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Malaysian Passenger Plane Reportedly Shot Down Over Ukraine
An anonymous reader writes The Russian newswire service Interfax is reporting that a Malaysian passenger plane carrying 295 people was shot down with a Buk ground-to-air missile over Ukraine near the Russian border. The Associated Press cites an adviser to Ukraine's Interior Minister as the source. First reports are that it was mistaken for a Ukrainian AN-26.
Malaysia airlines confirms they lost contact with the plane (last known position), but there's no confirmation it was shot down (yet). The Ukrainian government accused Russia of shooting down a fighter jet in Ukrainian airspace last night. Reports indicate there are no survivors.
We're now getting reports from the airline that there was an issue on board, so everything, including being shot down, is speculation at the moment.
What a horrible tragedy, and one that changes the political climate considerably. Obama will face much less resistance from Europe if Russia turns out to be responsible. It also gives the Ukraine a reason to call in US "specialists" for help with the investigation.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
http://vk.com/strelkov_info?w=wall-57424472_7256
is that it isn't a very good idea to fly Malaysia Airlines.
For those of us old enough to remember The USS Vincennes.
Best Slashdot Co
http://www.aeroinside.com/item...
Here's one of the problems with MANPADS (MAN-Portable Air Defense Systems). When you're holding one, your eyes are pretty much all you have to go on for determining friend from foe, and you are your own command chain. So if 90% of the people carrying those missiles around are calm of mind and sharp of eye, you still get 10% of them who may well shoot at anything with wings.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Recorded flight path: http://flightaware.com/live/fl...
Bubble and froth: http://www.airliners.net/aviat...
If I were Malaysian Air I would not be surprised if passengers start asking for flights on some other model plane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
>> issue on board
Like a missile poking up through the floorboards and then exploding?
That rag tag militia got lucky it seems, with a direct hit no less. Those light ammunitions gathered from round the house, what the odd Klashnikov and what have you.
Speculation at this point is this is what those rag-taggers managed to bring it down with: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
As always, doesn't even matter which government it is, but it is a government weapon that killed near 300 people by shooting down a civilian passenger plane.
These horrific crimes are perpetrated by government criminals will never stop as long as there are governments.
You can't handle the truth.
Four and a half months is a long time to remain airborne. Something had to happen
Wait ... you've lost another plane?
Citation required (seriously, you couldn't be bothered?)
I can't find anything to back your claim.
Please help metamoderate.
CNN is already excitedly dusting off their airplane model.
One of the most complex machines built and operated by man has allegedly been shot down from 40,000 feet by a sophisticated explosives-carrying rocket missile, and it's not 'news for nerds?'
This is a capture of the message in the VK network sent by Russian GRU officer Strelkov admitting that he ordered the missile strike against the Malaysian jet: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bs...
Local air traffic at time of event.
http://v-serv.com/MH17/MH17.jpg
Lots of commercial airlines in the area.
Indeed, I think the OP is suffering from miracle of flight syndrome.
Not saying this was planned, but you can be sure this will be used to distract the US from the current events here..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So, this is where the 777 of Flight 370 finally was crashed by whoever abducted it an flew it to Diego Garcia. As you know, it happened right after a major superpower screwed up with Ukraine (the same that operates Diego Garcia)
The real sad question is - where are all the people - the ones from the original Flight 370, and the ones from the plane that has landed right now in order for the flight 370 777 to take its place.
Karma to burn so at the risk of being offtopic to the article, but ontopic to you: We're antiquated relics from a time when the slogan still applied. The beginning of the end can be traced back to the fall of the WTC buildings, but the /. editors still tried their hardest to keep stories to the theme of the slogan for years after. However, ever since that event, Slashdot has slowly moved away from focusing solely on stories that fit the slogan and bringing in stories that have a possible historic and/or "climate" (whether this be political or otherwise) changing significance. The acquisition of /. by Dice just sped up this process. While it is still a large focus of the site you'll probably notice that the slogan "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters" has been removed from the main page*.
*Note: I just checked Beta, and noticed that the "News for Nerds" part of the slogan is part of the logo there... but who visits beta anyway?
While the (possibly intentional) destruction of the aircraft is tragic, with potential political consequences, loss of human lives, and so on, and is undoubtedly news we all should be aware of, how does this fit into Slashdot's focus on news related to technology and science topics?
