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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.
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.
Yeah, an issue on board caused by a freaking antiaircraft missile, right?
Actually as I heard it Russia actually shot down a Su-25 the other day as well, so this may have been a result of an overzealous commander telling his subordinates to shoot down "everything that flies."
For those of us old enough to remember The USS Vincennes.
Best Slashdot Co
I share your hope but not your optimism. Disappearing over the Ukrainian/Russian border would be a remarkable coincidence. Then again, a remarkable coincidence started WWI, so...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I share your hope but not your optimism. Disappearing over the Ukrainian/Russian border would be a remarkable coincidence. Then again, a remarkable coincidence started WWI, so...
Well it is also a remarkable coincidence this happens to Malaysia air -- who lost another Boeing 777 in March.
It's entirely possible the reason both flights are lost is the same. But, all is speculation until we hear more news
Too much of a coincidence for a plane to crash in a war zone where a fighter was shot down just the other day and a transport aircraft An-26 was shot down by a missile at 25,000ft couple of days ago. And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
http://www.aeroinside.com/item...
but i bet they are going to have one hell of a sale soon
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/...
Manpad cant reach this high.
This was a deliberate radar guided attack.
From the reports, the plane was flying at a cruising altitude of ~30,000ft., way too high for a MANPAD. It would have to be a radar guided missile system like SA-11 (which both sides have) but still there is a question how they would identify the plane.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Russia hasn't taken over Ukraine yet. Unless you meant another fascist junta.
I highly doubt that a shoulder-carried ground-air-missile is able to reach up to 10 km.
>> issue on board
Like a missile poking up through the floorboards and then exploding?
I don't think MANPADS can hit a plane at that altitude. Early reports said this plane was at nearly 30-50k altitude on it's way to Moscow and most MANPAD systems have fairly limited altitude ranges in the 2 mile range. This is the reason Ukraine accused Russia of shooting that other plane transport plane down, it was at an altitude that very very few MANPAD systems are capable of reaching.
Either Russia has given the insurgents some very high tech MANPADS or Russia shot the plane down using an air defense system like the S300. You need pretty advanced (and relatively large) missiles to reach the altitude that commercial airlines fly at.
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.
And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
To get to the other side?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Do we know it's a MANPAD and not an S-300? The plane was probably at ~40,000ft.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/...
max range=6000m. That's only half the distance to cruising altitude.
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.
I think we can squeeze one more "way too high" reply. Any takers?
Well then, to add to the speculation... On Reuters via Twitter, reporter Anne Applebaum tweeted this: Donetsk commander Strelkov, longtime Russian agent, claimed credit today for shooting plane he thought was Ukrainian http://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bsw... Though I can not read Russian (could someone please translate?), I don't get the sense that it says anything too positive though.
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.
Oh, and my source via Reuters is this live feed: http://live.reuters.com/Event/... in case anyone else is interested.
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...
Either Russia has given the insurgents some very high tech MANPADS or Russia shot the plane down using an air defense system like the S300.
Those are not the only two possibilities. Ukraine was complaining about Russian planes intruding on it's airspace just yesterday and it possesses plenty of weapons capable of shooting down a plane at that altitude.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
Because the time & fuel savings were weighed to be more significant than any risks to commercial air traffic? Until today.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Indeed, I think the OP is suffering from miracle of flight syndrome.
http://web.archive.org/web/20140717155906/http://vk.com/strelkov_info?w=wall-57424472_7256
https://web.archive.org/web/20140717155720/https://vk.com/wall-57424472_7256
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?
Translating from russian... "Near Torez (city) an An-26 airplane was just shot down, it crashed somewhere beyond "Progress" mine site. We warned beforehand - do not fly over "our zone". Here's another video proof of the next "birdfall". A birdie crashed down beyond terricon (mine excavation site), missed living areas. Population not harmed. We also allegedly have info on another SU-25 shot down".
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?
To answer your question...
The location tracking clearly indicated it is a normal flight path and at an altitude where only radar guided type missiles could hit. In other words, the weapons that could reach the altitude for it to hit should have known it was a passenger airplane. Unless they were rebels given equipment with very little training and no infrastructure to compare the flight paths with known flights.
I have a Russian coworker and he confirms thats basically what teh image is about; there is the usual spin about wrong plane etc but yes they shot it down.
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.
We're also now getting reports on numerous posters trying to white-wash this tragedy and make it look either as if this plane was not shot, or as if it was shot down by UA air forces. Clearly, Russian propaganda machinery is in full shit-on mode.
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.
The separatists have control over a Ukrainian anti-air installation (A-1402). That installation contains BUKs, which are quite able to reach a plane at that height. Also, given the separatist's demonstrated willingness to shoot down airplanes and that they also lied about their capabilities, I dare say that it's not looking good for them at the moment.
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.
Americans will go down in history as the most gullible, deluded people ever to live.
Yes, but we won't go down in history aboard a jet shot from the sky by some crazy fucking warmonger (Putin) and die like animals. We may live in ignorance, but it's a long and happy life. Enjoy your well-informed death.
And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
Each airline (and/or its regulatory overlords) will make its own decision as to where to (not) fly. The FAA told US based airlines to not fly over the region as a precaution. Apparently the Malaysian authorities came to a different risk evaluation. Or, they are still trying to figure out how to make a decision. Or they were ignored by the state flagged carrier.
I share your hope but not your optimism.
Your optimism is misplaced. Photos of the crash are on Reuters website, and reports of debris and body parts are coming in. The big question now is who shot it down. Most fingers are pointing at the pro-Russian rebels.
Well, the plane was shot down over territories controlled by pro-Russian terrorists. Just before noon, there was a few posts by them claiming that they have a powerful anti-aircraft missile system installed in this very area. There are videos of this, etc.. take a look -
https://twitter.com/kram_ua/status/489819473789333505/photo/1
It roughly says the following: "Anti-aircraft system BUK, on territory of anti-aircraft site PVO A1402 controlled by DNR (name of this pro-Russian terrorist organization)". Date: 29/06/2014.
If civilian commercial aviation is becoming fair game for armies seeking to gain advantage, then the world has just gone to a very bad place.
I highly doubt a Russian military plane would shoot down a commercial airliner flying into Moscow. Not only did this probably kill mostly Russian citizens, no Russian pilot is going to fire on a plane in a commercial flight corridor that's the same size and speed of a commercial airplane without visually confirming it's not a commercial plane.
You might remember the soviets did that once apparently intentionally and it didn't end well for them, and that plane didn't even have Russian citizens on it. I won't believe a Russian fighter jet shot that plane down without hard evidence.
Why are you so hostile? Is this the website you come to for world and economic news? I bet it's not.
If civilian commercial aviation is becoming fair game
Dude, 350 million dead in the last century alone. Every one is a tragedy, but one airplane hardly compares.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
Reports on sceen are finding multiple wreckage sites. Suggesting it, in some way, blew up. So it's not looking good.
With a layover in Moscow from what I read. Admittedly it's all pretty preliminary and the information has changed a couple times already.
That was the same party telling it that was advertising other pearls of wisdom, like the fact that there were no mass artillery shelling in Sloviansk. Vice news did a nice video of it where they drove through the city showing the massive destruction from indiscriminate shelling, all while playing the audio of the denials of the Kiev representative.
Brought the whole "Goebbels saying that everything is fine on Eastern Front as the Red Army is shelling the very radio station he's holding the speech from" feeling.
At least for that flight number, it apparently wasn't on a normal flight path. It was around 100 miles further north than that flight flew on previous days.
Check the FlightAware tracking data.
Don't know if that is significant or not but it's easy to verify for yourself. All the other flights on the page of MAL17 flights go over the Sea of Azov or even south of it. This one was well off to the north of it.
Again, don't know why or if that even matters, but at least compared to the other MAL17 flights it did appear to be off course in that region. Not that that is a reason to shoot it down.
Russian facist hunta has taken over Crimea in March, and trying to grab two more regions. This plane was shot while flying over territories controlled by pro-Russian terrorists. Get your facts straight man!
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.
Most likely rebels got their hands on BUK/KUB systems. That would explain recent AN-26 and SU-25 being shot down.
I want to know who the hell authorised a civilian flight plan over region in throes of a civil war where two airplanes were recently shot down.
I, for one, live in Odessa and consider Russia to be the major aggressor in this war. Vast majority of locals think the same. We elected new president just 6 weeks ago, so please stop making noises about illegality of UA's government. This was ridiculous at the time Russians started saying this, and it's old now.
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...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new... A large passenger aircraft Boeing 777, performing a flight between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur, was shot down in the eastern part of Ukraine. According to the General Staff of Ukrainian Armed Forces, the airplane was shot down by the Russian Buk missile system as the liner was flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters. Ukraine has no long-range air defence missile systems in this area. The plane was shot down, because the Russian air defence systems was affording protection to Russian mercenaries and terrorists in this area. Ukraine will present the evidence of Russian military involvement into the Boeing crash. The leader of the terrorists Igor Girkin (Strelkov) immediately commented on the airplane catastrophe, believing that it was the Ukrainian jet that crashed down: “In Torez An-26 was shot down, its crashes are lying somewhere near the coal mine “Progress”. We have warned everyone: do not fly in our skies.”
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.
Now way man, the NSA has clearly indicated it was Snowden with all the force of his computer juju.
Putin, will you STFU.
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.
If civilian commercial aviation is becoming fair game for armies seeking to gain advantage, then the world has just gone to a very bad place.
Unless this is a covert action by the Ukrainians in order to blame the Russians, then this is very likely an accidental shoot down of a civilian plane. Unfortunately, many countries have shot down civilian aircraft accidentally.
Most likely BUK. South Ossetian and Abkhasian rebels openly support the rebellion and they had the system for ages. It's highly likely that Ukrainian rebels also have it (though they deny it and claim that their SAM system have an effective ceiling of 3000m on their VK page).
Identifying the plane is unnecessary. This is an airspace over zone of civil war. It's extremely likely that it's closed from civil aviation. How this aircraft ended in the middle of the war zone is going to be a very interesting question to answer.
.... but still there is a question how they would identify the plane.
Seeing how it was a civilian airliner, I would suspect that they couldn't and didn't.
ITAR-TASS (Russian state owned) reported eyewitness claims that "Militiamen of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) brought down a military transport Antonov-26 (An-26) plane of the Ukrainian Air Force on the outskirts of the town of Torez..."
Given that the geographic area is predominantly occupied by separatists ("eyewitnesses"), and the speed with which the report got to Russia, that report may be a "smoking gun," almost literally.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I, for one, live in Odessa and consider Russia to be the major aggressor in this war. Vast majority of locals think the same.
Go ask the same question in Donetsk or Sevastopol, and you are likely to get a different answer.
We elected new president just 6 weeks ago,
... to replace the democratically elected pro-Russian president, who was overthrown by military force. This new election was held in full knowledge that the eastern (pro-Russian) regions were in turmoil and could not meaningfully participate.
I am glad that Ukraine is turning toward the West, but I think it is very disturbing how it has all happened. The Russians are not the only ones with dirty hands.
I share your hope but not your optimism.
Your optimism is misplaced.
He implied he did not have optimism. Not sure how one misplaces what one does not have.
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
The BBC are now reporting over 300 on board with 23 US Citizens. Now to see how the US reacts.
Russian separatists give themselves a huge black eye. A major Western economy fails to accept energy poverty. Dems are using illegal immigration to guarantee a huge loss four months from now. The UN got caught hiding Hamas missiles in one of the Gaza 'schools' they operate.
Bad day eh? Maybe head back to Vice and stare at pictures of dead pallys for a while and feel better. Off you go.
.
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.
well, responsible nations use IFF to identify airplanes. And yes, civilian aircraft all carry an IFF transponder. It was way too high to be, at that short range, a transport being used in prosecution of military action against the rebels. Either the Russians shot it because they genuinely mis-identified it, or the rebels shot it through malicious incompetence.
