at the very least it reflects badly on him. And at most, Russia was involved (helped man that BUK missile system, gave orders, etc).

do we have documentation that putin has aided the separatists and do we have any indication that russia was involved.

this all smells of speculation to me.

Plus - and this might be hard to understand for someone who yesterday was all like 'huh why does the world care about what Obama thinks about this' - not only will Russia be in a huge tizzy about this, it also seriously puts his every action in Ukraine in the limelight (finally). This is a global deal now.

Yes, I have all the documentation you need. Brb faxing it to you now.

what every action of his.

do you really think russia wasn't in the 'limelight' about the ukraine before? seriously? that shit has been inescapable.

u can use a hyperlink with the blue text too you know, xpost

Inescapable? Really? The Maidan riots were well reported, sure, but after that the US - for reasons of its own - did all it could to stay out of the Ukraine thing. So did Europe. Now they just can't anymore. Hence then UN security committee feeling obliged to meet today. Different dawn, dude.

i'm all for keeping the team-reddit-catch-the-boston-bombers theories masquerading as helpfully reposting tweets and "news alert" stuff where it belongs

... but western media and governments are on record that at least some of the "separatists" are from russia, not ukraine, and many are ex-military (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-27231649 etc. etc. etc.) and it seems obtuse to deny this.

s.clover, why do you think putin wouldn't sponsor russian separatists in ukraine, given your knowledge of his recent involvement there, and previously in crimea?

Otm xp

Now they just can't anymore. - wouldn't be so sure about this

that being said (xp to self)...

i'm all for keeping that team-reddit-catch-the-boston-bomber stuff where it belongs *especially*

1) given the dishonest record of the many actors involved in this situation

2) having spoken to a woman flying MH next week while getting coffee this morning, and heard the straight up garbage she believed about the situation, and hearing how upset she'd made herself about the prospect.

but if you feel like you're being useful by begin the first to post "developments" to social media then... i dunno, it's your journey

Caek, i'm not denying that russian people are involved, i'm just asking about direct involvement of the putin govt.

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direct involvement in this specific incident, no, but indirect culpability is being pretty heavily hinted at by the US and UK govts, for what that's worth:

At an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council called by Britain, the UK’s ambassador Sir Mark Lyall Grant said “searching questions” had to be asked about Russia’s links with armed separatists and called for Moscow to issue an “unequivocal condemnation” of their actions.

He said without Russian support the armed groups would “wither” and claimed three Russian citizens were leading figures in the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic.

Sir Mark said: “We have to ask searching questions about why we are now confronting this tragic situation. Russian officials have claimed that armed separatists in eastern Ukraine represent a spontaneous local insurgency.

“We know that this is not the case. We know that the three leading figures of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic are Russian citizens and have come from outside Ukraine. We know that weapons, equipment and logistical support has been systematically provided to armed separatist groups by Russia.”

Those weapons included tanks, artillery pieces and up to 100 man-portable surface-to-air missiles - although these are not the weapons believed to have been used to bring down MH-17.

Sir Mark said: “The United Kingdom urges Russia to reflect carefully on the situation they have created. We urge Russia to cease its policy of supporting armed separatist groups and their violent actions, of destabilising a neighbouring country, of generating displacement and social and economic hardship.