The Gaming Den

Counter argument: even if Russia wanted to shoot down a passenger jet in Ukrainian territory, it seems like it would be easier to just hand such a missile off to private citizens in Luhansk and have them fire it off for you. Russia is big and clever enough that hopefully it sees that it doesn't have to get its hands dirty on trivial bullshit like this.

Counter counter argument 2: getting four big suspicious cars through the border stealthily would be really hard now.

Additionally, it has not been proven yet that it was ground-to-air missile, and not air-to-air missile.

Koumei wrote:The Russian government got caught out editing the Wiki page for the event.

World War Wiki, eh?

Russian ip's edit history is interesting. As far as I can see, it's mostly proofreading, and edits to the plot of "Forrest Gump".

Longes wrote:

Counter argument: even if Russia wanted to shoot down a passenger jet in Ukrainian territory, it seems like it would be easier to just hand such a missile off to private citizens in Luhansk and have them fire it off for you. Russia is big and clever enough that hopefully it sees that it doesn't have to get its hands dirty on trivial bullshit like this.

Counter counter argument 2: getting four big suspicious cars through the border stealthily would be really hard now.

Uh, no, border security is kind of shit at the moment because there's a war going on right next to it.

Additionally, it has not been proven yet that it was ground-to-air missile, and not air-to-air missile.

Due to the wonders of modern satellites, it totally fucking has been proven it was a ground launch from rebel territory.

Are the nascent fascist movements in countries like Hungary and Greece and Ukraine connected to each other financially or tactically or are they still pretty factionalized?

name_here wrote:

Additionally, it has not been proven yet that it was ground-to-air missile, and not air-to-air missile.

Due to the wonders of modern satellites, it totally fucking has been proven it was a ground launch from rebel territory.

Also this is pretty damning.

@erik, That forbes article is strait-up propaganda. You can tell, it's busy poisoning the well against anyone who says different before they even finish.

[*]It calls the rebel factions in The Ukraine "Russian mercenaries" and "terrorists". That's what the fascist government of The Ukraine calls the part of their citizenry they're engaged in murdering. Big red flag there.
[*]It talks about Russian troop movements into Crimea (which is part of Russia now) as if it's some grand conspiracy. Hint: there's a war on next door and the government keeps talking about invading you and has actually fired artillery across the border, you put some fucking troops there, duh.
[*]It keeps saying the Buk must be Russian, but The Ukraine is full of Russian Buk systems, that are owned by the government of The Ukraine. That's what you call deception by the use of equivocation. Lying without technically lying.

That's their whole argument.

1: The rebels who shot the plane down are sometimes called "Russian" by their enemies.
2: A different group of people called "Russian" are moving some troops around with their associated weapons.
3: A third meaning of "Russian" describes where a different weapon was built.
4: Therefore Russia!
5: Anyone says otherwise is just pro-Russian propaganda! DON'T LISTEN!!!!!!!

tussock, what in the world are you talking about? As far as I can tell you're being satirical, but I've been burned enough time by Poe's Law to ask first.

tussock wrote:@erik, That forbes article is strait-up propaganda. You can tell, it's busy poisoning the well against anyone who says different before they even finish.

It was but one of many sites running that story, I chose it since they also had alleged footage of surface to air missile platforms leaving the scene shortly after the attack. Since it was Ukraine intelligence that allegedly intercepted the calls, there is that as a possibility that it is Ukranian propaganda.

Nevertheless, it seems to be lining up with other accounts.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Are the nascent fascist movements in countries like Hungary and Greece and Ukraine connected to each other financially or tactically or are they still pretty factionalized?

There are some connections between the various nationalist movements. There are Serbian Supremacists on the ground fighting for the Donetsk separatists, and there are White Power Swedes backing the Ukrainian Right Sector. Greece's golden Dawn, France's Front National, and Hungary's Jobbik and Fidesz are all clutzing around trying to make their own EU parliament factions. There's a "European Alliance For Freedom," an "Alliance of European National Movements," and a "European National Front." And various of these parties are members of these various tiny blocs, trying to get the other ones to merge under the banner of their tent.

But yes, they do help each other. The Ukraine's Svoboda held observer status in Jobbik's little piece of crazy town until March.

