Debt? Yes, Please.

This is a cursory lesson in human frailties. It is very easy to say, “Oh, this happened in a Third World Country so, obviously, these people are more liable to such acts of profligacy.”

Yet it happens, frequently, on a large scale Worldwide. Everywhere.

This is an article dated 21^st April, 2014, from the ‘New Straits Times’, a highly respected newspaper published in Malaysia:

“NILAI: Mention Felda LBJ and sad tales of a crumbling community brought down by greed from instant wealth would come to mind for the locals here.

The area was just an ordinary settlement until it was selected to be part of the Negri Sembilan technology corridor, a joint-venture project between the State Development Corporation and Tabung Haji, 16 years ago.

The 504 settlers grabbed the limelight back when the transformation saw their lands being acquired, making them "instant" millionaires. It was a dream come true that after years of hardship, these families suddenly had loads of cash to spend and their lives began to change.

Apart from indulging in luxury cars, many of the settlers opted for enormous houses with extravagant furnishings, including swimming pools. Many men also took new wives.

With these changes came new challenges and problems, especially after the money ran out. Many abandoned their huge houses, which are now rotting reminders of the once "instant" millionaires. Some settlers passed away while others chose to migrate with their children to cities.

Mohamad Said Sulaiman, 57, said the settlement, which was left vacant for many years, was picking up now due to surrounding development.

Many people, especially staff of the new academic institutions nearby, had begun to rent or purchase the houses left by Felda's first generation.

Checks by New Straits Times showed that the settlement seemed poised for recovery with interest buzzing from outsiders working in the surrounding area, including near the Kuala Lumpur International airport, located 30 minutes away.

Said said many were unaware of the history of Felda LBJ and how the settlement got its name.

He said it was visited by the then US president, Lyndon B. Johnson, who was said to have brought cheer to the residents.

"I remember my father telling us how ecstatic the settlers were when Johnson arrived and some people did not sleep throughout the night.

"Imagine a US president, with his entourage, coming to a small settlement. It was definitely a highlight of their lives," he said, adding that the settlement was subsequently named after him in honour of his visit.

"We were also told by our uncles that Johnson tried his hand at tapping a rubber tree during his visit."

“Most of the settlers were really touched as he was willing to get his hands dirty,” he said, adding that things changed after the residents were blessed with good fortune three decades later.

 Husin Alias, 52, a security guard and a second generation settler, who witnessed the disintegration of his community and blamed it on their inability to handle the instant wealth, said the settlers received between RM1.2 million and RM1.4 million in cash, depending on the size of the land.

“It was a lot of money, especially in the 1990s, and many did not spend it wisely. Big houses mushroomed, men began ignoring their families and responsibilities and started drinking alcohol, gambling and chasing women. It was sad that they allowed money to change them.”

 Husin said he was lucky that his family was wise enough to lead a moderate life. His parents built a modest house and divided the money among the children while keeping some aside for the future.”

  Some settlers fell victims to investment scams and became embroiled in longstanding legal battles that they had no money left to complete the construction of their homes. With no land to return to many were forced to find jobs as security guards or venture into trading, but their income was barely sufficient.

The Felda LBJ is now known as Kampung LBJ as it is no longer a Felda settlement. The settlement’s entrance overlooks the route to the new Nilai Polytechnic in Labu, Negri Sembilan.”

The Federal Land Development Authority (more commonly referred to as FELDA).

Quite clearly there will be names here with which you will be unfamiliar but this does not detract from the overall message that we need to explore.

This is something that happens, as I said in the introduction, Worldwide. It is a feature of life in the so-called ‘Developed’ countries.

That feature is called ‘insecurity’.

We, as a race, have been inundated over the years—thousands of them, with the idea that there are the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’. H.G.Wells made a story about them called ‘The Time Machine’. Other authors, including the magnificent Isaac Asimov, have also made reference to this societal idea.

The fact is, that for most people, they are uncomfortable with the concept of having money.

Sounds odd, doesn’t it? But it is true.

