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Re: [ontolog-forum] Universal Basic Semantic Structures

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "doug foxvog" <doug@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2012 10:45:12 -0400
Message-id: <9937371034c9ea5ceacbece4f9aabae8.squirrel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On Thu, September 27, 2012 21:30, Hans Polzer wrote:
> ...
> The USAF pilot and plane that attacked the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade,
> Serbia during the Bosnian War had no way of sensing that the building was
> the Chinese Embassy. The pilot in fact hit the exact building he was
> aiming at, and it was the correct physical target.    (01)

Correct.    (02)

> Unfortunately, a Serbian
> government agency had sold the building to the Chinese shortly before the
> war (I don't remember the precise time delta),    (03)

It was actually well before the start of the war.  I can't quickly find out
the details, but according to the NY TImes,  the "CIA turn[ed] up in its
files two maps that accurately placed the embassy: one was a map handed
out by a Belgrade bank that showed a branch office near the embassy; the
other listed the embassy and its grid coordinates in its index"
 -- July 23, 1999
http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/global/072399china-embassy.html    (04)

The turn-around from when the embassy opened until the bank issued
its map is unlikely to be quick.    (05)

> and that conceptual reality was not conveyed to and correctly
> represented in the data base of buildings in Belgrade used to support
> targeting of air missions at the time.    (06)

The location was not in NATO's data base.  However, this was a CIA
targeting decision (the only one it made during the war).    (07)

My understanding is that the bombs exploded in the embassy's
radio room.  The CIA figured that radio signals from the building
were going to Yugoslav forces.    (08)

The US explanations (that the building looked similar to a building a few
hundred meters away, that they were attacking the headquarters of
the Yugoslav arms agency because it selling to "rogue" nations, ...)
would not explain that the room targeted was the radio room.  Only
by knowing the interior layout of the building could the US locate
the radio room.    (09)

"The Observer", published "Nato bombed Chinese deliberately"
on 16 October 1999.  Excerpts: "According to senior military and
intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy
was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic
intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic's
forces."   "a source in the US National Imagery and Mapping
Agency said that the 'wrong map' story was 'a damned lie'."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/1999/oct/17/balkans    (010)

It is always fun to blame "the computer" or "the system" for a
"failure", when one intends something, but wants an excuse.    (011)

> ...    (012)

> Hans    (013)


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