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RE: Vive la France
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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 RE: Vive la France (in reply to keith)
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I like what quoted Mr. Merry said, with the reservation that he appears to be missing out on a very obvious global ongoing. Which is that with every passing year there is less in place of the rudiments of national and cultural identities that were to actually be any driving force.
Instead it is much more of money making, resource and options securing instances that reign behind whatever surfacing motifs. With the increased size and market of internationally operating combines anyway.
Just today, listening to a young fellow´s telling of details from an essay of an old intelligent man dealing with Paris and Western / Middle Eastern, after him finishing I was saying that everything mentioned seemed very coherent, except of the interpretation of states´ perspectives and strategies as a seeking of entities ... when the young man added that the essay actually covered the circumstance of interests that had nothing to do with superior aims like concerns of people, nations, whatever. So, in the end quoted old man´s article seemed round all about.
I also sympathize with the benign expectations expressed here, and I would give something, possibly even my life, if there were any such integrity given in international scene of the big game.
Individuals mentioned above, more precisely their clientele, out for democracy and humanitarian goals?
All of the past indicates utterly different background from that.
# It indicates that there is given no rats butt for any such values, but to the opposite, these being suppressed on behalf of profiteering and ensuring concepts.
# It indicates a vast theatre scene, with every now and then weird mixtures of pretended aspects with the theatre plot.
# From there also the alleged opposition with Iran mentioned above. In truth there has been active support to install the regime, and in over 3 decades of its existence policies to ensure its preservation. Aside from many points; whenever there was a chance to give rebelling people there international medial attention and place timely kinds of diverse levers to at least support for a hint of reform, international media would pass the opportunity and sometimes even mute altogether. There are also obsolete agreements being maintained that allow unhindered local suppressing of opposition with multinational citizenship.
# Same with pretty much all focal points of the region. Be it Saddam calling Bush sen. for permission to invade Kuweit, which was granted to then operate to the opposite against the disgraced stepchild. Being over $ 3 billion worth of Iraki mineral oil going straight to private US figures without paying, after Saddam´s removal.
# ... Being the alleged inability of preventing break of sanctions, whichs transfer included American goods galore. Or an alleged inability of keeping oilers from getting ISIS raw oil ... The inability to prevent stolen $ trillions transfer of Middle Eastern despots to private offshore accounts. (From where the money being washed through shares in international combines or even building of Canadian highways ... And if no considerable share of it being used for making international friends where there officially are none, then it should make you wonder. BTW, any info on the remains of ~ $70 billions prey of Tunesia´s Ben Ali? No? Hmm, ain´t it surprising. Hopefully there come up some 500 mio of it, or so, and Ali either very soon die from ... what, heart attack, leukemia ... or in the end quietly resume to Panama or so for a quiet little life with a promille of his original budget.)
# Being the latest US weapon delivery contract to Saudi Arabia for completely re-filling up the arsenal of SAE who as the most stuffed country of the whole region, just revealed to have used up nearly all of its tremendous stock on bombing out Jemen (boy, I don´t want to know how that little country must be looking like now. And isn´t it once again funny how we in the whole of western world don´t get informed about the actual dimension that after all is being said to have exterminated half of its population!) and on equipping ISIS. (Wasn´t the Saudi guy cute, days ago standing midst the G20 heads, smiling an innocent´s uncle´s gentleness, without anyone disturbing? He was there to help against terrorism, you must know. Really, that´s what´s officially been said and written, so why should you think of anything else. Long live humanitarian and democratic goals of integer states policies and their allies!)
US policies for democracy and humanitarian premise?
Dear friends, how many Asian or Latin American enterprises do you need, to realize that the USA are far from being a democracy, and that US policies are no policies of and for the American people.
And should you come to it, maybe also take into consideration that these days hardly anywhere being national concerns in place but strategies of groups. Plain profanity.
Peace, freedom, fairness, pancakes? Integrity on upper scale?
I mean, what do you expect? The gross material distribution of today, without a making use of it? Politics elected and active by and for the people?
We all have the right for being naive, but come one now. Stop fooling yourself into outlines that make Grimm´s fairytales look like Einstein´s relativity theory.
You are grown up, intelligent and well-read men. Don´t do that to your intellect just for trivial comforting of oneself.
US secret services and military engaged to bring democracy and fairness to the world. That´s like Steve Ballmer investing his money into investigative journalism or into clean water for rural Bangladesh at best. A no-brainer.
The man is a completely selfish and irresponsible bloke. And that is by far the most common mentality way up there today. All too obvious by operations across the earth.
