SECRECY EMPOWERS MASS KILLERS ALL OVER THE WORLD. Direct Democracy Necessary To Prevent That.
Abstract: Secrecy enables insanity in the pilots of the world. Direct democracy, with its transparent debate, is the ever more necessary antidote…
The French BEA (Bureau Enquete Accident: Inquiry Accident Bureau) the world’s prime agency on transportation accidents, came up with its detailed analysis upon, and recommendation from, the crash of a German Wings A 320, which killed 150 people. The BEA’s work has bearing on general world technological, social and political problems of prime importance, including the locking of smartphones, so I will revisit here this dreadful subject.
The BEA found that the 27 years old copilot, Andreas Lubitz, caused the crash, deliberately (as nearly everybody knew from the first declaration of French justice).
The captain, discovering the door of cockpit was locked, tried to knock it down, and failed. The BEA says this is OK, and should not be changed (I disagree with that; a system of unlocking from the ground, and, or using Artificial Intelligence could probably be set-up).
The BEA found that MEDICAL SECRECY should be lifted for pilots. It noted that, a week prior to the crash his German doctor had wanted to forcefully hospitalize, for major psychiatric disorder, the murderous copilot. In any case the doctor advised the pilot to reside in a hospital, two weeks before the crash. He was also prescribed a work stoppage, which was effective the day of the crash. However Lubitz did not inform Lufthansa.
150 People Died In The French Alps Because Of Vicious Secrecy. It Could Have Been Much More. And then, What Of The World?
Several doctors followed Lubitz, and viewed him as completely nuts. However, because of existing medical secrecy laws, the information that one of its pilots was a crazed maniac, did not make it to the airline.
In view of the BEA report on Sunday, March 13, 2016, the French Civilian Pilot Authority requested that medical secrecy be lifted for pilots having psychological problems. The European EASA demanded six measures, including a second person in the cockpit at all times, and various psychological strategies.
In any case, we meet again the problem posed by the increasingly enormous power of modern technology. Andreas Lubitz knew extremely well the part of the French Alps he crashed on. He learned to fly there as a youth. In the area, not only are concentrated cities in plain view, but so are in plain view nuclear power plants with multiple reactors. He also crashed within a few kilometers of the largest dam in Europe (Serre Poncon: OK, the extremely well-built dam would have certainly resisted, and the nuclear plants are supposed to resist; however not all nuclear plants and dams in Europe, or the world, can take it).
It gets worse: suppose a “president” of some major nuclear power goes crazy (OK, Putin is already crazy, but, so far, it’s a mild case). I would argue that “presidents” in general are already giving clear signs of insanity (as their global policies are bringing the destruction of the biosphere).
The point is that we are giving too much uncontrollable powers to too few with too much secrecy. This is how Hitler became Hitler and could proceed with his holocaust. While brandishing plausible deniability, as the Nazis were careful to leave nothing in writing… well, nearly nothing: some documents slipped through the cracks of Nazi secrecy.
Obama did not proceed any differently with his drone assassination program: I agree assassinations may be necessary, and I also agree drones are excellent weapons. However the combination of the preceding with extreme secrecy has enabled the institutionalization of evil. Now that Obama has done this, nothing prevents a future president, somewhere, to kill millions with drones (the ultra massive bombing campaign which reduced Nazi Germany to a dysfunctional rubble killed much less than a million people, because civilians went to shelters, or were evacuated after preliminary attacks).
Thus Obama should tell us, attack after attack, what criterions he personally used to kill civilians in countries far away, and publish the guidelines. In other words, I want to know how he differed from Andreas Lubitz plotting his murder of innocent people.
Psychological secrecy should be lifted for pilots. Lubitz piloted 150 persons. Obama, Putin, or Xi pilot more than seven billion. What do we know about their justification. How do we know that these arrogant masters have it all together? How do we know they are not driven by faulty logic or knowledge?
Alright, not to heap too much abuse on my friend Obama: perhaps chastised by his early errors with banks, drones, etc. he has understood the danger of those who, in Silicon Valley want to use secrecy to impose the rule of terror (how does that make sense? Well actually not only is monopolistic plutocracy, Silly Cone Valley style, terror, but the present terrorists and their ideology, were initially enabled by the ideology of the predecessors of the present plutocrats: a long story going back millennia I have literally spent millions of pages telling… watch for my next installment on Augustus, viewed as the mastermind of the system we are presently enjoying!)