Right, because nerds don't give a rats ass about civilian casualties in war zones from commercial jets getting shot down.
Nosirree, none of us ever fly because we're always safely ensconced in our mom's basement. Doesn't affect us at all. And we certainly might not know people from the region.
Don't like these stories? Don't read 'em.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Firstly, I'd like to note that I'm not placing blame with any particular party or saying that this was definitely an incident where the plane was shot down. With that said, the plane was in the older Malysia Airlines livery, which has the bottom of the fuselage and engine nacelles painted grey. Perhaps this could contribute to it being mistaken for a military transport by inexperienced or trigger-happy forces, as it would be a similar color to that used on those transports. I hope the truth of this incident can be found without politics getting in the way on every side. The crew and passengers deserve it.
Is it really a good idea to continue flying your normal route when it now goes over a war zone? And one where planes and helis have already been downed? Its not like there aren't any number of safer alternatives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 crashed over the Black Sea on 4 October 2001, en route from Tel Aviv, Israel to Novosibirsk, Russia. The plane, a Soviet-made Tupolev Tu-154, carried an estimated 66 passengers and 12 crew members. No one on board survived. The crash site is some 190 km west-southwest of the Black Sea resort of Sochi and 140 km north of the Turkish coastal town of Fatsa and 350 km east-southeast of Feodosiya, Ukraine. Ukraine admitted that the disaster was probably caused by an errant missile fired by its armed forces
Why are you so hostile? Is this the website you come to for world and economic news? I bet it's not.
i thought this was news for nerds, stuff that matters. Not speculative, sensational headlines.
At one point, it was. Look at the title now.
It's not my primary source, but it's hardly surprising when something like this actually gets posted.
Because it is stuff that matters.
As opposed to all of the whining and bitching about Apple v Microsoft and other pointless stuff that goes on around here.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A Russian GRU officer had already taken credit for shooting down the plane on Twitter before it was realized the AN-26 he just shot down was a 777:
http://thehill.com/policy/inte...
You're new here, aren't you? Slashdot frequently has articles on internationally significant news, often with much less tech relevance than this.
The site banner is "News for nerds, stuff that matters". This story easily meets both criteria.
Two other airplanes (non-commercial with much lower loss of life and thus less interesting to news outlets I presume) were shot down within the week in similar airspace. Why aren't we discussing those?
Because non-commercial airplanes being shot down in a war zone is not an out-of-the-ordinary technical news... not unless there were interesting technical attributes to the story .ie. new anti-missile system technology, radar, anti-missile technology failure, etc.
A commercial jet, and a big one at that, being shot down in a war zone, then brings a whole bunch of technical topics to discuss? What lead to the airplane being mis-identified? What technical prevention mechanisms could have been used to prevent this? Would it be worth while to explore temporary expansion of flight routes to avert war zones? Etc, etc.
Go ahead and try to put a techie spin on it, but the point remains that we're only oogling over this because a bunch of people died, which not only seem distasteful, but again, has nothing to with the type of news this site represents.
No, that is only you putting that spin on it so that you can accuse others of distasteful oogling. Stop projecting... or not, whatever rocks your boat and gives you a moment to build faux moral outrage and pass it as your moral accomplishment of the day.
Here comes the white van to take you, er, on vacation. Let's put this lovely jacket on. yes, the straps are meant to go around the back like that.
Errr...can Palin find Russia on the map yet?
I would like to add that a boulder fell on a mountain goat in Paraguay this morning and it was also a result of the Democrats' disastrous foreign policy.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This is the kind of mistake that happens when decisions are made remotely. If the fighter jets all lack pilots, then Mark 1 Eyeball won't be possible.
The BBC are now reporting over 300 on board with 23 US Citizens. Now to see how the US reacts.
.
19:00:
A tweet (in Russian) from a key Twitter account used by pro-Russian separatists, in which they claim to have captured a Buk surface-to-air missile system, has now been deleted, BBC Monitoring observes. Ukrainians say the Malaysian plane could have been downed with a Buk, but pro-Russian rebels have now denied they have it.
I'm a nerd and it's interesting to me. In fact I find several other things interesting that don't run Linux.
I haven't seen a single thing to draw the conclusion that it was 'shot down' yet? Has anyone?
