What Makes People Tick?

Minister Timmermans vertelde op woensdagavond 8 oktober 2014 bij televisieprogramma Pauw dat er bij een passagier van het neergehaalde vliegtuig #MH17 een zuurstofmasker is gevonden.  Een YouTube video afkomstig van Pauw - Gemist  waarin Minister Timmermans vertelt dat er een masker gevonden is: YouTube: Roeland Roovers Dat er een zuurstofmasker gevonden is bij een passagier betekent dus dat er voor in ieder geval een persoon genoeg tijd zat tussen de inslag van de raket en de dood om een zuurstofmasker om te doen. Genoeg tijd om te zien en horen wat er gebeurde, genoeg tijd om de armen uit te strekken, een masker uit de lucht te pakken en dat om te doen. Genoeg tijd.  Oorlog is niet leuk of mooi of heroïsch. Wapens zijn gemaakt om levende wezens te stoppen, om anderen te doden. Mensen voelen en denken na, ook in hun laatste momenten. De treurigheid en de grote leegte die ik voelde toen ik hoorde over het neerschieten van vlucht MH17 komt nu weer terug. D...

The first official report about the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 came out today. Thirty-plus pages of maybes and more questions, thankfully some clarity too however not nearly as much of it as I'd hoped for. The report seems to only confirm all the speculation going on in the days after the downing of the Malaysian Airlines passenger carrier. The aeroplane didn't suffer any kind of failure, the pilots and crew didn't screw up or do anything wrong. Something external, something outside and slightly in front of the aeroplane, exploded and impacted with MH17, causing it to break apart in mid-air. The cockpit, as I understand it, pretty much went straight down, the rest of the plane, the part with engines and momentum, disintegrated and came down in pieces spread out over a larger area.  Chilling reports from villagers on the ground  confirm this, their stories of body parts landing in their gardens and on their streets are as horrifying as the loss of human ...

Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Frans Timmermans spoke to the United Nations Security Council about the 'downing' of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 carrying a total of 298 innocent men, women and children, 193 of whom were Dutch. Parts of Mr. Timmermans' speech were shown on Dutch television news ( NOS Nieuws ) such as the statement I transcribed below in order to share it with readers of this blog. Minister Timmermans' speech can be viewed here on YouTube . Any transcription errors are mine. "Just for one minute, I'm not addressing you as representatives of your countries... But as husbands and wives, fathers and mothers.  Just imagine that you first get the news that your husband was killed. And then within two or three days you see images of some thug removing a wedding band from their hands. Just imagine that this could be your spouse.   To my dying day I will not understand that it took so much time for the rescue workers to be allowed to do their ...

BBC News reports earlier today that Dutch experts have been given limited access to some of the bodies of the victims of the rocket attack against Malaysian Airlines flight #MH17. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose country lost 193 people, said all political and economic options were on the table if access to the crash site remained unsatisfactory.  "We want our people back," he told parliament in The Hague. Source: MH17 plane crash: Dutch experts examine bodies , BBC News

Dutch television just showed an interview with a Ukrainian man who explains what he saw and heard yesterday after Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by a rocket over eastern Ukraine. The interview was subtitled in Dutch, the translation to English is mine. The images belong to Dutch NOS television . "An explosion and a bang. Then people fell from the sky. People started appearing right out of the clouds. A large piece of wreckage landed at the end of the street. People fell on the rooftops of houses and on the asphalt." Two hundred and ninety-eight innocent men, women and children. Dead through no fault of their own because they were dragged into a conflict they had nothing to do with. Dead because ... Because why? Because what?