A Series of Amazing Coincidences.

On Thursday (17/7/14) Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed in eastern Ukraine most likely after being hit by a military anti-aircraft missile. Since then details have begun to emerge about the 298 passengers and crew that were killed.

The first piece of information that leaps out is that there were no US citizens aboard. One of the 192 Dutch fatalities - Quinn Lucas Schansman - did hold dual Dutch/US citizenship having been born in New York City despite living his entire life in the Netherlands. This directly contradicts the initial claim by the Kiev junta that 23 Americans had been killed. That claim now appears to be a complete lie by the junta intended to inflame the situation.

The overwhelming majority of the passengers (108) were delegates travelling to the annual International AIDS Society (IAS) Summit that is being held in Melbourne, Australia on the 19th & 20th of July (19&20/7/14). HIV/AIDS is of course a massive global issue that is so serious it represents a very real barrier to economic development in much of the developing World particularly in Africa. It is also of great significance in discussions about gay-rights because many people still wrongly consider HIV/AIDS to be a "gay plague" despite the fact that Worldwide far more heterosexuals are in infected then homosexuals. 

Despite being a complex issue in its own right HIV/AIDS is also a topic that people like to use as a euphemism for other issues. For example it frequently comes up in United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) discussions particularly in the REDD+ program. I think it was the 2010 IAS Summit that focused very heavily on infection rates amongst intravenous drug users in South East Asian nations such as Thailand, Vietnam and the Cambodia that are just on the edges of Chinese influence in the region. The majority of the heroin they're inject comes of course from Afghanistan which has been at the centre of international relations since 2001. Furthermore it has often been claimed that I must be prevented from meeting up with the pop-star Rihanna in case I infect her with HIV/AIDS although there it is being used as a euphemism for rational thought. Just before Rihanna headed to Brazil for the World Cup final the US was forced to retract a 2012 claim that a Dr Gay had succeeded in curing a baby of HIV/AIDS.

As such any discussion about HIV/AIDS ends up getting very complicated very quickly. In fact I think research into all blood borne diseases pretty much ground to a halt during the Cold War because anyone publishing a paper on the behaviour of "Red Cells" immediately had NATO and Soviet intelligence agencies crawling all over them.

The next two interesting passengers were Cor Pan a Dutch national who was travelling with his Dutch girlfriend Neeljte Tol and Maree Rizk an Australian. Prior to boarding the flight Pan took a photograph of the plane and uploaded it to Twitter with a joke about making sure that people knew what the plane looked like in case it went missing like Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. Rizk's step-mother Kaylene Mann lost her brother and sister-in-law aboard MH370. This demonstrated that both were aware of Malaysia Airlines track record so you could attempt to argue that both gave their implied consent to be killed by choosing to fly with Malaysia Airlines. The issue of implied consent is a huge one in all areas of medical research including research into HIV/AIDS. Despite the fact that the UK in particular has completely disregarded it the international law on the issue is quite clear - no-one can give their consent, implied or express, to an experiment where there is a risk of death.

Another interesting passenger turned out to be the grandmother-in-law of the Malaysian defence minister Hishammuddin Hussein. As mother-in-law jokes are pretty much universal where ever you go in the World this news seems to be crying out for someone to make an inappropriate comment about the Malaysian military bringing down MH17 simply so Hussein can get away from his mother-in-law. Although I have to concede that is a possibility I don't think it is particularly likely.

Then there is the aircraft operator itself. As I'm sure you all remember Malaysia Airlines also operated MH370 which was another Boeing 777 that went missing on March 7th 2014 (7/3/14) - the opening day of the 2014 Winter Para-Olympic games being held in Sochi, Russia. MH370 remains missing to this day despite a lengthy Australian led search. MH370 itself is a very complicated issue but its focus on satellite surveillance and ocean mapping made it a very handy metaphor for the deeply technical aspects of the UNFCCC process. It also seemed to be intended as a critique of the US 2013 Rihanna operation which was previewed in Rihanna's 2012 "777 Tour" in which she flew between 7 cities in 7 days aboard a Boeing 777.

Finally this crash occurred on the eve of the first annual Mandela day honouring Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid campaigner. The day itself was completely overshadowed by the international fall out to the MH17 crash. The number 777 is actually hugely significant within the Mandela story.

One of the largest supporters of apartheid and therefore opponents of Mandela are the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB). Hugely proud of their Dutch colonial roots the AWB's flag which you can Google image search yourselves is a red flag with a white circle in the centre containing a black rune. This very closely resembles the Swastika flag of Nazi Germany. However as they don't wish to be viewed as the Neo-Nazi's they are the AWB will swear blind that the black rune is a Christian image made up off three 7's to counter-balance the Biblical number of the beast (666). They really don't like being pressed on the fact that Mandela's prison number was 46664.

It is so amusing to listen to AWB members try deny that their flag is a copy of the Nazi Swastika I find myself frequently use them as an example of other Neo-Nazi groups who try to hard to hide their Nazi identity. In fact I may have most recently brought them up in reference to Svoboda a Ukrainian political party that hold high office in Kiev junta despite polling less the 1% at the recent Presidential election. Svoboda of course claim the black rune at their centre of their flag is a combination of a "N" and an "I" signifying "National Identity" and is not in any way based on a Swastika despite the fact the letters "N" and "I" don't exist in the Ukrainian Cyrillic alphabet.


As a result this whole MH17 story seems incredibly neatly packaged to force you think that it was a revenge attack by an aggressive Russia that must be harshly punished for its crimes.

16:10 on 19/7/14 (UK date).