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
Strelkov is former GRU and a present day Russian operative stirring up shit in Ukraine on behalf of Putin and fellow travelers. He has been personally sanctioned by the EU for corrodinating the separatist insurgency. Read his Wikipedia page if you want more.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
I'm not sure. It was at 32000 feet when they last had contact, which means it wasn't quite at cruising altitude, but it was still several miles up. The 777's cruising speed is mach .84, about 630 MPH. I'm not going to do the math (i'd love it if one of you aerospace guys would, especially since we know where it landed and the last known altitude and the great circle between Schipol and Kuala Lumpur), but I think it would be safe to say that on the ascent it would be going about 350-450 MPH. I can't see terrorists getting their hands on that kind of hardware. Both Ukraine and Russia on the other hand...
compared to the other MAL17 flights it did appear to be off course in that region
According to CNN, it was due to weather on the regular flight path.
...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.
Translating from russian... "Near Torez (city) an An-26 airplane was just shot down, it crashed somewhere beyond "Progress" mine site. We warned beforehand - do not fly over "our zone". Here's another video proof of the next "birdfall". A birdie crashed down beyond terricon (mine excavation site), missed living areas. Population not harmed. We also allegedly have info on another SU-25 shot down"
The AN-26 is a turboprop, vaguely similar to a DHC-8. The SU-25 is a twin engined fighter. The most obviously identifiable piece of wreckage is clearly part of a large gas turbine engine.
But it's an airplane, not a chicken!
I, for one, live in Odessa and consider Russia to be the major aggressor in this war. Vast majority of locals think the same.
Go ask the same question in Donetsk or Sevastopol, and you are likely to get a different answer.
Yep, just like the neo-Nazi's who refuse to recognize Obama as President of the U.S. Same retards, different language.
... to replace the democratically elected pro-Russian president, who was overthrown by military force.
You mean when he fled the country with his looted money in the face of mass civilian protests. No military force was necessary, just a fear of justice after years of robbing his country and people.
Too much of a coincidence for a plane to crash in a war zone where a fighter was shot down just the other day and a transport aircraft An-26 was shot down by a missile at 25,000ft couple of days ago. And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
No U.S. carrier has been allowed to fly over certain parts of Ukraine since the end of April, due to an FAA order.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
In the US pilots can and will alter their course to get around bad weather systems or take advantage of more helpful prevailing winds that day. For a trans-continental flight, 100 miles is a pittance.
Fortunately, for us, our pilots don't have to also take in consideration whether Nebraska is currently having a dispute with Kansas.
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.
>> I, for one, live in Odessa and consider Russia to be the major aggressor in this war. Vast majority of locals think the same.
>Go ask the same question in Donetsk or Sevastopol, and you are likely to get a different answer.
That would be a bit complicated since these territories are controlled by terrorists these days. As far as I know from refugees (and we have LOTS of those coming from Donetsk and Luhansk regions), local support for terrorists is minimal. It is mostly limited to local criminals, ex- political leaders (Communist and "Party of Regions" parties).
>>We elected new president just 6 weeks ago,
>... to replace the democratically elected pro-Russian president, who was overthrown by military force. This new election was held in full knowledge that the eastern (pro-Russian) regions were in turmoil and could not meaningfully participate.
Yanukovich was not overthrown by military force. There were clashes in the center if Kiev, but police and military was on his side at the time, and they had guns, grenades, armed vehicles; rebels had one catapult and molotov's. Yanukovich didn't care about anything besides money, and he fled the country as soon as he realized that there's not much more to make. Basically, he bled Ukraine's economy in a major way - to the extent where we had a revolution with majority support from UA's population. Odessa has been one of "his" regions. Majority of locals supported President Poroshenko (new elect), same goes for all other ex-Yanukovich's regions - Nikolaev, Kherson, Zaporizhya, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, parts of Donetsk and Luhansk where there was no turmoil at the time.
One last bit on "democratically elected" - I participated in 2004 elections as an observer - there's no such thing as democratic vote in regions controlled by Yanukovich representatives.
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"
Not as many as you might think. World population only hit 1 billion around 1804 and didn't get to 2 billion until around 1927. It was still under 3 billion when I was born in 1952.
So, they apparently did have "that kind of hardware." Of course, today they're claiming they don't.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Airspace invades YOU!
Ooof, I didn't see that article. Here's the great circle route, and it looks like it went right along the north/eastern borders of Ukraine. http://www.greatcirclemapper.n...
Then again, a remarkable coincidence started WWI, so...
I don't know what is coincidental in the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne by Serbian nationalists armed and trained by Serbian military intelligence. Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria
Given the political and military alliances forged in Europe before WWI, this was not going to end well.
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.
A Google translation gives this:
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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.
Mod parent up
The previous time, the aircraft was hit 100km beyond the range of the missile. I would have denied it, too. No one has yet figured out how the missile flew so far and still had the power to track and intercept an aircraft.
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.
and the actual assassin (who wasn't the intended assassin) had gone off to sulk over the failure, and was walking down the street that the Arch-Duke's procession had chosen to avoid that traffic problem.
The rest, as they say, is history.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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)
In that case, it sounds like they got a new weapons system and had no damn idea how to ID what they were shooting at, and brought down a plane they didn't intend to.
Which is precisely the reason commercial flight corridors and hundreds of miles wide.
Here, let me help you - https://twitter.com/kram_ua/st...
It says something along the lines - "DNR captured this BUK on 29/June/2014, from UA AA base".
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.
Some of what I've been reading indicates that the "AN-26" the rebels thought they shot down was actually this 777.
If you splode something at 25-30k feet with an "illicitly acquired" SAM battery that you're probably not properly trained to use, unless you're an aircraft engineer you might have issues properly identifying the wreckage.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Yeah, rumor has it there are a lot of Muslims in Malaysia.
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).
The "rebels" are in a good part active-duty Russian army and special forces personnel with no distinctions, so I wouldn't claim "very little training".
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
But it's an airplane, not a chicken!
Ok, so it flies through that airspace for the same reason the punk rocker does ...
It was stapled to a chicken.
There is a precedent for this
Hamas was just saying the other day that they intend to shoot down commercial airplanes flying into and out of tel aviv.
The USA and Germany were sinking each others civilian boats around the Atlantic during WWII
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I'm not sure. It was at 32000 feet when they last had contact, which means it wasn't quite at cruising altitude, but it was still several miles up. The 777's cruising speed is mach .84, about 630 MPH. I'm not going to do the math (i'd love it if one of you aerospace guys would, especially since we know where it landed and the last known altitude and the great circle between Schipol and Kuala Lumpur), but I think it would be safe to say that on the ascent it would be going about 350-450 MPH. I can't see terrorists getting their hands on that kind of hardware. Both Ukraine and Russia on the other hand...
FWIW the last flighttrack data showed a speed of 490 kts (564mph), altitude of 33,000 feet (a common cruising alt if there is turbulence at 35k+) Lat 48.088 Lon 38.6359.
I was just showing up to ask if anyone else first thought this story was about the original Malaysia Airlines plane? It was seriously confusing for a few seconds.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Previous to that, a tactical missile hit an appartment building with the military claiming that the missile in question has successfully hit the target even after parts of the missile were shown on TV.
There were German civilian ships in the Atlantic between 1941 and 1945?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Hey! Look over there... Perfect timing as Israel advances into Gaza.
It's KAL-007 all over again, the plane flew into the area with overzealous anti-air defence. But I still wonder how is it possible that in the era of GPS the planes still divert from the route by that much?
Thirst they claimed that there were no missiles fired that day in first place. Except that it was a complete lie, Ukrainian troops in Crimea were firing anti-aircraft missiles at some target drones that day.
Don't forget the first official reaction of their then-president: "We should not make a tragedy out of matters if it was a mistake. Bigger mistakes have been made."
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
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
In the US pilots can and will alter their course to get around bad weather systems or take advantage of more helpful prevailing winds that day. For a trans-continental flight, 100 miles is a pittance.
Fortunately, for us, our pilots don't have to also take in consideration whether Nebraska is currently having a dispute with Kansas.
Indeed. I once flew from Houston to Florida in high summer. Cloud systems were popping up like mushrooms and we kept having to turn to dodge them, since they were far too tall to fly over.
I swear we were halfway to Ohio before we managed to swing back south again.
The russians have a disgusting habit of shooting down civilian airplanes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007
The handling of Crimea and events like these show that they haven't really become an European civilization. The russians are unreasonable for not forging alliances with the West. They will find themselves in a cold, hard place, then will be eaten alive by their real source of threat, China. They will have deserved it.
That would be a bit complicated since these territories are controlled by terrorists these days.
Please let's not make the term "terrorist" so broad that it means nothing. There is a civil war going on in Ukraine. The aim of the two sides is to control territory, not to terrorize people, though of course the war doesn't exactly make people feel safe. Not all bad things in the world are terrorism.
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.
That's not correct but the coincidence is even better than that. After their first failed assassination attempt of the day, the assassin moved to a restaurant that he believed would be along the Archduke's return path (it wasn't). The duke's driver went the wrong way and when the Governor saw that it was the wrong path ordered the driver to reverse and go another direction. The driver stopped the car in front of the restaurant the assassin had chosen, literally right in front of him. The assassin had to merely take two steps forward and shoot the Archduke from about 5 feet away.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
I know you're just trying to make the point that Russian military is behind all the separatist actions. Anyways, just because they are trained military personnel does not mean they are trained to use any and every military weapons system. They could still have very little training on a particular surface to air missile system.
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.
One mr. Osipovich would have a word with you.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Since the beginning of the conflict, Igor Girkin aka Strelkov has repeatedly stated that he does not have any accounts in social networks. Please, don't cite fakes.
Except that since the beginning of the conflict Igor Girkin aka Strelkov has repeatedly stated that he does not have any accounts in social networks.
Please, don't cite fakes.
He claims to be a retired FSB colonel, not GRU. That means intelligence, not army special forces. I have not seen any evidence that he was with GRU.
Unfortunately comparing to a track of a previous day doesn't tell us anything concrete. There are tons of valid reasons why the plane would be flying a different route. Planes optimize their routes according to weather - especially winds, and ATC just might have directed them differently this time.
Only dumb birds land downwind.
Strelkov does not have a twitter account, he was telling this since the beginning of the conflict.
He probably means cargo ships.
This is a group in Russian social network Vkontakte, but he does not post there personally. Sometimes the admins of the group translate his reports, but such reports have a dedicated banner which is not the case here.
Strelkov has no social network accounts.
this should not be a such a big surprise - rebels have the weapons that they got from Ukrainian army and possibly also from across the border (although direct involvement of of Russian military or in general government is unproven till now. They are also the only ones there under air assault (from Ukrainian air force) so any shooting into planes is done done by rebels who also happened to have the BUK which is good enough. The question is why with all this knowledge civilian airplanes were allowed there and why airlines knowing very well about the situation still accepted to fly just above the no fly zone. Either stupidity or provocation or both as this always works best.
apparently there is a no-fly zone there but it ends at 9750m or so - the planes are flying just above the zone which is just a silly and as we see it has consequences.
I thought it was the US's fault. Isn't every single bad that has happened in the last 75 years the fault of America?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I have a feeling he's going to get a bullet to the head fairly soon.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
LOL. If fake, how was the detailed post, which included pictures, created before the crash was publicly known, and why was it taken down so quickly? Also, you've cited no references for your claim. Given that 2 weeks ago the Donetsk People's Republic claimed to have captured Buk missiles, and today they claimed to have none, their integrity is quite suspect.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
which if they have any sense they would be claiming in the open - as they have no control over air space other then shooting things randomly, pushing the responsibility to traffic control that allows flying over war zone and airlines saving money on shortest route. Even if this were an Ukrainian provocation this is a better PR strategy then anything else. Anything else and this will be a PR catastrophe bigger than anything Russia and separatists can handle now. After all shooting of Iranian planes by US navy over Persian gulf is a fair deal is it not...
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.
"The Truth" . . . is the first casualty in war.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I'll enlist for Kansas.
I'd be tempted to make a joke here, but Kansas already has a similar political proxy war in its history. Makes it much less funny.
160 years later, and evil looks pretty much the same.
Oh, and he seems to be a frequent blogger (over 1300 posts, going back to May), including bragging about the real AN-26 which was shot down on 14 July.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Well, we'll probably tie with the Russians. Americans at least manage to oust our leaders in elections.
