John McCain – Speak Your Mind https://indianapublicmedia.org/speakyourmind/ Speak Your Mind from WFIU Mon, 20 Mar 2017 13:00:12 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.12 Just another Indiana Public Media weblog John McCain – Speak Your Mind John McCain – Speak Your Mind ebinder@indiana.edu ebinder@indiana.edu (John McCain – Speak Your Mind) Copyright © Speak Your Mind 2010 Speak Your Mind from WFIU John McCain – Speak Your Mind https://indianapublicmedia.org/speakyourmind/wp-content/plugins/powerpress/rss_default.jpg https://indianapublicmedia.org/speakyourmind/ The Malaysian Airlines Tragedy https://indianapublicmedia.org/speakyourmind/malaysian-airlines-tragedy/ https://indianapublicmedia.org/speakyourmind/malaysian-airlines-tragedy/#respond Thu, 24 Jul 2014 14:45:42 +0000 https://indianapublicmedia.org/speakyourmind/?p=389 In 1983, the Soviet Union apparently shot down a Korean airliner that was off-course over Sakhalin Island, a Soviet submarine port. 269 people perished. My father, John Keppel, a retired U.S. Foreign Service Officer, questioned the U.S. government’s account and called for an independent Congressional investigation.

The apparent missile shootdown of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine also deserves independent investigation, but clearly in both cases innocent people lost their lives when civilian airliners crossed zones of intense conflict. Many civilians have been killed in recent battles in eastern Ukraine after government forces ended a truce with separatists.

If pro-Russian rebels mistook the Malaysian plane for a Ukrainian military aircraft, their mistake, though criminally reckless, was not unique. Ukraine shot down a Russian airliner in 2001, and the U.S. downed an Iranian civilian Airbus in 1988, killing 290.

The Reagan administration seized on the 1983 Korean Airlines tragedy to push Europeans to accept deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles on their soil. Senator John McCain already speaks of the Malaysian Airlines tragedy as a “game-changer.”

One hundred years ago, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo led to the cataclysm of world war. This is no time for games. NATO deployments in or near Ukraine would be especially provocative. A new Cold War on the border of a resentful, nuclear armed Russia would carry incalculable risk, to which the Malaysian Airlines tragedy is just a clue.

Sources:

Democracy Now

The Nation

The Nation

MSNBC

The Sleepwalkers:  How Europe Went to War in 1914

]]> https://indianapublicmedia.org/speakyourmind/malaysian-airlines-tragedy/feed/ 0 A new Cold War on the border of a resentful, nuclear armed Russia would carry incalculable risk, to which the Malaysian Airlines tragedy is just a clue. A new Cold War on the border of a resentful, nuclear armed Russia would carry incalculable risk, to which the Malaysian Airlines tragedy is just a clue. John McCain – Speak Your Mind 2:00