Russia blames 'negligent' airport bosses for Total CEO's crash
AFP
By Anna Malpas | AFP – 11 hours ago

The CEO of French oil giant Total, Christophe de Margerie, died in a plane crash at a Moscow airport when the private jet he was using struck a snowplough on takeoff

Russian investigators on Tuesday accused senior airport officials of criminal negligence over a plane crash at a Moscow airport that killed the head of French oil giant Total, Christophe de Margerie, whose private jet hit a snowplough on takeoff.

Several executives would be suspended, the investigators said of the accident which also killed three crew members. They added that the driver of the snow-clearing machine was drunk on the job -- a claim disputed by his lawyer.

At Total, one of the world's biggest oil companies, staff at its Paris headquarters observed a minute's silence for their charismatic 63-year-old boss, who had been known by the affectionate nickname "Big Moustache".

"The group is set up to ensure the proper continuity of its governance and its activities, to deal with this tragic event," Total's secretary general Jean-Jacques Guilbaud said, as top executives were due to hold an emergency meeting.

One of France's best-known business leaders, De Margerie was an outspoken critic of Western sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine crisis, and just hours before his death had met Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev at his country residence outside Moscow to discuss investment, local media reported.

Even as relations between the West and Russia deteriorated to the worst since the Cold War, the French oil boss had criticised the sanctions, calling them "a dead-end" and urging "constructive dialogue" instead.

Russian President Vladimir Putin described De Margerie as "a true friend of our country, whom we will remember with the greatest warmth".

In France, President Francois Hollande said he learnt of De Margerie's death with "shock and sadness", while Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France had lost "a great captain of industry and a patriot".

- Fire on the tarmac -

Vnukovo airport said the Falcon Dassault business aviation jet crashed as it prepared to take off for Paris. Visibility was 350 metres (yards) at the time, it said, as Moscow saw its first snowfall of the winter on Monday.

Images on Russian television showed the remains of the Falcon-50's charred cabin on the grass near the runway, its tail and one of the engines close by.

The Interstate Aviation Committee, which investigates all Russian air accidents, said senior airport officials were to blame for causing the accident through "criminal negligence" as they failed to ensure proper staff coordination.

Poor weather, an error by air traffic controllers and the alleged drunk snowplough driver will also be investigated as possible causes of the crash, it said.

Late Tuesday French experts arrived in Moscow to assist the Russian investigators in the probe, Russian television reported.

Moscow transport investigators said they had opened a criminal probe into breaches of aviation safety rules causing multiple deaths through negligence, which carries a maximum jail term of seven years.

"Why was a vehicle on the runway? Traffic controllers in the tower are expected to ensure that this does not happen, it's their job," Victor Gorbachev, general director of the Moscow-based Airport Association, told Russian radio.

The 60-year-old snowplough driver appeared shocked as he was taken into custody for 48 hours, hiding his face from the cameras as he was escorted by emergency services.

"My client has chronic heart disease, he doesn't drink at all. His relatives and doctors can confirm this," his lawyer Alexander Karabanov told the Interfax news agency.

"We don't want the responsibility for the accident to be shifted to just another ordinary man," he added.

Conspiracy theories?. That's peanuts! What I wanna know is: Who offed Gough?

Just like in the West - the first response is to blame the lowest man on the totem-
pole, and smear him (drunkenness allegations) to turn the public face against him.

All the while, no doubt, bribing witnesses and hiding any self-incriminating evidence
from investigators.

Seen it happen SO many times... trouble is, far too often they get away with it.

I was wondering more if there was some dark forces at work here. Could this have been more than an accident?

bogarde73 wrote on Oct 23^rd, 2014 at 9:11am:

I was wondering more if there was some dark forces at work here. Could this have been more than an accident?

Whilst I have no wish to travel down the conspiracy-theory road, I have to say that not much would really surprise me any more.

The Heartless Felon wrote on Oct 22^nd, 2014 at 10:39am:

Conspiracy theories?. That's peanuts! What I wanna know is: Who offed Gough?

Probably the Communists again.

Kat wrote on Oct 23^rd, 2014 at 9:09am:

Just like in the West - the first response is to blame the lowest man on the totem- pole, and smear him (drunkenness allegations) to turn the public face against him. All the while, no doubt, bribing witnesses and hiding any self-incriminating evidence from investigators. Seen it happen SO many times... trouble is, far too often they get away with it.

