MikeLigalig.com

5. Cathay Pacific Airways (1954)


A Douglas DC-4, a similar aircraft to the one that was shot down. (Russavia)

On July 23, 1954, mainland China's People's Liberation Army fighters shot down a Cathay Pacific Airways (the airline of Hong Kong, then under British control) C-54 Skymaster flying from Bangkok to Hong Kong; 10 out of the 19 passengers and crew died. In apologizing for the attack to Britain days later, the Chinese government stated that they had thought the plane was a military aircraft from the Republic of China n (Taiwan) on an attack mission against Hainan Island (near where the shoot-down took place).

However, the initial tragedy was compounded when two PLA fighters engaged three US Navy planes that were searching for survivors; the two PLA planes were shot down. While admitting fault and promising compensation in the case of the civilian plane, China claimed that it was faultless in the confrontation with the US. President Eisenhower, in turn, alleged the harsh tone toward the US and conciliatory tone toward Britain in reference to the Cathay plane was a Communist plot to split the allies.

It's hard to say the incident made relations between the Allies and mainland China much worse than they already were, but it risked bringing the Allies further into the battles that were then occurring between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China. Given that the Eisenhower administration was apparently considering using nuclear weapons on the ROC's behalf, any heightening of the tensions there was dangerous.

4. El Al Flight 402 (1955)


An El Al Lockheed Costellation, similar to the one that was shot down. (Oyoyoy)

On July 27, 1955, an El Al flight from Vienna to Tel Aviv flew into Bulgarian airspace and was shot down by two Bulgarian MiG fighters. All 58 people on board were killed. After initially denying involvement, Bulgaria admitted to having shot the plane down. Despite occurring during a low point in relations between the Soviet bloc (including Bulgaria) and the US and its allies (including Israel), international fallout was minimal.

Eight years after the attack, Bulgaria agreed to pay a total of $195,000 ($1.5 million in current dollars) to Israel, having already compensated non-Israeli passengers.

3. Itavia Flight 870 (1980)


An Itavia DC-9, similar to the one shot down. (Piergiuliano Chesi)

This is a case where we still don't really know the true story. On June 27, 1980, an Itavia Airlines flight from Bologna to Palermo with 81 passengers and crew crashed in the Tyrhennian Sea, near Sicily. The New York Times' Elisabetta Povoledo reports that the "most widely accepted theory behind the crash" â€" for which an Italian court last year said there was "abundantly" clear evidence" â€" was that a stray missile from an aircraft hit the plane, but any information about which country's aircraft it was, or why, is still very much up in the air.

An Italian judge, Rosario Priore, presented the theory that there was a NATO plot to shoot down a plane carrying Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, and the Itavia jet got caught up in that operation. He presented radar evidence suggesting the presence of US, French, Libyan, and British military operations near to where the plane crashed. Francesco Cossiga, the prime minister at the time, said decades later that the plane was shot down by French military personnel. But neither his nor Priore's claims have been proven.

2. Iran Air Flight 655 (1988)


Another Airbus A300B2-203 operated by Iran Air, at Barcelona - El Prat Airport in 2011. (Dura-Ace)

Though the Soviets did it first, the US also once accidentally downed a civilian airliner carrying about 300 people on it. On July 3, 1988, as the Iran-Iraq war was winding down, US and Iranian ships were involved in some skirmishes in the Persian Gulf. An Airbus A300 took off from a nearby airport, one which was used for both military and civilian purposes. An American cruiser, the USS Vincennes, mistook the plane for an F-14, an American fighter plane that we had sold to Iran before the 1979 revolution, and launched two missiles, downing the plane and killing everyone on board.

President Reagan called the event a "terrible human tragedy," and stated "we deeply regret any loss of life." Iran's UN ambassador condemned the action as ''criminal act,'' an ''atrocity'' and a ''massacre," while the US insisted it was a misunderstanding. Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush called the idea the US would have shot down the plane deliberately "offensive and absurd," and argued that allowing passenger flights out of an airport as a naval battle was underway was irresponsible of the Iranians. "They allowed a civilian aircraft loaded with passengers to proceed on a path over a warship engaged in battle,'' Bush said. ''That was irresponsible and a tragic error.''

Iran sued the United States in the International Court of Justice, and the American government eventually agreed in 1996 to pay $61.8 million ($93.7 million today) to the families of victims; notably, that amount was 1/30th of the compensation the US secured from Libya for victims of the Lockerbie plane bombing that same year. The US government has never apologized for shooting down the plane, beyond Reagan's initial statement, and Max Fisher has noted the event contributes to Iranian mistrust of American intentions to this day.

1. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (1983)


Korean Air Lines Boeing 747SP at EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg in 1985; the plane that crashed in 1983 was a 747-230B. (Sangil)

Also known as "that time the Soviet Union killed a sitting US Congressman." KAL007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter plane on September 1, 1983, killing all 269 passengers and crew, including Larry McDonald, a Congressman from Georgia then in his fourth term. An ardent anti-Communist and believer in various conspiracy theories about the Rockefellers, the Trilateral Commission, and the Council on Foreign Relations plotting to bring about a socialist world government, McDonald also was president of the John Birch Society, the ultra-right-wing conspiracist group.

