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..but was caught in a swamp of corruption...
It seemed that they did not want to quit. Even as the end of the search for the remains of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 was announced the crew of the ship conducting the search continued to scour the deep ocean floor in one last sweep.
But it’s over now. Any hope of finding the remains of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 any time soon—or maybe ever—has died. The Texas-based deep-sea search company Ocean Infinity has pulled the plug on its self-funded search in the Indian Ocean after three months.
This means that the world’s most advanced deep-sea search technology has been defeated by the same challenges that ended the previous 27-month search. It also means that the fate of the 239 souls on board the Boeing 777 that disappeared on March 8, 2014, remains part of the most baffling mystery in modern aviation history.
But this is so much more than a mystery. It is a calamity that indicts the organizations charged with setting the safety standards for international air travel for their failure to anticipate and remove a long-evident weakness in regulations.
And, equally seriously, it highlights the problem that air crash investigations can be seriously compromised by the political culture of the nations under whose jurisdictions they fall. In the case of MH370, that has exposed a singularly egregious example.
The Hermes Birkin handbag is one of those accessories that a woman carries casually while aware that it sends an identifying message: I am filthy rich. Or I have a close friend who is.
The bag is named for Jane Birkin, who, as a winsome, somewhat androgynous actress and singer became an icon of Swinging London in the 1960s.
The bag dates from the early 1980s, when the CEO of Hermes on a flight from Paris to London saw Birkin spill the contents of a straw bag while attempting to stow it in an overhead bin. He offered to create something more elegant specially for her—and, presto!—there emerged an instant classic of conspicuous consumption. Depending on which kind of animal skin it is fashioned from, a Birkin bag can cost up to $300,000.
That price is no obstacle to women who really want it now.
Take, for example, Rosmah Mansor, the wife of Najib Razak, the erstwhile prime minister of Malaysia.
Her husband’s annual salary was, officially, a modest $70,000. But in Malaysia, if you were the wife of any high government official, if you wanted something badly enough you could, apparently, be gratified with the help of a little looting of the public funds.
The true scale of the looting was disclosed only when Razak’s party was voted out of office early in May after more than 60 years in power. They were replaced by a coalition government led by 92-year-old Mahathir Mohamad who promised to clean up what appears to have been one of the world’s most avid kleptocracies.
At the heart of the corruption was a sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, at least $4.5 billion was diverted and laundered from the fund. Around $680 million is alleged to have ended up in Razak’s personal bank account.
Searches ordered by the new government of properties used by Razak and his family discovered 284 boxes of designer handbags, including Birkins, 72 bags stuffed with cash, watches, and jewelry—including a 22-carat pink diamond necklace valued at $27.3 million belonging to his wife.
These mind-boggling details bring their own chilling perspective to the way the Malaysians met their largest single responsibility to the outside world during more than four years of being in charge of investigating the disappearance of MH370.
Forty percent of government spending under Razak was—according to his opponents—lost to corruption, and the effort to cover the enormous debts of the looted fund means that the new government will impose an austerity regime. The new Malaysian government has also made it clear that it is not prepared to fund or devote any resources to new searches for MH370.
But here is an unpalatable illustration of the equation involved and its ethical message: Three nations, Malaysia, China, and Australia funded the first unsuccessful search which is estimated to have cost $180 million. Of that, Malaysia contributed $100 million, Australia $60 million, and China $20 million.
For Malaysia that works out at just over $400,000 per passenger lost, or little more than the cost of a Birkin bag.
From the beginning, in March 2014, the Razak government displayed a combination of incompetence and a natural instinct to avoid public scrutiny. Suddenly faced with a tragedy that gripped the whole world’s attention, ministers showed little grasp of what had happened and even fled from press briefings when their lack of grip was exposed.
Within a week the government selected the easiest targets to blame for the tragedy, the pilots. They staged a deliberately public raid on the home of the pilot, Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah. Soon after they suggested that Captain Shah had used a flight simulator on his home computer to rehearse a plan to hijack his own airplane.
Some of the people ordering this search and promoting the theory have now had their own homes publicly searched in the course of the corruption investigation.
A year later the government had to admit that it had found no evidence or motive for either of the pilots to have planned a mass murder-suicide.
Under a regime like this it was not surprising that the country has come nowhere near to meeting its obligations under international treaties to make the investigation into MH370 publicly transparent. Officially, the investigation is led by Malaysia’s Department of Civil Aviation, always headed by government appointees. In an administration that incorporated patronage, cronyism, and the intimidation of opponents as a matter of course there was no semblance of transparency.
Nor was there any chance that the Malaysian media would take a deep dive into how the investigation was being handled. The main newspapers and news channels were either owned or controlled by friends of the ruling party. Websites critical of the government were accused of publishing “offensive” content and to silence them Razik, picking up his tone from the Trump White House, introduced the so-called Anti-Fake News Act. Fifteen of his political opponents were charged with sedition. Repressive police powers were enabled by a new “anti-terror” law.
