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Evidence that the plane and passengers survived a water landing and were taken to be kept as prisoners by Soviet government.
Frequently Asked Questions Concerning the Downing of KAL Flight 007
Korean Airlines Flight 007
Evidence that the plane and passengers survived a water landing and were taken to be kept as prisoners by Soviet government.
Frequently Asked Questions Concerning the Downing of KAL Flight 007
"It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." --- Voltaire ---
-- Исправьте мои ошибки --
Hmmm...... isn't this a bit irrelevant in todays world?
Plus, the idea that large numbers of people were kept prisoners etc seems like a conspiracy theory of the first order.
It would seem to anyone who is still a prisoner and to the 22 children who were adopted out to small communities not to be irrelevant for them.
"It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong." --- Voltaire ---
-- Исправьте мои ошибки --
Всё это была американская провокация. Самолёт, скорее всего, был на автопилоте, и пассажиров там не было.
Not at all, Hanna. Now, THIS would be "a conspiracy theory of the first order", assuming Marcus were serious:Originally Posted by Hanna
(Although I think he meant this sarcastically.)
Говорит Бегемот: "Dear citizens of MR -- please correct my Russian mistakes!"
Нет, я говорю вполне серьёзно. То, что это провокация, факт. Насчёт второй части уверенности нет, но это вероятно.Although I think he meant this sarcastically
Talking with some Russians about politics is like talking with somebody about their boss when the boss is in the same room.Not at all, Hanna. Now, THIS would be "a conspiracy theory of the first order", assuming Marcus were serious:
(Although I think he meant this sarcastically.)
What do you mean? That people are scared of saying what they really think?
I don't think so, not based on people who participate here. I think it was perhaps like that, to a degree during the Stalin era and for a while later. But I think it was a very long time since a Russian person was seriously concerned about expressing a political view.
And in addition, this is an anonymous forum, hosted in the USA.
They only exception, I think, might be perhaps government officials, based on what I have been reading.
If they value their career they should probably not be too outspoken. But that is not very different from anywhere else.
If you think I am wrong, please say, but that is my impression.
Маркус, позвольте познакомить вас с Вилльяамом Оккамом...
If you think it's вероятно that since 1983, the US and S. Korean governments have paid thousands of actors to pretend that they're the grieving friends and family of 269 imaginary people from KAL 007, then, evidently, I completely misunderstand the meaning of вероятно...
That's why I said to Hanna that there are different degrees of conspiracy theory. For a government to make 269 real people completely disappear is merely маловероятно. For a government to make 269 non-existent people "real" (by pretending they were on an empty airplane, and then hiring hundreds or thousands of other people to pretend that they are mourning the deaths of these imaginary persons, and to maintain this fiction for decades) is not merely improbable; it's nearly невозможно.
Then again, there are some 911 Troofers who continue to believe that no one died aboard American Airlines Flight 77, because there was no AA Flight 77 at all, and the Pentagon was actually hit by a missile, not by an airliner with almost 70 persons on board; and that people who claim to have known the passengers and crew of Flight 77 are delusional, or paid liars; that the cell-phone calls made by terrified passengers right before they died never happened, etc.
So by comparison, Marcus seems almost reasonable here.
P.S. As to whether this was an American провокация -- I think it's fair to say that the U.S. government did their best to needlessly demonize the Soviet government AFTER the shootdown happened. For example, Reagan's characterization of the incident as "barbarism" was unnecessarily provocative (and Reagan's words seem especially rash when you consider that the shootdown of Iran Air 655 by the USS Vincennes happened less than five years later). Also, I completely agree that the US was already engaging in "provocation" BEFORE the destruction of KAL 007, with regular USAF fly-overs of Soviet space earlier in 1983. So in both those senses, I agree it's a fact that there was провокация from the US side.