The fact that the crash killed McDonald would fit perfectly into his particular set of conspiracy theories, but there's no evidence that what happened was more complicated than KAL007 entering Soviet airspace and being shot down as an intruder. This International Civil Aviation Organization report from 1993, incorporating documents released by Russian president Boris Yeltsin that Soviet leaders had previously withheld, summarizes what we know well, and finds Soviet personnel appearing baffled and concerned by the presence of an unknown aircraft, rather than determined to strike intentionally, though their decision to strike without attempting to establish contact with the plane was reckless.

The direct response to the attack â€" and subsequent Soviet attempt at a cover-up â€" was largely rhetorical. President Reagan condemned the shoot-down as a "crime against humanity" which "must never be forgotten." The US responded to Soviet intransigence by releasing substantial amounts of classified material to back up the charge that the Soviets (accidentally or not) shot the plane down. An unintended side effect of that was to weaken the US's ability to monitor Soviet communications through Japan "According to various unnamed Japanese officials, changes made in the Soviet codes and frequencies following the American disclosures reduced the effectiveness of Japanese monitoring by 60 percent," David M. Johnson noted in a write-up on the intelligence losses for Harvard and the Center for Information Policy Research.

The shoot-down led to the expansion of the Global Positioning System to civilians, which Reagan announced in the wake of the shoot-down. It would have been harder for the KAL pilots to drift into Soviet airspace with satellite navigation technology.

Before Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 17 July 2014

[There were]... seven previous airliner shoot-downs that could provide some clue as to what the consequences of the crash will be. The list is hardly comprehensive but gives a sense of how these situations are handled.

kind of gives us some perspective...

According to the United States Government, the crew incorrectly identified the Iranian Airbus A300 as an attacking F-14A Tomcat fighter, a plane made in the United States and operated at that time by only two forces worldwide, the United States Navy and the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force. The Iranian F-14s had been supplied by manufacturer Grumman in an air-to-air configuration only and had no known anti-ship capabilities.

The event generated a great deal of controversy and criticism of the United States. Some analysts have blamed U.S. military commanders and the captain of Vincennes for reckless and aggressive behavior in a tense and dangerous environment.

As of 1993, the United States had not apologized to Iran. In 1996, the United States and Iran reached "an agreement in full and final settlement of all disputes, differences, claims, counterclaims" relating to the incident at the International Court of Justice, including a recognition of the incident in the form of "...the United States recognized the aerial incident of 3 July 1988 as a terrible human tragedy and expressed deep regret over the Loss of lives caused by the incident...". As part of the settlement, the United States did not admit legal liability but agreed to pay on an "ex gratia" basis US$61.8 million, amounting to $213,103.45 per passenger, in compensation to the families of the Iranian victims.

Iran Air still uses flight number IR655 on the Tehranâ€"Dubai route as a memorial to the victims.

wikipedia/

Iran Air Flight 655

Iran Air Flight 655 was an Iran Air civilian passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai that was shot down by the United States Navy guided missile cruiser USS Vincennes on 3 July 1988. The incident took place in Iranian airspace, over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, and on the flight's usual flight path. The aircraft, an Airbus A300 B2-203, was destroyed by SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles fired from the Vincennes.

All 290 on board, including 66 children and 16 crew, died. This event ranks seventh among the deadliest disasters in aviation history, tenth if including the 9/11 attacks, which includes ground casualties; the incident retains the highest death toll of any aviation incident in the Persian Gulf and the highest death toll of any incident involving an Airbus aircraft anywhere in the world. The Vincennes had entered Iranian territorial waters after one of its helicopters drew warning fire from Iranian speedboats operating within Iranian territorial limits.

According to the Iranian government, Vincennes negligently shot down the civilian aircraft: the airliner was making IFF squawks in Mode III (not Mode II used by Iranian military planes), a signal that identified it as a civilian craft.

Family members of the victims killed in the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 plane disaster line the route along which a procession of hearses arriving at the Korporaal van Oudheusden barracks in Hilversum on July 23, 2014. A Dutch air force transport plane carrying the first 16 coffins with the remains of victims of the downed Malaysian airliner landed at Eindhoven airport on Wednesday from an airport in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. (Michael Kooren/Reuters)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/

A convoy of hearses are escorted along the A27 highway by military police to Hilversum, where they will be identified by forensic experts, near Nieuwegein on July 23. The bodies of the first victims from a Malaysian airliner shot down over Ukraine last week arrived back in the Netherlands on Wednesday. (Marco de Swart/Reuters)

People pay their respects during a national day of mourning for the victims of the MH17 disaster in Amsterdam on July 23. Bells pealed and flags flew at half mast in memory of the 298 people killed when the airliner went down in an area of eastern Ukraine held by Russian-backed separatists. Wednesday's memorial is the first national day of mourning in the Netherlands since Queen Wilhelmina died in 1962. (Cris Toala Olivares/Reuters)

Soldiers carry a coffin during a ceremony to mark the return of the remains of passengers and crew killed in the downing of the Malaysia Airlines fight from Ukraine at Eindhoven air base on July 23. (Martin Meissner/Associated Press)

From left, King Willem Alexander and Queen Maxima of the Netherlands, along with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and other officials attend a national reception ceremony at Eindhoven for the remains of the victims of the Malaysia Airlines jetliner downed over rebel-held territory in Eastern Ukraine. (Francois Lenoir/Reuters)

The convoy of hearses with the remains of the victims of the MH17 tragedy drive past international flags on route to a military base in Hilversum. Two aircraft carrying the remains of some of the 298 people killed touched down at an airport in the Dutch city of Eindhoven as next-of-kin and Dutch and foreign officials looked on. (Toussaint Kluiters/Reuters)