If something looks like a duck, acts like a duck then it must be a duck. I heard plenty of stories of eye witnesses, now refugees from Luhansk and Donetsk regions. Saw hours of videos, photos, TV news etc. This is not a civil war. There are roughly 10,000 armed armed terrorists paid by ex-president Yanukovich, certain oligarchs and supported by Putin. Their goals are - to further destabilize Ukraine economically, politically; chop off a few more regions if possible, keep new UA government from making any reforms, generally keep UA attached to Russia, try to save property - production plants, mines, etc. Try to save control over certain regions. And they're failing, but we still have a very, very long way to go. For instance, the whole destabilization thing is likely to go on while Putin is in power, which may or may not last for long.
Russian separatists give themselves a huge black eye.
Not just the Russian separatists. The same goes for the irresponsible idiot who allowed these terrorists access to surface-to-air missiles, as well as the idiot in the Kremlin, who approves these activities.
In my book, everyone in that region is considered an idiot. Just nuke the damned area and get it over with.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
If McCain/Palin had been elected we'd be at war with Iran right now. McCain is a warmonger.
You are not using the approved language. Pro-Russian president, no matter how much money is being stolen, is to be referred to as the hero of the people. Pro-Western president, no matter what their background is, is to be called a Nazi.
or as Ukraine admitted some time ago rebels just took it from army stores. This is a land where not all military was convinced about sense infighting with people that were determined to get their objective. This is also one of the reasons Ukrainian military was changing commanders so often and on the ground is supported by affiliated forces of national guard, right wing militias and as German intelligence seems to be believe US company that used to be called blackwater. This is not an excuse for anybody but if a country slips into civil war it usually also means no full control of its armed forces and depos. The question also remains how the fuck it was possible that in view of rebel possession of BUK the no-fly zone was limited to 9km or so and what serious airline would chose to fly over such a zone in view of shooting of airplanes by rebels.
It's not twitter, it's VKontakte. I should have said "blog" when I said "tweet," but that's obvious from the link.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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.
you mean traffic controllers sending civilian planes over to a place where military planes are regularly shot down is quite out of responsibility? I think Russia and Russian rebels face a massive PR disaster but do not carry full responsibility for the deaths. Come to think of it one can get to unholy thoughts.
Vice? The billion dollar (with 70 million of 21st Century Fox's money) "counter-culture" rag? By a guy who says he worked for Reuters, only he didn't? That Vice?
Hooah
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
yes I keep on hearing about terrorists and yet the majority of reports of civilian deaths till now are associated with actions of Ukrainian military and support units (whether that were National Guard or right wing militia is impossible to tell from outside of the country). If I look at other news where terrorism is mentioned this makes me think unholy things like Kiev government is hell bound on getting its rights back whatever the cost. Bottom line by calling these people terrorists for more than a half a year I consider claims of terrorism just for what it most likely is i.e. propaganda.
AN-26 and Boeing 777 are very different planes. You can't confuse them even if it's at 30000 feet altitude. AN-26 is much smaller, slower and it's turboprop
You can't see this? Come on, they fucking brag about it.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
AN-26 and Boeing 777 are very different planes. You can't confuse them even if it's at 10 km altitude. AN-26 is much smaller, slower and it's turboprop
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.
Most people seem to think it was an accident. Neither side wants to intentionally shoot down a civilian airliner, it would be a massive PR disaster that even a camoflauge wearing militia person would understand. So most likely it was someone over zealous thinking that it was a military plane.
It makes no sense for UA to shoot anything down, since the separatists have no air assets. I find the other explanation - UA shooting down a civil airliner just to setup the separatists or Russia - to be way too far-fetched.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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.
Not sure what sort of news sources you are using, it would be interesting to take a look. I am Ukrainian, living in the country in question; my news sources are - facebook posts by locals, a number of independent news sources (independent from each other, and allegedly some even from UA government), a few military journalists. None of them report any civilian deaths caused by actions of UA military, nothing systematic at least.
Let me tell you of one of the tactics these terrorists employ. They wait for UA air forces to fly by, then start firing guns and grenades around, imitating air strikes. Next, Russian TV people ("lifenews" and "russia today" mostly) arrive at the scene (usually they're there already), make some footage, interview some "locals" who support air strikes in their claims, translate that into english and voila - western world is fed with very roughly made-up "news" from war zone.
But hey, what if you just had your daily intake of vodka?
Well, as lpng as we are going conspiracy here, wasn't the US trying to get the EU to impose sanctions on Russia and most EU countries were afraid it would have negetive impacts on their economies? I bet they support sanctions now.
You wouldn't believe what sort of crap Russian TV is making up. Just a few hours ago, they were spreading news of a statement by "Spanish air control technician" claiming he saw two UA fighters following this Malaysian Air flight. Their original "proof" link was to a livejournal account.
Interesting moderation there. Gee there /. mod, something not sitting well with your limited view of the world today? I'm guessing it was the missiles found in a school in gaza. Not the first time either, it's much like hamas using ambulances to transport terrorists around.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
Riiight. Because Malaysia has such a huge interest in the Ukraine...
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.
I highly doubt that this would be a deliberate act by pro-Russian separatists. If it does turn out that this was done by them, this is a HUGE PR disaster for them. They have nothing to gain by it. I see three possibilities:
1 - separatists shot it down accidentally (unlikely as a crew trained to use a highly sophisticated SA-11 system would also know how to tell a civilian airliner from a military transport turboprop)
2 - false flag operation by Ukrainians in order to blame pro-Russians (unlikely as they are too incompetent to pull this off without the word leaking out)
3 - Ukrainians "tricked" the separatists into shooting down the plane. Only couple of days ago separatists shot down an An-26 military transport plane and warned Ukraine not to fly over the region anymore. Two days later a civilian airliner is sent (by the Ukraine flight-control?), 100km away from it's usual flight-path and straight over the separatist area. (Most likely in my opinion)
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
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.
There seems to be an unusual amount anti alternative media sentiments here lately. Maybe the NSA is manipulating the moderation system. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-...
ayottesoftware.com
Any available in Germany. The point is this: after all these years I spent in a communist country I start having doubts if reports about one side of a conflict are so uniform while facts are so limited an confusing. Credibility of a source is lower when it constantly use derogatory terms to one side. That was a sign of bad propaganda in a communist country I once lived in. Bottom line is: one can do your PR better without calling people names. there is also this little suspicion that not only Russian 50c brigade is at work here. I do not trust Russians but I have very little illusions about the other sides of the conflict: Ukrainian state is just a cradle of corruption that people on the ground try to remove once in a while only to be served another portion of the same. US reaction to this all, at least that what we can see in media, fits into `these are our basterds so we have to careful not to support them too much and keep their incompetence and corruption in check` scenario. I watch this all with interest especially ever since I read this. This is actually the reason I think U-R conflict belongs very much so to /. how media are used to pump us with pseudoinformation. Watching from aside Russia seems to be losing PR contest.
Actually, the FAA told US airlines not to fly over Crimea, because in April Russia claimed they controlled air traffic over that airspace. The FAA told US planes not to fly there because it was a convoluted, disputed mess which could lead to accidents. It had nothing to do with risk of being shot down, and that area does not (or did not until today at least) cover the area over Ukraine where this flight was shot down. That flight path would not have been restricted by the FAA.
Better known as 318230.
Looks like the bastards were under the impression that Russians had closed the whole airspace down whereas the NOTAM only closed it up to 32k feet, the flight was at 33k feet and legally flying over the area...
The captured audio calls between the rebel scum clearly show they thought it was a military plane.
Actually there were no BUKs there, so the separatists couldn't get any from UA military. If they have BUKs then those cam from Russia. It's a standard scheme - the separatists claim to have captured something from the army and then they get that from Russia. Often times in 10x quantities comparing to their claims.
I double checked - my post did not refer to Malaysia. I think traffic controllers over Ukrainian air space are still paid by Ukraine. I admit however that Malaysian airlines take part of the blame - why was their airplane flying over war zone where planes are shot down any other day even if traffic control allowed it? I mean even if I had trust in any military, which I do not, I would try to avoid risk if possible which is - not to fly over places with crazy people having weapons that can destroy my planes. I missed that part of argument in my post tho so what the hell are you talking about?
That's wonderful for future reference. However it doesn't help me when posting before it becomes common knowledge. I was more interested in trying to figure out where exactly the plane would have been attacked.
in a secret facility on cuba producing i-phones on 20 hour shifts
I wonder where German news sources get their info from. Please provide a link to e.g. tv station or news article claiming UA army atrocities.
Russian news crews are allowed in terrorist-controlled territories, Ukrainian aren't. This is why you can only rely on statements by refugees, by people from liberated cities such as Mariupol, Solvyansk and Kramatorsk, on locals filing atrocities performed by terrorists
On the "Ukrainian state is just a cradle of corruption that people on the ground try to remove once in a while only to be served another portion of the same" - hardly true. Things and times are changing, e.g. Poland made a quick de-sovietization only 20 years ago. We might as well do our anti-corruptionization. I'm not claiming that we well, I'm only pointing out that things generally don't stay the same for long.
that is assuming that military units not only just do their duties, do not use drugs while on duty and are competent but also that their HW does what it is supposed to do and their commanders do not accept too much of collateral damage. Other than that I know no military that would not take a shot if they could - US and Russia and others I am sure - did that in the past. The world is a bad place.
That is a rebel sympathizer's group called "reports from Strelkov". However, only posts with a dedicated banner are his actual reports, mostly there are some reports from locals with a lot of rumors and hearsay. Igor Strelkov has been blocked for a while in a city of Slavyansk, he did not have time to post all these 1300+ posts.
This is what happened with the plane: some locals have reported the crash, the moderators of the group assumed that it was a Ukrainian military plane and made such a post. Not Strelkov himself.
It's not his blog either. It's a sympathizer's group blog which sometimes reposts his official bulletins. Those are marked with a banner. Other than that nothing in this blog is from Strelkov.
There were any German non-submarine ships in the Atlantic between 1941 and 1945? Not if the Royal Navy or United States Navy could help it.
Meaning the non-submarine presence of German ships in the atlantic was practically nil.
The reference is the blog itself. The people that post there have been saying repeatedly that this blog is not Strelkov's blog. It is called "reports from Strelkov" because the official bulletins and reposts from Strelkov are being re-posted there. Such reports are marked with a dedicated banner which was not the case with this message. There are over 1300 posts in the blog, most are reports from locals who wish to stay anonymous but also hearsay and rumors as well. Which was ultimately the case with the plane. Basically, the locals have reported a plane crush and have sent photos. The blog's authors assumed that it was a military machine and got overly enthusiastic about it.
I've seen the reports about Buk missiles as well, I won't dismiss the version that the rebels did indeed shot the plane down. I'm just saying that the cited source is not Strelkov's blog because he has none.
You again use that word which I think is not appropriate. I refuse to lead discussion on this level. Not because I like the rebels or believe in their goals but because I know enough about terrorism and I see no evidence of that so far. BTW: Poland did not have the problem that bothers Ukraine - multi-ethnic society. With all the PC about people living together the evidence is that when times are hard - the guilty is the guy on the other side. That you could see in Yugoslavia before it fell apart and it is to see in Ukraine. You could possibly get the situation under control without use of heavy weaponry but for this not only gov. in Kiev would have to recognize that Russian citizens of Ukraine have rights too even if the use of these rights would have to mean federalization of the country etc. We will never know now as we do not talk with terrorists do we?
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!
Well, how does your possibilities look considering this?
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org...
I cannot say there is a connection or not, but as long as we are speculating, we might as well speculate.
First of all: That was hardly the only commercial liner to fly there.
Secondly, you seem to be under the impression that traffic control flies the planes. That is not so: Ultimately the crew decides the course. Traffic control merely watches that there are no dangerous approaches.
What this boils down to: The separatists put some unschooled and untrained people onto the seat of a BUK which then, due to being unable to make heads or tails out of the blips on the radar, decided to shoot at one blip by the roll of dice.
And that's the friendly interpretation.
They are either Terrorists or Criminals. These insurgents robbed dozens of businesses at gunpoint including car jacking people in broad daylight. I don't like calling them terrorists either, but they are certainly criminal scum. This is what happens when the leader next door has made deals with the Russian Mafia. I'd be willing to bet that when you subtract the Russian Spetznaz officers from the insurgents you are left with a core of people that are Russian Mafia and probably less than 10% that are genuine civilians with Russian Nationalist inclinations that want to see their cities integrated into Russia (course they would be very surprised to find out that Russia doesn't want them).
