I believe it for a very simple reason. In most cases it will say so in site's TOS that they will not keep it should I tell them not to do so.

I find it very hard to believe that a site selling me goods would take a risk of getting hit by a contract breach and all the negative PR that would follow it just to keep my credit card information on file.

Untick "keep my credit card information for future payments". In vast majority of the cases, that means company doesn't keep your info after payment has been received.

Has it ever occurred to you that of that many people living in Donetsk, your friendly propaganda machine could only handpick a few videos of this discontent as in comparison to far wider support that was shown in thousands upon thousands actively participating in setting up the original independence polls? Not voting for it mind you, SETTING THE THING UP.

Has it ever occurred to you that sheer mathematics of this dictate that reality is the exact opposite as your propaganda suggests, and that quoting a small minority, similar to quoting Tatar minority in Crimea is not dissimilar to quoting, for example, native Indian population quotes about US and Canada?

Has it ever occurred to you that if the reality in Eastern Ukraine was anything like what your propaganda machine is telling you, then judging by your infamous communist leader, Ukraine is massively against current leadership?

Welcome to slashdot. Where we are generally not as bad as average citizenry in terms of applied mathematics.

Entire middle scene. Start to finish. The elderly people that come for the food and water. The woman accusing everyone around. Everyone looking scared that someone will act. Old man lashing out and instantly getting subdued at Ukrainians soldier making a thinly veiled threat about "lives lost to capture your city".

That is how Vietnamese villagers behaved when US troops entered them. How people behaved when Nazi German SS troops came to look for Jews. And so on.

I'll just give it a rest. It's fairly obvious that you will not be bothered to even consider that world may not be fully evil and criminal on Russian side, and fully good and righteous on yours. You are in good company. Quite a few invested pundits in Europe and a whole lot more of the militaristic people in US share your world view. It's an easy view to take, it doesn't require you to think about reality and makes it really easy to feel superior.

In the same way it was really easy for nazis to feel superior. Ideology of inherent superiority does indeed make one completely insensitive to both suffering of demonized population (compare: gulags, concentration camps) as well as inherently supportive of the most insane suggestions and propaganda, as long as they feature the demonized population and leader in proper evil position (examples: Iraq invasion).

Did GCHQ run out of ability to create new sock puppet accounts on slashdot or something?

Sounds to me like you're a victim of the attack that you claim Russians are target of, considering that I don't live in Russia, and haven't had any recent contact with anyone from the country (discounting occasionally reading some of their sites), and I have a very good understanding of the fact that most Ukrainians today live in a complete and tightly sealed propaganda construct. All it takes is to read some of the messages on Twitter as well as Ukrainian government's official statements to understand this simple fact.

Even here in the West, where we have always been a subject to fairly tight propaganda and self-sensorship of the media in interests of media owners, we have recently started to apply some serious critique to anything that comes from mouths of those who are pro-current Kiev government. Because they are so off the rails insane in their rhetoric, that no matter how our media would try to spin it, it wouldn't be believable to Western audience.

As a result, I can understand why your Russian relatives are more aware of the situation that you. You live in a propaganda bubble similar to that of propaganda bubble of wartime WW2 states in Europe, i.e. Great Britain, Germany and USSR. You are completely polarised, and pushed to be so invested in your view that you dismiss reality.

Such as the video noted earlier. To someone watching from the sidelines such as myself, the emotion on faces of those "liberated" people is obvious. It's fear. All encompassing, crippling fear. That's why you have reactions like woman going off the rocker to accuse everyone around her. That's what people who were deathly afraid of Stalin's commissars did in their villages during Holodomor in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan for example.

To you, living in the complete propaganda bubble it was "happiness of being liberated". You are that disconnected from reality.

Right. So you are starting to understand that like most psychopaths, you have serious trouble telling what emotions other people are experiencing, to the point where you have to guess between polar opposite emotions "so are they happy... err, no are they sad?"

You didn't even notice the entire episode in the middle of the video, or must have seriously thought that those people were "liberated" or even "happy to be liberated". I truly am at loss for words at your complete lack of not just empathy, but complete inability to interpret even basic spectrum of emotion based on what you see.

