Choice, You Say?! Heaven Forfend....

"I'm sure a lot of you may be asking what this new email story is about, and why in the world the FBI would decide to jump into an election with no evidence of wrongdoing. That's a good question [with election day coming in short order]."
"I understand. And as I've said, I'm not making any excuses [for private email system]. I've said it was a mistake and I regret it."
"There is no case. Now, what people are focused on is choosing the next president and commander in chief of the United States of America."
"I'm running against a man who says he doesn't understand why we can't use nuclear weapons. He wants more countries to have nuclear weapons."
"And if you're telling yourself he's going to surround himself with smart people to stop these crazy ideas, remember this: He was asked who he consults on foreign policy. Donald Trump said he doesn't need to consult because, and I quote: 'I have a very good brain'."
"[Vladimir Putin] knows he can use flattery to get into Donald's head, to make Donald the Kremlin's puppet, and it seems to be working. Donald has signalled to Putin that he will let Russia do whatever it wants."
Hillary Clinton, U.S. Presidential contender

"Hillary is the one who sent and received classified information on an insecure server, putting the safety of the American people under threat."
"Hillary is the one who lied to Congress under oath. Hillary is the one who lied on so many different occasions to the FBI."
Donald J. Trump, U.S. Presidential contender

Mrs. Clinton asks her supporters to ask themselves and possibly challenge supporters of her nemesis:
(a) Can the candidate be trusted to command the American nuclear arsenal? (b) How does the candidate handle a crisis? (d) Do  you know the difference between our allies and our adversaries? Needless to say, the very same questions could be put to her. Of course, Mrs. Clinton represents a Democratic administration that sat back when it should have taken action and instead permitted Mr. Putin do whatever he wanted, manipulating the U.S. to the point of emasculation.

Smoothly glossing over the fact that a candidate for the presidency, while acting in a key cabinet position committing to an egregiously serious lack of judgement potentially imperilling the very security of the country that she pledges to uphold and protect doesn't cover herself in glory by magnanimously stating she erred, she regrets that, and has learned from the situation. The presidency is not a learning opportunity. Augmented by her lack of commitment to the position of Secretary of State, willing to sell access to high bidders to enrich the Clinton estate, augers ill.

When FBI Director James Comey released his little bombshell last Friday over the agency's ongoing probe of Mrs. Clinton's private email server, citing the discovery of another immense cache of previously unknown emails many of which could be incriminating in nature, betraying the open house that the State Department had become, offering entree through the Clinton Family Charitable Trust, it served to shock additional members of the voting public into confused disarray.

It was all fodder for political groupies and pundits assessing the outcome of these damning revelations as polling day galloped closer. What should have alarmed the Democrats is that the Trump campaign had already, before the thuddingly surprising revelation, been profiting from her downgraded reputation. Donald Trump was steadily gaining on the elevated support numbers of the Clinton campaign. ABC, which had Clinton with a 12-point lead a sneeze-event earlier placed Trump slightly ahead of her just before Director Comey's regrettable statement.

Attributable by those taking the rising temperature of the American public over news of an amazing premium increase in Obamacare, it was clear to many that this was what the reaction amounted to; a ditching of Clinton support and a switch to Trump. There's more of a sour whiff of Hillary Clinton's efforts to bring universal health care to the United States when her husband was president and gave her that job, presumptuously ugly in the minds of those who preferred to limp along without universal coverage, to remind them of yet another reason why they balked at this political establishment.

The Clinton campaign team spent lavishly on television advertising, pointedly taking well-deserved shots at the fact that a nasty egotist whose faith in his own intelligence supports his animus toward anyone who isn't like him, and an utter ignoramus on international affairs could conceivably become the next President of the United States, an event too horrible to contemplate for any thinking individual. This, while practically nothing was spent by the Trump campaign on election advertising and public relations.

Now, with scarcely  time left to blink before November 8 arrives, Republican election adverts of stunning negativity are hitting the Democratic candidate in a double whammy of Trump and Comey. Revelations of tens of millions of dollars ushered toward Bill Clinton personally in the pay-for-play playlist is all delectable fodder for Clinton dynasty haters. The reality of continued FBI scrutiny of the reported staggering 650,000 additional emails discovered on Huma Abedin's husband's computer is a backdrop too far; a candidate for the American presidency under examination by the FBI for wrong-doing?

And then there is the Clinton Foundation and the fact that it too is and has been under investigation by the FBI, irrespective of the Justice Department opposing any such investigation. As matters proceed, things could get worse and worse still for Hillary Clinton's aspirations. As matters continue to proceed, the outcome could be disastrous for the United States in the potential prospect of the next president succeeding the current one to bring in the Trump administration; an outcome too sordid and frightening to allow the mind too long to linger upon.

The Agony of Destroyed Heritage

"This is a very small village and I fear it will be left to die. We have nothing now. We have no future."
"This is not a touristy place, it's not Assissi [which was meticulously restored after the 1997 earthquake]."
"I'm afraid we could be living here [emergency tent village] a long time."
Monica Valle, 49, Accumoli, Italy

"After seven years, L'Aquila [still unreconstructed, where 309 people died in a 2009 earthquake] remains an open wound. What's going to happen to us?"
Stefano Petrucci, mayor, Accumoli

"Amatrice is too important not to be rebuild. People come from all over Italy to eat spaghetti all'amatriciana here -- it's known throughout the world."
Giorgio, elderly resident of Amatrice

"No night can last so long that the sun never rises again."
"I am convinced that Amatrice will rise again. We owe it to the people who died here."
Sergio Pirozzi, Amatrice mayor

  The Arquata del Tronto tented camp - one of several in the earthquake zone -- AFP

Local people of the Green Heart of Italy, a huge triangle of mountains, forests and medieval stone villages despair that their historical towns will ever be rebuilt after the devastating earthquake that hit the region with a death toll of 290. The financial state that Italy is in lends credence to their fears. Augmented with their feeling that the determination that their hamlets be rebuilt will vanish after the initial shock to the nation of the heritage loss.

They envision their towns and villages left in ruin, the forests overtaking them.



Fewer than one percent of Italian home owners possess earthquake insurance. In Japan, by comparison, another hugely earthquake-prone geography, about 20 percent of homeowners do have such insurance. Should families in the mountainous region that saw all they owned and lived for destroyed by the tremblor and its aftershocks, wish to rebuilt, it is doubtful they could do so without financial assistance from some source, and the sole source they might consider would be government treasury.

