A Malaysian jumbo jet has disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. That's one of the few things we know about this incident except for the fact that at least two of the passengers had boarded with stolen passports, using tickets bought by other persons, and at least one of those passengers was Iranian.
That, of course, does not prove anything, well, not in a court of law sense, but it certainly makes one wonder why police and media organs are so quick to come out with the following sorts of comments,
the head of the international police organization Interpol said that his agency increasingly believed the incident was not related to terrorism.
"The more information we get, the more we're inclined to conclude that it was not a terrorist incident," Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble said at a news conference in Lyon, France.
Among the evidence pointing in that direction, Noble said: news from Malaysian authorities that one of two people said to be traveling on stolen passports, an Iranian, was trying to travel to his mother in Germany.
Further, there's no evidence to suggest either was connected to any terrorist organizations, according to Malaysian investigators.Excuse me?
We saw this same nonsense, this pell-mell dash to avoid any possibility of assigning blame to Muslim terrorism in the wake of the Boston bombing. It would seem that at a minimum police and media would want to shut up about whether this aircraft disappeared because of terrorism. I also wish media and others would stop citing Interpol as some sort of great investigative agency. It is just a collector of data sent on a voluntary basis by police and intel organizations around the world. It is hardly a complete data base. I love the phrase, "there's no evidence to suggest either [passenger] was connected to any terrorist organization." Also a nice touch is that one of the Iranians wanted to visit his mother. Ain't that cute? That discounts him as a terrorist . . . Idiots.
Would terrorists generally use people "known" to be connected to terrorism to board aircraft? The murderous Clown Posse that flew the planes into the Pentagon, the Twin Towers, and the Pennsylvania countryside had no "known" connection to terror groups, or they would not have gotten their visas in the first place. We live in a world of Hollywood fantasy one in which there is no such thing as Muslim terrorism . . ..
For now, we don't know what happened although as more and more information comes out, it seems something genuinely bizarre did. It could be mechanical; it could be something else. The minimum the cops and other investigators and politicians can do is to keep quiet and not insult our intelligence. Let the facts come in. Then make statements.
In the absence of any hard evidence thus far as to the aircraft's fate the conspiracy theorists and religious whackjobs are airing their paranoia across the web. So far I have seen:
ReplyDeleteThe Malaysians shot it down
The Chinese shot it down
The Iranians blew it up (elsewhere, no they didn't)
God told me not to get on board, so I didn't
A man gives his wife his watch and wedding ring on departure 'just in case'
The plane actually doubled back across Malaysia without 'painting' on the ATC radar which is ridiculous as on civil aircraft transponders cannot be turned off
and so on..........
Any act prevented by police and intelligence agencies is a foiled terrorist plot. Any successful act of destruction is a criminal matter or a lone-wolf, amateur operation which no one could have detected and stopped.
ReplyDeleteRest easy citizens. We are protecting you from everything possible to protect you from. Collecting all information about you is part of serving you. Be assured that we will serve in office as long as needed to eliminate these threats. Some additional contributions will be needed.
Don't ask about what we are doing or what we have done. Any public information about our sources, methods, staffing, or funding would aid your enemies. Trust us.
As a reassurance, know that this is a quality, family-run organization. All of our sons, daughters, siblings, cousins, in-laws, and school friends are first choices for positions of responsibility. We are like family, so think of us as your family.
EasyOpinions.blogspot.com
Yeah, da family. I wuz bawned in Naw Joysey, and know all aboud da family, Andy. Ciao, Paisano!
DeleteRandom thoughts from a lowly consular scut who, in Guangzhou, bought his bread and raisins from Uighurs who had little but venomous hatred for the Han people amongst whom they lived--
ReplyDeleteWhen I heard about stolen passports being used, my first guess was that a couple of somebodies wanted to get out of somewhere and into somewhere else very, very badly. How do you get a stolen passport? A lot of cities in Asia have thriving markets in stolen and fraudulent goods, with the baddies getting the technology to do a flawless knockoff American passports within months of our own brilliant Gummint spending oodles of moolah to make a real passport all the more expensive for the honest and careful American traveller. As for stolen documents, it was bread and butter for Citizens services to deal with the drunks who get rolled and divested of everything save their clothes and the morons who insist on carrying their wallets and passports in the back pocket--as if they want to enhance the profiles of their already ample posteriors (and they aren't even women, drat it!).