Ruphus
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Date Nov. 18 2015 20:01:02
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
It is foreign to the spirit of the Enlightenment (now much diminished) to lump people together under the rubrics of religion or culture. Yet those with experience in the Near East often do so.
When I reported McClellan's assertion to my sister-in-law, she immediately burst into loud, long and bitter laughter. She exclaimed, "Isn't there anyone in the government who can tell them about the Middle East?"
Actually, it is not foreign to the spirit of the Enlightenment to recognize that there were (and are) certain markers that by and large identify people under the rubrics of religion or culture (even as Enlightenment thinkers were separating rational thought from religion in the Western context). In the case of Islam one cannot separate religion and culture, as no distinction is made between them, just as there is no distinction made between the sacred and the secular. The term "secular" has little meaning for a Muslim. Islam has not experienced the equivalent of the Eighteenth Century Western Enlightenment, but it desperately needs to if it is to come to terms with modernity in the social, cultural, political, and economic realms.
Regarding your sister-in-law's exclamation and question about U.S. Government knowledge of the Middle East, like many people she appears to believe that the U.S. Government operates as a monolithic whole, with no internal discussion, dissension, or different points of view expressed. Nothing could be further from the truth. You may assure her that there was internal discussion and disagreement with the view that prevailed.
There were (and are) many people in the State Department and other entities who have spent entire careers on the Middle East and know it well. Once a position is decided upon, however, open dissent is not possible, nor should it be. The honorable thing to do if one wishes to dissent is to resign, and some have done so over policy decisions taken by the U.S.
As an example of internal dissent, in October 2002, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) dissented from the conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. INR made its case, as did others within the government. They lost the debate, but not for lack of knowledge.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 19 2015 13:48:16
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
Regarding your sister-in-law's exclamation and question about U.S. Government knowledge of the Middle East, like many people she appears to believe that the U.S. Government operates as a monolithic whole, with no internal discussion, dissension, or different points of view expressed. Nothing could be further from the truth. You may assure her that there was internal discussion and disagreement with the view that prevailed.
There were (and are) many people in the State Department and other entities who have spent entire careers on the Middle East and know it well. Once a position is decided upon, however, open dissent is not possible, nor should it be. The honorable thing to do if one wishes to dissent is to resign, and some have done so over policy decisions taken by the U.S.
As an example of internal dissent, in October 2002, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) dissented from the conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. INR made its case, as did others within the government. They lost the debate, but not for lack of knowledge.
Bill
I disagree with some of my sister-in-law's political positions, but she is an intelligent and educated woman. You may rest assured that she is reasonably familiar with the makeup and operation of the government, to the extent that someone outside the government is likely to be.
Her exclamation was due to frustration, not ignorance.
RNJ
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Date Nov. 19 2015 22:39:00
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
Sad that the muslim world can't untie the beautiful aspects of it's culture from the religious one.
Unfortunately, Islam does not distinguish between religion and culture, between the sacred and the secular. Islam is an all-encompassing religio-cultural way of life that transcends those categories; and in my opinion, that is the main reason the vast majority of Muslims have a difficult time coming to terms with modernity in the political, economic, and social realms. It certainly is one of the main reasons many cannot come to terms with life in a Western country like France with its strong tradition of proud secularism.
To use just one example: Shari'a law and its relegation of women to second class status. Women may only inherit half of what their male siblings may inherit. In a Shari'a court a woman's testimony is only equal to half that of a man. And perhaps most egregious of all, under Pakistan's Hudood Ordinances (derived from Shari'a law), a woman who charges a man with rape must produce four male witnesses to testify on her behalf (as if rape were a spectator sport!). If she cannot produce four male witnesses, she herself is charged with adultary. The heavily Islamic state of Kelantan in Malaysia was seriously considering implementing Hudood as well, but thankfully it did not pass.
None of this will change without Islam undergoing the equivalent of the Eighteenth Century Western Enlightenment, with its relegation of religion to the church, and rational thought and inquiry dominant in the public square. Of course, most Muslims will say that to separate religion from the public square is impossible because it would no longer be Islam. But much the same thing was said by those who felt threatened by the Enlightenment. People and cultures can change, but it takes a bold and courageous few to begin the process. And some will no doubt suffer the consequences of their actions. But without it, I see little hope for Islam's acceptance of, and integration into, the modern world.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 23 2015 21:36:19
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Ricardo)
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quote:
That turkish move may have gotten the ball rolling here finally, we shall see.