When the city of L'Aquila was destroyed after a powerful 2009 earthquake, the government in Rome pledged it would swiftly rebuild. Seven years later, the city resembles a construction site, buildings wrapped in scaffolding, propped with girders, with 8,000 of its residents living still in the temporary accommodation provided to them in the immediate wake of the devastating tremblor that destroyed all that was familiar to them.

Little wonder the villagers inhabiting towns destroyed by the quake of last week have little faith. Matteo Renzi, their prime minister stated without equivocation that "We want those communities to have the chance of a future and not just memories", as he pledged to rebuild. But in light of the financial challenges the country is facing and considering that dozens of villages and hamlets were devastated, the very thought of building materials being transported up those narrow twisting mountain roads which heavy machinery must traverse is daunting.

Perhaps, in the final analysis, practical reality will impose itself, and the Renaissance frescoes in medieval churches, towers and convents now so heavily damaged, will never be restored, let alone peoples' homes. Amatrice was the worst hit, where over 200 of the victims died, and it is little but rubble, where it was once considered one of Italy's most beautiful of villages.

The heaviest casualties were in Amatrice, as many old buildings collapsed in the night -- AFP

Migrant Marine Rescue Season

"It is still not entirely clear what happened, but they died a horrible death."
"[Water and fuel had undoubtedly mixed together and fumes were generated that] might have been enough for them to lose consciousness."
Jens Pagotto, head, Doctors Without Borders search-and-rescue operations

Migrants sit in their rubber dinghy during a rescue operation by Italian navy ship Borsini (unseen) off the coast of Sicily, Italy, in this handout picture courtesy of the Italian Marina Militare released July 19, 2016. Marina Militare/Handout via Reuters 

 

They've revved up the hope-and-pray machinery again, with the presence of warmer weather and more tranquil sea conditions. The urgent desire to continue harvesting the fears and aspirations of haven-seekers and migrant-opportunists eager to escape poverty, oppression, violence and degradation in their countries of origin for the greener pasture of civilized Europe has persuaded human smugglers that they've bided their time for long enough.

Monday marked the advent of 240,884 migrants having paid smugglers exorbitant fees to ferry them by sea into Europe, according to the records maintained by the International Organization for Migration. Their record-keeping also reveals that almost three thousand of those hopeful migrants have died in the Mediterranean through 2016.

The hapless victims of whom Mr. Pagotto spoke were those of 22 migrants mostly women, who had hoped to arrive in Sicilian waters whom Doctors Without Borders, patrolling the central Mediterranean, discovered. The bodies lay at the bottom of one of two rubber dinghies found floating off the Libyan coast. Taking the two dinghies in hand, over 200 people, 50 children among them, were rescued and brought to Italy.

Their discovery marks a 'first', a rather ghastly and inglorious one, where already the grim spectacle of deaths at sea have overtaken this early in the season what in previous years' counts took until fall to achieve in lost lives. North Africans are leaving in greater numbers, desperate to reach Europe, and smugglers have accordingly mustered greater resources of the usual unseaworthy vessels to get them there, dead or alive.

With the moderately 'safer' route from Turkey across the Aegean Sea to Greek islands having been diminished in opportunity reflecting the Turkish government's agreement with the European Union in exchange for Turkish favours that some might interpret as blackmail, the longer and more dangerously storm-tossed route across the Mediterranean to Italy has resurged.

Up to 135,000 economic migrants have attempted to find asylum in Italy in 2016, most hoping to forge on to other destinations further in Europe, like Germany or the Scandinavian countries where rumour has it that they will be welcomed so enthusiastically that all their cares and concerns will be resolved as economic opportunities open wide for their aspirations to be fulfilled.

A woman looks out of the porthole from aboard the Aquarius rescue vessel after arriving in Sicily June 25 with more than 600 migrants aboard the ship rescued by SOS Mediterranee and the medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). | AP

Chernobyl, Sealed

"Russian aggression had undermined the trust of non-nuclear governments in the non-proliferation of these weapons, and threatened the repeat of a nuclear catastrophe in our country."
"[Ukraine would] neither today, nor tomorrow [halt nuclear reactors providing power for Ukraine in reflection of its vital need for energy independence from Russian gas]."
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko

The arch, though, is a formidable structure, said Vince Novak, the director of nuclear safety for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which administers the project’s financing. If necessary, he said, “it might be able to last 300 years or more.”

Addressing his country on the 30th anniversary of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power explosion and meltdown, President Poroshenko spoke of Moscow's support for ethnic Russian Ukrainian separatists in the eastern  Ukraine, and the potential threat of a repeat of the catastrophe that might have ensued during the course of its actions there. The domination of the Soviet past was revisited on an unwilling Ukraine by its former nemesis.

It has taken thirty years, but finally the international efforts to seal the remains of the exploded nuclear reactor No.4 is close to completion. The immense dome meant to seal the reactor was the setting for Mr. Poroshenko's speech to his nation. He made note of the fact that fighting between the military and the insurgents had occurred a mere several hundred kilometres from the city of Zapaorozhiye where the nuclear power plant stood.

The New Safe Confinement structure is meant to contain the radiation from the worst nuclear catastrophe in a century, according to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, leading the project. And when that giant deadly tomb is finally sealed, the international community will withdraw, leaving destitute Ukraine to fend for itself in managing future nuclear waste disposal.

"By the time we were evacuated, we had been exposed for 36 hours. My entire family has been affected by this. We are all sick. My daughter, my son, my husband and me", stated Nadiya Makyrevych, a survivor of the catastrophe who lived with her family in the town of Pripyat, where there were no warning sirens installed in the town, and it took Soviet authorities quite some time to alert residents even as a radioactive cloud rose over Eastern Europe.

Even then, there was no word of the sheer magnitude of the nuclear event that tore apart peaceful life in the area, making the area unsafe for human habitation for generations while authorities sat on the botched experiment at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The wrecked reactor No. 4 along with the initial protective "sarcophagus" that had been installed in 1986, are set to be sealed by an immense 35-storey arched dome, wheeled into permanent place, next year.

Once sealed, robotic cranes within the structure will be programmed to disassemble the destroyred reactor. The disposal of a thick, lava-like mass filled with uranium will complete the dismantling and neutralization of the reactor. As long as all goes as planned.

