Update 03/11/2019: Ethiopia's recent crash adds to the list of airline crashes killing dozens if not hundreds of people, leading to grounding of Boeing planes in Ethiopia, China and several other third world countries, but to the best of my knowledge it hasn't been grounded in the United States or other developed countries that fly much more.
Like the Germanwings crash, combined with incompetent media coverage providing propaganda coverage for the industry, it's another virtual invitation to conspiracy theories, although I haven't seen many yet, even if it is just a result of corner cutting and incompetence. There have been enough reports from whistle-blowers over the years to recognize that even if there isn't a far-fetched conspiracy going on the effort to deregulate this industry along with all other industries is backfiring.
This crash hasn't been followed by the quick memorials and calls for solidarity, perhaps because it happened in Ethiopia, presumably with mostly third world casualties, except for eight Americans, which might be an indication of elitist racism; but, whether this is the case or not, rational review is more important than appeals to emotion, that distract from solutions.
No industry should be allowed to regulate themselves, and we need much more disclosure laws for all of them, instead of relying on their good faith efforts, which they've proven repeatedly aren't actually in good faith, to look out for the safety of the public!
Edit 03/14/2019: Donald Trump's incredibly slow grounding of the Boeing 737 Max has raised major doubts about his ties to the airline industry and why he was so slow to ground them even after news reports exposed that there have been complaints from pilots about this jet for months which haven't been reported. I haven't seen as many conspiracy theories from organizations that mainstream media often portrays as fringe as I might have expected; however, the mainstream media is coming up with plenty of their own blaming it on Trump.
A lot of this is justified, of course, Trump has been outrageous, and he should have known he would have to ground it several days before he did and that if he didn't the media would rightfully, in this case, demonize him for it; however, the deregulation of the airlines began long before he came into office. I wouldn't rush to a deeper conspiracy theory without additional evidence to show what it might be; but there's enough insane behavior from both the mainstream media and Donald Trump to indicate that something bigger might be going on, so I wouldn't rush to rule out a bigger conspiracy for some bizarre reason either.
Ethiopian Airlines plane crash: Crash similar to this DOOMED Boeing 737 flight, pilot says 03/11/2019
Boeing crisis escalates as countries ground 737 MAX jets 03/11/2019
Ethiopia, China, other countries ground Boeing aircraft after devastating crash 03/11/2019
Ethiopian Airlines crash: Boeing faces safety questions over 737 Max 8 jets 03/11/2019
UPDATE 2-Ties between Boeing and Trump run deep 03/12/2019
FAA acting head says Trump right about planes being 'complex,' but they're safer than ever 03/14/2019 He has many ties to the airline industry, and was last to ground Boeing only after enormous amount of public pressure & whistle blowing.
Trump wanted his personal pilot to head the FAA. The critical job is still vacant amid Boeing fallout. 03/14/2019
Criticism of FAA mounts as other nations ground Boeing jets 03/13/2019
Here’s What Was on the Record About Problems With the 737 Max 03/13/2019
Pilots Voiced Concerns To Federal Database About Boeing 737 Max 8 Jets 03/13/2019
Rachel Maddow Show Transcript on reports from pilots on Boeing 737 Max 8 Jets 03/12/2019
Trump administration grounds Boeing 737 Max planes 03/13/2019
Boeing 787 Dreamliner Planes Grounded by FAA 01/16/2013
Edit 05/13/2019: There have been at least two other major crashes, plus more small plane crashes that are probably much more common, in the last month, picking up the pace of crashes that are usually very rare. And they also arrested a pilot just before take off for a triple murder that took place three and a half years ago. There aren't as many conspiracy theories, that I know of about these incidents as some past crashes; however it may add additional doubts about how well they're regulating the airline industry and whether or not privatization is making these incidents more likely. The plane that ran off the runway was a contractor doing work previously done by the military, and the pilot arrested worked for a subsidiary of American Airlines, which is a common practice of avoiding accountability. He was suspected of several things prior to his arrest including the murder, yet the airlines kept him on, even though they knew about at least some of these activities.