---

As to that Forbes article: the only interesting information in there is that they show some more evidence that it was probably a Buk missile. Which I think is the story that everyone's going with for now. But even accepting that, we're still at the point where the most likely source of Buk missiles is the Ukrainian military, who either fired it themselves or lost it to rebels who then fired it.

Putin's a dick, but there's no evidence at all that there is anything to hold him responsible for in this particular tragedy.

-Username17

As far as I can tell you're being satirical

No, I read an article where the author was describing ethnically Russian Ukrainians, the nation of Russia, and Russian-made weapons found throughout the region as "Russian" and thereby concluded that Putin was directly responsible and concluded with a series of statements decrying any other possible story as Russian lies.

Because Russian terrorists using Russian weapons recently seen in Russia is a thing that people read and think is sensible. When it's really lying by equivocation. That's where you use the same word for different things to conflate ideas otherwise unconnected by fact.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/equivocation

Ukrainian separatists using a Buk like those found in the Ukraine where they are fighting is the same story, only it doesn't use the word "Russian" repeatedly and then blame Russia and then declare everything else false.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderic ... ian-plane/

That one. Read it again. Hell, look at the title, Russian.

Longes wrote:This is quite interesting

No, it's not.
It's a bunch of Russians blaming Ukrainians. Some of it is already discredited (It could have been an SU25!) Some of it is conspiracy (But why did they have AA assets!??) It offers nothing new or noteworthy. Actually I lie, the noteworthy part is that they offered no possible scenario where the rebels shot down the plane. They've got one story and they're sticking to it.

Into this, I've seen a number of articles talking about a removed post from the rebels claiming to have shot down a military aircraft at the same time in the same place. Is this propaganda, or did it actually happen?

Blasted wrote:Into this, I've seen a number of articles talking about a removed post from the rebels claiming to have shot down a military aircraft at the same time in the same place. Is this propaganda, or did it actually happen?

It doesn't matter either way, since no one is claiming to have found a post from anyone saying "I shot down a plane" or something similar, just people in the area reporting that a plane had been shot down and assuming that it was separatists shooting down a government military plane.

Basically we're still at square one. A missile was fired from a war zone and hit a passenger jet. That missile was old Soviet tech, and literally any faction with any stake in the proceedings of the conflict could have had access to it. There was a burst of speculation as to what the plane was until it had been confirmed to be a passenger jet, and the burst of speculation as to who actually shot the missile has continued to this day.

-Username17

US intelligence has confirmed the Ukranian phone intercepts of a seperatist leader reporting shooting down a plane to the GRU

name_here wrote:US intelligence has confirmed the Ukranian phone intercepts of a seperatist leader reporting shooting down a plane to the GRU

But those intercepts don't really say anything other than that separatists saw the explosion and engaged in wild speculation. There's still no smoking gun of anyone saying they fired the missile or ordered a missile to be fired or that a missile system in their possession had been fired.

There's just a bunch of rumor mongering followed by message discipline after it was clear that it was a civilian plane.

-Username17

name_here wrote:US intelligence has confirmed the Ukranian phone intercepts of a seperatist leader reporting shooting down a plane to the GRU

The man this video claims to be colonel Geranin is actualy Khamzatov Musa Magomedovich (Хамзатов Муса Магомедович).

Here's the original foto:

Blasted wrote: Some of it is already discredited (It could have been an SU25!)

Was there anything other than "SU-25 can't fly at 10000 m"?
Because this isn't true (apparently, I'm not an expert). In fact, here's STATE COMPANY "UKROBORONSERVICE" giving it a practical ceiling of 10000m.

FrankTrollman wrote:

Blasted wrote:Into this, I've seen a number of articles talking about a removed post from the rebels claiming to have shot down a military aircraft at the same time in the same place. Is this propaganda, or did it actually happen?

It doesn't matter either way, since no one is claiming to have found a post from anyone saying "I shot down a plane" or something similar, just people in the area reporting that a plane had been shot down and assuming that it was separatists shooting down a government military plane.

That's exactly what's been claimed. It did the rounds and has since gone off the radar, but apparently rebels posted to some social site that they shot down a transport at the same time, then removed the post.
The wayback machine has the post, so it's more about whether the original post was accurate:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... ial-media/

What do we know about his post?

