Taliban vows no revenge, less restrictions on women this time

[Bluesofa]

20 hours ago, Thaiger said:

Taliban vows no revenge, less restrictions on women this time

This looks like the type of statement we're used to see from the Thai government.

First denying revenge.

Next day revenge is not really being considered.

Third day revenge announced as official government policy.

[thai3]

25 minutes ago, Stonker said:

More out of interest than as a correction, @thai3, but while fundamental Islam is homophobic it's not anti-trans, however hard that is for those from other cultures to understand or accept.

While most people are well aware that Iran is strictly Islamic and so homophobic, few realise that it's second only to Thailand in the number of GRS (gender re-assignment) operations performed every year, including for foreigners / GRS tourists, and the state pays for GRS.

Being trans isn't an issue.

The flip side of that is that since gays in Iran are persecuted, so they're put under increased pressure to be trans rather than gay - which makes life even worse, as the options are to either risk being caught out as gay and face the consequences or to become trans when you're not.

That would only be for men, like the prophet dressing in women's clothes, a woman dressing as a man would get the same treatment as Joan of Arc for the same 'crime' It might be a non issue, but only for pansy men.

Answering Muslims: Why Did Muhammad Wear Women's Clothing?

[Stonker]

"...in Afghanistan the men (if you can call them that) have a fetish for young boys ..."

 

Hardly universal, but bacha bazi, as it's called, along with the sexual abuse of young girls, was one of the direct reasons for the rise of the Taliban after the warlords had taken over in the 90's and for their comparative popularity - with the emphasis on "comparative".

The Afghans had a simple choice then, as they do now:

- the warlords running everything on a local basis, including extortion, kidnapping and rape;

- or the Taliban running everything on a national basis, including Sharia law and repression.

 

The West could have offered a viable alternative solution, such as a federal system, but they didn't and instead insisted on a Western-style, national democratic system that was doomed .....

..... leaving Afghanistan back at square one, with a choice between the warlords and the Taliban.

 

 

[AussieBob]

57 minutes ago, Bluesofa said:

This looks like the type of statement we're used to see from the Thai government.

First denying revenge.

Next day revenge is not really being considered.

Third day revenge announced as official government policy.

Also sounds like their overlords in China when they took over Hong Kong.

Things sure have changed since back then - now they are showing their true colours.

[kerryd]

None of the Afghans that were clinging to the airplane when it took off survived.

They could not have held on for long once the plane was in the air as it's not like in the movies where people can walk on top of airplanes when they are flying at altitude. The wind alone would have blown them off.

Not to mention that once they start gaining altitude, it starts getting cold. Real cold. As in well below freezing.

Did I mention lack of oxygen as well ?

Once guy did make it to Qatar though. They found him in the landing gear after they arrived. Very dead of course.

My understanding as well is that those 600 civilians inside the aircraft had been "pre-cleared". It's not like a horde of random civilians suddenly stormed onto the airplane.

My guess is there were a couple thousand "pre-cleared" people waiting on the military side of the airport to fly out and when the **** hit the fan they all tried to surge onto the first available plane.

The military side of the airport is about 700 meters from the civvy side if you walk along the tarmac and taxiway, which I did a few times while I was there.
There are guardposts to keep people from the civvy side from entering the military side, but it isn't fenced off on the inside. 

I would assume that they (The US military) would have kept all the "random" civvies from getting into the military side of the airport by using barricades and threatening lethal force. No way they would have let them run amok around there. Not only other military hardware, but accommodations, offices, store rooms, medical facilities and of course, that's where the Embassy staff are operating from for the time being.

There was also US Military personnel forming a perimeter around the plane and it was reported that they had to fire into the air a few times to get the crowds to move back.

 

[vlad]

1 hour ago, Fluke said:

Some of them may have tied themselves to the aeroplane and managed to survive the journey ?

With an oxygen mask as well once there over 15,000 ft ? and a thermal jacket.

[Fluke]

12 minutes ago, vlad said:

With an oxygen mask as well once there over 15,000 ft ? and a thermal jacket.

Wasnt it only a short flight and therefore the pilot may have kept the airplane at a low altitude

[Stonker]

2 hours ago, thai3 said:

That would only be for men, like the prophet dressing in women's clothes, a woman dressing as a man would get the same treatment as Joan of Arc for the same 'crime' It might be a non issue, but only for pansy men.

Answering Muslims: Why Did Muhammad Wear Women's Clothing?

No, not so - fundamental Islam simply doesn't recognise that lesbians exist.

