Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - The Ukraine Did It? and RIP Robin Williams:

KUALA LUMPUR:   INTELLIGENCE analysts in the United States had already concluded that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down by an air-to-air missile, and that the Ukrainian government had had something to do with it.

This corroborates an emerging theory postulated by local investigators that the Boeing 777-200 was crippled by an air-to-air missile and finished off with cannon fire from a fighter that had been shadowing it as it plummeted to earth.

In a damning report dated Aug 3, headlined “Flight 17 Shoot-Down Scenario Shifts”, Associated Press reporter Robert Parry said “some US intelligence sources had concluded that the rebels and Russia were likely not at fault and that it appears Ukrainian government forces were to blame”...

I missed that one on the US nightly news.  There is quite a bit of speculation in this piece above.  And Parry did not write this piece for the AP.  He is an investigative reporter who has written for AP in the past, helping to break the Iran-Contra story for example.

I wonder if the real truth of this sad incident will ever come out.  Perhaps we will have to file this one with Jimmy Hoffa, Jack the Ripper, the Lost City of Atlantis, and WTC 7.

Speaking of sad incidents, RIP actor/comedian Robin Williams of an apparent suicide at age 63.  Williams had been battling severe depression.  

It has become almost a cliché that the exceptional minds of improvisational comedic geniuses, that allow them to see the odd associations and absurdities, hypersensitive to the ironies of life, can be both a gift and a curse. 

And when the comedy has gone out of life, only the tragedy remains.  For without those who can laugh at themselves and our vanities, what remains predominant among men are grimly oblivious monsters, and their retinues of un-self-aware banalities.

I wonder if the masters of the universe are aware, or even able to cry, while they put their makeup on, and see what monstrosities they have become.