Yes, it was flying over a war zone. But this is above the envelope for a shoulder-launched missile, and even if the rebels have actual AA installations from their Russian patrons, why would they waste a shot on something cruising in a straight line at 10km high? It's not like Ukrainian bombers are flying B-17 attack profiles.
Ukraine says 'terrorist action'.
Malaysian Airlines says it 'lost contact'.
Wreckage has been found.
But again: I haven't yet seen anything that clearly says it was SHOT down.
-Styopa
...where 295 human beings walked ahead of me not ten hours ago, who are no longer on this earth.
Geek or not, your heart has to break for them and their families. I only hope there is some small way some good can come out of all this, but I have no idea how that could be.
If it really was shot down, the Ukraine gains most because it influences European politics. They have been caught lying before and allegedly used snipers against their own people in a false flag operation. After all the revelations about whats going on in the world in the past month it wouldn't surprise anymore.
Indeed. They're getting better at it too.
Canada's CBC.ca has lots of posts saying "oh, the Ukranians recently moved some AA into the area. It was them" and various other similar posts.
Your link does not support your claims, read it again!
Also, missiles and military tech are still tech, and of some interest to nerds. I'd imagine there are some people here that know enough about such to rule out stuff like shoulder-mounted rockets etc. History and politics are also "news for nerds"
Airspace invades YOU!
This is the kind of mistake that happens when decisions are made remotely. If the fighter jets all lack pilots, then Mark 1 Eyeball won't be possible.
Drones have cameras that are superior to the Mk1 Eyeball. Plus the remote human operator (loosely the "pilot") receiving the camera feed has 2 Mk 1. Drones may navigate autonomously but it takes a human to make it shoot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If it is found to have been shot down, this is going to be a perfect excuse for NATO to walk right on in and pacify the Eastern Ukraine.
But that's *IF* the plane was shot down.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The site banner is "News for nerds, stuff that matters".
Is it? Does it still say that anywhere? Not that your point doesn't stand.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
KAL-007 (and no, James Bond was NOT aboard)
The Russians approached that Korean civilian airliner from behind, positively identified it, then shot it down with loss of all souls on board.
At the time, left-wing apologists all over the world went full-on "9-11 truther" foil-hat conspiracy mode and tried to blame others, including the US govt, for the shootdown (one former Carter administration officiel even made money from a book he wrote trying to blame it on Reagan). Unfortunately for their misguided cause, the radio communications between the Russian fighter pilots and their ground controllers (which contained both the explicit ID and the shootdown orders) had been heard and recorded by multiple stations - none of the conspiracy theories were valid - the Russians, in full-Communist-era-paranoid mode had intentionally shot down a civilian plane full of people for straying into their airspace (which the blackboxes later showed was the result of a simple pilot error in configuring his navigation system before he tookoff)
the leader of the Ukrainian separatists (Mr. Putin's puppets) bragged about the shootdown (mis-identifying the plane as a Ukranian Antonov) and even put photos of the smoking wreckage with the announcement BEFORE word got out that it was a civilian 777 from Malasia. THEN he took down his postings (stupid moron is as dumb as many western politicians who think you can hide or "take back" something after it hits the www). Now, apparently, Putin's puppets at his mouthpiece "RT" are claiming it was not his puppets because they would not shoot down such a plane because it could have been Putin's plane that got shot down if Putin had been flying there at the time.
The ONLY "false flag" involved here is all those "Ukranian Separatists" Putin has injected into the Ukrain in order to stir things up and give him a fig-leaf of a justification to eventually move-in to "protect" them by grabbing more of the Ukrain. Putin is following Adolf Hitler's playbook perfectly and the Europeans are following the same path of willful-blindness and capitulation they followed in the late 1930's. Human nature, it seems, never changes.
I am confused: here is the route of that flight: http://de.flightaware.com/live...
But if you look for older dates, you'll see that the route is much more to the south, almost above Crimea (about 300-350 km deviation depending on the date you choose), e.g. http://de.flightaware.com/live...
Are such deviations normal or could the flight be directed that far to the north by ground control? (Not an expert, just curious).
or do you just post some pro-Ukrainian propaganda in return
Hey! Look over there... Perfect timing as Israel advances into Gaza.
This is probably all fake and they are using the crash site to dispose of the missing Malaysian flight 370 that has been hidden by the Chinese up until now
Are you working for Putin? I am looking at video of a crash site and body parts in a war zone.
