In the previous installment of this series, I looked at the psychological context for a hypothetical suicide run into the southern ocean. Today, I’d like to consider an equivalent issue with regard to a hijacking scenario. Presuming one occurred, what could be the motive for such an act?
As has often been observed, nobody claimed credit for the disappearance of MH370, and nobody visibly benefited from it. No benefit would seem to imply no motive.
Motive, however, can be a tricky thing to impute to another person’s actions. How can we be confident that we understand enough about a person’s position in the world—or more importantly, how they perceive their position in the world—to judge whether a given act would or would not be rational from their perspective?
A question more likely to yield results, I would argue, is: are there any potential perpetrators who might feel motivated to take such an action, however opaque their motive might be to us?
Here the answer is a resounding “yes.”
As it happens, the UK-based group Bellingcat today released the latest in a series of reports about the shootdown of MH17. For anyone who is not familiar with its work, Bellingcat is a very highly regarded group of amateur analysts who have pioneered the crowd-sourced investigation of open-source data. Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins first attracted attention after using social media to locate evidence that the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons; later the group used similar techniques to identify the specific Buk missile launcher used to shoot down MH17 and has grappled with many other pressing topics of the day. If you haven’t visited their website, I heartily recommend it, as their coverage is fascinating and offers an excellent model for transparency and balance. Not for nothing the Columbia Journalism Review described Bellingcat’s work as “rigorous, evidence-based examinations of extremely specific questions… extremely valuable in helping us understand complex subjects.”
What has emerged from these reports is a strikingly concrete and layered depiction of events surrounding the destruction of MH17. And it is radically different from the picture that most journalists and analysts hold.
According to Bellingcat’s research, the Buk missile launcher that destroyed MH17 was not some trophy of war that a bunch of untrained militiamen got their hands on and fired off willy-nilly. Rather, it belonged to a specific regular Russian army unit, the 2nd Battalion of the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, which was sent from its base near Kursk to the Ukrainian border. From there, this specific launcher was brought across the border in the middle of the night and positioned under the scheduled flight path of MH17. After it blasted the plane out of the sky it was put back on its trailer and brought back to Russia. The whole operation was a one-day mission.
Bellingcat identifies the unit’s officers, and even hones in on the individuals who likely operated the Buk in question. They stop short of speculating at who pushed the “fire” button. The report does make very clear, however, that operating a Buk requires intensive training, so whoever committed the fatal act must have had considerable experience with the system. And as might be expected with a weapon of its range and lethality, a major part of operational training is a tightly controlled firing process. Of the four man crew, only the officer in charge is authorized to make the firing decision. He, in turn, must receive the necessary order from his commanding officer. Contrary to the popular narrative, anyone who would be able to fire off a Buk blindly would know better than to do so.
That’s why, as I write in New York magazine today, Bellingcat has concluded that “responsibility for the downing of MH17 from a weapon provided and possibly operated by the Russian military lies with the Ministry of Defense and the Supreme Commander of the Russian Armed Forces, President Vladimir Putin.”
Some will no doubt find this conclusion incomprehensible: Why in the world would Putin order, or allow, a brutal attack which triggered such harsh repercussions against his country? What possibly could be the motive?
The answer is, we don’t know Putin’s motive. Indeed the alarming upshot of MH17, and how badly the press and intelligentsia have bungled their attempts to understand it, is that we don’t understand Vladimir Putin at all. We can’t presume to guess what his cost/benefit analysis of this decision was. But based on a year’s worth of intensive reporting by Bellingcat, as well as on work released by the official Joint Investigative Team, Putin obviously felt he had reason enough.
By this point I think the relevance of this story to MH370 should be clear. Within four months, two Malaysian Airlines 777s were taken out of the sky under suspicious circumstances. Imagine if you were a farmer who’s been raising chickens for many years without incident. Then one day, for the first time ever, one of the chickens goes missing. Then the next day, you see the neighbor’s dog jumping over your fence with a second chicken in its mouth. Now would you have a theory about what happened to the first chicken?