A Boeing 737 coming from Guantanamo Bay slid off the runway and fell into St. Johns River in Florida, officials say 05/04/2019
Passengers were waiting to board. Then the pilot, Christian Richard Martin, was arrested in a triple homicide case. 05/12/2019
Christian Martin: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know 05/12/2019 Christian Martin, decorated Army Major, Was Accused of Downloading a ‘Hit List’ While Serving in the Army Along With Other Charges
Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 2014 unofficial disappearance theories
Fiery Crash Landing Of Russian Passenger Plane In Moscow Leaves 41 Dead 05/06/2019 The Kremlin has also opened a criminal investigation, Charles Maynes reports for NPR from Moscow.
Russia’s Aeroflot Cancels Dozens of Flights Following Tragic Plane Crash 05/13/2019
Edit 05/24/2019: the number of crashes continues to rise with a third small plane crashing in Alaska, an F-16 crashing in California, and more questions about past crashes, including the Boeing 737 MAX, and a Piper Aircraft that crashed last year. I don't know if this is a sharp increase in crashes or if I'm just compiling them making it seem more common; figuring this out would take a closer look at past crashes, which someone should, and probably is doing, but they're not reporting when they become more or less common to the public or why. But even without that information it's clear that deregulation is a disaster, and there needs to be more accountablity.
New Boeing Lawsuit Alleges Company Hid Design Flaws in 737 MAX Planes 05/21/2019
Boeing says it needs more time to complete 737 Max software fix 04/02/2019 There was another report of them renewing this request in mid to late May.
F-16 pilot safely ejects before jet crashes into California building 05/16/2019
Taquan Air suspends flights after second deadly crash in a week 05/21/2019
Third small plane crash in 2 weeks in Alaska kills at least one person 05/22/2019
Deadly ERAU plane crash: Father of student pilot sues Piper Aircraft, claims 03/15/2019 DAYTONA BEACH — The family of an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University student killed in a plane crash along with a federal examiner last year when a wing detached from the airplane is suing Piper Aircraft alleging it knew of structural failures in that model since 1987 but failed to warn pilots and owners, or require testing that could have saved lives. Zack Capra, a 25-year-old Navy veteran who was taking his commercial pilot license exam, and Federal Aviation Administration pilot examiner John S. Azma, a father of four, were killed on April 4, 2018, when the left wing came off the Piper PA-28 as they flew west of Daytona Beach International Airport.
The traditional commercial media was quick to demonstrate a pro-industry bias in the coverage immediately after the Germanwings crash and their rush to hype the news, which is now routine, combined with their obvious bias had the inevitable result of inciting a large number of conspiracy theories.
However, like most potential conspiracy theories the most important thing might not be the most bizarre assumptions, but the obvious hype that demonstrates their bias, since the evidence for this is stronger and it can be confirmed by reviewing the news coverage of it.
It would be helpful to have records of the news as it is playing out and review them. This is available to those with adequate resources and would be good material for research into how the media covers the news and how their claims change in the immediate aftermath of dramatic events. Unfortunately most of us don't have access to these but I have noticed some of the coverage that happened before they had time to look into it too much; and it raises some major questions.
There should also be questions about whether or not antidepressants had an impact on the alleged suicide. There is an enormous amount of additional evidence to indicate that this could be counter productive. This includes some evidence cited by many researchers including those mentioned on "The Dark Side of a Pill" which explored a possible connection between violence and antidepressants which sometimes does the opposite of what it is supposed to, although they have been slow to warn people about that.
Whether it is a review of the immediate coverage after the crash or research into a possible connection to antidepressants there is much more evidence to indicate problems and some of it will also indicate why conspiracy theories have been so quick to come up and are virtually inevitable.
By hyping the news and blundering it so badly the media has practically invited conspiracy theories; and no more than two days after the crash France 24 News did an interview with someone they presented as an expert who said that he had major doubts about the conclusions that the judge was announcing and said that the only one that looked into it that didn't was the judge who, he said wasn't an expert.
