the shooting down of Malaysian Flight. MH17

[CaptainQuintero]

Thoroughly fed up of these horrible events, drone strikes on weddings in Yemen, regime changes planned by cowards in suits, big boy nations arming their little proxy militias, artillery barrages onto children, the list goes on. Our 'leaders' one and all have failed humanity wholesale, we may have high technology but were still a bunch of knuckle dragging apes, just in smart clothes. Anyone who wants to try and being a little light back into the world is swiftly dealt with and trampled into the dirt.

No wonder there's been no alien contact, we're probably under an intergalactic quarantine until we become halfway civilised.

RIP to those missing, what a terrible waste.

[rtrimbath]

This is unbelievable. I'm speechless.

[ptrthgr8]

I'm a little surprised by how many folks themselves are surprised that something like this could happen. If nothing else, mankind has proven (a mind-numbingly staggering number of times) over the last several centuries to have a seemingly limitless capacity to cause harm to one another. The depths of such depravity have only gotten more massive on scale as mankind plods along.

So, while I agree it's a terrible tragedy and I feel for the families and loved ones of the victims, I can't say (unfortunately) that I'm shocked by this news.

[MrGTO]

Now reports of looting of the crash site..... Filthy animals should be shot on sight....

[sw15825]

Thoroughly fed up of these horrible events, drone strikes on weddings in Yemen, regime changes planned by cowards in suits, big boy nations arming their little proxy militias, artillery barrages onto children, the list goes on. Our 'leaders' one and all have failed humanity wholesale, we may have high technology but were still a bunch of knuckle dragging apes, just in smart clothes. Anyone who wants to try and being a little light back into the world is swiftly dealt with and trampled into the dirt.

No wonder there's been no alien contact, we're probably under an intergalactic quarantine until we become halfway civilised.

RIP to those missing, what a terrible waste.

So sad and true. This is a big one in the news today because so many innocent people lost their lives at once. But the sad fact also of other big players who end up killing innocents all in the name of a "war against terrorists" or just greed and control. Then say we do our very best to minimize civilian casualties Wow and thanks for your your concern. One casualty is one too many in my opinion. There is plenty of blame to go around to the big players who seem to lack any concern for human life. Sad days indeed.

[ErikB]

Thoughts and prayers...

Could think of little else flying back from La Palma this morning.

So weird to step off the plane in Amsterdam and walk past the gates, coffee shops,baggage claim, customs etc.

I hope there's a heaven for all the poor souls that we lost..

[Guest rob]

Anything to do with Russia having passed that anti-*** law, you think?

:eyeroll:

[samuelsmithbeer]

The last half was a hard read for me. Those poor kids.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2697010/Faces-innocent-victims-Melbourne-real-estate-agent-wife-student-leading-AIDS-doctors-confirmed-dead-Flight-MH17-terrorist-attack-killed-298-people-board.html

[Bartolomeo]

How about the Australian lady who lost family members on both flights....very sad

[Aksan]

Yeah almost 200 Dutch ppl were on board, among them also a member of the Senate, 3 babies, many parents with their children, HIV researchers, etc. Already the Dutch newspapers are very hard towards Russia(n rebels).

Landed yesterday at Schiphol and by now its a media circus

[ZinZan]

I think our aids research gonna be thrown back 10 years with this loss

[Laxman]

My condolences to the families. That fact that something like this in this day in age can happen is crazy. Maybe it is just me but Putin seems to be very dodgy. Hopefully those that committed this heinous act will be bought to justice and made an example of.

[DoubleDD]

I'm saddened by the photographs of the scene and the victims laying there. It's unfortunate access to the scene is extremely difficult. Put your ideals aside for a minute and let people do the humane task of recovering the bodies. As for those responsible, swift and brutal justice.

[MIKA27]

Internet is “all lies," eye-rolling rebel leader tells CNN on missing missile tweet

CNN's Chris Cuomo interviewed Donetsk People's Republic leader Alexander Borodai today about the chaotic aftermath of the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight 17. Among the questions for the pro-Russia militant: did your guys down the plane? (No.) And what happened to those brag tweets right before the plane crash, in which an account that appeared to represent your group boasted of possessing Russian anti-aircraft missile systems? Borodai's response to that one is best part of this totally bizarre interview: he dramatically rolls his eyes at Cuomo, and tells him basically, don't believe everything you see on the internet.

http://youtu.be/RtTNIhf812w

[maxcjs0101]

"Don't believe everything you see on the internet."

Seriously? That's a f*cking convenient answer, isn't it?

[helix]

Absolutely no shame, no respect for anything or anyone. Nothing more than a bunch of despicable, disgraceful, vodka guzzling low life looting degenerates .

[Maplepie]

Now now... Let's not get TOO cynical.

Or carried away, of course... Remember the decorum maintained on a public forum.

[helix]

about all the decorum I can muster all things considered.

[El Presidente]

There is a burning fury down in Oz.

I still don't understand why a UN clean up team wasn't sanctioned with NATO support on day one. It is a war zone. What can individual countries do. 2000 UN troops with air support and Putin/Kiev co-operation and we wouldn't have our kin lying in the sun with their belongings looted for three days.

