A Right Royal Cover-Up.

The cease-fire between the Ukrainian factions that was agreed on Friday (5/9/14) is already starting to look shaky. The main problem has been the junta's refusal to follow through on their commitment to withdraw their forces from positions within 45km (27miles) of population centres in the Donestsk and Lugansk regions including the city of Mariupol.

Curiously the European Union (EU) has decided to respond to these violations by pressing ahead with fresh sanctions against Russia who brokered the cease-fire. Public support for these sanctions which are likely to do great damage to the EU's own Eurozone economy was supposed to be generated by the release of the Dutch's preliminary report into the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 on July 17th (17/7/14). As a preliminary report this was expected to focus entirely on the mechanics of the crash and ignore issues such as if and why the aircraft had deviated so far from its course and whether it was identifying itself as a civilian aircraft when it decided to enter a war zone. In short the report simply expected to scream; "It was a Russian missile!!! It was a Russian missile!!!!!!"

However on Friday the US created another mysterious air crash when a private plane took off from New York state headed for Florida only to lose contact with the ground and fly across Cuban and Jamaican airspace before crashing into the sea for reasons that have yet to be determined. The purpose of this was to warn the Dutch that any report into MH17 that didn't address the key question of why it was flying over a war zone would lack any credibility. It also intended to point out that releasing the report on the 6 month anniversary of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 would also greatly reduce the report's credibility by reminding everyone that Malaysia Airlines don't exactly have a reputation for honesty and integrity.

Needless to say the Dutch decided not to release their report into MH17 after all.

However don't expect to hear about any of this on the news if you live in the UK because the British Monarchy decided to use the exact moment that the Dutch report was scheduled to be released to announce that the Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant again.


11:45 on 8/9/14 (UK date).

Edited at around 13:40 on 8/9/14 (UK date) to add;

In the last hour or so Ukrainian President Poroshenko has visited the city of Mariupol and announced that the junta will not be honouring its commitment to withdraw its forces in Donetsk and Lugansk. Instead it will be increasing its forces. This is a clear violation of the third clause of the cease-fire and under the all-in-all principle of the agreement means that the junta has now rejected the entire cease-fire in much the same way they went back on their commitments in the Geneva agreement.

As a result the anti-junta rebels are now fully entitled to resume fighting. However I cannot recommend that they do so because it is slightly more complicated to explain how the junta ended the cease-fire and certainly not an argument that the US wants to hear.

Also the official reason why the Duchess of Cambridge's pregnancy was announced today is that she is suffering from "morning sickness." As "Morning" sounds a lot like "Mourning" this seems to be the UK putting forward the argument that the Dutch forgot about the MH370 anniversary because they were so overwhelmed by their grief over MH17. The alternative of course is that the Dutch hadn't forgotten and were simply trying to make the point that something really needs to be done about the Malaysians.