Victim-blaming refers to the way, after rape, people find ways to blame the victim, rather than the perpatrator. I for one think it can also, equally well, refer to the same actions after bullying, police brutality, and other forms of abuse. But I don’t think it can, always, refer to accidental, instead of deliberate, actions.
I don’t think it is right to shoot at anyone, but what would you do if you were being shot at, or your hometown was being bombed, and you didn’t know there were innocents passing through?
P.S. I want to add, I don’t think it is right to shoot at anyone. Another poster wrote an angry statement accusing me of thinking it was right. I think that every war has led to similar tragedies, and escalation will lead to more, and this is one reason to oppose any war.
If this happened, the separatists were returning the goodies whence they came. Russia has been pouring arms into Ukraine recently, including Buk launchers/
Also, in a news conference Friday, the chief of Ukraine’s security service, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, said the Buk missile system that shot down the airliner crossed the border from Russia only “right before” the attack. He didn’t say how investigators know that, however
OK, so Ukraine speaking again. But really, imagine if this is true.
The reason I’m focused on this is we’re watching a potential pivotal moment in history. If Russia organised a framework within which a civilian airliner was shot out of the sky by separatists - if this can be pinned on Russia - the political ramifications are electrifying.
And war raises its ugly head.
I think Putin played a dirty card, upping the ante. This may backfire as the west in turn seeks to destabilise his political regime.
Maybe round a storm. It does look like they were off-track, but if that had any importance, the pilot incompetence would have been staggeringly noticeable.
I read a report somewhere that pro-Russian rebels had found the black boxes as well, so I’m wondering if we’re ever going to know wtf the plane was doing flying over there in the first place.
I wrote a challenging question. Wish you had answered it.Now instead you’ve dodged and characterized it.
It did come across, to me, acrss three comments that you made here, as though you were justifying what you claim to be wrong. Sorry if you didn’;t like my tone. Please address my point?
I was confused and felt a bit put off by what you did seem to be getting at. It did seem to me, and still does, seem to be justifying something. Not supporting it. But saying well maybe we would do the same. Which i find challenging.
And maybe I feel even more insulted now that you took it up with a mod and the peanut gallery when I’m right here, at the other end of a private message. Available and quite friendly.
I could only understand about half of what you said. That half seemed to be deliberately misreading me to accuse me of wanting people to die. The other half, I have no idea about.
Why would I go to a private message to respond to your public statements? Why would anyone? Isn’t it underhanded to take arguments to pm?
Ask the mods. It’s one of the other options when you flag a comment.
Please note. Only one of us has characterized the other. As I have struck a nerve, I will gladly drop the specific point, but overall I saw a contradiction. I sought clarification, and I was misunderstood, also, as far as i can tell. Maybe neither of us brought our best game today.
Stating that I see a contradiction, and exploring it, is not personally about you the way calling someone “Angry” is.
That is a classic dodge, and very unkind. It is a changing of the subject from your unclear position to my emotional state, which you arrogate the description of. As you are the expert on your opinion and emotional state, I am that of mine. I would not presume that you were here in bad faith. But I will ask.
The other reason you PM if there is any chance you have misunderstood is so that this sort of boring crap isn’t in the comments.
I strongly dislike the current Kiev government, and have some sympathies for the separatists, but this is hard to swallow. I agree that, if they are the ones who did it, they wouldn’t do it deliberately. But I don’t think intention is very relevant when butchering 300 civilians. You can cause an “accident” with a car, or maybe with a handgun, but when someone bangs around with AA missiles, there are no “accidents”, there is no such thing as “accidental terrorism”. I’m not a fan of for moral arguments, but unless you have an extremly cynical view of the world, this is just murder. But we still don’t know who did it. In 2001, it was the Ukrainian army who “accidentally” shot down a Russian plane on route to Tel Aviv with that type of missile. Also we should note what Putin and Obama have not said: Obama has not accused Russia of direct involvement with the incident, which is a good thing. And Putin, though morally blaming the West and suggesting it might have been the Ukrainian Army, hasn’t jumped to flat out denial of the possibility that the separatists could have done it.
Putin has not sought to absolve Russia of any responsibility either. He’s simply said it’s the fault of the nation in whose airspace the incident occurred.
That’s oblique like my annoying brother. He’s goading in this complex way, opening all sorts of complex interpretations and possibilities.
Obama and the other western leaders can’t take the world to the brink of war by accusing Putin directly. That would be foolish. There is no correlation between what Obama & Co put out in the media and what they believe behind the veil.
The thing is, given the givens - this occurrence is so highly unlikely without Russian participation, there must have been at a minimum complicity. Why didn’t the Russians launch a mass media campaign warning (1) the rebels not to shoot down civilian aircraft overflying Ukraine, (2) international airlines to avoid the region because now the rebels have dangerous launchers - do note they closed the routes to Russian aircraft.
There are glib reasons for every event in this scenario, every situation, it all seems reasonable to blame, for instance an over-excited rebel. But when I stack that all up, my Jenga tower doesn’t look as if it’s quite obeying the laws of nature. There is a shimmer to it, an unnatural angle.
And that angle reminds me of my annoying brother, who’d set up a circumstance where I would fall in the shit, and stand back smirking and commenting.
Even assumed it was the separatists, I doubt there was direct Russian involvement. The Ukraine uses this type of missile, too (as demonstrated in 2001). So it is well possible the rebels could have seized a system that belonged to the Ukrainian army, or deserted with one. Also, they probably have people that have served in the military, and know how to operate that equipment - to some extent. I don’t think if Russian military would have been directly involved they would have made that kind of mistake. They must have better training, and better information. For fs sake, the positions of passenger airlines are updated live on the fing internet, how could someone who isn’t a rag-tag irregular fighter with a cellphone as only means of communication make such a mistake.
All we can do is assume things, isn’t it. I’ts a nice summer day, I’ll go swimming. And no, I doubt this could have been deliberate. It’s too big, if it would ever come out people are going to the electric chair. But if it would have been, it’s clear who would benefit.
Well, there are those NATO reports (from a few weeks ago) of Russian troops training Pro-Russian separatists on this sort of equipment in recent months.
We had some warning on this, she went on to say. Two weeks ago, on
June 30, Air Force Gen. Phillip Breedlove spoke at the Pentagon.
Maddow reported, “And in that press briefing, he said that
surface-to-air missiles, anti-aircraft systems, not just the
shoulder-fired ones, but the big, vehicle-borne surface-to-air missiles
that are designed to shoot down airplanes, those had been observed in
eastern Ukraine and just across the border in Western Russia.”
NATO had observed in the early part of the summer, that Russia was
moving heavy anti-aircraft equipment over the border into Ukraine and
training the rebels there to use them.
Nothing is proven, and I deeply resent denunciations of doubt like yours. Floating around unproven accusations one way or the other is doing nobody any good except maybe admirable, peace-loving characters like your General Breedlove. “Wiggle room”? Well, I feel indeed pretty comfortable in the “wiggle room”, if leaving it means joining the party with the warmongers and military goons you trust so much.