... and "pansy men" aren't trans, and vice-versa - the two are totally unconnected except by stereotype.

... and I'd hardly describe being given the choice between GRS and killed for being gay as a "non issue" although that may not have been what you meant.

[Stonker]

52 minutes ago, kerryd said:

None of the Afghans that were clinging to the airplane when it took off survived.

They could not have held on for long once the plane was in the air as it's not like in the movies where people can walk on top of airplanes when they are flying at altitude. The wind alone would have blown them off.

Not to mention that once they start gaining altitude, it starts getting cold. Real cold. As in well below freezing.

Did I mention lack of oxygen as well ?

Once guy did make it to Qatar though. They found him in the landing gear after they arrived. Very dead of course.

My understanding as well is that those 600 civilians inside the aircraft had been "pre-cleared". It's not like a horde of random civilians suddenly stormed onto the airplane.

My guess is there were a couple thousand "pre-cleared" people waiting on the military side of the airport to fly out and when the **** hit the fan they all tried to surge onto the first available plane.

The military side of the airport is about 700 meters from the civvy side if you walk along the tarmac and taxiway, which I did a few times while I was there.
There are guardposts to keep people from the civvy side from entering the military side, but it isn't fenced off on the inside. 

I would assume that they (The US military) would have kept all the "random" civvies from getting into the military side of the airport by using barricades and threatening lethal force. No way they would have let them run amok around there. Not only other military hardware, but accommodations, offices, store rooms, medical facilities and of course, that's where the Embassy staff are operating from for the time being.

There was also US Military personnel forming a perimeter around the plane and it was reported that they had to fire into the air a few times to get the crowds to move back.

 

That's exactly what I've been told, @kerryd, and what's been widely reported - as you rightly say, these were NOT "random civvies" who stormed the airport and the plane, as has been claimed vociferously here.

 

Thank God at least one person commenting here claiming to know the score genuinely does, and knows which way is up.

[Dancbmac]

22 hours ago, kerryd said:

Once that is done, then they can start getting back to the business of terrorizing their own people - and pumping out the opium again.

The opium has been financing the Taliban for several years.  Once Obama said combat ops were over for American troops and he pulled the DEA from Afghanistan they started having record crops again after the Taliban took control of a lot of the southern farming provinces.  They won the hearts of the farmers as opium makes them more money than growing food crops.

[Dancbmac]

1 hour ago, Fluke said:

Wasnt it only a short flight and therefore the pilot may have kept the airplane at a low altitude

When I was there for several years, our civilian flights to Dubai were between 3 to 4 hours on “Dubai Air” and Qatar is another hour east from Dubai.  The flight paths are usually the normal 30-35k feet and Afghanistan is a mountainous area. Being an Air Force flight it may have been a direct flight to Qatar, but would have to avoid Iranian airspace, so it may have flown to the Gulf via Pakistan first, before turning east past Dubai to Qatar.

[Stonker]

51 minutes ago, Dancbmac said:

The opium has been financing the Taliban for several years.  Once Obama said combat ops were over for American troops and he pulled the DEA from Afghanistan they started having record crops again after the Taliban took control of a lot of the southern farming provinces.  They won the hearts of the farmers as opium makes them more money than growing food crops.

... and why wouldn't they?

You'd think that with 2 trillion dollars in funding some bright spark could have found an alternative crop and source of income, but ... no ...

[Dancbmac]

3 minutes ago, Stonker said:

... and why wouldn't they?

You'd think that with 2 trillion dollars in funding some bright spark could have found an alternative crop and source of income, but ... no ...

Exactly!  Economics 101

[Benroon]

4 hours ago, Fluke said:

Some of them may have tied themselves to the aeroplane and managed to survive the journey ?

One of the planes couldn't get the wheels up and had to request an emergency landing  - they found the reason to be the wheels kept jamming into a body in the wheel housing !! Doubt if he'll be playing football this weekend !

[Benroon]

4 hours ago, Stonker said:

More out of interest than as a correction, @thai3, but while fundamental Islam is homophobic it's not anti-trans, however hard that is for those from other cultures to understand or accept.

While most people are well aware that Iran is strictly Islamic and so homophobic, few realise that it's second only to Thailand in the number of GRS (gender re-assignment) operations performed every year, including for foreigners / GRS tourists, and the state pays for GRS.

Being trans isn't an issue.

The flip side of that is that since gays in Iran are persecuted, so they're put under increased pressure to be trans rather than gay - which makes life even worse, as the options are to either risk being caught out as gay and face the consequences or to become trans when you're not.

