Turkish Shootdown of Russian Warplane Fails To Stop Hollande Visit to Putin

French president François Hollande is in Moscow to try and get Vladimir “Yakov Bond” Putin into an actual (as opposed to mostly rhetorical) anti-ISIS alliance. This comes after a whirlwind of separate meetings by Hollande with U.S. boss Barack “DroneMan” Obama, UK prime minister David "Top Toff" Cameron, German chancellor Angela “The Iron Mouse” Merkel, and Italian prime minister Matteo "Who?" Renzi. All these hurried and urgent consultations have been instigated by the brazen ISIS (or Islamic State, IS, the crazed Islamic “caliphate” in large swaths of Iraq and Syria proclaimed by the terrorist group) attacks in Paris earlier this month, which slaughtered 130 people and wounded about 300, most young people in the prime of their lives mowed down at a rock concert.

According to NPR's Paris correspondent, Hollande's mission is to try and persuade Putin to bomb ONLY ISIS, and not any other groups fighting the murderous regime of Syrian tyrant Bashar “Barrel Bomb” al-Assad. (NPR is the U.S. government domestic radio propaganda network.)

Of course, Putin's position is that all the anti-regime rebels in Syria are “terrorists.”

Reminds me of the saying, “one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.” But really, that should be “one government's terrorist is another government's freedom fighter.”

As Russia is in Syria to prop up Assad, and so far has been dropping most of its bombs on what Western governments and media propagandists like to call the “moderate rebels,” (which is code for Those We Support, kind of, in a half-assed way), it seems unlikely that Putin will get on board with Hollande on that. But given that IS planted a bomb on a Russian airliner that blew up over the Sinai in Egypt a couple of weeks ago, the Russians are incentivized to increase targeting of IS in Syria, but not to the exclusion of other anti-Assad forces.

Spoiling Hollande's mission to Moscow may have been an ulterior motive of Turkey in shooting down the Russian jet bomber on November 24th, as the U.S. is leery of Russian military involvement in Syria to begin with, and Russia is on the U.S. Enemies List since the debacle of the Western takeover of Ukraine using fascist street thugs, which resulted in the country splitting into two and a civil war. But even if it was a factor, it clearly wasn't the main motive.

Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan actually told us what the reason was, in a speech he ranted just after the shootdown. While mentioning the guff about protecting Turkey's sovereignty, his main focus was, in his words, that “We are trying to protect our kin, our brethren.” Namely the Turkmen of Syria, who were the targets of Russian bombardment in the area where the Russian jet was downed and the pilot killed by Turkmen. [1]

By “ranted” I mean Erdoğan was exclaimed loudly and angrily.

It's been reported that Turkish media has been beating the drums for awhile now about Russian attacks on Turkmen rebels in Syria. So Erdoğan would have felt pressure from that- not that he needed any. Also, given the repression of critical media in Turkey, it is safe to assume that Turkish media now reflects Erdoğan's attitude.

I should pause here to address the Manicheans out there, who always see the world in black and white, and insist that everyone is on one side or the other, and if you're not on their side, and don't reliably parrot their line-of-the-day, you're on the Enemy's side and are a traitor.

I am independent. This allows me to be morally objective and intellectually honest, unlike members of a system who are at best biased and partially blind and at worst cynical, rank propagandists. I'm not “on Russia's side.” I'm describing events objectively. My position is based on human morality. The Assad regime is a loathsome, murderous dictatorship. Therefore it is evil that Russia is propping it up, now with direct violence. At the same time, the “defending Turkish territory” line is patently bogus as a justification for shooting down the Russian plane. But I'm not particularly aggrieved by it either. The mother of the dead Russian pilot may properly be aggrieved, but I have no particular reason to be.

By the same moral logic, I don't feel any sorrow or loss for the deaths of U.S. pilots who bombed Vietnam. They aren't “my” pilots. As far as them being “fellow Americans,” my “membership” in this alleged fellowship hasn't prevented my “fellow Americans” in the various U.S. secret police and police agencies from persecuting me my entire adult life. So they needn't wave their flag- their piece of colored cloth- in my face and expect a Pavlovian response of obedience and support for their relentless drive for power over others, all over the world.

