August 24, 2020 Update
News today reveals that the cockpit voice recorder "black box" recorded conversation inside the cockpit after the first missile strike. It is suggested that the pilots were still in control after the first hit. It is claimed that the cockpit voice recorder quit working prior to the second missile strike.
Also today I found an article from July 15 about a report concerning how Iran's military blundered and fired the two missiles. Even this explanation I find to be extremely difficult to believe but hey, accidents happen, right?
And another article that goes so far as to try to explain why Iran officials needed to lie. Anyone familiar with this story should be able to remember the chain of lies before evidence surfaced that there were missiles involved.
February 3, 2020
Recordings show Iran knew jetliner hit by a missile, Ukraine says CBC Canada February 3, 2020
Just an editorial comment here...
I think what this historical event illustrates is just how cruel and cold the leaders of the nation of Iran actually are, and how untrustworthy they are. They are in fact so far gone that they are actually saying that their missile attack on US targets earlier in the night of this tragedy were carried out by the hand of god. Think about that one a minute. Iran now is in control of god's hands. I need references for that claim don't I?
Khamenei says Iran's 'slap' to US in Iraq was 'hand of God'
"The fact that Iran has the power to give such a slap to a world power shows the hand of God," said Khamenei
A brief summary:
‘Days of God’: A look at Iran’s mounting crises Associated Press January 17
General Soleimani Profile
Qassem Soleimani and Iran’s Unique Regional Strategy November 2018 Combating Terrorism Center at West Point
My list of perplexing facts:
[a work in progress]
- A Ukraine airliner was shot down just after taking off from an airport just south of Tehran before dawn on January 8, 2020
- The airliner was a Boeing 737-800
- All passengers and crew were killed
- Iran initially faulted the airplane
- Boeing stock fell sharply the day of the crash
- Pictures and video emerged on the Internet convincing the world that surface to air missiles fired from one or more launch sites not far from the airport had shot the plane down
- Reports have come out that one or more of the people who shot the videos on their cellphones have been arrested
- Iran continued for days to deny that they had shot the plane down despite the obvious fact that they did know.
- Eventually, several days after the crash Iran admitted that its missiles had shot the airliner down
- Iran continues to insist that one way or another America is to blame for them shooting the plane down
- No evidence has yet emerged to back up the claim that Iran accidentally shot the airliner down
- Iran has consistently used propaganda to hide their own guilt relating to this tragedy
January 5, three days before the attack on the Ukrainian airliner:
January 19 Update
Bits of news trickle in:
This would imply that anybody who casts doubt on the official propaganda story is an enemy of Iran.
Something odd in this BBC article. It mentions that there were passengers from an "unnamed country" onboard in addition to those countries already publicly named. ???
New York Post January 15 This article confirms the arrest of the video maker but also shows a more recently released video of both missile launches and strikes as well as the airplane approaching the camera in flames.
January 17 Update
NBC News January 17
Rare recently at least. He spoke at Friday prayers. There's a lot of war mongering and sabre rattling at the highest levels of Iran's government including from the supreme leader himself, a devout religious man. Is Islam now the religion of peace through strength?
TehranTimes
Defense Minister says U.S. surrenders to Iran’s missile power and strong resolve
It is simply astounding to me how many news articles there are out on the Internet right now, Saturday evening January 17, 2020, that are blaming America for Iran's missile attack on the Ukraine airliner. There are Iranian outlets of course. Iran says they did it (although I was sure I saw something this morning or yesterday evening saying the US had hacked the missile defenses and caused the SAM attack on the airliner. No reference for that though, not yet at least and I can't find any articles about that now). But American news outlets, the Canadians, Russia, you name it. They all call the attack an accident (although no proof has yet been given by anybody for that claim) and they are all saying Trump is partly to blame. In other words America makes Iran do bad things. They aren't mature enough yet as a nation to be responsible for the things they do. Yet they want advanced weapons systems, maybe even including nuclear weapons.
Another unreferenced claim I read about this morning or yesterday evening was that Iran's leadership had said that evil powers had invented all the high tech weapons, presumably the new precision ones Iran had used January 8 to attack the American military in Iraq and the ground to air missile defense system they used to attack the Ukraine airliner that same night and of course the
stealth airplanes that had Iran in a panic after their missile strike on Iraq.
De devew mae me do it.