We know from the analysis of MH370s satcom system carried out by Mike Exner, Victor Iannello, Gerry Soejatman and others, that if a spoof hijacking was perpetrated on MH370 then whoever carried it out possessed an extremely high level of technical sophistication. So high, in fact, that the attack must not only have been state sponsored, but sponsored by a state with cutting-edge technology in aircraft systems and satellite communications. That being the case, if we suppose that MH370 was hijacked by someone other than Russia, then that would mean that two Malaysian Airlines 777s—of which only 15 existed out of a worldwide commercial aircraft fleet of perhaps 18,000—happened to be targeted within the span of four months by two different major powers.
Talk about bad luck!
@DennisW
Four words in and you use the words ‘Highly Speculative’
5 seconds later you wrap up your whole post by saying ‘Blank_ supports this theory’ That’s not very ‘speculative’ that’s an assertion.
And another thing which needs to be said more often on this blog, is that nobody knows. Nobody. Knows. *thumbs up*
@all
Got a Google alert on the linked article this morning. Thought someone would have linked it by now.
http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/mh370-eight-questions-on-missing-malaysia-airlines-flight-mh370-that-need-answers/news-story/c72cfb2b0ff57c96483ae6028bc954f5
@Jeff – I appreciate your breaking down the pages into psychology and motive. However quite often we are discussing different topics concurrently. Since we are looking at this in a different light I would suggest four threads:
Why was this done?,
How was this done?
Who did this? and
Where is the plane?
Even if we can answer 1 of these it doesn’t guarantee that it will answer the other 3. Each seems to be its own line of inquiry. However I think it might make the conversation flow smoother.
Oh my, Bellingcat’s Syria fiasco as a supporting proof. Too bad the chemical weapon theory of Brown Moses (aka Elliot Higgins) has been already proven false from real experts, people who actually have some knowledge in the field.
Former UN weapons inspector Richard Lloyd and Prof. Theodore Postel of MIT, are authors of an actual report from the MIT Science, Technology, and Global Security Working Group entitled “Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013.” You better read that, it concluded that the Syrian government could not have carried out the attack, and that such intelligence was nearly used as justification for yet another aggressive war.
Also debunking BM’s spurious charges is the report from Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh which revealed the existence of a classified US Defense Intelligence Agency briefing which noted unequivocally that the Al Nusra Front had its own chemical weapons, not to mention deep ties to Saudi and Turkish intelligence and chemical arms suppliers.
Just do your homework before investing your hope into Bellingcat and their experts.
Here, read that.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/20/there-goes-the-guardian-lying-about-ukraineagain/
@Trip,
Good idea. I would suggest combining your items 1 and 3 into “Who did this and why ?”
to separate discussion of technical aspects from speculations and conspiracies.
@Jeff
Great new article about you in the DM. I hope your dedication to unravelling the mystery keeps getting you the plaudits you deserve. Putin or no Putin, as the host of this forum I’m rooting for you. You have developed an unrivalled meeting point for MH370 junkies (due respects to PAX), a melting pot of both experts and non-experts.
@all:
I watched a fascinating documentary on CBS Reality the other night – ‘The Alps Murders.’ I wanted to provide a link but it seems the documentary hasn’t been uploaded anywhere yet.
For those unfamiliar with the case or those who might have forgotten it since, the Annecy shootings occurred in September 2012 when a British family and a French cyclist were shot dead in an apparent targeted killing. The case remains unsolved. The documentary discussed possible leads, claims, counter-claims. It reminded me very much of the speculation surrounding Captain Zaharie.
Four people were killed. An Iraqi-born British tourist, Saad Al-Hilli, 50, his wife, his mother, and an unrelated French cyclist, Sylvain Mollier, 45, who appeared to have stumbled upon the unfolding event. Al-Hilli’s two young girls (aged 4 and 7) survived.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annecy_shootings
There have been many lines of enquiry, one being a possible family feud over inheritance, but no clear motive established as yet. The brother, Zaid Al-Hilli, has always denied any role in the killing. Potential links to terrorism were also investigated. Al-Hilli was a Shiite whose family had fallen foul of the Saddam regime and emigrated to Britain in the 1970s. Hilli’s computer hard drive revealed strong anti-Israel sentiment, sometimes even jocular references to Al-Qaeda. But ultimately his friend states he was just a regular family man who disliked terrorism “it kills innocent people to achieve its ends.”