The guy that replaced the Crimea parliament at gun point and then named himself governor so he could call for a referendum on joining Russia was nicknamed "the Goblin" and was the local Russian Mafia leader. Why do you think no one stood up to him? People that stood up to him ended up dead. Putin choose to use the same strategy in Eastern Ukraine but he wanted a smoother fight so he appointed an Intelligence operative to move in and take control.
With the Russian intelligence officer in coordinating actions and the Russian mob providing the muscle Putin got his little war to stir up a pile of shit so he could force the Ukrainian's to do what he wanted. This is why the referendum never said anything about joining Russia because he doesn't want them to join Russia. Putin want's a federal type government in Ukraine that he can use to control the entire government. He realizes he can't control the western side anymore so he's using the British divide and conquer strategy. He'll put the Mob in control in the east (they get financial benefit out of it) and because there are more people in the east he'll have control over the whole country.
I've always wondered why Ukraine didn't call Putin's bluff and tell the eastern provinces to join Russia while handing them the bulk of all the debt. Putin doesn't want to take on all that outdated industry and energy demand or the debt he caused so he could use it as leverage to control them. If they'd called his bluff he would have been put in the position of refusing to annex the eastern provinces which would have cost him dearly.
First, there is a lot of information pointing to the rebel scum really early in this happening. It's almost as if it was prepared in advance in order to hand out once the rebel scum shot it down.
Second, who benefits the most from this?
http://www.atlanticcouncil.org...
Finally, can we trust anyone who has an axe to grind this early in the game? It seems like everyone pointing fingers is in a position to want someone else to look bad. The Danes are going to investigate so I think I will wait until they report before I believe anything concrete. I'm not saying they are not corruptible, I just don't see anything they would gain right at the moment.
No, it isn't particularly interesting how it ended up in the middle of a war zone. Not at all. The area in question is not closed to civil aviation, or at least it wasn't prior to this incident. The aircraft was flying about a hundred miles off its usual flight path, which is a completely reasonable deviation when avoiding inclement weather as they were. Presumably, the deviation was approved by the Ukrainian civil aviation authorities.
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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.
Better question to ask are who benefits and what was the regional track record. Who benefits at this time is pretty clear Ukraine and Israel. Ukraine into attempting to bring in international support. Things are not all hunky dory into Ukraine defence forces, they can not even properly feed their troops let alone pay them, the oligarch are too busy strip mining the country of anything they can loot and selling off the remainder to the US, so desperation is rising. Israel, another land based invasion of that Warsaw like ghetto Gaza, which will be kept off the front pages (there are highly skilled mercenaries from all over the world operating in the Ukraine, only temporarily loyal to the highest bidder). All prior rebel shoots down of aircraft were at low altitude, none at high altitude. Apparently a very high skill set of many operators is required to operate the system, definitely not point and click, strictly specialist trained operators.
The biggest indication of false flag, western media are trying to claim Russia shot down the aircraft without any reason why given and only mention the Ukraine government, the biggest benefactor in passing as a maybe might be.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Air traffic control had declaired the area safe for commercial air tarffic.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Damn Rednecks, never doin' the right thing. I tell ya, why aren't they firing BUK missiles at their shooting ranges?
unlikely as a crew trained to use a highly sophisticated SA-11 system would also know how to tell a civilian airliner from a military transport turboprop
What makes you believe that they have a properly trained crew? It's much more likely that, after acquiring those AA launchers, they cobbled together a team of "best and brightest" who did their best to figure it out - and maybe had a hazy recollection from 40 years ago when they were conscripts. In fact, that's precisely why I think it's the most likely scenario - people operating complicated machinery without proper training is exactly the kind of thing that'd be likely to lead to this disaster.
Too much of a coincidence for a plane to crash in a war zone where a fighter was shot down just the other day and a transport aircraft An-26 was shot down by a missile at 25,000ft couple of days ago. And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
No U.S. carrier has been allowed to fly over certain parts of Ukraine since the end of April, due to an FAA order.
My first thought: When did the US build a flying aircraft carrier?
Strelkov does not have a VK account, either. This particular one is some unknown "group of volunteers" who repost the messages from his official forum (forum-antikvariat.ru - it's an antique militaria / reconstruction forum which he moderated; its 'General Talk' subforum is now basically dedicated entirely to Ukrainian events and serves as the official info channel of Strelkov).
So the question is whether that was posted in the forum. And the answer is yes, it was. It has been hastily erased, and it happened so quickly that it didn't get cached by any search spider, but Yandex managed to cache a part of it for search results (i.e. it's the bit that shows under the link in the listing - if you try to "Open from cache", it'll still say that it doesn't have it). And the part that is cached is word-for-word identical with the VK message.
So, yes. They did officially report the downing of An-26 today.
The silhouettes are similar, and Boeing 777 flying at 30000 feet is roughly the same size as An-26 flying at 15000 feet, if you look at their wingspan and do the math. A bunch of untrained militia types who are trigger-happy with their new shiny toy mistaking identity? Especially after they have already downed one An-26 with it just three days ago? Sounds very likely, IMO.
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.
That doesn't seem to be the case. Russia is actively helping with equipment and intelligence, and there's a steady trickle of mercenaries from the Russian side, some "fighters for a good cause" (where cause varies wildly - it's a really weird mix of hardcore Stalinists fighting "fascists", hardcore Russian nationalists fighting for "restoration of Empire", and hardcore white racists fighting "against Jews", and a bunch of other stuff), some just plain old mercs hired for money. But so far there has been no evidence of actual army units operating there. Certainly not unlike Crimea, where it was all over the place.
Special forces, I'll grant you, that's quite possible.
Either way, most people with guns in that area that are on separatist side are militia types, not organized army. Some of them have army background, but for most it's one or two years of conscript service, and the most complicated equipment they've handled is an AK-74 for most, maybe tanks or artillery for some. I doubt they have many specialists to operate something like "Buk" properly.
Conspiracy cover story or a hard luck affair for all those aboard?
It's more fun to throw wood on the fire of conspiracy, but it's more practical to consider stupidity ahead of sublime political intrigue.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It was an airplane engaged in a game of chicken.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Strelkov self-identifies as a monarchist and wants to see the Russian Empire rebuilt as an absolute monarchy with Eastern Orthodox Christianity as a state religion, and preferably in the 1917 borders of the Russian Empire. He is definitely sponsored by Putin, but I don't think there's much love lost between the two. For too many Russians, Strelkov is a hero now, and the recent announcements from the government (for the lack of open support of DNR and LNR) are treated as betrayal. If Strelkov were to abandon Ukraine, cross the border into Russia with all his forces, and announce that he is now going to "fight against the corrupt, backstabbing Putin regime and its American puppeteers", I suspect he'd get wide support. Many people think so. I wouldn't be surprised if so does Putin.
Well, the Americans are already on their way in.
Ukraine being part of the Russian federation
Russia only has annexed Crimea. You are getting ahead of yourself.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There was more than one An-26 involved.
Three days ago, on July 14, the rebels have already reported shooting down an An-26. That one was the real thing, confirmed by Ukrainian forces. The rebels themselves didn't specify what they used, but it was flying too high for MANPADS, and Ukrainians immediately claimed that it was "Buk".
Given that rebels themselves have boasted of acquiring "Buk" on June 30 (from a captured Ukrainian base), the dots seem to connect.
Go ask the same question in Donetsk or Sevastopol, and you are likely to get a different answer.
It depends, actually. In Sevastopol, you're probably right. In Donetsk, it's more like 50/50. You usually don't hear the other side much, because voicing the unpopular opinion is not a good survival strategy when the guys who self-appointed themselves governors of your region announced total mobilization, and arrest people for treason, sabotage, espionage and "spreading harmful rumors".
I think his point is that they're not terrorists, in a sense that they don't focus on civilian targets - they are mainly engaging the Ukrainian Army and National Guard units.
They'd be terrorists if they were doing something like what they did today, deliberately (today, it looks like they simply went trigger-happy, probably still overexcited from all the other downed planes in the last two weeks).
They have boasted of capturing "Buk" three weeks ago.
http://itar-tass.com/mezhdunar...
which makes today's reporting that much more schizophrenic:
http://itar-tass.com/mezhdunar...
Separatists themselves have boasted of acquiring SA-11 Gadfly aka "Buk" three weeks ago:
http://itar-tass.com/mezhdunar...
And just three days ago, separatists have said that they shot down An-26, which was flying above 6km, and specifically noted that they did it with "Buk":
http://www.vz.ru/news/2014/7/1...
(That one was a real An-26 - Ukrainian side confirmed the loss.)
Occam's Razor would lead to one obvious conclusion here. Although today's TASS report is very funny, given that they were the ones reporting on the capture of "Buk" before!
http://itar-tass.com/mezhdunar...
Terrorism is a hit and run business, if they're trying to cease and hold control over territory it's a civil war. Popular support is not a prerequisite, armed factions that clash in warlike combat while the general population suffers is more the norm rather than the exception. That one or both sides get external help too. Of course it doesn't exclude the possibility that those waging war also do terrorism, but taking control of buildings and raising flags isn't it.
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In before World War 3!
Article states of the bat that it was a vacant UN sponsored school building. To spin this as the UN being complicit in hiding Hamas missiles displays some remarkably reading comprehension problems.
Maybe the UN should start sponsoring schools in the
US. Obviously the education system failed you.
accident that Putin gives heavy weapons and training to pro-Russian militants and then things like this happen....yup, accident
Oct 2001 the Ukraine shot down an Air Siberia plane killing 78.
Basically check your flight plan. Some area you want to go around.
This is rediculus. Any reasonable person would not have shot down a commercial plane killing hundred of innocenct people. Clearly the Ukrane insurgents are unreasonable terrorists who should be treated as such. Ukraine needs large amounts of western help to fight them.
And yet you are not sorry about the dead. Take two minutes to think how stupid and cruel this was...how unnecessary ?
He has been personally sanctioned by the EU
I don't know what you've been smoking, but the EU is firmly supporting the new Ukranian government in Kiev.
The mountains of madness have many little plateaus of sanity - Terry Pratchett.
And due to the enormous amount of false flag operations that have been done by the US (since the US is backing the UA government), they may actually get away with it as well.
The mountains of madness have many little plateaus of sanity - Terry Pratchett.
I am sorry, but you obviously missed the part where people involved in the military coup to oust the old president were giving nazi salutes and one of the ministers of the current UA government proposing measures in eastern Ukraine that essentially come done to ethnic cleansing. Not saying that the separatists in the Ukraine are all honky-dorey, but at least they're not neo-nazis.
The mountains of madness have many little plateaus of sanity - Terry Pratchett.
And in both cases the planes in question had *violated their sovereign airspace*, which this plane did not.
Forgive me,but I'm willing to bet, especially post-9/11, if a jetliner violated US airspace and didn't respond to contact attempts by fighters scrambled up to it, the US would probably do the same... we wouldn't want that next attack to be in the form of a mushroom cloud, from a device planted in an unresponsive civilian airliner, would we?
Ukraine has no long-range air defence missile systems in this area.
Most likely the separatists did shoot it down accidently. But that statement is complete and utter BS. The Ukraine has Russian BUK and other Russian Anti missle/air defense systems throughout the region because they are supposedly scared of a Russian invasion.
I agree, the separatists shooting it down wouldn't surprise me. But yeah, the UA not having air defense in the area is a crock, especially if they're talking about Russia 'violating their airspace', of *course* they'd want to have some air defense - they'd probably love to knock a Russian fighter down in Ukrainian airspace.
Too much of a coincidence for a plane to crash in a war zone where a fighter was shot down just the other day and a transport aircraft An-26 was shot down by a missile at 25,000ft couple of days ago. And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
No U.S. carrier has been allowed to fly over certain parts of Ukraine since the end of April, due to an FAA order.
Certain parts, apparently not including the area this plane was flying over.
Of course it is despicable to hide weapons in a school, or any civilian premises for that matter. But it is no less despicable, in my book, for the Israelis to withhold information about those three murdered teens -- enforced by a gag order no less -- allowing tensions to rise to the point where a Palestinian boy was burned alive in "retribution".