Even before that the other news outlets where hyping it in favor of the airline industry to prevent people from panicking by warning them how unlikely it is statistically to have an accident in an airplane. Deutsche Welle Journal's newscaster emphasized the claim that people have a better chance of winning the lottery than they do of crashing in a plane and even one upped himself by saying people have a better chance of winning twice in one day, which I find quite astounding.
A hundred and fifty people died in that crash and it is one of many high profile crashes in the past couple of years, including two passenger flights in south East Asia, plus a smaller plane that had a very dramatic crash over a freeway that was played across the world over and over again and another passenger jet that was shot down in Ukraine, and more that I can't keep track of.
I can't think of one person who won the lottery twice in one day let alone a hundred and fifty, or enough to match all the other people that died in other flights.
They don't do the same thing when it comes to cops shooting unarmed people, or when it comes to many terrorist attacks that are used to scare the public for emotional reasons. Other media outlets have also been quick to claim that this is highly unlikely although most of them weren't quite so obvious; and they don't try to calm people about terrorism either by saying it is highly unlikely which it is.
It is hard to doubt this is blatant bias in favor of the airline industry.
French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy were quick to arrive on the scene and declare what they called "solidarity" in their efforts to find out what happened. At this time they were telling people that they had no reason to believe that it was terrorism and the airline was making statements about how well their screening process was and that both pilots were highly qualified and unlikely to be involved.
This claim was quickly forgotten when they began to suspect the co-pilot.
The quick response to declare "solidarity" looks a lot like their claims of solidarity after the terrorist shooting of a cartoonists a couple of months ago; and it is similar to other public relations campaigns. It is starting to look like this might be a routine if they think the public will fall for it.
They don't seem inclined to research the potential contributing causes of this anymore than they're inclined to research the potential contributing causes of terrorism.
And when France 24 interviewed one of the so-called experts on TV no more than a day after they concluded that it was the co-pilot that crashed the plane intentionally and not much if any more than two days after the crash it should have raised major doubts about whether they're more concerned about finding the cause of the crash and addressing it or "solidarity" to defend the industry and avoid more than a token amount of accountability for them.
Unfortunately I don't know where to find the exact interview but it might be on their web site at France 24: Germanwings flight 4U9525. The titles don't clearly indicate the interview which I saw when it first aired; but he said that they didn't have enough data to come to conclusions since they still hadn't found the second black box. He claimed that they had no way of knowing if the co-pilot was alone in the cockpit, at that time, or if he had passed out or many other things.
Even if the evidence they found later supported their conclusions then it should still raise some legitimate doubts if they came to those conclusions before they had adequate information. It wouldn't be entirely irrational for some conspiracy theorists to speculate about the possibility that they created evidence to support their conclusions; it certainly wouldn't be the first time authorities did something like that.
This possibility was quickly dropped from the traditional media which is typical once they come to their conclusions and the official version is repeated over and over again as if there is no doubt about it, which is a typical propaganda tactic they use.
Even if the official version is true, which I'm certainly not ruling out then more consideration should be given to the possibility that antidepressants might have something to do with as "The Dark Side of a Pill" seems to imply even though they didn't directly research this particular incident.
This documentary and other research articles, including the following, raises major doubts about whether antidepressants accomplish the goal they've been intended for or, in some cases it might do the opposite:
How Zoloft & Prozac are Linked to Child Suicides & Mass Shootings 04/29/2014
Every mass shooting over last 20 years has one thing in common... and it's not guns 04/2/2013
SSRI Antidepressants: The Gateway Drug to Mass Murder 04/24/2014
SSRI Stories: Antidepressant Nightmares
Pharmaceutical companies spend more on advertising than they do on research; that alone should raise major doubts about their integrity; but some of these studies raise many more questions, although they're rarely if ever addressed in the traditional media, or by the political establishment. Both these institution cater to the Pharmaceutical as well as the airline industry, which provides circumstantial evidence to the possibility that tehy might not want to hold either as accountable as those with much less political power.