But even more interesting than all of the above has this has been the speculation surrounding Al-Hilli’s professional background: mechanical engineer for SSTL (Surrey Satellites Technology) which is part of EADS (Airbus Group).
“Mr Al-Hilli was part of a team involved in an undisclosed project linked to European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS) – a pan-European defence giant which has contracts with Russia, China and the Foreign Office.”
Some have speculated whether he may in fact have been in possession of top secret technological/technical material relating to a satellite project that could’ve proved useful to a foreign country – possibly Iran (al-Hilli was a Shiite) or Russia (there is at least one claim – albeit unsubstantiated – that al-Hilli was planning a trip to Moscow). So maybe his attempts to flog this information irked other interested parties such as Mossad in the process? Or maybe he played one party off another to secure the best deal for himself? Then again he could’ve simply been duped into sharing the info and eliminated afterwards.
Certainly, if the above were true, the secret would’ve been tremendously important for someone to get murdered for it.
There have also been claims of a cover-up. Almost nothing is known of Sylvian Mollier, the French cyclist. No backstory, no photographs. The French stated he was investigated and exonerated early on. A case of wrong place, wrong time. But even Mollier worked in a highly sensitive field, “for CEZUS, a subsidiary of AREVA, the global leader in the market for zirconium, the metal used, among other things, for nuclear fuel cladding.” Was he another person who needed to be silenced?
To me, the case bears interesting similarities to the disappearance of MH370. Highly sensitive info, secret services, foreign governments, an international aeronautical and defence corporation, claims of a cover up, and an apparently innocent and kind-hearted family man at the centre of it all. Maybe just my mind seeking out coincidences. Yet it would be mind-blowingly fascinating if the two events were somehow linked!
Anyone interested in further reading:
http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=56022
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200388/Did-French-Alps-murder-victims-secret-work-space-satellite-contract-make-prime-assassination-target.html
BBC Panorama documentary (this is one I haven’t watched but its similar to the CBS one):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX_q5fpWSBg
@SajidUK, Thanks, fascinating stuff. Whether or not it’s linked, it’s worth contemplating that there are other mysteries out there as strange as MH370, and laden with as many potential ramifications.
And thanks for your kind words about the site. I feel very lucky to host a discussion with contributors like yourself who are so generous with their intelligence and insight.
@SajidUK:
Thanks for reminding us of that other mystery.
“His” mother was actually his mother-in-law, i.e. “her” mother.
well, done, so its going nuclear, and instant, these days; I doubt that @Jeff hosts on load-balanced server farm or some auto-scalling cloud… no doubt its mystery, but as I read one comment on DM, some guy from Toronto: “Putin masterminded 9/11 and his father Pearl Harbor”; what happened to your open mind, Jeff? my idea is, that this case may be global attack on lazy and unresponsible media… hope it changed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QheoYw1BKJ4
@JG
you said:
“Four words in and you use the words ‘Highly Speculative’
5 seconds later you wrap up your whole post by saying ‘Blank_ supports this theory’ That’s not very ‘speculative’ that’s an assertion.”
At first I did not reply, but I will now to make a broader point. You can “assert” that something supports speculation without asserting that the speculation itself is correct. Two entirely different things.
The broader point is the peer review process itself. That is what we have going here. There is nothing wrong with tossing something out there, and letting people take shots at it. You cannot let the fear of being wrong inhibit you. Peer review has worked wonderfully well in the history of human enquiry.
Of course, there are some “black belt” analysts on this forum i.e. Victor and Henrik (and many others) come to mind. While they might rightfully object to being lumped into the peer category, my experience is they are generally gracious in sharing their time and opinions. Good stuff going on here.
Yes, attack is the best form of defence. Much people think that the us government is behind the disappearance of flight MH370 and the shooting down of MH17 only four month later, in order to blame Russia for it, and Putin directly.
