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Russia Prepares For Internet War Over Malaysian Jet
An anonymous reader writes The investigation of a Malaysian passenger jet shot down over Ukrainian rebel held territory is heating up. U.S. and U.K. news organizations are studiously trying to spread the blame, Russian ITAR, which, just earlier today was celebrating the downing of a large aircraft by rebel missiles in Torez (Google cache) is reporting that the rebels do not have access to the missiles needed for such attacks. The rebel commander who earlier today reported the downing of the aircraft has also issued a correction to earlier reports that they had captured BUK air defense systems with Russian sources now stating that the rebels do not posses such air defenses. The Ukrainian president has been attempting to frame the incident as a "terrorist attack". President Obama made contact with Vladimir Putin and has been instead treating it as an accident, calling it a "terrible tragedy" and saying that the priority is investigating whether U.S. citizens were involved. With control of the black box and its own internet propaganda army Russia may be in a good position to win the propaganda war.
Why haven't all airplanes been upgraded so the black box data is streamed to satellites/ground stations? It's so dumb to have to search for a airplane to find the data, that should be the fallback plan. Hey FAA, you listening?
meanwhile overnight it's been reported by the telegraph.co.uk that a mobile launcher was seen headed back toward the russian border with two of it's four missiles missing, short video clip provided of one on the move at the website.
Counter propaganda is rife, backpedaling at the speed of light by the ukrainian "rebel" commander (who's actually Russian) and hordes of incoherent babblegaffers vehemently denying everything and making it even more painfully obvious what's plain for everyone to see.
Ukraine did not shoot down the Malaysian passenger jet, the rebels did, and boasted about it (then quickly removed the post).
Just watch what happens in this thread.
It will be very enlightening
Seeing a lot of pro-russian "psyops" on one local forum attached to a news outlet focused on economics, so much so that it's pretty obvious that it's organized. Massive amounts of downvotes on anything negative to the pro-russian side, and weak conspiracy theories written in broken english moderated up.
Not sure why they're wasting their time, but there you go. I guess the proud Cheka men have nothing better to do than troll forums.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
That kind of propaganda might help them inside Russia where Putin has almost complete control over the press. But outside? With all the incriminating stuff that's already turned up?
I really don't think that the other major players will be impressed by Russian propaganda. The Ukraine certainly won't. The US won't as well, due to their longstanding tradition of mistrusting Russia, in addition to having lost citizens in the crash. Neither will several states in the EU - the Netherlands won't be happy with an "accident" explanation, particularly in light of the fact that an anti-air missile cannot really be considered an accident.
Slavian Farmers Militia ("Seperatists") bored and trigger-happy and with easy access to Russian military hardware. To dumb to doulbe-check their targets or to dumb to care. Wether this is Ukranian seperatists or not is of no significance - there all just pawns in a Game. I think Putin has since this begun weighing the risks of supporting seperatists and making russia fell big again - whatever that is - and keeping a low(er) profile. This could shift sentiment considerably.
Either way, I don't trust the guy but I don't consider east-ukranian militia folks rational enough to be under any usefull control by russian. When push comes to shove, they'll do whatever they feel like doing, as long as they've got enough ammo and toys and enough dumbwits who support their cause - whatever that's supposed to be.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Hell, they were even able to enlist "Weird Al" Yankovic.
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If the rebels are ever confirmed to have shot down the plane all of Russia's denials fall apart like a house of cards. Caught red handed. Except now there's international blood on their hands instead of just Ukrainian. Unfortunately for Ukraine, nobody really cares about them except their neighbors. So on that note, you can be guaranteed they will stop at nothing to prove rebels were not at fault. I have no doubt there will be people that will be "silenced". The stakes are simply too damn high.
... the priority is investigating whether U.S. citizens were involved.
Seriously, is that really what matters now? What an arrogant *****. What really matters is who did it and why. What's the risk for other planes. If it were the rebels, how did they get their hands on such advanced weaponry. 298 people died. Who they were is something to find out by the airliner company. A president, and specially one from the USA, should really have other things to worry about.
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
Russia already has a history of, at the very least, being a prime suspect for taking down a plane. The only difference now is that the world is actually watching this show more carefully.
So does the US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
And Ukraine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
The only real lesson is that surface to air missiles are way to dangerous to be put into the hands of the military. Now think about putting them into the hands of rednecks and other idiots who fancy themselves rebels. In retrospect it is pretty obvious that this had to happen sooner or later.
"In war, the first casuality is truth".
Aeschylus (525 BC - 456 BC)
Res eo magis mutant quo manent.
Separatist have motive - they are trying to shoot Ukrainian military planes. They have means - they were showing BUK launchers themselves, Ukraine later said that they won't be able to operate them, but might have been wrong, especially given technical support from next country.
They had means and motive. And no clue this is rerouted civilian plane, because despite having enough capability to fire BUK (few people with neccessary skills), they weren't up to date on flightwatch... and decided to not ask on radio first.
So, in certain sense it is an accident. Same kind of accident as when sniper tries to kill person A, but person B moves in the way at last second. Sniper is still at fault, even if he had no motive to kill person B.
Oh come on now, how could anyone mistake this guy for being gay?
Seriously, though, some of his publicity stunts are almost Kim Jong-* level. While the "flying with geese to lead them home" one was funny, and the saving his camera crew from a savage tiger one was conveniently off camera, my favorite has to be the "finding ancient Greek pottery while diving in two meters of clear water on a popular beach" one. ;) Of course that one was so over the top even for him that they had to backtrack:
Again, though, let me stress - not gay! ;)
People said I was dumb, but I proved them.
From the summary:
WTF? Is this intended to somehow suggest that the USA and/or UK share some portion of blame?
The article linked in that part of the summary is a CNN article making the case that shoulder-fired missiles cannot reach 33,000 feet, so it must have been military gear. That's it... it even notes that both Russia and the Ukraine have such missiles.
This is news, and a news organization is reporting on it. Go figure. "trying to spread the blame"? "studiously", even! Really?
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
To whoever is responsible:
You make think that you're a big balled freedom fighting hero, but in fact you are the worst kind of coward. Instead of admitting what happened, and apologizing, and turning yourself in to the International Crimes Court, you're trying to put the blame on others.
You're a despicable coward. I hope you'll never be able to have good night's sleep for the rest of your stupid life.
This is not the sig you're looking for.
Russia: guns, oil, money and thousands of practicing hackers
US: very, very peezed bloggers and president "with a pen and a phone"
Unfortunately, my money here is on Putin...again.
As someone pointed out in the first thread of this tragedy, this is not the first time something like this has happened.
Obama may be being diplomatic so as to not call the kettle black so to speak. The US accidentally did the same to Iran years ago, except they were in Iran air space, the weapons were fired from a warship, by professional soldiers. Consequently rebels accidentally (and I have no doubt they did) shooting down an airliner, using stolen unfamiliar technology with little or no training by militia in the middle of a civil war seems rather less bad.
Also it dredges up the result which was all dead, and the USA not admitting any blame or fault, and instead writing a check for a few million to throw at the hundreds of victims families.
13, actually. But please, continue with your rant.
He's one cowboy away from a Brokeback Mountain.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon