Man accused of shooting down UN chief: ‘Sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to…’

The Guardian UK ^ | 13 Jan 2019 | Emma Graham-Harrison, Andreas Rocksen and Mads Brügger

[blueplum]

Jan van Risseghem was only a teenager when his mother ordered him to flee Nazi-occupied Belgium for her native England with his brother Maurice. After hiding in a convent, and an epic journey across the war-torn continent, they reached safety in Portugal, then took a ship north.

Once in England, the pair signed up with the Belgian resistance, and with the help of an uncle enrolled for flight training with the RAF, a decision that shaped not just their war, but the rest of their lives.

Half a century later, flying skills he learned in Britain would also make the younger van Risseghem internationally notorious, when he was publicly linked to the plane crash that killed Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld, the UN secretary general, in 1961...{snip}

Rumours about why the plane came down were fuelled by no less a figure than former US president Harry Truman. He told reporters two days after Hammarskjöld’s death that the UN leader “was on the point of getting something done when they killed him. Notice that I said ‘when they killed him.’”

He refused to elaborate, but it was the start of decades of suspicions that western governments were not sharing all the information they held about the crash.

[Vigilanteman]

LBJ was not willing to divorce himself completely from the anti-communist legacy which JFK left for him. Nor did he expect it to be such a long and costly war. I think he would have genuinely preferred a Korea type solution which lasted only three years.

[marktwain]

I see it as simple unwillingness on the part of post WWII Progressives in the U.S. to see reality.

According to them, the only thing holding back African countries is Colonialism and Racism.

Therefore, when Black African leaders repeatedly fail, and drive their countries into pre-colonial poverty and violence, it *must* be caused by colonialism and racism.

So they just keep on doing the same stupid things, over and over.

[kvanbrunt2]

I remember when his plane crashed. never knew about a survivor. He was on postage stamp not log after.

[kvanbrunt2]

It was only later that I had to figure out on my own, that the UN itself, was among the WORST tragedies to impose on the world.>>>. yes i was 8 and we filled those little unicef milk cartons with pennies every halloween.

[elcid1970]

My college roommate grew up in Congo, the son of missionaries. He could not say enough good about Tshombe and said a few additional `mercs’ could have kept Katanga independent.

Lumumba was a communist stooge & there is Lumumba University in Moscow to this day, indoctrinating third world students in Marxism-Leninism.

Joseph Mobutu was just like Mugabe, Nkruma, Sekou-Toure & all the other tin-pot dictators of the region. He later became Mobutu Sese Seko which means “the rooster who leaves no hen untouched”.

By 1960 the United Nations had become utterly corrupt in backing anti-western regimes in the Third World. The U.S. should have gotten out then.

[Vigilanteman]

Not just a postage stamp, actually two. The yellow plate was inverted at some point during the first printing and a few with the inverted yellow background pictured here got into circulation. Rather than make a few collectors lucky with the error, the post office proceeded to print about a half million copies of the inverted yellow stamp to put into additional circulation.

It isn't nice to say it, but Dag Hammarskjold was no hero. He was simply a bureaucratic hack doing the bidding of his globalist employer when he met his fate.

[GingisK]

They hurt like crazy, and the responsible brother gets beaten.

[Vaquero]

Sorry for you penalty…I suppose they can take an eye out (see Christmas Story).
Sometimes I smash a primer installing it. I have burned them till they popped (with a mapp gas torch) but put them behind a safe barrier. Even just with a primer the case flies pretty far.

As a kid I would get a roaring fire going in a vacant lot and throw in co2 cartridges. Now they would ‘splode!

[GingisK]

The CO2 cartridge in the fire is one trick that didn’t occur to us. Dang.