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Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile

arstechnica.com

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Re: Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile

#31

Post by Krasnol »

klez wrote: post #26
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ars Technica needs to issue a correction to the story. Otherwise I'm going to lose considerable respect for them. There's a fine line between making a genuine mistake and lying to your readers.

I think if you point it out to them with a correct translation from the Italian police site they will correct it. Also, they're not the only one who made that mistake. The independent said the same thing. It would be interesting to know where the original mistranslation originated from.

I guess it came from the origin of the main suspect Fabio Del Bergiolo. He was was a candidate for Forza Nuova in 2010. FN is a pro-Kremlin far-right party.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Force_(Italy)

Re: Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile

#32

Post by HelloNurse »

klez wrote: post #26
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ars Technica needs to issue a correction to the story. Otherwise I'm going to lose considerable respect for them. There's a fine line between making a genuine mistake and lying to your readers.

I think if you point it out to them with a correct translation from the Italian police site they will correct it. Also, they're not the only one who made that mistake. The independent said the same thing. It would be interesting to know where the original mistranslation originated from.

It might be a typical American level of ignorance of geography and foreign politics. A wrong assumption of Ukrainian separatists in a Russian land is an obvious mistake to make.

Re: Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile

#33

Post by stareatgoats »

FDS wrote: post #10
skrebbel wrote: post #6

Anyone with more insight into all of this than me who can explain why they went to fight on the Russian side? I mean, there surely were neo-nazis around on both sides of that conflict, right? Just different flavours? I wonder how you pick who to support if your core ideology is that "people different from us are bad".

They didn‘t fight on the russian side. For some reason english media mistranslated original press release. https://www.poliziadistato.it/articolo/225d2c47fb2c9ef299497... It says "avevano combattuto nella regione ucraina del Donbass contro gli indipendentisti". So they were fighting against separatists.

This does not seem to be correct, Forza Nuova seems indeed to be supporting the (Russian backed) separatists. According to the Wikipedia article (with sources) [0], the party used to be allied with neo-fascist Svoboda but switched sides during the Donbass conflict and is in return also backed by Russia.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Force_(Italy)#Presence_out...

Re: Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile

#34

Post by [deleted] »

skrebbel wrote: post #6

Anyone with more insight into all of this than me who can explain why they went to fight on the Russian side? I mean, there surely were neo-nazis around on both sides of that conflict, right? Just different flavours? I wonder how you pick who to support if your core ideology is that "people different from us are bad".

[deleted]

Re: Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile

#35

Post by aksss »

AndyMcConachie wrote: post #20
FDS wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn‘t fight on the russian side. For some reason english media mistranslated original press release. https://www.poliziadistato.it/articolo/225d2c47fb2c9ef299497... It says "avevano combattuto nella regione ucraina del Donbass contro gli indipendentisti". So they were fighting against separatists.

Ars Technica needs to issue a correction to the story. Otherwise I'm going to lose considerable respect for them. There's a fine line between making a genuine mistake and lying to your readers.

> I'm going to lose considerable respect for them

Hahaha.. as if the bank account was that full to begin with

Re: Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile

#36

Post by Elzear »

FDS wrote: post #10
skrebbel wrote: post #6

Anyone with more insight into all of this than me who can explain why they went to fight on the Russian side? I mean, there surely were neo-nazis around on both sides of that conflict, right? Just different flavours? I wonder how you pick who to support if your core ideology is that "people different from us are bad".

They didn‘t fight on the russian side. For some reason english media mistranslated original press release. https://www.poliziadistato.it/articolo/225d2c47fb2c9ef299497... It says "avevano combattuto nella regione ucraina del Donbass contro gli indipendentisti". So they were fighting against separatists.

Can't "indipendentisti" mean in favor of Ukraine's independence to Russia?

Re: Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile

#37

Post by simonh »

willvarfar wrote: post #7
skrebbel wrote: post #6

Anyone with more insight into all of this than me who can explain why they went to fight on the Russian side? I mean, there surely were neo-nazis around on both sides of that conflict, right? Just different flavours? I wonder how you pick who to support if your core ideology is that "people different from us are bad".

Yeah! The Ukrainians had small but vocal numbers of fascist volunteers on _their_ side, and that got a lot of bad press and the Russian side went to great lengths to paint the whole of Ukraine as fascist. So its really surprising they'd have fascists going to the _Russian_ side.

Russia is selling itself as a counter to liberal, internationalist hegemony in the form of the EU. Ukraine wants to join the EU and is economically supported by the EU and broke away from Russia's political sphere over it, and the alt right hates the EU political project. This makes Russia and the European alt right natural allies.

Re: Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile

#38

Post by yborg »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #30

How dangerous is one of these things without the surrounding targeting system? And how useful would this be to a foreign government that somehow doesn't have access to other air-to-air missiles? It seems to me like a bit of a sensationalist headline, and the more dangerous weapons are actually the small arms.

Not very, since it lacks a warhead. And it's a late-70s era missile, so not even valuable for reverse engineering.

Re: Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile

#39

Post by Karto »

FDS wrote: post #10
skrebbel wrote: post #6

Anyone with more insight into all of this than me who can explain why they went to fight on the Russian side? I mean, there surely were neo-nazis around on both sides of that conflict, right? Just different flavours? I wonder how you pick who to support if your core ideology is that "people different from us are bad".

They didn‘t fight on the russian side. For some reason english media mistranslated original press release. https://www.poliziadistato.it/articolo/225d2c47fb2c9ef299497... It says "avevano combattuto nella regione ucraina del Donbass contro gli indipendentisti". So they were fighting against separatists.

I'm coming to wonder whether it could be a typo in the Italian Police's report, that other media may have corrected. Pretty much all media have written that they fought ALONG the separatists. See French Le Monde and German Deutsche Welle right now, who agree that'd be PRO separatist.

Re: Italian police raid of neo-fascist militants finds air-to-air missile

#40

Post by benj111 »

napolux wrote: post #29
benj111 wrote: post #15

How useful is this in actuality? Could I launch it from the ground, or does it need to be launched from the air? Could i just strap it to a Cessna, or does it need other systems (radar?) to work? Does it need the original war head, or can you attach any old explosive device. In short, if I as a potential terrorist wanted to shoot down a plane, would this be a reasonable starting point?

Italian here, in the news they said it looks like the rocket was empty. So explosive was probably removed to be used by itself.

The linked article said it didn't have a warhead. Are you saying it didn't have any propellant either? In that case an expensive tube?
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