Conspiracy theories ares good when they are against Russia…
@Patrick
I’ve read so many posts and theories that the US is behind both of these incidents. Its just kind of passing strange when 2 Malaysia planes within 4 months of each other, meet strange fates (disappearance & shootdown) Problem is if 370 met a similar fate even if by accident was a shootdown or some other accidental incident. Why would it be classified by the US? We’ve written to many different agencies asking this question and have gotten no where.
It appears that nobody who is anybody wants anything to do or say about this matter so it has been left up to the minds and hands of regular folks and math experts, science guys in general to figure out what happened.
The media made a farce out of reporting incidents as they unfolded. Taking the word of any Malaysian official proved to be the wrong thing to do and only made the network appear foolish (CNN mostly).
Malaysia admitted they were keeping secrets (does this mean classified or other?) The whole thing has been a bungling mess (either on purpose or real incompetance coming through). Who knows, but until the plane is actually found, no one can say for sure what they know or don’t know.
It does appear as though Russia claimed the US stole mh370 in the beginning (russian trolls perhaps), then mh17 is decalred by Barack Obama as being shot down by Russian rebels backed by Putin. Again another controversy of he said/he said. Neither side has proved their case or who did or didn’t do it.
Both these cases have way passed the strange factor, tampered with evidence in mh17 proves they can guess but will likely never know the real truth there either. All I can say is that I hope they find mh370 and can give the families the closure they so desperately need. If my family had been on that plane, I’d be out of my mind by now with the treatment of family members, lies and false statements by those supposedly in charge.
I don’t do conspiracy theories and always believed there was a logical explanation for mh370, but since controversy surrounds both of these cases, I’ve begun rethinking my ideas….thanks Jeff for keeping this forum going where discussions can be held and ideas shared.
One of these days (I hope) that someone somewhere will stumble on the truth, if they haven’t already and prove once and for all what really happened.
@Patrick: I really hate the expression “conspiracy theory” because it is often used to discredit any theory outside of conventional thought in which two or more parties secretly plan (conspire) to commit a crime. If you believe that a particular scenario is unlikely because it requires a secret plan with an improbably large number of collaborators, just say that.
Conspiracy theories thrive on what is not known, and usually discredit the facts that are known. Are they any good for supporting the purported aim of this discussion forum, to figure out where the plane is?
@Paul Smithson – Your theory gives a plausible explanation of why MH370 hasn’t been found in the current search area. Other than that A/C, I haven’t heard of a reasonable explanation of the large debris fields captured by various satellites in mid to late March 2014.
FYI, a quick look at Skyvector.com and the FCOM show that 9M-MRO had sufficient fuel range and endurance to reach your proposed impact location as long as the cruise was around 460 knots at around FL340.
In December 2014 I posted: “I would think if KLIA was the destination after the diversion, the a/c would have turned right, not left.”
The posted responses said the PIC still would have turned left after IGARI to get back to KLIA so not to cross over the higher mountains in that direction and to get over water as soon as possible. I do not know if these are valid arguments or not.
@Gysbreght: Not that long ago, any theory that did not center around a mechanical failure followed by a zombie flight to the SIO on autopilot was considered a “conspiracy theory”, to the point that such discussions of such theories were banned from many discussion sites about MH370. I know that the ATSB wouldn’t even entertain the possibility of these scenarios. Those banned theories included any scenario in which there was a deliberate diversion by any of the crew or passengers.
We now hear that the ATSB believes that it is possible that the plane flew to the SIO with a “rogue pilot” at the controls, and that the “rogue pilot” might have glided far from the 7th arc.
So did tarnishing those “conspiracy theories” help “to figure out where the plane is”?
@Lauren H and @Paul Smithson:
If you are willing to discount the BTO, BFO, and radar data, or at least our best interpretation of it, why do you believe that the plane ever turned back after passing IGARI? Why not believe Mike McKay, who is quite certain he saw an aircraft in flames flying close to his oil rig off of Vietnam?
Jeff,
You may have discussed this earlier in another blog post, but there was an interesting report right after the MH17 crash that the pro rebel commander Igor Girkin mentioning to the media that “a significant number of the bodies weren’t fresh,” adding that he was told they were drained of blood and reeked of decomposition.
suggesting “suggesting many of the victims may have died days before the plane took off.”