However, I reject the idea that the US government in some way either planned or hoped for the shootdown of KAL 007. In addition to the points I made above about the logistical difficulties in faking the deaths of so many people, there's also the point that both the US and Japanese governments compromised their own intelligence capabilities by voluntarily releasing their recordings of intercepted Soviet radio communications after the incident (as a result of which, the USSR quite predictably upgraded their codes). Why would the US and Japan have done something to make things more difficult for the CIA, if KAL 007 was part of some complicated CIA plan?
Also, by the way, "Occam's Razor" has been paraphrased in many ways, but the original Latin phrasing is often given as Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem (Не следует множить сущее без необходимости; "Entities should not be multiplied without necessity").
And the "KAL 007 was a nearly-empty spy plane with no passengers" theory thus violates the бритва (razor) in a quite literal way -- it "multiplies entities" by requiring that a far larger number of persons (namely, the hired actors pretending to be loved ones of the imaginary passengers) must be participating in the conspiracy.
The "passengers were abducted alive by the Soviets" theory could in principle be done with a smaller number of conspirators, but it still violates Occam's Razor (in my opinion) because of the significant number of orphanage officials, etc., who would be involved in re-settling the kidnapped passengers within the USSR.
But if one seeks to explain why only two confirmed bodies were found (on Japanese beaches) from a plane that had 269 people on board, the simplest and smallest conspiracy (if one wants a conspiracy at all) would be the Soviet navy recovered a significant number of floating bodies/body parts, but sailors were instructed to lie and say that they'd found zero bodies; and the recovered bodies were incinerated or secretly buried. That the Soviet navy lied to American, S. Korean, and Japanese search-and-rescue teams about the probable crash location is a matter of record, and also that the Soviets lied for years about the fact they'd found Flt 007's black boxes.
The "no conspiracy" hypothesis would be that the corpses were scattered by ocean currents and eaten by sharks, crabs, etc., before they could be recovered.
Russia has actually been relatively honest about this kind of stuff from the 1990s and onwards. At least towards my country, the USSR was not very dishonest or plotting, and when ex Soviet military people were able to speak off the record without any risk of reprimands, they confirmed the officia USSR version of events, and digging around in archives that were opened up, again confirmed the USSRs version. Sweden had some issues with the USSR about a some missing people, submarines and a small plane that was shot down. Even though the assumption was always that the USSR was lying and covering things up, as it turned out,they had been telling the truth, more or less, including when it was not particularly flattering on them. Actually, our own polititicians and media had been MORE dishonest than the USSR, simply lying about what the military, and individuals had been up to, on Soviet territory.
I honestly think this is a fanciful story that probably doesn't have a lot of substance although undoubtedly dramatic and intriguing.
Any kids that had survived something like this would surely remember it and look into it as adults. Any surviving adults would surely have spoken up by now.
I agree with you on this point, Hanna. I think the simple truth is that 269 people were killed as a result of accidental mis-identification, technological failure, and human error, all compounded by political paranoia and military over-zealousness -- similar to the tragic case of Iran Air 655 in 1988.
To answer your earlier question about the relevance of this in today's world, I would say that if you're interested in Soviet history, the KAL 007 tragedy was a highly significant event in the late Soviet period. And even if you believe, as I do, that this was essentially a terrible accident and that Reagan was totally wrong to spin it as "barbarism" by the "Evil Empire," the internal Soviet response in the aftermath of the accident (particularly the decision to engage in international deception about the black boxes) is also possibly revealing about the willful lack of transparency within the Soviet political system. And I admit that "lack of transparency" has been an issue in American policy, too -- but I would insist that it's much easier to be massively deceitful in a country with only one political party and complete state control of the media.
One other interesting thing I learned as a result of this thread: rather amazingly, KAL 007 was actually the SECOND South Korean airliner in less than a decade that was shot down by the Soviet "ВВС" (Военно-Воздушные Силы, "Air Force"), after blundering into USSR airspace as a result of navigational errors!!