Or to blame Hamas without presenting a shred of evidence. Or to start a murderous bombing campaign, and now an invasion more or less, on one of the most densely populated cities based on that unproven assumption. This is a deliberate strategy on the part of the IDF, and collective punishment is a war crime according to the Geneva Conventions.
I think Hamas' tactics are deplorable, but like it or not they have won elections that observers have qualified as fair and open. If we are truly committed to democracy then we can't make exceptions when we don't like the outcome. The fact that they enjoy popular support certainly doesn't justify making the population as a whole a target. This applies equally to rockets fired into Israeli civilian territory, of course. But the capacity of the IDF to inflict damage is orders of magnitude larger.
People living under an illegal occupation have the right to resist, I firmly believe that. In fact there was almost a UN resolution about terrorism, but it was vetoed by the US because the definition of terrorism in that proposal explicitly stated that those who suffer under racist regimes or illegal occupation have this right to resist. Palestine and South Africa were mentioned.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
It was in the news a couple days ago, reporting a first sighting of 300-400 men in plain (green) uniforms of Russian army. Without distinctions, same as in Crimea.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Hm, I haven't seen that. I'd wait until someone posts a video - there were many in Crimea, and it was them that made it abundantly clear who the "polite men" are, especially when they yapped too much on the camera. As it is, it's really hard to separate truth from fiction in the stream of events that are reported from the region, because there's just too much propaganda and panicked multiplication of it from both sides.
There is no such thing as "Russian citizens in Ukraine". There are 10 million Russian-speaking, Russian ethnic people living in Ukraine, with Ukrainian passport. They are citizens of Ukraine. My home city of Odessa's population is almost 100% Russian-speaking, 30% Russian-ethnic people. And as one might expect, I have plenty of friends and co-workers who fall into this category - ethnic Russians. And they all despise what Putin is doing, they do not want to be under Kremlin control and they are all calling these "rebels" "terrorists". To a larger extent, an exact same thing is happening in all former "pro-Russian" regions of my country. You see, people are smart enough to realize that Ukrainian government is not going to be prosecuting anybody based on language or ethnicity. This is simply B.S. coming from Russian propoganda. And people are smart enough to understand that Putin's regime has nothing to do with Russian culture, and they don't actually have to be governed by Kremlin in order to be Russians culturally and ethnically. For example, take a look at Russians living in Brooklyn, NY, or in Germany. Is anybody's willing to back to modern Russia? Is there anybody who supports annexation of Crimea on anything but nationalism?
Actually I agree that "terrorists" is perhaps an incorrect word to use. What we have on our hands in Russian military invasion of Ukraine. So at this stage, I'd call them Russian mercenaries.
They actually do focus on civilians - kidnapping is a huge business over there. They also torture and kill anybody who does not support their point of view. There has been numerous reports on all of this in the press, by eye witnesses, by people who escaped. These guys are not what one would call "orthodox terrorists". Do we really have to keep searching for a mildly more correct word to use?
Somehow I think that mass support from locals is a prerequisite for a thing to be called "civil war". The word "civil" implies that?
You won't be able to figure out how to operate a Buk without special training. No amount of smarts will help - and your training should be fairly recent. And from all accounts (even including Ukraine's own defense dept: http://www.mil.gov.ua/news/201... ), allegedly captured Buks were not in a battle-ready state.
Funny enough, Ukrainian military claimed the same: http://www.mil.gov.ua/news/201... Rough translation: "terrorists only got obsolete and broken junk"
No, the Vice that actually sends reporters with cameras in the middle of the conflict, and just has them upload their video material of what's actually happening straight to youtube.
Not the current mass media that sanitizes everything to see that the message gets across. That's why I like them - you get to see things like both sides of Ukrainian conflict (Ostrovsky, the reporter in question was the guy who got kidnapped to much furore a couple of months ago by separatists, mainly because he actually had the balls to go pretty much everywhere to report and record the situation, including dangerous places).
That's why I enjoy watching that material. Not their editorial content, which is pretty strange and opinionated most of the time. But their direct video reports are far closer to reality than anything that either Western or Russian media shows. They show both the fact that most young men fighting on Ukrainian side aren't openly nazi, nor that separatists are terrorists. Because they embed with both sides and they show them in their every day goings, from peaceful moments to moments when theyare shooting at one another. They embed both with much accused Azov Battalion as well as separatists.
Separatists now HAVE airplanes and helicopters. Since Strelkov's blog is now considered authoritative, here's a link to it with an announcement: http://voicesevas.ru/news/yugo...
It's also worth reading voicesevas.ru in full (of course, taking into account its bias) to see the war from rebels' point of view.
Yes, because "terrorists" shell themselves, and all the grannies who were left behind and were visited by the crew are openly lying to the camera.
Excuse me while I facepalm at your utter ignorance.
Search google for "vice news Russian roulette". It will lead you to their youtube channel, and that name is their direct reporting series on conflict in Ukraine. I think the Sloviansk footage was included in one of the last four videos or so.
And I was in Kramatorsk to help my friend to relocate his family to a safer area. I also was in Crimea during its independence referendum.
People there REALLY REALLY don't want to live in the same country with Western Ukrainians.
Also, it's a military axiom - a successful rebel operation is not possible without wide support of native citizens.
What a crap. Get a clue and drive to Slavyansk or Kramatorsk. Nobody there likes Kiev.
And here's some help from the Ukrainian military: http://www.mil.gov.ua/news/201... which says otherwise. And Ukrainian military officials never lie, don't they?
In this regard, vice isn't even "alternative media" as much as "direct reporting from the site, largely unedited".
Something our mainstream media never practices as it gets in the way of relaying the required propagandist message. Like the fact that separatists aren't terrorists (Western angle) or that most of the people in Ukrainian army aren't nazis (Russian angle).
That's OK, since Ukraine also claims that rebels don't have anti-air defense system: http://www.mil.gov.ua/news/201...
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.
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.
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
Yes, they have plenty of "grannies" "reporting" "truth" - all of this, only via russian tv news. None of that - via any other independent news sources - not Ukrainian, not EU, not US. How come?
How come none of the tens of thousands of refugees report any systematic atrocities allegedly done my UA army? How come all of them report numerous kidnappings, killings, burglaries done by terrorists and terrorists only?
How come Slovyansk and Mariupol, two cities liberated by army just recently, do not report any violence at all?
Yes, there are plenty of youtube channels created by russian propaganda people, with staged actors, numerous false footages, etc. There has been so many it made somebdy start collecting them - http://www.stopfake.org/en/new... there's an english section. Welcome to Russian propaganda!
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.
As for rebels if they have any sense at all they would check if this was their rocket (which most likely it was as they reported it before) apologize and claim that the aircraft was not supposed to be there in the first place - declare no fly zone etc.
It really bothers me that neither Ukrainian, nor Russian traffic control (who else is involved there?) nor rebels nor airlines nor captain had enough brains to prevent this.
There's actually no contradiction here. https://twitter.com/kram_ua/st... -- this is a picture by rebels claiming that they stole BUK from UA army. Next thing that happens - this BUK is used to shoot down a civilian airplane. Now, who might also have BUKs up for grabs in the area? What other, huge country is close (within 15 miles range), is known to import vast amount of arms, tanks, missiles, etc into the terrorist-controlled territories?
At this moment it looks like BUKs were "thrown in" by Russia in order to suppress UA air strikes.
SOME people did not wanted to live with the rest of the country, yes. But what percentage is that? Can you argue that this "referendum" was actually representative? With people voting 8 times per day, with 103% turnout rate in Simferopol, with no access to news except for Russian ones for 2 weeks leading to this "referendum"?
Russia is yet to establish a precedent where an opposition gets into power by way of popular vote. The only way people gain power in Russia is by revolts, wars, killings, internal Kremlin politics. Democratic vote is a farce in this country, one of the methods to keep people from rioting. I actually participated as an observer during 2004 presidential elections, in Odessa. There is no such thing as democratic vote done by Yanukovich people. And the same people were involved in 2014 Crimean "referendum".
What area did you relocate your friend's family to? Not to Donetsk or Crimea, I suppose?
Ukraine?
My military specialty was anti-air defense. I was not trained to work with Buks (I specialized on CUB), but I saw them. They are not something that you can disguise or easily move - definitely not a good weapon for rebels relying on stealth and fast movement. Also, use of Buks requires close coordination of at least 8 specially-trained people and two vehicles. So I consider it unlikely that rebels possess a working anti-air defense system.
This world is not a nice place. We know it is so. Sending civilian traffic over east of Ukraine qualifies as manslaughter. Similarly as letting a naive person into a hungry lions cage. What the heck were they expecting to happen with these BUK systems that rebels stole from Ukrainian army? I mean it is not first time they used them or?
Well, what percentage of country was on Maidan? By my count, less than 1% (I supported Maidan and still do, btw). So please, don't throw stones if you live in a glass house.
And you should note, that in Ukraine people only gain power after revolts, bloodshed and nationalism flare-ups.
He does not have it, because it has been misplaced. If I misplaced my keys, then I would not have them.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/17/world/europe/malaysia-airlines-crash-missile/index.html
5 minutes to arm, even less to pack and leave.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Girkin -- one of main terrorist leaders is a Russian military officer. There are plenty of other Russian military among these terrorists, including specialists trained in e.g. driving armored vehicles, training local criminals for combat, performing attacks, etc. Is it so far-stretched to assume that since UA's air strikes were so effective, Russia added a few specialists along with BUK-s into the mix? 2 UA military support planes were taken down in the past 2 days, flying well over 4km height - allegedly by the same terrorists..
Nice distortion field you have there. That is actually the main reason I observe this conflict. It is the first time I can see shills from two sites in action and affecting even third party systems like the one from Angela M. that was abused by somebody this week. It is almost funny if it were not so tragic at the same time - all these shit storms on TE forums every time an article mentioning Russia or Ukraine is published. Even regular media are affected which may indicate that they lost credibility. I switched to al-Jazeera of late for at least I know they have skewed perception. It is almost funny to watch experts excluding reasonable options to fit into their perception of reality. Propaganda at its best. I never thought we would go this far but that is of course only a logical development of the pipes.
Maidan was not a "referendum", and Yanukovich did not leave because he was impolitely asked to. Police and military was still on his side. He simply realized that there's no more money to make.
Presidential elections in 1994, 2004, 2010 resulted in peaceful transfer of presidential seat to then-opposition. 1999 presidential elections was a very close tie. Ukraine is not proper democracy, of course, but we are clearly not on the same level with Russia.
Okey so you claim that my "field is distorted". Would you please comment on specifics and facts which lead to you to that conclusion?
ORLY? Police and military forces were deserting en-mass, several military bases were looted, regional administrations in Western Ukraine were captured, pro-Yanukovich Volyn' governor was captured and tortured, Sashko Bilyh was terrorizing local councils.
Yanukovich literally had no forces to quell the rebellion by the time he was ousted. He was even lousier a dictator then he was a president. And speaking about 'no more money to make' - all the new regional governors are oligarchs. And several of them have their own armies.
You can't move these complexes for long distances with armed missile launchers, and moving a rocket into an armed position takes about 15 minutes (in reality at least 30-40 minutes). Also, 5 minutes assumes that both command and launcher vehicle are linked.
Well, only 1994 election counts. 2004 election resulted in a rebellion (though peaceful). 2010 election was falsified - from your own words, so it also doesn't count (you can't have it both ways).
So yeah, Ukraine's democracy record is definitely not good. Mind you, Russian track record is even worse.
Not trying to defend Yanukovich here, he was a dumbass and all, and a very lousy at that. All I'm arguing is that I do not understand why he fled on 22nd of Feb or so. "Berkut" police squad was still supporting him, they were still armed to the teeth; some military bases were looted but that's just a few versus the rest. I am all for his "departure", just don't understand why it happened when it happened; the only plausible explanations I can relate to are a) money gone and b) direct request from his managing director from Kreml
So, they had plenty of time, they were in position, they shot down 2 large planes in the same area in 48 hours leading to the events. It all sort of checks out?
No, my point is that Buk is not a good weapon for rebel forces. It's far too large, difficult to disguise and easy to spot. It's also very vulnerable - it has no armor to speak of and can be damaged by light weapons.