I did just read somewhere that Iran had fired more than 30 missiles at Americans in Iraq that night and it is in today's news that the Americans did take casualties in the strike contradicting earlier reports that no Americans had been hurt. American military personnel were hurt by the blasts of those missiles.
In other words, Iran plays the victim and the whole world virtue signals in its defense. Ya gotta love virtue signaling.
January 15 Update
TehranTimes online January 15
Somebody should tell M. A. Saeed, the author of this article, that the words
“Fundamentalists”, “extremists”, “terrorists”, “insurgents” are nouns, not adjectives. Where did she go to school anyway? I use the word she only because it's now politically correct to use the female pronoun when in doubt. Assuming M. A. to be a man is sexist. But anyway, there are "terrorist" organizations and "insurgent" forces and "fundamentalist" beliefs and "extremist" causes yes and those adjectives are correct, but adjectives as far as I know don't have plural forms.
By the way, I used to be what was at the time a "fundamentalist Christian" meaning Christians who adhered to certain fundamental Biblical principles of the faith. Somewhere along the way Christians gave up that word. Maybe it was when they began to understand that there were fundamentalist radical Islamic terrorist groups that we expected would soon start nuking our cities. 9/11 actually came as a relief to us in the sense that it served the same purpose as a nuke attack without as much damage and loss of life. Nobody wants to contemplate what would follow if Islamists ever nuked us but it would be suicidal for them on a grand scale if ever they did.
Same goes for North Korea.
Just sayin'
NBC News January 15
Iran threatens European troops but admits protesters 'were lied to'
This article discusses the Obama era nuclear arms deal. It's not much of a stretch of the imagination to suggest Iran is threatening Europe with future nuclear strikes if they join the US effort to renegotiate the deal. But the watered down threat is that Iran will target European soldiers in the Middle East. The article points out that it is unclear what was meant by the threat.
I noticed the all-male audience in the accompanying picture as opposed to the presence of women in all the pictures and videos I've seen of the protesters. Why is it that women in these fundamentalist extremist Islamic nations don't demand equality with men?
January 14 Update
A brief scanning of headlines this morning on Google News leads me to these conclusions:
- Thousands of Iranians are protesting the official Iranian government's handling of the airliner shoot-down story, third day of protests over the coverup, arrests of protesters made, (Fox report of blood on the sidewalks in a report I watched, gunfire, live bullets), 30 arrested (CNBC), Iran denies shooting protesters (BBC)
- Canada's prime minister Trudeau says the obvious, that the plane crash victims would be alive today if not for US Iran tensions... [like duh guy, that's news? Isn't it obvious? Maybe what isn't so obvious is why Canada wasn't able to defuse those tensions before the Iranians shot down those Canadian citizens in the first place? Just sayin'.]
- Iran's leader is reporting the arrests of those responsible for shooting down the airliner. [Sure, sure, does that include himself and the ayatollah? Right. Not too likely that Rouhani was interviewed in his prison cell or torture chamber when he said this.]
- Iranian official tells Trump not to dishonor the Farsi language by tweeting in it [laughing out loud about that one!]
- Trump keeps lying about Iran (Washington Post behind a subscription firewall)
- Some Canadians angry at the US about Iran shooting down the airliner (NPR article) [no doubt an emotion shared by many at NPR itself]
- Top Iranian TV reporter quits and apologizes for lying (I read elsewhere last night she apologized for lying for the past 17 years)
- Iran says Canada will have "active role" in the investigation [maybe because Canada agrees it's the USA's fault? just a guess...]
- "Iran Jet Disaster Setup" (Sputnik Russian news yesterday) [This article speculates on the odd nature of there even being an eye witness to the missile attack and seems to accuse the USA of using special secret warfare tools to trick missile defense systems into shooting the airliner, capturing a video of the results, and using spy websites to disseminate the video that very same day, total anti-American conspiracy theory. I'm surprised Iran hasn't jumped on this story as a propaganda ploy and a mask, a red herring]
- Ukraine knew but didn't go public (Radio Free Europe yesterday)
- Ukraine foreign minister says airline not forewarned of missile attack on Iraq the night just before the disaster or the heightened state of alert in Iran (CNA Singapore) [wondering why the airline wasn't following the news but oh well...]
Enough already...
