[garuda crash] imagine you were in it

Have you ever imagined yourself actually being aboard a plane when things like this happen?

Passengers on a Garuda plane in which dozens of people are feared dead have told of panic and screams as people tried to escape the flaming wreckage. Dozens of people were killed when the aircraft crashed and burst into flames after landing in the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta.

Dien Syamsuddin described the moment when the plane crashed, saying it landed heavily before overshooting the runway by about 300 metres.

"The aircraft was swaying and there was maybe something wrong with the engine. (The landing) was very hard the first time and the second time, the aircraft was outside the boundary of the airport. The lights on board went out and the cabin filled with smoke after the plane came down heavily. I felt the emergency exit was empty, nobody there, behind me there was also screaming. That was all I can tell."

Ruth Bamggadan said she was sitting near the emergency exit when the plane came to rest.

"One of my colleagues, she told everybody to stay calm and leave their belongings. People were panicking, it was really chaotic. Some people were helping the older ladies but we were really close to the door so we had to get out first. After I get out of the plane an explosion started. I think it is from the right side of the plane because we get out from the left side and the left side there are no fire yet at the moment.Then some explosions come again and I didn't see the whole flames.''

One of the crashes I always come back to is the Tenerife crash between KLM and Pan Am. It keeps coming back to haunt me because I know every detail of it. We're always just 'that' far away from it. The closest I came, apart from turbulence and steep drops, was at Heathrow in 2000, when the BA plane suddenly dropped 5 000 feet, as it was circling, on orders from the tower. We all saw the other plane out of the windows, so the pilot came on to the intercom and said:

"You've probably seen our neighbour over on the starboard side. Don't worry, he's on a different flight path to us."

Er, yeah.

[fragility] one click and your blog is gone

This has been blogged on by many, the poor man:

Earlier this month, Abdel-Karim Suleiman, a 22-year-old former law student at al-Azhar Islamic university, became the first Egyptian jailed for his blogging when he was handed a four-year prison sentence. The case against Suleiman, a Muslim and a liberal who uses the name Kareem Amer on his blog, was based on a complaint by al-Azhar University about eight articles written since 2004.

Suleiman accused the conservative Sunni institution of promoting extremist thought and described some companions of the Prophet Mohammed as "terrorists". He also compared President Hosni Mubarak to the dictatorial Pharaohs of ancient Egypt.

Could it have been otherwise for Suleiman in such a regime? But before we start to congratulate ourselves that it could not be so in our own increasingly oppressive regime, it only takes one click and you're blocked, mate. Or something more draconian - Blogger gets shut down in one blow. What have we left? The telephone? The e-mail?

I always operate on the basis that each time I go to my site, it's just not going to be there. Of course, that's a completely different thing to being thrown into prison for having an opinion.

[blogfocus] tomorrow evening, wednesday

Starting yesterday, unfortunately, they've put an extra three hours a day on me for the next three weeks and something has to give. The way round it is to run a slightly shorter Blogfocus tomorrow but this evening I simply can't, sorry - I have to prepare for these people tomorrow. I'll try to get a post up later and another tomorrow morning. Bear with me, please.

[diana] … and one last thing, if I may

There are three fundamentally illogical positions taken by the 'it was simply an accident' devotees:

1] The Butler-Sloss position is not illogical in itself but it has the greatest gall if it hopes to be taken seriously. You can't blame her for doing as she has in defending her department but the notion that it was in any way a fair and impartial analysis or an impartial decision is a hoot. Hence the jury hearing, which in itself is capable of being rigged.

This is exactly like Tony doing his own investigation of cash-for-honours, then gravely announcing to the country his personal self-exoneration, announced by the most impartial and venerated commoner in the realm - namely himself.

2] The second illogical position is for someone to say: "Well, I don’t believe in all that conspiracy theory stuff. Let's just move on. Everyone's sick of it."

Well, you'd be pleased to know that this blog is also dead against conspiracy theory. The evidence in the last post was all on the record [though parts of it have subsequently been expunged by person or persons unknown] and the worst that can be said is that it is circumstantial. But it's certainly not theory. Those people really did see and say those things.

3] The third illogical position is to read but not comment, then post a counter argument without addressing the issues in this one or refuting the evidence. As if this article had never been written, in other words. When someone writes that black is white, when everyone can clearly see it's black, then either the person who wrote it is not completely au fait with the evidence or else he or she has an agenda.

This Diana thing might have been the fault of the paparazzi, it might have been the fault of Henri Paul, it might have been the sheer incompetence of officials but one thing it most certainly was not - it was not an accident.

[diana] when these are answered, we may move on

About the only PC term this blog would concur with is 'closure'. Like Hamlet's ghost, ofttimes the business is unpleasant and all anyone ever desires is to lay the matter to rest but a soul can never rest until justice is finally done.

I am no ghoul. I have not the least desire to rake over old coals. However, to gloss over clear anomalies in the name of 'moving on' when it is as clear as day that we can't move on under the current circumstances, this is plain wrong.

So, at the risk of my readership, I re-present some unanswered points:

Tony Blair's plane

The RAF crew which flew Tony Blair from his Sedgefield constituency to London to greet the Princess’s repatriated body had been on continual standby to make the flight from two days earlier.

Sir Robin Janvrin was based in the equerries' room, where he also fielded incoming messages. He was on duty because his superior — the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, had taken a weekend's leave.

Two senior MI6 gave evidence to Lord Stevens, then later produced tickets and documents dating from 1997 which prove they were not in Paris that weekend. One was in the South of France with his wife and in-laws. The other was taking a short trip to Greece.

A middle-aged, English wireless operator at the embassy in Paris came on duty in the early evening of August 30, expecting his night shift to be routine, sending encrypted phone calls and messages from the embassy via UK listening stations …

Article continues here.

[sources] the msm is still the one to trust

Mr Eugenides had this today:

And they wonder why people don't trust blogs? It's the sheepish yet graceless retraction this morning that makes this funny.

He was referring to the Alex Hilton post, reporting Maggie Thatcher's death. Hilton says he was given dud info by a 'journo friend'. Some friend.

Whether or not Hilton did it just to boost his traffic, [which of course it did - enormously] or whether he made a genuine mistake late at night and didn't check his sources sufficiently, it does bring the blogosphere under severe scrutiny and temporarily relieves the pressure on the MSM.

I'd been planning to write a piece anyway, defending the MSM, but this Hilton biz has already done it for me.

What it also does is make me scrutinize my own posts, for example the very last one, on Diana's death. I'd like to say I scoured 17 articles of all hues before coming out with that and I'm preparing a follow up right now with 10 questions the enquiry needs to answer.

One mustn't make statements unless they can be backed up. I hope that mine can be; I think they can. I suppose when we can't find backup, we're faced with a dilemma.

For example, I certainly had a piece on file, before my computer crash, asking why an 'older' man was seen by one of the orderlies going into the emergency room unaccredited and not wearing surgical clothing and why he was standing at the foot of where Diana lay, speaking some phrases repeatedly, then was not there when the orderly returned.

I had that piece on file but then it and dozens of others on my 'D' disk were lost in the crash, along with all the programmes. Does that mean that this information can then never see the light of day? In the MSM that's so - unless it's double sourced, it doesn't go in.

The Voluntary Code Free Zone banner above is clear enough but now I don't know if we shouldn't at least follow some basic protocols on sourcing. That's if we wish to be taken seriously, that is.