h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A number of people nevertheless tried to respond to the point, and unsurprisingly AA has completely ignored them and instead just focussed on personality type stuff of people who haven't answered in a way he likes.

No change there then.

>>
kea loves to have people elaborate, and yet only posts emoticons
<<

Yeah, but I'm known for posting alot of words (some might say too many), so there should be some appreciation when I post succinctly . I also didn't think there was anything to say, as Azathoth had summed it up pretty neatly.


>>
The British people see everyone else's actions as hostile or aggresive, but not their own. Case in point, this thread.<<

Which does seem to the be the real point of the thread (rather than Russians and NATO), so maybe we should be talking about that.

"It's sad to see the spin..."

Isn't it just.

That poor Mr Putin - not an aggressive bone in his body.

And now the serious post...

To be honest, the Russians are making a point more than anything else. Russia was in a terrible state in the 1990s and was practically a ward of the West whose money it needed to stop it going the way of Yugoslavia. It was partly a two-way relationship (Russia knew the West was too afraid of Russia falling to chaos to ever cut-off help, hence their confidence in being aggressive over the 1999 Yugoslav war) but Russia found it humiliating. With the strong resurrection of the economy, the loss of need of Western assistance and Putin's more aggressive Presidency the Russians are finding their feet and sense of purpose on the world stage again. And this time they don't have an unworkable economic system holding them back.

I think the current state of Russia is a good example of how chaotic and unpredictable the world is. In the mid-90s, Yeltsin made a big play of how there were no "ideological" barriers between Russia and the West and how we were all going to be friends and it was widely assumed that Russia would, like Germany in the 1950s, become just another European country that we'd eventually be going to on holiday. It didn't happen for various reasons. One is the now-discredited "End of History" philosophy which reasoned that because Russia had ditched communism it would inevitably take-up the liberal democratic politics of Western Europe. Not only has that not happened but the West's encouragement of Yeltsin's authoritarian tendencies in the 1990s (in the name of short-term goals - never a good idea, historically) helped stifle opposition and paved the way for Putin's more confident authoritarianism. We are now faced with a strong Russia with a growing economy which has is stuck in the political situation of the Yeltsin era and shows no serious signs of changing.

Just to put the record straight so ta squeak , it couldn't have been in the 70's I saw an english plane fly by /past a russian one , It had to be 1982 cause in the 70's I always came home from america (the other side)

1982 was my first time home using aeroflop and again in 85 but it was a grand sight, this plane just came up from the left hand side and went straight across in front of us very fast ,I thought it was just standard procedure at the time n made me feel good to be british , I also remember seeing the mouth of the thames below in front of us so I reckon we were 5 -6 miles out , but it was a while ago

I know that 'scrambling' is the correct term for launching a response, but what I find sinister is the BBC's choice of words for two different, but parallel articles:

In that posted by arnie, the RAF fighters were 'launched' or 'were scrambled'.
In this article, describing the USAF reaction to a similar incident in the Pacific, the BBC says that the US pilots 'scrambled to track them'.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6938856.stm

1. You scramble to intercept, not to 'track'
2. Tracking is done from the ground

Compare :

a: RAF fighters were scrambled to intercept...
b: USAF fighters scrambled to intercept...

Gotcha Beeb.

alec.

Got some of that

"but what I find sinister"

I'm possibly in on teh conspiracies but dare I suggest...I dunno...a mistake?

You can track something using anything you have available - if you don't have sufficient coverage from your ground radars then you launch something that has. I don't think the choice of words is particularly significant.

However - it sounds like the US action was equally as "aggressive". More so in fact since they used terms like "prepared to repel" instead of just "identify".