Ditto to the fervid nationalists who demand “loyalty.” (These same super-duper patriots however refuse to grant even legitimacy, much less loyalty, to any U.S. president who isn't a Republican. So maybe they should shut up, for a change, about how “patriotic” they are. That also goes for the lapel-flag-wearing loudmouths who work for the Australian Rupert Murdoch.)

In sum, for me, if a Russian warplane gets shot down by Turkey while bombing rebels against the Assad tyranny, that's tough luck for the Russians.

But if it's tough luck for Russia, it's even tougher luck for the Turkmen in Syria. BBC reports furious Syrian army artillery bombardment of the hill where the Russian jet crashed, and greatly-stepped-up Russian aerial bombardment of the area. Rather ironic, as Erdoğan wanted to stop Russian attacks on his “kin.” Looks like the shootdown backfired, at least in the immediate term.

Now let's expose the sham of this alleged egregious violation of Turkish sovereignty.

The piece of Turkish territory where the putative incursion by the Russian jet occurred is Hayat province. It is a spit of land that juts due south from the underbelly of Turkey directly into Syria.

Syria claims the land as its own, and shows it on maps as part of Syria. Thus if the Russians were working from such maps, they may well have believed they were over Syrian territory when (if) they overflew Turkey.

Here's a map of Turkey. The Turkish province in question, Hayat, is that piece of territory on the south side (the bottom) of Turkey, right in the middle. See how it juts down into Syria, with the Mediterranean Sea to the west (left) of it?

This strip of land, as best as I can tell from maps, is only about 25.5 kilometers (14,6 miles) wide, between Syrian territory and the Mediterranean. A jet cruising for ground targets to attack would be traveling perhaps 400-500 mph (miles per hour), or 644-805 kph (kilometers per hour). Let's give it to the Turks and say the Russian plane was traveling at half its top speed. At 400 mph (644 kph), the Russian jet would have passed over Turkish territory in a little over two minutes. Okay, bend over backwards for Turkey. Maybe the Russians were flying at only 300 mph (483 kph). That would take them three minutes to pass over Turkish land. (Although Erdoğan apparently considers all areas inhabited by ethnic Turks as Turkish Land.) [2]

But Turkey insists, and anonymous-as-usual U.S. “officials” “confirm,” that the Turkish pilots radioed TEN warnings (or “at least ten” in some tellings) to the Russian jet in just FIVE minutes.

Well, that Russian jet wasn't even over Turkish territory for five minutes.

No matter. Western “officials” and media propagandists have a simple way to finesse that. Just don't explain this to anyone! Problem solved!

We were told of a radar map the Turkish Ministry of “Defense” issued. For some reason it isn't out there widely. Here it is as reproduced by CBS “News,” one of the big U.S. TV networks, which figures few people would do what I do and carefully analyze bits and pieces of disparate information from different sources, put it all together, and see the obvious: 

 

The solid blue line is the Turkish border. “SURIYE” is Syria in Turkish. The red line with dots is the flight path of the doomed Russian jet. Giris and cikis are “entrance “ and “exit,” so the jet was traveling from east to west across the bit of Turkish ground. Gray on the left is the Mediterranean. I don't know what the green box to the left of the exit point is.

But I actually misled you. The distance I cited before is north of the path the Turks claimed for the Russian jet. On the map of Turkey, that tiny little southern tip of Turkey is too small to see. That is a much shorter distance. According to the leading German publication Der Spiegel, if the Russian plane indeed violated Turkish airspace, it was for 3 seconds.[3] So even my previous calculations are far too generous to the Turkish-U.S.-Western-stooges' version of reality.

The surviving Russian navigator says, according to the Russians, that their plane didn't overfly Syria. But let's assume that it did. In any event, it is hardly standard protocol, as Erdoğan claiims, to shoot down any warplane the instant it “violates” your airspace. (What is that, like being raped?) The Russian plane wasn't bombing Turkey.