There is some speculation that our entire economic system might be partially responsible for many disasters being more likely, and there is enormous amount of evidence to support this assumption. When I was taught about various economic systems decades ago in school they told us that there were three main types fiscal ideologies and three types of democratic control systems which were not necessarily synonymous, although there has always been an enormous amount of propaganda equating Communism with tyranny and Capitalism with democracy.
The three types of control systems were totalitarianism, where a country is controlled by one man, Authoritarianism, where a country is controlled by a relatively small and undemocratic group of people, and democracy where the people supposedly control the government, although I have found that is rarely the case even though many governments claim to be democratic. The three economic ideologies were Capitalism, Communism, and Socialism.
We were taught that we could never have an pure extreme version of any of these fiscal ideology since they wouldn't work and efforts to create them always failed so all the existing systems were actually compromises.
This was true; however since then we have been moving steadily in the wrong direction to create a more extreme version of capitalism than we had since the reforms put in place by FDR.
The media and political establishment haven't even tried to raise serious doubts about this, or at least they haven't done a good job at it; instead they've been providing propaganda that will escalate this process. Even though I don't think we should go to the opposite extreme I think that the so-called Marxists might have some major points including some to indicate a partial explanation how fiscal ideology could make these disasters more common as indicated in the following excerpts.
Germanwings crash in the Alps: sick pilot a symptom of a sick industry by Martin Swayne 04/02/2015
The news of the German pilot Andreas Lubitz flying the Germanwings Airbus 320 into a mountain in the French Alps came as a shock to the world. Although the official accident investigation is still in progress and will take months to complete, French authorities quickly made this into a criminal investigation and released certain information pointing the finger to the First Officer on board. ....
Nevertheless, it is not the first time pilot murder-suicide has occurred. In fact, less than two years ago almost exactly the same thing happened on Mozambique Airlines Flight 470, when an Embraer 190 began to lose altitude rapidly on a flight to Angola from Mozambique. The aircraft crashed in Bwabwata National Park in Namibia, with all 27 passengers and 6 crew members killed. According to the investigation report, Captain Herminio dos Santos Fernandes had a "clear intention" to crash the jet and changed its autopilot settings after the First Officer had been locked out of the cockpit.
Before that, in 1997 there was the case of SilkAir Flight 185, where the Captain nose-dived his aircraft into the Musi River in southern Sumatra, Indonesia. In 1999 all 217 passengers on board EgyptAir Flight 990 also died after a similar crash. Not all the causes of these events have been determined conclusively, but the primary theory is that they were murder-suicide, committed by one of the pilots. ....
The present author is a commercial pilot and takes great pride in flying his passengers safely to their destination. We are trained very thoroughly to deal with all kinds of emergencies and are well aware of the great responsibility on our shoulders. ....
The truth is, a cancer has been eating away for quite some time at the aviation industry as a whole. Low cost airlines have initiated a race to the bottom and through sheer market forces legacy carriers have been forced to follow suit. In order to understand how it came to this we have to go back a few decades.
In most of Western Europe most flying jobs were with national government-owned unionised flag carriers. They were the standard bearers, worldwide ambassadors and advertisers for their countries. Great pride was taken in them, by them and by their employees. It was a coveted position and very well paid.
Later came the charter/holiday carriers, some of whom survived, while many others went bankrupt or were taken over. In all aspects it was still a respected and well remunerated profession, with standards in services and terms and conditions that were well understood by all.
Then came privatisation and the governments sold their investments to public shareholders. Now profit was the only parameter. Lo and behold, it was discovered that this was a vocational industry; people would sell their grandmothers for a step on the ladder, and pay to do it. The accountants couldn't believe their luck and the cancer started to spread. This was at a time when the market was deregulated and anyone could start up an airline flying from anywhere in EU to anywhere in the EU. Cut price was the answer. Dog eat dog became the mentality. Pilots became commodities. Complete article
The news of the German pilot Andreas Lubitz flying the Germanwings Airbus 320 into a mountain in the French Alps came as a shock to the world. Although the official accident investigation is still in progress and will take months to complete, French authorities quickly made this into a criminal investigation and released certain information pointing the finger to the First Officer on board. ....
