Thread: Korean Airlines Flight 007 survivors and other alleged conspiracies

Originally Posted by Hanna

the idea that large numbers of people were kept prisoners etc seems like a conspiracy theory of the first order.

Not at all, Hanna. Now, THIS would be "a conspiracy theory of the first order", assuming Marcus were serious:

Originally Posted by Marcus

Всё это была американская провокация. Самолёт, скорее всего, был на автопилоте, и пассажиров там не было.

(Although I think he meant this sarcastically.)

Originally Posted by Throbert McGee

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.)

Talking with some Russians about politics is like talking with somebody about their boss when the boss is in the same room.

Originally Posted by Eric C.

Talking with some Russians about politics is like talking with somebody about their boss when the boss is in the same room.

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Hanna

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.

I accidentally said "some Russians". My crazy thought was that might give somebody the idea I wasn't talking about all of them.

And no, I don't say they are scared. It's just for some reason they tend to stand for those in power whatever the latter do, just like those in my metaphor about discussing a boss. Not all, but the tendency does exist.