A mysterious Halloween air crash

ISIS has claimed responsibility for bringing down the Russian Airbus A321 over Sinai, though it is fair to say that at present, not many believe them, with the authorities blaming a technical fault. What is clear is that 224 passengers and crew have been killed.

Halloween saw another mysterious air crash in 1999, when an EgyptAir Boeing 767 from New York to Cairo crashed into the Atlantic about 60 miles off Nantucket Island, killing all 217 people on board.

America’s National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the aircraft had been deliberately crashed by the first officer. The cockpit voice recorder (pictured) revealed that the captain had left the cockpit to go to the toilet, and that the first officer then began constantly repeating: ‘I rely on God’, as the autopilot was disconnected, and the engines shut down, leaving the aircraft plummeting towards the sea.

The Egyptians, though, rejected this explanation, saying a mechanical fault was the ‘likely cause’.

*Here I am doorstepping Tony Benn, then the Secretary of State for Industry, as crisis envelopes the British motorcycle industry in 1974 -

http://www.macearchive.org/Archive/Title/atv-today-08111974-anthony-wedgwood-benn-in-birmingham/MediaEntry/22215.html

Building a police state (3) + Tamburlaine

As Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith tries to justify an expenses claim of at least £116,000, evidence of the extent to which she is creating a police state in Britain grows ever more clear. Ms Smith is under fire for claiming that her sister’s home, where she sleeps in a spare bedroom while she is in London, is her main residence rather than the constituency house where she lives with her family.

Meanwhile, Tony Benn, a redoutable campaigner for civil liberties, who had served a mere 48 years as an MP before his retirement from Parliament, was stopped and searched by police on his way to the House of Commons because his presence in the area made him a potential terrorist suspect.

A group of Stoke City football fans found themselves in an even more Kafkaesque situation. They were having a drink in a pub on their way to a match in Manchester. The publican has apparently testified that they were well-behaved, however, police detained them in the pub, and required each one to sign a statement saying they were "part of a group of football fans … causing a disturbance". A fan who questioned whether they had to sign a document asserting something that was untrue was threatened with arrest. Then they were put on buses and sent back to Stoke so they missed the match, and all it’s all perfectly legal under Labour’s “Violent Crime Reduction Act” of 2006. Nor is this an isolated instance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/27/civil-liberties-football-violence-police

On this day....604 years ago, Tamburlaine the Great died. Born in a village about 50 miles from Samarkand in 1336, he would lead 35 campaigns and amass 27 crowns. Those who tried to resist him would be massacred and have their cities destroyed. After taking Aleppo, he engaged in learned debate with some captured academics while his soldiers ran amok murdering the citizens. He devastated Delhi so severely that it did not recover for a century, then razed Baghdad and built a pyramid of 90,000 severed heads on its ruins. Tamburlaine died on his way to invade China when he was 69. For more details see
A Disastrous History of the World.