The arch stands 360 feet high and 540 feet long and will be the biggest moving structure in the world when it slides into place atop a concrete sarphogus built atop the melted down reactor four after the disaster. It is tall enough to fit the Statue of Liberty, from the base to the torch. Photo: John Wendle for The Wall Street Journal

The Normalizing of Bypassing Responsibility

"He only did it for very few second[s] before the plane could even move. There was no way for air traffic control to detect that."
"The man planned this. It was no spontaneous action."
Peter Pletschacher, president, German Aviation Writers Association

Investigators searching through the wreckage of the doomed Germanwings plane in the French Alps were forced to resume the hunt on foot as bad weather hampered helicopter flights. "The teams will get to the site via the path that is already in existence," said Yves Naffrechoux of the local mountain police.  Picture: EPA/YOAN VALAT

Some of the wild speculation now finally put to rest. It is now accepted that the co-pilot of the Germanwings Airbus A320, planning to commit suicide through a spectacular mass murder, took advantage of some slight and brief opportunities on the flight from Dusseldorf to Barcelona to practise using the plane's autopilot in a deep descent, on March 24.

It appears from deciphering the plane's recovered black boxes that co-pilot Andreas Lubitz practised diving the plane, and evidently satisfied with what he briefly accomplished then rectified, prepared to move from dress rehearsal to full commitment, ultimately setting the Airbus and its terrified passengers on an irreversible crash-course with death.

He set the autopilot controls to descend perilously low while briefly alone in the cockpit, then restored the proper settings to ensure that the change he had momentarily effected was over-ridden, and as such undetected. A 30-page report compiled by investigators set out the details. On the return trip he knew precisely what he was going to do.

After persuading the pilot to leave the cockpit for a bathroom break, Andreas Lubitz locked the cockpit door, then refused to respond to frantic calls from air traffic controllers and the pilot while Flight 9525 plummeted toward mountain peaks in southern France.

But this was not the only revelation to be brought forward. Finally, Lufthansa, parent company of Germanwings, admitted to have been fully informed in 2009 of the circumstances surrounding the young employee's return from a months-long hiatus in his training. He had suffered an "episode of severe depression". 

This admission of knowledge was revealed shortly after the company insisted it had received no information relating to the co-pilot's medical condition, before the catastrophic crash. Having said which, the airliner has no wish to comment further, at this time. And little wonder it doesn't.



After the crash of the airliner, details began emerging relating to the psychological state of the 27-year-old man who was so devoted to the craft of flying planes. He had also, according to German officials, scanned websites prior to the crash, for the purpose of researching information on methods of suicide. The method he chose was nothing short of astonishingly cruel and fathomlessly horrible.

The plane was cruising at an altitude of 38,000 feet, entering a descent toward the Alps. A descent that was deliberately and catastrophically accelerated with recovered flight recorders evidencing the terrified screams of passengers realizing that their lives were coming to an abrupt and dreadful end.



The culpability of the airlines should not be buried under an avalanche of quiet 'regrets' and explanations of institutionalized respect for privacy relating to medical confidentiality that 'compromised' action on the part of the airline requiring that security of the passengers trusting that all would be well on a routine flight, belied reality.

Nature Disposes

"From what we've seen on the ground, the need is great and widespread and not limited to the urban centre of Kathmandu."
"The most difficult task right now is reaching people in remote areas who have been cut off by the earthquake -- from communications, from roads, from all their normal routines of receiving food and other supplies."
"The needs are great and the response has been quick. We are looking at a large population of people facing profound needs in the coming days, weeks and months."
"We are in early days still. We are still assessing where the greatest needs are and where the pockets of people who need help most can be found."
It is a country that has suffered a lot and has made progress in some areas, but this is a really significant setback."
Steve Taravella, senior spokesman, World Food Programme

Many earthquake victims are having to wait for relief supplies

"It was the most difficult three metres I have walked in my life. It was like trying to walk on a fast-moving rowing boat."
"The walls around the road looked like they were ocean waves; the buildings looked like rubber ..."
"People on the street started crying and crowds gathered as everyone tried to escape falling buildings."
Sakun Gajurel, Nepal-based UN aid worker

"Currently there is no electricity. Communication lines are also down. Many people have been displaced from their homes and spent the night out in the open. There are many people injured and hospitals are unable to hand the situation."
Mariko Tanaka, country director, ChildFund Nepal

Pierre-Ane Dube, 31, slept outside a hotel on the sidewalk. The Canadian said she had experienced the best time of her life on a trek to Everest base camp. And now she was experiencing the worst imaginable thing she could ever have been exposed to. "We can't reach the [Canadian] embassy. We want to leave. We are scared. There is no food. We haven't eaten a meal since the earthquake and we don't have any news about what's going on."

The outcome of the devastating earthquake that hit Nepal a week ago has left almost seven thousand people dead, and there is no longer any hope that any more people will be rescued from the suffocating, maiming rubble that was once buildings and homes where people went about their ordinary lives. Little wonder that many people now complain that foreign aid is slow coming in. Nepalese customs has not been lifted to allow foreign aid unimpeded entry to the country.

This is what Malaysia did after the dreadful tsunami that took so many lives, and caused international humanitarian aid agencies to rush in to offer assistance to yet another government unable to cope with such a devastating natural disaster. In that instance, Malaysia imposed customs tariffs on humanitarian aid coming into the country; an immorally absurd money-grab that cost aid agencies in imposed taxes, sidelining funding that could have been used to aid people, not enrich their incapable government.



Without bureaucratic foul-ups in a country that has been unable to provide the most basic search-and-rescue missions the huge task of treating the tens of thousands of injured, of finding shelter for over a million displaced people, of providing potable water and food for the hungry would be enough to tax even the resources of a well-regulated and -functioning first-world country. And Nepal is definitely not that.

Military personnel abandoned earlier attempts to land helicopters in some of the more devastated areas. No fewer than 70 smaller earthquakes, known as after-shocks, continued in the days following the devastating 7.8-quake that shattered so many structures and buried people alive. Stretching east and west from Kathmandu along the middle mountain range of the Himalayas, the devastation was overwhelming.

There were reports of villages where 75 percent of buildings crumbled in the quake, and all contact has been cut off, since. Funeral pyres from cremations have smudged the skies in Nepal. "The hills all came down", said Sumzah Lama, nursing her youngest daughter at the time the earthquake struck, killing her husband and three other children, in a village near the Tibetan border.