We have this little maggot in our heads that says, “We should be rich. We should, deservedly, have lots of money,” and yet, having got it we get rid of it as soon as we can.

Why? Because we are uncomfortable with it, it makes us uneasy.

Our comfort level is debt. We are so accustomed to being in debt that not having that debt makes us uncomfortable.

The idea for this is rooted in the class system that has been around since ancient times. The Greeks and Romans certainly had the belief that there are people who were supposed to have money and then there was the peasantry and that they were required to root around in the mud doing the work that would keep the rich (and famous, perhaps) living in the manner to which they had become accustomed.

Note that these people had ‘become accustomed’ to being wealthy. It was, and is, part of their lifestyle, their persona.

It doesn’t take very much to find stories of ‘riches to rags’. There are those who have won great fortunes on lotteries and football pools that have subsequently “spent, spent, spent” until they returned to destitution.

A famous such person in the United Kingdom was Viv Nicholson whose story can be read, in part on ‘Wikipaedia’.

She is not alone. There are countless people who have received fortunes—large and small, only to fritter them away to nothing in a relatively short time.

We dream of gold but we comfort in having nothing. Paradoxical?

Just a part of human nature, part of that complex mix of our psyche that makes us all, individually, interesting.

Flight MH370 – Discontinued?

It seems that the public interest or, at least, the media interest, in MAS Flight MH370 has waned.

It is, often, no longer on the scroll bar at the bottom of the screen and, in newspapers, it has been despatched to the inner pages if it is mentioned at all.

Of course there are still wild theories surfacing on the pages of ‘Facebook’ and other social media centres but the craze has, for the most part, died down.

We are now refocusing on the ‘crisis’ in the Ukraine and other, more sensational, issues.

The fact is that we have developed a mental numbness to the deaths of the people on board because it is taking too long to find the aeroplane; the whole issue is dragging out past our attention span that needs to be filled with something ‘amazing’ every so often.

So we turn our attention back to ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and the latest episode of ‘Blacklist’—or whatever the new kid on the televisual block happens to be. At least therein lies some entertainment, a sop for our unimaginative minds to soak up while we await death in some form or other.

This is what we are doing. We are waiting for death. We are filling in the time between now and whatever awaits us in the hereafter by attending to vacuous entertainments.

Our brains are inured to pain and suffering to the extent that yesterday’s news and shock-horror stories are just humdrum tales today.

We need constantly topping-up on excitement to keep our nerve endings raw.

Might I just put it past you that between one and a half million and two million people have been killed in Afghanistan? Just Afghanistan. We shall ignore the millions of deaths that are, even now, occurring in the Niger Delta, South Thailand, Burma, Sudan, et al, through anthropogenic causes. We haven’t begun to mention that the Americas also have their problems in this regard.

So that didn’t ‘float your boat’, as it were?

Try this:

“The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that nearly 870 million people of the 7.1 billion people in the world, or one in eight, were suffering from chronic undernourishment in 2010-2012. Almost all the hungry people, 852 million, live in developing countries, representing 15 percent of the population of developing counties. There are 16 million people undernourished in developed countries (FAO 2012).”

Take very careful note of that last sentence and then, having read it and absorbed what it means, you may now hang your head in shame.

Why is this happening? Because we voted in the wrong people into Governments. Because we allow Corporate insensitivity to ride rough-shod over us.

Who cares if people are dying through hunger as long as the shareholders get their extra cent on the dollar!

Are you aware that the nation of Uganda is so rich in its potential agronomy that it is capable of growing enough food to feed all of Africa?

Why doesn’t it? Because tribalism and greed will not allow it. Because the political will to transport the food is not there. Because the people in Uganda are dying of AIDs through a failure to resist their vile traditions and filthy customs so there is nobody remaining to pick the crops.

Ancient traditions and cultures are preventing development Worldwide. Not just in the remote areas of backward countries but in the so-called ‘developed’ countries because people come from these backward places and they drag their revolting practices with them and claim the right to practice them. We do not stop them because that would be ‘Politically Incorrect’!

And so we turn our backs.