There were others in the region tracking the Russian Suckhoi Su-24, and the evidence appears to support the charge that the Russian aircraft violated Turkish air space. And that was not the first time. Russian aircraft have violated Turkish air space previously on several occasions and been warned. If the violation is confirmed, the Turks had every right to fire on and down the Russian aircraft after repeated warnings had been ignored.
Something like this was bound to happen. The area is in the Northwestern corner of Syria, hard up against the Turkish border. In that small area both Russian and American aircraft are operating without coordination or common rules of engagement. In fact, the Russians began air operations after giving only one hour's notice to the U.S. Defense Attache at our Embassy in Baghdad, and they had the gall to demand that our aircraft cease operations in the area. Of course, we are not taking orders from the Russians.
To top it off, the U.S. supports the so-called "moderate" Syrian Free Army rebels (such as it is!) against Assad; the Russians support Assad and are bombing the so-called "moderates," and we both claim to be fighting against the Islamic State. The U.S. is fighting IS from the air, but Russia claims to be bombing IS while using it as a cover to bomb the anti-Assad "moderate" rebels. The U.S. supports the Kurds, who have been the only effective fighting force on the ground against the Islamic State, while the Turks oppose the Kurds, fearing their separatist tendencies. You need a program to keep score!
Personally, I have serious reservations about any attempt to topple Assad from power. Who, or what, will take his place? while never our friend, the Assad family (Hafez and Bashar) and the United States managed to avoid conflict for 45 years while we pursued our interests in the Near East. We certainly didn't do ourselves any favor with regime-change in Iraq. And we, and NATO, helped create an ungovernable failed state when we supported regime-change in Libya. What evidence is there that regime-change in Syria would be any different?
To lighten up on this topic just for a moment, today, November 25, 2015, marks the 100th anniversary of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. Put simply, on November 25, 1915, Einstein laid out how the interplay of space and time gives rise to gravity and the fabric of the cosmos.
Now, back to our regular programming.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Nov. 25 2015 15:12:38
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Ruphus)
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Don´t thank him, it quite appears his to be the propaganda.
The Turks claim to have warned the Russian pilots 10 times. However:
# First of all, the jet was on return to Russia, and very obviously far from attacking anything Turkish.
# It passed over Turkish territory between 3 and maximal 10 seconds.
# The Turks have provingly been supporting the IS, and also are financing the IS by buying off raw oil from them for around $7 per barrel. It shout be without doubt how they got annoyed to have been deprived from cheap source by almost half of the IS tankers having got destroyed by the Russians that very day.
# The Turks are interested in overtoppling of Assad, mind you, not for any humanitarian reason, but for putting through own strategies in Syria.
# Not at last the Turks long evident and known scheme for destroying the Kurds, who again belong to the few actually fighting the IS.
Further:
The alleged warnings to the Russian jet can only have been:
# Either a fake statement, as it is impossible to do so within only a few seconds
# Or under the premise of an 8 km broad borderline behind the Turkish territory in Syria and Iraq which the Turks in their osmanic megalomania claim for air space of themselves. Out of international law and quietly backed by Nato integrity.
These information aren´t hard to be find out by yourself, Paul, instead of trusting US policies saga on Middle East that are sufficiently known by now for biased insincere quality.
You may just as well beware of fox-eating geese. A notorious bird species.
Ruphus
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Date Nov. 25 2015 17:16:54
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
Since it is well known that neither the Russians, the Turks nor the USA ever lie, and all three are always in perfect command of the facts, what we have here is what Kurt Vonnegut called a "chronosynclastic infundibulum."
Attempts to apply Kurt Vonnegut's simplistic notion to a very serious situation notwithstanding, I suspect eventually there will be reasonably hard evidence of what happened, and we will see that the Russian Su-24 either did or did not violate Turkish airspace. Often, initial reports from the battlefield, or air encounters, are confused, but my understanding is the Su-24 was being tracked (and not only by the Turks). If that is the case, it will be easy to locate what its position was on a grid at the time it was hit.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Nov. 25 2015 20:12:43
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Ruphus)
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Very funny, Bill, Tourette ... hehe :O)
While my post may have appeared to you like insulting, it was not, nor aimed to be.
I like you as a person and you know that.
It is only your interpretations of societal perspective and politics which, apart from very sporadic exceptions like with your sympathy for Zappata, to my understanding you actually do insult your own intellect with. Ignoring and neglecting blatantly lacking authencity and ethics of in fact raptor policies, with the banal individual background of denial whom you work(ed) for.