"There is nothing left to go back to, everything is destroyed. Everything was moving and smashed apart", said Karchon Tamang, from the village of Langtang, who had been evacuated by helicopter Sunday. Fear of aftershocks has meant that tens of thousands of families are resigned to spending their nights outdoors in the cold Himalayan nights. Rain events are not viewed as adding any comfort to their unspeakable plight.

Mounting Rescues

"She is stranded, she is trapped, and she is begging and pleading for help. She needs immediate rescue and aid."
"She has limited food, some rice, some water, but it's really cold. When she first called us she was in a panic, crying, literally bawling her eyes out."
"We need our government [Canada] to negotiate with the Nepalese to go in and rescue them."
"Everything around her is completely collapsed, and it's very, very cold. I'm not sure if they have a tent or whether they've found shelter under a roof."
Michelle Dack, Calgary

"There have been so many casualties, in my neighbourhood, all the buildings have collapsed."
"My mother is slightly injured, the fence fell on her when she was working in the garden during the earthquake. But she will be OK. There are others with much worse situations."
Rishi Bastakoti, Calgary Nepalese Community Association

"They [Canadian consular officials in Nepal] are working closely with local officials in Nepal and India to locate and ascertain the well-being of Canadians on the ground."
Diana Khaddaj, spokeswoman, Department of Foreign Affairs

"When I got home, there was nothing. Everything was broken. My wife -- she was dead."
"Only the other villages who have also lost their homes are helping me. But we get nothing from the government."
"I get angry, but what can I do? I am also working for the government. I went to ask the police if they could at least send some men to help us salvage our things, but they said they have no one to send."
Bhoj Kumar Thapa, Nepanese army soldier, Paslang, Nepal

The horrendous death toll resulting from the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that hit the impoverished nation of Nepal continues to grow; latest figures are over five thousand dead, and ten thousand injured, but the numbers are growing. And the simple fact is that humanitarian aid has not yet been able to reach isolated villages where passage is hampered by the earthquake's effect on roads that were barely passable before rocks were hurled down on them from the destabilization of the tremblor.

There are long queues for food and water around the capital, Kathmandu

Hundreds of thousands of Nepalese are without shelter. The weather has turned absolutely miserable; cold, and wet, people huddling for shelter under tarps. They are hungry, they are thirsty, they are in need of medical assistance. They await aid, lining up for food handouts, and preparing to sleep out in the open, huddling for comfort that eludes them in the destruction of all that was familiar. Tents to house them would look good at this juncture.

A government that is incapable of meeting the most basic needs of its people during a dreadful emergency is certainly unable to care for the handful of tourists and visitors who happen to have visited the country and become victims of a natural disaster. And nor is the government of a country far distant from the scene, with a handful of representatives in a huge geography of almost thirty million people, able to do much for those of its own citizens who of their own free will chose to visit a country in crisis.

"We need 15,000 plastic tarps alone. We cannot buy that number", stated Mohan Pokhran, a district disaster management committee member. A mere 50 volunteer army and police officers were distributing food and aid for thousands in the immediate vicinity. "We don't have nearly enough of anything", wailed Mr. Pokhran, helplessly.

Sheltering from the rain

Kumar Thapa's home in Paslang was destroyed. And so were the homes of the other villagers. He was placed on leave from his army unit, given time to mourn his losses. He spoke of a government official who arrived at the village, took some photographs and then left. Nothing was delivered to the village of about 300 people north of Kathmandu. The village is a mere three kilometres distant from the town of Gorkha, district headquarters and staging area for rescue and aid operations.

Damaged houses are seen from an Indian Army helicopter at Lapu in the Nepalese area of Gorkha.   Photo: AFP

The villagers sleep in the open together in the mud, sharing what bits of food they are able to extract from under their ruined buildings and homes. They cannot even begin to imagine when aid might reach them. Stormy weather is hampering passage along poor roads. A shortage of funds and volunteers to bring assistance to the needy is the order of the day. Helicopters are being co-ordinated to remote villages to evacuate the injured, but a major downpour put a halt to the effort.

A mudslide and avalanche hit close to the village of Ghodatabela leaving 250 people missing according to district official Gautam Rimaj. The result of heavy snow where the ground was loosened by the quake. Hundreds of thousands of Nepalese have no clean water, no sanitation. Rain was heavy in Kathmandu, and people desperately sought shelter wherever they could find it. Over 8.1-million people have been affected by the earthquake, with 1.4-million requiring food assistance.

So when people criticize their government for not delivering immediate aid to their loved ones halfway across the world, caught up in a devastating natural disaster, recommending to their government that they liaise with the government where the disaster has struck, to mount a rescue, they might try instead spreading their wings and undertaking flight on their own initiative, to bring back a sister who travelled to Nepal to teach yoga there.

"Save Us! We're on a Ship and I Think It's Sinking!"

The April 16 disaster off the southern coast of South Korea has struck a devastating blow to the country. An advanced, technological economy capable of producing goods and services for its population, proud of its collaborative advance with Western countries, yet incapable of mounting a rescue mission to save the lives of hundreds of vulnerable youth trapped in a vessel in frigid, unforgiving waters.

The orange sun begins to set above searchers and divers looking for bodies of passengers believed trapped in the sunken ferry near Jindo, south of Seoul. Photo / AP.

 

There has been a slight comparison with the sinking of a ferry in the Inside Passage off British Columbia where the Queen of the North hit a rock and sank rapidly with two deaths as a result. The water in the area is cold and considered treacherous; it is an isolated area. The mariner navigating the vessel in 2006 when it ran aground and sank was sentenced to four years' imprisonment for criminal negligence after a routine turn was missed causing a collision with a remote island.

Although that ferry had a capacity of 700 passengers and 150 cars, there were, on that occasion, only 101 passengers on board. But they all survived under extremely adverse conditions, with the exception of the two passengers who vanished to their death. As in the April 16 South Korean disaster, the captain of the Queen of the North was not on the bridge at the time of the accident. Winds gusted to 75 km/hr. The ship sank in an hour and passengers were evacuated into lifeboats.