Civilization is one. Ultimately, it’s a big tribe. Some cannot be left to brandish nukes as the North Korean dictator is doing. It could not just ruin our day, it’s bad for global mental health.
The correct attitude is to do what the Brazilian authorities did. The former president of Brazil, a former union leader, lived in an eight million Euros mansion. But he could not explain where he found the money to buy it (he is not as well organized as the Clintons, who are more than twenty times wealthier!) So now he is in jail.
Good.
Who needs secrecy anyway? Outlaws?
So let Obama go after Apple and “What’s App”, showing some virtuous guts, for once. Those who enable terrorists are terrorist themselves. Secrecy enabled the Kaiser’s attack onto the world in 1914, and then Lenin-Stalin abominable rule, Hitler’s various holocausts and insane rampages. It does not spare the USA: G W Bush’s invaded Iraq, by invading first the minds of tens of millions of Americans, with poisonous lies.
The young North Korean dictator owed his success in succeeding his father to his uncle. So he had the uncle tortured and fed, alive, to dogs. It should be more widely known. Lifting secrecy is necessary, and it will feed more inclination to examine the most important facts.
Life on Earth beyond the bacterial stage, has become incompatible with secret vices.
Patrice Ayme’
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
March 14, 2016 at 2:32 am |
Excellent. Thank you.
I understand your arguments on secrecy, Apple, encryption, etc.
What gives me pause is the role of the “intelligence establishment” (by which I mean CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA, ONI and the rest of the gobbledygook alphabet) which has become the black mold in the walls of our allegedly democratic republic.
Let’s not kid ourselves, there is no effective oversight. The uses of their $100+ billion of funding is a “secret”, even from the Congress which appropriates the money. (And let us not forget Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey who planned to set up a system of “independent” funding for the CIA, not unlike, oh I don’t know, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army?).
The CIA was set up by Allen Dulles and company to be the effective paramilitary for Wall Street plutocracy and has functioned quite well at that, particularly in destroying democracies in Latin America, Iran and elsewhere that were a threat to plutocratic profits.
The NSA effectively wiretaps everybody and everything now and archives the wiretaps against future “need”. Edward Snowden revealed much of this and is now a targeted “enemy of the state”. As is Julian Assange.
What I am afraid of is that if the FBI (that would be the same FBI that wiretapped Martin Luther King and ran COINTELPRO) wins its case against Apple, it will be one more step on the road to total surveillance 24/7 for “our own good” by the national security state (not to be confused with the official state to which we elect representatives. See “black mold”, supra.).
That surveillance is going to be used for the benefit of the same plutocracy that has benefitted from the CIA, etc., in the past, i.e. to maintain the system they control and from which they profit.
Is what is happening a struggle between plutocrats (and their servitors) over who is to have access to the secrets?
It reminds me of that African proverb, “When elephants fight, it is the grass who suffers.”
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March 14, 2016 at 2:41 am |
A further thought.
The rise of the national security state (maintaining the FBI at WWII levels of funding and creating the CIA) was in order to fight the danger of “communism”!
But today, post-Cold War, the Evil Other is now “terrorism”!
I think we can assume that post-terrorism, it will be “China!” [or under a President Trump, we can resurrect the 1890’s term “The Yellow Peril!”]
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March 14, 2016 at 6:01 am |
Well, in the 1940s, Mao rode into Beijing on US equipment. Ho Chi Minh got US military support, and so on. Roosevelt did not mind giving half of Europe to Stalin (Churchill was livid, France, not present… nor was Poland!). However FDR insisted that France had to be stripped of all her colonies under any shape or form, whatsoever (his subordinates asked, they were told, no French protectorates, no French influence, no French anything; it had all to become USA USA USA…)
Muslim terrorism was long created by the CIA and its predecessors, such as American oil men (I have met a few myself)
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March 14, 2016 at 6:12 am |
All the one million+ goons with “security clearances” are part of the so-called “Deep State”. Well, Direct Democracy has to open it up successfully. As usual, Switzerland shows the way. It’s not perfect, yet it’s getting improved everyday, and Suisse is more open than France (I know both). France is held together by the Cartesian debate, Suisse, increasingly by direct votation.
To watch over, and INSIDE the Deep State, precisely, demands more transparency.
I would like a debate, for example, on how the West Coast to the USA is protected from the North Korean dictator (I live smack dab in the middle of the main target area! ;-)) Let the Deep State explain that to me in words a Physics PhD can understand.