In April 1978, KAL 902 was flying with 109 people on board from Paris to Seoul (via Anchorage) by a trans-polar route. When the flight was passing over the North Pole, the magnetic compasses failed, and the flight crew attempted to navigate by visual sightings of the sun. The result of this was that the plane made an almost 180° U-turn and entered Soviet airspace over Murmansk, east of northern Finland. As in the KAL 007 incident, the plane was initially suspected to be a US Air Force RC-135; Soviet military pilots in the air visually confirmed that it was a civilian plane, but were ordered by superiors on the ground to open fire.
But this incident ended much less tragically -- two passengers were killed by shrapnel from the Soviet missile strike, but the plane made a safe emergency landing, and the other 107 survived and were taken into custody. The passengers were released and flown to Finland after two days, while the civilian airline crew members were held a little longer (and forced to make a public "apology" for political purposes), but also released.
Since the plane was "embarrassingly far" into Soviet airspace before it was finally intercepted by fighter planes, some analysts think that this incident contributed to the over-zealous response of the Soviet Air Force in the KAL 007 incident less than six years later.
P.S. I was not even 7 years old when the KAL 902 incident took place, which is probably why I don't recall ever hearing about it until now -- I certainly remember the news reports about KAL 007, by which time I was almost 12 and in junior-high school.
P.P.S. On ru.wikipedia, the articles about the shootdowns are called Инцидент с южнокорейским Боингом [1978] and Инцидент с южнокорейским Боингом [1983] ("Incident with a South Korean Boeing, 1978/1983") as though they were talking about two movies with the same title!
[Edited by author because of unnecessary rudeness: The only relevant thing I said was that Sweden's small population (and corresponding lack of military power) gave the USSR less incentive to plot against Sweden. -- Th.M.]
Hanna, if you saw my post, I apologize for being so impolite. I was rattled by Marcus's "empty spy plane" claim, which I think was beyond rational defense, but I should not have taken out my frustration on you, just because you were commenting in the same thread.
Well, there should have been a proportional level of plotting relative to the size and importance of the country then.
And there was a connection based on gegraphical proximity and historical relationships.
My impression is that the USSR was acting in a relatively predictable way militarily and was actually more honest about its intent than anyone in the West gave it credit for at the time. This seems to be the picture that is emerging now that statements can be verified.
Its' interests being primarily protecting Russia and having a sphere of interest surrounding it, protecting USSR and the socialist state they had created. Secondly it was driven by ideology which spurred it to support "liberation movements" in various countries and socialism in the third world.
The US on the other hand was a lot less predictable, driven by the objective of ruining socialism and by fluctuating financial motivations. This meant it was less predictable and more volatile. "Our enemy's enemy is our friend" which lead to it supporting some gruesome dictators and crazy radicals.... the results of which we can see today. It also lead to it spying and plotting on countries for no other reason than economic gain.
I have nothing against critisizing the USSR for the many things it did wrong, but I think the shooting down of this plane was an unfortunate mistake in a tense military situation. No conspiracy and no covering up that involved any survivors.
If you are outraged by Marcus' theory you probably should read a full version. The theory was ploted by a Michel Brun. He wrote a book about the incident. It involves tens planes from both sides engaged in air figths. Some of them (not only KAL 007) were presumably downed. Marcus at least occam-razored that staff.
While many people in Russia believe that the flight throuh Soviet air space was intentional, the Brun's theory isn't very popular.
Sacré merde, WTF is wrong with these паршивые лягушатники?!?! Может, французские мамы намазывают свои сиськи ртутью и свинцом, чтобы у детей мозги развивали ненормально?
I mean, I thought that Thierry Meyssan was a rare freak, but now you tell me that Michel Brun was doing the same thing 20 years earlier!
Well, to quote "The Muppet Movie"...
А вы считаете, что 9 сентября 2001 года теракты в Нью-Йорке совершили какие-то исламские террористы?мозги развивались
Как сказать по-русски "Well, DUH"?
Не знаю, поскольку не знаю, что оно значит по-английски. Что вы имели в виду?Как сказать по-русски "Well, DUH"?
Ваша бритва как раз вопиет о том, что эти теракты были организованы американскими властями.
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