Malaysian Plane shot down by Russian Border 290 souls lost

[Deleted]

To me "shot down" is "shot down"... I don't care if it was a missile or a phalanx of soldiers with pellet guns... or anything in between.

[mmhmm]

Aug 4, 2014 21:15:15 GMT -5 @richardintn said:

Virgil... you should be shot (ping pong ball out of a "potato gun", maybe?) for getting people's hopes up like that.

I was all ready to celebrate no more Biebs or Kim K. stories...

Hopes?  More like gorge in my case, I'm afraid. More than 300 human beings died in that crash. Their families have lost loved ones. I don't see that as a matter for cheap comedy. Perhaps that's just me.

[Wisconsin Beth]

I haven't followed Virgil's link yet.  I'm swamped right now. 

I did see something on the assassination attempt theory back when this was still hot news.  I'm guessing the source was Slate but I was blipping around the Internet trying to find news on this so it could have been somewhere else.  And I really don't have time right now to find a link. 

So with that out of the way - what I remember reading was that while this was discussed, it was dismissed because the timing was off, the planes were NOT all that similar in size and shape and what I took away was that basically, you'd have to know very little about planes in order to mistake the Russian presidential plane from MH17.   

I cheerfully admit to knowing very little about planes myself and even less about military "stuff"  I'll check in later on.  And I'm marking the link to read when I can. 

[Virgil Showlion]

Aug 5, 2014 7:36:41 GMT -5 mmhmm said:

Aug 4, 2014 21:15:15 GMT -5 @richardintn said:

Virgil... you should be shot (ping pong ball out of a "potato gun", maybe?) for getting people's hopes up like that.

I was all ready to celebrate no more Biebs or Kim K. stories...

Hopes?  More like gorge in my case, I'm afraid. More than 300 human beings died in that crash. Their families have lost loved ones. I don't see that as a matter for cheap comedy. Perhaps that's just me.

It's also a matter nobody could be bothered to talk about three days after it happened.

Drastic measures were needed.

Now that you're here, what are your thoughts on the article, or on the political ramifications of MH17 in general? Have you read anything compelling or share-worthy? Do you care who perpetrated the attack? If NATO mobilizes against Russia as a result, do you care about that?

[mmhmm]

Really, Virgil. So, because YOU want to see some responses, "drastic" measures are needed that result in the virtual dismissal of nearly 300 dead in favor of cheap comedy to meet YOUR needs? Interesting outlook.

I will not comment on the article under these conditions and I won't answer any of your questions regarding it. Consider it my personal protest.

[Virgil Showlion]

Aug 5, 2014 8:34:09 GMT -5 Wisconsin Beth said:

I haven't followed Virgil's link yet.  I'm swamped right now. 

I did see something on the assassination attempt theory back when this was still hot news.  I'm guessing the source was Slate but I was blipping around the Internet trying to find news on this so it could have been somewhere else.  And I really don't have time right now to find a link. 

So with that out of the way - what I remember reading was that while this was discussed, it was dismissed because the timing was off, the planes were NOT all that similar in size and shape and what I took away was that basically, you'd have to know very little about planes in order to mistake the Russian presidential plane from MH17.   

I cheerfully admit to knowing very little about planes myself and even less about military "stuff"  I'll check in later on.  And I'm marking the link to read when I can. 

I've posted the two side-by-side images of the planes on page 2 of this thread. The images share a common scale.

They're virtually identical in size, and you can judge for yourself whether the shape and colourations are similar. I have no trouble whatsoever believing that the two planes could be confused.

[Virgil Showlion]

Aug 5, 2014 8:44:08 GMT -5 mmhmm said:

Really, Virgil. So, because YOU want to see some responses, "drastic" measures are needed that result in the virtual dismissal of nearly 300 dead in favor of cheap comedy to meet YOUR needs? Interesting outlook.

I will not comment on the article under these conditions and I won't answer any of your questions regarding it. Consider it my personal protest.

Protest away.

[The Captain]

Ok, I read the Haisenko article.  A few thoughts...

1.  With respect to your ealier speculation about it being an assination attempt on Putin's life - at first I thought this sounded very plausable (though not for the reasons you speculated, political murder for abandoning the US dollar, really?) because it appears obvious to me (at least) that he is a bit sociopathic with definite ideas of how much power and territory he want's to amass.