The U.S. State Department confirmed that the post pictured above is the one Kerry was referring to in his statement on Fox. The post comes from Strelkov’s profile on VKontakte (VK), Russia’s version of Facebook. This is a translation of the post, according to the Ukraine Crisis Media Center:

17.07.2014 17:50 (Moscow time)
In the region of Torez AN-26 plane has been shot, it is somewhere near the ‘Progress’ mine.
We have warned them – not to fly ‘in our sky.’
Here is video-proof of yet another ‘bird fall.’
The bird has fallen behind the (waste heap), it missed the residential quarters. Peaceful citizens were not hurt.

Again and still: read those posts, or the transcripts from phone calls, and all the rest, with the assumption that the people making them were part of the fire team that brought down the plane. Now go back and read all of them again, only this time with the assumption that the people making them simply saw that a plane exploded over their territory and started talking smack.

There is not one word that is out of place making either set of assumptions. So the released posts and phone calls don't give any evidence at all.

All it shows is that there were some people who affiliate themselves with one or more segments of the separatists who thought that separatists had brought down a military plane shortly after the explosion, and then walked back their statements when they got more information. That's all it fucking says. Which is nothing, because we already knew all that.

-Username17

Igor Bezler: We have just shot down a plane. Group Minera. It fell down beyond Yenakievo

[...]

“Major”: These are Chernukhin folks shot down the plane. From the Chernukhin check point. Those cossacks who are based in Chernukhino.
“Greek”: Yes, Major.

I would call a guy specifying the group responsible for the shootdown evidence that they have some idea what they're talking about. There's also the matter of the missile being launched from within separatist territory.

name_here wrote:

Igor Bezler: We have just shot down a plane. Group Minera. It fell down beyond Yenakievo

[...]

“Major”: These are Chernukhin folks shot down the plane. From the Chernukhin check point. Those cossacks who are based in Chernukhino.
“Greek”: Yes, Major.

I would call a guy specifying the group responsible for the shootdown evidence that they have some idea what they're talking about. There's also the matter of the missile being launched from within separatist territory.

Unless the Ukraine has given up contesting that territory, it's still "contested" territory, and the Ukrainian military sends whatever military units into it that it wants whenever it wants. The idea that there's no reason for their to have been any Ukrainian military in that area is ridiculous. Up to the point where the finger pointing started, the government in Kiev claimed to own that territory.

Again and still: read it with the assumption that the guy in question is directly part of the chain of command of the person who literally pressed the button and has operational information of the decision to fire. Now read it again with the assumption that the guy in question is just a guy in the area making guesses and talking smack based on having seen an explosion. There is not one fucking word out of place either way. It's not a smoking gun for anything.

Either he knows who fired the missile or he's just guessing based on where the explosion happened. But it's entirely consistent both with the narrative that the rebels shot down the plane and the narrative where they didn't. So it's useless as evidence. No one in that piece discusses why they think they know any of the stuff they say is true, and a good amount of what they thought early in the proceedings were demonstrably wrong.

-Username17

name_here wrote:

Igor Bezler: We have just shot down a plane. Group Minera. It fell down beyond Yenakievo

[...]

“Major”: These are Chernukhin folks shot down the plane. From the Chernukhin check point. Those cossacks who are based in Chernukhino.
“Greek”: Yes, Major.

I would call a guy specifying the group responsible for the shootdown evidence that they have some idea what they're talking about. There's also the matter of the missile being launched from within separatist territory.

Dude, arguing with Frank over this is pointless. He hates the Ukrainian government because they had ties to right wing extremists. He honestly finds Putin and Russian state controlled media as trustworthy as the United States government and the AP. It doesn't matter that the US confirms that the Ukrainians didn't have AA assets in the area to carry out the attack; it doesn't matter that multiple rebel sources admit to firing on a plane when the attack took place, including the overall military commander of the rebels in the area. The Ukrainian government are BAD GUYS, so an implausible conspiracy to frame the rebels is something he wants to believe in.

