Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Want Justice For Trayvon Martin? Legalize Drugs

from huffpost

Posted: 07/15/2013 4:00 pm

I'm sitting at the hotel bar in Denver.  Professional lacrosse is on one TV and some barking chef show is on another, competing for the least of my interest.  I'm nursing a pilsner at the very end of the bar while I await a friend's return with the hotel room key.
There is an empty seat next to me and an African-American woman, about my age, takes it. She's drinking some chardonnay and she's engrossed in digital communications on hercell phone.
Then I hear her say, "Oh my fucking God!" under her breath.
George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida, had just been acquitted of 2nd-degree murder (and manslaughter) by a six-woman jury.  I had just found out myself on Twitter minutes earlier.
"He fucking got away with it!" she continued, her voice rising and attracting the attention of the older married couple seated on her other side.  "They found him not guilty?!?  He was a baby!  A baby!"
Another person farther down the bar heard "not guilty" and asked "The Aurora shooter?" referring to James Holmes, the maniac who shot up the theater in Colorado and is now on trial.
"No, George Zimmerman," I explained, "was just found not guilty of murder in the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida."
Then, I felt the room, at least the people in earshot of this now sobbing woman, turn a bit.  I've grown up in and played music in bars all my life.  At that moment, it felt like the empathy for her became indifference.  It was almost as if these white drinkers flipped an "oh, it's a black thing" switch in their heads and tuned her out.  Or maybe "oh, it's a drunk crying woman thing."  Either way, when they heard "killing of Trayvon Martin," they registered no more interest than if she were crying over the cancellation of a soap opera.
I asked her name -- it's Chris -- and engaged her in conversation, mostly listening to her.  The emotion she feels is palpable. I really don't know what to say but to lead her with simple acknowledgements -- "yes, I understand, why do feel that way?" types of questions.  Then she stops, her face twists into skepticism, and she asks, "why do you care?", where "you" clearly means "middle-aged white guy wearing a Boise State ballcap."
I was a little shocked to be asked, as white guys get in the rare instance when our race is the topic.  And, truly, while I wasn't shocked at the verdict, because it is Florida, and while I was certainly outraged about yet another travesty of justice, I wasn't at all feeling it in my core like Chris was at that moment, fighting back tears of anger.
"Well, I try to care about all people," I began, "and as a white guy born and raised in Idaho, it's taken some education.  I don't think I met a black person face to face until I was eleven years old."  Chris cocked her head in that "really?!?" look.  I continued. "Listen, I work in drug law reform, so every day I cover stories that consistently feature young black men getting screwed over by the system. My friends are some of the best defense attorneys in the country and they tell me horror stories. But only recently has the NAACP and other black leadership recognized how much of this systematic oppression is fostered by the War on Drugs."
I think my answer caught her by surprise. "When 1 in 57 white kids has a parent in prison, but 1 in 9 black kids do, there's something seriously wrong," I said.  "But this is Florida, so as saddened as I am by the verdict, I'm not shocked. This is a state where 3/4 ounce of marijuana gets you a felony and you lose your right to vote for life.  Did you know 23 percent of voting-age black people in Florida can't vote because of their felony laws?  We'd never have had a President George W. Bush if those people could have voted!"
We continued talking and I found out she worked with a non-profit that helps young black girls in the inner city.  Then she asked me if I'd video her with her phone because she just wanted to have a record of this day.  When she couldn't get her phone to work, I volunteered my handcam.

If you want justice for Trayvon Martin, legalize drugs. This isn't about the marijuana in Trayvon's system -- irrelevant -- but the racism in our justice system that is perpetuatued by the War on Drugs.  When we criminalize so many young black men it is not surprising that someone like George Zimmerman sees a young black man in a hoodie walking down the sidewalk and thinks "criminal."  That's in no way meant to justify Zimmerman's mindset and actions but to point out that he isn't all that different from the way our police and courts and juries and society perceive young black men.
Of course, legalizing drugs isn't going to miraculously cure racism.  It will, however, dismantle one of racism's primary engines.  So many of the cycles of poverty, incarceration, welfare dependency, single-mother households, high unemployment, gangs and violence that plague the black community owe their continuation to the War on Drugs.  Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow will explain it to you better than I ever could.
By the way, also in Florida, a single mother was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot to warn off her abusive ex.  She argued self-defense, just like George Zimmerman.  She didn't hurt anybody.  She's black.  Think about that.  If you're a black woman in Florida with a restraining order against an ex who's abused you before and you fire a warning shot, you get 20 years.  If you're a white Hispanic in Florida with a gun who's been told not to follow a teenager and you track him down, he "stands his ground" and you shoot and kill him, you walk free.  Justice?
 