Skewing of one´s otherwise more than capable view merely for professional matters in one´s vita has always appeared to me like disrespect to oneself. Too trivial and cheap for educated and demanding person that you otherwise are. And the more I like you, the more I mind such deliberate self deceiving.
However, what get´s me touretting in such a case, as you see it |OD, is that I consider it hazardous to NOT be indignant about the US /NATO reaction that could end up in a total desaster for everyone, likely even more fatal than the US´s foregone reviving of the fanatic religion in ME.
The Turk´s allies (all conviction for strategy aside, sick enough to be allies with such a f*** up wannabe Sultanat or the SAE) should had obligately rebuked the Turks for this aggressive act, even if just through understating diplomatic statement.
With Obama´s outrageous stand instead however it is being risked that the Russians after about 20 years of degradation could be done with all these provocations.
Now things get overhand with their installation of S-400 rockets in Syria and the air space shield that it will present / the escalation that it could be leading to.
A president of such an important country like the USA and leader of the western allies should had definitly known better than possibly firing up another world war.
This is total irresponsibility and literally idiocy when you consider the coherences all around.
And once again, just as with the US´s hazardous and inhumane ME policies to date, ALL COMPLETELY NEEDLESLY destructive!
There you have it; this time actually rambling me. 
Ruphus
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Date Nov. 25 2015 20:39:24
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to BarkellWH)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BarkellWH
quote:
Since it is well known that neither the Russians, the Turks nor the USA ever lie, and all three are always in perfect command of the facts, what we have here is what Kurt Vonnegut called a "chronosynclastic infundibulum."
Attempts to apply Kurt Vonnegut's simplistic notion to a very serious situation notwithstanding, I suspect eventually there will be reasonably hard evidence of what happened, and we will see that the Russian Su-24 either did or did not violate Turkish airspace. Often, initial reports from the battlefield, or air encounters, are confused, but my understanding is the Su-24 was being tracked (and not only by the Turks). If that is the case, it will be easy to locate what its position was on a grid at the time it was hit.
Bill
With my weak attempt at humor, I was not meaning to minimize the potential seriousness of the situation. Instead I was poking fun at the posturing of the participants, the significant onlookers, the media and the ordinary kibitzers. I count myself among the last.
Given my fairly extensive experience with media reports of projects I was personally involved in, I believe that even if the facts do eventually become known, the public presentation of them will be heavily influenced by political considerations, not only in Turkey and Russia, but in the USA as well.
What is important is not what happened, how it happened, and who is right or wrong. What is important is what the consequences turn out to be. The consequences may turn out to depend very little on the facts of the case.
One of my good friends was shot down over the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He ejected, parachuted safely (except for a back injury) and walked out of the country with the assistance of the local inhabitants, whose altruism was no doubt encouraged by the gold coins and the pistol he carried, as well as their distaste for the Soviet regime, which my friend reported.
My friend was the pilot of a plane loaded with signal intelligence equipment, and a crew to operate it. During the Cold War the USA regularly and intentionally violated Soviet airspace, in considerable depth. The objective was to observe the order of battle and tactics of their air defense systems by collecting radar and communication signals for analysis.
Once in a while either our guys would go too far, or the Soviets would decide to push back, and a plane would be shot down.
Of course the planes were equipped with electronic and other defenses. The defenses worked most of the time, but as we say in Texas, "Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while."
The CIA, the Lockheed Skunk Works and the U.S. defense establishment in general took great pride in the regular overflights of the Soviet Union by the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, and the succession of satellites that began with Keyhole. In my work I used valuable information they supplied.
Eisenhower commended the U-2 program for providing him with hard intelligence on Soviet capabilities at a time when other info was very scarce. Ike said it enabled him to tamp down the demands of the military for more funding. They said they needed more money because of the "missile gap," which was shown not to exist.
The Soviets were well within their rights to shoot down Gary Powers and put him on trial. But you didn't read much about that at the time, nor did the TV news bring it up very often. One thing you heard about was how embarrassing it was to the USA, and to Eisenhower personally.
We couldn't lie any more when someone accused us of violating Soviet airspace.
The participants and important bystanders in the present fracas are playing out the roles one would expect, regardless of what the facts turn out to be. So are the American and Russian media.
More important than either the facts or the law is how the political leaders will react. That may not be clear until after the posturing is done, though the posturing can be dangerous in itself. It can commit the leaders to an unwise course of action. There is some danger that they will convince themselves by their own rhetoric.
RNJ
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Date Nov. 25 2015 21:30:21
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Ruphus)
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quote:
Very funny, Bill, Tourette ... hehe :O) While my post may have appeared to you like insulting, it was not, nor aimed to be. I like you as a person and you know that.