Thus the media, who know what our bell curves are for ‘news’ input is like, will shelve the subjects that they realise are ‘going off the boil’.

Am I some sort of rabid socialist? No. I am a human being with a fine regard for the suffering of others.

I am a person with a fine sense of justice.

That sense of justice is sometimes seen by others as a form of cruelty but I stand by my beliefs as I will stand by you for your right to your beliefs.

We fretted about the possible deaths of 239 souls on Flight MH370 for a month.

We are ignoring the millions who face death every day and those who pass on every day.

Because we are at the whim of the media, the governments and the corporations.

One day the ‘Black Box’ and ‘Cockpit Voice recorder’ (CVR) will be found and interest will be revived for a few days; there will be a news report on Somalia and we will sit up and take notice; there will be another outbreak of Ebola somewhere and our eyes will widen with vicarious fear for those in danger—but we will only react for a few minutes while the report is being relayed to us.

Then we will settle back and chuckle at another episode of ‘The Following’.

It is a comedy, right?

English as She is Massacred

There have been, in recent times, a number of occasions in which I have suffered a severe wince at the pronouncements of newsreaders both in British newscasts and American.

This is quite apart from the appalling standard of English employed by the people who post things on ‘Facebook’ and other social media sites.

Some of those people can be, in part, forgiven because they are, for the large part, uneducated or that they have foresworn to use any education they may have received for reasons best known to themselves.

I was also going to include people who are dyslexic but, on reflection, a friend of mine is dyslexic and, although his spelling is sometimes worthy of a raised eyebrow, his choice of words is never in question.

Let us start with a few examples in order to make my case reasonably (I hope) clear.

During the extensive reporting of non-facts regarding the disappearance of MAS Flight MH370 one of the newsreaders explained to the imagined assembled throng who were, as one, agog to hear her every word that the “...NTSB, an acronym for the National Transportation Safety Board...” We shall dispense with the rest of the story.

Firstly, the NTSB is not an acronym no matter how much she, and the rest of the assembled non-English speaking media people would like it to be. NASA is an acronym. This is because it is a word formed from the first letter of a series of words; hence National Aeronautics and Space Administration becomes NASA. While I agree that NTSB does, indeed, stand for the National Transportation Safety Board the initials do not form a word; it is, thus, an abbreviation and not an acronym.

There are several ‘nyms’ about. We have ‘homonyms’ from the Greek ‘homus’ that means ‘same’ and is used in ‘homosexual’, for example. So ‘homonym’ is ‘same name’; this means words that are pronounced and spelt the same but have different meanings. A fine example is ‘spring’ that can mean a season of the year, a coil of metal that will return to its previous shape after compression or tension, a leap into the air or, even, water flowing from some point in the ground.

There are ‘synonyms’ and ‘antonyms’. A ‘synonym’ is a word having the same sense as another while an ‘antonym’ is a word opposite in meaning to another. ‘Fast’ is an antonym of ‘slow’.

While we are pondering abbreviations we might consider the increasing usage of the abbreviation ‘lbs’ for pounds. This does not exist. The written expression ‘lb’ is short for ‘libra’, which is the Latin for ‘pound’—and ‘book’, incidentally.

The plural for ‘libra’ is ‘librae’; you will observe, on close scrutiny, that there is no ‘s’ at the end of ‘librae’ thereby giving the lie to the abbreviation ‘lbs’. Thus the announcer on ‘Entertainment Tonight’ telling us that ‘so-and-so is “packing on the ell-beez” is nonsense. Of course, without the ‘zed’* at the end it is less of a catchy sound-bite, as they say.

There have been wars and natural disasters that have, we are reliably informed, decimated the population of a specific area.

Perhaps I could persuade you to examine the idea that we have a decimal coinage system and that the SI units of measurement are also decimal.

‘Deci’ is ‘ten’. Thus ‘decimate’ means to ‘reduce by one tenth’. It is a very precise measurement that is rooted in the myth that it was a punishment meted out to soldiers in the Roman Legions. In fact it comes from ‘decimatus’ meaning ‘tythe’. This is a tenth of your possessions or produce that is given to authority as tax; it continued into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries where the authority was the Church that built tithe, or tything, barns to store it—usually on a Glebe, which is an area of land belonging to the Church.