No way am I buying that! So imagine the scene Mohammed Dabdoub, (we have changed the name to protect the innocent), the tough soldier from down the road, glittering football career beckoning,  suddenly has his knob severed, wears lipstick, starts shopping for dresses and develops an unholy interest in Justin Bieber, and you think these primitive, bearded savages are going to let him get away with that ? Nah - sorry dude I'm not having it. They execute you for whistling, no way are they going to tolerate Mohammed becoming Maureen !

I think if I could be arsed to google it the US and Brazil must be the gold and silver medal winners with probably Thailand chasing a medal, but Iran full of Caitlyn Jenners ? nope. 

Infact the reason I refuse to google it, is I'm scared I will drop dead tonight and the last thing my family see on my laptop is a search for Iranian transgender surgeons !

[Fluke]

 

[kerryd]

Why the **** do people keep thinking that "someone" may have survived the flight by hanging on to the outside of an airplane ? 

The aircraft couldn't have "flown at a low altitude" and I seriously doubt any of those Afghanis came prepared with rope/tape/straps to tie themselves to the outside of an airplane.

To get to Qatar, you have to fly over Pakistani air space (as I doubt the Iranians would be too happy at seeing a US Air Force plane flying over their territory - at any altitude). The shortest direct route would be around 2,300 kms, flying over Pakistan until reaching the Gulf then turning west to Qatar.

International agreements and flight controllers decide at what altitude aircraft should fly at. Pilots have a small degree of  latitude depending on weather, but for the most part have to stick pretty close to the designated altitude.
There's a lot of other planes in the sky, even over Afghanistan. (Used to watch the contrails when I was in Kandahar and try to determine which planes were heading to Pakistan and which were destined for India or points beyond. Even over that desolate place there was a lot of air traffic.)

As well, some countries will have "set" flight paths for overflights as they don't want aircraft flying over certain areas.

Pakistan most certainly would not have let a US Air Force plane fly over it's territory "at a low altitude" either and had it tried to do so, it would have likely either been shot down or forced down by the Pakistani Air Force.
(I'm sure they haven't forgotten the last time the US sent aircraft into Pakistani  air space "at a low altitude".)

So the plane would have had to have been probably well above 30,000 feet almost the entire way.

Checking some info and it seems that the temperature at that altitude (outside the aircraft) would be below -40 (-40 is the same in Celsius and Fahrenheit.)

There is zero chance anyone would have survived such a trip even if they had managed to guntape themselves to the plane.

I remember at one point, early on when I was in Kandahar, the charter flights we were using (DFS) for some reason couldn't fly over Iranian air space. They were using an old AN-24 turboprop at the time and couldn't refuel in Kandahar.
So they'd land, off load everyone, fly to Pakistan to refuel, fly back, pick up the outgoing passengers and then fly to Dubai.
But passengers were restricted to one carry on bag and that was it - and they could only fill half the seats on the plane !
They ended up having to lease a larger plane (737 class) so they could fly around Iran and still be able to make it to Dubai. 

Too many Hollywood movies rot the brain. Like all the Fast & Furious movies. People start believing that you can, in just a few hours, modify a car with some rockets, wear some old diving suites, then launch that car from on top of an airplane and rocket into space where they can then drive around, save the day and then go spacewalk over to the ISS and ask for a ride back to earth.

(Or the movie Mordecai where Bettany's character sneaks into the unheated wheel well of a very small plane and rides it from London to Moscow.) 

[Stonker]

1 hour ago, Benroon said:

No way am I buying that! So imagine the scene Mohammed Dabdoub, (we have changed the name to protect the innocent), the tough soldier from down the road, glittering football career beckoning,  suddenly has his knob severed, wears lipstick, starts shopping for dresses and develops an unholy interest in Justin Bieber, and you think these primitive, bearded savages are going to let him get away with that ? Nah - sorry dude I'm not having it. They execute you for whistling, no way are they going to tolerate Mohammed becoming Maureen !

I think if I could be arsed to google it the US and Brazil must be the gold and silver medal winners with probably Thailand chasing a medal, but Iran full of Caitlyn Jenners ? nope. 

Infact the reason I refuse to google it, is I'm scared I will drop dead tonight and the last thing my family see on my laptop is a search for Iranian transgender surgeons !

Don't be scared!

I know it sounds implausible, but you've done the classic of making a judgement based on Western culture.  That's genuinely the way it is.