2.  I then thought more about the means, and really - shooting down a plane?  Very heavy handed and it would be very easy to see the plane was shot down.  IF the US truly wanted to off this guy I would hope we would be a lot more subtle about it (poisen, elevator accident, auto brake failure - you yourself have posted about how easy it would be to over-ride some electronic programming).  So shooting down a whole plane didn't make sense to me from a US assissination perspective.

I agree the plane appears to have been straffed with bullets and have always wondered why (in this uber electronic day and age) there were not more pictures posted on the internet.

Now as far as I know (and correct me if I'm wrong) the rebels did NOT have fighter jets with tank piercing bullets.  Which means it had to be the Ukraine government and if so, why would the rebels try to destroy or hide evidence - news of their enemy shooting down a passenger plane would only help their cause? 

There is SO much about this that simply doesn't make sense to me.  I truly think the wrong plane was shot down, but don't know why.

[Virgil Showlion]

Aug 5, 2014 13:05:23 GMT -5 The Captain said:

Ok, I read the Haisenko article.  A few thoughts...

1.  With respect to your ealier speculation about it being an assination attempt on Putin's life - at first I thought this sounded very plausable (though not for the reasons you speculated, political murder for abandoning the US dollar, really?) because it appears obvious to me (at least) that he is a bit sociopathic with definite ideas of how much power and territory he want's to amass.

2.  I then thought more about the means, and really - shooting down a plane?  Very heavy handed and it would be very easy to see the plane was shot down.  IF the US truly wanted to off this guy I would hope we would be a lot more subtle about it (poisen, elevator accident, auto brake failure - you yourself have posted about how easy it would be to over-ride some electronic programming).  So shooting down a whole plane didn't make sense to me from a US assissination perspective.

I agree the plane appears to have been straffed with bullets and have always wondered why (in this uber electronic day and age) there were not more pictures posted on the internet.

Now as far as I know (and correct me if I'm wrong) the rebels did NOT have fighter jets with tank piercing bullets.  Which means it had to be the Ukraine government and if so, why would the rebels try to destroy or hide evidence - news of their enemy shooting down a passenger plane would only help their cause? 

There is SO much about this that simply doesn't make sense to me.  I truly think the wrong plane was shot down, but don't know why.

I strenuously disagree with your point #1. I've presented arguments in the past about the Iraq war resulting from Saddam Hussein's appeals to the African Congress to desert the US petrodollar, and about America's arms dealing in Syria to depose al Assad being spurred by a similar initiative that Assad championed in the Middle East. Numerous excellent books, whitepapers and analysts back this up.

Yes, both men are/were brutal dictators, but you can't throw a stone on planet Earth without it hitting a brutal dictatorship. Out of the dozens of candidates, TPTB chose Hussein and al Assad for very specific reasons. Any nation or leader that threatens the dollar hegemony is swiftly crushed--or was, until the US ran out of money.


As for point #2, I'm less skeptical than you are, but you raise a good point: shooting down a plane is a rather heavy-handed way of assassinating somebody.

We have to bear in mind that life isn't like spy movies, and assassinating Pres. Putin would be ridiculously hard to do by conventional means. Sabotaging a brake line might work for a journalist (although one of the facts that came up during that discussion is that auto accidents have a surprisingly low fatality rate), but for Putin the saboteur would have to break into a secure compound and gain access to a vehicle guarded 24/7, just for a miniscule chance of a successful assassination.

Likewise with poison. Virtually impossible to introduce into a closely monitored food supply, high probability of failure, and a high probability of being caught, which would spark a war.

Shooting down a plane over native airspace is i) 100% guaranteed lethal, ii) realizable with minimal effort and risk, and iii) undetectable, or at least unattributable to a specific attacker. Except for details like bullet holes in the fuselage and inconsistent fracturing, which are the very things we're observing.

It seems to me that scrambling two fighter jets with orders to blow a specific plane out of the sky at a specific place and time--with a built in patsy and 100% lethality--is a far better strategy than "break into the Kremlin, evade his security, sabotage his brake lines, and for the love of Lenin don't get caught" for a 5% chance of actually killing the man.

It's also worth noting that the Ukrainian government absolutely despises Putin. Despises him. Enough that they might jump at the opportunity to take him out, with the US's and NATO's blessing.



As you say: if we accept Mr. Haisenko's conclusions, we have to somehow reconcile that with the fact that it simply doesn't make sense for Ukraine or Russia to knowingly blow a run-of-the-mill passenger jet out of the sky.