Let’s also have a debate why it was so bad that Snowden exposed the killing of the journalist by that Apache.
And so on. In France there is the Conseil d’ Etat to attack the state directly. The USA should have a similar structure. To start with. (The French have also higher European jurisdictions which have overturned lower French courts; I don’t see too well how that could be duplicated in the USA… Although if the USA ratified the ICC, it could be used that way… As it is in, say, Sudan. France belongs to the ICC, but no case was ever brought against her, considering the wealth of other avenues to sue her…)
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March 14, 2016 at 6:18 am |
Thanks, John!
What the FBI did against MLK was unconstitutional. MLK was no angel, so it had some grip. Another way to get at MLK was with plain harassment. However, the way to expose unconstitutionality is by lifting secrecy. If We The People had known what that prick Hoover was doing to MLK, well… But would we have ever known if all the FBI had been using Quantum encryption on What’s App or Telegram? No. The proof of the FBI badness was ultimately black on white. Apples Mr. Crook wants terrorists to have perfect communications, 100% private, as they plant a nuclear device in Times Square.
I say: send him to Guantanamo, where his most genuine clients are.
My entire communications can be sent to the Deep State (they already were!) What are they going to accuse me of? Coughing?
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March 14, 2016 at 3:34 am |
Secrecy reigns everywhere in the plutocratic realm. From government to industry. When exposed there is much consternation- Snowden is a prime example. So how do we remedy this? The populace seems relatively detached from this. The corporate media do a fine job of redirecting the people away from this. Celebrity TV is now clearly part of the political process.
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March 14, 2016 at 4:59 am |
“Secrecy reigns everywhere in the plutocratic realm.”
Reminds me of “hypocrisy is the compliment that vice pays to virtue”.
Which is to say that in the modern world secrecy is the very lifeblood of plutocracy – that explains the crazed witch hunt for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Louis XIV could just disappear Eustache Dauger – “the Man in the Iron Mask”, without having to go through the mummery of Swedish sexual “assault” cases or secret sealed indictments out of the Federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia.
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March 14, 2016 at 5:56 am |
The populace, or rabble, understands very little. A friend whom I like, but whom does not have the mental whatever-it-takes to read my essays was rambling on and on today, about the danger of the government listening to his phone. Instead some loser at the Guardian (which I despise because it censors me!), told him everything about it. I got impatient in the end, telling him he did not understand the problem at all.
The government can listen to all what I do all day long, and watch me like an hawk, because I even respect traffic stops. I can’t even remember doing something illegal. Years ago, a crooked cop stopped me for going 35 mph… in a 35 mph zone: he just wanted to shake me of $300. I have felt total solidarity since for black drivers who get stopped for driving while black.
So I am all for cameras, wiretaps, etc…. Oh, yeah, because I was attacked, more than once, by hoodlums and organized fascists, with deadly force (I was also stolen with force). In none of these attacks were the attackers punished.
Plutocracy would collapse in days, without secrecy. That’s why the Mr. Crook and his Apple are so strident. The world’s most profitable company siphons tens of billions of untaxed profits a year, thanks to Mr. Cameron’s doomed kingdom .
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March 14, 2016 at 7:23 pm |
“Plutocracy would collapse in days, without secrecy. That’s why the Mr. Crook and his Apple are so strident.”
EXCELLENT POINTS!
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March 14, 2016 at 7:37 pm |
Thanks, John! I got pretty infuriated yesterday. I was talking to this friend of mine who is pretty destitute. He does not have a job, nor does his spouse. He has one very old beaten car to his name in California, he lives in Europe where the spouse gets some money from the (German) state. And there he was, lamenting the end of his privacy, because the nasty FBI was going to bust him. I don’t think he ever had to pay taxes once. He may not have a SS#.
When who plutocrats view as total losers, the “underclass”, feel everything is at stake for their freedom because of smartphones they cannot dream to afford whatsoever, one can perceive the astounding extent of pluto propaganda…
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March 14, 2016 at 4:20 am |
While this aviation crash was terrible for all concerned it was an extraordinarily rare event. Yes, there’s an argument for medical records in very tightly defined circumstances to be released, the argument for lowering the security of the cockpit door is not valid.
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March 14, 2016 at 5:28 am |
If Putin fires nuclear missiles, it will be, assuredly, a very rare event. Similarly, Obama fired missiles on wedding parties killing hundreds each time, and dishonoring all of civilization and the US, and it was an extremely rare event.