Once stolen, the passport goes through a series of shady (no other kind) middlemen before landing in the hands of an aspiring Democratic voter--oops, illegal immigrant wannabe. In Bangkok in the early '90's, the local Chinese-language press was full of ads for help in getting into the US. I wondered how many advertisers were fronts for alien smuggling gangs or dealers in stolen and fraudulent documents eager to enhance the Fuzhou-descended population of major American metropolitan areas.
As for terror linkages, I'll take Mr. Amselem's advice and suspend judgment. However, I strongly doubt that Uyghurs out to murder Han Big Brothers en masse would target a Malaysian aircraft--fellow Muslims and all that.
Speculation duly noted. However, I would be surprised if Uighur separatists or sympathizers would attack a Malaysian target. Back in the '90's, they were even friendly to Westerners, much less foreign Muslims. However, they hated the Hui, who are Chinese-speaking Muslims.
Deleteheh.. something about your posts today reminded me of a bunch of speculation a couple of friends and I had (late at night in a bar, of course, where all serious subjects are discussed) about who you were, back before your big blogging hiatus. I really had no idea, but someone threw out 'John Bolton' as a possibility. I'm not sure whether you'll consider that a compliment, an insult, or a little bit of both, but I just thought I'd mention it for giggles. :)
ReplyDelete-reader #1482
I a big Bolton fan and worked with him.
DeleteThat is to your credit.
DeleteJohn Bolton with a black Corvette and a Colt 45 would be pretty cool... stay tuned for Magnum CG, starring John Bolton.
DeleteSo one fine Thursday in Los Angeles--eleven year ago, come Fourth of July--ol' Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, then 41, shows up at the airport ticket counter and what do you know, he doesn't want to buy a ticket to Jerusalem.
ReplyDeleteWhat he wanted, it developed--and this is by no means unique to him, especially among Arabs and other Mohammedans--is to kill all the Jews. He is in a gun-free zone, only as it happens it is not absolutely perfectly gun-free because he has two pistols in his pockets.
First he shot 25-year-old Customer Service Agent Victoria Hen in the chest at point-blank range. Then he started shooting at the 90 passengers in line.
He killed 46-year-old passenger Yaakov Aminov and injured four others before an *unarmed* El Al security guard [whose name I don't have] knocked him down. H. Mohamed brought a knife, too, and stabbed El Al security officer Chaim Sapir, who killed him anyway.
Within an hour, the FBI authoritatively announced that it was not a terrorist act, because H. Mohamed H. wasn't a member of a terrorist organization.
This is a bit like saying that Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman weren't murdered because O.J. wasn't a member of Murder, Inc. Don't get me wrong--I'm not saying that O.J. *was* a member of Murder, Inc.
Ultimately, after a media storm, the FBI reversed itself on this point. Reluctantly.
Happens all the time. Usually it is Slavs or rogue US soldiers
ReplyDeleteso.. apparently the facts include that the flight diverted and was an hour off course when some radar station glimpsed it very briefly.
ReplyDeleteMakes me wonder if some pirates in the area sent a short range radio signal telling the plane that it would be shot down if it didn't divert to some strip and maintain radio silence... perhaps then some ancient eastern bloc fighter jet showed up to enforce? (I doubt pirates would have access to mobile surface-to-air missiles that could reach a jet liner, but those old jets are really cheap..)
What the heck would a pilot do in such a circumstance?
If I remember correctly, the area around where the flight disappeared is a heavily pirated area.. like horn-of-africa levels..
Absolutely crazy.. and clear skies too. What are the chances of an equipment failure leaving the plane unable to communicate yet able to make its way an hour off course?
- reader #1482
Oh good grief...
Delete"... so.. apparently the facts include that the flight diverted ..."
