What happened to flight MH17 over Ukraine and why?

Background
Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was going to fly from Nederland to Malaysia and possibly from there to Australia. Flight plan was reasonably normal: some companies, such as British Airways and Air France had stopped using it, but Singapore Airlines was flying one minute and 40 seconds behind this flight.

Who shot the plane down?
There is ample evidence that it was East Ukraine rebels/separatists that did it. There are plenty of conflicting rumors to other parties, but those are not even worth of disputing here.

Where did separatists get their weapons?
This is the most critical question of all.
What happened was that Putin decided to arm separatists with better weaponry and this scheme took a few months or at least over one month to play:
1) Russian media told to the world that separatists had stolen this weaponry from Ukraine army. They have it so this is possible to happen. Ukraine government denies this.
2) Russia delivers those weapons to separatists about a week before they used it.
3) Russian air control closes four flight routes over East Ukraine a few hours before the shooting.
4) Either separatists or Russian military was those that did the actual shooting from East Ukraine.

Did separatists get any training from Russia for shooting down airplanes?
Yes, read the article from ABCNews.

So this whole thing was masterminded by Putin?
Yes. Who else controls Russian media, Russia weapons, Russian army and Russian air control?

Did they want to shoot down commercial flight or military plane?
Military plane.

The Russian organization masterminding this shooting apparently have not practiced this as they did many things badly:
- They left the timing extremely tight. Russian air control shut down routes over East Ukraine from their side only a few hours before the shooting.
- This caused MH17 to alter their flight plan to a place where commercial planes do not fly normally, so the militants didn't expect commercial planes in that place.
- No one from the organization either knew about a system to follow commercial planes, or they didn't want any traces that they had been active on that site. Either way militants didn't follow the site to know that commercial planes are there now and more than just this one.

Did Ukraine do something wrong?
Most likely yes, their intelligence knew something was going on. How much they knew and how much in advance is unknown, but the Ukraine air control did two changes requiring flight to raise over 10 kilometers. Apparently this was a communications gap and the people making decision thought that separatists had weapons only up to 6 kilometers, not to 15 kilometers the way they did have. So it was a mistake, but in my book an honest mistake.

Did CIA do something wrong?
Most likely yes, it seems that they informed close allies: Britain & France to watch out, but didn't make public announcements. Probably to protect their sources or from letting Russia and separatists to know how much they know.

Why Malaysian Airlines?
No reason, except that Malaysia is not close Russia or USA ally.

Why did the plane fly over 200 km too South from the original route (L980)?
Because they were flying on channel L980, but Russian air control closed that route, or their part of it A87, so the plane had to divert from the original plan.

Did the Singapore Airlines (SQ351) fly on the original route or on the modified MH17 route?
It appears on the modified route, but I am not sure. The source, Swedish newspaper Sydsvenkan, said it was flying 25 kilometers behind the Malaysian plane, which makes one minute and 40 seconds. Btw it was a joined flight with SAS (SAS is a Nordic company, and especially because of this Sydsvenkan is reputable source on this) and Virgin Australia and Boeing 777 with 285 seats. Other source: Expressen, another Swedish magazine.

Why did the separatist leader say that people on Malaysian Airlines were dead already?
This is common practice in Russia: there is a saying that if you want to lie, you better lie more outrageously as people believe outrageous lies easier. Naturally this was a lie still.

Who is leading these Ukraine militants?
Igor Girkin (Strelkov): "FSB until March 2013, and according to Ukrainian and EU authorities, he is a retired Russian military intelligence GRU colonel who has previously participated in the 2014 Crimea crisis."
Igor Vsevolodovich Girkin (Russian: Игорь Всеволодович Гиркин), also known as Igor Ivanovich Strelkov (Russian: Игорь Иванович Стрелков), born on 17 December 1970,[1] is a Russian citizen from Moscow[2] who commands the Donbass People's Militia paramilitary group and is a key figure behind the 2014 pro-Russian conflict in Ukraine.
According to Russian papers, he is fighting against fascists in Ukraine, but he is fascist himself: "during the 1990s, Girkin wrote for the right-wing Russian newspaper Zavtra, which is run by the Russian nationalist Alexander Prokhanov" and where Borodai was an editor.[16]". So naturally that is just a bad cover story that doesn't sit well on him.
So when Putin says that he has no control over the militants, remember that his hired man is at least officially the top #1 among the Ukraine militants.

