Rousing 2011 #OWS speech reminds us of role of St. Vincent's Hospital on 9/11

Read your lipservice on 9/11, but we have no full-service hospital below 14th Street since St. Vincent's closed. #Rudin @Partnership4NYC

— Louis Flores (@maslowsneeds) September 11, 2014

Boeing role in missing Malaysia Airlines crash not yet fully reported ?

Will Malaysia Airlines replace transponder, other communication, and tracking instruments aboard its fleet of Boeing aircraft, like how Air France replaced airspeed instruments aboard its fleet of Airbus aircraft following the crash of AF447 ?

As hopes ebb and flow over the intensive mobilization to locate and retrieve the Boeing 777-200’s data and voice recorders of the missing Malaysian flight, the authorities taking part in the coordinated international effort to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 are having to bear the expense of a "needle in the hay stack" search and recovery effort that just should not be.

• RELATED : Nobody is asking why Boeing, the manufacturer of the missing aircraft, cannot explain or is not being asked to explain why the tracking systems failed on a plane believed to have continued its flight for several hours after last contact. (FAA, clueless to help, grateful it was neither an American flight that disappeared, nor that the disappearance took place near America * NYC : News & Analysis)
• RELATED : A lawsuit wrongly filed in Illinois state court was dismissed shortly after it was filed, even though it sought to protect evidence from the negligence of Malaysia Airlines and Boeing, letting Boeing off the hook, for now. (Illinois judge tosses first lawsuit over missing Malaysia Airlines flight * WQAD 8 News)
• RELATED : As the intensive hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 entered its second month on Tuesday, it was certain to become the most expensive search and recovery effort in aviation history. (Search for Malaysian Jet to Be Costliest in History * The New York Times)
• RELATED : Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Xie Hangsheng told Malaysia's ambassador to Beijing late Monday that China wanted to know exactly what led Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to announce that the plane had been lost. (Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: China demands satellite data used to conclude Boeing 777 crashed into ocean * CBS News)

The report in The New York Times indicated that authorities and companies participating in the search will likely bear their own costs for the search, but it is a shame when there appears to be negligence involved in the horrible fate that befell Flight MH370.

After news first broke that the flight went missing, the Malaysian government was reluctant to share information, because they feared exposing their "weak radar and satellite systems," The New York Times reported at the time, alluding to a shared fear by American aviation officials, who didn't want any political blowback directed their way over American failures, chiefly from aircraft manufacturer Boeing, that may have contributed to the crash. Boeing, an undisputed leader in aviation, has taken a backseat in the search for Flight MH370, an aircraft it manufactured. Will U.S. and other aviation authorities focus on the spectacular manufacturing failure that appears to have allowed people aboard the missing flight to deactivate transponders and other tracking equipment, as speculation suggests, exposing a lingering risk of vulnerability aboard aircraft to criminality over a decade since the Sept. 11 attacks ? There seems to be a lot of hostility directed at the Malaysian government over its troubled search efforts, but nobody questions Boeing's faulty manufacturing that may have had a contributory negligent role in the flight's disappearance.

Five years ago, the prior record for the costliest aviation search and recovery effort ever undertaken was set following the 2009 crash of Air France Flight 447 several hundred miles off of the coast of Brazil, The New York Times reported, adding that the cost of that two-year effort, for the remains of an Airbus A330, reached about €115 million, before noting that "... the search for Flight 370 is already far more complicated, and may have already topped that total. Some of the ships involved cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day apiece to use, and some of the aircraft being used can cost thousands of dollars an hour each to operate, officials say."

Misreadings by airspeed instrumentation aboard the Flight AF447 Airbus was ruled to have contributed to that accident, and Air France ultimately "replaced the speed sensors, known as Pitots, which were manufactured by French company Thales, on its Airbus planes with a newer model after the crash," The Daily Mail reported. No word yet if Malaysia Airlines plans to audit, investigate, and ultimately replace transponder and other communication and tracking equipment on other Boeing aircraft in its fleet.

Morbid Internet Memes of Missing Malaysia Airlines Flt. MH370

PUBLISHED : MON, 17 MAR 2014, 05:23 PM
UPDATED : WED, 26 MAR 2014, 9:00 AM

• RELATED : Satellite locates debris field of 122 objects possibly of missing MH370 jet (The New York Post | March 26, 2014 | 12:22 AM)

Did Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Land On Gilligan's Island ?