The remains of the victims will be brought over the next few days to a military base in Hilversum. The Netherlands declared Wednesday the country's first day of national mourning in more than half a century. (Francois Lenoir/Reuters)

A KLM stewardess pays her respects at Schiphol Airport during a national day of mourning for those killed on Flight MH17. (Cris Toala Olivares/Reuters)

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17: Victims’ bodies arrive in Netherlands

Dutch citizens mourn victims as 2 Ukrainian fighter jets shot down over Eastern Ukraine

CBC News
Jul 23, 2014


A Ukrainian policeman watches as a train carrying the remains of the victims of Malaysia Airlines MH17 arrives in the city of Kharkiv in Eastern Ukraine on July 22. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)

On their way to Tivoli, the driver said Marsh, who was tipsy, was complaining that he lost his wallet at the club.

“I lost my wallet, my cash, my ATM, everything,” Villanueva quoted the Irish-Filipino TV host as saying.

Upon arriving at Tivoli, Marsh just stepped out of the cab and declared “I’m free,” the driver said.

The driver said he called out, “No, Sir.”

Marsh, the driver said, insisted, “I’m free. I’m not joking.”

The driver said Marsh kicked his cab when he insisted on being paid.

Villanueva said he got out of the car and Marsh mauled him. “He hurt me with a head butt,” he said.

The driver said before Marsh went up, he threw him a P100 bill at him.

more at https://ph.news.yahoo.com/tv-host-mauls-taxi-driver--no-money-for-p78-fare-092214332.html

TV host mauls taxi driver; no money for P78 fare

VERA Files
23 July 2014


Yahoo Southeast Asia Newsroom/TV 5 - Daniel Marsh (Photo from TV 5)

By ELLEN T. TORDESILLAS, VERA Files

A TV show host, who said he had no money to pay the P78.50 fare, mauled a taxi driver Wednesday morning in front of a Mandaluyong condominium.

Cabbie Edward Villanueva, 49, of World Taxi, said Daniel Marsh, one of the hosts of “Juan Direction,” a weekly documentary-style reality show, mauled him and damaged his cab when he insisted that the host pay the P78.50 fare reflected in the taximeter.

VERA Files tried to get Marsh side by text and call, but he did not reply.

Villanueva said Marsh got into his cab a little past 5 a.m. outside the Prive Luxury Club at The Fort in Taguig and directed him to go to the Tivoli Garden Residences in Mandaluyong.

cool.  angayan man ka diay kun mag-eyeglasses, loll.

He also dismissed that the US' "involvement" in world affairs such as in the conflict in Syria and the Russia-Ukraine crisis are a form of "interference."

Goldberg said that many problems fall on America's lap as a country with great human and financial resources.

"We don't view our involvement in the world as interference," he said. "Clearly like other countries we have our own interest and we pursue them. But also it oftentimes falls to the US and I have to tell you at great costâ€"human and moneyâ€"it falls to us to deal with the problems because of our capability, our worldwide presence and the fact that this is a situation in the world [that affects us all]."

http://www.philstar.com/

"So I think that it makes sense that we have these kinds of assistance programs, these kinds of economic relationship with the Philippines as it develops," he said, adding that the US benefits tremendously from its partnerships abroad.

"That's what's in it for us, we want and need friends and allies around the world also," he said.


Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario and US Ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg link arms following the opening ceremony of the joint U.S.-Philippines military exercise dubbed Balikatan 2014 on May 5, 2014 at the Armed Forces of the Philippines headquarters in Quezon City. AP/Bullit Marquez

Goldberg said that Americans and their government believe they "should help when other people are suffering or have humanitarian needs."

"It's in the nature of our country," said Goldberg, who also admitted that the US is not unique in assisting friends and neighbors.

However, the Philippines-US ties are also distinct as both countries share a "long history" of friendship and alliance, Goldberg explained. The Philippines is the US' oldest ally in Asia.

He said that the people-to-people ties of Americans and Filipinos who are immigrants in each others' countries would not make one the colony and the other its conqueror.

"It is a cousin, a mother-in-law, friends ... it's a different relationship," Goldberg said, pointing out that the Philippines was the only American colony in its long history.

Goldberg also addressed concerns that the US' various forms of assistance in the Philippines are largely political and economic in motive.

Washington has pledged about P2.7 billion for the relief and rehabilitation of central Philippine areas ravaged by  the powerful typhoon Yolanda in November 2013. The US also supports the Philippine military with $50 million in funding the past year.

Why US helps Philippines: We're not 'Big Brother'

By Camille Diola (philstar.com)
July 23, 2014



Airmen from the 36th Contingency Response Group and 535th Airlift Squadron situate their luggage and themselves on their seats Nov. 15, 2013, on the Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, flightline before the aircraft departs to support Operation Damayan in Tacloban, Philippines. Operation Damayan is a U.S. humanitarian aid and disaster relief effort to support the Philippines in the wake of the devastating effects of Typhoon Haiyan (local name Yolanda). US Air Force/Senior Airman Marianique Santos


MANILA, Philippines â€" The United States is no longer the Philippines' "Big Brother" as the 19th century foreign policy concept goes, the American Ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg said.

Goldberg was quick to dismiss left-wing notions of a strong US watching over its smaller Southeast Asian ally, saying the two countries are now "friends."