But Putin wants ETYJ to find out who is responsible
Yes, Putin should get an honorary master's degree on western media manipulation as he plays them so well. And here his tactics are to appear to support this while he does everything to hinder the actual process.

What is the status of investigations?
As of July 21, the status is that European organization, ETYJ is leading the investigations. Also Malaysian and Netherlands authorities are involved. Clearly Malaysian and Netherlands authorities are the most neutral on this topic, and therefore militants were sure to give airplane black boxes to them.
Ukraine government has taken corpses and they plan to send them to Netherlands as the plane left from Netherlands. Largest group dying in the accident was of Netherlands nationality.
Militants have declared crashing site as safe area.

Testing Garcinia Cambogia - does it help to get thinner?

Testing Garcinia Cambogia

Why: My weight is reasonably good. My weight index is 84.5kg/1.78m/1.78m = 27. The normal weight maximum is 25, so I am only very slightly in the overweight category. But my wife wants me to decrease it. I have tried that for several years and succeeded only for a short duration. So let's see if this "miracle" diet product helps on me.

Product: Garcinia Cambogia Select
This product has three ingredients: Garcinia Cambogia, Calcium and Potassium. Two of the latter help body to digest the main ingredient.
One capsule has 500mg of the extract, making it (overly conveniently) 250mg of the core ingredient: Hydroxycitric Acid (HCA).
Recommendations: Not for children under 18 years or pregnant or nursing mothers.

Current status: It looks like this is total fake/cheat/fraud product that does absolutely nothing. If I were you, I would not look for any further but would scrap this idea for good.

Shop I used: Garcinia Cambogia Select. Make sure you go to .net and .com. The latter works only as a virus sender... I bought six bottles for US$ 120, so that made120$ / (6 bottles * 90 pills/bottle * 250mg) = 89 cents / gram or $20/month. Package arrived eight days later here to Finland. Best before date on them was Feb 03, 2017 so I have 2½ years to eat ½ year of pills, so I could have ordered even more in one order.

Weight history: My weight has stayed relatively stable for the last 15 years, so I am quite perfect specimen for the experiment.

Pills usage: Recommendation is to eat three pills a day, half an hour before each meal with a glass of water. The reality with me is that most of the time I take the pill with Pepsi Max, but that is quite close to water so it should be fine. I will hardly eat three times a day, but I will eat it at least one time every day as I eat some other pills at the same time. Most of the time I won't eat before meal but after a meal: on breakfast I eat it with my other pills after the breakfast and typically I remember to eat this on other times either after a meal or at any random time. So due to not eating three times always and for not eating them at right time, maybe the effect will be 50 - 80% instead of 100%. But that is not the main point: main point is to let you know if it really helps or not.

Diet: For the last two years I have been in "flexible" GI+ diet. I eat healthy and my calorie intake and quality of them is good. The reason why I am not as thin as I want is that I eat sweets, ice cream and about anything before and during night. Before GI+ diet, I was on low fat "diet" for over 10 years. But don't take the word diet seriously: it is just that I avoid some foods. My greatest success with any diet is that I avoid potatoes: I eat them about 100g / month. Next success is with bad quality bread: I eat typically one or two hamburgers / week.

Sports: Summer was record cold on June, but now it is July in Finland, so that means my bicycling season has started "seriously" recently. If I manage to do sports well, I may loose up to two kilos during this heavier exercise period. As my experiment will take on minimum half a year, that gain will be lost easily in that time though. But it may show up as better than normal start on the test results.

Weight changes:
I have checked my starting weight on three scales and it was: 84.5, 84.5 and 84.3. My weight can vary half a kilo during a day. If you want to get exact results, then check it always on morning. But I'll check it always on evening, because that is when I write the blog.
Starting date: July 13, 2014 and weight with my electronic scale was 84.5 kg.

