I don't know why, after thousands of years of war and every day accidents, a lot of people still do not know what trauma looks like in real life. Movies and video games, perhaps?

Not long ago there was a video from eastern Ukraine showing victims of an airbursting mortar, one of them being a woman under a tree that must have been right under the shell as it exploded. The flesh was torn in a way that exposed the ribs and she lay dead and burned on open soil and leaves blown off the tree. Out comes the laymen conspiratists saying the body looks decomposed and partially skeletonised, "no blood", and that the separatist rebels must have placed her on the scene to make her appear as a civilian victim of the attack. *face palm*

A little while back there was a conspiracy theory surrounding the Boston marathon bombings that got a little traction for a while. It used photos from the aftermath scene claiming that there is almost no blood visible in the photos... from two bomb blasts that burned, tore flesh and kicked up dust... Oh but obviously since there were no blood spraying from decapitated limbs the whole attack must have been faked and by using clever misdirection the people who rushed to tend to the wounded in the first minute must have been applying prosthetic wounds to actors and actresses. Clearly that must be the case. *face palm*

I have seen the graphic aftermath footage from the MH17 shootdown and there is nothing unusual about it at all. Some bodies are burnt, others are simply broken from hard impact. Some of them have been blown out of the plane in the sky and hit the ground at terminal velocity, hitting open soil. Intense heat, soil, grass and clothing does a lot for soaking up any fluids. Leave them to dry in the sun as well and it only takes minutes. The bodies appearing relatively dry is consistent with, oh I don't know, all of recorded human history.

ARGH! *face palm*

I must confess that I also never have seen a dead body in real life, but I hope, I wouldn't create stupid theories like this in such a situation.

The quickness for casting blame is to try to take control of the narrative from the beginning, because everyone else will be attempting to do the same. If Ukraine and the US remained silent while figuring out what definitively happened it would allow the rebels and Russia to spin their own narrative in the meantime, and by the time the truth of the matter is figured out the general public may not even have interest in it anymore (having already decided for themselves what the "truth" is based on the narratives of groups who chose not to remain silent during this time). It doesn't mean there aren't some half-truths or outright lies as part of the government press releases (that's par for the course there), but rather it just reflects the ugly reality of world politics.

As for the statements by Ukraine, in pretty much any military conflict you'll find the same pattern- each side tries to downplay the capabilities of the other side while exaggerating their own capabilities. Additionally, some of the information currently floating around was that the rebels may have seized the BUK system from the Ukrainian military, which at the time would have been quite embarrassing for Ukraine to admit the rebels are taking control of their higher end military assets. You'll also find a similar reversal of position from the rebels, who were previously claiming they had seized a BUK system, then after MH17 crashed removed all social media posts making these claims and said they didn't have the ability to shoot down planes as high as MH17.

When dealing with statements made by governments and groups involved in politics you have to assume that everyone is lying or spinning things to some degree, then figure out what specific goals they're trying to accomplish by doing so, and from there sort out what the truth of the matter actually is.

The US is monitoring missile launches world-wide. Of all possible countries, the US has the capabilities to determine from which region exactly a missile went off. And IF (not claiming it is so) in this case it launched from a region controlled by the seperatists, that's a pretty strong indication about who pulled the trigger.
How much this qualifies as proof is another story - but then again, there's no hard proof in such conflicts at all.

There is so much propaganda about this right now it's incredible.

Actually, that was during WWI, so the "Nazis" didn't even exist yet. Of course the Zimmerman telegram only brought the US closer to declaring war against Germany, and the idea that Mexico, in the midst of a long and bloody revolution at the time, would be able to keep the U.S. sufficiently distracted was far-fetched (to put it mildly) anyway, so it was possibly one of the worst ideas in a war that was full of them.

[/end off-topic]

And if they were supposedly dead before the impact, what would have caused that? Just curious.

Unfortunately just because the US of Army is watching the Ukraine it does not necessary mean that any of their satellites were watching that exact area at that time. For a start we know they are spending a lot of time watching the Russian borders for any "movements".