It is possible that rebels managed to cobble together a working Buk, but it's unlikely. Transporting it from Russia is also not really feasible (see above about its size and difficulty to disguise).
Did I say 2010 elections were falsified? I mentioned I was an observer during 2004 elections, and I saw numerous falsifications during 1st and 2nd votes, but very few during the re-doing of the 2nd vote.
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.
It's pretty simple - he really had no choice. Berkut's support is nice and all, but there were probably about only 100-200 policemen that he still controlled. And even Berkut's loyalty was questionable - as far as I remember Ternopil's and Lviv's Berkut deserted him. And then there were sniper attacks which caused EVERYONE to turn away from Yanukovich.
Again, I supported Maidan (I stood there and donated money) but I absolutely hate nationalist scum that rose to power as the result of it.
Yes, BUK is large, slow, heavy, easy to spot. And guess what? There are numerous photos and videos of this BUK spotted in the area on the day of the tragedy.
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/07/17/7032237/
https://www.facebook.com/dmitr...
https://twitter.com/Dbnmjr/sta...
Russia supported terrorists with tanks, armored vehicles, ammunition, grenades etc since early April. It has been confirmed by numerous sources - by locals, UA military, by terrorists themselves. What makes it unlikely for them to smuggle in a few BUK-s and a few specialists as well? Given that, after all, the major issue terrorists had do deal with was UA air forces?
Sorry, I don't believe a word from Tymchuk without a corroborating video evidence (nothing personal, they were caught lying for too many times).
This picture appeared on Jun 30, so it's not new. BTW, this is a launcher vehicle, it also needs a command vehicle to operate.
"Nationalist scum that rose to power as the result of it" - sorry but who's acting nationalistic? Are there any prosecutions based on language, ethnicity, nationality?
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...
Just ask the Right Sector. And no, rebels are not nationalistic - they want Russian as the SECOND state language. Not as the only one.
It's actually quite simple - if somebody declares that Ukraine is for Ukrainians and everyone else lives there on sufferance, then they are nationalistic scum. If somebody tells that Russia (or DNR/LNR) is for Russians and everyone should just suck it up and learn Russian - they are nationalistic scum (and yes, Russia has plenty of them).
Funny that you say "deliberate strategy" and "war crimes" did you miss the story today about the Hamas spokesman saying that civilians should be doing their utmost to be human shields? Hello, that's a war crime. Shooting rockets at civilians, war crime. Targeting schools, and playgrounds in Sderot...well that's a war crime too. Building rockets inside civilian structures, war crime. Launching them from civilian buildings, war crime. Launching them from hospitals, and religious buildings, war crime.
If Israel was really about "collective punishment" they would have shut off power to gaza along with the water. They would also refuse to allow any of them to transit into Israel to work. They would also reduce food stuffs to the materials for basic nutrition. But they're not doing that either. Let us not forget that technically since they're an "elected government" and they're firing rockets. That is a full on declaration of war, Israel could with due-prejudice level every building that they even suspect that's involved. And fully occupy the area, but funny they're not doing that either.
The UN is as close to the most anti-jewish organization with a "humane" face to exist, and that's because of the OIC. But hey, while you're going on about that gag order. The people who killed the Palestinian(actually arab that lived in Israel) have already been arrested, and it's before the courts as we speak. Where's the palestinian government looking for the ones who killed the Jewish kids. And while we're at it, why was it at the first opportunity they started launching even more rockets. Nearly 1k in under 9 days.
Om, nomnomnom...
I'm yet to see Tymchuk lie on anything. He's very cautious on everything he reports, and prefers not to disclose anything which has not been confirmed. If you have any evidence of him lying, please share.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAxpT5AikhQ -- a video from yesterday, you can clearly see two vehicles traveling, one of them is allegedly the main BUK vehicle.
Why would terrorists be in possession of a BUK system without a command vehicle? Would you say that Russian military was stupid enough to give them a gun with no bullets? (Admittedly, that is exactly what USSR did a few times during 2nd world war).
Once again, 2 military support planes were shot down in the same area in 48 hours leading to this tragedy. These planes were flying above 4km mark, which narrows things down to BUK and C300(?). So the facts are that there is a usable AA battery in the area - area controlled by pro-Russian terrorists.
Yours is the old "Let's blame the victim" tactic, which is despicable.
Oh come on, examples of Tymchuk lies: http://zik.ua/ru/news/2014/05/... or when he was saying that Russian military was spotted in Ukraine (not in Crimea). Or when he denied army's shelling of cities. He's not credible.
This video is a little bit better, but needs proper corroboration. And both military planes were likely not that high, they were trying to attack rebels and that requires them to be lower than 3km (which is reacheable by MANPADs).
As for, C300 - it's simply not possible. Sorry. They need to be tied into a national anti-air grid or at least connected with a couple of radars.
Okey so I watched this video. I can see happy faces of people liberated from terrorists who held them hostage for almost 3 months. I can see people going for humanitarian aids - food mostly. I see sad faces of people who lost property, who will now have to live in a rubble for a while. I heard one accusation of UA army shelling one building, with no actual proof.
Everything I said in my previous post still checks out and you still have all your work ahead of you explaining my "ignorance"
Okey, here goes "Right sector", again. Who, out of UA's present government, is coming from the "Right sector"?
"Right sector"'s leader leader got <1% of votes during Presidential election in May.
Most of the people in this mystical organization are coming from Russian-speaking regions. Please inform us on the alleged crimes this organization committed since we first heard of it in January.
Apparently you are claiming that UA government said something along the lines of "Ukraine is for Ukrainians only". Please provide a proof of that. I haven't seen or heard anything like this, so please enlighten me.
Your link to zik.ua is not a link to an official Tymchuk's info channel. There were numerous occasions where people would post some b.s. as if Tymchuk was the source. So let's stick to the sources and omit any intermediates.
The 2 planes which were shot down were AN-26 - support vehicles carrying food, etc. They were not attacking anybody, they were flying above 4km hight. Who am I not to trust BBC? http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
So it's not C300, as you say. Must be BUK then?
I don't mind debating this with you here -- although I must admit to having taken us rather off topic -- but first we'll have to get one thing out of the way.
Do you accept that it is conceivable -- for reasons other than being "anti-jewish" -- to be critical of Israel's occupation of West Bank or their stranglehold on Gaza, and their treatment of the Palestinians in both the occupied territories and Israel proper?
Or are you of the opinion that any criticism of Israel is, somehow by definition, anti-semitic? (Disregarding, for a moment, the fact that Palestinians are Semites as well).
Because if that's the case, I don't see the point. And frankly I am not going to bother spending any effort toward convincing you I am not an anti-semite.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Where exactly did I blame the victims? Are traffic controllers or airline bosses victims? The passangers had no choice as they did not even know what danger looms on the route. It was captain duty to get informed, traffic controllers duty to divert and airlines management to give advice and tell crews to avoid dangerous areas. This has not been done and people with guns made terrible decision with terrible consequences. In which part is this view blaming the victims?
4km is within the range of MANPADs, Igla can just reach this altitude.
Pretty sure they didn't state that the UN is complicit. Let's check again, nope they didn't. They did however state it was a UN school, and this of course isn't the first time. You do realize that in doing so, hamas has committed a serious war crime correct? Of course the silence on this is deafening.
Om, nomnomnom...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-portable_air-defense_systems -- "aircraft flying at 6,100 metres (20,000 ft) (3.8 miles) or higher are relatively safe". AN-26 was flying at 6.5km, Malaysian Air - at 10km.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9K38_Igla -- "Flight ceiling 3.5 km (11,000 ft)"
Right Sector is a splinter of Svoboda party. And Svoboda have 8 cabinet positions right now: ministry of defense, prosecutor-general, lots of SNBO members, etc. And while Jarosh got 1%, Lyashko got 12.5% and Tyahnybok got another 2%.
And why should we wait for the crimes? Jarosh clearly states that Ukraine is for Ukrainians. Here's his direct quote: http://lenta.ru/articles/2014/... - "Russian speaking citizens should leave Ukraine, if they don't like it here"
Sorry, but that is nationalism that should result in immediate expulsion from politics in any self-respecting state. No arguments. No questions.
Is there even a reason why Russian-leaning regions should remain in Ukraine? Clearly, Ukrainians disdain 'vatniks' and 'Colorado bugs' from the East. And East also thinks that all of the Western Ukraine are fascist swine.
Right, and I was told I couldn't configure a Nortel Meridian PABX without special training or the manual, but with a bit of careful trial and error and scraping together scraps of knowledge from here and there I slowly figured out how.
What makes you think there isn't a separatist army defector who was half way through his training and hadn't done the identification aspect yet?
Your talking complete nonsense to pretend the Buk is a magical all or nothing system - you can either perfectly identify an aircraft and fire or you can't use it at all. No such system exists, any system can have an operator with only partial knowledge. Even if the system is smart enough (I don't think it is, it's a 70s - 80s era system) to automatically tell you based on the radar signature what it is that still doesn't preclude the possibility of misidentification - the launcher is older than the aircraft it shot down for starters.
Let's be honest, you're speculating, you're basing the idea that you can either not use one of these at all, or perfectly identify a target on nothing more than your will to for whatever reason preclude the possibility that rebels shot this plane down even though all the evidence (including comments from rebels themselves) point to exactly that.
Hindsight is 20/20. You're still blaming the victims.
The only ones to blame here are the guys who pulled the trigger. No one else. Yours is the same despicable argumentation method which would blame a catholic if he was murdered by protestants in Ireland because he used the "wrong" street.
Igla can reach a little bit higher, especially considering the ground elevation. At the end of its trajectory it's moving at supersonic speed, so even small variations in starting conditions result in a wildly varying range. The hard limit is self-destruction timer linked to exhaustion of its internal gas generator charge or to boil-off of liquid nitrogen in optical tracking sensors.
It's also possible to get additional 100-200 meters of elevation if it's shot towards the approaching plane (it's tricky to get a lock in such conditions, but possible). And lastly, the rocket itself detonates within 40 meters from the plane to maximize the damage, so it's possible to get a little more altitude from that.
Hitting a target at 5km requires specialized MANPADs (like Grom missiles), I don't know if Ukrainian army had them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriy_Heletey -- current minster of defense. Has nothing to do with the "Right sector". Please advise on your sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Sector -- "Right sector" has nothing to do with "Svoboda".
Who are these 8 members of "Svoboda" who hold positions in the government? Please be specific.
I am still to hear of any atrocities done by Ukrainian government related to nationalism or fascism. Please advise.
I am living in Odessa - a "russian-learning region", as you call them. Vast majority of my friends and colleagues, especially the ones who are ethnic russians, all for staying as a part of Ukraine.
During past 9 months, 50 statues of Lenin were destroyed in Ukraine. At the same time, 0 statues of Pushkin were destroyed. This means that there's no ethnic/cultural Russian-Ukrainian war going on (contrary to what Kremlin's propaganda is saying). What we have here is a war against sovietism - an old-style, autocratic/despotic governing system still maintained by Putin in Russia.
You REALLY can't learn how to use Buk without training. It IS an all-or-nothing system with lots of moving parts that require manual control to set up properly. It's an old weapon with little automatics and primitive computer systems and if you do something incorrectly, you can either break your system completely or in the worst case destroy yourself. There's no incremental training.
It's certainly not magical, just too complicated. Imagine trying to take off a Boieng 747 with no training. It's similar.
And no, misidentifying the target is certainly possible. I'd even say that it's the probable cause.
So.. I am not to trust Wikipedia article which explicitly states max 3.5km height, but to take your word on this? Why should I?
Also, regardless of all of that, the facts are - a plane was shot down while flying over a terrorist-controlled zone. No UA military aircraft were in the air at the time. What is more likely - a special ops by UA military to make terrorists "look bad", or an inexperienced terrorist shooting down civil air carrier by mistake? What's worse, claiming "another AN-26 shot down" minutes before "the realization"?
What we have here is a war against sovietism - an old-style, autocratic/despotic governing system still maintained by Putin in Russia.
Congratulations. You've won. Now you have a good old feudal society with local lords having absolute power. Just look at who are governors right now - it's a total perversion of what Maidan stood for. And there's now censorship on TV and in press (certain foreign TV channels are banned), the Parliament passed draconian anti-demonstration laws, there's a talk of purges (sorry, 'lustrations') and so on.