Date	Weight (kg)	Change (kg)
July 13	84.5	NA
July 16	84.5	0
July 26	84.6	+0.1
Aug 22	86.7	+2.2

Mitä suomalaiset haluavat Alexander Stubilta?

Kuten Alex sanoi heti valintansa jälkeen: Kokoomuslaiset halusivat jotain uutta kun he valitsivat hänet [eikä kumpaakaan veteraanipoliitikoista]. Tässä artikkelissa pohdiskellaan mitä se voisi olla.

Talous: Katainen ja Urpilainen eivät onnistuneet nostamaan Suomen taloutta vaan se vetää matalaliitoa ja jää koko ajan jälkeen esim Ruotsista. Kiitos tästä epäonnistumisesta kuuluu erityisesti Urpilaiselle ja SDP:lle, eläkeläisten jarrupuolueelle: Suomen julkinen talous on ennätyssuuri ja se imee verojen kautta Suomen talouden veltoksi. Kataisella ei juuri ole ollut mitään pelikortteja joilla hän voisi onnistua, mutta pääministeri saa silti kantaa vastuun. Jos ei muusta niin siitä että hallituksella ei ole ollut mitään muutakaan järkevää ideaa eli asioiden on vain annettu pyöriä ennallaan. Stubilla ei tule olemaan yhtään helpompaa: Rinne on sulle-mulle konklaavin konkari joka vetää neuvottelut viimeiseen hengenvetoon asti. Oikeastaan ainut kortti joka Stubilla on, on ennenaikaiset vaalit. Niiden jälkeen voi saada jotain järkevää aikaiseksi Keskustan ja jopa Persujen kanssa: mikä tahansa lienee parempi vaihtoehto kuin Rinteen vetämä SDP kun taloudesta puhutaan. Rinteen ei enää tarvitse jarrutella eläkeiän nostoa, mutta se auttaa vain yhteen osaongelmaan.

Työttömyys: Pelko työpaikasta vaivaa ja työllisten määrä laskee näin taantumassa. Samaan aikaan kuitenkin kirjoitetaan kuinka Helsingin Seutu kaipaa lisää ulkomaalaisia. Yhtenä syynä on se että työt ei kelpaa suomalaisille, mutta toinen syy on liian kallis asuminen. Pääkaupunkiseudun kunnat ovat kaavoitusmonopolin turvin vetäneet hinnat pilviin eikä siinä ole mikään muuttunut vuosikymmeniin, joten ainut lääke on ottaa se monopoli ulos (ja samalla valtion jarru samalle seudulle eli ympäristöministeriöstä). Eli perustakaa metropolialueelle yhteiselin joka hoitaa kaavoituksen, veden ja viemäröinnin sekä julkisen liikennöinnin ja laittakaa valtio sinne mukaan varmistamaan että kaavoittaminen alkaa viimein toimia tällekin seudulle. Kun kaavoitus on avattu niin asuntojen hinnat laskevat ja työvoiman siirtymisen jälkeen myös Suomen työttömyystilastot paranevat (joskin USA on aivan oikeassa: työttömyysluvut ovat roskaa, työllisyysluvut ovat haastavampia seurata mutta kertovat totuuden paremmin).

EU-politiikka: Stubb on varmastikin henkisesti enemmän Brysseliläinen kuin Joensuulainen, joten EU:n tekemien tyhmyyksien myöntäminen ja jarruttaminen tai estäminen jatkossa tulee olemaan varmastikin haasteellista. Näin vaikka lähes jokainen Joensuulainen tietää että esim Romanian hyväksyminen Schengenmaaksi oli idioottimaisen tyhmä päätös. Tosin talouspolitiikan osalta EUn lienee pakko syventyä tiukemmin, koska nykyinen malli on suunnilleen huonoin mahdollinen. Ja kun Suomen ja Kokoomuksenkin on pakko sitten väkisin hyväksyä se, niin kansa tulee äänestämään uuden jytkyn sen jälkeen.