I know that, Ruphus, and the feeling is mutual. I like you and appreciate your contributions in spite of our disagreements. But please allow me to correct what I perceive to be a misunderstanding on your part. I sense that you think the positions I hold and my interpretations of events, both international and domestic, are the result of having spent a career with the U.S. Government. I assure you that is not the case. In fact, I do not always agree with U.S. Government policy and have stated that in some of my posts on the Foro.
Nevertheless, those cases where I agree with U.S. Government policy and support it are not the result of my professional association with the government, past or present. Rather, after examining the facts and the various interpretations of each case or issue, I determine my own position and interpretation. Often it will be aligned with the U.S. Government position and policy. In short, I do not tailor my position to fit U.S. Government policy; instead, when I support the U.S. Government position it is because I happen to agree with it.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 25 2015 21:50:35
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
What is important is not what happened, how it happened, and who is right or wrong. What is important is what the consequences turn out to be. The consequences may turn out to depend very little on the facts of the case.
What is most important is indeed what the consequences turn out to be. But equally important is what happened and how it happened, because the actual facts of the case will likely determine the consequences. You provided a good example of how the facts of the case determined the consequences in the Soviet shoot-down of Francis Gary Powers and the U-2 in 1960. At first, the Soviets craftily said nothing, and the Eisenhower administration concocted a story. But then the Soviets released factual information that they had Powers alive and parts of the U-2 as well. Those facts led to Eisenhower's embarrassment and the disastrous consequences of the scheduled U.S.-Soviet summit in Paris in May of that year. Facts matter, and they determine consequences.
I spent a few years in the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s before getting a Master's Degree and entering the U.S. Foreign Service. My Air Force career was in intelligence, in what today is known as the Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency. One of my assignments was at our Air Force station in Peshawar, Pakistan, which was the same base from which Powers flew his U-2, which he was supposed to land in Bodo Norway after overflying the Soviet Union. I was assigned there just a few years after his fateful flight. Our intelligence command had both ground-based and airborne intercept platforms, so I know very well about your friend's activities. They were essential in getting the Soviets to activate their air defense radar, thus enabling us to pinpoint where the air defenses were located as well as their accuracy in locking on our aircraft. We lost several aircraft in those days.
One thing to keep in mind, however, when discussing the facts and consequences of a given action. Intelligence activities are of a very different nature and magnitude than regular military, air, and naval maneuvers. Everyone understands that intelligence activities are highly classified and often subject to plausible denial. That does not appear to be the case in the Turkish shoot-down of the Russian Su-24.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Nov. 25 2015 23:28:23
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Ruphus)
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On the SPIEGEL website it says:
As reflection of Turkish statement:
quote:
Während die Su-24-Flieger sich dem türkischen Luftraum näherten seien sie "10 Mal während einer Periode von fünf Minuten via "`Emergency´-Channel gewarnt" worden. Beide Jets hätten den türkischen Luftraum verletzt, "in einer Tiefe von 1,36 Meilen und einer Länge von 1,17 Meilen". Die Dauer des Grenzübertritts ist auch festgehalten: 17 Sekunden.
Roughly equalling:
"Whilst approaching the Turkish air Space the Su-24 planes said to have been warned over Emergency channel `10 times over a period of five minutes´. Both jets to have had violated the Turkish air space `in a depth of 1.36 miles and a length of 1.17 miles´. The duration of the violation has been recorded as well. 17 seconds."
Further in style of live record:
quote:
Das Flugzeug zerschellt mehrere Kilometer von der Grenze entfernt auf syrischem Territorium. US-Militärs kommen später nach Angaben der Agentur Reuters zu dem Schluss, der russische Jet sei in syrischem Luftraum getroffen worden. Das gehe aus einer Analyse von Wärmedaten hervor.
Which basically means something to the extend of:
"The plane crashes several kilometers away from the border, on Syrian territory. US-militaries later on according to news agency Reuters come to the conclusion that the Russian jet has been hit in Syrian air space. This ought to be apparent through analysis of thermal data".
With the Turks due to admit not more than 17 seconds of passing along their border, and taking into consideration the area, respectively how at 20 km per minute you can´t fly rectangles around miniature border fringes ...yada yada ... whatever be declared, it should be rather clear that this has been a case of deliberate aggression.
No matter whether for plenty of reasons mentioned above, or for the Turks own explanation, hence defense for their islamist Turkmen "brothers". (Will they on same token plan attacking China next, for their Osmanian empire´s brothers there or what? -But I guess neither would they dare to nor would NATO back them up. ... Though, these days nothing seems accountable anymore.)