Not going to even get into "oh those TERRORISTS" debacle. Even western media started to put "" around that word when quoting Kiev's current leadership nowadays for obvious reasons. Well, obvious to everyone except your types apparently.

It takes a true monster with complete lack of human empathy to call these people "happy". I suppose it's pointless to try to argue with a psychopath about human emotions and suffering - after all psychopaths lack capability to understand it in the first place.

No you retard. They are telling this to anyone who comes to ask. It's fairly clear that you're trolling because you didn't do the exact thing I told you to do. Because that video, alone, shows the depth of your lies.

When vice guys with cameras came to Sloviansk alongside the Ukrainian troops and went around asking what happened, they got told this, straight to the face. Refugees tell pretty much the same, except most of them got out before the worst came down. It's the elderly that faced the reality, ones to weak and frail to leave before war machine started to really pound them. And they are the ones who are happy to tell the story to anyone that asks. That's why Western media pointedly ignores them and only "alternative news", which is basically a few guys with a handheld HD camera who have the balls to go with anyone who lets them in the region, even at risk of getting kidnapped and beaten up that report on actual news.

You know what, I'm going to make you face your own monstrousness. Here, these are your terrorists you monster. Look in their haunted eyes, shelled by Kiev's army. Tell them how it's their fault. Tell us how this is "Russian propaganda".

Truly, your kind is the reason for most atrocities committed by any side in the conflict. Because there are people like you on both sides that these atrocities are allowed to continues. So face your victims monster. Look in their eyes.

https://news.vice.com/video/ru...

Answering to myself but it just occurred to me that this in turn makes Ukrainian angle of "we didn't know they had this capability" equally schizophrenic.

Intentional routing of specific flight known to be flying mostly Europeans and Asian nationals from countries that are mostly neutral in the conflict over potential kill zone? Epic stupidity on part of civilian aviation authority of Ukraine?

We'll probably never know considering the bets that large interested parties placed in the region.

Indeed. Original story does specify that they do not know if any BUK's ended in hands of the rebels, but I'm willing to bet that Ukrainians had no manpower (most soldiers in the region are known to have joined the rebellion) nor time to pull them out

Pretty stupid assumption considering the shot down AN-26 and SU-25 in the region and the fact that Kiev's forces conducted a very recent bombardment and shelling of Donetsk. Which typically causes many itchy trigger fingers on air defence in the region. Which is my point.

That is the point. If you avoid a weather problem, you would make a risk assessment, and a reasonable risk assessment by Ukrainian civil aviation authorities would be that it's far more risky to put a flight over a conflict zone with known shot down aircraft in last two days than divert it over the Crimea instead.

So either this was some sort of misguided nationalist idiocy (can't have them fly over Crimea), stupidity (who cares if there are shot down aircraft over same region in last two days) or intentional sabotage.

I'm inclined to blame stupidity in such cases, because that's usually the case.

Incorrect. If you compare the flight trajectory of this particular flight:
http://flightaware.com/live/fl...
And its own flights on other days, as well as flights going similar routes, you will find that all flights actually avoid conflict zones by going about 100km south of the region over Crimea.

For example, same flight two days ago (this is a daily route):
http://flightaware.com/live/fl...

Actually Russians are the masters of automation when it comes to air defence. They built almost all of their system to be so automated, that a layman could operate them in a crisis with minimal training. A good example of this was MiG-25, the aircraft that was built before age of transistors that was so automated that to shoot down a target given to aircraft by ground contol was to press one button on the flight stick. The aircraft would automatically re-orient itself to face the target, lock it's own fire control radar on it and fire the missile as soon as firing solution was found. And because the airplane was inherently unstable and had a tendecy to roll after a high altitude missile launch, it would automatically correct this as well without any input from the pilot.

All was done by onboard computer system built on nothing but vacuum tubes.

Russian SAM systems were a part of this philosophy as well and included a fully automated mode where all operator required was to press one button for system to automatically shoot down anything in range. US later incorporated similar philosophy in automating interception on its naval AEGIS system.