Do you think that the rocket immediately stops at 3.5km? Without any effects of terrain, speed of the target, firing trajectory and so on?
3.5km is a guaranteed height - the rocket can reach it in any situation, even when chasing a target. In better conditions it can fly higher, 4km is within range. 5 km is definitely outside, though.
And as for probability - both are likely. Ukrainian army is not playing nice (up to the level of war crimes) and is in a tight spot right now.
Odessa is 90% Russian-speaking, has 30% ethnic Russian population. Along with 7 other regions, it was claimed as a part "Novorossia" by Putin himself, just a few months back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... -- look for "April 17, 2014". It didn't work out anywhere except for two halves of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which are presently occupied by Russian-supported, Russian-paid terrorists. Roughly 10,000 of them, in a region with ~2m population. Nobody outside of Putin's propaganda space supports any of this.
Are you defining "Russian-leaning" as "the ones controlled by terrorists"? I'm asking because a few years back, it was defined by Putin as "territories where Russian ethnic people are living".
Just one statue of Pushkin was defaced, in a mainly Russian-speaking region; it was not demolished.
The only foreign tv channels which are banned are russian propaganda ones. Censorship, an artifact of Yanukovich era, is now largely gone.
Perversion of "Maidan ideals"? This is typical rhetoric which pro-Russian bots started to employ some time back. Maidan was against Yanukovich, and he's gone now. Maidan was for the united country, and we are fighting for it. Maidan was never "against oligarchs" such as Kolomoyskiy. If you insist on that, please argument your claim.
Feudal society? Come on, dude.. we just elected a new President, in a landslide election, clear and cut, per strictest Democratic standards available. At this point, if anything, we are a developing Democracy.
What I think is that the rocket is unable to reach anything beyond 3.5km and hit a target. And yes, at some point it literally stops going up and starts going down. Believe it or not -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
Both planes were flying well above your claimed limit of 5km. Is there a point in arguing this any further?
Please advise on "Ukrainian army is not playing nice". I would love to read some articles on this.
So there's censorship of inconvenient information. Other than that - complete democracy! That's straight out of Orwell, you know.
Maidan fought for two things: EU association and after the initial crackdown for the Yanukovich ouster. There was no rhetoric about national unity or anything. Nazi scum rose to the top only by the end of it. Also, Maidan was against oligarchs and corrupt politicians.
And about this election? Sorry, an election where about 15% of the country couldn't vote is not democratic in any way or form. And you might notice conspicuous absence of praise from foreign election observers - there were tons of violations. Poroshenko would have probably still won without these violations, though may be not without a runoff election.
This is a common pattern. Thugs that 'we' support can go enjoy a rout of ethnic cleansing and nobody does anything against it, nobody wants to remember. You can ask Serbs from Krajina - but they were guilty right? Maybe that is better in some bigger picture. I hope that it is because all these senseless killing is in one way or the other supported by us in the West even if we have no say in those matters.
The limiting factor is the _time_ of flight. Liquid nitrogen in the seeker head boils off after 14 seconds, that causes the rocket to lose target lock and triggers a self-destruct.
Please advise on "Ukrainian army is not playing nice". I would love to read some articles on this.
Have you seen prisoners of war from DNR? Guess so. Do you know why? Ukrainian military simply shoots all suspects, there are multiple confirmations of that. They even admit it, as if it's good thing: http://korrespondent.net/ukrai... (see around the phrase 'put against the wall').
And then, of course, shelling of cities and the infamous bombing of Luhansk.
I can hardly call russian propaganda stuff "information". I watch plenty of their footage over e.g. youtube, and mind you, the stuff they're smoking must be fantastic. We even have a website for some of that, with disclosure - http://www.stopfake.org/en/new...
So.. Yanukovich is gone, EU association is halfway done. Now, let's get back to the "nazi scum" you keep referring to. Who are they? Are they in government? What are the actions they performed which can be classified as fascistic? This is perhaps 3rd time I'm asking for this info from you?
There was plenty of rhetoric about united country, it still goes on. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... -- I assume you are Russian-speaking. For others, they are chanting "one, single, united Ukraine". The video is from May, so it's fairly recent.
A lot of people from Donbass region participated, and Poroshenko had 33% (Luhansk) and 36% (Donetsk) support - http://www.cvk.gov.ua/pls/vp20...
There was universal support and praise coming from everywhere except for Russia http://www.kyivpost.com/conten...
Do you have any links to support your claim of violations?
Actions: cancellation of the Law about the languages. Media censorship. Lots of nazi scum in SNBO. President openly supporting OUN-UPA. Enough?
And since we're on a topic of conspiracies: http://fox-talleyrand.livejour... - so the SBU know about the downed plane BEFORE it was downed. Whoops.
Okey so wikipedia people list 3.5km maximum height for this particular piece of equipment. Why do you keep on arguing that it may or may not go as high as 5km? And why am I to trust you rather than wikipedia?
I read your link to korrespondent.net. It does not support your "Ukrainian military simply shoots all suspects" claim at all. In one spot, it says that a particular sub-division of the army is very harsh towards terrorists on block-posts. It does not prove your claim of "shelling of cities". An "infamous bombing of Luhansk" was a one-time explosion in the center of terrorists operation, and it's still not clear was it UA air strike or a misguided AA missile fired from the park nearby. And that's it? All we have thus far is speculations? I'm not saying UA army is not to blame, but if I'm to blame anybody, I need to know things for a fact. Speculations are not enough.
If it'd had a layover in Moscow the flight would never have been anywhere near the Ukraine.
Maybe
A Parliament (the 2012 Parliament, the one we got during Yanukovich times) voted to end this "Law about the languages". but then-President vetoed, so this law is still in action. Needless to say, it was originally voted in ca 2012, by pro-Yanukovich people and was neither usable nor made any difference whatsoever. It was basically a charade to make (some) people believe Yanukovich cared for what he ran on - "Russian as a 2nd language", etc.
Media censorship? Really? Please provide more information on this. I, for one, see much less censorship these days, versus good old Yanukovich times.
Nazi scum in SNBO? Who exactly? What are their actions? What are their views?
OUN-UPA were freedom fighters during first half of 20th century, in western Ukraine. This organization has been largely dead since 1960-es. Does verbal support for this organization make President Poroshenko a nazi scum?
And on your last "SBU" bit.. so a "proof" consists of downloading an mp4 video from some 3rd-party website and checking dates in it. And this is somehow authentic?
So shelling of cities is all ok? A nice position. The article in Korrespondent says that Right Sector militia simply shoots all suspected rebels. There are multiple corroborations from rebel sources, I just tried to find one from a pro-nazi resource.
I am yet to see any proofs of "shelling of cities". I keep on asking you of any proof, and keep on failing to get any.
The Korrespondent article doesn't even mention "Right sector". Search for it - you will find these words in comment section only. It does mention another military organization created based on entirely different people, but it does not say that they "shoot all suspected rebels"
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.
As for media censorship - what pro-Russian channels are there? Lots of anti-Yanukovich channels were on the air during Yanukovich's reign.
About SNBO. Right now it contains: Parubij, Jarosh and others.
And on your last "SBU" bit.. so a "proof" consists of downloading an mp4 video from some 3rd-party website and checking dates in it. And this is somehow authentic?
As authentic as SBU's claims that all prisons in Kiev are overflowing with GRU agents. Or that Luhansk explosion was caused by an incorrect operation of an air conditioner.
BTW, another piece of trivia. It's impossible to shoot an Igla missile at an air conditioner - it simply won't lock and fire. Or rather the gunpowder charge in the launcher will push the rocket out of the barrel and then it'll flop to the ground right at your feet.
Look, I can simply restate the same thing you just said, reverse the roles and change "happy" to "sad", and have roughly the same argumentation to support my point of view.
These people are confused, still shocked, they are in despair as their homes are partially ruined. But when it comes to liberation, they are all happy and not looking to go back under terrorist control.
This new law is closely tied to new constitution, which is coming pretty soon. And as it happens, we have far worse issues at hand - a war with Russia, for instance. The idea is that the old, still active language law, will suffice, for now. It was good for 2 years, it was so desperately cried for that the President had to veto it's cancellation. Can you guys live with that until the situation with terrorists is resolved? Priorities..
Pro-Russian channels were violating the law (mind you, the one which was in place way before Maidan). They are now largely gone, which is a great thing. The rest of the world is free to broadcast anything they like. Freedom of speech is not a freedom to lie, you know..
On your "authenticity" thing - have you actually visited Kyiv prisons? On Luhansk - what about this video of the alleged air strike? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
On your "trivia" thing - I truly do not understand why and how so many pro-Russian people suddenly became so well versed in technicalities of war toys. You guys are also doing so well when it comes to war criminalistics, economics, international trade, gas prices, etc..
So in Ukraine it's against the law to air information that you happen not to like? And what about the law which forbids armed uprisings and attempts at overthrowing the government (ironic, I know)?
On your "trivia" thing - I truly do not understand why and how so many pro-Russian people suddenly became so well versed in technicalities of war toys.
I'm a reserve officer with a military specialty in anti-air defense. I think I even have a comment on Slashdot about it. And the video looks exactly like a strike with NURSes.
Sorry, I completely fail to understand your point on Gubarev.
On the information thing - just go and read the law. I doubt you will find any country in the world which allows hate propaganda aired.
On the "irony" thing - per Ukrainian constitution, the law above all, the people is the sole and main source of power. It is unthinkable to let 45 million of people to be ruled by somebody who's openly hated by vast majority of the population. Are you going to defend this based on law?
>I'm a reserve officer with a military specialty in anti-air defense
Yeah, as of today, I spoke to 2 military defense dudes - you on slashdot, another on youtube. At the same time, I had an interesting conversation with a world-class economist, a bunch of historians, several very important people from natural gas industry. Internet is a truly amazing place to be.
FYI, Iranians are not the biggest sponsors of "Islamic terrorists." That would be Saudi Arabia (and per some friends who are in military intel, UAE is up there too). Remember, sectarian divisions are very real in the extremist community. Iranians are predominantly Shia, whereas Jihadi terrorists are predominantly Sunni. That's not to say that there's not some mixing - which there most certainly is - but by no means are they a majority. The reality is actually the opposite of what you'd expect, considering Shi'ites have a big focus on martyrdom because of the the death of Hussein Ali. Otherwise, I agree with the rest of what you have to say. Ciao!
But people have landed Boeing 747s with no training.
Anyhow, your comments are irrelevant now, as we have evidence from a professional organisation that actually knows their stuff and has explained why you are wrong. They make it clear that whilst you need training to run this thing, you don't necessarily need to know what your firing it, specifically:
"However, a Buk launcher can also operate in stand-alone mode. Its built-in radar is normally used to track the target being engaged, but can be operated in a target-detection mode, allowing it to autonomously engage targets that were present in the radar's forward field of view."
http://www.janes.com/article/4...
Looks like all that nonsense about you couldn't fire one of these things without knowing what your tiring at really is bollocks propaganda, if it can be set to fire autonomously then someone may not have even known it was about to fire, let alone what it was firing at if they set it in that mode not realising civilian airliners were still flying overhead.
All it would take is one defector, or potentially one trained captured soldier along with the launcher to set it in this mode, possibly not even that, possibly just a phone call to Moscow to ask "How do we use this thing?" is all it took.
Either way, doing this with or without knowing what was being launched at is clearly well within the capability of the Russian operatives fighting in Ukraine.
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.
So are you assuming the "separatists" are pro-Russian Ukrainians who somehow got their hands on a missile, or are you assuming the separatists are Russian military?
Even then, for both cases, you have to question how much training such soldiers received. Is #1, where some dumbasses with a missile shot down a convenient target, so much of a stretch? Also, why can't #1 and #3 be true?
I think so, yes. We didn't call guys like Pinochet terrorists, or other similar oppressive dictatorships, even though they do kill and torture their political opponents They might use terrorists (like e.g. death squads), but by themselves that's not what they are.
You don't need to keep searching for a mildly more correct word, it's already there - "separatist".
A problem with the word "separatist" implies that these people are local Ukrainians, which a lot of them aren't. There are thousands of criminals, ex-military, current military personnel, mercenaries from all over Russia. One of their major leaders - Girkin - is ex-Russian military. So I can't consider or call them "separatists".