An ugly truth I will give you. I find it even more saddening given all of those who have lost their lives without wanting any of this, both those on the plane and those civilians caught up in all this as they just try to live their lives.
I really do wish we could just hand over space and tell these lug-heads if they really want to go kill each other for nothing then go there and blow yourselves to hell, let the rest of us sit down to a diplomatic, democratic and calm discussion to sort out all of our problems.


I am going to try and remember something I was taught many years ago. I do believe it takes the human body less then 10 min to bleed out even if it is not a major artery if the individual is not treated correctly, and on non baked soil it can occur without you even seeing, as the ground can easily absorb all the blood the body can expel without a pool forming.
It makes me ill just thinking about it, but I agree. If you watch movies or games you would think everyone goes out in a blast of blood, but people just "leaking" is the more common way to loose their blood even from a missing limbs.

Another point with which to shut down the conspiracy theory is that many bodies were ejected from the plane at an altitude of 10km. They would have around three minutes of free-falling at terminal velocity, some of that time being spent in low air pressure where their internal body pressure would have pushed blood out faster. Morbid and disgusting, and I'm not saying this out of disrespect for the victims and their families, but it makes a whole lot more sense than speculating that they were murdered somewhere else, drained of blood and loaded on to a plane set up for a false flag operation.

I hope that anyone who may have survived the blast lost conciousness quickly after being blown out of the plane.

The idea being presented/implied is that the incident could be a false flag operation intended to frame the separatists and sway public opinion against them. The dead bodies would have been loaded onto the plane before takeoff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag

Just explaining, not making claims one way or another.

Yes you can bet that the defense minister in a brewing civil war probably had some sort of power.^^
The government immediately after the coup was a coalition by Svoboda and some other parties. And svoboda is as far right as you can get. They aren't even far right anymore, they are outright Neo-nazis, their previous name was "Social-National Party" and their logo was the Wolfsangel.
So your claim (and the state departments) that far right elements had no power at no point is a lie. We are used to that from the state department, but you should be better than that.

I really don't know what to believe any more.

1982, the soviets shot a Malaysian machine down. (~300 dead)
1988, the US shot an Iranian plane down (~300 dead)
2014, Ukraine shot a plane down (don't tell me the terrorists did it, they are all Ukrainian in a civil war). (~300 dead)

It will happen again, these weapons are mostly automated and the flights need to send a signal to be recognized as a civil plane. No human distinguishes a plane on 10km distance.

I'm not a fan of conspiration theories and for double dealings - always the attacker is trying to divert attention (Germany in 1939, US in 2003, Russia in 2014, ...). I don't think the US is always looking for a war. Why should anyone? You'll see that the US will avoid any direct part and the burden is on the Western European countries now (in my opinion). Russia however has already started the war with the annexation of Crimea and sending troops there in the beginning. It's a new kind of war where even big powers operate in disguise.

Let's just look at the past weeks. How many airplanes have been shoot down by Ukrainian forces and how many by pro-Russian forces? The probability that pro-Russian forces wanted to just shoot down another airplane is very, very high if you ask me. But of course the full truth might never be known to us. And without equipment (and people) from Russia all their operations would not be possible. They even might be beaten already.

Just look at the contrast between Crimea and Eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian forces in Crimea just went away from their own land when they saw that the only thing they can achieve is sheding blood. In Eastern Ukraine where Ukrainians and Russian live together in about equal parts some people just took weapons and started shooting and killing in the name of whatever.. In the end they cannot really hope to win unless Russian troops invade too.

From very far away it's just a war between Russia and Ukraine and Russia started it and invaded Ukraine (the Crimean part) and now is involved guerilla-style in Eastern Ukraine by giving material support.

It's not the people on Maidan who started the killing or shoot down an airplane.

If F. Hollande, A. Merkel, D. Cameron, B. Obama and the Malaysian and Dutch authorities (don't know them, sorry) had balls, they would send some special forces from their respective countries together to safe the ground zero site and keep proofs and bodies untouched by pro-russians or ukrainian army, just to make the investigations possible !
Unfortunately, they all fear V. Putin reaction concerning this break of sovereignty and he knows it !

What a pitiful world !