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Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

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Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#181

Post by redleader55 »

romanovcode wrote: post #161
intricatedetail wrote: post #54

Nothing material is going happen as Germany needs that gas pipe. It's obvious from the news that this hijack was done together with Russia.

Germany has general election this September and since Merkel is gone for good there is a huge possibility that the CDU (the majority party for several years now and was in favor of NordStream) will lose to green party. Green party is completely against NordStream2. So things might actually change. But then again, it is easy to criticize when you are not in power.

My feeling as someone looking from outside, is that Merkel was forced to continue and buy gas from Russia because of the public outcry against nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster. The Green party might not be so eager to support nuclear, either. So then, without nuclear, without gas, there isn't a lot of choice for Germany in terms of energy.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#182

Post by V-2 »

toyg wrote: post #178
V-2 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to have started writing your reply before (or instead of) reading my commment in full. My point was that if Snowden actually was there, they wouldn't land in Austria to begin with. Unlike the RyanAir flight, the plane wasn't forcefully grounded (under a false pretense). It just wasn't let through any further, but returning was still an option.

Because of the constraints on fuel, there was no realistic alternative to going down. And again, once that happened, the fact the Austrian government sent a search party says it all, no matter how hard you want to spin it.

"Because of the constraints on fuel, there was no realistic alternative to going down"

Source? Wasn't it a Transatlantic flight?

"And again, once that happened, the fact the Austrian government sent a search party says it all, no matter how hard you want to spin it"

This doesn't contradict nor invalidate my point at all.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#183

Post by elliekelly »

mikro2nd wrote: post #104
mrweasel wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This will likely have no consequences to the regime in Belarus That's the problem with sanctions, at some point you run of of things to take away. From then on your target can pretty much do what ever they want, knowing that things can't really get any worse.

Not so. Sanctions can be devastatingly effective applied by a significant majority of the world over a length of time. Sanctions were the instrument that brought an end to the Apartheid regime in South Africa: sanctions, having brought the South African economy to its knees, were a key factor in forcing the ruling regime to the negotiating table. Yes, in some fairytale world the ruling National Party could have conti…

What about Cuba? North Korea? Iran? They’ve been sanctioned for decades with devastating human consequences and little to no sign of those sanctions spurring any meaningful change.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#184

Post by ridethebike »

toyg wrote: post #133
input_sh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you talking like there's no middle between not doing anything and a full on invasion? From the top of my head: - Divert EU planes to avoid Belarus. - Prevent Belarus' aeroplanes from flying over the EU. - Increase sanctions towards Belarus officials. etc etc

Yes, and all of them take time to be put into motion. A lot of different parties will have to agree, including immoral profit-driven scum like Ryanair. That's what democracy looks like in practice; it ain't as pretty and orderly as a tyrannical dictatorship, where one guy says something and everyone complies right away. All of that means it's early to complain about any lack of European reaction. In some areas there…

Yes, but, remember mh-17 - the plane with 200 dutch citizens that russians blasted out of the sky in 2014? I'm sure strong response from the EU is coming in any minute now.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#185

Post by [deleted] »

ramblerman wrote: post #128
Iv wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they have already proved time and time again they are a dog which is all bark and no bite. People keep saying that as if that was a kind of universally acknowledged wisdom. Here is a map of the 39 countries targeted by European sanctions (not counting the ones specifically targeting ISIS territories or various regions of Ukraine): https://sanctionsmap.eu/#/main There has been sanctions against Belarus for a while,…

I'm an EU citizen we obviously have a different viewpoint on this but the link you sent to me shows precisely all bark in my opinion. Holding off on a few weapons exports here and there is meaningless. > People keep saying that If it's the general concensus there may be some reason for that. I'm sure Belarus wouldnt try this with a US plane. > Turkey doesn't have to "watch", they also received sanctions after the dri…

[deleted]

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#186

Post by romanovcode »

redleader55 wrote: post #181
romanovcode wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany has general election this September and since Merkel is gone for good there is a huge possibility that the CDU (the majority party for several years now and was in favor of NordStream) will lose to green party. Green party is completely against NordStream2. So things might actually change. But then again, it is easy to criticize when you are not in power.