The case of Germanwings was not so rare. Pilot suicide is nearly the leading cause of air crashes, and there were several attempts.
In any case, I used pilot suicide as a tiny example of the sort of problem the entire planet is having, giving too much uncontrolled power to too few..
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March 14, 2016 at 7:31 pm |
Can’t find it right now, but there was a study a couple of years ago that found a correlation in a worldwide uptick in plane crashes following major aviation disasters. There was no commonality of geography, weather, aircraft type, circumstance, etc. But the theory is that a major crash gives other (depressed? suicidal?) pilots the idea to act out on suicide-by-aircraft. All the more support for your opinion.
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March 15, 2016 at 1:16 pm |
Please support your claim that pilot suicide is nearly the leading cause of accidents. For I believe your claim is factually incorrect.
I understand the underlying point you are making but, nevertheless, your claim must be supported by the data.
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March 15, 2016 at 8:13 pm |
Dear Paul:
I know this is a very sensitive subject for you, as you are a pilot, and so is your son, and you tend to react like a Christian hearing that Jesus was a suspected cannibal (wait…)
Or hearing that a pack of integrity dogs ate a human integrally.
Many suspected mass murder by suicide pilots are strongly suspected but could not be proven. For example the Malaysian flight which went for hours over the Indian ocean.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/03/11/just-how-common-are-pilot-suicides/
According to Federal Aviation Administration data, 24 American pilots have killed themselves while flying their planes in the last two decades. Twenty-three of those pilots intentionally crashed their craft, and one student pilot jumped out of his plane mid-flight.
All of the pilots who killed themselves were male and middle-aged.
While none of of the American pilots who killed themselves were flying a big commercial aircraft, it has happened elsewhere.
In November of last year, a Mozambique Airlines E-190 jet carrying 33 passengers went down in Namibia. No one survived the crash, which became the subject of great mystery because the plane was only one year old, flown by an experienced pilot, in good weather.
According to cockpit voice recordings reported by the International Business Times, the co-pilot left to use the bathroom, and when he returned, he found the door shut. Inside, the pilot had switched the plane’s altitude reading from 38,000 feet to ground level, IBT reports. Recordings show someone pounded on the door to the cockpit as the plane plummeted. Investigators later concluded the plane had crashed because of “intentional actions by the pilot.”
Echoes of that tragedy were found in a pair of late 1990’s crashes. In 1997, more than 100 people were killed with a pilot or crew member forced a plane to crash in Indonesia. Two years later, a Cairo-bound airliner that plummeted into the Atlantic Ocean off Nantucket in 1999. All 217 passengers and crew were killed. During the plane’s tailspin, its pilot, Gamal al-Batouti whispered the Arabic phrase, “I rely on God,” — traditionally uttered moments before death.
Depression appears to be the leading cause of aircraft-assisted suicides, and in 2010, the FAA did away with a generations-old ban on pilots taking anti-depressants . The aviation agency, which has mental health restrictions for pilots, now can issue certificates permitting pilots to take Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, and Lexapro, CNN reports.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_by_pilot
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March 15, 2016 at 11:58 pm
You thinking that this atheist is reacting like a Christian is a novel concept! 🙂
While I don’t deny the evidence that you offer, of course not, it was the claim that pilot suicides was close to the leading cause of all commercial aircraft crashes that I struggled with.
When I have a few spare moments (ha! ha!) I will look up the stats for both FAA & CAA commercial accidents and see what the top three causes are.
Couldn’t agree more that taken in the round commercial air travel is incredibly safe.
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March 16, 2016 at 4:00 am
Dear Paul: it depends upon the time scale considered. In recent years, there were three major crashes, worldwide, One against Malaysian (missile), and another Malaysian (probable suicide) and GermanWings.
Anyway I used this as a prop. The fate of 7 billions in the hand of a few power crazed tyrants (tyrants means “ones”)
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March 15, 2016 at 8:32 pm |
Looked at it the correct way, it’s testimony to how safe air travel has become… 😉
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March 14, 2016 at 7:01 am |
Great analogy. Putin and Obama, and Xi, as mad pilots hiding their mental diseases
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March 14, 2016 at 9:41 am |
Here they are, our Great Helmsmen, portrayed by Hieronymus Bosch.
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March 14, 2016 at 1:48 pm |
Excellent! They are truly exceptional! They never left the Middle Ages, they just jet around now… on drugs. Naturally, of course, as absolute power is the ultimate addiction, even stronger than all the amphetamines and cocaine they use…
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