In contrast, the Sewol's captain, Lee Joon-seok's judgement was to instruct the hundreds of teens from a single high school to remain where they were, not to go up on deck where they might have been saved. Over three-quarters of the 323 students on board the ferry are dead or missing. Almost two-thirds of the remaining 153 people aboard survived the sinking. Corpses are being steadily recovered since the week-end with low visibility and strong currents lifted.

Transcripts between the ship and shore related the uncertainty of the crew and particularly that of the captain, as to the correct course of action to take. An astonishing state of affairs. Where there were insufficient numbers of life jackets to be distributed, and some crew members surrendered their own to passengers without them. And lifeboats were not launched and passengers evacuated into them. But if the hundreds of young people had been assembled on deck they might all be alive now.

One transcript revealed a ship, Doola Ace, had been three kilometres distant from the Sewol, a mere eleven minutes after the distress call came in from the bridge. The Doola Ace was instructed to assist in a rescue. Twelve minutes later the Doola Ace reported the ferry wasn't in the process of evacuating its passengers. "We cannot move alongside if people don't evacuate", said the Doola Ace.

In another five minutes it radioed back again to say it was "right in front" of the Sewol, and still waiting to see any passengers it could evacuate from the ship; no one appeared on the deck. When the shore informed the ship once again to get its passengers up on deck, the bridge came back with the word that the captain had not yet made his final decision.

Park Hye-son, 16, an aspiring television screenwriter. Now dead, along with hundreds of her high-school peers. Her mother described how occasionally she and her daughter exchanged harsh words. Her memory haunts her with the time her daughter yelled, "I just want to die", and Lim Son-mi responded to her daughter: "Then why don't you go and die?"

In this Monday, April 21, 2014 photo, Lim Son-mi, 50, who works at a daycare center in Ansan, speaks during an interview in Jindo, South Korea. Her daughter Park Hye-son is among the 302 people dead or missing in last week’s South Korean ferry disaster. She said her 16-year-old daughter Hye-son wanted to be a television screenwriter. But Lim’s wages from working at a daycare center meant she didn’t have enough money to send her younger daughter to the writing academy she’d wanted to attend.      AP Photo/Gillian Wong

Breaking Fragile Hearts

"There are 160 divers from the special forces, but the current is so strong that they are being swept away when they enter the water."
"The teams are tapping on the outside of the ship with hammers to listen for any survivors inside. When they can go in, only two divers at a time can fit because the corridors are so narrow."
"There is an air pocket in the front of the boat. If anyone made it there, they may have survived. But for anyone in the rest of the boat, the hopes are low."
Kim Dohyun, Korean Special Forces liaison

"The parents are very upset about the captain of the coast guard who ordered the civilian divers to leave. There is no clear chain of command, the navy, the special forces, the coast guard and the local police all have different commanders and do not talk to each other."
Jin Kwangyung, father of missing Yoonhwee

Photo, Ahn Young-joon -- Parents rest on floor of gymnasium in Jindo, South Korea, 18 April 2014

Wrapped in light raincoats against the wind and the rain, parents stood in agonized vigil on the jetty. Their teenage children -- 250 of them and most certainly no longer alive trapped inside the 6,200-tonne Korean ferry Sewol -- rested underwater, twenty kilometres from the jetty. They had been en route to a four-day field trip on the holiday island of Jeju. So festive and yet ordinary an event, suddenly turned into a viciously dreadful catastrophe.

The captain of the vessel had turned over control of the steering to a third officer with scant training. And Captain Lee Joon-seok was being asked why it was that he had been among the first on board the sinking ship to evacuate, while knowing full well the desperate state of affairs, and that hundreds of passengers, high school teens in his care, were desperately helpless below. Abandonment of responsibility, for which a shamed apology could do nothing to salve the festering wound of loss.

South Korean Navy officials work on buoys to mark the sunken passenger ferry Sewol in the water off the southern coast near Jindo, South Korea.  (Photo: AP)

Navy divers are attempting to do what they can under truly vicious sea conditions leaving them scant visibility. They have been unable to enter the submerged ferry's hull. So dreadful were the weather conditions and the swelling seawaters the divers were forced to abandon their efforts by early afternoon. Officials who would not allow their names to be used commented that the chance of finding any passengers alive would be "close to zero".

"We have received at least 20 text messages from children on the boat who are still alive", wailed one mother on the jetty. Spoken communication with the children still on board was not possible due to weak mobile-phone conditions, but text messages were getting through initially; messages like "Mom, I'm sending you this now because I'm afraid I might not be able to say it later. I love you." Or, "Dad, don't worry. I'm wearing a life vest and am with other girls. We're inside the ship, still in the hallway."

Tell these parents that there is no longer any hope their cherished children will be found alive? Some of the waiting parents had to be held back by the crowd, to stop them from attacking coast guard officials on the jetty. "Children are dying! They sent messages! What do you mean bad weather has stopped you!", shouted a father.

The ship, explained Kim the special forces liaison, had been "outside its authorized route", and may have struck a rock, gashing the prow. Rescued passengers had recalled a loud bang. Investigators felt the ship had turned sharply left before tilting representing perhaps the captain attempting to steer back on course. A suggestion was made that the load of 160 vehicles and over a thousand tonnes of cargo may have shifted, improperly secured, causing the ship to "tilt out of control", when it turned.

A relative of a missing passenger weeps as she waits at the port on Jindo Island.  (Photo: Chung Sung-Jun, Getty Images)

"There are few people on the ship, can't see a thing, it's totally dark. So there are few men and women, women are screaming and we are not dead yet, so please send along this message." 
Student to parent text message.

MH370 stays missing for want of data-sharing among intelligence searchers

DEBKAfile Special Report March 28, 2014, 7:50 PM (IST)

Tags:  Malaysian airliner,  Intelligence,

The hunt for the missing Malaysian airliner

All of a sudden Friday, March 28, the search for the Malaysian airliner still missing after three weeks, switched to a new site, 1,120 kilometers north of a part of the Indian Ocean where the day before 300 objects were hailed as “the most credible items yet.” The explanation for this sudden shift to a new area was that the Boeing 777 was traveling faster than previously estimated, had used up more fuel and had therefore flown a shorter distance into the Indian Ocean. The new information based on the analysis of radar data placed the new “credible search area” between the South China Sea and the Strait of Malacca. 

So what about the “credible items” found earlier? All the various experts including radar specialists would say was that the new area was more convenient for the search. They regretted the waste of time and resources expended in shifts every few days from place to place.