Why are you so hostile?
Why are you such a douche bag?
You're new here, aren't you? Slashdot frequently has articles on internationally significant news, often with much less tech relevance than this.
The site banner is "News for nerds, stuff that matters". This story easily meets both criteria.
Point taken. It definitely falls under the slogan if read literally -- it's news for nerds (since it's news for everybody) and matters.
It does raise the question though which pieces of general news without any particular technology/science/IT relevance (note the 'particular') is important enough to be featured here (and who selects them, though I do trust that the Slashdots powers-in-charge are pretty sensible about that), given that such news are generally covered by most other news services we might frequent.
Yes, the HTML title for http://slashdot.org/ is News for nerds, stuff that matters. I notice if I'm logged in that my browser shows an unread count rather than the title, but it's there in the HTML.
At least the Ukrainians did it by accident. The Russians have twice shot down airliners - on purpose.
It is mostly limited to local criminals, ex- political leaders (Communist and "Party of Regions" parties).
In these situations I must always think about one of the leaked cables, where some embassador said that in Russia you cannot distinguish organized crime from politics.
Here is the transcript of pro-Russian separatists discussing the downed plane.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwaggCQawZs
If McCain/Palin had been elected we'd be at war with Iran right now. McCain is a warmonger.
Well, where can I get the money? If the same misinformation is repeated many times here, it's only fair if I clarify each topic starter.
I see it differently. What I see is incredible spin from 'both' sides of the conflict. Any article on the subject in TE gets amount of trolling and flaming I have not seen there ever. Both sides have apparently their squads of posters ready and fixed with beverages and pizza. This aspect of course is not discussed yet but I think this is a new quality in media war.
there are nerds that do not leave their cellar and there are nerds that do not leave their cellar but are interested in such events anyways.If you do not like it do not read it.
First a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 (flight 370) vanishes.
Now, another Malaysian Airlines 777 apparently shot down.
Two approximately $300 million (US) planes lost in five months. Odd.
There is a tweet from alleged ground control who was tracking the flight:
"El avión B 777 voló escoltado por 2 cazas de ukraine hasta minutos antes, de desaparecer de los radares"
My Spanish is a bit rusty, but it says something like "the flight B 777 was escorted by two Ukrainian fighters some minutes before disappearing from the radar". Don't know what to think of that. If true, then the Ukrainian Air Force at the very least knew that the plane was heading into the conflict zone.
I'd say that the machine is only "complex" because there are some modern CPUs in the devices carried by the passengers. The aircraft itself, without the payload, is an order of magnitude simpler, at least, than a modern multicore Intel CPU. Seriously. Even if you count the complexity of the legacy CPUs on board in the avionics and such. What I basically claim is that if you add up all the discrete parts in such a plane, and add the transistors in all of the on-board electronics, it's probably still beaten by what's in a modern PC.
Most complex machines built and operated by man go on sale, repeatedly, at a local Walmart. That's the world we live in.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Ukrainian Ministry of Defense states that there were no Buks in the bases taken over by the terrorists, and any other military equipment left there was rendered unusable by the leaving troops.
Wishful thinking in typically American-centric fashion. Russia usually knows better and knows plenty other tricks so doesn't really need to kill a lot of people to make a point, pro-Russian rebels not so much. The US gov't meddling here isn't going to help matters, but might easily impede things quite a lot. Even your "help" with the investigation isn't very high on the agenda. First in line would be the Ukrainian air safety board (well, really the Russian one, due to Ukraine being part of the Russian federation), then the Dutch and Malaysian ones to assist. Yours would be number four, not number one. So sorry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Probably had a hand in this one too so they could "stir the pot"
So Ukraine intelligence is recording separatist traffic and giving it to the media. Among these are two calls between some "Major" johnny-on-the-spot reporting to someone called "Greek":
One call:
Greek: "Yes Major!"
Major: "Kazaks from the Chernukhino checkpoint shot down the plane."
The above is abridged; the audio has a lot more speech and this is an alternate translation:
Major: "Well, these were <guys from> Chernukhino who shot the plane. From Chernukhino checkpoint. The Cossacks that are standing at Chernukhino."
Next call:
Greek: "What's the news?"
Major: "I mean, it's definitely a civilian aircraft."
Greek: "Were there many people?"