Nowadays it has become common usage to refer to ‘decimate’ as the destruction of a large proportion of’ land or population, for example.

All languages change. There is little in the English language that existed even three hundred years ago that we should recognise as useful to us now.

We develop, words are introduced from other languages and words are made up from the development of science and engineering.

Three hundred years ago they would not recognise ‘cache memory’ for what it is now even if they knew the word ‘cache’.

Words, old words, take on new meanings. Some of them are at complete variance to their old meanings. Go to a ‘symposium’ and you would be going to meet a drinking partner; while a ‘sinister’ person is, disappointingly, merely left-handed. That is if we accept the purely etymological meaning!

And that, dear fellows, is what we call a ‘contronym’.

*’Zee’: transAtlantically.

MH370: The Search Continues

We understand, in no small measure, the frustration of the families and friends who have sustained these traumatic times in the reporting of the demise of flight MH370.

We do.

One wonders, however, why it is that there are riots outside the Malaysian Embassy in Beijing and not at the gates of Malaysian Embassies and High Commissions in other countries.

What is it that the Chinese relatives feel that they are not being told that, perhaps, other families have been told? Indeed, what news is there to tell them?

It has been mentioned before in this ‘Blog’ that the Malaysian authorities have done their best to cope in what has been—and continues to be, a unique and exasperating case. Similarities between this missing aircraft and other flights that have vanished have been... well... none.

What was, at first, thought to be quite a straightforward search, find and recover mission has developed into all manner of complexities.

What is it that people imagine the Malaysians could have done differently?

There have been incidents of mishandling of some situations, which is true and have been copiously reported worldwide. The SMS incident where relatives have been informed over their mobile ‘phones was spread instantly but, it occurs to this person, if the news was spread in this manner by the Malaysians—either as the ‘Search Authority’ or as MAS, or whether this was a forwarding of the news by Chinese authorities who immediately deflected the situation off on to the Malaysians when they saw the storm brewing on the media horizon.

This is not a defence of the Malaysians, it is merely an attempt to have a more sanguine look at the situation. To try and rid ourselves of the emotive content with which the media is bent on twisting this saga now that there is little in the way of concrete facts to give us.

To start with, we still have no evidence. The circumstantial evidence appears to point to the current search location in the Southern Indian Ocean. It is entirely possible that this assertion is correct. We shall see. Anything that stirs the smallest vestige of hope is better than a complete collapse and the admittance that nothing further can be gained by shutting up shop and sending the search aeroplanes and ships home.

But there is one more thing. Just one small, nagging doubt eating, like a maggot, in the back of the brain.

It is this.

Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was also marketed as China Southern Airlines Flight 748 (CZ748) through a codeshare.

Many of the passengers would have purchased their tickets through the China Southern Airlines desk possibly including, one would think, the two that had the false passports (this is, of course, a conjecture).

How silent China Southern Airlines has become. It is true that the aeroplane belonged to Malaysian Airlines System and that they have carried the brunt of the flack and abuse that the world has hurled at the Malaysians.

Unfairly.

China Southern Airlines received the benefit of the codeshare but has done nothing to assist MAS with the families. China Southern Airlines is in a far better position to deal with the families than is MAS.

What have they done? Nothing according to the media reports.

Perhaps the accusations and virulence towards individuals should stop now and energy thus spent directed at the search effort instead. Perhaps a combined and concentrated effort on behalf of all the relatives and Nations of those lost rather than a focus on one Nation would be more desirable and effective.

Pointing fingers and making up stories is still not helping as it helped not one jot nearly three weeks ago.

The batteries in the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder are fading. Let us not allow our hopes to fade with them.

Non-Fiction or Fiction?

There have been many journalists that have ‘crossed over’ into the field of writing fiction. Some of them have been successful and others less so—as you might expect. Mark Knopfler, of ‘Dire Straits’ fame, switched to another form of fiction when he decided to go into music; a decision that made many people happy.