After the plane went missing on March 8, satellites, planes and ships focused first on the Bay of Thailand, and then the Andaman Sea near India, before looping round to Central Asia and settling briefly on Kazakhstan. They then hared off to a broad patch of Indian Ocean between Australia and Antarctica.

Now they have moved north to a new search area of approximately 319,000 sq. km. which Australia’s investigation agency determines is “the most credible lead to where debris may be located.”
What keeps on driving the search in so many directions?

1. The searchers are groping in the dark. They have still not turned up a single piece of information or material evidence as leads to the location of the Malaysian flight or the cause of its disappearance. Their only guides are speculation about which way the currents in any presumed crash site may have caused the wreckage to drift.

2.  Last week, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, in an attempt to bring this tragic episode to some conclusion, cited data provided by the British Inmarsat’s new technology as evidence that the plane had ended its flight in the Indian Ocean and all 239 aboard were lost.

Radar experts explained that Immarsat picked up “pings” from debris sighted up to 2,000 miles in the sea distant from Perth after 17 days in the water.

Five days after this dramatic discovery, the searchers and the Malaysian authorities appear to have forgotten all about it and are chasing a new theory, that the plane traveled faster and its route was shorter than first estimated.

3.  The governments involved in the search, the US, China, India, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, are using their resources not just to locate the missing Boeing, but for purposes of their own: a) Trials of their innovative intelligence and military technology; b) Checking out the satellite and electronic cyber resources of fellow-agencies engaged in the hunt and c)  Discovering the outer limits of their colleagues’ intelligence capabilities and range in one of the most forbidding places on earth.

The lessons these powers are drawing from their own and their rivals’ performance are providing them with a study text on their comparative strengths and weaknesses in the event of potential sea, air or cyber conflicts.

It is worth noting in this regard that neither Russia nor France has volunteered to help Malaysia in the search. France’s contribution would be especially valuable in the light of its experience in the search for the Air France flight which crashed in the Atlantic in 2009 en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. Neither was prepared to expose its satellite and intelligence resources to the competition.

The fourth week is likely to focus on scouring the sea bed for the black box of MH370. But if nothing substantial crops up yet again, the disappearance of the Malaysian airliner will have to go down as one of the unsolved mysteries of modern aviation.

The only chance of cracking it lies in all the governments taking part in the search setting aside their rivalries, pushing their experts and agents into one room and ordering them to come clean and piece together all the data they have collected. Perhaps then a true picture will finally emerge. But that is not about to happen.
 

Malaysia plane disappearance no accident, pilot solely responsible

Robert Spencer Mar 26, 2014 at 1:33pm 

This is not a conclusive indication that the plane fell prey to a jihad attack. Still, there are several disquieting indications that that cannot be discounted as a possibility: just before takeoff, the pilot, Zaharie Ahmad Shah, got a call from someone using phone obtained under false identity, raising “fears of a possible link between Captain Zaharie, 53, and terror groups whose members routinely use untraceable SIM cards.” Also, Zaharie was a “fanatical” follower of Anwar Ibrahim, who is linked to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who has praised Hitler and justified suicide bombing. Anwar Ibrahim is a founder of the International Institute of Islamic Thought; it is well established that the IIIT is a Muslim Brotherhood front.

“Malaysia plane disappearance no accident, says investigator,” by Mahi Ramakrishnan for USA Today, March 26:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The pilot of the missing Malaysia Airlines jet is believed to be solely responsible for the flight being taken hundreds of miles off course and there is no evidence of a mechanical failure or hijacking by a passenger, according to a source involved in the investigation.

A high-ranking officer attached to a special investigative branch of the Malaysia police force in Kuala Lumpur said Wednesday that investigators are pressing relatives of the pilot, Capt. Zaharie Ahmad Shah, for information on his behavior leading up to the March 8 flight. They believe he “deliberately” redirected the plane, said the official.

The Boeing 777 was bound for Beijing when it vanished from civilian radar. Malaysia says satellite data indicate the plane veered west about an hour after takeoff and then flew south deep into the southern Indian Ocean.

The lack of places to land there, and the amount of fuel needed to get there, indicates that the flight must have ended there and that there is no realistic hope the 239 people on board survived, according to Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein.

A French satellite scanning the Indian Ocean for remnants of a missing jetliner found a possible plane debris field containing 122 objects, he said, calling it “the most credible lead that we have.”

The search resumed Wednesday after fierce winds and high waves forced crews to take a break Tuesday. A total of 12 planes and five ships from the United States, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand were participating in the search.

“This was premeditated,” the investigator, who has been on the case since the beginning, told USA TODAY. “If you scrutinize the crew and passenger list, you will know there is no one else besides the captain who has the experience and expertise to fly the plane.”
The official could not speak on the record because he is not authorized to talk publicly on the investigation. He said investigators have found no connection between Zaharie, 53, and any militant groups, and the 27-year-old co-pilot on the flight did not have the experience to manage such a diversion, they believe.

Zaharie was a firm supporter of the opposition party to the current ruling regime and his flight left the day that the party’s leader, Anwar Ibrahim, was sentenced to five years in prison on sex crimes his supporters say are fraudulent. Zaharie was in the courtroom when the verdict was announced.

The official said there “is nothing amiss” in Zaharie’s finances to suggest he did something drastic for money. And he refuted reports in British media that Zaharie received a phone call moments before the flight was to depart from a woman who used a false name to obtain a cellphone SIM card to make the call.

He said as far as investigators knew, he did not receive a phone call to his cellphone at that time.

On The Face of the Earth or Below the Sea

"It's about the most inaccessible spot that you could imagine on the face of the Earth, but if there is anything down there, we will find it.
"We owe it to the families and the friends and the loved ones of the almost 240 people on Flight MH370 to do everything we can to try to resolve what is as yet an extraordinary riddle."
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, Papua New Guinea

Captain Allison Norris scans the ocean from the bridge of HMAS Success in search of missing flight MH370. Photograph: Abis Julianne Cropley/AFP/Getty Images

If anything can be said of the disappearance from the air and telephonic and radar contact with Malaysian air traffic by Malaysian Airlines Flight 370, it is that the mysterious events leading up to its vanishing act has captured a rapt audience worldwide. While at the same time leaving the families of the primarily two-thirds-Chinese passengers on the flight in deep, anxious mourning for the plight of their loved ones. Demanding answers, and receiving puzzled shrugs in return.