I am quoting the above directly from this source:http://www.infowars.com/rebel-leader-says-many-of-the-dead-bodies-in-mh17-werent-fresh/
Just bizarre….
@all
Not too long ago I posted some data showing that the “incremental liklihood” of solving a crime (substitute problem for crime if you want to) decreases as time passes – meaning that a crime investigated for 6 months is not twice is likely to be solved as a crime investigated for 3 months. Quite the opposite. When the 100 day mark is passed the probability of a solution rapidly plateaus, and there is almost no increased likelihood of a solution.
These same studies imply that even advanced forensic techniques such as DNA analysis have not changed these basic statistics. What the studies do show is that new information, such as a whistleblower, is almost always the key to a solution.
So it is with MH370. I believe we have wrung every drop out of the information we have to work with. We may have even extrapolated beyond what is analytically reasonable if we are brutally honest about it. What we need is additional information. Radar data and flaperon forensics come to mind. If the new FI due out in March is devoid of new information, there is little likelihood of any further progress being made. Of course, a whistleblower would be a very welcome addition to the mix.
If new information is in the March FI, I will be very annoyed that it was not released when it was available. There is nothing in the ICAO protocol that says you have to synchronize important information with annual FI reports. That would once again smell of Malay obstructionist behavior.
@Ken, It seems pretty clear (to me, anyway) that Girkin was a key player in establishing the counternarrative about MH17–but I hadn’t heard of this before, thanks!
“We may have even extrapolated beyond what is analytically reasonable if we are brutally honest about it. ”
we are indeed beating a dead horse, the problem is with search authorities who refuse to search out of assumption-driven bounds
@VictorI – I don’t have any pet theory, but I have long wondered about the debris seen around 45S. Yes, I agree for Mr. Smithson’s theory to work, I must disregard the BTO, BFO and radar data as coming from MH370.
When the Lido Hotel radar image was made available, the presenter pointed to the white circle and said this is the area where the plane dropped off the radar. Now we are being told that there were only two radar returns: one around Palau Perak at 18:02 and one at the very end, 10 miles past MEKAR at 18:22. What changed?
Could the turn at IGARI have been a different plane? I’m not sure what to believe.
Even if the radar data is accurate, it seems that just a minor misinterpretation of the BTO and/or the BFO data could move the impact point 100 nm and putting the plane outside of the current search area.
Early on, one of the spokesmen said that the reports that the plane continued flying for 6 hours were inaccurate. Why hide this? I agree with Dennis that the plane will probably not be found unless a whistleblower comes forward.
@Lauren H: I am not aware of any Malaysian explanation of the white circle in the Lido Hotel image, nor has Malaysia even acknowledged the existence of the slide, although I am quite confident it truly was presented to the NOK on March 21, 2014. I am sure the Malaysians wish that image was never shown.
And yes, although the paths of the plane are identical, the radar captures shown in that slide differ from what was claimed in the DSTG report. There has been no explanation regarding this discrepancy. Of course, since Malaysia has never acknowledged the existence of the Lido Hotel image, it is difficult to corner them on this.
The (unaltered) BFO requires the plane travels south, but it is the BTO combined with some other assumptions, such as an autopilot mode, that locates the plane. In that the search has produced an empty set, those assumptions are likely wrong. That doesn’t put us in a very good position because relaxing those assumptions and allowing for a piloted flight renders a search area that is unmanageably large.
The best we can do is define hot spots based on “hunches” and search the hot spots. In my opinion, that is unlikely to find the plane.
It is not surprising that Darren Chester, the new Minister for Transport and Infrastrucure, has decided against expanding the search area.
“Early on, one of the spokesmen said that the reports that the plane continued flying for 6 hours were inaccurate. Why hide this?”
That was Hishammuddin Hussein. He was responding to reports that the RR engines continued to send back data for 6 hours. Notice that he use the term “inaccurate”, not “false”. No the engines did not send back data, but yes, SATCOM signals were sent for 6 hours. Why hide it? I can guess (they wanted to be the ones to release the information) but who knows for sure?