Akula wrote:Dude, arguing with Frank over this is pointless. He hates the Ukrainian government because they had ties to right wing extremists. He honestly finds Putin and Russian state controlled media as trustworthy as the United States government and the AP. It doesn't matter that the US confirms that the Ukrainians didn't have AA assets in the area to carry out the attack; it doesn't matter that multiple rebel sources admit to firing on a plane when the attack took place, including the overall military commander of the rebels in the area. The Ukrainian government are BAD GUYS, so an implausible conspiracy to frame the rebels is something he wants to believe in.

This actually is an ad hominem, by the way. It's important to point these things out, because so often people claim that things are ad hominems when they are really insults.

Akula is of course a worthless shitbird who wouldn't know an honest argument if it was a flying candiru wedging its way up his or her urethra. I of course can't read Russian domestic news, so it absolutely doesn't matter how credible or not I would find it if I could read it. Nor am I subscribing to any elaborate conspiracies about zombie aircraft or fake missile launches.

All I'm doing is pointing out that what we know now is precisely what we knew forty five minutes after the plane went down:

• A passenger plane went down in a contested region of Eastern Ukraine.
• The plane probably got hit with a missile.
• The missile it got hit with is old Soviet technology and possessed by every state in the area, but is well outside the capabilities of small time criminals to have.
• Some people in the area originally thought that the rebels had shot down a military transport, but quite obviously they were wrong about at least one of those things.

That's it. That's what we know. That's what we knew on Thursday, and that's what we know now. And people who are pointing the finger at Putin and claiming it is obviously his fault are fucking wrong. Even if the missile was fired by the rebels (and not the Ukrainian army) and originally supplied by the Russian army (and not a missile launcher that the rebels claimed to have stolen from the Ukrainian army last month), that still wouldn't be Putin's responsibility. It would be less Putin's responsibility even than most "government arms terrorists" type situations, because the general assumption when you hand a group of separatists some anti-aircraft weapons is that they will point them at targets other than passenger jets full of AIDS researchers from an uninvolved country flying to a different uninvolved country.

It's not that Putin is a good person or that he isn't doing bad things or even that he isn't doing bad things in the Ukraine. It's just that the rush to blame him for this attack is based on wishful thinking and immature splitting. There isn't enough evidence that has yet been made public to even know which side in the civil war accidentally shot down that plane. So far, all the evidence provided by both sides ranges from "dubious" to "laughable." Maybe one side or the other is sitting on some much better evidence and hasn't released it yet. But considering that the last time the Ukrainian government accidentally shot down a passenger jet they denied it for eight days even when there was no one else to blame, I'm guessing this particular blame game is going to go on for a long ass time.

Interestingly: when the Soviet Union shot down a passenger plane in 1983 (which had gone off course and flown through restricted airspace, but which was still totally a dick move), they took five days to acknowledge the incident had happened at all. And when the United States accidentally shot down an Iranian passenger plane in 1988, it took eight years to get the US to apologize. Anyone expecting any kind of quick resolution to this situation is living in a fucking fantasy world.

-Username17

Our government and media are already doubling down on the assumption that Putin personally jumped into the sky and clubbed the plane to pieces with a rocket. The front page of the papers showed his face, and various pictures of Russians holding signs apologising for what their government has done*. With "Russians apologise but Putin still won't admit it". Because that is the quality of the newspapers we have.

And our PM spoke angry words... not actually to Putin, because he's terrified of Putin. He gave a speech to Australia, condemning Russia, and then said bad things to a Russian ambassador or trade minister. He specifically said big countries mustn't go around bullying smaller countries and infringing on their sovereign territory. In other news, a pot made racist remarks about the coloration of a kettle.

I assume most of the Western world has this shit going on in their papers?

(My assumption on this is that separatists shot it down in a case of mistaken identity, in a situation where the plane was kind of put in danger by the Ukraine but not in a deliberate attempt to cause international trouble, and the missile was probably either sold by "some dude" from Russia or nabbed from a Ukrainian base that the separatists control/raided. Also, Russia is a shitty country with a shitty leader and shitty policies, but they missed out on the opportunity to do this particular shitty thing.)

*I can understand them immediately assuming their government was at least in part responsible: Putin is a massive dick. And assuming your own government is being shitty is a healthy thing to do.

Personally, I blame whichever side makes it *less* likely to start world war III if they are responsible.