The Government of Malaysia has been accused of failing to share intelligence it has gathered, both on its own and through the helpful auspices of the various nations involved in assisting it with satellite images, surveillance aircraft and the most up-to-date methods that can be shared to help find the mystery of what happened to a normal routine flight that took off two weeks ago and failed to arrive at its destination.

There is no end of questions, and a singular lack of answers. None of the sightings of floating objects in the immense expanse of ocean has yet given any clues of what might have occurred to the ill-fated flight. Theories abound, many of them emanating from the experienced minds of those acclaimed for their knowledge of flight trajectories, airplane structure and dynamics, and the unexpected potential for accidents to occur.

Needless to say, the spectre of fear associated with malevolent actions by those who might deliberately attempt to destroy an airliner full of innocent people to make an impression on the international psyche in defence of their extreme, malign ideology of religious-based insanity is always going to crop up as a possible cause. Nothing has as yet been ruled out as a possible cause of the plane's disappearance, and nothing as yet has cropped up to lead to any conclusion.

 

One of two Japanese Government P-3 aircraft arrives at RAAF base Pearce March 23, 2014 in Bullsbrook

Surveillance planes have scoured several oceanic regions, returning with not one iota of information that might be helpful to the cause of discovery. Chinese and Japanese technologically advanced aircraft and search equipment have been added to the Australian planes searching thousands of kilometres southwest of Perth. A flotilla of Chinese ships is under sail to the region. Poor weather conditions have closed in, hindering the search.

In Kuala Lumpur, where the plane took off on its flight to Beijing, Malaysian Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein spoke of the over two dozen countries involved in a search whose area stretches from Kazakhstan in Central Asia to the southern Indian Ocean. The search area represents a four-hour round-trip flight from western Australia, leaving planes with fuel to search only for about two hours before having to turn back.

"Noting that we got no radar detections yesterday (Friday), we have replanned the search to be visual. So aircraft flying relatively low, very highly skilled and trained observers looking out of the aircraft windows and looking to see objects", explained John Young, manager of the maritime safety authority's emergency response division. Malaysia is awaiting undersea surveillance equipment from the U.S., a technology only it possesses.

Sunday's search, according to Flight Lieutenant Russell Adams of the Royal Australian Air Force, was frustrating, because "there was cloud down to the surface and at times we were completely enclosed by cloud", speaking of the planes taking off from Perth, working for the search mission.

Meanwhile, satellite and meteorology experts have doubts of the prospect of finding those objects in the Indian Ocean believed linked to the missing flight, spotted by satellite, pointing out that debris might have drifted hundreds of miles on strong currents, since first detection.

That Colossal Search

"Objects that have drifted for two weeks will have travelled a long way in that time. If you have currents at four knots, that means four nautical miles per day and a considerable distance in 14 days."
"After  you have identified and examined some debris,  you can piece together how the plane broke up. Was it in the air, was it during a sea landing, or did it hit the ocean surface? From that you can build up a scenario."
Captain of the Hoegh, St.Petersburg, Norwegian cargo vessel

Scanning the seas: A Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion plane passes over the Norwegian car transport ship Hoegh St Petersburg during the search for the missing flight MH370

To speak, however theoretically -- and at the same instance, the most intelligently experienced theorizing -- of an airplane carrying 239 men, women and children disintegrating over a vast ocean with all lives most assuredly lost, is to give no comfort to the distraught families of those who were passengers or crew on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

Who, in their agony, would far prefer to visualize their loved ones patiently awaiting rescue from the landing the plane took under duress on a remote archipelago in a vast oceanic landscape, which rescuers have not yet discerned to be the resting place of that errant airliner. Their relatives will be exhausted, frightened, hungry and miserable, and perhaps some will be in need of emergency medical treatment, but they will be alive.

Concern: Relatives of Chinese passengers aboard missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 watch a TV news program about the missing plane after attending a meeting with Malaysian officials at a hotel in Beijing

Their cherished lives will not at all have been lost. They will recover from their unspeakable ordeal, and so will their relatives, in everlasting gratitude to the real events that took place, not the imagined ones where a terrorist bomb exploded over the ocean concealed in the luggage compartment of the plane, or a deranged pilot planning suicide decided to take along with him company for the afterlife. Their lives would resume, and they would forevermore treasure one another more than ever.

This is their tenuous, passionately-hoped for reality. One that, when the lost plane is finally discovered on an unused runway overgrown by an encroaching jungle, with those on board eking out their existence on whatever food was left in the plane's pantry, anxious for discovery and grateful that they would soon resume their normal lives. The other reality -- the one that rational minds unencumbered by personal grief hark to -- is to identify the detritus floating on the ocean.

Say, for example, one or more of the ships and aircraft dispatched to one of the remotest places of deep oceanic presence on the planet, roughly 2,500 kilometres southwest of Australia to isolate the "credible sighting" of what might be wreckage of the plane. The world is a large place, and its oceans are vast and unknown to a degree complicated by their very isolated distance.

Flight Lieutenant Neville Dawson (centre) monitors instruments aboard the Royal Australian Air Force AP-3C Orion on the second day of an extensive search of the remote reaches of the southern Indian Ocean

But the satellite image that sighted that debris several days earlier is viewed as "the best lead we have" in the search for the plane that so mysteriously disappeared from contact in what has been seen as evasive, secretive steps to make itself invisible. Wild seas, miserable weather, shrinking visibility and an area of search in a stretch of ocean 4,000 metres deep have all contributed to the plane's -- or its remnants' -- invisibility.

A satellite image released by China shows an object in the southern Indian Ocean. 22 March 2014

Are there submersibles conceivably capable of descending to that depth to find the presence of the sunken body of the airliner and its sad passengers? Is the retrieval of a 'black box' that might help investigators discover, or enable them to advance an educated projection of what had occurred between the time the Malaysia Airlines plane took off in its night-flight, and the time since then, even possible?

There will be no relief, in this lifetime, for the family members of the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 from the nightmare their lives have descended into. Two weeks following the disappearance of the plane, there is no reasonable possibility of the fantasized vision of survival.

But the searchers, after expending time, energy, imagination, experience and money in conducting the search among 24 nations taking part, could find closure in any possible discovery of devices that might solve the puzzle of a plane vanishing from a regularly scheduled flight taking with it all those doomed souls.