In addition to that.. if something looks like a terrorists (fully armed, in military clothing, etc), acts like a terrorists (killing civilians, attacking and killing army men and police, kidnapping, torture, shelling civilian buildings, bank robbery), then it must be terrorists.
The other option is that they did indeed have the crew (maybe defectors, but more likely volunteers or mercs from Russia who used this system in the past), but they didn't have the proper radar station so the autonomous mode is all they had, and is what they used. I'd expect that this radar is much more limited in its target identification capabilities if its primary use is to track the target that's already designated. If so, they could be eyeballing the targets to pick them, and then feeding them to the radar. This would explain how they ended up targeting the jet - at this height, its silhouette would look a lot like An-26 flying at the height that's normal for it.
I'm intrigued to know if it was even in visual range, but I guess we need the launch location and a determination of exactly where it was hit for that.
Presumably it's even possible that it was simply cloudy and there wasn't even a visual indicator so they just guessed and went for it.
Interesting. One learns every day! Thanks.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Hey, do you happen to have any info on that Russian NOTAM? I can't seem to find it anywhere, and I have no idea what the russian equivalent of "NOTAM" is... googling NOTAM just brings up the FAA warnings.
He does not have it, because it has been misplaced. If I misplaced my keys, then I would not have them.
That's true of keys, but misplacing optimism is placing it in a faulty idea rather than not having it altogether.
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.
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?...
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
FSB is new KGB. KGB was not nice people. FSB recruits bratva (Mafia to us) to do their dirty work.
Murphy was an optimist
I'd mod this up to 10,000 if /. would let me.
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
Well, you really try to fail. You can't have it both ways.
If you're saying that people's will, not Constitution is above all, then certainly the will of hundreds of thousands of people in Ukrainian East should be honored? Right? After all, tens of thousands of people on Maidan were enough to oust Yanukovich.
If you insist on following laws, then all those in the government should be jailed for anti-constitutional revolution.
Especially since there were apparently one hundred AIDS specialists on the plane, which could be quite a blow to medical research...
Considering the actions of the UN, when it's Israel vs oh say...Somalia, or Zimbabwe no. If there was an equal standing on commendation I'd agree, but greater issues happen and there's nary a peep on them. In fact there's been several cases in the UN itself where the general assembly has supported those issues while on the same day condemning Israel. Again, if they were occupying you might have a point. Remember those wars? Right. And where's the commendation of Egypt with regards to Gaza? You might remember that Egypt is doing the same thing, and is assisting Israel to enforce the blockade.
So with that I'm of the opinion that there's a clear bias. As it rolls along, the only one who's said anything about you being a anti-semite or not is you, especially since you brought it up.
Om, nomnomnom...
There were blockade runners, which I suppose can be considered civilian, but not in any great number.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
After you strip away all the layers of false flags here you may find a mirror. Grow up a bit.
My comment was directed at the AC's phrasing:
"The UN got caught [theguardian.com] hiding Hamas missiles in one of the Gaza 'schools' they operate."
As to Hamas committing war crimes and terrorism, that's a dog bites man story, what's your point?
Hmm yeah.. if this was reliable information, we'd have heard more by now.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Well, you did say you think the UN are "anti-Jewish" in the context of Israel. And I have had some discussions which turned out to be pointless and frustrating because some people pretend they can not distinguish between criticism of Israel and hatred of Jews.
Which is regrettably still not completely gone, as is racism generally, but I don't think it is the reason why the UN condemns some Israeli actions and policies. Well, the general assembly. There hasn't been a meaningful security council resolution for ages because the US veto everything. Check out the UN voting records, it is rather shocking how many resolutions have overwhelming majorities and a single US veto.
In the 80s, there were various resolutions against South Africa during their Apartheid years. Would you say this is a sign of "anti-white" bias on the part of the UN? Of course not, it is a just the majority opinion of the member states.
I'm not sure what you mean when you write "if they were occupying". They ARE an occupying force, I don't think that is controversial. Some argue that this occupation is justified, or that this is somehow a special kind of occupation that exempts Israel from the Geneva rules -- in particular the one that says you can't move your own population into occupied territories, or provide military and economic support to individuals who move in of their own accord. I, and the vast majority of the "international community" disagree.
I'm going to assume you mean "condemnation" rather than "commendation". There is no shortage of condemnation of Egypt. Not just over their handling of the Palestinian issue, but you might remember there was a military coup that ousted the democratically elected government they had after the revolution. I despise the Muslim Brotherhood, but they did win fair elections.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
As somebody claiming knowledge (perhaps professional?) in the field of psychiatry, can you please comment on the current state of the general Russian population? In the past year or so, as far as pretty much everybody in the world knows besides Russians, Russians suffered a rather unique and intense brain-washing attack coming from their own media. Is there going to be a permanent damage? How much time it may take for the population to calm down, get rid of spontaneous aggression towards e.g. Ukrainians, Europeans, Americans?
It is a very interesting question to me personally since my relatives from russian far east had suffered greatly. Apparently, while being 11,000 km away from Ukraine, they behave as if they understand and know more on current events in my country than me - somebody who's living here. Their judgment is very harsh, aggressive and contradicts basic facts. This long-distance know-it-all attitude is very common and perhaps you could identify it's clinical picture, and perhaps indulge in a self-diagnose?
Also, please advise us on a long-distance therapeutic methods you seem to employ when it comes to psychiatric evaluations such as the one you were so keen to perform on yours truly.
What is the "will of hundreds of thousands of people in Ukrainian East", exactly? We heard demands of wider autonomy, making Russian an official language. These things are going to be granted with the new constitution and reforms, and it has been promised by a new-elect President Poroshenko on numerous occasions. It is also, as it happens, something plenty of people are waiting for here, in Odessa. Waiting peacefully, no guns, no killings, no kidnappings, bank robberies, rape, organ trade, etc.
Let's continue with a proof by picture.
Typical Maidan protesters: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
Typical "eastern Ukraine protesters": http://i0.wp.com/cyprus-mail.c...
Are you going to argue that the latter do not, in fact, represent a covert intrusion of armed special forces, criminals, ex-military from a nice peaceful country to the East? Which is not known for annexing another part of Ukraine just recently, waging war in Georgia in 2008, destroying most parts of it's own Chechnya region in two wars 10 years ago?
Truly failing is one thing, being perceived as fallen by a biased is quite another, isn't it?
The most interesting part of this discussion is the apparent correlation between number of digits in UIDs and related political opinions. Just saying.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
There was a large fleet of German civilian ships in the Atlantic between 1941 and 1945, although they were all submarines.
They did have torpedoes on board, but they were civilian torpedoes. For defense.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Can we nuke your friends and family first. After all, they probably care as much about the Ukraine-Russia conflict as my friends and family in Eastern Ukraine do. So it seems only fair that they die first.
Sounds so much better than your plan, I think.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
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.
Did GCHQ run out of ability to create new sock puppet accounts on slashdot or something?
Okey let's take a closer look at the "sealed propaganda construct" you're claiming I'm living in. My information sources are:
first-hand experience
popular Ukrainian TV channels
large Ukrainian online publications
twitter, facebook posts made by on-site eyewitnesses - everybody these days has a phone with a camera and an access to internet. This is, after all, a country where you can get 100mbit unlimited for roughly 13 USD/month, in any city. Cellular data exchange is also universally accessible.
I personally just came back from a 2-week trip all over the central and western Ukraine, visited 10 regions, stayed in 10 cities.
On-line publications by large Western news companies
On-line publications and videos by Russian news agencies
Now, there are two ways one can go around adding 1 and 1: either do the math yourself and get "2", or one can ask around for a consensus opinion. What if the consensus is "3"? I'd say there's a conspiracy going on (and as you, as a psychiatrist, know very well that it is a prerogative of relatively retarded people to believe in large-scale conspiracies). If most of what I get from my news sources is aligned, except for info coming from Russian channels, do I go for the conspiracy theory (claiming that all my news sources are somehow not independent), or for a simpler explanation that these news sources, except for Russian ones, are sort of trying to tell the "truth" ?
My dean at the University once said that once you hear word "obvious" in a conversation, do yourself a favor and question underlying logic. Please provide a time frame for the "people who were deathly afraid" in the video in question.
Let's have another Dr. Cal Lightman-style look at the emotions of civilians, now in the city of Donetsk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This is an old, insulin-dependent lady with a disabled relative, telling Gubarev (one of the main terrorists's leaders - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...) that they have no more support from the people of Donetsk, and asks him to literally leave the city with all his gunmen. His reply is - "we can't. we've got nowhere to go".
FYI - terrorist-controlled territories do not have Ukrainian TV; they have Russian TV instead. I highly doubt this lady and her friends have facebook or twitter accounts. They have to consult their own sensory organs such as eyesight and hearing in order to get information while being literally on-site. Do you think she's living in the same "information bubble" I allegedly live in?
my friends and family in Eastern Ukraine
Your friends and family shot a plane with my friends out of the sky and then looted their belongings and passports.
So Fuck you, Fuck Ukraine, Fuck the Russians.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
BTW, are you talking about killing Russians who live in Russia (including Vladivostok, 9000+km away), Ukranians who live in the Ukraine, Russians who live in the Ukraine, Ukranians who live in Russia, or all of the above? Or shall we just glaze the whole area with nuclear weapons with the same success there has been in Iraq and Afghanistan (and which the Russians had in Afghanistan and Chechnya)? Don't forget that the Russians do still have a large and capable stock of nuclear weapons too.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
People who live in the same area.
Well, I'd like to see the innocent ones evacuated. No need for more people who have nothing to do with the conflict to die. But those pro-Russian separatists and every single civilian supporter (how can you still support them after this?) can get a nice one way trip to hell as far as I am concerned. I'm sure the folks in western Ukraine agree with me. Seal off that self-imposed border, get your own people out and nuke the damned place. Let's spend our vacation money elsewhere then Crimea.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
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).
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.
The only fear I can see is in the eyes of the reporter when he recalls events of being held hostage by terrorists. The women at 11:20, barely 2 days since the end of war on their street, are recalling events of the past 4 weeks - and a look on their faces is just that - recalling events of the past 4 weeks. If you say they show fear, then you sort of have to admit it is directly related to surviving under terrorist rule. A women at 11:40 is upset because she does not understand how she's supposed to live in a half-destroyed house. There's also an older man cleaning broken glass out of a house. He's cautious of the camera people and does not say much. Then at 12:40 there's a 90yo woman making a tour of the remnants of her condo. There's, again, an uncertainty regarding how she's supposed to survive in these conditions, she's thankful for somebody who brought some bread, water and cleaned some of the rubble (for money). Happened *after* terrorists were gone. Where's fear? Do you have a specific offset in the stream, Minute:Second?
"Old man lashing out and instantly getting subdued at Ukrainians soldier" is something you misunderstood entirely. This old men demands for the water etc to be restored as soon as possible, and the soldier asks him to simply wait - they are still busy removing boobytraps, mines, searching for remaining terrorists. Where's the "threat"?
On the nazi thing - so you're basically claiming that a) I feel superior, b) nazis felt superior => I am a nazi. Do you really think logic works this way for the majority of people inhibiting this web site, let alone the planet?
Also, Slovyansk and other cities have been liberated for 2 weeks now. Surely nazi Ukraine army did gruesome things to the locals, and surely there must be evidence for that, available on internet for all to see as well. Can you please find some for us to see?
Do you or do you not realize that if over 5 independent news sources continually say the same thing, it can only be false if they've conspired to lie?
Donbass region is a home to some 4 million people. Sure they had perhaps 100,000 people supporting these terrorist organizations initially - sometime in April. Has it occurred to you that things changed? A video I just posted to you - right here - http://slashdot.org/comments.p... - is a nice illustration of my point.
Has it ever occurred to you that Russia has never, ever it it's history held a properly organized democratic vote where opposition won? Do you realize that this suggests that Russia is not in the business of Democracy (makes me wonder why I have to argue this)? Are you suggesting that, as someone claiming to understand applied mathematics and psychology, that for the first time in history, Russia organized it's first Democratic, completely free and representative referendums - in Crimea and Donbass?