Russia says Ukraine lighthouse incident will harm bilateral relations

RIA Novosti ^ | 13/ 01/ 2006

[REactor]

I tried to post something about this from MosNews.com, but it appears that site is allowed on FR. (Anybody know why?)
MosNews is a very leftist site and it got banned.

I also tried to post something from Mosnews and got the answer that it is not welcome on FR. But MosNews is NOT a very leftist site. So why the heck is it banned on FR? Is it becuse it is sponsored by Soros??

Admin, please answer, otherwise I will think that FR practises censorship. Why MosNews is banned?

[REactor]

But you can post from the Guardian and the New York Times and The Nation. So there must be other reason why Mosnews is banned. Aside from the fact that Mosnews IS NOT leftist at all.

[REactor]

Admin, I didn't get an aswer to my question? Why posts from MosNews are not welcome here? Is there a political censorship on FR?

[Jim Robinson]

Yup. We don't want it here. Thanks.

[Mr. Mojo]

....otherwise I will think that FR practises censorship

Some topics are banned, some sites and banned, and some posters are banned. Deal with it. ....or don't.

[REactor]

Excuse me for my asking again, but WHY is it so? I mean is there any reason aside from the fact that you don't like it? Mosnews is not especially leftist. You allow posts from sites that are much more leftist than that. So why?

[GarySpFc]

lizol, apparently you believe every urban legend. The story is not true. From Snopes:
----

The story of the self-important aircraft carrier captain getting his well-earned comeuppance at the hands of a plain-speaking lighthouse has been making the rounds on the Internet since early 1996. Most writeups purport to be transcripts of a 1995 conversation between a ship and a lighthouse as documented by Chief of Naval Operations.

It ain't true. Not only does the Navy disclaim it, the anecdote shows up in a 1992 collection of jokes and tall tales. Worse, it appears in Stephen Covey's 1989 The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and he got it from a 1987 issue of Proceedings, a publication of the U.S. Naval Institute.

It's likely far older than that, because another reader mentioned he saw it passed around as a photocopied joke in the late 1960s while serving aboard either the USS Dixie or USS Truxtun. That certainly agrees with the opinion of Navy sources (as quoted in the news article later on this page); they place the story as being thirty or forty years old.

Slightly different versions name different ships as the one which unwillingly gained a lesson in the unimportance of self importance. Having debunked this tale a few times themselves, the Navy has a web page about this legend, one that answers what three of the commonly cited ships were doing at the time this supposedly occurred.

The Navy's take on this crazy bit of faxlore is contained in the following 1996 newspaper article:

The source of that story, which the Navy swears is untrue, is not known. It's a joke that has been floating around for at least 10 years, and maybe 30 to 40 years. Some think it originated in a humor column in Reader's Digest. Nobody knows for sure.
But for the past four months the story of the ship and the lighthouse has been passed along, as gospel, by comedy talk-show hosts, lazy newspaper columnists and clueless cyberspace jockies until it has taken on an air of the apocryphal. It clings to Navy lore like that old captain from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." And, like Coleridge's haunted captain, the Navy is having a real tough time getting this albatross off its neck.

This week the story was repeated by The New York Times News Service, quoting a Canadian newspaper. Last week it was read to a global radio audience on Michael Feldman's popular Whad'ya Know? program on Public Radio International. Earlier, the same network's Car Talk program aired the tale.

In the story's current form, the ship is identified as the carrier Enterprise. In the past it involved a battleship. A version that arrived via e-mail in Norfolk this week from the U.S. Air Force Academy identified it as the "aircraft carrier Missouri." There is no such carrier. The Missouri is a retired battleship.

Various versions carry little embellishments. An amateur-radio buff communicating via the Internet said it happened in Puget Sound. A columnist in the Montreal Gazette said it happened last fall off the coast of Newfoundland. A columnist in North Carolina quoted a local man as saying it happened off the Carolinas.

"It's a totally bogus story, but over the last four months we've gotten at least 12, maybe 18 calls from different media sources trying to confirm that," said Cmdr. Kevin Wensing, an Atlantic Fleet spokesman in Norfolk. "Unfortunately, some of them don't check it out. They just repeat it.