Sajid – My quick guess is the Alps murders are related to MH370 in a very peripheral way because it illustrates that motives are often murky-sordid and come to light in the course of time. People scratch their heads and think why oh why would anyone or anything do that(MH370)? Here in the comfortable west, ensconsed with an idiotic media it is easily obscured that the world is cruising towards a major conflict that is thoroughly anticipated by a lot of players despite the business as usual dispositions on display. There is going to be a redraw in the ME with plenty at stake and nukes are in the mix. It makes pre-WW11 geopolitics look simple by comparison. With China/Russia backing Shia Islam(Iran) some Sunni players(Saudi’s/Turkey) are now opening some doors to Israel as a security partner. Who woulda thought? The Iranians are heavily active in Malaysia – a longstanding seeding policy via student sponsorship – which itself is a regional hub for Sunni networks that reach far and wide. Iran is on the cusp of being a nuclear state while Sunni groups are doing anything they can to get hold of nuclear anything including waste materials from areas they conquer in Syria/Iraq.
One of Putin’s problems is the control of nuclear materials. When the USSR broke up in 1991 they had 27,000 nukes with enough materials stored to make another 80,000 of them – mind boggling isn’t it?? Since then much of it(material) has been sold to the civil nuke energy market but by no means all and Jihadi groups have done nearly everything to get hold of this stuff with hundreds of plots so far, many coming from inside the former USSR. Countries said to still hold large amounts of high grade material include Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan. The Islamist networks are getting bigger and more sophisticated while the Russian reach has diminished until recently.
So what could possibly be the motive for removing a plane? At the moment there could be heaps. Four bodies on an Alps cycling trail with no apparent motive – if you ignore what these people did for a living, and who they were?
@DennisW
Fair enough (That’s all I was doing, taking a shot) Cheers for responding. Some good stuff indeed
@Jeff
“One might ask why Hitler attacked Stalin. We can’t figure out why he did it, just that he did it”, one your reply on twitter
“1200 comments from Russia’s troll army. Must’ve hit a nerve”, another one
Do you remember what I wrote in email once? Hope that this case will not cause some permanent brain damages. Actually, I’m not sure if not too late.
(during whole 2 years, I watch here on local TV sometimes documents about WWII, often BBC/west produced, even about eastern front and all tragicthings what heppened on all sides that times, and there guys from both/all sides, Germans and Russians tell about ugliness of war, without any mutual hate today, and it is simply fact, that Europe was saved by joint effort of western coalition and commies Soviet Union, thats simply fact, that many people from there died fighting german nazis and many of us here was probably never born without them, the same as them on western front and pacific, because Hitler was really, really most dangerous man ever, far more dangerous than Stalin, yeah, despite all the tragic deaths which HE caused to his countries and even Ukraine, sure, but its absolutelly stupid to try to twist history and compare the two as “the same” – SU never planned to take over whole world by force, they even was not able to effectivelly without M.A.D. so mutually assured destruction “crazy defense”, becuase US was quickly superior in all nuclear arsenal and carriers, yeah, they was afraid too, but after U2 and first satellites, they simply realized that they have far more power, so… whole that stupid fear on BOTH sides calmed down and since then, both countries cooperate slowly but steadily on nuclear disarmament, the most ugly legacy of clod war – other thing is, that unfortunatelly, since then, many other countries have nuclear weapons too, not to mention possibly some terrorist groups or mad individuals; and so, its absolutelly irrational to not talk with Russia, nor China, etc)
Kindly please, can you tell me/us one thing? What is your oppinion about scientology cult and all the sideband orgs they run? Because this is one and only thing I really hate on America, one and only. And everytime something even near to this s*it occurs, all my red-alerts starts to flash as crazy. Please, reply or I am hands-off here, restarting thinking about myself and all the nonsenses of this case and everything I did to try to understand how stupid is the hate based on nationality in any way. At the end of the day, scientologists thinks that they have absolute truth, they do only right things, that purpose cleans the tools, that they are only elite who survive some apocalyptic tragedy caused by I dont know what, that they are simply the ones who save the whole planet. But its in fact neo-nazi neo-fascist elitist stupid gangsters and their brainwashed victims org spreading the hate over the world in his corporate BS softskills trainings mostly and invisibly, because it all looks so nice at the first and second and third sight… Thats the most dangerous manipulation I see, and nobody and nothing cant stop me to fight against this s*it, never ever. Cheers.
