MAS aircraft, code share with KLM
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Are you sure you donāt have that backwards? Malaysia Airlines cooperate with KLM, and you can buy tickets from pretty much anywhere in Europe to Kuala Lumpur, via Amsterdam, through KLM. But Iām pretty sure the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur is operated by Malaysia Airlines. Also, the logos on the wreckage clearly belong to Malaysia Airlines.
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Please donāt think that I am absolving Putin of blame. There is plenty of blame for that corrupt fascist authoritarian, Putin, even if he didnāt have the plane intentionally shot down. I donāt think that having a commercial airliner shot down was his intention. That said, I also find it rather doubtful that he accidently supplied Ukrainian rebels with an advance mobile SAM launcher. He wanted the rebels to use that SAM to destabilize Ukraine and maybe nom another piece of that country off.
Putin is a wretched, sociopathic, egomaniacal, fascist, authoritarian piece of shit, even if he didnāt order a random civilian 777 to be shot down with the equipment he provided those rebels. The world will be a better place when he is dead. The only person to arguably do more damage to a functioning Russian democracy free of corruption than Putin was perhaps Yeltsin, but at least Yeltsin can claim to be an incompetent drunk who failed Russia by ineptitude. Putinās destruction of Russian democracy and the terrorizing of his neighbors on the other hand is most certainly deliberate and calculated. May that man die early and rot in hell sooner rather than later.
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The thing I canāt get past is - and maybe itās because Iāve likely flown over Donetsk-ish areas 20 times - (as a civilian) - how could the chain of command hand over that kind of training and/or equipment without utterly ensuring the recipients are perfectly clear on the nature of the air traffic above them?
I agree that a crew screw-up is entirely likely, but itās feeling to me like one of those screw-ups that happen that are so easy to avoid unless you set the game up a certain way.
I think it is pretty easy to imagine how it happened. Russia rushes a SAM launcher or three across the border, has some commandos teach some local yokel rebels how to use them, and then run back to their side because getting caught handing over advanced weapons to Ukrainian rebels is probably bad for publicity. At that point, imagining how barely trained rebels could screw up and hit a civilian airplane doesnāt take much imagination. Alls it takes is one idiot manning the radar to get overly excited at having a lock on something, fail to do the proper checks, and pull the trigger. If have seen people screw up far less complex pieces of equipment than a SAM launcher, documentation and training be damned.
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One of the most difficult things I really got into during my years studying for a masters in finance is the cyclical nature of systems from forests to interlinked economies. Historically things like the great depression, this latest great recession of wealth only for the 1%, the Japanese super depression, terrible wars after long periods of peace, and big super forest fires after decades of fire prevention seem to be baked into economics of production and consumption.
As the US recedes into a world where national wealth is equalizing especially in Asia we move back to a world of great powers last seen before the world wars rather than the stable bipolar standoff or unipolar world we saw from 1945 until the near future where a new stability will be found.
I take hope that poison gas was never used during WW-II(except against Jews in death rooms and ethnic cleansing resistant Chinese villages) though I now understand that in Europe that had more to do with the desperate loosing side needing horse transport(difficult to fully protect from gas) to support logistics than any other reason.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s under the fear of total nuclear war, I accept that unless humanity makes a great mental leap we are moving into an era of instability unknown possibly in over 100 years though certainly far less than the terrible apocalypse of the developed nations than threatened in my youth. This is the economics and national psychology of resettling to natural ethnic borders and economic considerations replacing the arbitrary borders negotiated between the winners of WW-I and WW-II for their own interests and enforced by the ascendant superpowers mostly for their own benefit.
I worry how far down Maslowās pyramid the average person will be kicked this time.
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I hear you. What Iām saying is concordant with your opinion, with an examination of the prelude.
Imagine youāve got a box of matches and some gasoline. What happens when you give them to a wide-eyed gang of 8 year olds?
What Iām saying is thereās an element of obscure Russian-ness in this. If Russia were utterly, deeply concerned to avoid a tragedy of this type, by god they would have controlled those assets and the operators. Apparently, they didnāt. And although itās a conflict zone, itās not shrouded in the fog of war. There isnāt that much confusion.
My view - at best, Russia was careless and reckless. At worst, Russia handed over the gas and matches and watched as the inevitable unfolded.
