Boeing – praag.org

Airbus to court over NSA/BND espionage

European aviation consortium Airbus said it would file criminal charges over industrial espionage, following reports that US and German foreign intelligence spied on the industry giant.

“We are aware that as a large company in the sector, we are a target and subject of espionage,” the company said in a statement to AFP on Thursday. “However, in this case we are alarmed because there is concrete suspicion of industrial espionage.”

The move follows reports in Bild newspaper and Der Spiegel news magazine based on intelligence documents, claiming US spy agency, the NSA, deliberately targeted Airbus and Eurocopter – also run by the French-based company. The reports additionally revealed Berlin was aware of the espionage and kept quiet since 2008.

Following the allegations, Airbus “asked the German government for information.”

“We will now file a criminal complaint against persons unknown on suspicion of industrial espionage,” the company said.

It is alleged the German Foreign Intelligence service (BND) collaborated with the NSA in providing information about Airbus’ industrial secrets. The German media reports also alleged BND used the Bad Aibling monitoring station in Bavaria not only to spy on industrial business, but also to eavesdrop on the French president, the French foreign ministry, and the European Commission.

A French foreign ministry spokesman was quoted by DW as saying: “We are in close contact on this issue with our German partners.”

The German public and the political elite were furious following the 2013 disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, into the NSA hack of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone. Yet while promising to respond, Germany has done nothing so far.

Germanwings crash supports 9/11 speculation

Advances in sensor technology, computing and artificial intelligence have made human pilots less necessary than ever in the cockpit. After the Germanwings crash some seem less worried about being branded a 9/11 conspiracy nut.

Because information collected after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 has raised questions about the alleged ability and motivation of the people accused of piloting four Boeing 757 and 767 planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon building and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, speculation has since lingered regarding the covert use of technology to precisely navigate the four airliners that day without onboard pilot control.

By 1999 already, Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft contained digital flight control systems that can “automatically fly the airplanes on pre-selected routes, headings, speed or altitude maneuvers.”

On October 9, 2001, Cubic Defense Systems, Inc. applied for a U.S. patent that removes control of an aircraft from its pilot and utilizes an aircraft’s auto-pilot system to implement an uninterruptable pre-programmed autopilot flight plan in order to navigate an aircraft to a given destination during an emergency. This would be accomplished through the use of an electronic or mechanical relay or relays, that become activated by pilot operation of an aircraft hijack notification system.

Surprisingly to some, none of the four aircraft destroyed on September 11, 2001 in NY are known to have entered unique transponder hijack notification codes, suggesting either modified function or insufficient activation time.

One optional feature of the Cubic system is termination of an aircraft’s ability to communicate.

In two cases, hijacker communications aimed at passengers on-board American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 93 on September 11, 2001 were heard instead by air traffic controllers, suggesting modified communication functions.

In 2014, airlines carried 838.4 million passengers on more than 8.5 million flights. Commercial aviation is already heavily automated. Modern aircraft are generally flown by a computer autopilot that tracks its position using motion sensors and dead reckoning, corrected as necessary by GPS. Software systems are also used to land commercial aircraft.

In a recent survey of airline pilots, those operating Boeing 777s reported that they spent just seven minutes manually piloting their planes in a typical flight. Pilots operating Airbus planes spent half that time.

And commercial planes are becoming smarter all the time. “An Airbus airliner knows enough not to fly into a mountain,” said David Mindell, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology aeronautics and astronautics professor. “It has a warning system that tells a pilot. But it doesn’t take over.”

The Pentagon has just that system and has deployed automated piloting software in F-16 fighter jets. The Auto Collision Ground Avoidance System reportedly saved a plane and pilot in November during a combat mission against Islamic State forces.

The Pentagon has invested heavily in robot aircraft. As of 2013, there were more than 11,000 drones in the military arsenal. But drones are almost always remotely piloted, rather than autonomous. Indeed, more than 150 humans are involved in the average combat mission flown by a drone.

Because the Flight Data Recorders (FDRs) for American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175 were not recovered, details regarding the operation of each aircraft on 9/11 are not known. The FDRs for American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93 were recovered and indicate pilot control of each aircraft.

However, the FDR readout file for American Airlines flight 77 was completed four hours and fifteen minutes before the said FDR was recovered, suggesting false or altered FDR information.

And the FDRs for American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93 are virtually the only ones during the previous 20 years of major National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) U.S. aviation mishap investigations, for which unique inventory control serial numbers were not published.

Such serial numbers are required to facilitate FDR data readouts. In fact the NTSB possesses no records pertaining to the positive identification of the FDRs for American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93.

Boeing flight diverted after bomb scare

A Boeing en route from Istanbul to Sao Paulo, declared an emergency and diverted to Casablanca, Morocco.