It is natural that a flair for writing facts and an ability to make words graphically descriptive would help enormously in writing fiction in whatever genre was chosen. It is equally possible that the practice gained from writing editorials and column inches in the newspaper would make flowing prose easier to write down than it is for the ‘untrained’ author.

Over the last few years, perhaps more, since the advent of the more sensationalist tabloids, there has been a blurring of the distinction between journalism and story telling.

There was a time when the media, radio and newspapers then, gave us facts. In truth, the facts we were given often pointed us in the direction that the ‘Powers That Be’ wished us to look. That has never changed. We are still led to believe what those in charge want us to believe.

In recent times, especially with the emergence of tele-journalism, images and words passed to us are often coloured to alter our mindsets. They are, frequently, doctored by the media and those in charge of the media to reflect the current National viewpoint as we have seen recently in the revelations that the Iraq War was not all it seemed to be at its inception.

How much else can we trust the media? Sensational images from distant places, graphic pictures of torn bodies, starving children and war torn buildings will grasp our heartstrings and wrench them into a huge lump in our throats.

Everything is politicised. There are vested interests lurking behind every paragraph that is printed and spoken. Journalists who ardently believe in the freedom of the press and their own independence are still biased, they still have their minds and opinions distorted by the ‘facts’ that are printed and spoken by others in their trade.

What can we believe? Not much. Local news is often more accurate but, even then, it can be distorted to represent a specific frame of mind—especially an official one.

There is a ‘reality’ show on TV called ‘Cops’. This show purports to show us what a day in the life of an urban policeman is like. Are we sure that it reflects the truth?

Most of the people shown to be holding drugs and running from the law are black. Does this mean that most criminals are black and that all white people—except ignorant and uneducated rednecks, are innocent?

There is bias afoot, Watson.

And now, with the disappearance of Flight MH370 there is a plethora of unsubstantiated claims and speculation in the media.

There is no news so they make it up. ‘They’ speak to ‘experts’ that abound, that crawl up out of the woodwork, to express their opinion on the matter in had.

Suddenly the World is full of experts from whom the media can go and wreak ideas. Most of it is nonsense. But it is better to print, or report something, than it is to say, “We have no idea.”

Reporters are paid to have an idea. Without ideas they become worthless.

So where are we? Journalistic freedom or fiction? The freedom to invent facts and make up stories where none exists so that there can be another ‘sensational’ headline; another fabulous string of sound bites from yet another expert?

I have written one book that deals in fact. It is unequivocal fact right down to the last word. It has been checked and read by fellow experts in the field who have given me the nod to proceed (my thanks to them for their time and patience).

The rest of my stories are fiction. They are clearly fiction. They have also been read and checked by fellow writers (thank you, again, to those stalwarts).

The media really needs to start putting its house in order. There is so much nonsense broadcast and printed that all forms of media have now been tainted with acute distrust. There are many people pointing out errors of both fact and omission on several TV News channels.

Trust is hard to win back. The slippery slope is well underfoot to the point where newspapers, radio and TV news are all becoming a laughing stock. Even channels that have been traditionally trusted are no longer viewed with the same acceptance as they once were.

It is time, reporters all, to make up your minds. Follow Mark Knopfler into the realms of fiction or stick with facts.

You can’t have both without becoming a laughing stock.

NB: ‘Expert”

Ex = ‘used to be’

Spurt = ‘a drip under pressure’

MH370 Pt. III

How far have we advanced in the search for the missing aeroplane MH370?

Not far, it seems.

Theories, as one might expect, abound but none of them have drawn us, realistically, any closer to finding the Boeing 777 or, more importantly, its passengers.

These are trying times for the relatives and friends of those on board. Although the focus seems to be on the two thirds of the pax who are Chinese it must be remembered that the others are equally important. There are, for example, three Australians on board whose lives are just as important to their relatives and friends as are the lives of those who live in China.