The international agreement covering air accident reports states: “The sole objective shall be the prevention of accidents, it is not the purpose of this activity to apportion blame or liability.”
But as the campaign against the pilots indicated, assigning personal blame to people who could never answer was the government’s first instinct and the role of the government ministry has offered no protection from overt political interference.
There were also indications that the airline’s observance of international regulations was lax. A year before the flight vanished, the company auditors at Malaysian Airlines discovered that the airline was not compliant with its own rules governing the airplane’s on-board system for automatically sending bursts of data reporting its vital systems to managers at its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur. The auditors pointed out that because of this, by law, MH370 should not have been cleared to fly. The Malaysian transport minister knew of the audit but never admitted to it.
Technically the investigation team includes representatives from America’s National Transportation Safety Board, the U.K.’s Air Accident Investigation Branch, China’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Department, the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses of France, and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. But apart from a bare-bones “factual report” issued on the first anniversary of the disaster nothing remotely resembling a normal air investigation report, which would include regular updates, has ever emerged.
There have been signs that career civilian investigators have been clashing with the military establishment over technical issues. Early this year the Australian news network ABC reported that there had been a power struggle that had led to four civilian air crash investigators, including the lead authority on analyzing black boxes (flight data recorders retrieved from crashes), being sidelined and replaced by members of the Royal Malaysian Air Force.
Of the international partners involved, the Australians have been by far the most active. The ATSB issued regular detailed reports of the 27-month long initial deep-sea search. Australian oceanographers spent more than two years attempting to predict the most likely location of the airplane with an analysis of debris from the Boeing 777 that washed up on beaches in the western Indian Ocean—but, as it turned out, to no avail.
And now, with the cleaning of Malaysia’s Augean stables, there is a new transport minister, Anthony Loke, who announced as the search for MH370 ended, “There will be no more extensions. It cannot continue forever.” But he did say that he was committed to transparency and will release details for public scrutiny “in due time.”
For Voice 370, the organization that represents the families of the victims, that is the kind of promise they have heard before. For a while they have demanded an independent review, particularly including any possible falsification or elimination of maintenance records for the Boeing 777 involved. Perhaps this time they will get the answers they deserve.
There were also indications that the airline’s observance of international regulations was lax. A year before the flight vanished, the company auditors at Malaysian Airlines discovered that the airline was not compliant with its own rules governing the airplane’s on-board system for automatically sending bursts of data reporting its vital systems to managers at its headquarters in Kuala Lumpur. The auditors pointed out that because of this, by law, MH370 should not have been cleared to fly. The Malaysian transport minister knew of the audit but never admitted to it.
Technically the investigation team includes representatives from America’s National Transportation Safety Board, the U.K.’s Air Accident Investigation Branch, China’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Department, the Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses of France, and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. But apart from a bare-bones “factual report” issued on the first anniversary of the disaster nothing remotely resembling a normal air investigation report, which would include regular updates, has ever emerged.
There have been signs that career civilian investigators have been clashing with the military establishment over technical issues. Early this year the Australian news network ABC reported that there had been a power struggle that had led to four civilian air crash investigators, including the lead authority on analyzing black boxes (flight data recorders retrieved from crashes), being sidelined and replaced by members of the Royal Malaysian Air Force.
Of the international partners involved, the Australians have been by far the most active. The ATSB issued regular detailed reports of the 27-month long initial deep-sea search. Australian oceanographers spent more than two years attempting to predict the most likely location of the airplane with an analysis of debris from the Boeing 777 that washed up on beaches in the western Indian Ocean—but, as it turned out, to no avail.
And now, with the cleaning of Malaysia’s Augean stables, there is a new transport minister, Anthony Loke, who announced as the search for MH370 ended, “There will be no more extensions. It cannot continue forever.” But he did say that he was committed to transparency and will release details for public scrutiny “in due time.”
For Voice 370, the organization that represents the families of the victims, that is the kind of promise they have heard before. For a while they have demanded an independent review, particularly including any possible falsification or elimination of maintenance records for the Boeing 777 involved. Perhaps this time they will get the answers they deserve.
In fact, technological change is outpacing the bureaucracies. This year a satellite operator, Iridium, launched the first batch of a fleet of mini-satellites capable of providing real time tracking and transmitting all the crucial data once every second—wherever in the world a flight operates.
Competition between satellite fleet operators has reduced the cost of installing the new tracking systems so markedly that many airlines are not waiting for the new regulations to kick in. They will install the systems in their trans-oceanic fleets as soon as they are available.
But a truly effective system will have to include three abilities—to know precisely where the airplane is; to know what has failed, and an ability, in the words of the ICAO, to recover the essential data from the airplane’s black box “in a timely manner.”