Bizarre Indeed

"It's just bizarre they didn't come forward before. It may be too late to help the search ... but maybe (they) and the Malaysian military should do joint military exercises in incompetence."
Scott Hamilton, managing director, aviation consultancy Leeham Co.

• Photo By Ted Aljibe/AFP/Getty Images

"[At 1:28 a.m. Thailand's military radar] was able to detect a signal, which was not a normal signal, of a plane flying in the direction opposite from the MH370 plane [back to Kuala Lumpur]. [Why did it take so long to release the information?] Because we did not pay any attention to it. The Royal Thai Air Force only looks after any threats against our country."
Air Vice-Marshal Montol Suchookorn, Thailand

Early in the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Malaysian officials suspected the plane had doubled back toward the Strait of Malacca, west of Malaysia. Malaysian military radar data took a week for them to confirm that suggested route. And just next door in Thailand their radar showed an unidentified plane, which might have been Flight 370, flying toward the strait, minutes after the jet's transponder signal was cut off.

The Thai air force spokesman Vice-Marshal Suchookorn, could not say with any degree of certainty whether the plane its military radar had detected was indeed Flight 370. Inconsequential, incidental, unimportant, coincidental, dismissed. At a minimum, according to safety experts, that radar data might have saved time and initial effort spent searching the South China Sea, far from the Indian Ocean.

"It's tough to tell, but that is a material fact that I think would have mattered", John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board stated.

Once the plane caught on Thai radar had turned back toward Kuala Lumpur it turned right, toward Butterworth, a Malaysian city along the Strait of Malacca. Infrequent radar signals were received, not including data like the flight number. Thailand may not have wished to become involved, indifferent to the problems a neighbour was experiencing and the possible loss of 239 lives, but 25 other countries are making an effort.

Aircraft and ships are involved, scouring great tracts of territory, half in the remote waters of the southern Indian Ocean. Commander Williams Marks, speaking for the U.S. 7th Fleet described the search for the missing plane akin to locating a few people somewhere between New York and California.

A “Startlingly Simple Theory” About the Missing Airliner is Sweeping the Internet. It’s Wrong.

Slate

Future Tense

The Citizen's Guide to the Future

March 18 2014 6:03 PM

A “Startlingly Simple Theory” About the Missing Airliner is Sweeping the Internet. It’s Wrong.

By Jeff Wise

Has someone finally solved the MH370 mystery?

Photo by TANG CHHIN SOTHY/AFP/Getty Images

Chris Goodfellow doesn’t have much patience for the uncertainty concerning Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. The instrument-rated Florida pilot found the theories and countertheories mooted on outlets like CNN “almost disturbing.” (I’ve appeared on CNN to discuss Flight 370, but I’ll try not to take Goodfellow’s remarks personally.) So he set about cutting through the clutter, using nothing more than the machete-like incisiveness of his own intellect. “I tend to look for a more simple explanation,” he writes in a Google Plus post that was republished on Wired.

As he read up on the incident, he got to the part where Malaysia military radar detected the aircraft making a 90-degree turn to the left and leaving its planned flight path, just after it had passed the last navigational waypoint in Malaysian territory, and after its transponder and ADS-B (“Automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast”) reporting system had stopped working. His eye followed the track that the airplane made as it headed west, toward the Malay peninsula and to the Andaman Sea beyond. And there, close by the western shore of the peninsula and just a few miles south of the plane’s recorded track, he spotted the island of Langkawi. In a flash, everything made sense.

“Thanks to Google earth I spotted Langkawi in about 30 seconds, zoomed in and saw how long the runway was,” Goodfellow wrote on his Google Plus page on March 14. “I just instinctively knew this pilot knew this airport.”

He knew what the lost pilot and co-pilot had been thinking when they made that turn, and it was something he’d thought himself, while behind the yoke of an aircraft, many times before. “We old pilots were always drilled to always know the closest airport of safe harbor while in cruise,” he wrote. "Airports behind us, airports abeam us and airports ahead of us. Always in our head. Always.”

In the scenario that Goodfellow laid out, MH370 suffered a fire in the cockpit as it climbed to cruise altitude en route to Beijing. Sensing the urgency of the crisis, the flight crew turned toward Langkawi and its 13,000-foot runway, while at the same time pulling circuit breakers to stop the fire. But it was no use. The smoke rendered the men unconscious, and “the flight continued on deep into the south Indian ocean” until it ran out of fuel and crashed.

In a stroke, Goodfellow had solved the mystery of MH370—not only what caused the crash, but where the wreckage would be found. What’s more, his revelation rehabilitated the reputations of the captain and first officer, who have come under an increasing cloud of suspicion. “This pilot,” Goodfellow wrote, “was hero struggling with an impossible situation. … Smart pilot. Just didn’t have time.”

Goodfellow’s posting may be the most (first?) popular thing ever to have come out of Google Plus. After exploding across Twitter, it was reprinted by Wired and praised by James Fallows of the Atlantic, who wrote, “his explanation makes better sense than anything else I've heard so far.”

Goodfellow’s account is emotionally compelling, and it is based on some of the most important facts that have been established so far. And it is simple—to a fault. Take other major findings of the investigation into account, and Goodfellow’s theory falls apart. For one thing, while it’s true that MH370 did turn toward Langkawi and wound up overflying it, whoever was at the controls continued to maneuver after that point as well, turning sharply right at VAMPI waypoint, then left again at GIVAL. Such vigorous navigating would have been impossible for unconscious men.

Goodfellow’s theory fails further when one remembers the electronic ping detected by the Inmarsat satellite at 8:11 on the morning of March 8. According to analysis provided by the Malaysian and United States governments, the pings narrowed the location of MH370 at that moment to one of two arcs, one in Central Asia and the other in the southern Indian Ocean. As MH370 flew from its original course toward Langkawi, it was headed toward neither. Without human intervention—which would go against Goodfellow’s theory—it simply could not have reached the position we know it attained at 8:11 a.m.

To make a good theory, Einstein is said to have asserted, “everything should be kept as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Unfortunately, Christopher Goodfellow’s wildly popular theory errs on the side of too much elegance.

Update, March 18, 2014: This blog post was revised to make consistent which version of Goodfellow's article was used for quotations. The quotes are now all from Goodfellow's Google Plus account, rather than the Wired version.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.