Minä, minä, minä: Suomi on kansainvälisesti ottaen melko järkevä maa joka osaa hyväksyä realiteetit kun on pakko. Mutta sitä ennen me olemme kuten muutkin ja kaikki ajattelevat omia etujaan. Ja joissain tabuasioissa yhteistä etua kuten että lapsilisiä ei saa leikata. Mutta ei saa muualtakaa, jos se koskee minua. Yksi asia on kuitenkin jonka saa ja tulee uhrata: byrokratia. Lunastakaa viimein niitä vaalilupauksia ja sen sijaan että suljette hyödyllisen poliisijaoston ja heitätte oikeita töitä tekevät kortistoon, niin etsikään ne kulusäästöt sieltä byrokratian mailta. Jos sieltä ei muuten löydy, niin muuttakaa lakeja niin että se byrokratia jää tarpeettomaksi. Allekirjoittanut jättäisi esim YLElle vain yhden televisio- ja yhden radiokanavan ja leikkaisi kaiken muun pois ja antaisi näille jotain tekemistä mikä ei kilpaile muiden kanavien kanssa: opetus, korkeakulttuuri jne. Maaseudun äänestäjät kyllä rakastavat YLEä, joten poliittisesti tämä ei ole paras ajatus.

Avoin data: Tämä on enemmänkin minun oma toivomus. Erityisesti kunnilla, mutta myös valtiolla on paljon dataa joka olisi hyödyllistä päätösten teossa. Ajatellaanpa vaikka koulujen sulkemisia: eikö datan voisi julkaista ulos jolloin siitä voisi kuka tahansa asiasta innostunut luoda oman analyysinsä siitä kuinka paljon koulun sulkeminen säästäisi rahaa tai säästääkö se ollenkaan. Eli miksei voi julkaista kaiken tilastollisen datan: kunnan kaikkien koulujen budjetit alaosastoittain, opiskelijoiden määrä, opettajien määrä, erikoisaineiden määrä, kuntalaisten määrä alueittain jne. Sen pohjalta joku osaava tai asiaa opetteleva voisi luoda laskelmat ja ennusteet. Kunnalta varmaankin löytyy myös vastaava, jonka voi joko julkaista tai joku päättäjäpuolella voi arvioida kumpi niistä on luotettavampi. Joka tapauksessa yhteiskuntamme tulee väkisin avoimemmaksi. Nykyään ei luoteta välttämättä lääkärinkään asiantuntemukseen, vaan kyseenalaistetaan se vaikka pyytämällä toinen arvio yksityiseltä puolelta kun lausunto vaikuttaa väärältä. Joten kuka uskoo vielä siihen että kansalaiset uskovat poliitikkoihin ja byrokraatteihin jotka kertovat minimaalisen vähän ennen kuin vasta päätöksen teon jälkeen ja omaa näkemystä tukevat faktat?

Finland, Sweden and NATO

Should Finland and Sweden join NATO?
Yes.
Followed by explanation:

Claim: no one will attack our country (Finland/Sweden)
Answer: I suppose you didn't bully anyone in school? That doesn't mean that you never saw anyone being bullied, or if you claim that then either you were blind or your memory is very shaky one. Sweden, Finland and Norway are maybe three of the nicest countries in the world. But only Sweden and Finland are competing on being most naive counting in the world; Norway joined NATO after Germany conquered in second world war. They learned the hard way that someone can find a reason to conquer them even when there isn't any clear sensible reason for it.
Sweden and Finland are counting on Russia to be nice even when its general says that Finland belongs to their control area and they fly test flights on both countries. Recent development in Ukraine should prove even to dumbest that this is not so: Russia was the best friend of Ukraine just one month before they invaded Krime from them and with demands for more.
I spoke with one Russian about it. First he was defending Russias right to conquer their neighbors. After that failed, he put the blame on Putin. On second world war happened the same: Soviet Union shot with cannons their own village and blamed it on Finland and started their attack on that pretence. Even today their school history books don't admit that they attacked Finland without any cause for it. And same is true today: Russian law allows the country to attack any other country "to protect their citizens". And if you follow Russian newspapers, then Finnish government takes Russian children from their parents in thousands. :-) This should be clear propaganda to anyone with any brains, but either some Russian mothers don't have such organs or they are paid for believing in whatever as this seems to be believed by reputable organizations and supported by people in demonstrations. At least the organization is corrupt: Russian mothers are lead by a certain

Claim: Russia is too weak
There was a time when this statement had plenty of truth in it. But by the time general public was starting to learn it, situation had changed. The real question is how long Finland and Sweden can withstand Russian forces without outsider, very substantial, help. So in other word, they are better off than Ukraine but not enough to make a difference on outcome.
There has been some arguments that Sweden is even weaker than Finland (thanks to being further from Russia). I haven't studied this and I don't want to give opinion on it. In any case the only thing that matters is that they are both too weak.

Claim: Finland and Sweden should ally closer.
Yes, this makes sense and something is happening. But in the end this would make decent effect only if you joined their militaries totally. And that won't happen. So basically you want to grow straws so that you can hang on them if you go over the edge. And the only sensible answer is to build a fence strong enough that you will never fall over it.

Claim: NATO won't help us any more than they will help Ukraine.
Lot of people seem to think that Ukraine is a NATO country. Well, they are not. And that is why NATO won't help them. At least not enough to matter with the outcome.

Claim: We don't need to belong to NATO. Either EU or NATO will help anyway.
So NATO won't help Ukraine, but they will help Finland or Sweden? Let's hope that either of them will, but if any help comes it will be much, much slower and weaker. And Finland used a lot of their bargaining chips when joining EU to remove military assistance on fellow EU countries when they joined it. Great, I think we have earned the title of most naive country in the world.

Claim: NATO would not help us anyway
No country has ever dared to attack on a NATO country, so it is hard to prove this false. But basically this is just an attempt to make reality to follow your ideas of it instead of trying to understand the reality. For example US , UK and Germany would all intervene on an attack to a NATO country. And Estonia would let their airports to be used for NATO support.

Claim: Al Qaida has attacked NATO
True. We all can evaluate which one is bigger threat to us, Russia or Al Qaida? Half of the Russian generals that mention Finland publicly make some kind of threats. AFAIK Al Qaida has never mentioned Finland. Finland has had two wars against Russia / Soviet Union during the last 100 years. Muslims have not made any terrorist attack in Finland ever. So if you choose any neutral argumentation, the answer is clear: Russia is greater threat than Muslim terrorism to Finland.

Claim: NATO would loose the war
As history should teach to you, on long term war, the more efficient economy will win. Even when Nato countries would use only a small percentage of their reserves to war, they would win easily (assuming that nuclear weapons are not used). So Finland or Sweden needs to succeed on defense only a short time until NATO will win the war in the air.

Claim: We can't trust the defense of our country to other countries.
At least in Finland, the answer is obvious: how does this prevent us from joining NATO? It doesn't! They will be happy if we don't rely on them too much.

Claim: NATO is too expensive.
Compared to what? Yes, if the alternative is that you don't want to defend your country. But if you think sensibly, it is cheaper to have sufficient defend forces when you can trust other countries to help you and when you can make joint purchases with other countries.

Claim: We have to join NATO operations like Afghanistan and Iraq.
1) Finland and Sweden are in Afghanistan already without being a full NATO member, so no changes in there. In places like Iraq we make our own decision if we will join it or not.

Claim: President Niinistö thinks that Finland should not join NATO
Yes, (at least) three groups have been against joining NATO in Finland: Finnish politicians, Helsinki Times (Helsingin Sanomat) and Aleksanteri Institute of Helsinki University. And all of them have more-or-less been proved wrong in it.

Let's start from Finnish politicians and to keep the story short let's focus on presidents only. Since Kekkonen, only Kekkonen and Ahtisaari have had their own standing in terms of Russia / Soviet Union. Perhaps not incidentally, these two are also the only world class politicians. Kekkonen was the only politician who could play on equal level with foreign top politicians. Since him, there has not been any other. Ahtisaari comes as second as he is equal to at least African heads of states. Whereas Koivisto, Halonen and now Niinistö have been bowing deep and hard to East. I had expected that Niinistö would not have fallen to that category, but his weakness was his ego: During Ukraine crisis Putin has been calling to Niinistö and as a master politician he has succeeded to make Niinistö to believe that he listens to what Niinistö says and thinks. So Putin is using Niinistö as one of his many pawns on the chess board, while Niinistö thinks that they are almost on equal levels. A bit similar happened to Halonen with Silvio Berlusconi: Finland was supposed to get their first EU office. Instead thanks to Berlusconi it went to Italy as their third and Finland got a lot smaller office as compensation.

Then let's go to Helsinki Times. Helsinki Times has been supporting Finland consensus policy: Russia is our biggest trade partner and we are close enough to be almost friends. Even after Russia took a piece of land from their other friend, Ukraine, what did they do: Sofi Oksanen wrote critique on Russia, but it was published only on their culture section (as she is also a writer). Foreign section news were the last one to find out what kind of "friend" Finland has. Or have they found it out yet? There is only one high quality politics paper in Finland and that is Uusi Suomi with their printed copy. Their web publication is similar rubbish to usual tabloid papers, but despite of that their printed copy is of high quality. I don't know if their journalists are equally bad as on other papers and their have a good filter before anything gets printed, or if they are acting as a tabloid on web on purpose.

And as third and least is Aleksanteri Institute. They represent the Russian knowledge in Finland, and I don't know if their director gets better salary from Russia than from the university or why, but he was also the last one to understand what was going on in Ukraine. When no one else believed in what Putin said, he was still repeating it like a well breed-ed parrot.

Claim: Finn are so tough soldiers that they will manage against Russia, even today as they did during second world war.
People who believe on that missed another lesson from second world war: there was at least one battle where Polish military showed their bravery. Polish cavalry rode to face German tank unit. Well, that battle ended up very quickly and today most people only remember how Hitler and Stalin made a pact on how they would divide Poland and Poland has nothing to say on that issue.

Nazar vs. Tjäreborg

Background
I am currently travelling on Tjäreborg "inclusive" travel to Sunwing Cala Bona Beach.
2012 we traveled on "all inclusive" travel by TUI to Southern Turkey. As we don't have too much money to spare we try to find good quality travels as cheap as possible. And this blog post is our conclusions.

Spain vs. Turkey
On both cases the hotel was a bit far from civilization. As a result there was not terribly many restaurants to choose from. Although prices were cheaper than in central of a city such as Palma. As I have been traveling extensively, I am not interested of most sites since I have seen something more impressive already. That suites well since tours are expensive and/or harder to find than in "best" places.
As countries go, I don't have preference between Turkey and Spain: both of them have overly good sales people who don't care about extorting truth as long as they don't meet police because of that. Palma had more foreigners selling than Spaniards, which was good. But on overall both were safe to us, although one American I know was stolen three times in Spain in a single day so stay on better neighborhoods.

Tjäreborg vs. TUI
Both hotels were nice four star hotels where dining was in five star hotel. Food was about equally good: fresh fruit juice, king prawns, stake, free decent wine etc. Spain was a bit better and had wider variety. But it was also more crowded and you could not fetch drinks freely. On both hotel rooms had something small to fix.
For our children,Turkey was clearly better as they spoke English also. On Spain they spoke Swedish 80-90% and rest was English, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish and German. Our daughter knew two of those languages, but still didn't join because of the language barrier.
For grown UPS also, Turkey had shows and common sports (on paper Spain had also but my attendance was 14-0 on behalf of Turkey). Turkey had crappy old gym, whereas Spain was well equipped. But then Turkey had a beach that was better than the beach Spanish hotel was named after even though it was half a kilometer away. And to find decent beach you had to travel a kilometer in Spain. So add 10€ per day on bicycle budget in there.

Conclusions
Singl
Swedish speaking women and girls should choose according to price.