This was always the fundamental failing of the international air safety regime—that the critical data, the detailed record of what doomed an airplane, went down with the airplane. Obviously, if it went down into an ocean the chances of retrieving the black box recorder were greatly lessened.
As the case of MH370 demonstrates, this problem can still defeat the most advanced deep-sea search technology in the world. Seabed Constructor, the vessel operated by Ocean Infinity, deployed a swarm of as many as eight autonomous underwater vehicles simultaneously. In little more than three months they swept more than 112,000 square kilometers of deep and challenging seabed—almost the same area that it took 27 months to cover in the initial search with earlier generation equipment.
Wherever the 239 victims of MH370 are entombed, they represent a comprehensive failure of the systems and people that were supposed to protect them from such an appalling fate. For sure, air travel is safer today than it has ever been. Nonetheless, the last thing that we can tolerate is that the cause of a crash should remain unknown. As all crash investigators will tell you, the cause might well be something that has never happened before. And might happen again. - The Daily Beast
Teruskan percakaran agar
cepat dikuburkan...
Rakyat masih terbayang-bayang dalam ingatan mereka bagaimana seorang orang tua berusia 93 tahun terpaksa bersengkang mata, melalui hujang dan panas, dicemuh dan dimaki hamun, berceramah dari satu tempat ke tempat lain semata – mata menyahut panggilan rakyat bagi menyelamatkan negara dari terus dirompak dan dimusnahkan oleh seorang lanun keturunan Bugis bernama Najib bersama isteri pujaannya, Rosmah Mansor.
Kerajaan kini yang dipimpin buat kali kedua oleh Tun Dr Mahathir sedang membongkar dan mempamerkan segala sampah sarap yang dilakukan dan disembunyikan oleh pemimpin-pemimpin Kerajaan BN yang diketuai oleh Najib semasa memerintah dahulu. Sebenarnya usaha menumbangkan Umno/BN telah bermula sejak penubuhan parti Semangat 46 yang di ketuai oleh Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah lagi, tapi tidak berjaya. Ketika itu Umno/BN dipimpin oleh Tun sendiri.
Pada Pilihanraya ke-12 dan ke-13, kali ini Anwar Ibrahim melalui partinya Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), DAP dan PAS juga menemui kegagalan apabila pengundi-pengundi Melayu khasnya di luar bandar tidak begitu diyakinkan untuk membuang Umno/BN. Bukan mudah pengundi-pengundi Melayu meninggalkan Umno
Hanya dengan kesanggupan Tun mengetuai barisan pembangkang maka barulah pengundi-pengundi Melayu khasnya peneroka Felda, nelayan, petani dan pesawah menggembleng tenaga menumpaskan Umno/BN. Malangnya, belum lagi setahun memerintah rakyat mula bosan dengan Kerajaan PH yang mereka naikkan itu.
Di mana-mana saja kita berada sama ada di warung mahupun di pejabat, ramai di antara mereka menimbulkan cerita – cerita yang panas telinga mendengarnya. Bermula dengan kegagalan mengambil alih semula Parlimen Cameron Highlands dan di ikuti dengan kekalahan teruk di DUN Semenyih, ia adalah hukuman awal rakyat kepada PH. Hakikatnya kira – kira 10,000 pengundi Semenyih yang pernah menyokong PH pada Pilihanraya Umum yang baru lepas telah berbalik kepada Umno/BN.
Memang benar bukan senang nak membina semula rumah yang telah menyembah bumi dek di makan anai-anai, ditambah pula ‘kehilangan’ dana negara yang besar yang telah dirompak. Memang benar juga hampir seluruh dunia sedang mengalami kelembapan ekonomi termasuk Malaysia namun rakyat tetap menagih janji seperti yang termaktub dalam manifesto PH.
Rakyat menolak Umno/BN kerana tidak tertahan lagi dengan amalan salahguna kuasa, penipuan, rasuah di semua peringkat bermula dari Najib, Perdana Menteri, menteri-menteri dan menteri besar dan exco; mereka juga menzalimi siapa sahaja yang tidak sehaluan dengan mereka. Keluarga mereka menunjuk-nunjuk kekayaan dan kemewahan tanpa segan silu sedangkan rakyat tertekan dengan berbagai-bagai masalah hidup.
Rakyat mula nampak cahaya di hujung terowong apabila PH menjanjikan hidup yang lebih selesa dan sempurna seperti tol akan dihapuskan, minyak kereta akan dikurangkan dan pinjiman PTPTN akan diatasi. Kedudukan kewangan yang terlalu kritikal adalah punca utama bagi melaksanakan janji-janji tersebut namun mereka berharap sangat kerajaan merealisasikan manifesto tersebut sedikit demi sedikit.
