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Finnair Flight 915

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Re: Finnair Flight 915

#21

Post by Svip »

steve19 wrote: post #20
keketi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. A similar incident, also from Finland, was the downing of the passenger plane Kaleva. It was shot down by Soviet warplanes during peacetime. The vague publicly stated reason for the crash was that there was an explosion of foreign origin. The Finnish government knew that the plane was shot down by the Soviets, but chose to withhold this information for foreign policy reasons. The airline's CEO confided the…

So that begets the question, why do the Fins allow the Russian to use their planes as target practice by keeping silent?

Maybe there is some truth to the West German term 'Finlandisation'?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization

Re: Finnair Flight 915

#22

Post by [deleted] »

steve19 wrote: post #20
keketi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. A similar incident, also from Finland, was the downing of the passenger plane Kaleva. It was shot down by Soviet warplanes during peacetime. The vague publicly stated reason for the crash was that there was an explosion of foreign origin. The Finnish government knew that the plane was shot down by the Soviets, but chose to withhold this information for foreign policy reasons. The airline's CEO confided the…

So that begets the question, why do the Fins allow the Russian to use their planes as target practice by keeping silent?

[deleted]

Re: Finnair Flight 915

#23

Post by greedo »

steve19 wrote: post #20
keketi wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. A similar incident, also from Finland, was the downing of the passenger plane Kaleva. It was shot down by Soviet warplanes during peacetime. The vague publicly stated reason for the crash was that there was an explosion of foreign origin. The Finnish government knew that the plane was shot down by the Soviets, but chose to withhold this information for foreign policy reasons. The airline's CEO confided the…

So that begets the question, why do the Fins allow the Russian to use their planes as target practice by keeping silent?

When you're a small country living next to a very powerful one, you learn to mind your manners.

Re: Finnair Flight 915

#24

Post by pastrami_panda »

pintxo wrote: post #16
pastrami_panda wrote: post #14

Reminds me of the brutal sinking of the swedish passenger ship Hansa by soviet, 84 people died with only 2 surviving. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Hansa_(1899)

Hansa was sunk during WW2, I would not compare this to anything happening 1987.

Well, it clearly shows the 100+ year pattern of using foreign civilian transportation vessels for target practice.

Re: Finnair Flight 915

#25

Post by VBprogrammer »

greedo wrote: post #23
steve19 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that begets the question, why do the Fins allow the Russian to use their planes as target practice by keeping silent?

When you're a small country living next to a very powerful one, you learn to mind your manners.

Are you Finnish? I'm not convinced many Fins would love that characterisation.

Re: Finnair Flight 915

#26

Post by mikeash »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #25
greedo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're a small country living next to a very powerful one, you learn to mind your manners.

Are you Finnish? I'm not convinced many Fins would love that characterisation.

Probably not, but that doesn’t make it wrong. There’s even a special term for it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization

Re: Finnair Flight 915

#27

Post by apecat »

Svip wrote: post #21
steve19 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that begets the question, why do the Fins allow the Russian to use their planes as target practice by keeping silent?

Maybe there is some truth to the West German term 'Finlandisation'? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finlandization

Finn here. Finlandization is absolutely a thing, it's even mentioned OP's Fine Article on Finnair Flight 915 ;)

National-level Finnish politicians still weigh their statements on matters such as the imperialist endeavors of our beloved eastern neighbor. Other institutions are gradually becoming less self-censored.

Someone better informed, or just older than my 30-or-so years can probably be more precise and offer more and better examples.

But I have the sense that internationally renowned journalist Jessikka Aro's reporting on Russian disinfo ops wouldn't have been encouraged, yet translated to English and Russian by Finnish state-owned broadcaster Yle before, say, 2005 https://kioski.yle.fi/omat/jessikka-aros-prize-winning-stori...

Re: Finnair Flight 915

#28

Post by wazoox »

cantrevealname wrote: post #10

This is good story to recall whenever someone says that governments, organizations, and other big groups of people can't keep secrets. This was kept secret for 27 years (1987 to 2014)! I imagine that the pilots told their wives, friends, and other pilots all about it. Nobody was even asking them to keep it secret. Probably hundreds of people knew what happened, but the public and the Finnish Transport Safety Agency d…

Yes and no. Your explanation looks like an excuse for conspiracy theorists.

It was kept secret because it looks like nothing much happened, nobody nor the plane was harmed. I've seen weird things I can't explain, and I "kept them secret" because most probably, nothing very interesting (like E.T. landing) or serious (like people getting killed) happened.

Regarding the news, as complete information is impossible, the system is some sort of Chinese whispers game with multiple levels of filtering through multiple conflicting choices providing only a very remote glimpse of the real thing. There's nothing much we can do about it (except getting to the source and being very thorough on matters that you really care about, and live with the fact that you mostly know nothing).

Consider climate change: Comes a new IPCC report. It's a digest of millions of papers from various sources and sciences (no one is really called a "climatologist": climate science is made by oceanologists, glaciologists, wheather specialists, etc). IPCC writes a 4000 pages report (100x or 1000x reduction from the source material). From this report, a 40 pages digest is made. Newspapers write (and people read) half-page articles about the new IPCC report, by reading this 40 pages digest and little else. As almost nobody reads more than partial reports of this 40-pages digest, unsurprisingly misunderstanding and ignorance prevail.

Re: Finnair Flight 915

#29

Post by sfafsafdsaf »

pastrami_panda wrote: post #24
pintxo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hansa was sunk during WW2, I would not compare this to anything happening 1987.

Well, it clearly shows the 100+ year pattern of using foreign civilian transportation vessels for target practice.

The ship was built in the 19th century. It was sunk in WW2 when Sweden was a de-facto ally of the Nazis who, also, used citizens as target practice.

Re: Finnair Flight 915

#30

Post by sfafsafdsaf »

officemonkey wrote: post #17
pintxo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hansa was sunk during WW2, I would not compare this to anything happening 1987.

The North remembers.

And the South remembers the barbarian raids that ended only when Sweden's back was finally broken and Finland liberated.

See what I did there?

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