The whole episode is a disgrace.

[MIKA27]

There is a burning fury down in Oz.

I still don't understand why a UN clean up team wasn't sanctioned with NATO support on day one. It is a war zone. What can individual countries do. 2000 UN troops with air support and Putin/Kiev co-operation and we wouldn't have our kin lying in the sun with their belongings looted for three days.

The whole episode is a disgrace.

The UN in my opinion are completely useless - All they do is waive their hands in the air condemning this, condemning that but as far as action is concerned, I don't see them doing much at all for a great many issues in the world.

[Maplepie]

I don't see them doing much at all for a great many issues in the world.

that Rwanda thing was great evidence about that.

The General in that conflict ended up homeless for a while. But then he became a Canadian Senator!

He later resigned. But that's besides the point.

[ptrthgr8]

I'm shocked - shocked!! - to learn that the UN is feckless.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

[MIKA27]

The Bodies on the Train

On Monday, a train left the Torez station, in Eastern Ukraine, with the bodies, or parts of the bodies, of passengers of Malaysian Air Flight 17 stacked in its cars. Organizing that departure had required angry statements by the President of the United States and other world leaders, and a spreading, queasy sense of disgrace. For four days, since the plane was shot down, coal miners and other townspeople, as well as some armed men, had gathered bodies from the wide field where the plane fell, shattered on the ground, but they were not trained rescue-and-recovery workers, and there had been a haphazard quality to the collection. There had been two hundred and ninety-eight people on the plane. On Monday, when Dutch forensic experts finally got to look inside the train cars—they were refrigerated but, the BBC noted, “the smell of decay emanating from the carriages was overwhelming”—there were perhaps two hundred corpses. Another few dozen had been in local morgues. Any other human remains, unless incinerated in the crash, were still on the ground, missed when the volunteers picked through the busted suitcases and toys. (A miner handed Natalia Antelava, of the BBC, a Dutch passport and a wallet.) The counts vary, but there appear to be a couple dozen bodies, or more, unaccounted for. (Update: Monday night, a Ukrainian official said that when the train departed there were two hundred and eighty-two bodies on it, and other remains.)

If the Ukrainian separatists who controlled the area where the plane went down had treated the bodies well—or just, as President Obama said Monday, with “decency”—they and their Russian sponsors might have kept a little bit more control over this story. The scenario was never good: a plane full of people—florists, actors, scientists, small children—who’d embarked in Amsterdam and were headed to Kuala Lumpur, was hit by a missile while flying at more than thirty thousand feet. The evidence so far strongly indicates that the separatists, whom the Russians have armed and trained, fired the missile, and so murdered the people whose bodies they are now picking up and putting into black plastic bags. They have denied it, with extravagant accusations and elaborate conspiracy theories. There needs to be a proper investigation to establish, in strong terms, what happened; apart from the geopolitical implications, two hundred and ninety-eight people are dead. The separatists have spent days keeping investigators from the crash site, trampling evidence into the dirt, or quietly lifting it and carrying it away. President Obama, in his remarks Monday, asked, “These separatists are removing evidence from the crash site, all of which begs the question: What exactly are they trying to hide?”

That is the legal and political question; the emotional one, again, involves the handling of the dead. Secretary of State John Kerry, on “Face The Nation,” said that “drunken separatists have been piling bodies into trucks.” He repeated the phrase “drunken separatists” on a few more Sunday shows. The unfinished journey of the Flight 17 passengers has been, as Obama said, “an insult to those who have lost loved ones.” (Desecration is almost the most ancient insult.) They’d been kidnapped without their families having the hope of anything but a funeral. The separatists might deny that they had shot down the plane, but they were blatantly, in front of cameras, stealing it. Parents were on television, asking for their children’s bodies back. Also on Monday, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding access to the site.

The plane’s flight-data recorders, or black boxes, have been on their own murky trip. The separatists had them, and said that they were waiting to hand them over to the proper international authorities—by which they may have meant someone in Russia who could tamper with the contents. It was left to reporters to take pictures of a sheet of the airplane’s exterior pitted with holes. Finally, on Monday, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that the separatists had agreed to give the boxes to his country’s authorities. He said that a rebel commander had told him that the bodies would come back, too: the Malaysians could have them, and give them to the Dutch. What happened to the plane is such an outrage that the outrageous fortune of it happening to Malaysian Air, of all carriers, has been slightly overshadowed. Two months ago, another Malaysian Air flight disappeared entirely; this one, turned inside out, has been sickeningly visible.

On Monday, while waiting for the separatists to strike a deal, Peter van Vliet, the head of the Dutch forensics team, said, “We don’t know the time. We don’t know the destination. But we’ve got the promise the train is going.” Soon after, word came that the train was headed to Kharkiv, where the Ukrainian government is in control. The weekend of unattended bodies can’t be followed by more days of wandering. They need a return trip home.

[stigmata]

im shocked at whats been allowed to unfold in gaza also.

[Smallclub]

im shocked at whats been allowed to unfold in gaza also.

I am shocked at dozens of things happening worldwide; I won't bring them here…