DeleteBetween 17:19 and 17:20 the aircraft turned right, changing heading from 25 to 40 degrees. Someone said this is a sign the aircraft was turning back to Kuala Lumpur or had already experienced an in-flight problem. However, the change in heading was probably performed in accordance with the FPL (Flight Plane) as the plane did the same, at the same position, on Mar. 4, 2014.
http://theaviationist.com/2014/03/11/mh370-known-unknown-facts/
Arkie
Be careful, Hollywood will sue you for stealing the script for the remake of AIRPORT '77.
Delete- reader #22
"The minimum the cops and other investigators and politicians can do is to keep quiet"
ReplyDeleteTrue but unfortunately the Police and Pollies are caught up in the 24 hour news cycle where they are pestered by news organisations to say something - anything. They just need the resolve to say "Bugger off we don't know anything as yet. When we do we'll let you know". Fortunately our new conservative Federal Government is doing just that and the idea is spreading.
Having been in the front line at very senior level of a response organisation I am aware of the pressure that comes not just from journalists but also the pollies. Telling them to bugger off and let you get on with the job can be difficult.
Having said that I watched a media interview with senior Malaysian Police re this disappearance and just shook my head. I've also dealt with them and in a lot of areas they leave a lot to be desired.
BIg story in todays msn news about Boeing being warned regarding corrosion and cracking problems with the 777 series aircraft.
ReplyDeleteHow convienent...
What's your point? Both Boeing and Airbus pubish service bulletins to address structural and equipment in-service issues and problems all the time. Not a few have Airworthiness Directives issued against them. This is 'news' only because someone at MSN had the minimal skills and initiative needed to query the FAA's database of AD's.
ReplyDeleteAnd the AD in question does not even apply to the Malaysian airplane.
DeleteThe 9/11 terrorists had "no known connections" because American intelligence agencies had collectively decided not to know.
ReplyDeleteJust as police don't know that there is any racial component to "polar bear hunting" and "the knockout game": they don't want to know.
Good points.
DeleteMH370 really doesn't seem like Uyghurs- most violence in Xinjiang is small-time stuff precipitated by some local grievance. The police start violating their rights even more aggressively than usual, and then a group of young men decide to grab some knives and attack a police station, stuff like that. Even the big Uyghur riot in 2009 started as a peaceful demonstration, and only turned violent after police opened fire on the crowd. There are some indications that the atrocity in Kunming may have been organized on the spot by a group of Uyghurs who were trying to leave China through the southern border but were caught and turned back, and then decided to die rather than go back to Xinjiang.
ReplyDeleteSo putting a bomb on a plane that isn't even taking off from China is way outside of what we've seen of their capacity and tactics. There have only been relatively few instances of premeditated violence by Uyghurs, and historically that's always been aimed squarely at Beijing- a few bus bombings in the 90s, and perhaps whatever that weird thing with the car exploding in Tiananmen square was earlier this year.
As for someone else doing on behalf of the Uyghurs, well, I'll believe it when I see it. Looks far less likely than basically any other explanation short of the Bermuda Triangle at this point.
Interesting analysis-- thanks.
DeleteWhen the average internet user can access sites like
ReplyDeletehttp://www.flightradar24.com/16.73,-260.18/5
and watch the progress of air traffic, in real time, then one knows for certain that the various industrial strength air traffic control systems and military tracking systems have the ability to track, record and communicate with every aircraft every second of the day.
So, once again we are being lied to. Something catastrophic has happened and governments for whatever reason have decided to hide why, probably because one of them was up to no good. (I am thinking here of the destruction of Korean Air Lines flight 007, which got mixed up in some tomfoolery by the USA) maybe China was "testing something".
Let us hope that when the truth is revealed that stupidity on the scale of the Boston bombing is not revealed.
Not much good can become of this disaster, but let us hope it reveals the street theatre that is airport "security" for what it is, and hastens it's demise..
Flightradar24 will track when the target is 30K asl (usually most accurate at 35K) below the minimums that specific site depends on the ACARS maintenance data uplink telemetry.
Deletehttp://www.wired.com/autopia/2014/03/malaysia-air/
Nothing personal Cascadian, just that I think we need keep Diplomad's ending paragraph in mind.
Arkie
Admittedly this is Doppler wavelength but, when the page loads click on any proximal coastal radar. Tampa for instance appears to have some cloud in the area (1634 CST).