I was bemused to hear, on an American based news channel, that the US has already ‘poured fifty million dollars’ into the search effort. Really? I am considerably underwhelmed. There were, I believe, Americans on board whose families will rile at the suggestion that supplying insurgents with weaponry to the tune of far in excess of fifty million dollars (US Dollars, one presumes) is money better spent than in trying to discover what has happened to their kin.

This is not a political rant. It is a point of disgust at the media who, even now, are trying to lay blame and create sensational headlines where none exist.

We have been through the suggestions that the crew are to blame, that the engineering staff are to blame, that the cargo loaders are to blame where, in truth, nobody knows.

Nobody.

We have suffered the enduring complaints against the Malaysian Government who are, if we are to be realistic about this, blameless. They have acted in the best interests of everybody throughout.

There are few countries, if any, in the World that could have done better under these circumstances. Of course there are ‘National Interests’ in play just as there were ‘National’ and ‘Corporate’ interests in play when the Americans and the British were said to be slow in giving up information.

The truth is that these people were not slow. Nobody has been slow. Data needs time to be decoded and decrypted.

Last year there were close to thirty four million departures from airports worldwide. Finding one flight among those, even when you know the time and date, is like the proverbial needle in a haystack. That this aircraft was not fitted with the latest technology is excusable; every airline wants to cut costs, there is no bottomless pit in the middle of one of their hangars containing funds to upgrade equipment or, for that matter, personnel.

There is now a clue. A possible clue.

Débris has been found in the South Indian Ocean over fifteen hundred miles from Perth, Australia.

Whether it is part of the missing airliner we do not know but it is worth checking.

Note that: ‘...we do not know...”

At some point the search will grind to a halt. The reasons for the missing aircraft will be in a file labelled ‘Unsolved’.

No doubt accusations will reverberate around the Globe in the media and in political circles for a long time.

We can only hope that, before the cash and the will to go on runs out something will be found, something that will bring closure to the families and friends of all on board—including the crews.

Until then, we do not know. We are still guessing, we are still speculating.

MAS Flight MH370 Pt.II

During the past hour the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Dato' Sri Najib Razak, has held a press conference.

Before I make my own comments about the information tendered let me say that what he said and, more importantly, the way that he said it in terms of expression and body language was impressive.

The statement, as a whole, merely ratified my sentiments in the first ‘Blog’ on this matter.

To remind you, this was that “we do not know”.

Anything beyond that point is speculation.

Over the last week there has been a massive guessing game played by the media and on the internet.

Suddenly everyone on the Globe is an aviation expert. Everyone has a theory, everyone is convinced that this is right or that the events were as follows...

In spite of the subject matter of my last ‘Blog’ I am still getting people asking me what happened. I have stated, time and again, to people who ask me personally what my thoughts are on the aircraft’s disappearance and each time I am forced to say, “I don’t know.”

Because I do not know.

In the event that some form of solid evidence appears that can be corroborated by the experts tasked with this duty nobody knows.

We have had a serious exposition from a young student who spoke ardently of cabin depressurisation; of cracks in the B777 fuselage that could have disabled the aircraft’s ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) system as well as the transponder that reports back to a ground interrogation system; many theories that have been considered, seriously, by an avid media.

All of them baseless in fact.

Note: ‘In fact’.

Now, as a result of an excellently proceeding investigation involving many International parties—all of whom have to be organised and shuffled in to some sort of teamwork, there is a probable result from one of the satellite systems that circle our World.

Because the satellite images have to be decoded and deciphered it has taken some while to sift through what is available.

The agencies involved have taken the brave step of saying what they have so far.

They tell us that there are two possible routes that the aircraft might have taken. Why are there two? Because, as mentioned above, it takes a while to sort through the data and, at this point in time, there are two possible situations that have come to light.

In terms of the search effort it is clear that having one source only would be ideal but, at least, having two is better than having no information at all.

Dato' Sri Najib Razak said that a hijack is only one possibility.

He is right.

The press will immediately jump on the ‘hijack’ as being “THE ANSWER’; they are, possibly, correct.

Possibly.

We do not know.

We wait for further evidence.