Major: "A fuck ton. The debris rained right into the yards"
Greek: "What's the aircraft?"
Major: "I haven't figured it out yet. I haven't reached the main section. I only looked at where the bodies began to fall."
Major: "There are remains of chair mounts, the chairs, the bodies."
So we've got separatist commanders taking credit for the shoot down before they knew it was civilian, Twitter posts celebrating captured Buk missiles deleted by separatists and captured traffic naming the shooters; the Russian equivalent of rednecks standing a post and firing missiles at unidentified aircraft.
Patton wanted to keep marching East and settle Uncle Joe after Germany fell. He might have saved us all about 70 years of this bullshit.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
what an amazing coincidence, indeed.
The number of passengers has been adjusted from 280 to 283. There were 15 crew on board.
He does seem Pro Russia, however correcting false information can hardly be called trolling.
154 Dutch nationals, 27 Australians, 23 Malaysians, 11 Indonesians, six Britons, four Germans, four Belgians, three from the Philippines and one Canadian. All 15 of the crew were Malaysian. Remaining ones yet unknown.
My country will have a day of mourning tomorrow. Personally I am wishing for the fast removal of Putin from the Kremlin, perhaps using a air-ground missile fired from a Boeing 777, for irony.
because that's never been slashdots remit?
I don't know what happened. One minute I'm arming clandestine KGB in Eastern Ukraine, and the next minute they are shooting down anything that flies! But the thing you must believe: its not my fault! I only sent in troops and arms in an attempt to grab some extra territory (you know, just like Crimea) and make the country kow tow to my every whim and desire! I never meant to *kill* anyone! Now if you don't mind I'm trying to blame Ukraine somehow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9VA4W1wDMAk
Ronald Reagan in response to KAL 007.
I'm not holding my breath for Obumbles to respond in kind...
In before World War 3!
Ukrainians say the Malaysian plane could have been downed with a Buk, but pro-Russian rebels have now denied they have it.
Of course they don't have it...anymore
But the news said that U.S. officials believe that someone fired a missile at it.
MISSILE DOWNED JET, U.S. SAYS
http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/europe/ukraine-malaysia-airlines-crash/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Malaysia Airlines plane with 298 on board shot down over Ukraine
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/malaysia-airlines-flight-17-crashes-in-ukraine/
Malaysia Airlines Plane Brought Down by Missile in Ukraine: US Official
http://abcnews.go.com/International/malaysian-air-loses-contact-passenger-plane-ukraine/story?id=24599558
Ukraine air disaster leaves 295 dead, 154 are Dutch nationals
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2014/07/ukraine_air_disaster_leaves_29.php
Oct 2001 the Ukraine shot down an Air Siberia plane killing 78.
Basically check your flight plan. Some area you want to go around.
will reveal what kind of explosives were used. It won't be hard to find traces on pieces of the plane. Once analyzed, the type of equipment used will be known, and radar signatures can be used to match. Case closed. All the other media hype (on whatever side) is just bullshit.
The 9-11 planes were exactly what the US investigators said and not some imaginary unicorns
Parts from every one of the planes bore manufacturer's serial numbers and were verified as belonging to the planes that went missing. To believe that anything other than the accepted hijackings and crashes took place, you would have to explain what happened to the missing airplanes and their crews and passengers and cargo and explain how people managed to get precisely the correct serial numbers onto the correct presumably-faked aircraft fragments so that months later whan the numbers from the recovered debris were matched with the maintenance records from the airlines and the manufacturing records from the plane makers all the data would agree.
I have stood in the crater of an aircraft crash, and I can assure you that most people have no clue about what they should (or should not) see an the aftermath of a crash. Most people see a large transport aircraft and their brains tell them that they are seeing a massive and very substantial heavy metal structure. This is an illusion. A large transport an aircraft is essentially a VERY thin-skinned hollow tube (fuselage) with very thin-skinned squashed hollow tubes (wings, horizontal and veritcal stabilizers) attached. The only real thick and heavy metal parts are the landing gear, engine cores, and a few special stuctural elements like the inboard wing spars. When one of these planes slams into the ground (or a building) at low speed or with a shallow angle it will break into sections. A steep or fast impact, however, will make it "go away" (the skin metal shreds, the few massive elements are deeply buried in the ground or fly completely through the impacted building, and the rest becomes small fragments). Every 9-11 crash site was EXACTLY what I would have expected as an aerospace engineer.