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Saturday, July 13, 2013

Anchorwoman who read racist pilot names: 'Serious mistakes' made

from latimes






By Kate Mather and Rong-Gong Lin II July 13, 2013, 3:58 p.m.





The TV anchor who unwittingly broadcast fake, racist names of the pilots flying the ill-fated Asiana Airlines Flight 214 issued an apology Saturday as debate over the incident continued.
The segment on Friday at noon that referred to two of the pilots as "Captain Sum Ting Wong," and "Wi Tu Lo," has gone viral and drawn heavy criticism on the Internet.
"Apologies to all upset by a story on Noon News. A serious mistake was made @KTVU," anchorwoman Tori Campbell wrote on Twitter. "My thoughts are w/ victims of Flt 214 & families."
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In a statement read on KTVU-TV on Friday night, anchor Frank Somerville said the station made several mistakes.
Somerville did not say how exactly the station got the names.
But "we never read the names out loud, phonetically sounding them out" before going on the air, he said.
Late Friday, the National Transportation Safety Boardacknowledged that a summer intern confirmed the names to KTVU when a reporter from the station called about them.
"Earlier today, in response to an inquiry from a media outlet, a summer intern acted outside the scope of his authority when he erroneously confirmed the names of the flight crew on the aircraft," the NTSB said in a statement. "Appropriate actions will be taken to ensure that such a serious error is not repeated."
Somerville said the station didn't properly verify who at the NTSB was confirming the names.
The hoax prompted outrage from some Asian American activists and a journalism organization.
"Words cannot adequately express the outrage we … feel over KTVU's on-air blunder that made a mockery of theAsiana Airlines tragedy," wrote Asian American Journalists Assn. President Paul Cheung and MediaWatch Chair Bobby Caina Calvan. "We are embarrassed for the anchor, who was as much a victim as KTVU's viewers and KTVU's hard-working staff."
The two said KTVU should explain where the names originated.
In a letter to Tom Raponi, KTVU/KICU vice president and general manager, retired KTVU reporter Lloyd LaCuesta, an Asian American Journalists Assn. member, said he was saddened by the airing of the prank names.
"Common sense indicates that simply sounding out the names would have raised red flags," LaCuesta wrote in the letter.
Two teenage girls from China and another passenger were killed and more than 180 people injured when the Boeing 777 clipped a sea wall and slammed into a runway July 6 at San Francisco International Airport.
Asiana Airlines has identified the pilot and copilot as Lee Kang-kook and Lee Jung-min.
The KTVU newscast was captured in a video posted to YouTube in which the station displayed four incorrect pilot names on the screen and an anchor read them aloud.
"The NTSB has confirmed these are the names of the pilots aboard Flight 214 when it crashed," the anchor said. "We are working to determine exactly what roles each of them played during the landing on Saturday."
Another YouTube video showed an apology read by the same anchor.
"These names were not accurate despite an NTSB official in Washington confirming them late this morning," the anchor said. "We apologize for this error."
The station issued a statement Friday afternoon acknowledging it had "misidentified the pilots involved."
"Prior to air, the names were confirmed by an NTSB official in the agency’s Washington, D.C., office," the statement posted on the station's website said. "Despite that confirmation, KTVU realized the names that aired were not accurate and issued an apology later in the newscast."
"We sincerely regret the error and took immediate action to apologize, both in the newscast where the mistake occurred, as well as on our website and social media sites," Raponi said in the statement. "Nothing is more important to us than having the highest level of accuracy and integrity, and we are reviewing our procedures to ensure this type of error does not happen again."
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Battery Is Not Suspected In New Fire on Boeing 787

from nytimes


Sang Tan/Associated Press
The Queen of Sheba, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner that caught fire at Heathrow Airport on Friday.
By 
Published: July 13, 2013
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Air accident investigators in London said on Saturday that a fire inside a parked Boeing 787 Dreamliner on Friday did not appear to be caused by any problems with the plane’s new lithium-ion batteries.