"Are we desensitized to the point of not being able to truly empathize, or is this our way of coping with tragedies since we’ve had to endure them in different ways than have previous generations ?" asked the Web site Elite Daily in a post trying to make sense of the morbid Internet memes about the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

Jokes about the missing airplane could be a way for people to cope with the outrageousness that the U.S. government can be so incompetent and impotent, given how much technology exists today, given how the limited computer power of a smartphone can now power record-breaking robots, but seemingly, by comparison, the U.S. government could still be blind-sided by the inadequate technology aboard jet airplanes over a decade after terrorists used airplanes as weapons of mass destruction during the attacks of 9/11.

These Internet memes are funny, when you think of the irony, but then they become tragic, when you think of the missing people and the pain and agony of their surviving friends and families. The government's continuing negligence in failing to update airline black box technology could be one of those concerns that Edward Snowden was warning us about : the danger that the U.S. government's dragnet surveillance program would inundate the government with so much useless information in such large quantities that the government would lose focus of more important issues, like finding missing airplanes, improving airplane black box technology, or being able to predict that Russia would pounce on Crimea, and, more importantly, when.

Internet Memes : When the implied butt of the joke is the impotent government

As the public's imagination has turned from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flt. 370 to morbid memes that the flight has accidentally landed on Gilligan's Island, or when the public imagines that Tattoo from Fantasy Island, who was famous for announcing the arrival of "The plane ! The plane !" would probably do a better job of locating the missing flight than the government, you know that the public's perception of government competence is in the gutter.

How soon before Republicans seize on the missing Malaysia Airlines flight as a flashpoint to demonstrate that President Barack Obama failed to improve world-wide aviation safety in the post-9/11 world ?

When is the U.S. government going to wise up, stop gutting the U.S. Constitution with its dragnet surveillance programs, and, instead, focus on the things the government should be addressing : like ensuring adequate safety technology being deployed and functional aboard every airplane ?

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• RELATED : Nobody is asking why Boeing, the manufacturer of the missing aircraft, cannot explain or is not being asked to explain why the tracking systems failed on a plane believed to have continued its flight for several hours after last contact. (FAA, clueless to help, grateful it was neither an American flight that disappeared, nor that the disappearance took place near America * NYC : News & Analysis)
• RELATED : If the transponders had not gone silent on 9/11, air traffic controllers would have quickly realized that two jetliners en route to Los Angeles had made dramatic course changes and were bound straight for Manhattan. (Out of Control : Why Does the FAA Allow Pilots To Turn Off Transponders ? * The New York Times)

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A lingering, yet compelling, question facing investigators is whether Malaysia Airlines offered its passengers Wi-Fi service. If so, did the Wi-Fi signal remain available, even though other communication services aboard the flight seem to have been deliberately disabled ? Because some airlines place Wi-Fi service behind a paywall, how many passengers on the flight had paid to access any available Wi-Fi service ? Since the Federal Aviation Administration and other airline agencies heavily regulate passenger use of cellphones, PDA's, digital tablets, and laptops aboard commercial aircraft, do airline regulators inadvertently cut-off communication technology that is undoubtedly "smarter" than black boxes and deactivation-prone transponders ?

VIDEO : NYC Freedom Tower Skydiver Jump

Three daredevils, along with their lookout, pulled off a breathtaking jump from the Freedom Tower in New York City, and the jump was documented in a daredevil YouTube video shot at night, The New York Daily News reported.

• RELATED : Helmet camera shows skydiver's remarkable jump from World Trade Center (The New York Daily News)

By jumping from the top of the Freedom Tower, the stunt men engaged in what is referred to as B.A.S.E. jumping, a risky sport where "participants jump from fixed objects and use a parachute to break their fall," according to Wikipedia. B.A.S.E. is an "acronym that stands for four categories of fixed objects from which one can jump: building, antenna, span, and Earth (cliff)."

The comments to the YouTube video ranged from excitable "Wow's" to shaming the daredevils. "Perhaps it would have been wise to take into account that you did this on the SAME grounds many poor souls as well jumped, as it was not for their enjoyment," one commenter wrote.

FAA, clueless to help, grateful it was neither an American flight that disappeared, nor that the disappearance took place near America

Disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 Torments Aviation Regulators More Than We're Being Told

Whenever a natural disaster, armed conflict, or a political crisis sparks anywhere around the world, the agencies of the United States federal government normally roll up rather swiftly, to lend their experience, to take charge, or to provide passive assistance. In the case of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet, U.S. aviation officials can only stand down, because they appear to be as clueless as Malaysian aviation officials as to the lack of credible, concrete information about what happened aboard Flight MH370.

"The American investigators believe that the Malaysian government was reluctant to share information with them because they fear exposing their weak radar and satellite systems," The New York Times reported, noting that American aviation officials don't want any blowback directed their way, adding, in keeping with its Timesian tradition of parsing its analysis, "With few leads to go on, countries cooperating in the search have sometimes sniped at one another."

