Sunday 1 January 2017

The RA-85572 Black Sea Air Crash. Pt 2.

This should be read as a direction continuation of Part 1; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/the-ra-85572-black-sea-air-crash.html

Since writing that post there has been another apparent terrorist attack in Istanbul, Turkey. That is very much Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan's response to events of the past week. Including the RA-85572 crash. So in order to explain that I first have to finish this.

RA-85572 was a Tupolev Tu-154. This type of aircraft first entered service in 1968 and quickly became the workhorse of both the Russian airforce and a number of civilian air carriers although with production ending in 2013 many civilian of civilian operators have begun to phase it out.

Over the course of that 48 year history some of the more than 1,000 Tu-154's have been involved in occasional crashes and incidents. The 2001 shooting down of Siberia Airlines flight 1812 for example.

However probably the most famous Tu-154 crash occurred on April 10th 2010 (10/4/10).

Here a Polish operated Tu-154 crashed while attempting to land at Smolensk North Airport in Smolensk, Russia. The 96 people killed in the crash represented almost all of the leading figures of the Polish Establishment at the time. So there were 18 Members of Parliament (MP's), the President, the head of the central bank, the head of the Polish military and numerous members of the defence staff.

The cause of the crash is well known. With the airport shrouded in thick fog the pilots concluded that it would be unsafe to attempt a landing. However the President's Chief of Staff overruled them ordering them to land. Due to poor visibility the pilots missed the runway and crashed into a wooded area.

The event was so shocking though that it spawned numerous conspiracy theories. Some of these blame the Russians while others blame then Polish Prime Minister and now European Union (EU) President Donald Tusk. The story goes that Tusk killed the opposition MP's to allow him to make the economic reforms needed to allow Poland to join the EU. I should point out though that none of these conspiracy theories are true.

As I mentioned in reference to the use of a Polish truck in the December 19th (19/12/16) terror attack in Berlin, Germany Poland is seen as key factor in the EU's response to the war in Shamali Province and the associated sanctions against Russia.

One of the things that is causing alarm about Poland's governing Justice & Law Party (PiS) is that in 2015 the re-opened the investigation into the Smolensk crash and once again started peddling the particularly anti-Russian conspiracy theories. Another thing that has been causing alarm about the PiS is that they have started pursuing an aggressively Catholic, Conservative agenda including attempts to completely ban abortion.

So people in the west can continue to try and pretend that there aren't significant religious and racial elements to the war in Shamali Province. It's not going to make it true though.

By referencing the Smolensk air crash the RA-85572 also references another air crash. The March 19th 2016 (19/3/16) crash of FlyDubai flight B981 at Rostov-on-Don airport in Rostov, Russia. In turn that crash highlights the importance of never underestimating the random coincidence.

B981 had taken off from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). As such it could be seen as a reference to the bombing of 7K9268 or the way that MH17 has been used to punish Russia over its long-standing opposition to Islamist terror groups such as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the allied Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF).

Rostov-on-Don is where Viktor Yanukovych fled to after US-backed Fascists overthrew the Ukrainian government. The weather conditions at the time of the crash were similar to those at the 2010 Smolensk crash.

So when the news of the B981 crash broke it certainly set of a lot of alarm bells.

However it turns out it was just a plane crash. Being a budget airline FlyDubai didn't want to incur the extra costs associated with diverting to another airport. So they put immense pressure on the pilots to land at Rostov-on-Don which is a notoriously difficult airport to land at. 

During the course of the landing the aircraft was caught in a strong cross-wind. The pilots were no longer able to control the aircraft and it crashed. According to the cockpit voice recorder the pilots died screaming.

The big event of last week was that I went to visit my lesbian mothers on December 27th (27/12/16). Russian President Putin had hoped to use the confusion my rather unconventional family causes to exert pressure on delegates at Syria conference that had originally been scheduled for the same day.

As I've mentioned one of the more controversial issues is that some of my mothers' neighbours are Turkish. This is another example of a random coincidence. However it seems that while Putin was planning to use the uncertainty to exert pressure on others he was hardly certain of the answer himself.

The classic example of the power of random coincidences is the First World War.

This was caused by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo, Serbia on June 28th 1914 (28/6/14). 

In order to achieve this the Serb "Black Hand" group sent six assassins to line the route that the Archduke was parading along in an open topped car. The first assassin threw a bomb at the car wounding the Archduke. As the Archduke was taken to hospital and then to the Town Hall reception he'd been invited to attend the other five assassins melted away with the crowds.

The assassin who actually killed the Archduke - Gavrilo Princip - threw away his bomb and stopped to have coffee at a cafe. On the return from the Town Hall the Archduke's driver took a wrong turn. Realising his mistake he stopped to turn the car around. In a random coincidence he stopped right outside the cafe where Princip was sitting. Princip simply stepped out of the cafe and shot the Archduke.

So yeah. Four years of war and 17 million dead all because of a random coincidence.

Although this obviously all occurred before the 1961 Vienna Convention the so-called Central Powers - the Austria-Hungarian Empire, the German Empire and the Ottoman Empire -  used the assassination as grounds to declare war on Serbia and its allies including Russia, France, Belgium and the UK.

So I think you can understand why the December 19th (19/12/16) assassination of the Russian Ambassador by a Turkish police officer is considered extremely serious.

17:25 on 1/1/17 (UK date).