So that's why Detroit Police Chief James Craig has been a real refreshing change:
“Criminals are getting the message that good Detroiters are armed and will use that weapon,” said Craig, who has repeatedly said he believes armed citizens deter crime. “I don’t want to take away from the good work our investigators are doing, but I think part of the drop in crime, and robberies in particular, is because criminals are thinking twice that citizens could be armed.Detroit's government was more-or-less deposed by the state last year, so maybe Chief Craig is freer to speak.
“I can’t say what specific percentage is caused by this, but there’s no question in my mind it has had an effect,” Craig said.
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Of all the things that I've read on the shootdown of MH17, this caught my eye: A suggestion that MH17 may have been diverted over the Ukranian conflict zone. The ten previous flights MH17 flew south of the contested area, but not this one.
Very interesting. One might hazard a guess which side would gain from a civilian airliner being shot down over the area. It's not a hard question to answer, if one watches how this has played out so far.
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The President has added some Russian arms companies to his sanctions list. I haven't been paying much attention to the equipping of the Afghan Army, but it seemed to me that the decision had been long-ago made to re-equip them with the same stuff that they were used to using, which ranged from Kalashnikovs to Russian helicopters.
the sanctions may make that process a lot more difficult. Just giving the Afghans the cash to buy what they want isn't really doable, not unless the idea is to give them a hundred million dollars and have them end up with most of it grafted away and the net purchases being a case of rusty Bulgarian knock-offs.
Do we know what the WX was on the more common route?
ReplyDeleteStick, CNN (nose held, but for once it was a rational story) did show a graphic that showed some thunderstorms on the normal airway that MH17 usually flies (N-91?). Ukraine ATC was the controlling agency, however, we can't rule out geographical considerations or ATC considerations in forcing a deviation to the north rather than the south (planes can "ignore" borders, but ATC sometimes is more constrained).
ReplyDeleteATC could have been forced to allow only a deviation to the north by Russian ATC, other ATC to the south, direction to avoid overflying Crimeia...or any of about 20 other reasons. Again, though, this is assuming CNN properly placed the WX on an aviation map...not a given.
Crimea was interdicted, they could not be diverted south to fly over Crimea. But in general I see nothing unusual here. Watching flights fly across the US east to west, you'll see similar diversions in their flight patterns as the jet stream sweeps up and down and brings storm fronts through. Flying head-on into a gale force wind is not something that airline pilots are going to do voluntarily do (for one thing, it drinks fuel and fuel is money), if there is an alternate route they can take.
ReplyDeleteTux, Crimea was interdicted by the FAA, not ICAO.
ReplyDelete