"[It] is a concept from the last century. I'd like to say now that our relationship is much different and much healthier in that sense, because we're no longer 'Big Brother'," Goldberg said in an interview over Radyo Singko on Wednesday.

Bierce couldn’t resist joining the barrage of outrage, writing from San Francisco a “Comment on a Famous Faux Pas” in The Argonaut of January 5, 1878:

    Mark Twain’s Boston speech, in which the great humorist’s coltish imagination represented Longfellow, Emerson, and Whittier [sic] engaged at a game of cards in the cabin of a California miner, is said to have so wrought upon the feelings of “the best literary society” in that city that the daring joker is in danger of lynching. I hope they won’t lynch him; it would be irregular and illegal, however roughly just and publicly beneficial. Besides, it would rob many a worldly sheriff of an honorable ambition by dispelling the most bright and beautiful hope of his life.

http://blog.loa.org/

But he had his revenge. Almost exactly four years later, it was Twain’s turn to suffer a similar fate. The occasion was the seventieth birthday dinner for John Greenleaf Whittier at the Hotel Brunswick in Boston. Among the sixty attendees were such literary legends as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Always trying a new twist, Twain had created for his toast what his biographer Ron Powers calls “the first celebrity roast.”

In a “frame-tale” Twain had himself knocking on a miner’s door in Nevada and finding that he was the fourth “littery man” to call in twenty-four hours, the previous ones being Emerson, Longfellow, and Holmes, only in the miner’s description: “Mr. Emerson was a seedy little bit of a chap,” “Mr. Holmes was as fat as a balloon,” “Mr. Longfellow was built like a prize-fighter. . . They had been drinking.” Twain had grossly misjudged his audience. He recalls in his Autobiography how “the audience turned to stone with horror” and that he sat down to “an awful silence, a desolating silence. . . Even the Boston Massacre did not produce a like effect.”

    Bierce insisted that he wasn’t covering up for his employer, that publisher Frederick A. Marriott would return soon, and asked if there was anything he could do for the caller.

    “I’ve come to repay Marriott a loan,” Twain explained.

    “You could leave the money with me.”

    “Young man,” Twain demanded, staring intently at Bierce. “look me in the eye and speak as if you were talking to your God. If I gave you that money, are you sure your employer would ever see it?”

    That broke the ice, and Twain chatted amiably until Marriott returned.

However, as Bierce retold the story of the meeting, the audience looked to Twain for his reactionâ€"and saw him sitting stone-faced, looking off into the distance, presumably bored. Twain’s response was not lost on Bierce, who faltered in his delivery and sat down to funereal silence. According to biographer Carey McWilliams, Bierce never spoke in public again.

    The lank, red-headed Twain strolled in and looked around the outer office with disdain.

    “Young man,” Twain drawled, himself in his early thirties, “this room is so nude I should think you and the owner would be ashamed of yourselves.”

    Bierce kept on working.

    “Young man,” Twain said, “where is the owner?”

    “Somewhere around town,“ Bierce replied. “He’ll be back shortly.”

    “Young man,” said Twain, glowering at Bierce, “are you sure he is not in that next room drunk?”

Silence as a weapon: the two most embarrassing speeches Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce ever gave

Within a year of settling his family in London in 1872, Ambrose Bierce published two collections of his San Francisco writings, dozens of his stories and sketches were featured in Tom Hood’s famous Victorian comic paper Fun, two columns (“The Town Crier” and “The Passing Show”) appeared regularly in the British magazine Figaro, and he sent a series (“Letter on England”) back home to the Alta California newspaper. He had become such a sensation that when Mark Twain, Joaquin Miller, and Bierce were honored at a dinner at the White Friars Club in Mitre Court, Fleet Street, in the winter of ’73, it was Bierce who got top billing, hailed as “one of the most original and daring humorists this age has produced.”


Mark Twain                                                          Ambrose Bierce

This clearly nettled Twain. Seven years Twain’s junior, Bierce had begun his writing career in California just as Twain was leaving; now it was Bierce, not Twain, who was being asked to speak. To acknowledge their connection, Bierce launched into his often-told account of their first meeting five years earlier in the offices of the News-Letter in San Francisco, just a few months after Bierce joined the staff. Richard O’Connor recounts the meeting in his biography of Bierce:

ang question, kinsay nagkasal?  dugang na siya sa medyo nalisoan ug gamay, with due respect to the world's known weird practices.

another question, is divorce necessary for this child groom before he can marry someone more appropriate in the future?

i would consider this child abuse, yet i'm glad that this affair is being likened to a bearded lady in a circus and not to a performing elephant.

aguy, ngano man tawong mangangin man si manoy?

posible sad nga nagtuo ang bana nga remote control ang cellphone ni misis pag-set off ug bomba para molupad ilang kasilyas.  malas pa gyod kay natunong nga nag-diarrhea si mister...

mas gaduda ko nga ang bana nagtuo nga pusil ang dala ni misis unya padung siyang i-assassinate mao nga iya na lang giunhan...

in the eyes of the great ham, yes, as he interprets the bible according to his own earthbound belief that humans, and thus necessarily only earthlings, have such privilege of being the only thinking, feeling, and reading creation of god. 

yet this here great bacon whose head may be above the clouds respondeth with another quote thus (refraining from quoting from the bible which is subject to countless interpretations, by humans.):

I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.