My feeling as someone looking from outside, is that Merkel was forced to continue and buy gas from Russia because of the public outcry against nuclear power following the Fukushima disaster. The Green party might not be so eager to support nuclear, either. So then, without nuclear, without gas, there isn't a lot of choice for Germany in terms of energy.

Probably you're right, however if they win and suddenly start supporting russian gas they would be looking like complete hyporcites.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#187

Post by morelisp »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #169
struxure wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criticism is allowed unless you have ambitions to work in government. Critique of the government has become actually quite common in the Russian stand up comedy scene. There are some exceptions, like you cannot show any public disrespect to the Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov (you can google how people apologise to him). Edit (forgot to mention): also, participating in anti-government protests often resul…

> participating in anti-government protests often results in people losing their jobs or being expelled from the universities This is quickly becoming the situation in the US if you criticize popular political movements.

For example, there have been many documented cases in the past few years of people getting fired over supporting the BDS movement - or in a few cases, not actively supporting anti-BDS movements.

... oh, that's not what you meant?

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#188

Post by lampington »

newsbinator wrote: post #152
raverbashing wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good, so you're in favour of an EU army? Armed invasion of Bielorussia to kidnap the guy back? The geopolitical armchair experts complain more about responses than actually giving realistic suggestions to give. (Sure, we can cut Belarus out, and see thousands of "Russian tourists" go for a holiday there right after - maybe that would be a good response?). And yes, you won't see me defending Borrell.

Friendly note: people from the country of Belarus call themselves "Belarusians" (pronounced like "bela-roo-sians", not like "bela-russians"), and take offence at the term "Bielorussia".

That's interesting! From my (admittedly very weak) understanding of Cyrillic, I'd expect Беларусь to be pronounced with a "y" sound as part of the "e", similarly to the vowel at the start of Ельцин (Yeltsin).

Presumably that's because of a lack of orthographic knowledge on my part... or is it something more subtle (say, the belorusian language differing from Russian)? I have a vague memory of languages in the former Yugoslavia being either "ekavsky" or "ijekavsky".

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#189

Post by ghostwriter »

notahacker wrote: post #102
sneak wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that they were refused entry into the airspaces of several countries Countries that minutes earlier they were cleared to fly through, and had planned to fly through. Had they ignored the refusal and proceeded as planned? Same ending: fighter jets. Let’s not pretend here that this is different.

Clearance to fly through and clearance to make an emergency landing due to doubts about the fuel gauge (we have the cockpit audio discussing the latter...) are not the same thing. If there was really a dastardly plot to capture the guy that wasn't even on the aircraft, they'd have gone for fighter jets, not "don't land in our country, land in the country you're flying over where a diplomat will be mildly undiplomatic…

One could argue that figher jets were not used at that time to keep the pretence of legitimacy of the entire episode. And that pretence is important, because when you publicly declare that the force is now the standard, the most unscrupulous bully wins over bullies with moral limits or political liabilities. Belarus, on the other hand, in its current political environment has no image to lose.

Re: Baltic airlines reroute flights to avoid Belarus airspace

#190

Post by ceejayoz »

YarickR2 wrote: post #134
kofejnik wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the Chinese you can tell when they cannot even refer to, say or admit certain things: e.g. massacres. But they would say "we are not being censored" It is exactly the same in Russia, you may not mention certain historical facts at all, e.g. Germany-USSR cooperation during 1939-1941

Well, this is fine example of so-called "lie", plain and simple. You may mention it, and often it is being mentioned by all kinds of media. Things that really are frowned upon are highly controversial topics like alleged mass raping by the Red Army in Germany during WW2 . Other than that, no holds are barred, and things are discussed freely; I'd say hot topics are more frequent in Russian media than in the US one ; b…

It seems you're quibbling on which topics can't be talked about, not that there are some.
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