That´s what you get from forming alliances with Middle-age lunatics and their choleric intellect of 12 year olds. (Unless Erdogan was even encouraged by his patrons to raise arms like back then Saddam was.)
-
The article assumes that the Russians may now a fortiori be bombing the Turkmen´s to dust.
Ruphus
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Date Nov. 26 2015 1:03:40
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to BarkellWH)
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So far, we have breaking news reports. I take them with a grain of salt. As I have said more than once: during a 43-year career in engineering and management I read only one major article about a project I was involved in which did not contain major errors of both fact and emphasis.
I except only the magazine "Aviation Week and Space Technology," who carefully checked their articles with experts, occasionally including me.
The erroneous articles appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Scientific American, as well as lesser lights. These were not reports of breaking news. They were in-depth articles that took weeks or months to put together. They contained glaring errors.
In the Turkish/Russian incident, with such narrow margins for error, no matter who turns out to be right, the case will be hard to prove. Not that the technical means do not exist to sort out the facts. Rather that people emotionally invested in one side or the other simply will not accept an account that goes against their side.
The Turkish/Russian incident differs in important respects from the Soviets shooting down Powers's U-2. His overflight of Russia was planned to take hours. He was well within the Soviet Union when shot down. The Russians had Powers to display to the world. It wasn't a question of whether he was in a space smaller than what I can see looking out my window as I type.
The Turkish/Russian incident differs from my friend, or others on similar missions getting shot down. They evaded capture, but took days to get out of the Soviet Union. It wasn't a question of just a few hundred meters, but the USA successfully concealed their missions from the world public.
Very few people knew the facts, and they kept quiet. Presumably the Soviets were ashamed that we could penetrate so successfully. We were not going to boast about violating international law, no matter what justification we saw for it at the time--not to mention the highly secret nature of any intelligence operation.
The Russian SU-24 and its crew, wherever it was when fired upon, wherever it was when it was hit, went down in Syria. Nobody seems to dispute that.
In my opinion the facts, whatever they may be, will be in dispute indefinitely. That'a why I said the facts didn't matter. In a dispute involving this incident, I think each side will believe their own "facts", whatever the truth may be.
At one time I nominated one of our former Presidents as the all-time lying champion of my lifetime. Not so much for the magnitude of his exploits, rather for his coolness and style in getting off obvious howlers, with a likable but falsely sincere smile. I believe Putin beats him by a wide margin--not only in style, but in substance as well. I haven't seen much of Erdogan's style, but for content he seems to have been in good form for the last few years.
Applying to be a contractor for the National Security Agency, I flunked the lie detector test twice, passed it the third time. Every time my answers were the same, the gospel truth. The first two times the guy with the buzz cut, cheap blue suit and shiny black shoes didn't like me or my answers. Few get the chance to take the test twice, nearly nobody gets a third chance, but it was arranged. The third time the nice young Mexican American woman from my home town of San Antonio seemed to think, "boys will be boys."
People disbelieve Putin, Erdogan or Obama simply because they hate them. The present situation is an ideal one for people to choose-or make up-whichever "facts" they like the best, since very few words, seconds or meters make all the difference.
Thus I conclude that it is the attitudes and actions of the political leaders which are important here, not the facts.
And if it's not already clear, I'm not on anybody's side here. I have nearly no confidence in the "facts" reported by the news people so far.
RNJ
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Date Nov. 26 2015 2:04:31
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
Very few people knew the facts, and they kept quiet. Presumably the Soviets were ashamed that we could penetrate so successfully. We were not going to boast about violating international law, no matter what justification we saw for it at the time--not to mention the highly secret nature of any intelligence operation.
The U-2s had been overflying the Soviet Union since 1956. The Soviets were aware of the flights but could not definitively link them to the United States and lacked the means to shoot them down until the Powers flight in May 1960. The United States, of course, kept them secret, and the Soviet Union could not admit that the U-2 was overflying its airspace because it could not identify its provenance and the fact that it lacked the means to bring it down.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 26 2015 2:42:38
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to BarkellWH)
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Lack of clarity on my part. I was talking about the lower altitude penetrations to exploit the Soviet air defenses. The Soviets at least had the wreckage of my friend's plane, so they were certain who it was, but they didn't make a big squawk.
If they had, we could have said, "Well they just put together some U.S. airplane junk, and they are lying about it."
If they had captured my friend, it might have been a different story.