 

Edit: I should add that I'm not suggesting there's no stigma, just that gay and trans are seen very differently.  Iran's the only Muslim country in the Gulf that actually changes your gender after GRS.

[Fluke]

3 minutes ago, kerryd said:

Why the **** do people keep thinking that "someone" may have survived the flight by hanging on to the outside of an airplane ? 
 

It was merely a question . 

They could have handcuffed themselves to the aeroplane and managed to survive the cold and oxygen levels . It has been known for stowaways to survive such conditions 

[Stonker]

6 minutes ago, Fluke said:

It was merely a question . 

They could have handcuffed themselves to the aeroplane and managed to survive the cold and oxygen levels . It has been known for stowaways to survive such conditions 

When?

[Fluke]

6 minutes ago, Stonker said:

When?

An 8000 mile journey 

 

A man who died falling from an aircraft while attempting to reach the UK had a friend on the same flight who survived and speaks in a new Channel 4 film, The Man Who Fell from the Sky

An almost unbearably painful moment comes halfway through a new Channel 4 documentary about the extraordinary story of a man who survived stowing away on a flight from Johannesburg to London – and his friend who didn’t make it.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/04/i-passed-out-with-the-lack-of-oxygen-truth-of-heathrow-stowaways-tragic-journey

 

[Stonker]

11 minutes ago, Fluke said:

An 8000 mile journey 

A man who died falling from an aircraft while attempting to reach the UK had a friend on the same flight who survived and speaks in a new Channel 4 film, The Man Who Fell from the Sky

An almost unbearably painful moment comes halfway through a new Channel 4 documentary about the extraordinary story of a man who survived stowing away on a flight from Johannesburg to London – and his friend who didn’t make it.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/jan/04/i-passed-out-with-the-lack-of-oxygen-truth-of-heathrow-stowaways-tragic-journey

Thanks - extraordinary.

Apparently the heat from the cabling in the wheel well kept him alive, which wouldn't apply here, though.

Still amazing, as well as the lengths people who are desperate will go to.

Thanks - appreciated.

[kerryd]

Most of the stories about stowaways involve people who managed to get into the wheel well of a large, commercial aircraft like a 747. None were clinging to the outside.

Even in a wheel well though, the odds are slim due to the extreme cold and lower oxygen levels. The minimal heat generated inside a wheel well wouldn't do much to offset the -40/-50 degree cold and the oxygen levels would be 25-35% of normal.

(As one article pointed out, people who climb Everest have to spend a lot of time preparing and acclimatizing their bodies to the altitude and even then use additional oxygen to make the trek.
Passenger aircraft usually fly at altitudes well above Everest, meaning it would be colder and harder to breath inside the wheel well than it would be climbing Everest. (But for a shorter period of time of course.)

The wheel wells on a C-17 are pretty cramped as well. The wheels retract a short ways into the wells that jut out from the side of the aircraft and then the two hatches close over them.

(I tried to find a decent picture of a C-17 wheel well but of course all the search results are about the plane that landed in Qatar and I can't be bothered to spend hours looking for a detailed pic of  what the inside would look like.)

[vlad]

yes i saw that Docc Fluke the guy survived because he used a gap in the wheel well were the heat from the brakes ,the heating oils in the linings in the Pneumatic lines going through the wheel well there was just enough room for him to to curl inside. His friend tried it a few weeks before but when the wheels came down for landing he fell out and died.

[King Cotton]

42 minutes ago, kerryd said:

Most of the stories about stowaways involve people who managed to get into the wheel well of a large, commercial aircraft like a 747. None were clinging to the outside.

Even in a wheel well though, the odds are slim due to the extreme cold and lower oxygen levels. The minimal heat generated inside a wheel well wouldn't do much to offset the -40/-50 degree cold and the oxygen levels would be 25-35% of normal.

(As one article pointed out, people who climb Everest have to spend a lot of time preparing and acclimatizing their bodies to the altitude and even then use additional oxygen to make the trek.
Passenger aircraft usually fly at altitudes well above Everest, meaning it would be colder and harder to breath inside the wheel well than it would be climbing Everest. (But for a shorter period of time of course.)

The wheel wells on a C-17 are pretty cramped as well. The wheels retract a short ways into the wells that jut out from the side of the aircraft and then the two hatches close over them.

(I tried to find a decent picture of a C-17 wheel well but of course all the search results are about the plane that landed in Qatar and I can't be bothered to spend hours looking for a detailed pic of  what the inside would look like.)

Wheel-well then.  Sorry . . . couldn't resist!