Deletehttp://radar.weather.gov/Conus/index_lite_loop.php
Ark
"I think we need keep Diplomad's ending paragraph in mind."
DeleteYes.
James the Lesser
Indeed, I agree with Diplomad's call for less speculation.
DeleteWhat I was trying to convey (rather badly it would seem) is that in these days of perpetual military surveillance and heightened military preparedness it seems (to me at least) absurd that an aircraft's electronic signature can be "lost" without the surrounding militaries becoming immediately concerned. Specifically to avoid another rerun of 9/11. And yet we are to believe that aircraft potentially fully loaded with fuel can roam at will and not attract the militaries attention.
To that I declaim -bullshit. Somebody knows what happened, I am not saying it is the US. Indeed the article referenced makes that very point.
If I am wrong, then I have even less faith in the security theatre we are forced to accept every time we attempt to board a plane.
"To that I declaim -bullshit."
DeleteThere's a lotta bullshit flying around the world lately Cascadian. For instance - "Why do ' they ' bother with radar at all? All ' they ' really need do is, check the metadata to line up where ~200 subscribers simultaneously dropped off Facebook."
Your "conveying" was not so bad and I'm sorry if I gave the impression that's what I thought.
(For what it's worth - & I'm kinda concerned to be seen getting close to the classified - I figure the answer is already on a server somewhere. Probably picked up on a hydrophone. Like the ones that picks up earthquake signals or ... submarines. Problem there is ... if the signal doesn't closely resemble, or 'match' whatever the efforted system is geared towards acquiring ... it takes awhile to sift through the data.)
Arkie
There are still a lot of dark places in the world in a geographic, electronic, auditory, etc sense.
Delete√
DeleteHi Ark, no apologies necessary.
DeleteConsider the world we live in when the authoritative source for aviation news is a financial discussion blog noted for disbelieving the financial bullshit that is being pumped at us.
Note it is an attempt to summarize "what is known".
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-13/what-happened-flight-370-analysis-what-known
particularly paras 2 and 7, but even this is now out-of-date.
Uhh ... thanks for the link Cascadian.
DeleteAs to your pointing out "particularly paras 2 and 7" - and seeing as how backofanenvelope happened upon this site t'other day (verymost likely linked from Duff n Nonsense ... well, I'm gonna be kinda keerful using the abbreviation "Paras" as that's applicable to some UK Mil sorts)
but it's worse than that actually Cascadian, these days it seems all it takes to "be in the know" is to have a live internet connection and the ability to enter onto a Google searchbar the letters, W-I-K-I-P-E-D-I-A.
Exhibit 1.
Additional information is available but is not being shared with the public. To take one example, the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) on Flight 370 was functioning and automatically sent data on four critical systems, including the engines.
As it happens Diplomad on the most recent post mentions a Sociology "Professor" as not, pardon the expression - knowing Shit from Shinola - and so goes the Financial Services "Professor."
Stealing from & paraphrasing Our Host - financial services and university elites'd be hard-pressed to explain not only "non-renewables" but - using the ACARS example, even if the ACARS data was "made available to the public"
neither Anderson Cooper or Shawn Hannity ... neither Peter King or Dianne Feinstein ... could in a typical soundbite - rattle off a "knowledgeable-sounding" stream in what would essentially be the language of Jet-Engine Speak.
Frankly I doubt Google Translate'd be up to it.
Ark
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the S&W 357's. lol Love my 686. Always been a 1911 guy, but the little lady ain't up for clearance drills so....
ReplyDeleteGot a link to you discussing them?
Or Russian Orthodox extremists...no kidding, that was the best they could do for the latest Jack Ryan film. What's next, Murderous Menonites?
ReplyDeleteI remember when they re-wrote Clear and Present danger to have the bad guy be a Neo-Nazi. Pretty amusing when in the book it was a Palestinian terrorist, who was working with American Indian extremists and former Stasi types.
No, no, no...could never happen...what am I thinking?
I dunno. It doesn't seem to have hurt the UK Showtime series "Strike Back," where Islamo-nutters are prominently featured (most of the time).
ReplyDeleteI suspect it wouldn't be as big a problem as people think--but the PC crowd that dominate the entertainment industry will never let it happen.