My initial acquaintance with him was on trips to Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida panhandle. They had some real Soviet air defense radars there. We had got hold of them from certain Soviet "allies". i was just a kid in my late twenties, but apparently I had enough experience in radar countermeasures that they wanted me to look at them. Since I was just a kid my older friend was sent along as chaperone.
After a year or so I got it set up to test some of the stuff made by the company I worked for against the actual Soviet Radars.
My friend had been a fighter jock. There was a fighter outfit at Eglin, so there were a few alcohol fueled nights at the Officers' Club. I had been in the Army for a couple of years and worked another couple of years as a paramilitary in Central America. Being an Air Force brat helped me to fit in at the O-club, more or less. But I couldn't figure out my friend's connection to the intelligence business.
It wasn't until we were better acquainted a couple of years later that I heard about his intelligence work, flying into the Soviet Union intentionally to light up their air defense, which turned out to be pretty well known within certain circles.
RNJ
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Date Nov. 26 2015 3:01:47
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Richard Jernigan)
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quote:
I have nearly no confidence in the "facts" reported by the news people so far.
I have little confidence in so-called "facts" reported by news outlets in the best of times. That does not mean there are no facts to consider. There are calm, analytical career intelligence professionals, particularly in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), who are the best in the business. I was assigned to INR during one of my Washington tours and was impressed with the atmosphere of objective, dispassionate analysis that prevailed.
During my assignment to INR in the early 1980s, we handled the Argentine invasion of the Falklands, the U.S. carrier strike force in the Gulf of Sidra and shoot-down of two Libyan Su-22s Gaddafi sent up to confront us, the ongoing Polish crisis involving Solidarity and the potential for Soviet intervention, and myriad other crises and events. In all these cases the level of analysis and conclusions were superb.
I understand many Americans' cynicism regarding U.S. policy and its execution, but much of the cynicism reveals a lack of knowledge and understanding of the superb work of professionals they will never hear of and, frankly, do not even know exist. It is the mistake of superficially looking on the U.S. Government as a monolithic whole and lacks the nuance required to render a carefully considered judgment.
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Nov. 26 2015 3:19:31
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to BarkellWH)
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My personal involvement in the intelligence business extended over a period of 19 years. It was a quarter or a third of my work during that time. I was on the 12-member Joint Anti-Ballistic Missile Intelligence Review Board during 12 years of that time. Other panelists were leading national figures in radar and interceptor design. I was the radar countermeasures guy. The other guys knew how to build them, I knew how to keep them from doing their job. We had a permanent staff of about 40 or 50 people.
We got quarterly summaries of collections and analyses against the Soviet strategic defenses, both technical and human, from all intelligence agencies. The technical analyses were presented to us by the people who did them. Occasionally we went so far as to review the design of signal collection equipment, and even interviewed the operators on a few occasions when something particularly concerning was reported.
Our ordinary sessions lasted two or three weeks. Sometimes there were special get togethers when something new and potentially important came up. Our job was to validate or criticize, and to direct collection emphasis for the next quarter. Some of us also interviewed three important Soviet "immigrants" as they began to be called in the Carter administration. "Defector" was felt to be impolite. But most human intelligence was at second or third hand, to protect sources still in place.
I wrote a fair share of our inputs to National Intelligence Estimates. Rarely (on three occasions) I was on the losing side of a debate about certain reasonably significant conclusions. In each case we were vindicated by later definitive data.
In each case the Intelligence Estimate erred in giving the Soviets less capability than they in fact possessed. As far as I can tell, these intelligence errors had no significant effect on the Cold War, except for our side to waste some money developing ineffective weapon subsystems. But we could afford to waste the money.
There have been more significant intelligence failures. People as intelligent and experienced as Colin Powell believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I was out of the intelligence business by then, but while I listened to Powell's speech to the U.N., I thought, "That looks pretty thin. Still, maybe they are just playing their cards close to the chest to protect sources." Turns out it was even thinner than it looked, and they had no reliable sources.
This is not to impugn the professionalism, honesty or dedication of the analysts who worked the problem. But if Cheney and Rumsfeld said, "Your job is to find evidence of WMD" how else are you going to make your way in the world? The intelligence people dredged up every shred of info they could find. I am morally certain some must have dissented from the conclusions. It was the policy makers who drew the (foregone) conclusions and took the action.
A few years in the defense and intelligence businesses will make it clear to any conscious person that the U.S. government is neither monolithic, nor nearly as focused and adept at skullduggery as many believe it is.