The British Air Accidents Investigation Branch said in a statement that the fire resulted in smoke throughout the plane and extensive heat damage in the upper part of the rear fuselage. But while the investigators said they had not found the cause of the problems, the damage was not near either of the plane’s lithium-ion batteries. “At this stage,” the statement said, “there is no evidence of a direct causal relationship” between the batteries and the fire.
That initial finding was a big relief to Boeing, its investors and the 13 airlines that have bought the planes, which were grounded for four months worldwide this year after two episodes involving fire or smoke from the batteries. But the eventual findings about the cause of the latest fire, which occurred on an unoccupied Ethiopian Airlines 787 parked at Heathrow Airport on Friday, could still be a setback for Boeing if the investigators find problems with another crucial system on the plane.
The investigation branch said its initial inquiry would most likely take several days, and it did not offer any other comment on possible causes. Other safety experts said the possibilities could include heated elements left in a galley just below where the fire burned through the jet’s carbon-composite skin, a poorly installed part or a short in the plane’s electrical system.
The innovative planes were grounded in mid-January after the incidents involving fire or smoke coming from the new and more volatile types of batteries. But the first 50 planes began flying again between late April to early June after regulators approved a series of fixes, including adding insulation between the battery cells and encasing the batteries inside a steel box.
Ethiopian Airlines said in a statement earlier on Saturday that it was continuing to fly its other 787s because the fire at Heathrow occurred after the jet had been on the ground for eight hours and “was not related to flight safety.” The airline did not comment on the possible cause of the fire.
The other airlines with the planes, including United Airlines and 11 other foreign carriers, have also continued to fly them while the fire at Heathrow is investigated.
The fire caused no injuries, but it disrupted travel, and investors reacted nervously, sending Boeing’s shares down 4.7 percent on Friday.
Smoke came from the plane, named the Queen of Sheba, eight hours after it had been parked in a remote space at Heathrow and about four and a half hours before it was scheduled to depart for Ethiopia. No passengers were on the plane, which was connected to an external ground power source, according to people briefed on the episode.
It was also not clear if any maintenance was under way or how long the fire had been burning, though it was intense enough to burn through the top of the fuselage near the tail. That area is in a complex section where large parts of the plane are joined together. The two lithium-ion batteries, which were used instead of conventional nickel-cadmium batteries to save weight and provide more energy, are under the cockpit and just behind the wings toward the bottom of the plane.
In addition to the British investigators leading the inquiry, a team from Boeing was on site along with representatives from the airline and from two American government agencies, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.
Boeing, the F.A.A. and the N.T.S.B. had no comment Saturday on the possible cause of the fire, deferring to the British investigators.
Other experts said that some of the plane’s wiring, and the oxygen systems for passengers, would have passed through the damaged area, which was above the rear galley. It was also possible the fire migrated from another part of the plane, they said.
The Financial Times quoted an Ethiopian manager in Britain as saying that maintenance workers had discovered a problem with the plane’s air-conditioning system during a routine inspection and had seen sparks but no flames. The report did not say when the inspection occurred, and aviation-safety officials in the United States were not sure what to make of it.
Thomson Airways, a charter airline, said on Saturday that it had replaced and tested several parts on a 787 that had cut short a flight on Friday. It said the plane would fly again on Sunday.
The 787 has had a history of other mishaps since entering service in November 2011. Several airlines, including United, Qatar Airways and All Nippon Airlines, have been forced to divert flights because of electrical problems or other reasons. Still, airlines have eagerly anticipated the plane, which has cut fuel costs by 20 percent.
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Video: Local News Names Asiana Airlines Pilots "Ho Lee Fuk," Other Racist Names [Updated]

from sfist.com


asian_air_pilots_names.jpeg 
Screen grab via Jon Passantino.
Bay Area FOX affiliate KTVU 2 might want to check their NTSB sources a little more closely. The station's news team just aired the (alleged) names of the pilots involved in the Asiana Airlines flight 214 crash, which include Captain Sum Ting Wong and Ho Lee Fuk


Further, the anchors actually read the names on the air. Behold:
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Friday, July 12, 2013

Marty Kaplan on the Weapons of Mass Distraction

from billmoyers.com




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Boeing 787 Catches Fire at Heathrow

from nytimes




Reuters TV
Emergency workers are seen near the tail section of a Boeing 787 that caught fire on Friday at Britain's Heathrow airport, in this image taken from video.
By  and 
Published: July 12, 2013
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An internal fire broke out on Friday on a Boeing 787 that Ethiopian Airlines had parked between flights at London’s Heathrow Airport, the airport said.

