Comments on: Breaking: Iran admits it shot down the Ukrainian plane by mistake

By: Mentus

Mentus — Sun, 12 Jan 2020 06:45:10 +0000

Ace-of-Spades-plagiarizer Jonah Goldberg throws dubs on your Franco-phobia:

Matzneff Flap Is a Cautionary Tale for Cultural Aristocrats

Matzneff, now 83, spent decades as a French literary darling. His work was supported by leading newspapers and literary publications. He’d appear on highbrow TV shows where he’d regale interviewers and audiences with the sublime pleasures of having sex with children in France and on sex tours of southeast Asia.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/gabriel-matzneff-controversy-cautionary-tale-cultural-aristocrats/

By: Richard Aubrey

Richard Aubrey — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 22:26:23 +0000

A conspiracy theory generally requires a beneficiary. It’s been reported that the 1985 Gander crash which killed 250 troopers from the 101st was followed by the site being bulldozed. Who gains? Maybe the guys whose job was to keep bombs off aircraft. They’d already lost Air India earlier that year.
Some moron in DC wanted the files sealed for seventy years. I don’t know if that was upheld for very long, but its mere mention sparked discussion of who would benefit–because without someone to benefit, why bother?
The Canadian Air Safety Board thought it was icing. Which is to say, five guys voted icing and four a bomb. Flip one guy….
Point is, trying to decide who benefits in Teheran is probably the key. So that involves either “showing” somebody, or killing somebody.
Who is “shown” by this massacre? And why kill somebody this way when his disappearance is easily arranged by the regime?
As to the first, the likelihood is that the US response was not as expected but the act could not be called off. The second…why bother? Those missiles aren’t cheap. A beating to death is just good exercise.
So we’re left with the defence guys had been told to expect a US response, which didn’t come.
Any other possible beneficiaries? Without a beneficiary, we hardly have anything to talk about.

By: Roy Nathanson

Roy Nathanson — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 22:07:06 +0000

Aesop Fan,

They are one of those “setbacks” I mentioned. ?

By: AesopFan

AesopFan — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 19:43:42 +0000

Roy Nathanson on January 11, 2020 at 2:18 pm said:
…
It is unnecessary and offensive to write off entire groups of humans as hopeless. However, we should also recognize that some groups will get there at their own pace and time. Progress cannot be imposed or forced.
* * *
I’m thinking of making an exception for the Democratic Party.

By: Brian Morgan

Brian Morgan — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 19:32:47 +0000

Re: the downing of the passenger jet, I speculate that the pilot was forced to take off at gun point in order to create an incident that could be blamed on Trump. I know of no rational pilot or commercial airline that would fly hours after mullahs worked ‘mourners’ into a frenzy. Delay the flight for 24-48 hours and then reassess the situation.

By: Roy Nathanson

Roy Nathanson — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 19:18:16 +0000

At the risk of getting blasted from all sides, in general, Art Deco is correct, by all measurable statistics, the world is becoming more civilized. Progress is not always constant everywhere or all the time. There are setbacks. But the trend is clear. The world is safer and healthier for humans than it has ever been and it is still improving.

It is unnecessary and offensive to write off entire groups of humans as hopeless. However, we should also recognize that some groups will get there at their own pace and time. Progress cannot be imposed or forced.

By: Tuvea

Tuvea — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 18:37:52 +0000

Art Deco,

Yes, a few Frenchmen did save some Jews. Most did not.
You can say that about any European country. Even Germany had brave souls who hid Jews. That does NOT make the entire country civilized.

Perhaps, I suppose, you actually believe that a few good people make a place civilized. I don’t.

Come on, give us some EVIDENCE that the French are civilized. If they are as wonderful as you tell us there should be millions of examples from which to choose.

By: Mentus

Mentus — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 18:35:07 +0000

Iran didn’t “unintentionally” shoot down this plane. It intentionally shot down what the defense unit thought was an incoming hostile object. How they could have decided that, given its trajectory coming from Tehran, is a question.

Is this a still a question of technical expertise? For something this important, you got your best guy on the radar monitor, right? Your best guy is that bad? Doubt it. I know what their fall-back position will be:

The flash of light you saw in the sky was not a Tor M1 missile. Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.

By: neo

neo — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 18:10:44 +0000

Art Deco, et al: Here are statistics for murders in Montana by sex and race in 2013 and 2014 (p 39 chart). It's interesting. In Montana, most homicides are between acquaintances and/or lovers (that's on another page) and they are overwhelmingly committed by white people. But more of the murders are committed by women than in most places (18% of murders in Montana are by women and 14% by white women). Montana, however, has such a small population that the actual number of murder is not large: 16 in 2013 and 12 in 2014. That's a pretty small n.

By: sdferr

sdferr — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 17:54:36 +0000

Masih Alinejad, twitter: “3-More protest videos from protests in Tehran against the Revolutionary Guards.

Protests are anti-regime in character. They’re chanting ‘murderer Khamenei'(Supreme Leader).

Iranians are indignant with the regime after it compromised the lives of 176 people during a plane crash”