"The first time I heard of it was - oh, let's see, how long - about 10 years ago or so, I think. "That story's so old," Wensing said, "it probably started out back in the galleon days, or back when there was a big lighthouse at Alexandria, Egypt."

Dutifully, when all those reports about the carrier Enterprise began to surface, the Navy had to follow procedures and check it out.

"Yes, we talked to the Enterprise," Wensing said. "It was like, "We've heard this story and we're pretty sure that it's without basis. . . . And their reaction was, 'What? You can't be serious.' "

For the record, Adm. Mike Boorda, the chief of naval operations, released no such transcript on Oct. 10. Or any other time, said Cmdr. John Carman, a spokesman for the admiral. "It's a joke," Carman said, chuckling in disbelief. "And not only that, I've been told it's a real old joke. Like 30 to 40 years ago, that old."

Of the many flaws in the recent version, the most glaring is that there is no longer a radio crew - or any crew, for that matter - on any lighthouse on the U.S. coastline. The last one was automated 10 years ago, said Lt. j.g. Ed Westfall, the lighthouse program manager for the U.S. Coast Guard's Fifth District, based in Portsmouth.

Westfall said he, too, had heard the story for years, but he had a different understanding of its origin.

"I always thought," he said, "it was just something one of us Coasties had made up to poke fun at the Navy."

Barbara "what, the Village People didn't do a good enough job?"

[Hill of Tara]

The breaching of the contract and the endangerment of both military and commercial shipping in the Black Sea by Ukraine is a reprehensible act. If the Ukrainians are upset about energy, they still have no right to endanger the safety of ships just to make a point in a very immature manner.

[lizol]

OMG - I know it's not true.

This was supposed to be a joke - you know - when people say something to make the others smile a little bit.

[derllak]

You made me spill my drink!

[FreedomCalls]

Here are all the currently active Notice to Mariners for the Black Sea area (Area 55):

HYDROLANT  49/2006 (55). BLACK SEA. GUNNERY. MISSILES.
1. HAZARDOUS OPERATIONS 0730Z TO 1530Z DAILY
   13, 14, 20 AND 21 JAN, 180600Z TO 181600Z JAN AND 
   0530Z TO 1600Z 17 AND 19 JAN IN AREA BOUND BY
   44-43.8N 032-52.2E, 44-34.8N 032-37.4E,
   44-39.0N 032-11.5E, 44-48.4N 032-08.2E,
   45-00.2N 032-14.2E, 44-52.2N 032-41.6E.
2. CANCEL THIS MSG 211630Z JAN.

(091056Z JAN 2006)

---

HYDROLANT  2406/2005 (GEN). GPS SATELLITE SYSTEM.
PRN 25 UNUSABLE.

(260219Z DEC 2005)

---

HYDROLANT  1551/2005 (55). BLACK SEA.
CHART 55110 (2ND ED).
PLATFORMS UNDER CONSTRUCTION IN:
A. 41-10.5N 031-13.2E.
B. 41-10.0N 031-06.2E.
WIDE BERTH REQUESTED.

(250806Z AUG 2005)

---

HYDROLANT  1283/2005 (55). BLACK SEA. ORDNANCE.
CHART 55200 (2ND ED).
MINE IN 45-06-26.3N 036-38-30.2E.
NAVIGATION PROHIBITED WITHIN ONE MILE.

(122034Z JUL 2005)

---

HYDROLANT  879/2005 (55). BLACK SEA.
SEISMIC SURVEY IN PROGRESS UNTIL FURTHER
NOTICE BY M/V PROFESSOR POLSHKOV UAIS
TOWING 6500 METER LONG CABLE IN AREA BOUND BY
44-26N 033-37E, 43-43N 031-30E,
45-14N 029-47E, 45-08N 031-10E.

(101107Z MAY 2005)

[jb6]

Hay I didn't make the rules. I even read an occassional article from them...rare but a fact.

[jb6]

I read this before several years ago...yes, it is rather interesting...one must never forget that no matter how big you are, sooner or later there will be someone bigger or faster or stronger or smarter.