A Turkish Airlines Boeing 777-300 with 256 passengers on board en route from Istanbul to Sao Paulo declared an emergency and diverted to Casablanca, a spokeswoman for the airline said.

Passengers have been evacuated, according to the recent reports. A search to find any explosive device was underway.

According to AirLive’s Twitter, a note reading “Bomb” was found at the airplane’s toilet cabin.

The airliner landed safely in Casablanca at 12:30 GMT. Prior to that, all flights were diverted from the Casablanca airport, Sputnik reported.

The warmongers: not looking out for us

by Ilana Mercer

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To listen to U.S. government officials there is only an upside to the punitive sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and a reluctant European Union. Consequently, the emphasis is forever on how to toughen the punishment; never on whether to lift economic sanctions on the long-suffering people of Iran.

But what about the effects of trade boycotts on American businesses?

Chris Harmer of The Institute for the Study of War estimates that the Boeing Company alone forfeits a minimum of $25 billion in business every year because of U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran, a niche market that is filled by the Russians. Overall, Harmer puts the value to U.S. business of trade lost due to the economic embargo on Iran at approximately $50 billion per annum.

For example, Iran imports $1.5 billion worth of cars a year, the beneficiaries of which are companies like Nissan, Toyota and Peugeot (when they might have been General Motors and Chrysler). Peugeot does an added half a billion dollars’ worth of commerce with Iran just in car parts.

The Iranian economy, moreover, has diversified and is adapting to life without the U.S. The rest of the world—pockets in Europe and most of Asia—has not isolated Iran, with the result that the country has many trading partners other than the U.S. And while Iran has lost petroleum revenue due to sanctions, the trend will not endure. China, Japan and South Korea are hungry for the country’s crude.

Not to be overlooked are the costs to Americans of sanction enforcement, avers Harmer. In addition to the opportunity costs—the missed business aforementioned—there are “direct costs.” The Office of Foreign Asset Control in the U.S. Treasury Department squanders around $1 billion a year in developing lists of “financial institutions that are subject to sanctions,” and then infringing on the rights of individuals and companies to freely exchange privately owned property.

“Indirect costs” are incurred in the course of cultivating a massive U.S. intelligent infrastructure—a veritable alphabet soup of agencies—upon which the Treasury draws in enforcing a regimen of sanctions.

So, too, are the “deterrent costs” borne by the American taxpayer who pays for patrolling the Persian Gulf, the Northern Arabian Sea and the Strait of Hormuz.

Ultimately, trade, not democracy, is the best antidote to war with Iran. The more economically intertwined countries become, the less likely they are to go to war. More than boycotts, barter with Iran is bound to promote goodwill and reduce belligerence on both sides.

As a general rule, state-enforced boycotts harm honest, hard-working Americans who use the economic means to earn their keep. They benefit servants of Uncle Sam—the political class and its media and think-tank hangers-on. For they deploy the political means to advance their ends and grow their sphere of influence. As libertarian economist Murray Rothbard once observed, these “are two mutually exclusive ways of acquiring wealth”—the economic means is honest and productive, the political means is dishonest and predatory.

As always, it’s us against them: the state versus the people who labor outside it and in spite of it.

For now, Obama’s eager response to Iranian overtures has sidelined Syria. Before Syria recedes in memory—to be replaced by demands for action against Iran—it’s worth considering one constant quantity: the media guttersnipes and their motivation.

The bobbingheads of TV have been complaining in the most unctuous terms that Russia and Syria have pulled one over us. The U.S., they lament, has been weakened, evidently, because someone halted the momentum of war.

You see, the chattering and political classes cannot conceive of greatness outside the state because they are part of the state apparatus and depend on it for status and income.

Conversely, individual Americans—who have nothing to gain and only losses to sustain from war—should never conflate their interests with those of the government and its emissaries, who have everything to gain from the great theatre that is war.

More than anyone, who benefits when America goes to war? Those who “function within the nimbus of great power” in D.C. and around it—the media-military-congressional-industrial complex.

Thus did Charles Krauthammer ridiculously equate the failure to go to war against Syria with “Russia supplanting America as regional hegemon.”

Krauthammer was joined by others, not least of them Bill O’Reilly and his sidekick Dennis the Menace. How diminished will the bluster of both media mouths be if the U.S. is no longer dictating the terms of war (lots of it) and peace (too little of it) in the world? Their immense egos will suffer. Maybe even their incomes, eventually.

But not you, the everyday American.

Putin stopped a war in Syria. This is not the same as “supplanting” American power. Rather, the Russians replaced bully power with a balance of power, and this is good for ordinary Americans.

He who saves you from war is better than he who sends you to war. The proof is in the Putin.

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