The plane was in a remote area, and no passengers were on board. But the airport temporarily suspended arrivals and departures on its two runways while fire crews responded to the incident at 4:36 p.m. local time, several hours before the plane, named the Queen of Sheba, was scheduled to depart for Ethiopia. By 6 p.m., the runways had reopened, and traffic was returning to normal.
Boeing said it was aware of the problem, but the airport, the airline and Boeing have not identified the cause of the fire.
The incident took place about two months after the innovative 787 Dreamliners returned to the skies after being grounded for four months because of hazards with a new type of battery. One of the lithium-ion batteries caught fire on a 787 parked at a Boston airport on Jan. 9, and another began smoking in midflight a week later, forcing the 787 to make an emergency landing in Japan.
Regulators lifted the grounding orders after Boeing came up with a plan to refit the first 50 or so of the new jets with more insulation between the battery cells and a new system for venting smoke or hazardous gases out of the planes. Ethiopian Airlines has four 787s in its fleet.
Boeing said that while the planes were grounded, it had also made changes in electrical panels that had failed on occasion since the planes were introduced into service in late 2011.
At Heathrow, the plane appeared to have sustained damage on the crown of the fuselage near its rear, which would not be near either of the two batteries. Television footage andphotographs showed fire damage near the base of the vertical stabilizer that appeared to burn through the plane’s carbon composite skin. Some wiring could run near the area where the damage was visible.
But the main electrical panels and generators are in the center of the plane, below the passenger floor. That is also where one of the two lithium-ion batteries is situated. The second is near the front of the plane, under the cockpit.
Britain’s Air Accidents Investigations Branch said it had sent a team of experts to Heathrow to look at the plane. In Washington, the National Transportation Safety Boardsaid it would also send an investigator.
The Heathrow incident was not the only problem aboard a 787 on Friday. Thomson Airways said that one of its Dreamliner planes traveling from England to Florida had to turn back after experiencing a technical issue, according to The Associated Press.
Thomson, a British charter airline, said that Flight 126 traveling from Manchester Airport to Sanford, Fla., had returned to Manchester “as a precautionary measure.” It said all passengers had left the plane and engineers were inspecting it.
Boeing has delivered 66 787s so far, with orders totaling 930 planes — an important anchor for its revenues over the next two decades. The company’s stock, which had rallied in recent months, fell more than 7 percent after news of the incident broke, but recovered somewhat later in the day to close at $101.87, off 4.7 percent.
Both Boeing and airlines around the world had hoped to put the problems behind them after fixing the battery issue. Another round of uncertainty over what caused the fire could provoke anxiety among passengers who could be more reluctant to fly on a new plane, or lead some airlines to delay or defer their orders. Aviation analysts said that Boeing’s battery problems had cost it hundreds of millions of dollars and slowed its progress in fielding the planes.
The 787 has a large number of innovations compared with traditional airplanes that go well beyond its carbon-fiber structure. To reduce weight and improve the plane’s efficiency, Boeing replaced much of the traditional pneumatic systems with electrical ones that do not rely on bleed air from the engines.
The 787 has six electrical power generators — including two that are near the rear of the plane, linked to the auxiliary power generator, and two on each of the plane’s two engines. These generators provide power to the plane’s electrical systems in flight, including the flight deck displays, flight controls and in-flight entertainment. The system is more efficient because it reduces the drag on the engines and generates less noise. During flight, the four engine generators are the primary sources of electrical power. The auxiliary power unit is a small jet-engine that is used to produce power while on the ground.
Beyond the battery problems, the 787 has had a history of other mishaps since entering service, in November 2011. Many can be traced back to the plane’s extensive use of electrical systems, including its batteries. Several airlines, including United Airlines, the sole domestic operator so far, Qatar Airways, and All Nippon Airlines, have been forced to divert flights because of electrical problems or out of an abundance of caution given the limited experience pilots and crew have with the new plane.
Boeing had little choice in developing a technologically advanced airplane, its first since the 777, which came in service in 1995.
Airlines are looking for more operating efficiency and fuel savings and have been eagerly anticipated the new plane, which promises a 20 percent cut in costs. Airbus, Boeing’s big European rival, is also planning its own carbon-fiber airplane, the A350, which is scheduled to enter service sometime next year.
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Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Too early to blame Asiana pilots for plane crash, NTSB says

from latimes


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By Laura Nelson, Dan Weikel and Ralph Vartabedian
July 10, 2013, 8:23 a.m.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The top federal investigator probing the crash of a plane at San Francisco International Airport said Wednesday that it's too early to blame the pilots for the tragedy.
"At this point in the investigation, we are not reaching any conclusions," Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told CNN. "We're gathering factual information. We know a lot, and what we need to do is correlate all that information. We need to put it together and see what it tells us."
The pilots flying the Asiana Airlines jetliner told federal investigators that an automatic throttle — a system akin to a car's cruise control — had failed to keep the jetliner at the proper speed for landing.
The Asiana pilots said in interviews with the National Transportation Safety Board that they had set the auto-throttles to maintain an air speed of 137 knots, or about 158 mph. Investigators have said that when the plane came in for landing it was flying 30 knots below that target landing speed and had dipped well below the normal flight path into the airport.
Hersman said investigators were still trying to verify whether the throttles were properly activated.
The pilots' statements do not resolve the central question of why the Boeing 777's speed and altitude fell so far out of the normal range for landing at SFO before the plan struck a sea wall and crash-landed Saturday morning's crash, killing two people and injuring 182.
Outside air-safety experts said the pilots' statements suggest a risky reliance on technology when the flight crew should have been constantly monitoring the airplane's speed.
"Whether it was engaged or not working is almost irrelevant," said Barry Schiff, a former TWA pilot and an air-safety consultant. "The big mystery of Flight 214 is why in God's name did these two pilots sit there and allow the air speed to get so low."
Experts said the pilots should have been monitoring the plane's speed every few seconds, and could have manually taken control of the engines at any time.
Auto-throttles, which are connected to an airplane's flight management computers, allow pilots to select the appropriate speed for takeoff, cruising or landing. The devices automatically make corrections if there are deviations from the setting.
Jon Russell, a veteran airline pilot and safety official for the Air Line Pilots Assn. on the West Coast, said the auto-throttle is a valuable tool.
"I don't know what happened. It just doesn't make sense," said Russell, noting that the pilots were very experienced in Boeing aircraft. "The situation deteriorated a lot farther than it should have."
Several seconds before the crash landing, a stall warning went off in the cockpit. With the impact 1.5 seconds away, the pilots finally attempted to accelerate and abort the landing, investigators said.
The Asiana pilots were making a visual approach to San Francisco without the instrument landing system, a part of which was not operating due to airfield renovations. NTSB officials said, however, that there were other automated systems and visual references available to assist the flight crew.
At the time, the pilot, Lee Kang-kook, who had only 35 hours flying Boeing 777s, was being checked out and supervised in the plane by Lee Jung-min, a captain who had been certified as a training pilot June 15, less than a month before the crash. It was Lee Kang-kook's first landing in San Francisco in a Boeing 777 and Lee Jung-min's first landing at the airport in a training situation.
Hersman said that when the jetliner crashed, three pilots were in the cockpit. Lee Kang-kook was in the left-hand or captain's seat. Lee Jung-min was in the right-hand or co-pilot's seat, supervising his flight, and a relief first officer was sitting in the jump seat to monitor the landing.
The approach to San Francisco International Airport is not particularly difficult, but it does require closely monitoring a jetliner's air speed as it executes a sweeping 180-degree counterclockwise turn in the approach from the north, according to Robert Ditchey, former vice president for operations atUS Airways.
Ditchey said that only the pilot in the left-hand seat — in this case, one who was not yet fully qualified to land the 777 — could see the runway during the turn. The supervising pilot in the right-hand seat could not see the runway from his position, he said.
Aviation safety experts and federal investigators have questioned why the crew did not recognize the problem and take action before the plane struck the end of the runway.
Hersman rejected the suggestion that any problem or misunderstanding about the auto-throttle by the crew would excuse the pilots from their duty to manually fly the airplane.
"But let me be clear: the crew is required to maintain a safe aircraft, which means that they need to monitor. They have a monitoring function, all three of them in the cockpit. One of the very critical things that need to be monitored on approach to landing is speed," she said.
None of the crew was tested for drugs or alcohol after the crash, Hersman said, because foreign flight crews involved in accidents do not fall under the same regulatory requirements as U.S. crews.
Hersman also said that two flight attendants in the rear of the aircraft were ejected after the impact and found on the side of the runway with injuries.
During a news briefing in Seoul on Tuesday, Asiana President Yoon Young-doo defended the pilots, saying they were "excellent" and qualified members of the flight crew with experience flying into San Francisco International.
Lee Kang-kook, who has almost 10,000 hours in the air, had previously flown into San Francisco 29 times as a co-pilot on Boeing 747s, Yoon said. Lee Jung-min, with almost 12,000 hours, had flown into the airport 33 times.
Yoon said he personally apologized to the families of the two Chinese girls who were killed in the crash. He said he planned to visit the crash site and meet with survivors and their families in San Francisco to apologize. He added that would assist the investigation in any way he could.
ALSO:
Weikel and Vartabedian reported from Los Angeles; Nelson reported from San Francisco. Times staff writers Victoria Kim and Kate Mather contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times
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