KentVillan Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 45 minutes ago, Awol said: I think some folks see the evil hand of Uncle Sam in everything, like a reverse McCarthyism. According to Twitter, the US govt is simultaneously a gang of imbeciles and also a sophisticated Satan playing 4D chess. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villakram Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 1 hour ago, Awol said: I think that was the point of killing of Soleimani. But on a purely practical level, how? A team of guys tooling around Tehran with a stinger missile in the boot? A bit fantastical, don't you think? MEK are no longer a designated terrorist group. You know this or should. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisp65 Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 9 minutes ago, KentVillan said: According to Twitter, the US govt is simultaneously a gang of imbeciles and also a sophisticated Satan playing 4D chess. It’s really tricky deciding isn’t it, and the truth is probably somewhere around the middle, evil imbeciles trying to play chess with a set of rules for draughts. I mean, do we really after all these centuries not understand the ethnic and religious groups, or do we choose to be ignorant, or do we know and just want to perpetually **** up that part of the world? Not that many of us even know where that part of the world even is and what countries are next to each other. Or that those ‘countries’ are bollocks lines on maps drawn by the people that choose to be ignorant of the very area they are dividing up. Got to be all of the above I reckon. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awol Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 Just now, villakram said: MEK are no longer a designated terrorist group. You know this or should. So is that the new theory, the MEK shot down a plane half full of foreign nationals, over Tehran, for no reason? Am I being trolled?! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Popular Post KentVillan Posted January 9, 2020 Popular Post Share Posted January 9, 2020 2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said: It’s really tricky deciding isn’t it, and the truth is probably somewhere around the middle, evil imbeciles trying to play chess with a set of rules for draughts. I mean, do we really after all these centuries not understand the ethnic and religious groups, or do we choose to be ignorant, or do we know and just want to perpetually **** up that part of the world? Not that many of us even know where that part of the world even is and what countries are next to each other. Or that those ‘countries’ are bollocks lines on maps drawn by the people that choose to be ignorant of the very area they are dividing up. Got to be all of the above I reckon. The issue is that you don't win elections by saying insightful things about these conflicts. There is no incentive for a campaigning politician to genuinely familiarise themselves with these situations. And being charitable for a moment, it would take multiple lifetimes for one person to really get their heads around China, the Indian Subcontinent, the Middle East, South East Asia, Latin America, and all the other potential conflict zones that might spring up. So what politicians of all stripes tend to do is structure their thinking around general principles - whether it be Corbyn's belief in the international laws and institutions that sprung up post WWII, or Trump's belief in Mafia-esque "deals". They apply that same logic universally to whatever situations arise. But usually these principles are less universal than the politicians realise - because like everyone they have grown up in a particular culture. They don't realise that often your guiding principles are much less important than just having a handle on who the actors are and what their histories are. And this is why we try and fill our intelligence agencies and foreign services with people who have spent lifetimes getting to grips with the cultural idiosyncrasies of foreign countries. But when you try and feed all that expertise back into a decision making system driven by the very broad heuristics and preconceptions that politicians bring to the table, often all the nuance quite quickly gets abandoned or even subverted. I don't really know how you resolve this. It's not just Trump who's affected - it's a feature of international relations going back decades and all different kinds of regimes. During the War on Terror huge mistakes were made backing supposed "allies" against radical Islam who were themselves the most corrupt, radicalising forces in their nation's history (Musharraf in Pakistan and Najib in Malaysia are two good examples). I don't think this aspect of the War on Terror is properly understood, and we continue to make similar mistakes in the Middle East. I've no doubt there are people within Western foreign services and intelligence agencies who were aware of a lot of these risks, but simply weren't listened to because their analysis didn't fit the narrative. 5 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villakram Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 23 minutes ago, Awol said: So is that the new theory, the MEK shot down a plane half full of foreign nationals, over Tehran, for no reason? Am I being trolled?! No, it's just you claimed it to be fantastical, when there is a known active terror group at work there. THere's clearly lots of theories because no-one knows what actually happened just yet. The mundane and incompetent explanations remain in pole position. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OutByEaster? Posted January 9, 2020 Moderator Share Posted January 9, 2020 8 hours ago, Awol said: It didn't make it more than a few miles from Tehran airport. Struggling to see how the Americans managed that from Iraq, or why? I'm just going on the idea that a coincidental crash seems incredibly unlikely and the US has a history of enormous amounts of potent ordnance and very limited amounts of common sense. I'm just theorising and I know that scenario is unlikely - but I can't find any scenario that's likely - there's absolutely no reason for the Iranians to do it and I see them as less likely to have done it accidentally, the best I can come up with is that in a combat scenario the technical stuff the Americans use treats anything that's in the air that it doesn't recognise as hostile and shoots it down - in this case, a potential missile is launched and immediately countered. Again, I know that's still really unlikely - but the important bit is that everybody wants this to be an accident - the US, Iran and the Ukraine want it to be accident - and the rest of the world would be very happy with that as it means one less thing for the region to get conflict-y about. If it was an accident, then great, if it wasn't an accident, then I suspect that Boeing will get a quiet tap on the shoulder and be asked to leave it be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awol Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 6 hours ago, KentVillan said: The issue is that you don't win elections by saying insightful things about these conflicts. There is no incentive for a campaigning politician to genuinely familiarise themselves with these situations. And being charitable for a moment, it would take multiple lifetimes for one person to really get their heads around China, the Indian Subcontinent, the Middle East, South East Asia, Latin America, and all the other potential conflict zones that might spring up. So what politicians of all stripes tend to do is structure their thinking around general principles - whether it be Corbyn's belief in the international laws and institutions that sprung up post WWII, or Trump's belief in Mafia-esque "deals". They apply that same logic universally to whatever situations arise. But usually these principles are less universal than the politicians realise - because like everyone they have grown up in a particular culture. They don't realise that often your guiding principles are much less important than just having a handle on who the actors are and what their histories are. And this is why we try and fill our intelligence agencies and foreign services with people who have spent lifetimes getting to grips with the cultural idiosyncrasies of foreign countries. But when you try and feed all that expertise back into a decision making system driven by the very broad heuristics and preconceptions that politicians bring to the table, often all the nuance quite quickly gets abandoned or even subverted. I don't really know how you resolve this. It's not just Trump who's affected - it's a feature of international relations going back decades and all different kinds of regimes. During the War on Terror huge mistakes were made backing supposed "allies" against radical Islam who were themselves the most corrupt, radicalising forces in their nation's history (Musharraf in Pakistan and Najib in Malaysia are two good examples). I don't think this aspect of the War on Terror is properly understood, and we continue to make similar mistakes in the Middle East. I've no doubt there are people within Western foreign services and intelligence agencies who were aware of a lot of these risks, but simply weren't listened to because their analysis didn't fit the narrative. And today’s winner of the Internet is... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterms Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 Better bomb Kansas, just to be on the safe side. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 (edited) 17 hours ago, Awol said: It didn't make it more than a few miles from Tehran airport. Struggling to see how the Americans managed that from Iraq, or why? or indeed why they would take down a UIA plane ( assuming they have addressed the old Aegis recycling issue !! ) if anyone is likely to down a Ukrainian plane it would be Putin not the Americans , but we really are getting into Craig Murray levels of bonkersness with that sort of speculation Edited January 9, 2020 by tonyh29 replaced shoot down with take down 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sne Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 Was it even shot down thou? More likely to be a sabotage while it was sitting in the airport over night surely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awol Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 9 minutes ago, sne said: Was it even shot down thou? More likely to be a sabotage while it was sitting in the airport over night surely. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sne Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 2 minutes ago, Awol said: 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr_Pangloss Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 22 minutes ago, sne said: Was it even shot down thou? More likely to be a sabotage while it was sitting in the airport over night surely. I'm hardly an aviation expert but the plane was on fire either at take off or very shortly there after. So what could actually cause that? Genuine question. What certainly wouldn't be likely to cause it is a vanilla systems failure, e.g. autopilot switching off or the sort of thing that has blighted the 737 MAX. It also wouldn't be one of the common types of engine failures, such as a stall even a compressor stall wouldn't cause the plane to ignite like we can see in the footage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sne Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 (edited) 14 minutes ago, Dr_Pangloss said: I'm hardly an aviation expert but the plane was on fire either at take off or very shortly there after. So what could actually cause that? Genuine question. What certainly wouldn't be likely to cause it is a vanilla systems failure, e.g. autopilot switching off or the sort of thing that has blighted the 737 MAX. It also wouldn't be one of the common types of engine failures, such as a stall even a compressor stall wouldn't cause the plane to ignite like we can see in the footage. No idea either. Just going by what the expert quoted in the Swedish media he thought it was way to early to speculate about technical issues. He thought it was really odd that the Ukrainian authorities were so quick in claiming technical issues. That they later retracted. He said it was a very secure type of plane and this one was apparently only 3 years old and that the Iranian plane technicians have a very good reputation. He did mention that since the plane had been standing on the tarmac over night there was a risk the plane had been tampered with. I have zero leaning towards any specific cause what so ever. The timing is just so extreme thou. Edited January 9, 2020 by sne Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
villakram Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 Reuters are out this morning quoting anonymous sources from numerous independent (3US, Euro... UK?, Canada) intelligence agencies, and all say it was not shot down. Given the current state of affairs, and how quickly independent imaging of the US airbases was publicly released, I imagine fairly detailed data on the air-space around Tehran is available. Also, the black boxes have been recovered but that they were "damaged" in the crash and resulting fireball. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 If you want to read commercial airline pilots giving their own theories on what might have happened, there's a forum for that too: https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1438597 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 Nearby cctv footage gives an indication of the force of the impact Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bannedfromHandV Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 (edited) 17 hours ago, sne said: Oh absolutely. Israel, Saudi, China, Russia....... And all the old colonial countries, and before that... Probably easier to list the countries that do give a shit isn’t it? Edited January 9, 2020 by bannedfromHandV 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LakotaDakota Posted January 9, 2020 Share Posted January 9, 2020 (edited) 23 hours ago, Dr_Pangloss said: Looked on fire in the sky so definitely not more common technical fault such as an engine stall. Very unlikely a plane would take off on fire, strikes me as foul play,. Not like it has never happened before is it... Hell there have been multiple cases of boeing planes bursting into flames on/immediately after take off in the past few months. Flights leaving from LA in november, Dakar in October, Washington in September all had engines burst into flames shortly after take off & sure there are also others Edited January 9, 2020 by LakotaDakota Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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