― Arthur C. Clarke

this prayer is great, hof.  thanks.  i can't really say if i could be consistent on a daily basis here, but it's worth a try...

how about the possibility of the great creator we call god creating aliens too?  adam was for us, earthlings.  those martians and plutonians may have their own adamex too.  who can say?

Jillian Johnston, an illustrator from Mountain View, California, said she felt pulled to create her own image of Sophia. She posted it online and then woke up the next morning to a flood of compliments and several requests from other parents who lost their children in similar situations.

“I have at least a dozen more babies to paint,” she said. “There are so many beautiful babies. It’s heartbreaking.”

Steffel said his family now has more memories of their daughter than they could have imagined, he said.

“It’s kept me and my wife occupied reading all these messages,” Steffel said. “Keeping our minds off things.”


http://technology.inquirer.net/

This combination photo of two images shows a family photo of Sophia Steffel, left, and a retouched version by Jillian Johnston of Mountain View, California. AP

So far, they have received thousands of messages expressing support and hundreds of photos. Someone else is sending a woven blanket with Sophia’s picture.

David Valdez, who has been painting portraits for several years, made a digital painting of Sophia within a few hours of seeing her father’s message.

“I was having a bad day when I saw this guy asking for a photo. I just started painting,” said Valdez, a college student from New Braunfels, Texas. “It brought me some sort of sense of relief to help someone out.”

His daughter, Sophia, died last Thursday at a Cincinnati hospital from complications of a tumor in her liver, six weeks after she was born in Columbus. She was awaiting a transplant when she died.

Her father posted a message on Reddit asking if anyone could use their photo of Sophia in the hospital and remove the tubes attached to her face and wrist. “Since she was in the hospital her whole life we never were able to get a photo without all her tubes,” he wrote.

“It started because I just wanted one picture,” said Steffel, who lives in the village of Kalida with his wife, Emily, and their two sons.

He initially was not sure about posting the request online because he was worried someone might respond rudely. “I guess the best has outweighed the negative,” he said.

Dad’s heartbreaking web plea spurs strangers

Associated Press   
Thursday, July 17th, 2014



This undated photo provided by Nathen and Emily Steffel shows their infant daughter, Sophia. Days after Sophia died in a Cincinnati hospital on Thursday, July 10, 2014 from complications from a tumor in her liver, Nathen Steffel asked users on the Reddit website if someone could alter this hospital photo. “Since she was in the hospital her whole life we never were able to get a photo without all her tubes,” he wrote. So far, they have received thousands of messages expressing support and hundreds of photos. AP


TOLEDO, Ohio â€" Just days after his infant daughter’s death, Nathen Steffel asked strangers on the Internet for only one thing: He and his wife wanted a photo of their daughter without the breathing tubes and tape that masked her little face.

The response has been overwhelming.

Hundreds of photos, sketches and paintings have poured into the family’s northwestern Ohio home and their inbox.

“I’m getting messages in languages from all over the world,” Steffel said Wednesday. “It’s more than I can count.”

what an insult to the feline species.

eeekkk, nangatol man akong nawong ug ahat.  this guy can't seem to make his mind up.  okay, he dislikes being human, fine.  but can't he make his mind up between being a south china sea lion king or an albino palawan porcupine prince?   

puro sila boaw, buyag.  si inday sa tingin ko ay kailangan nang dalawang bra, hihihi.

Around the time the Malaysia Airlines plane went down, Strelkov posted a statement on Russia's largest social network that seemed to take responsibility for the attack. The post was later deleted, and it's now widely thought that the separatists mistook the Malaysia plane for a Ukrainian aircraft.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-igor-strelkov-blamed-for-shooting-of-mh17-2014-7#ixzz385e2ffRn

This Is The Former Russian Military Officer Who Might Be Behind The Shooting Of MH17

    Pamela Engel
    Jul. 18, 2014



REUTERS/Maxim Zmeyev
Pro-Russian separatist commander Igor Strelkov leaves after a news conference in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, July 10, 2014.


A retired Russian military officer is suspected of being involved in the attack that downed a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane in eastern Ukraine on Thursday.

Igor Girkin, who is also known by his pseudonym Igor Strelkov, has been called "one of the most powerful separatist figures in eastern Ukraine." He's a Russian citizen from Moscow and has declared himself the Minister of Defense of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), according to Radio Free Europe.

The Ukrainian government says Strelkov is a covert agent of Russia's GRU military intelligence. In documents posted on separatist websites he has asked Russia to provide military assistance to the DPR.

Strelkov is a veteran of both the Soviet and Russian armies, according to Reuters.

Around the time the Malaysia Airlines plane went down, Strelkov posted a statement on Russia's largest social network that seemed to take responsibility for the attack. The post was later deleted, and it's now widely thought that the separatists mistook the Malaysia plane for a Ukrainian aircraft.


Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/russian-igor-strelkov-blamed-for-shooting-of-mh17-2014-7#ixzz385e2ffRn

rich indeed.  but well he knows that money cannot buy everything.  it cannot even buy him ears.

Quote from: hubag bohol on July 21, 2014, 03:47:10 PM
Hmm, magic mirror?

kind of, although i prefer the word 'enchanted' as it evokes moonlights and starlights and winged fairies while 'magic' calls to mind circuses and bearded ladies and flying trapezes. 

btw, fyi, that mah sexy face at reply #57 happens to be the backside of mah a**.

my understanding of sam and cat...



...until the poison of knowledge prevailed over innocence.  and i was corrupted.