The US used planes like the RC-135 which looked NOTHING like a Boeing 747 to fly along Soviet borders... and all such planes were marked with US government markings as required by international law (which made the DISTINCTLY different visually from even other planes of the same type). The RC-135 is NOT the same shape as a Boeing 747, nor is it the same size. KAL 007 was marked with large swaths of red paint making its ID as a Korean civilian airliner obvious to even a vodka-fueled pilot. The Russian pilot who shot it down clearly identified the aircraft as having "two rows of windows", something ONLY a civilian 747 had at that time. Spy planes generally lack windows. Google for pictures of the P-8 Posidon (anti-sub Navy version of Boeing 737) the E-3 Sentry (Air Force AWACS version of Boeing 707) the E-8 J-STARS (Boeing 707 derived) - they ALL lack windows because they are stuffed-full of electronics and the people abord who are not up front in the cockpit are looking at computer screens NOT looking out windows.
The Soviets also used to fly planes along American borders and over American Navy fleets. Competent pilots can EASILY tell the difference, and the US never shot down any Russian airliners for flying near our airspace. The Soviet Union had an official policy of shooting down airplanes in their airspace and all Soviet Airspace was clearly marked with warning text indicating the shootdown risk on American and NATO aviation charts during the Cold War.
Your comment that seems to make lite of Russians being wary of all Boeings is about like saying they should be wary of all four-wheeled cars .... a sick joke. Every pilot on Earth knew what a 747 was back in the 1980s ... it was THE "jumbo jet", was widely used in intercontinental airline flights, had a very distinctive shape (the "hump", and the wings) and there was NO use of the type by the US military back then. The Soviets were quite aware of US spy plane types and knew this was not one. The problem for the Soviet air defenses was that an aircraft overflew their territory (and most-particularly one of their most important naval bases) and their perception was that NOT shooting it down would be seen internationally as a sign of weakness after shooting down so many other planes over the years for airspace violations.
Let's not get carried away confusing two VERY different events.
For context:
1. The US and Iran were (and still are) enemies at the time. Last time I checked, Russia and Malaysia are not.
2. Iranian gunboats were on the surface harrassing the US warship involved in the incident at the time. The Malaysians were not on the ground in Russia or the Ukraine harrassing Russian military forces at the time of this shootdown.
3, The Iranian airliner in question was tracked by the navy ship departing from an Iranian military airfield (at the time, US Navy ship crews did not know that airfield was "dual use") and headed directly toward the naval vessel (in a latitude,longitude sense ... I'll address altitude shortly)
4. The navy ship attempted to contact the Iranian aircraft by radio to warn it off, but got no response; this was another tradgic aspect of the incident. The Russians and their puppets in supposed Ukranian separatists made no effort to communicate with and warn-off this airliner.
5. The Iranians are the biggest sponsor of Islamic terrorists, who often engage in suicide attacks. Malaysia is not generally known as a sponso of terrorists and not generally associated with people who do suicide attacks.
6. The US Navy ship in the Iranian incident was a warship operating in a very narrow section of international waters, very close to Iran which had a history of attacking shipping, with hostilities underway and VERY limited time to make judgement calls - The captain, if he believed his ship and crew were at risk would have VERY limited time to act. This MIGHT have applied to the current Ukranian situation IF all the other points here were the same - but they are not. The ship captain however was severely constrained by limited time.
7. A sailor on the US ship misinterpreted his radar display and told his captain that the Iranian jet was descending as it was headed directly toward the ship (rather than ASCENDING as is actually was) - this was a TERRIBLE error which he admitted and the US Navy admitted as it investigated. The US Government publicly admitted its errors (though not in an official legal/diplomatic way, given that the US and Iran have no such relations since the Iranian revolution) in the incident and payed millions of dollars to the families of the victims.
The Iranian airliner shootdown was wrong, done in error, no doubt a horrifying incident for families across Iran who could never be made whole - but it was VERY different from the current incident. In the Ukranian incident, the "separatists" have been shooting down planes and intended to down this one. The US navy does not have a reputation for being "trigger happy" and shooting down civilian planes. The Russian puppets however, HAVE been eagerly shooting down planes without first positively identifying them. They were NOT doing other acts, then detecting a non-communicating plane from an enemy nation with a history of sponsoring suicide attacks headed right at them, and then shooting as an act of self-defense.