[Wisconsin Beth]

I do not trust any sources coming out of Russia or the Ukraine right now on Flight 17.  I feel pretty skeptical of US sources on this too.  Which doesn't leave me with a whole lot. 

[The Captain]

What I find truly surprising the the dearth of reporting from the BBC on this.  I trust their reporting much more then most US sources.

[Deleted]

Aug 5, 2014 7:36:41 GMT -5 mmhmm said:

Aug 4, 2014 21:15:15 GMT -5 @richardintn said:

Virgil... you should be shot (ping pong ball out of a "potato gun", maybe?) for getting people's hopes up like that.

I was all ready to celebrate no more Biebs or Kim K. stories...

Hopes?  More like gorge in my case, I'm afraid. More than 300 human beings died in that crash. Their families have lost loved ones. I don't see that as a matter for cheap comedy. Perhaps that's just me.

You are right. It wasn't the most appropriate thing to say given the true subject of this thread.

My apologies to anyone that may have taken offense.


(I don't delete my posts though, because I own up to my mistakes, so I can't in good conscience remove it.)

[Virgil Showlion]

Aug 5, 2014 22:24:25 GMT -5 @richardintn said:

Aug 5, 2014 7:36:41 GMT -5 mmhmm said:

Hopes?  More like gorge in my case, I'm afraid. More than 300 human beings died in that crash. Their families have lost loved ones. I don't see that as a matter for cheap comedy. Perhaps that's just me.

You are right. It wasn't the most appropriate thing to say given the true subject of this thread.

My apologies to anyone that may have taken offense.


(I don't delete my posts though, because I own up to my mistakes, so I can't in good conscience remove it.)

No, she was referring to the celebrity disclaimer I put under the thread title. We disagreed on whether or not it was an acceptable method to draw attention to the thread.

I offer no apologies and no regrets. The thread had been dead for three weeks and not one warm body could be bothered to resurrect it during that time. My Reply #63, into which I invested considerable time and effort for sake of my concern about the attack, elicited 4 pageviews in 8 hours, two of which were mine. Hence nobody could be bothered to even look at the MH17 thread.

I figured if I put in something absurd and anomalous, it would at least attract some attention. The gambit paid off exceptionally well. And considering the harmlessness and transparency of the means, I feel the ends more than justified them.

It's also hard to feel guilty about "the virtual dismissal of nearly 300 dead in favor of cheap comedy" when the literal dismissal--by everybody on the board--occurred three weeks ago, the "cheap comedy" wasn't intended to be comedic, and the disclaimer happens to be the one and only reason the literal dismissal of the topic wasn't permanent.

[ՏՇԾԵԵʅՏɧ_LԹՏՏʅҼ]

Aug 5, 2014 23:39:49 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

No, she was referring to the celebrity disclaimer I put under the thread title. We disagreed on whether or not it was an acceptable method to draw attention to the thread.

I offer no apologies and no regrets. The thread had been dead for three weeks and not one warm body could be bothered to resurrect it during that time. My Reply #63, into which I invested considerable time and effort for sake of my concern about the attack, elicited 4 pageviews in 8 hours, two of which were mine. Hence nobody could be bothered to even look at the MH17 thread.

I figured if I put in something absurd and anomalous, it would at least attract some attention. The gambit paid off exceptionally well. And considering the harmlessness and transparency of the means, I feel the ends more than justified them.

It's also hard to feel guilty about "the virtual dismissal of nearly 300 dead in favor of cheap comedy" when the literal dismissal--by everybody on the board--occurred three weeks ago, the "cheap comedy" wasn't intended to be comedic, and the disclaimer happens to be the one and only reason the literal dismissal of the topic wasn't permanent.

If a thread has been dead for 3 weeks, I'd like to consider it dead, since there's new topics popping up to take over. I don't think that CPR should be performed to try to keep a dead subject going, if interest has moved on to other subjects - but that's just me.

YMMV.

[Deleted]

Aug 5, 2014 23:39:49 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

Aug 5, 2014 22:24:25 GMT -5 @richardintn said:

You are right. It wasn't the most appropriate thing to say given the true subject of this thread.

My apologies to anyone that may have taken offense.


(I don't delete my posts though, because I own up to my mistakes, so I can't in good conscience remove it.)

No, she was referring to the celebrity disclaimer I put under the thread title. We disagreed on whether or not it was an acceptable method to draw attention to the thread.