and I dont want to use cheap notes as that there is one org named WISE – World Instuitute of Scientology Enterprises (just maintaining network of financial streams from all their foreign supporters, mostly hiding it in public, sometimes even not knowing about it, as they only participated on some trainings but are slowly pulled inside by more and more addictive trainings)
Germans today, in war against evil…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9z4DWB7Iy8&list=PLzrRkSuSpF2NNf-A8BdcA64sQ4sMsD4dJ
Russians today, in war against evil…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBVY7Glcd84
This has become a Catch-22. Our answers are subject to the information we have
What If only fundamental background checks were done for PAX, crew, without further investigation from NOK interviews. Until that information is released, it’s reasonable to consider that someone on the plane had motive and means to enter the cockpit
What If the cockpit was breached by perpetrator(s) and the pilots were forced to fly by their commands knowing at some point that comms had been disabled
Was the first log-on request a reaction by Captain Zaharie to return communications capability. Could Zaharie have used the fuel cut-off switch to cause an intentional flame-out knowing this would trigger a log-on request when power was restored
Or could they have been forced to climb to an altitude high enough for low oxygen level to cause a flame-out
Also this could explain what McKay may have seen if the timing could ever be reconciled;
Other events such as a fuel control fault can result in excess fuel in the engine’s combustor. This additional fuel can result in flames extending from the engine’s exhaust pipe. As alarming as this would appear, at no time is the engine itself actually on fire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbine_engine_failure
Petition by Mike Chillit to start search behind CI…
https://www.change.org/p/malcolm-turnbull-mp-mh370-move-the-search-north
@Susie
My own opinion is that Shah or any other pilot would be totally ignorant of the AES functionality. My best guess is that no one on the aircraft had a clue that the AES was still responding to pings by the satellite.
These guys are bus drivers. Not rocket scientists.
@StevanG
FWIW, I did not sign Chillit’s petition. At this moment I am completely clueless relative to where the aircraft went down.
No strange forces outside the realm of science are needed to explain coincidences.
”Why does an educated person think there might really be something in coincidences?” Dr. Diaconis asked, and answered his own question: ”No one story holds up on its own. But taken together, they mean something.” If you put all these near coincidences together, doesn’t it indicate that something strange is going on?
It does not, Dr. Diaconis replied, and quoted another fundamental law of logic: ”A lot of flawed arguments don’t produce a sound conclusion.”
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/27/science/1-in-a-trillion-coincidence-you-say-not-really-experts-find.html?pagewanted=all
@Bruce
Yes, we all fall victim to confirmation bias and other forms of brain malfunctions. As you get older (and I am past getting older), you tend to rely more and more on counter-examples. If I can’t find a counter-example for something after a lot of looking, I start to think that it is probably true.
There are even cases where what seem to be iron clad arguments turn out to be bogus, and even after the fact you cannot figure out why they are bogus. My favorite example of this is Bertrand’s Paradox. Well worth the time for a careful read – where three seemingly “unflawed arguments produce three different answers. The notion of what constitutes a “well posed” problem is extremely subtle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_paradox_(probability)
@DennisW
may be bus drivers, but in this case little bit above average, at least in electronics
http://motionsim.blogspot.cz/2014/03/sending-positive-energy-your-way-zaharie.html
@DennisW
I’m still strong behind CI theory, will give up only if they finish the search there (however it’s unlikely they’ll even start it).
interesting; I tried to peek into Shah youtube home page activities (user catalinapby1) for some links and found for example this one, about education and creativity, its also funny but quite wise too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY
this wonderfull thing found there too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg3PberzvXo
wow, just now, quite comprehensive head-on collision with RT and laughing emperor itself; probably time to back @Jeff somehow… he was quite neutral all the time
https://www.rt.com/news/333908-mh370-blame-putin-conspiracy/
(I vote for Interstellar tonight)
@falken
The email thread with Thanos ended more than a year before the disappearance of MH370. Still, I generally agree that I have found nothing to suggest Shah was either suicidal or a murderer. Politically active? Yes.
