> Why downvotes?

Probably because some missing mention of some specific thing you care deeply about doesn't imply "lack of basic world knowledge" for an entire political office, really strange thing to say and most likely why people are downvoting. It's neither kind, curious and definitively a snark/swipe that doesn't really add anything to the point you were trying to make.

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sam_lowry_ an hour ago | parent [-]

I think you normalize the deviation, here.

If you listen to the press conference, Podesta (the press secretary) spoke about the plane circling and not being able to land. When preparing the press conference, she should have checked if this obvious lie can be obviously disproved, but she did not. This probably means that she did not know this was a lie, but then someone who ordered this to be announced knew.

My bet is that von der Leyen or her close aide told Podesta to announce the lie in these terms, and the thing that worries me as a European is that there was none to warn these war-mongering ladies that they are making a mistake. This whole situation screams for an intern that sets up the mics and has a callsign and who can stop Podesta as she walks to the pied de stal of shame and explain that the position of planes is monitored all the time and is public information.

But I bet that all their interns are servile 3rd generation eurocrats.

P.S. The whole press conference (and many others) are fascinating to listen to. The language these people use is softened by the media. What do you think von der Leyen was doing on that plane? She was going "along the frontline" to inspect our preparedness for war where "the frontline" is the Eastern EU border.

P.P.S The story made rounds in EU circles, and there was a parliamentary question offering a chance to apologize, but von der Leyen chose to ignore it.

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embedding-shape 24 minutes ago | parent [-]

> I think you normalize the deviation, here.

I don't care about Ursula von der Leyen nor her plane, merely explaining that if you try to extrapolate that a group of people don't have "basic world knowledge" based on not knowing a specific technology nor how/why it's used, the community is actually doing the rest of us a favor by downvoting it.

Want to discuss her office's use of a plane and how it's related to inspecting ammunition factories or whatever tirade you're going on about? Do create a new submission where that can be discussed, hardly related to the interesting story and methods of trying to track down GNSS interference.

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sam_lowry_ 11 minutes ago | parent [-]

It's a 9 months old story, even the MEP who wrote the question got over it.

I raised it because it was mentioned in the Veritassium video, but they stopped short of calling it a lie. They wanted to stay on topic, but the beauty of HN is that we can wander slightly off-topic and discover curious facts without being punished.

	▲	embedding-shape 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, curious facts like "it exposed the lack of basic world knowledge around von der Leyen and her office". Go outside brother, and get some fresh air before that too disappears :)