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Russian Government Edits Wikipedia On Flight MH17
An anonymous reader writes A political battle has broken out on Wikipedia over an entry relating to the crash of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, with the Russian government reportedly removing sections which accuse it of providing 'terrorists' with missiles that were used to down the civilian airliner. A Twitter bot which monitors edits made to the online encyclopedia from Russian government IP addresses spotted that changes are being made to a page relating to the crash. All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) changed a Russian language version of a page listing civil aviation accidents to say that "The plane was shot down by Ukrainian soldiers." That edit replaced text – written just an hour earlier – which said MH17 had been shot down "by terrorists of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic with Buk system missiles, which the terrorists received from the Russian Federation."
of course, russian govt is the most knowledgeable - they shot down the damn plane.
on the other hand, the rest of the world knows quite a lot - photos and videos on the ground, showing buk system moving around, intercepted terrorist conversations that include receiving of the buk, moving it around, then scrambling to react when they find out just what they just shot down.
that also includes public bragging about downed ukrainian plane, only to hastily remove all those comments once they figured out that it's a civilian plane.
after that they publicly try other idiotic statements like claiming that all passengers were dead in amsterdam already (yeah, happens in that city every now and then, right ?), or trying to find "weapons" in the remains of the plane.
then more intercepted conversations where they are given the orders from the "higher ups, from moscow, you know what i mean" not to let anybody who's not "theirs" near the crash site and above all - find all "black" boxes and ship them to moscow.
there is no "anti red agenda". there's a fascistic, aggressive country that invaded and annexed part of a european country. and there are lots of paid commenters who try to whitewash the crazy actions of russian state. (although some might be genuinely crazy and/or uninformed and do it for free)
Rich
Poor shills are on their 3rd straight day without sleep, and over-time pay is reduced to only 6 extra potatoes due to sanctions. Remember to take a rest, comrades. Next week when the satellite and black box data come out you will be needed even more.
There's also question of motivation. Why would soldiers waste expensive missiles for some irrelevant passenger plane?
To shoot down Ukrainian military aircraft. They had already shot down a Ukrainian transport plane and a Ukrainian fighter within the previous week. They were on a roll.
Why would be there a plane over a warzone in the first place? That just doesn't make sense.
It was a major air route. There were over 50 civilian airliners over eastern Ukraine at the time MH-17 was shot down. And about 24 aircraft flew through the precise area MH-17 was hit, over the previous day. There was a Singapore Airlines jet close enough to MH-17 at the time for the pilots to see it explode.
Aircraft are currently flying over northern Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel...
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
The commander of the eastern Ukrainian militia is a Moscow native and "former" GRU (Russian military intelligence) officer with no ties to Ukraine prior to the war.
No-one disputes that. Not on either side, Ukraine or Russian. The only dispute is over that "former". The Ukrainian government says he's still an active duty officer taking direct orders. They even know the name of his immediate GRU commanding officer in Moscow. Russia claimed he "retired" a month before he entered Ukraine.
The "Prime Minister" of the break away territory is a Moscow native. He ran a right wing news service for several years, with the protection and support of the Russian government. He was widely believed to be FSB. He had no ties to Ukraine before the war. He was sent into Crimea as a political "consultant" on behalf of Moscow during crisis there, then "retired" and moved on to eastern Ukraine.
No-on disputes any of that. The only dispute is whether he's FSB and whether he's still working for the FSB.
It seems that it's only really the western media which persists in treating it like a spontaneous uprising by local (ethnic-Russian) Ukrainians.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
a) The only side shooting at planes are the pro-Russian militants because only the Ukrainian military has had planes in the sky to shoot at.
b) These missiles were supplied by the Russians. To shoot a plane down from 30000 feet in the sky requires a hell of a lot more than a bottle rocket.
There is nothing to dispute here. For Russia or the pro-Russian militia to argue otherwise is incredulously sad, pathetic and stupid. Shameful.
In this particular case, there was exactly one terrorist group who claimed they shot down AN-26, a military support plane. Only to find out 30 minutes later it was a Malaysian Air flight. They also claimed 2 planes in 48 hours leading to the incident. They posted numerous pictures of BUK AA system(s) in their possession, in 3 weeks leading to this incident.
Janes the defence intelligence organisation disagrees with you FWIW. They claim that IFF in the Buk systems simply asks if it's a friendly and if it doesn't reply with a friendly signature it assumes it's a foe.
I know you claim you've been trained in the system but I'd rather believe Janes given that their description makes much more sense. If what you said is true that surface to air missile systems can be disabled from firing at a target by simply claiming to be civilian in their IFF response then they'd be less than useless as every military jet would be flying around pretending to be civilian.
See here:
http://www.janes.com/article/4...
Quote in question:
"Although it has its own identification friend or foe system, this is only able to establish whether the target being tracked is a friendly aircraft. It is the electronic equivalent of a sentry calling out: "Who goes there?". If there is no reply, all you know is that it is not one of your own combat aircraft. It would not give you a warning that you were tracking an airliner."