I think it’s quite clear he wasn’t suicidal, so intentional flight to current search area if it’s done, it’s not by him
@Jeff I feel a bit uncomfortable with discussions of a motive right now, before we understand what happened. Its a bit kind of blackmail to connect motive and capture. Every time i raise the question of a carefully planned deliberate act, lots of people come and say, “if you cannot tell the motive you cannot talk about a commando action”. But I think i am not obliged to know the motive , its just kind of pressure, generated to suppress the potential of other scenarios, like capture, theft or terror.
The weight of the known facts vary with the chosen scenario. When we assume a suicide flight, we dont need to talk about people who passed check in without security check, and we dont need to discuss the unbelievable incompetence of MAS HQ staff in the minutes after disappearance and we dont need to discuss radar spoofs or SAT spoofs. But since a suicidal scenario is so extremely weak founded, we have to draw our attention to other scenarios.
In a capture scenario, everything unusual that happened during boarding or on the airport would carry extreme weight. Immediately would we ask the question, if there was outside help and were lax security procedures part of the plan, were they intended? Also when loking at the extremely unusual behaviour of ATC and MAS HQ after the loss of comms. The wrong info from MAS HQ to HCM ATC carries extreme weight, if we assume a capture scenario, because it would be proof for involvement of ranking MAS staff. Then we have the “jets in Butterworth”-question. Were they told, to stay on the ground?
These are all indications for a meticulously planned act with outside support within MAS and Malaysian Government.
When we look at these facts more careful, we might find the motive.
@CosmicAcademy, You raise a lot of important and interesting points.
@Jeff My idea is, to find the special fingerprint of the people, who did it.
If i have the assumption, that it was done by a commando, i would have to look for a company that offers services up to this task, since no state would be prepared to employ its official agencies for a job like that. So a government can always claim, that it was not involved. (i think of the person in australia who gave his marriage ring to his wife, in case he didnt make it back)
Now the question would be, which privtely hired special ops would use a spoof-scenario to capture the plane? Would this be typically russian? Or would the western ops be the ones , who prefer it? Even now comes the question, whether the commando needed to do it with a spoof, because they had no other choice.
My suggestion would be, that the western style commandos would have other means to make the plane disappear, e.g. black out all comms by an AWACS and the like, while a russian inspired commando would have no other choice than to use a spoof. My theory is, they needed it. And china was not involved, because the first thing they tried after the disappearance, was, to hack the Malaysian government computers in search for informations about MH370. So only Russia remains as a possible mastermind of a comando action, and there we have the melange of Putins asymmetrical war: a hired commando of not militarily enlisted people , but capable to act as a special ops unit. (The only thing that wories me about this theory is, why i always have visitors from Diego Garcia on my website, when i mention it)
@Cosmic
you said:
“Every time i raise the question of a carefully planned deliberate act, lots of people come and say, “if you cannot tell the motive you cannot talk about a commando action”. But I think i am not obliged to know the motive”
I think you should take the advice of those people.
Jeff (and everyone else here) – I really appreciate all your hard work and analysis on this most vexing yet hopefully-solvable catastrophic riddle. My question to all of you, but mostly Jeff, is this: aren’t you frightened that Putin and his gang of thugs will track you down and harm you? I mean, there’s very little evidence that they did anything to 9MMRO, though I do acknowledge that it’s reasonable to suspect they did. I really am curious if you fear retaliation, and what you think of poor old Viktor Yushchenko.
http://www.thelancet.com/cms/attachment/2010709869/2032802928/gr2_lrg.jpg
Timetable of discovery of radar traces
Is there a definitive answer to this very simple question – “were the radar traces recognised in real time, or were they only discovered when the logs were re-run in the hours after the disappearance.”
If the latter, then there can be no surprise that Malaysian jets were not scrambled.
I think I recall reading very early on that HH said that Malaysia ran the logs at something like 8am Malaysian time. But I didn’t keep screenshots.