It would not do a damn bit of good in the long run, but if just one western head of state were to say in front of the cameras, āVladimir Putin, you are a murdererā, Iād go around smiling the rest of the day.
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No, it isnāt. Europe is fighting with itself about how to create a convincing facade of dealing with Russia, given that Europeās military capability has deteriorated to Duchy of Grand Fenwick levels.
Iām just waiting for the AIDS-angle to gain momentum.
Yay angular momentum!
Edit: Ahhh, THIS.
Worth a read:
A Ukrainian military Antonov AN-26 cargo aircraft shot down July 14 was at an altitude that meant it could only have been hit by āsophisticated weapons systems,ā a senior administration official said Wednesday. That indicates a heavy, self-propelled surface-to-air missile as compared with a lighter, cheaper shoulder-fired weapon like the Russian-made Strela or Igla.
āOver the past month, the flow of heavy weapons and support for separatists from Russia has actually increased,ā the official said. āYou will have seen on social media over the last week convoys of Russian tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry combat vehicles, Grad rocket launchers, Howitzers, self-propelled mortars flowing into Ukraine.ā
One such post on Twitter appeared to depict the presence of larger SA-11 or SA-17 tracked missile transporters in Ukraine, which launch a large missile also known as the āBuk.ā
IHS Janeās Defense analyst Nick de Larrinaga said an aircraft at normal cruising altitude would be within the range of those or other medium-range surface-to-air missile systems. āBoth Russia and Ukraine have such SAM systems in their inventories,ā he said in a statement.
Apparently, the Russian separatists captured a Ukrainian missile air-defence installation in late June.
With all this information, in hindsight, who wouldnāt have seen this coming?
Putin is simply blaming Ukraine. Heās not even trying to absolve Russia of responsibility, oblique or not.
The day before, his statement to the west was essentially āmess with us, we mess with youā.
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As far as I know, none of the decision makers regarding air route regulation or airline execs were on the plane. Criticizing their decisions (rightly or wrongly) would not be victim blaming, but rather looking for some accountability from those who sent the true victims into a dangerous war zone where serious anti-aircraft capability has been known about for days.
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Itās a component of the discussion, for sure.
The Buk missile system can hit aircraft at 72,000 feet - nearly twice the service ceiling of a civilian airliner.
Even Russia had closed the nearby routes to its aircraft. The FAA ordered US carriers to keep well clear prior to the incident.
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Maybe I spent too much time with books about industrial and aerospace mishaps, but I donāt understand the concept of āvictim blamingā. Even if somebody pays for his own mistake, it should be identified and named - and, NOT stopping here, contributing factors identified (asking āwhyā for each answer, at least 5-7 times in row, a key part of root cause analysis.
By not being allowed to say that somebody screwed up we are deprived of figuring out why the screwup happened, what factors led to it, and, ultimately, from not screwing up the next time when the same initial setup happens to ourselves.
An adviser to Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Anton Heraschenko was quoted by Ukraineās Interfax news agency Friday as saying that the missile launcher used to down the Malaysian plane is already in Russia and will be destroyed.
The āBukā launcher, as well as the flight data recorders from MH17, were handed over to Russian agents across the border at a checkpoint in the Luhansk area overnight, Heraschenko claimed, citing Ukrainian intelligence sources.
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/07/18/world/europe/ukraine-malaysia-airlines-crash/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Of course, this is what Ukraine is saying. But if this is true, itās bad news for Russia and all of us. It would mean Russia has control over the separatist military assets.
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But not from a conspiracy angle
From a human being angle. The angle that makes me demonstrably sad.
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Iām trying to parse the flight path graphic Xeni posted. Doesnāt it seem weird that the flight veered massively from its course over Poland? When it was shot down, it looks like itād been flying off-course for hours, but I havenāt seen any mention of this in the news yet.
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If anything, he would be hoping that the swine who received any such weapon system would shoot down a Russian aircraft, making the invasion that much easier to sell.
So it seems weāve moved past any discussion of the rebel parties not having the necessary hardware to kill at that altitude. And if the system was owned and operated by the Ukrainian defense forces, why the hell would they turn it back over to the Russians?
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From this non-analyst who grew up at the same time, youāre spot on and lets hope cooler heads prevail.