Yes of Course Kat...and your answer is?....seriously Kat?..what is your alternative?..forget communism..it don't work brother..forget spiritualism or religionism  we can all see where that gets you?...so come on..give us all your answer?..Leader of men?..or just STFUP!!!

I blame Canada.

I blame humanity

many blessings

maybe the islamic state did it ... or

ebola ... would most likely be these 2 that did it

either ways , be at peace

namaste

- : ) =

i blame the stockmarket profiteers... meaning whitey!!

BatteriesNotIncluded wrote on Oct 25^th, 2014 at 1:04am:

i blame the stockmarket profiteers... meaning whitey!!

Don't bring Corporate Whitey into this...

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-people-believe-in-conspiracy-theories/?WT.mc_id=SA_Facebook

Why Do People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?

resident Barack Obama has been a busy man while in office: he concocted a fake birth certificate to hide his true identity as a foreigner, created “death panels” to determine who would live and who would die under his health care plan, conspired to destroy religious liberty by mandating contraceptives for religious institutions, blew up the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig to garner support for his environmental agenda, masterminded Syrian gas attacks as a pretext to war, orchestrated the shooting of a tsa agent to strengthen that agency's powers, ordered the Sandy Hook school massacre to push through gun-control legislation, and built concentration camps in which to place Americans who resist.

Do people really believe such conspiracy theories? They do, and in disturbingly high numbers, according to recent empirical research collected by University of Miami political scientists Joseph E. Uscinski and Joseph M. Parent and presented in their 2014 book American Conspiracy Theories (Oxford University Press). About a third of Americans, for example, believe the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama is a foreigner. About as many believe that 9/11 was an “inside job” by the Bush administration.

The idea that such beliefs are held only by a bunch of nerdy white guys living in their parents' basements is a myth. Surveys by Uscinski and Parent show that believers in conspiracies “cut across gender, age, race, income, political affiliation, educational level, and occupational status.” People on both the political left and right, for example, believe in conspiracies roughly equally, although each finds different cabals. Liberals are more likely to suspect that media sources and political parties are pawns of rich capitalists and corporations, whereas conservatives tend to believe that academics and liberal elites control these same institutions. GMO conspiracy theories are embraced primarily by those on the left (who accuse, for example, Monsanto of conspiring to destroy small farmers), whereas climate change conspiracy theories are endorsed primarily by those on the right (who inculpate, for example, academic climate scientists for manipulating data to destroy the American economy).

Group identity is also a factor. African-Americans are more likely to believe that the CIA planted crack cocaine in inner-city neighborhoods. White Americans are more likely to believe that the government is conspiring to tax the rich to support welfare queens and turn the country into a socialist utopia.

Encouragingly, Uscinski and Parent found that education makes a difference in reducing conspiratorial thinking: 42 percent of those without a high school diploma are high in conspiratorial predispositions, compared with 23 percent with postgraduate degrees. Even so, that means more than one in five Americans with postgraduate degrees show a high predisposition for conspiratorial belief. As an educator, I find this disturbing.

Other factors are at work in creating a conspiratorial mind. Uscinski and Parent note that in laboratory experiments “researchers have found that inducing anxiety or loss of control triggers respondents to see nonexistent patterns and evoke conspiratorial explanations” and that in the real world “there is evidence that disasters (e.g., earthquakes) and other high-stress situations (e.g., job uncertainty) prompt people to concoct, embrace, and repeat conspiracy theories.”

A conspiracy theory, Uscinski and Parent explain, is defined by four characteristics: “(1) a group (2) acting in secret (3) to alter institutions, usurp power, hide truth, or gain utility (4) at the expense of the common good.” A content analysis of more than 100,000 letters to the New York Times in 121 years turned up three pages' worth of such conspirators, from Adolf Hitler and the African National Congress to the World Health Organization and Zionist villagers, catalogued into eight types: Left, Right, Communist, Capitalist, Government, Media, Foreign and Other (Freemasons, the AMA and even scientists). The common theme throughout is power—who has it and who wants it—and so the authors conclude their inquiry with an observation translated by Parent from Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince (a conspiracy manual of sorts), for “the strong desire to rule, and the weak desire not to be ruled.”

To those who so conspire, recall the motto of revolutionaries everywhere: sic semper tyrannis—thus always to tyrants.