Syria has shelled Turkey, killing Turkish citizens, and Turkey took it lying down. Syria shot down a Turkish air force jet- Turkey did nothing. So this aggressiveness should be put in that context. Instead the New York Times put it in a context of repeatedly Turkish complaints about- Russia bombing Turkmen in Syria. Oh, and about the centuries-old power competition in the region between the Ottoman empire and Russia. (That would be TSARIST Russia, but Western propagandists don't like to remind people about that when attacking Russia, because they romanticize that oppressive, feudal monarchy.) [4]

But whatever, right?

The plane crashed inside Syria. It seems next to impossible that the F-16 munition (I assume an air-to-air missile) hit the Russian jet while it was over Turkey. If it had, that would mean the Turks almost certainly fired at it when it wasn't over Turkey, assuming 3 seconds over Turkish turf. Alternatively, if they fired on it during that 3 second time frame, it means they were on a hair trigger, and the missile presumably struck the Russian plane over Syrian territory.

Nevertheless, the U.S., including the Top Man, has endorsed Turkey's action. According to DroneMan, Turkey had a "right to defend its territory and its airspace." This said almost immediately, before the fact were clear. (They still aren't.)

Of course, when Israel decides to “mow the lawn” in Gaza and slaughter a few thousand Palestinians and demolish the power plant, water system, hospitals, schools, and thousands of homes, Obama and the rest of the U.S. power elite all say “Israel has a right to defend itself,” And the U.S. police state and various war crimes are “protecting the American people from terrorism.”

So all the mendacious rhetoric is of a piece: self-righteous self-justification (or justification of one's “allies”)

Turkey, of course, is a member of NATO, the U.S.-controlled military alliance of most European nations and Canada. So Russia had to take it out on the Turkmen. On the other hand, the U.S. didn't want to see an escalation, so it quietly told Turkey Good Enough, Now Cool It.

Regarding Turkey; to my fellow Americans, I offer this policy advice: go bite a turkey's leg! It's Thanksgiving!

1] Voice of Erdogan, excerpt of his speech, with simultaneous translation in halting English by man with heavy Turkish accent- i.e. a native Turkish speaker- broadcast by BBC “World Service,” early morning November 25.

2] The Russian jet was a supersonic (can fly faster than sound) Sukhoi SU-24, a twin-engine light bomber with a two-man crew. It's maximum speed is listed as 815 mph (1,315 km/h) at sea level, a bit faster than the speed of sound, or Mach 1.08. At high altitude the top speed is 1,028 mph or 1,654 km/h (Mach 1.35). But this is with afterburners on, which greatly increases fuel consumption. Ordinarily the plane would be cruising at significantly slower speeds. It has an internal 6-barrel cannon, good for strafing or dogfighting, and can carry various bombs and missiles, including nuclear bombs, and air-to-air missiles for shooting down other jets. It is a 1970s vintage plane, as are the two U.S.-supplied F-16s that shot it down.

The pilot and navigator ejected and fell to earth by their parachutes. NPR described video from the incident of Turkmen shooting at the Russians as they drifted to earth. The pilot was killed, either in the air or on the ground by the Turkmen. The navigator was eventually rescued, but a Russian soldier on a rescue helicopter was also done in by the Turkmen. What I found most interesting was that the NPR correspondent described the Turkmen shouting the Arabic Islamic slogan “Allahu Akbar!,” “God is Greatest,” as they fired at the Russian crewmen. That's the same slogan used by IS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, indeed the whole Islamofascist terrorist movement when they're attacking. This information has since gone unmentioned by NPR, and as far as I know never reported by the rest of the U.S. establishment media, or the “alternative” media either, for that matter.

So our “friends” have a similar mentality and religious zeal as our enemies. Interesting.

3] "Fragwürdiger Luftkampf: Nur ein paar Sekunden auf der falschen Seite (Questionable dogfight: Just a few seconds on the wrong side)," Der Spiegel-Spiegel Online, November 24, 2015.

Cited in The New Yorker, “Three Questions About the Downed Russian Jet,” November 24.

4] “Rangeof Frustrations Reached Boil as Turkey Shot Down Russian Jet,” New York Times, November 25, 2015.