I offer no apologies and no regrets. The thread had been dead for three weeks and not one warm body could be bothered to resurrect it during that time. My Reply #63, into which I invested considerable time and effort for sake of my concern about the attack, elicited 4 pageviews in 8 hours, two of which were mine. Hence nobody could be bothered to even look at the MH17 thread.

I figured if I put in something absurd and anomalous, it would at least attract some attention. The gambit paid off exceptionally well. And considering the harmlessness and transparency of the means, I feel the ends more than justified them.

It's also hard to feel guilty about "the virtual dismissal of nearly 300 dead in favor of cheap comedy" when the literal dismissal--by everybody on the board--occurred three weeks ago, the "cheap comedy" wasn't intended to be comedic, and the disclaimer happens to be the one and only reason the literal dismissal of the topic wasn't permanent.

My apology stands (since I mentioned hope, and she mentioned hope, I feel confident that I was at least, in part, responsible for contributing to the issue).

If you feel no need to apologize, that's completely your call. I wasn't apologizing for your part in the issue, I was apologizing for mine. 

[Virgil Showlion]

Aug 6, 2014 0:19:37 GMT -5 ՏՇԾԵԵʅՏɧ_LԹՏՏʅҼ said:

If a thread has been dead for 3 weeks, I'd like to consider it dead, since there's new topics popping up to take over. I don't think that CPR should be performed to try to keep a dead subject going, if interest has moved on to other subjects - but that's just me.

YMMV.

I'd agree with you if the issue wasn't of great importance or the CPR was more than one line of text beneath the thread title in the thread index.

Aug 6, 2014 0:57:51 GMT -5 @richardintn said:

My apology stands (since I mentioned hope, and she mentioned hope, I feel confident that I was at least, in part, responsible for contributing to the issue).

If you feel no need to apologize, that's completely your call. I wasn't apologizing for your part in the issue, I was apologizing for mine. 

Ah.

[The Captain]

Ahh, I knew I could count on the BBC...


www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28357880


Virgil Showlion - the graphics do an excellent job of explaining how the shrapnel/bullet damage could appear from a missile.  I didn't know they detonated prior to impact (similar to nuclear bombs).

I will be curious to find out what the findings are of the investigation.

[Virgil Showlion]

Aug 6, 2014 7:15:08 GMT -5 The Captain said:

Ahh, I knew I could count on the BBC...


www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28357880


Virgil Showlion - the graphics do an excellent job of explaining how the shrapnel/bullet damage could appear from a missile.  I didn't know they detonated prior to impact (similar to nuclear bombs).

I will be curious to find out what the findings are of the investigation.

That's if you trust it to be a fair investigation.

Mr. Haisenko is/was aware that the BUK is a shrapnel-based missile, Captain. That's not the reason for his skepticism. He questions the theory because (in his opinion) the gauge of the shrapnel is inconsistent with the puncturing, the shrapnel holes are bidirectional (suggesting fire from both sides), and the damage is limited to the cockpit area.

Basically he argues that BUK missile shrapnel ejected from a single point of detonation wouldn't cause the damage shown in the photos.

[mmhmm]

Aug 6, 2014 7:15:08 GMT -5 The Captain said:

Ahh, I knew I could count on the BBC...


www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28357880


Virgil Showlion - the graphics do an excellent job of explaining how the shrapnel/bullet damage could appear from a missile.  I didn't know they detonated prior to impact (similar to nuclear bombs).

I will be curious to find out what the findings are of the investigation.

I had read this, The Captain, and knew that was to what the damage had been attributed. Frankly, I don't know enough about that sort of thing to comment one way, or the other. The deaths of all those people, travelling innocently (some with their families), shocked and horrified me. They still do. I, too, am waiting to hear the results of the ongoing investigation - if only the ongoing investigation is allowed to continue! What's going on, to me, is absolutely horrific!

[Wisconsin Beth]

I trust the UK a helluva lot more than I trust Mayalasia Airlines, the Ukraine and Russia to investigate. 

I think the "black boxes" are where we're going to find answers.  At least if they've not been tampered with.  Which it seems like they haven't. 

As for lack of movement on this thread - I wasn't seeing much in the news beyond getting the bodies out.  And there's not much to say about that. 

[zibazinski]

Its a terrible tragedy that should never have happened. It was very apparent that it wasnt any kind of threat but simply a passenger plane. Disgusting.