Carter and Toby

the baby protector became the playmate and best friend as the baby grew up

may he rest in peace.

The Passengers of Flight MH17

Malaysia Airlines listed the nationality of MH17 passengers as:

193 Dutch (including 1 dual American/Dutch citizen)
42 Malaysians
27 Australians
12 Indonesians
10 Britons (including 1 dual UK/S. Africa citizen)
4 Germans
4 Belgians
3 Filipinos
1 Canadian
1 New Zealander


Source: Malaysia Airlines

"That's the (missile) system that you pick to do the very thing that it did," O'Reilly said. "So that there's some deniability. Both the Ukrainians have it and the Russian army has it."

It's possible, Reeves said, that specialised Russian military personnel-"Spetsnaz"-were directly or indirectly involved with the crew that fired the missile.

"Whoever did this wasn't someone that had a little bit of training and some Russian advisers told him how to do it. These people were trained on it - for a long time. The fact is, they shot one (missile) and they hit. They're pretty proficient, O'Reilly said.

"If it wasn't Russians or Russian advisers, it had to be former Russian air-defense personnel. Someone had to be formally trained in order to use it.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/

Debris from the wreckage, particularly chunks of the jetliner, probably will contain tell-tale fragments of the SA-11. However, the forensic work of verifying the type of weapon would still fall short of identifying who fired it because of the SA-11's ubiquity in the region, both O'Reilly and Reeves said.

Senior US officials have said the missile appears to have been fired from an area of eastern Ukraine held by Russia-backed separatists, some of whom were spotted with an SA-11 launcher shortly before the missile was fired.

O'Reilly and Reeves noted that the Russian and Ukrainian armies possess SA-11s. They also said it was possible that the Russia-aligned militants possess them. The crash occurred in an area of eastern Ukraine held by the separatists.

Those who fired at the Malaysian jetliner on Thursday "knew they were shooting a large aircraft," O'Reilly said. "It's such an old technology, it could very conceivably be they thought they were shooting down a military cargo plane or a large tanker. It is not unlikely they really thought that they were shooting down a military aircraft."

The SA-11 missile is an explosive warhead armed with a "proximity fuse" that detonates within 100 metres of a target. This means, O'Reilly said, that Flight 17 was downed by the force of the blast, not by a direct collision with the missile.

"It's not designed to hit the plane," he said. "It's designed to get close, and the proximity fuse automatically goes off."

The SA-11 system is designed to identify a target with radar before and throughout the flight of the missile. The radar data are transmitted continuously to the missile, guiding it toward the target.

However, O'Reilly said that while the SA-11 can find and follow targets at altitudes up to 70,000 feet, the system is unable to distinguish between a military transport plane and a large passenger aircraft.

Given the Malaysian jetliner's altitude and cruising speed, O'Reilly said, the SA-11 probably was fired within 40 km of the crash site.

The SA-11 is a 1972-era weapon system, and is not as technologically advanced or easy to operate as more modern weaponry.

"This is a hard system to use, in today's terms," said retired US Army Lieutenant General Patrick J. O'Reilly, a former director of the US Missile Defense Agency, who estimated that each of the SA-11 crew members would have needed at least six months of training.

"You don't just take some folks off the street, and 30 days later they're trained," he said.

Operating Buk missile system took training

DAVID WILLMAN
20/07/2014

The Buk missile system is believed to have been involved in the downing of MH17

Whoever fired the surface-to-air missile that brought down a passenger jet over eastern Ukraine would have needed extensive training to execute the mission, according to military experts.

Taking down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, travelling about 965 kph at an altitude of 33,000 feet (10km), required vastly more expertise than, say, firing a shoulder-braced rocket-propelled grenade at a slow-moving helicopter. A crew of at least four would have been needed to accurately fire the truck-mounted Russian-made SA-11 missile, also known as a Buk missile system.

"You've got to have people who are technically competent," said retired US Army Major General Stephen V. Reeves, who served as an intelligence officer in Western Europe.

curious whether or not a gorilla can operate this deadly system, hof, i tried reading further.  and it looks like we've been reading/hearing about the same thing after all, as follows...

countries or groups that own the buk surface-to-air missiles, in varying number of units but all invariably ordered from russia:

Azerbaijan
Bulgaria
Belarus
Egypt
Finland
Georgia
India
North Korea
People's Republic of China
Russia
Syria
Ukraine
Donetsk People's Republic Ukrainian insurgency
Vietnam
Venezuela

Backside of the 9A317 TELAR of Buk-M2E (export version) at 2007 MAKS Airshow

The Buk missile system is a family of self-propelled, medium-range surface-to-air missile systems developed by the Soviet Union and its successor state, the Russian Federation, and designed to fight cruise missiles, smart bombs, fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles. (wikipedia)

most especially if the boyfriend needs those additional beauty aids too. 

our tb mr weatherman bai tigs, balik na pod bi.  ni-pinch hit si hubag ug webmaster nimo, but you know that we all look forward to your thorough reports.

i have a feeling that either you are now working abroad (good luck!) or have just gotten married (more good luck!).

salamat, henry, kay motipas ka sa among payag.  daghan na mig bisita nga makagubot, mao nga papahuwaya usa mi.  adto usa tira sa china.

maglisod kog tuo nga nalukop gyod ni mingming ug tour ning tanang lugara.  di gyod hinoon ko mo-question nga iyang gitarong ang leaning tower of pisa.