There's a lesson from the Iranian shootdown: Don't become famous for sponsoring suicide attackers, don't harrass enemy navy ships, and if you HAVE done those first two things, don't load a bunch of your civilians into an airliner and launch it from a military airbase headed toward one of you enemy's ships (pick a different route) without taking extra precautions (like directly calling that ship on the radio and telling them what you are "up to" as an extra precaution) .... things might not go too well; any one additional unanticipated problem can cause people to die. Remember: the Iranians had long claimed the US was dangerous and evil, so they SHOULD have presumed what they were doing that day was risky and SHOULD have used every international convention to eliminate opportunities for the "great satan" to behave badly; they did not, so either they (their government, CERTAINLY NOT the people on the ill-fated plane) share the blame OR they should admit that they presumed the US was not evil and would not harm their people and plane.
Palin warned thet Putin would make a move against the Ukraine - no prominent Democrat saw it coming, though they all agreed she was stupid.
But in the 2012 campaign debates when Romney warned about Russia, Obama ridiculed him as being "stuck in the eighties".
Obama is very good at swaggering, and snark, and smug overconfidence (and that always-subtly-flipping-the-bird routine is just plain childish). Obama is the best in the world at erecting straw men and then knocking them down with a smile and a "hip" cadence that must turn Jesse Jackson green with envy .... but when it comes to actually dealing with the real world, both Palin and Romney were smarter - and SHE was only running for VICE president...
It's so very sad, really. There are so very many extremely intelligent and experienced black men in America who have been military generals, astronauts, corporate execs, scientists, engineers, end yes even politicians..... but history will record that when the US elected its "First Black President" it chose a pot-head with attitude and bravado and nothing else. Obama could've been one of Spiccoli's buddies tumbling out of the smoke-filled VW in "Fast Times" (google: "Choom gang")
Do you think that there are ground control operators in Ukraine that speak Spanish but not English? google about that guy, you'll find some information.
This is a tragic story, but why is this on Slashdot? This is indeed stuff that matters, but news for nerds? Not so much.
Hopefully the integrity of the site won't be compromised by the sudden outbreak of humanity.
If so, then why is McCain usually quoted so prominently as a critic of stuff like the F-35 (and other defense programs) ?
The video that inplicates the pro-russian seperatists has a creation date of the previous day before the plane was shot down. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Vladimir Putin was out target practicing...
Given that the commander of the "Seperatists" is ex-FSB it is highly unlikely that they did not get immediate instructions from the Russians on how to use the Buk system within hours of capturing it. They were very effective shooting down cargo planes at high altitude earlier in the week.
Murphy was an optimist
You make a good point, and the Democrats played the same game with Bush (and still do)
But It was Obama who re-signed the mutual defense pact with Ukraine, and it is Obama who refuses to honor that treaty
Murphy was an optimist
This seems to support reports about radio chatter indicates that Russian Separatists are enforcing a "No Fly" zone over the air space over the region they are occupying. The reports go on to say that the Russian Separatists shot down airliner with a newly acquired Russian anti aircraft missile system because it invading their air space - and the radio chatter point to Separatists who wants the world to take them seriously and honor their claim to their own air space. This sort of makes sense in a twisted way.... Only after the Malaysian Airliner was downed did I read the mass media that the Separatist had sophisticated anti aircraft missile systems and were claiming that their occupied area as a no fly zone... Those who fly over the Ukraine are flying into harm's way....
Especially since there were apparently one hundred AIDS specialists on the plane, which could be quite a blow to medical research...
Mr. Putin's little games are finally going to come back and bite him in the ass! His game of sending in hi-tech weaponry to a bunch of clowns has cost the lives of 295 innocent people. If the European governments don't back much more stringent sanctions on Russia after this, then they don't deserve all the U.S. money spent on NATO. I say, "It's time to send in the Wild Weasels!!!"
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
...looks nothing like the Pentagon or other 911 crash sites. It looks like a plane was there.
Where is this arms race taking us? Would it not be safer to go back to shields and knives rather than the data and drones and missiles that are wielded without conscience?
These people were ripped from life in a most shockingly callous way. Many communities and lives are affected by this loss. Children and distinguished members of Dutch society died needlessly.