What Makes People Tick?

Recently read an article entitled "Freedom Under Attack" in the Op-Ed section of The Jewish Press. The writer, Ron Prosor, is Israel's ambassador to the United Nations. Read the article at: http://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/freedom-under-attack/2015/03/05/ A lot of what Ambassador Prosor says has me nodding, not just today but in the past as well and from what I read, I find that he makes a lot of sense to me. Which is why I'm sharing some quotes from the article. The quotes are in bold text, my own words are in plain text. Ambassador Prosor starts by looking at 1945, the year World War Two ended in Europe. The year 2015 marks seventy years since the closing of Auschwitz - Birkenau and other Nazi camps, the death of Anne Frank, the liberation of Europe from the claws of Nazi Germany and the eventual end of World War Two. My grandparents lived through that War and growing up, it was not uncommon that they and other grown-ups, those old enough to remember ...

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 ...

If you read anything at all today, read this. The story of these people deserves more attention than it has been getting up to now. More attention from the international media and from international aid organisations as well. This 25 July 2014 article from The Wall Street Journal opened my eyes to a side of the MH17 crash that I'd barely given any thought to up until now. Then the plane crashed. The cabin's second-row overhead compartment is in a tree across from the village hall—and suitcases and clothes are in backyards and gardens of square-windowed cottages.  Villagers dashed into their basements, fearing a bomb attack. Residents in a nearby village ran for the church, certain that the world was coming to an end. A colleague of Ms. Voloshina screamed after being nearly hit by the plane's cargo hold.        Days later, the 43-year-old mayor found the bottom half of a man's body in the shrubs next to her office. She has barely slept since then.  ...

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 ...

Een kort artikel met wat uitleg over de handelsrelaties tussen Rusland en verschillende Europese landen, waaronder Nederland. "De Europese ministers van Buitenlandse Zaken zijn dinsdag bijeen om te spreken over eventuele handelssancties tegen Rusland. Sommige van hen vinden dat de Europese Unie moet ingrijpen om te voorkomen dat het land wapens blijft leveren aan de pro-Russische separatisten in Oekraïne. Maar hoe groot is de handel met Rusland eigenlijk?" Bron: Overzicht van handel met Rusland , Nieuws.nl Gepubliceerd: 22/07/14

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 newspaper De Telegraaf reported yesterday that some of the bodies of the 298 innocents who died after being shot down BY A ROCKET  (which according to both Ukrainian and American sources was sent from the rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine area) last Thursday were being kept in a train. The train not only stored bodies of the victims, it also kept these bodies cool (to keep them from smelling, decomposing etc.). In the middle of European summer, that was very necessary. De Telegraaf reports today that the cooling system in the storage train had been TURNED OFF overnight from Sunday to Monday. Apparently no one understands how this could happen...

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?

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 flying from Amsterdam (The Netherlands) to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) was shot down yesterday over eastern Ukraine. By a rocket. A passenger jet carrying 298 innocent people was shot down BY A BLOODY ROCKET. A very sophisticated one too, apparently. Both Ukraine and Russia deny involvement, point at the pro-Russian separatist movement who are in control in eastern Ukraine as the culprit. Last night, the Americans confirmed that a rocket had  indeed hit the plane. Today they were able to confirm that the rocket that killed 298 innocent people originated from eastern Ukraine. Two hundred and ninety-eight innocent people shot down. That is the kind of damage one rocket can do in the hands of the wrong people. While yesterday the confirmed Dutch death toll stood around 90, those figures were revised upwards last night to 154 and again to 189 earlier this afternoon. One hundred and eighty-nine of my people are dead because the Ukrainians and the Russi...