quite so.  even his hair, for a beginner, is already compromised.

better to wise up.  wa koy gigasto to change my face from that of julia roberts to this of islander.

hinoon, mine is not a judgment, which is not for me to render.  di baya pod ko makatubag ngano kunong usbon nako ang natural order of things, sama sa mga iring nga akong pa-operahan aron di manganak. o nganong ganahan kog bonsai.  but i'm talking of flora and fauna, not human beings.  i hope to be excused from such questions.

di na lang ko motan-aw, hof, kay mahadlok man gani kog injection o bakuna lang, unsa na kaha kanang imong giingon nga skin cuttings.

ako nay gikuyawan sa kalibotan.  usbon ang lawas, usbon ang unsa ba ron dinha aron mausab ang gender, ay, ambot.

with due respect, and i truly like him, i'd rather that he becomes secretary of national defense or secretary of the interior.  a leader is supposed to inspire a nation, not plant fear in the hearts of people.  the president leads and inspires, the few good men around him do the dirty job of making things work.  we don't really need a dirty harry.  if we must, then we should do away with all pretenses of democracy and become something similar to singapore under lee kuan yew.

the die is cast. 

die mannschaft had won their fourth world cup.  olé, olé, olé!

Germany 

till world cup 2018 in russia. 

here my reporting from worldwide sources ends.

over and out.

"Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans always win." - Gary Lineker, english former footballer and current sports broadcaster and writer

Rioters clash with police in Buenos Aires following Argentina’s defeat to Germany in Sunday night’s World Cup Final in Brazil. Photograph. Ivan Alvarado/Reuters

World Cup 2014: Pride and devastation among the crowds of Buenos Aires

Giant Argentinian flag carried through city centre celebrating team's fight against Germany as youths clash with police

Argentines Gather In Buenos Aires To Watch Country's World Cup Final Match Against Germany


Argentinian football fans react as time runs out against Germany during the World Cup final while watching in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Uki Goni in Buenos Aires
Monday 14 July 2014

Crowds in the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires reacted with a mixture of celebration and anger to the country's 1-0 World Cup final defeat to Germany.

Thousands of people who had been waving Argentinian flags on the city's streets since the early morning seemed unfazed by the defeat, bursting into chants of "Ar-gen-ti-na!" when the whistle was blown ending the match in Germany's favour.

But people could could be seen fleeing in fear after police, who initially remained on the sidelines as jubilant fans poured into downtown Buenos Aires, began chasing down groups of youths who threatened to turn the scene ugly.

The youths, many of them with their faces covered and drinking heavily, responded by hurling rocks, destroying store fronts and even breaking into a theater. Police said 15 officers were injured and at least 40 people were arrested.

more at http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/jul/14/buenos-aires-argentina-football-world-cup-final-loss

The German multinational software company SAP Data which, in a neat example of the synergy between the nation’s industry and its football, provided Löw with endless groundbreaking performance and sports-science statistics can also expect to boom.

Try telling Merkel that politics and sport do not mix. Or that success does not breed success.

http://www.theguardian.com/

Germany has reaped the rewards of staffing the Bundesliga with more than double the number of homegrown players found in the Premier League. Not to mention producing around 10 times the English contingent of pro-licence qualified coaches.

So much for the macro picture but at micro level German glory will prompt individual prosperity. The Stanford University scientists behind the “CoolingGloves” CoreControl technology that Mesut Özil and company routinely donned at half-time in Brazil’s heat to reduce their internal body temperatures to optimal levels, should flourish. England may have decided against purchasing these cramp-preventing chill mitts but, if the 2022 World Cup takes place in Qatar, everyone will want a pair.

Just as the country’s rebranded, heavily yet subtly tweaked version of socially responsible capitalism (a bit more ruthless than before but still big on fair competition, long-term goals and employers maintaining the sort of paternalistic attitudes towards employees now scorned in many UK quarters) paid dividends so too has the Bundesliga’s similarly socially responsible football model.

Fans enjoy controlling influences at clubs, television revenues are distributed evenly and ticket prices pegged, while “mercenary” foreign owners are kept out. The conditions remain ripe for top-class development of indigenous youth which, facilitated by high-calibre coaching, takes place alongside academic education.

In 2000, remember, Germany was the sick man of Europe. As the economy stalled, the national football side suffered elimination from the European Championship after failing to win a single match.

Fast forward 14 years and under Merkel’s chancellorship her country has regained economic powerhouse status; and, under first Jürgen Klinsmann’s tutelage and now his one-time sidekick’s, a fast, technical, ethnically diverse Germany team have reached at least the semi-final of every international tournament since 2006. During Brazil 2014, Merkel texted every Germany player a good-luck message and later sent congratulations. While some predicted their team would once again choke at the final hurdle, the chancellor had faith the “system” would be fully endorsed.

From Dresden to the Dutch border, Germans should swiftly come to terms with finally being recognised as being truly beautiful after all. After so many years of commanding respect, admiration â€" albeit sometimes grudging â€" and even fear, a football evolution that, in typically methodical manner, began in 2000 has culminated in a velvet revolution.

Although it is symbolised by a fourth World Cup trophy, and first since 1990, this international coup was essentially pulled off during that astonishing 7-1 semi-final demolition of Brazil. When Juninho declared that Germany were playing as his compatriots once did and watching them had made him “very happy”, it felt like an epiphany. Not to mention the vindication of an awful lot of meticulous hard work. In the space of 90 extraordinary minutes it seemed as if a nation’s reinvention had been all but completed.