Jika tidak ada penjelasan dan jaminan pemulihan ekonomi dari Tun sendiri, berkemungkinan besar rakyat akan hilang kepercayaan terhadap Kerajaan PH. Buat pertama kali dalam sejarah, 19 Kawasan Parlimen Felda berpindah dari Umno ke PH – ini satu penghijrahan yang besar yang tak pernah berlaku dalam politik negara; kepercayaan dan keyakinan mereka pada Tun Dr Mahathir terlalu tinggi.
Kini peneroka terlalu perlukan bantuan kewangan dan pembelaan; begitu juga petani, pesawah, nelayan, penjaja dan peniaga kecil, mereka semua dahagakan bantuan kewangan dan pembelaan segera. Selain itu pengangguran di kalangan graduan dan isu PTPTN mesti ditangani segera. Apa yang dipaparkan selama ini sebahagian besar menteri dan menteri besar gagal menunjukkan kecerdikan mereka.
Pemimpin-pemimpin PH asyik bercakaran sesama sendiri; masing-masing cuba menegakkan benang basah, cuba menjadi hero dengan harapan mendapat laporan di akhbar-akhbar dan televisyen tanpa peduli akibat tindakan mereka itu. Mereka ini bodoh sombong yang tidak suka ditegur dan tidak boleh diajar; mereka lebih mementingkan diri sendiri, kedudukan dan gelaran itu dan ini sahaja.
Mereka lupa dari mana mereka datang dan janji-janji mereka terhadap diri sendiri dan yang lebih penting janji mereka kepada rakyat. Sudah acap kali saya mengingatkan jika rakyat boleh buang Umno/BN yang telah berkuasa selama 61 tahun, rakyat juga boleh humbankan PH dalam sekelip mata sahaja.
Balaslah budi rakyat dengan menghulurkan bantuan seberapa segera. Tidak guna menyesal selepas nasi sudah menjadi bubur !!! Kepada menteri dan menteri besar, tengok-tengokkanlah kawan-kawan yang telah berjuang sehingga berjaya ; mereka juga perlukan apa sahaja pertolongan yang boleh untuk hidup lebih selesa ; ‘jangan jadi pisang lupakan kulit’.
Kelakuan menteri, menteri besar ini tak ubah seperti ‘Kera Dapat Bunga’ – sebenarnya ramai di luar sana yang lebih layak dari mereka. Bantulah Perdana Menteri untuk membantu rakyat. Percakaran sesama sendiri pasti akan membawa kehancuran. - Tamrin Tun Ghafar
In conversation with TPM...
Dr.Wan Azizah dedah kisah cinta...
Timbalan Perdana Menteri, Dr Wan Azizah Wan Ismail buat pertama kali mendedahkan detik pertama beliau 'dating' bersama Anwar Ibrahim sebelum dipinang dua minggu kemudian.
Beliau yang juga Menteri Pembangunan Wanita, Keluarga dan Masyarakat turut menambah Anwar kelihatan kurus kering dan tinggi semasa mereka kali pertama bertentang mata.
Tidak ramai yang tahu cerita di sebalik tokoh hebat wanita yang kini menjawat jawatan kedua paling berkuasa di Malaysia selain daripada sisi politik sepertimana yang ditampilkan selama ini.
“Tanpa pengetahuan saya, gambar saya dihantar dan Anwar Ibrahim melihat gambar saya”, tambah Dr Wan Azizah.
Tanpa pengetahuan saya, Anwar pernah melihat gambar saya, ketika itu, saya salah seorang yang belajar Bahasa Arab di Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) in England & Ireland.
"Salah seorang kawan kami menyatakan bahawa mungkin kita boleh bertemu. Pada masa itu, Anwar dipilih sebagai salah seorang pemimpin belia untuk pergi ke Iran.
"Saya baru lepas on call dan kami berjumpa, di hospital. Bagaimanapun, lepas itu, dua minggu hilang. Ingatkan takda apa-apa dah.
"Namun, lepas pada itu, dia hantar keluarga untuk melamar,” kongsi beliau sambil ketawa mengingati detik-detik manis tersebut.
Jelasnya, antara yang membuatkan dia tertarik dengan diri Anwar ketika itu ialah semangat yang dimiliki oleh beliau yang mahukan anak bangsa maju dan menjadi orang berguna dan menyumbang kepada negara Malaysia tercinta.
Menceritakan tentang kisah hidupnya, salah satu kenyataan menarik dibuat beliau ialah, hidupnya banyak kejutan, tetapi latihan sebagai doktor banyak mengajarnya untuk jadi seorang yang tenang.
"Saya ditakdirkan berkahwin dengan Anwar Ibrahim. Dan, hidup saya banyak kejutan, lama-lama jadi kebiasaan. Namun, Alhamdulillah, setakat ini saya cuba. - f/bk
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