The Vicious Poodle

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Tuesday March 6, 2007
POLITICAL ESSAYS
The Vicious Poodle
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Yesterday Times Online published "59 Things That
Would Have Stayed Secret" but for the UK's Freedom
of Information Act.
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One of the 59:
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"The Prime Minister took trips costing more than
£ 1.2 m[illion]  over four years from 2002 on RAF
jets allocated to the Royal Family and government
VIPs, including those for holidays abroad."
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Of course we remember (a) The Prime Minister's New
Year's holiday at Sharm el-Sheikh in 2004 and (b) the
downing over the Red Sea of Flight 604 on January 3,
2004 killing all 135 passengers and 13 crew members.
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Of the 135 passengers, 133 were French tourists.
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In my Monday January 26, 2004 essay "Down And
Dirty," I speculated:
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{start}
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With Gaulic wit and sarcasm, a number of the 133
French tourists had told The Superpower's
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POODLE
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where to get off.
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In a fit of "imperial" pique, The Poodle ordered the
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DOWNING
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of Flight 604.
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Lest he be detained, The Poodle fled, surfacing amid
his killer troops in Iraq.
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{end}
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With RAF jets at hand, 'twere an easy crime...
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The factoids of the incident are presented (with bias)
in the Wikipedia article "Flash Airlines Flight 604."
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However, the "External links" section leads to meatier
stuff: the 2006 final report (part 1 - contents and fact-
ual information; part 2 - analysis; parts 3 & 4 - con-
clusion and recommendations) and, ultimately, to rele-
vant articles from Aviation Week & Space Technology
magazine.
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>From the April 2, 2006 article "Investigators Differ on
Cause of Flash Airlines Crash":
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"No clear directive actions are emerging from the in-
vestigation into the crash of a Flash Airlines Boeing
737-300, largely due to disagreements among the
Egyptian, French and U.S. authorities."
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More from "Down And Dirty."  The year is 2004.
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{start}
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On January 20th, Utusan Malaysia Online reported:
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A French submarine robot recovered the cockpit voice
recorder early Sunday [the 18th] after retrieving the
flight control data recorder Friday night from wreck-
age scattered on the seabed....
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French officials handed the cockpit voice recorder to
the Egyptian authorities leading the crash investiga-
tion....
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The other "black box'" was given to the Egyptian
authorities late Saturday.
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It should be kept in mind that Egypt --its elite, not
its people-- is on The Superpower's dole, right be-
hind # 1 Israel.
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Utusan contines:
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....Egyptian experts will open the black boxes to study
the data which will later be shared with French and
US experts taking part in the Egyptian-led investiga-
tion.
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If French or US experts have remarks or questions,
they will send a note to the Egyptian committee ana-
lysing the data....
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"We (the Egyptian committee) are free to take it
into consideration or not."
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That's the Egyptian elite's way of asking for a big
bribe; and The Superpower will cough up more green
to save its Poodle than the French can afford for the
truth.
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There's another aspect.
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Excerpts from P W Singer's Corporate Warriors: The
Rise of the Privatized Military Industry:
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L-3 [Communications] was created in 1997 by the
merging of business units spun out of the defense
manufacturers Loral and Lockheed Martin.
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....its primary customer is the U.S. Department of
Defense and selected U.S. government intelligence
agencies, but it also serves aerospace firms (includ-
ing making the infamous "black boxes" that record
accident data on planes)....
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Considering the origin and customer base of L-3, it is
highly probable that the boxes can be turned off by
a "friendly" fighter seconds before the actual
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DOWNING.
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{end}
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</b>
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59 Secrets (2d page of 5):
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/global/article1471409.ece?token=null&offset=12
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Down And Dirty (reedited):
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http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PoliticalEssays/message/108
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Wikipedia:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_Airlines_Flight_FSH604
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Aviation Week:
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http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/search/autosuggest.jsp?docid=2532
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In search box, enter:
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Investigators Differ on Cause of Flash Airlines Crash
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In the resulting list, the top 2 are relevant.
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The book excerpts are from pages 85 and 134 of--
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P W Singer
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Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military In-
dustry
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Cornell University Press
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2003
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330 pages
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Hardback ISBN: 0 8014 4114 5
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date: 7 Mar 2007 12:13:17 -0800 author: unknown