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Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

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Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#141

Post by dash2 »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #104
inglor_cz wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, democracies are usually much younger than the underlying societies. For example, the vast majority of Europe is now democratic. 200 years ago, most of Europe was autocratic and even exceptions like the UK were at most very incomplete democracies with limited suffrage. But the constituent nations and ethnicities are very much the same, even though political boundaries have shifted; an English, Polish or Spanish…

But most democratic countries in the world are not in Europe. Most of them were born as democracies: India, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, USA, etc.

US society existed and was plausibly high-trust for more than 150 years before 1776.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#142

Post by sofixa »

Ozzie_osman wrote: post #88
ngneer wrote: post #13

A rather well-written piece. My takeaway is that the French investigators are pros and the Egyptians are hacks. And that safety culture matters. One must not bend the facts to draw a desired conclusion. One must review the data without bias, or else recuse oneself.

It's easy to say this sitting in the west, especially since Egypt is run by an authoritarian government. I'll point out though that even sans-authoritarianism, there are plenty of examples of Western "investigators" arriving at politicized and often false conclusions with far worse consequences. The history of the CIA/FBI is chock-full of examples. And you don't even have to go that far back or dig that deep... The w…

> there are plenty of examples of Western "investigators" arriving at politicized and often false conclusions with far worse consequences. The history of the CIA/FBI is chock-full of examples

BEA and the NTSB really really cannot be compared to CIA/FBI/DGSE. They are professionals with clear and apolitical goals. See the NTSB and BEA regularly criticising various government agencies, including in this case BEA being raided by the transport gendermes. Hell, even the MAK (equivalent air crash investigation agency for most of the former Soviet Union) dares criticise and publicly shit on and get into disputes with on government agencies not doing their job.

It's the Egyptians who are really the counterexample here in being absurdly terrible at their jobs. Wether it's just sheer incompetence, corruption, nepotism, or not wanting to embarrass the regime, we'll never know. Maybe it's a mix of the above. But especially in this crash, there is no reason for them to be so absurdly terrible at their jobs, there is nothing for them to be covering up (unlike the previous crash which was genuinely embarrassing for the country).

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