Much of the damage done by the USA since WW II springs from misapprehension, misplaced good intentions, fumbling, or attempts at self defense under the impulse of fear. The Great Satan fearful? I'm here to tell you, during the Cold War, everybody who was anybody was scared sh1tless.
And some of the damage no doubt has been due to less admirable impulses. Nobody's perfect. When you're the most powerful country in the world, not being perfect is a big problem for everybody. We spent most of the past summer overseas. More than one person said to me, "You guys elect the leader of most of the civilized world. Please be careful who you vote for!"
The other day Larisa and I were talking. She said, "Where do all these conspiracy theories come from?"
Just off the top of my head, I replied, "For most of our history as a species we lived in small hunter gatherer bands of 20 or 30 people. In my experience, in a group that size a few people will dominate. If they are wise and well liked, the band will appreciate their leadership and do as well as external conditions allow. If the leadership is poor, people will tire of them and eventually get rid of them--violently if necessary. For 90-percent of our history, if things weren't going well, it was either due to the easily perceived will of the gods, or the fault of somebody you knew quite well."
"Nowadays, when the gods are a little more distant and society is far more complex, and more capable of throwing up bad results from good but inept intentions, and you know hardly anybody, it's still somebody's fault. 'They' are out to get us, the sons of bitches!"
But as vindication for my role in all this, I still fondly remember the time Larisa and I first visited the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC together, seven years ago. Larisa's mother was an aeronautical engineer in the Soviet Union. The Museum had more Soviet space stuff than the last time i had been there. Larisa, proud of Russian culture, was pointing out Soviet "firsts" in the space race. Teasing I asked, "So should the Soviet Union have won the Cold War?"
Larisa lived in the Soviet Union until she was thirteen. Her fair face turned red and she practically spat, "No! They were a bunch of evil bastards!"
The USA opposed the Soviet Union for a variety of reasons, some selfish, some noble, some misguided, in my experience mainly from fear. But opposing them was the right thing to do, evil bastards or not, by the account of every former Soviet citizen I have met--and I've met a few, both during and after the Cold War.
I was raised in a religious household where the distinction of good from evil was for the most part perfectly clear. All these decades later, I am at times confident in classifying results as good or bad. But after all these decades I am far less confident in assigning "good" or "bad" to the intentions that led to the results, unless I actually know how it happened, in detail, and feel that I knew the participants to some extent. It is all too easy to attribute evil intentions to mere ineptitude or lack of foresight, or any number of other failings, and to imagine that the bastards are out to get us.
Don't get me wrong. If we find ourselves in a bad situation we need to get busy and do something about it. But blaming somebody is not going to get us very far along that path. It's not going to help much in figuring out what to do.
For millennia we have told ourselves that we are the masters of creation. Now we are numerous enough and technologically powerful enough actually to play that role. So far we're haven't really been up to the job.
So shut up and play your guitar, RNJ!
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Date Nov. 26 2015 4:52:48
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Ruphus
Posts: 3782
Joined: Nov. 18 2010
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RE: Vive la France (in reply to Ruphus)
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Agreed with that the world being ever more complex and applied strategies ever more hard to look through. And increasingly not to be figured out in relative detail with the diverse side branches and apparent secondary effects.
However, to see "good but inept intentions" on grand scale policies is just as close to realism like possibly classifying my skepticism as "hate" and as partial being to any of the involved parties. I have sympathy for none of them. For none of them being engaged on behalf of the people / all of them of reckless agenda.
"Good" but only failed intentions behind far more than just 70 years of plutocracies' instigating and supporting of fake democracy and dictatures?
That actually takes preset perspective whether as wishful thinking or as bias for whatever background.
To miss out on omnipresent corruption, lobbyism and nepotism it takes deliberate rejection of daily ongoings.
There is no sober cause to miss out on how the list of undemocratic and inhumane arrangements for insuring power, resource and profiteering make for a convolute of shakespeareian dimension, while the number of humanitarian fig leafs and eventual sincere stands won´t even last for a flier.
In view of history and daily revealings, a suspecting worst case scenario as most realistic for actual scenes is only consequential.
Whereas, after all of post WWII concepts, to fancy national officials as brain storming for democratic and humanitarian sketches for their´s or other people is just plain out of this world. Unfortunately.
It is naive to even just figure them as autonomous, let alone integer personnel, seeing the delegates of industrials and pecuniary aristocrats that they actually are.
Don´t even consider it before a leveling of possession, introduction of direct democracy and the precondition of untouched information and education that it takes to be of sense.
Ruphus
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Date Nov. 26 2015 12:07:23
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