There's a bias in the media, or else just plain old lazy reporting, that nobody is asking why Boeing, the manufacturer of the missing aircraft, cannot explain or is not being asked to explain why the tracking systems failed on a plane believed to have continued its flight for several hours after last contact.

Flight MH370 disappeared two weeks ago while carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing, China, but the large coalition of nations working on the search for the missing jet have been stymied in every way possible, because for days they were operating on assumptions that had no factual basis and were, consequently, conducting searches anywhere the latest fad theory would point. In this situation, the United States, an undisputed leader in aviation technology and surveillance, has declined to assert leadership, because it, too, is ignorant of what happened to Flight MH370. What would be the difference if the communication equipment aboard the jet of an American airline had been deactivated, or if the disappearance of a jet had taken place in one of the oceans thousands of miles off of the U.S. coastline instead of the Australian coastline ? Probably not much, and that's precisely why the Federal Aviation Administration and Boeing are keeping a low profile right now, and that's exactly why the media can only speculate about what might have happened.

As it stands, what should be more worrisome is that the equipment aboard an American-manufactured Boeing 777 failed. What do American aviation regulators have to say about the integrity, safety, and reliability of tracking equipment aboard the jets manufactured by Boeing ? Nothing. Why all the silence ?

As often as Malaysian aviation officials have been criticized for failing to be transparent about their lack of information, so, too, should the F.A.A. be pressed to admit that it lacks the same information. When will the media ask how the F.A.A. would handle the search for Flight MH370 if American aviation officials had been in charge of this investigation ? When will focus shift from the scrutiny of Malaysia Airlines to Boeing ?

• RELATED : The continuing uncertainty, with no evidence of what happened to the plane and the people on it, has tormented relatives of those on board and flummoxed aviation experts, including the Federal Aviation Administration. (Jet’s Disappearance Puzzles a World Under Constant Electronic Watch * The New York Times)
• RELATED : Speculation about what really happened on missing flight 370 has been rampant. A commercial long-haul pilot and an experienced cabin crew member discuss the possibilities. (What happened to MH370 ? Since aviation regulators are clueless, a pilot and a flight attendant give their views * The Guardian)
• RELATED : If the transponders had not gone silent on 9/11, air traffic controllers would have quickly realized that two jetliners en route to Los Angeles had made dramatic course changes and were bound straight for Manhattan. (Out of Control : Why Does the FAA Allow Pilots To Turn Off Transponders ? * The New York Times)

As the investigation turns to identifying criminal responsibility for the missing flight, will the U.S. government focus on the spectacular intelligence failure that appears to allow airplanes to remain vulnerable to criminality over a decade since the Sept. 11 attacks and susceptible to going missing almost five years since the 2009 accident that befell Air France Flight 447 over the Atlantic Ocean ?

• RELATED : The Technology Is Out There,’ but Satellites Don’t Track Jets (The New York Times)
• RELATED : The mystery of flight MH370 : How can we track smartphones anywhere on earth, but a giant plane can go missing ? (Updated) (Extreme Tech)
• RELATED : Black boxes, air safety, and the need to know what happened to MH370 (Al Jazeera America)

For the U.S. government, which is caught up in a controversy over the indiscriminate dragnet surveillance by the National Security Administration, the blind spots in aviation safety patterns recent blind spots in foreign policy risks, such as the Russian takeover of Crimea. These blind spots are proof that real threats are not being assessed while the N.S.A. is wholly consumed with the distraction of dragnet surveillance -- a dangerous situation about which civil libertarians and journalists had warned would happen as a result of the Obama administrations's faulty obsession with collecting Internet data.

Guantanamo Farcical Military Sept. 11 Trial Feed Censorship

During Monday's military court proceedings in Guantanamo, the audio/video feed was shut off -- but nobody knows by whom ?

"Judge Col. James Pohl remains puzzled by an anonymous censor that cut the audiovisual feed during September 11 courtroom proceedings. Ryan Reilly joins Abby from the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba," reported Huffington Post.

And from The Washington Post :

David Nevin, one of Mohammed’s civilian attorneys, was discussing a defense motion to preserve any evidence from the secret overseas prisons where the defendants were held by the CIA. The motion had been declassified, but Nevin had barely gotten a sentence out when the audio feed to the media centers on base and at Fort Meade was smothered in white noise. Then the video of the courtroom was cut.

When the feeds were restored several minutes later, Judge James Pohl, an Army colonel, seemed perplexed as to not only why Nevin was censored but by whom. Pohl said he did not cut off the feed, and it did not appear that the court security officer who sits beside him did, either.