Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
- 18
- 1
What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule

Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Particularly since the standard emergency bailout procedure for two-pilot/multi-crew helicopters over water is for one pilot to attempt to maintain control so that the rest of the crew can jump as a group, and then get the helicopter away from them before a bunch of highly kinetic metal blades hit the water. The later is the far more dangerous part of even a 'controlled' crash, and it's basically a deliberate trade of the last pilot to save the rest, who can help eachother swim / stay aloft and activate any rescue equipment. In a kinetic shootdown over water, it typically tends to be everyone, since a shot that takes down the aircraft is probably violent disassembly in air, or just one or two survivors.
Also, this part of BigGuy's conspiracy-
-is just stereotypically American geographical confusion trying to wrap up in sarcasm.
The Arabian Sea- the place where the aircraft was claimed lost- is not the Arabian Gulf, the culture-rivalry rename of the same waters as the Persian Gulf ala the Korea-Japan East Sea versus Sea of Japan. The Arabian Sea is a completely different body of water in the opposite direction from contested Iranian waters.
Iran's territorial water claims that are causing tensions are regarding the Strait of Hormuz. The Persian Gulf is the waters west of the Strait of Hormuz. The Gulf of Oman is the waters east of the strait of hormuz leading to the Arabian Sea. But the arabian sea itself is the part of the indian ocean between the arabian peninsula and India. There is no Iranian claim on the broader geography of the Arabian Sea, not least because Pakistan dominates the north face and Oman dominates the west. Iran only has the tiniest of proximity in the furthest north west, which is not part of the Strait of Hormuz dispute.
Notably, the general location of the carrier groups since the start of the war has been generally understood to be... not there. During the war and the blockade one of the main frustrations for Iran's efforts to attack the carriers was that it could find them, and that was because duringn both points the carriers fell back into the Arabian Sea far enough to stay out of Iranian detection and weapon range. (There was the war-time conspiracy that the laundry fire on the Gerald Ford was actually a lie to disguise a critical damage from anti-ship cruise missile, but that largely petered out when the Ford returned to a high traffic port without observable evidence of a cruise missile.) During the blockade portion of the post-conflict, helicopter landings of ships trying to run past the blockade happened in the Arabian sea, well away from Iranian waters and ability to interfere.
So the military version of the story is that a helicopter from a carrier known to have been operating in the Arabian sea away from Iranian waters and weapon ranges went down for non-iranian-weapon reasons, with casualties consistent with a controlled mechanical failure helicopter crash.
The BigGuy version presupposes that the carrier group was far further north than there is any conflict-contemporary record of them being, in order for '50 miles left' to be anywhere near Iranian waters as opposed to, say, uncontested Oman. It also is probably confusing a body of water already to the west of the Strait of Hormuz that no carrier has been observed in since the war started- even in which case 50 miles left would be further from the strait- to a body of water thousands of square miles large to the south east, in which fifty miles 'left' would still be... well south.
Something something war is how some Americans learn geography.
More options
Context Copy link