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Bolivia says Morales' plane diverted, apparently over Snowden

reuters.com

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Re: Bolivia says Morales' plane diverted, apparently over Snowden

#41

Post by spottr »

viraptor wrote: post #15
kriro wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not even aware that site exists. Pretty fascinating stuff, thx for posting. I'm surprised Poland let him pass if Snowden was really supposed to be on board. US-Polish relations are generally pretty good. Russia->South America without clashing with the US seems like an interesting problem. If Italy,France,Spain,Portugal is blocked you pretty much have to take a giant detour, go through Africa or try flying out e…

> US-Polish relations are generally pretty good. Are they that good? I got an impression they were pretty good while Poland was still promised things like joining the visa waiver program. Now I think many people are quite annoyed at the outcome / delaying for years. The whole project of rocket interception sites is also bringing up some interesting questions lately.

Currently Polish government is so pro-USA that our Minister of Foreign Affairs preemptively declined asylum for Snowden using his Twitter [1][2]. It's funny, because instead of building better relations with our neighbors "we" are constantly trying to please the US. This trend continues despite being given nothing but empty promises for years. So yeah, our gov likes to think and say (loudly) that those relations are pretty good -- hard to say if it's because they want to keep their face or for whatever reason. I think that US also likes this arrangement a lot, because free service can't be bad [3].

[1] https://twitter.com/sikorskiradek/status/351959186072027139 [polish]

[2] https://twitter.com/sikorskiradek/status/352062021082165249

[3] http://rt.com/news/poland-drops-charges-investigation-136/

Re: Bolivia says Morales' plane diverted, apparently over Snowden

#42

Post by jonmrodriguez »

marvin wrote: post #25
zokier wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the plane forced to land Forced how? I doubt anybody would be willing to shoot a civilian plane down to get Snowden, especially if the plane in question was also carrying a president or other high ranking people. So the pilot could relatively safely ignore any demands to land.

They still have to refuel...

Wouldn't it be possible and not that hard to outfit a private plane with supersize fuel tanks, occupying the entire cargo area?

Re: Bolivia says Morales' plane diverted, apparently over Snowden

#43

Post by mtgx »

alan_cx wrote: post #39
mtgx wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny, going from wanting to be the US' "51st state" to not even wanting to be a full EU member, which I think makes a lot more sense (to be one).

In general..... The anti EU people in the UK see the EU as socialist, liberal and left wing. The anti EU people in the UK are...... you guessed it... right wing. Fairly extreme right in UK terms, but probably still left wing by US standards. So, for them, the US is an aspiration further right. IMHO, the EU makes total sense, even if there are many problems with it, and even the US government have urged the UK to get…

But why do you think you'd do any better than Americans right now? From what I can tell, it's even worse in UK with GCHQ and with all the cameras and whatnot, and people have "gotten used to it".

Re: Bolivia says Morales' plane diverted, apparently over Snowden

#45

Post by jlgreco »

jonmrodriguez wrote: post #42
marvin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still have to refuel...

Wouldn't it be possible and not that hard to outfit a private plane with supersize fuel tanks, occupying the entire cargo area?

Fuel is a lot denser than cargo tends to be; I suspect this would be harder to do safely than you might expect. You'd need to make sure the balance is okay and stays okay throughout the flight (can't have it slosh around).

You could surely get Boeing to retrofit one of their planes like that, but I don't think it is something a 3rd party could slap together on short notice.

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