Meanwhile:
YouTube video on CNA Singapore channel
Iran plane crash: Ukrainian airline not warned about missile attacks says Ukraine Foreign Minister
Freudian slip at the 58 second mark???
Finally something real
BLAME AMERICA FIRST: Kevin McCarthy RIPS Democrats Over American Hatred
January 13 Update
Fox News on Solemani execution (YouTube today)
January 11 Update: Iran Confesses, Blames Others
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards
Well as evening arrives it is becoming clear to me that today is a day that will go down in history. That's my hope at least. Today is the day that the people of Iran, good honest hard working intelligent citizens, realized how corrupt their government actually is.
Will the government accept their fate or will it fight back and start mowing down its own people? Will civil war break out? Will Iran's government and religious leaders drive their people into submission or will freedom finally arrive? I just read a New York Times piece on how the people of Iran have taken to the streets in protest against how Iran's leaders lied to them about shooting down this airplane and blaming it on everybody else but themselves, even now after finally admitting their guilt.
A message to the people of Iran. The world stands with you as you seek freedom from your own government's repression.
A Message to Garcia
You know, it's kind of ironic but for some bizarre reason I was thinking about the Elbert Hubbard booklet "
A Message to Garcia" today and discovered that it had been made into a movie in 1936 and I found the movie on YouTube and watched it this afternoon. Elbert Hubbard and his second wife went down on the Lusitania in 1915. My kids are among his descendants; I'm not but they are. So anyway the booklet is about an American military guy who was asked by the President of the United States to deliver a message to the leader of the Cuban resistance in the leadup to the Spanish American War.
It is my understanding, although I'm too lazy to look up a reference, that the Iranian general who was targeted and killed on January 3 this year in Baghdad was carrying a letter to the leadership of Iraq proposing a path to peace but it never reached its destination because of the general's untimely death. So now there's this in today's TehranTimes:
I'm more inclined to believe that this Iranian version of the story doesn't add up since the said Iranian general was a hero trying to drive America out of Iraq with the long range goal of driving the Jews out of Israel (Palestine to them). The Tehran times, by the way, from what I was reading today, actually makes the western world's mainstream media look like truth rather than propaganda. I highly recommend reading it!
January 10 Update
Reports came out yesterday that the debris from the crash was being cleared by the Iranians with bulldozers. Actually they used front-end loaders as seen in the pictures in this article from The Sun, a UK publication:
**********
January 8
There's a lot of speculating going on concerning the Boeing 737 crash shortly after taking off from Tehran on the morning following the Iranian missile attack on Iraq that led to President Trump's televised appearance yesterday January 8, 2020. The airliner crashed predawn just hours after Iran's ballistic missile salvo so one might think Tehran's air defenses must have been on high alert.
In my mind anybody who doesn't think the crash is suspicious is... well... is...
isn't, actually, doesn't have a functioning brain let's say.
Everything about the crash is suspicious.
So here are a couple of links that have popped up on the Internet that should give hints for early speculation:
From the DailyMail dot com January 8:
Is this the missile that shot down Ukrainian Airlines flight... or a hoax?
Following the story in the Aviation Herald:
Crash: UIA B738 at Tehran on Jan 8th 2020, lost height after departure, aircraft on fire
January 9 Update
As the day progressed today (January 9) news sources have been reporting on the probability of a missile strike on this airliner and a video has emerged that may be showing the missile strike itself. The camera taking the video was approximately two miles from the airplane at the point of explosion and according to this website its position has been located. Check out this
bellingcat dot com website. The missile rises from the left in the video and the sound of the explosion takes about ten seconds to reach the camera after the flash from the explosion.
Anyone wondering why Iran might want to shoot down a 737 and try to blame it on the airplane might want to see this report from the day after the crash:
Boeing sees $4.3 billion of market value erased after a fatal 737 crash in Iran
Welcome to the new face of covert warfare.
Reminder:
This airplane was downed pre-dawn on January 8 just five days after
Qasem Soleimani was executed by a US drone attack in Baghdad prompting retaliation and threats by the Iranian government. On January 7, one day before this tragic crash,
as many as 56 people died in a stampede at one of
Soleimani's funeral processions in Iran. It is reported that most of the passengers onboard the doomed airliner were Iranian or held Iranian passports. It makes a person wonder if enough Iranian people have died yet to satisfy Iran's leaders' need for revenge or is there more to come.