Anxious to replicate what Miroslav Klose describes as his country’s “Super Blend” of aesthetics and über-efficiency, the Football Association will inevitably introduce a five-year plan designed to accelerate the implementation of German-ification throughout all areas of the English game. They might stop just short of equipping the computer screen-savers at St George’s Park and Wembley with images of Joachim Löw/Merkel/Thomas Müller/Sami Khedira super-imposed on Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue.

As Löw â€" his somewhat patchy record in club management long since forgotten â€" is pursued by the Champions League glitterati, British politicians may begin wondering whether the startling synchronicity between the philosophies behind Germany’s economic and footballing revivals is entirely coincidental. Parallels are bound to be explored.

World Cup victory confirms Germany supremacy on almost every measure

After so many years of commanding respect the nation should rejoice that its football is finally recognised as beautiful


Chancellor Angela Merkel with the Germany team after their victory over Argentina in the World Cup Final. Photograph: Guido Bergmann/Handout/EPA

Louise Taylor
Sunday 13 July 2014

It cannot surely be long before Angela Merkel is pictured placing a consolatory arm around David Cameron, after being overheard lecturing Vladimir Putin on the trouble with 4-4-2, and brochures extolling Germany will become popular in high-street travel agencies as the world wakes up to a much-underrated destination. Who needs Barcelona when you’ve got Bavaria?

In boardrooms around the globe, football club owners will be instructing their chief executives to “get me a German”. Across assorted time zones it is no longer enough for a goalkeeper to have “safe hands”. Thanks to Manuel Neuer the era of “sweeper-keepers”, boasting strong lines in fancy footwork, is upon us.

With the death of tiki-taka now rubber-stamped, aspiring football coaches will eschew study trips to Spain, instead flocking to a rather large patch of Europe stretching from the Baltic to the Alps.

flower girls?  bridesmaids?  ring bearers?

Argentina's Lionel Messi casts a dejected figure with his Golden Ball award alongside Golden Glove winner Manuel Neuer. Photograph: Clive Rose/Getty Images

FIFA’s decision to award Messi the golden ball as the best player in the tournament (over Colombia’s James Rodríguez, most notably) seems almost cruel. That decision could open Messi up to even more criticism, highlighting the fact that the sport's golden boy didn't have a golden final.

No, he didn’t win a World Cup like Maradona did. But as my colleague Jeremy Stahl wrote this weekend, an Argentina loss doesn’t change the fact that Messi is an all-time great. Germany had the better team. Argentina had the best player. The team won, and that’s how it should be.

more from Whatta Mannschaft! Germany Wins the World Cup on a Wonder Goal by Mario Götze, http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_spot/2014/07/13/mario_g_tze_goal_whatta_mannschaft_germany_wins_the_world_cup_on_a_beautiful.html?wpisrc=burger_bar

Germany lift the World Cup

Germany's pile of joy

Quote from: hofelina on July 14, 2014, 07:42:21 AM
these professional players are mostly millionaires but they were trained to work and play as a team, that was the secret of their success. Way pasaway

the very reason why i've always rooted for the german team in four world cups past; they are a team, no superstars, focused, disciplined.  they even have to sweat it out and risk their heads and bones to earn those milions.

uuuyyy, angayan lagi sila.  puro pa gyod swiss guards ang ilang gwardiya.

Agony and ecstasy: Germany celebrate after defeating Argentina in extra time 1-0 during the 2014 FIFA World Cup final

Germany's Mario Götze, left, celebrates with Thomas Müller after scoring the winning goal during extra time in the final. Photograph: Dylan Martinez/Reuters

Wunderbar: Germany's Mario Gotze scored with a brilliant finish to put his team ahead in the dying minutes of the World Cup final against Argentina

YAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!  just a few minutes ago!  IT'S GERMANY!

don't cry for you, argentina.  it's okay.  it's just a game.  and you gave germany a hard time.

     Football gets away with taking a larger and larger share of consumer incomes because of the powerful identification people feel with their favorite teams and players. And that sense of tribal loyalty is exactly what is threatened by the globalized, out-of-control football economy. It will take more than a few moments of inspiration from Messi, Neymar and company to give the sport's aging "bull market" a new lease on life.

Peter Tasker is an analyst with Arcus Research in Tokyo.

http://asia.nikkei.com/

     Is football a bubble waiting to burst? The sums of money involved suggest that might be the case. Wayne Rooney, the underperforming star of underperforming Manchester United and England, earns 300,000 pounds ($510,464) a week just from football. That is made possible by the monetary value of broadcasting rights for the English Premier League, which has roughly tripled in the past 10 years. For its part, FIFA, the scandal-wracked international football federation, is expected to generate $4 billion from the World Cup in broadcasting and sponsorship deals.

     What the players get up to pales in comparison to what goes on behind the scenes. Europol's Operation Veto investigation into match-fixing has deemed 680 games "suspicious", including World Cup qualifiers and European Champions League matches. Zurich-based FIFA is itself the epitome of a free-floating supranational entity that exists in a realm beyond normal rules. The current president, Sepp Blatter, has been in office since 1998 and is attempting to stay on for another term. Even that would not match the 24-year reign of his predecessor, Joao Havelange, who is alleged to have amassed a fortune in bribes. The latest scandal about awarding the 2022 World Cup to Qatar should come as a surprise to nobody.