Nevertheless, it is not the first time pilot murder-suicide has occurred. In fact, less than two years ago almost exactly the same thing happened on Mozambique Airlines Flight 470, when an Embraer 190 began to lose altitude rapidly on a flight to Angola from Mozambique. The aircraft crashed in Bwabwata National Park in Namibia, with all 27 passengers and 6 crew members killed. According to the investigation report, Captain Herminio dos Santos Fernandes had a "clear intention" to crash the jet and changed its autopilot settings after the First Officer had been locked out of the cockpit.
Before that, in 1997 there was the case of SilkAir Flight 185, where the Captain nose-dived his aircraft into the Musi River in southern Sumatra, Indonesia. In 1999 all 217 passengers on board EgyptAir Flight 990 also died after a similar crash. Not all the causes of these events have been determined conclusively, but the primary theory is that they were murder-suicide, committed by one of the pilots. ....
The present author is a commercial pilot and takes great pride in flying his passengers safely to their destination. We are trained very thoroughly to deal with all kinds of emergencies and are well aware of the great responsibility on our shoulders. ....
The truth is, a cancer has been eating away for quite some time at the aviation industry as a whole. Low cost airlines have initiated a race to the bottom and through sheer market forces legacy carriers have been forced to follow suit. In order to understand how it came to this we have to go back a few decades.
In most of Western Europe most flying jobs were with national government-owned unionised flag carriers. They were the standard bearers, worldwide ambassadors and advertisers for their countries. Great pride was taken in them, by them and by their employees. It was a coveted position and very well paid.
Later came the charter/holiday carriers, some of whom survived, while many others went bankrupt or were taken over. In all aspects it was still a respected and well remunerated profession, with standards in services and terms and conditions that were well understood by all.
Then came privatisation and the governments sold their investments to public shareholders. Now profit was the only parameter. Lo and behold, it was discovered that this was a vocational industry; people would sell their grandmothers for a step on the ladder, and pay to do it. The accountants couldn't believe their luck and the cancer started to spread. This was at a time when the market was deregulated and anyone could start up an airline flying from anywhere in EU to anywhere in the EU. Cut price was the answer. Dog eat dog became the mentality. Pilots became commodities. Complete article
Martin Swayne doesn't go into possible conspiracy theories in order to review the problems with the airlines; instead he reviews problems that are well documented and legitimate concerns that should be addressed whether or not there is a conspiracy involved. The researchers about antidepressants do this as well, or at least the good researchers.
Both these problems should be addressed to the best of our ability; but the traditional media and political establishment are focusing on putting all the blame on the co-pilot, using this for entertainment purposes disguised as news, and sweeping it under the rug with minimal amounts of reforms to make this leas likely.
As usual the conclusive evidence should be a higher priority since we know that the solutions to this will improve things whether there are one or more conspiracies involved or not; but the way they use all this hype is a virtual invitation to believe in conspiracies, even some really bad ones that could distract from the more rational theories or the proven truth.
Edit: Since this was posted there was at least one other high profile story about Russian plane crash: Was there an explosion? where the media coverage of it is following a similar pattern, which speculates about an enormous number of possibilities before any investigation is done and provides obsessive coverage of it. This is another virtual invitation to conspiracy theorists and does very little to recognize and solve the most important contributing causes to plane crashes. One of the possibilities that was briefly discussed was that the co-pilot said there were problems with with condition of the plane.
This was quickly forgotten when they moved on to the bomb theory, and while they were doing this they provided multiple conflicting versions of it. This is overwhelming evidence for the need for major reform in the media allowing sincere reformers from any given subject to discuss the potential problems and fixing the ones they can be sure of.
Unfortunately until we get that, perhaps with enormous grassroots pressure we'll continue to have enormous amounts of hype which inevitably incites both good and bad conspiracy theories then the same media establishments that provide terrible coverage routinely ridicules all the conspiracy theorists that disagree with them including the good ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment