Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17

What a tragedy. And you know what's sad? You may never know the truth. You will forget it, before you know it.

Remember TWA Flight 800? Talk about coincidence. July 17th, 1996.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TWA_Flight_800

The most probable cause:
It doesn't matter what the exact cause is. Someone could have been too trigger-happy, or someone deliberately shot it down, or it was misidentified - it doesn't matter.

What's a crazy theory?
That MH17 is MH370, complete with all its passengers. Right, then how about all the crying relatives? Or the airport people who saw them board?

What we know:
Think about it. Do you really know anything about it?

Everything we're getting is secondary information. Anything goes. Even mutual accusations. A rational human would realize this and believe nothing.

Optimum move:
Let the public awareness die down naturally. Expect people not to see why it happens. It took just a few months for MH370 to be forgotten. Exploit for propaganda purposes to fullest extent possible. People will believe what they wish to believe, or what they fear is true.

What we can expect:
Nobody admit or deny it. Neither is not politically advantageous.
Every side will use the incident to support their position.
At least a side will try to make evidence impossible to use.

What to learn:
The art and science of killing people has been perfected to an extreme degree. Combine that with government monopoly on Initiation of Force and this is how it will go wrong. Allow a government to support a related organization with weapons and you have many landmines waiting to go off.

We should all assume we are being manipulated.

Once you realize this, you realize there is no immediate solution to ending wars, conflicts, dirty politics, etc.

What you can do:

Don't be a victim. It sucks to be a victim. People will write RIP FB posts and then forget about you in a week. It will be as if you have never lived.

Stay far, far away from conflict zones. There will always be victims, but it doesn't have to be you. I thought about vacationing to Iran, but decided against it for cost and security issues. There are other interesting places to go.

Be prepared. Most disasters are actually very survivable.

Stay informed. See something, say something. There is a dimension to this mess that we do have control, and that's information.