MH370 – A confluence of Incompetence

I may be jumping the gun to say this as no one is really in the picture and those in the know would be smiling quietly. For all the while goose chase, there is a pattern, like they say, even madness has a pattern. Who knows, from the very next day the Malaysian Govt was already in contact and negotiating with the hijackers and the rest of the chase was just a big wayang kulit.

Putting this aside, the incompetence of those managing this affair is showing. When MH370 first went missing, the first thought that it could be a crash or an explosion was reasonable and the search for a crash site and debris a very logical thing to do. The stupid part about this was that though there were other possibilities mentioned, there was no serious effort to follow up in those directions. The most important of which was a hijack scenario. Instead, all efforts and resources were ploughed into searching for debris in one location. And when this was fruitless, everything was turned towards the Indian Ocean to follow a new lead.

The authorities should have dovetailed the search, from just looking for debris and a crashed aircraft to looking at where the hijackers could possibly take the aircraft to at the same time. Before ruling out a crash, a hijack cannot be ignored and ruled out.  It could not simply ignore other possibilities while sitting on one. Ok, I am saying this assuming that they did not know and were not negotiating with the hijackers. Without chasing this possibility and other possibilities, without looking at possible landing sites, many precious days were lost and now it is as good as impossible to locate them except for the hijackers to call.

In the case of a hijacking, and not a suicide bomber mission, the plane would have to be flown to an airstrip or some islands where it could land with minimal damage to the aircraft and loss of lives. It could be a friendly airport controlled by sympathetic forces, or an island prepared for this mission, fully secured by members of the hijacking team.

In the first couple of days, the aircraft and passengers could be at the landing site. By now they would have been dispersed to far away locations from the landing site. The aircraft could have been camouflaged or hidden or dumped somewhere else. If it landed in an airfield, it could be inside a hanger or even be repainted. All clues would be gone.

I am afraid by now any searches to locate where they could have landed would be in vain. There would be no traces of their presence or where about.  One possibility, as in the case of the debris in the Antarctic, is that after off loading the passengers and doing all the necessary, they would be dumping the aircraft as far away as they could to hide their tracks.  

The initiative is now with the hijackers and everyone could just wait patiently for the phone to ring. The last lead is for the intelligence services to make contacts with their sources for information. If it is state terrorism, it would be a very different proposition. Do not expect them to tell you even if they are openly offering assistance.

All the search parties can now make a last ditch effort with the Australian lead in the southern Indian Ocean before going home for a good rest and hope for more leads.  For sure, whatever that could be found from the latest lead would not lead to the passengers or the hijackers unless the passengers are sacrificed and buried with the aircraft.

For so many days, everyone was just reacting to news and would rush to wherever something was seen moving. It was funny but pathetic. Everyone was waiting for something to fall onto their laps but nothing came. They were not using their heads to look at other possibilities. To anticipate what could be and looking in different directions.

What theory are they going to explain for a pilot or hijacker to dump the plane in the Antarctic if this is the case?  The aircraft was airlifted by alien spacecraft and dropped off in the Antarctic Ocean? Or could it land in a remote airfield in Australia or Diego Garcia, off load the cargoes and passengers, refueled to fly to the Antarctica and dumped into the deepest corner of the ocean, not to be found again?

Kopi Level - green

MH370 - The 10 ‘NOs’ that tell a story

This is a summary of the 10 NOs we know of the missing MH370.
 
1. The pilot did not make an emergency call.
2. The pilot did not switch on the emergency squawk.
3. There is no radar contact or no confirmation of radar contacts but only believed to be seen on radars.
4. There is no visual sighting of the aircraft.
5. There is no mobile phone call/message from the passengers.
6. There is no sign of wreckage or debris, no explosion.
7. There is no signal from the black boxes.
8. There is no claim of responsibility by any terrorist groups.
9. There is no demand for ransoms or negotiation.
10. There is no news of the aircraft’s where about.
 
The above may be NOs but they also tell us a lot of things about what happened. Every NO is saying something. Piece them together it gives a picture of what had possibly happened and even said that the passengers are likely to be still alive. But if the silence goes on for another couple of weeks, then things will look really ugly. At this point, no news is still good news and keep the fingers crossed that whoever had taken the aircraft and its passengers would be contacting the authorities soon. Maybe they had already done so.
 
Now the answers to all the 10 NOs, ‘WE ARE IN CONTROL.’

High-Speed Traders Face Scrutiny In the U.S

Regulators are taking aim at the relationship between high-frequency trading firms and major exchanges, examining whether the preferential treatment market operators offer the firms puts other investors at a disadvantage....
 
The probe is focused on complicated, often opaque incentive programs that give high-volume trading firms financial benefits such as discounts on fees the exchanges charge to execute trades, the people said.
 
Separately, Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement officials are investigating whether stock exchanges provide advantages to certain clients, including high-frequency traders, by designing software programs that can give preferential treatment to their orders, and whether such details have been fully disclosed, people familiar with that inquiry said.
 
The probes come amid heightened concerns among institutional investors, lawmakers and regulators that superfast traders have access to advantages on stock and futures exchanges not typically available to regular investors.
 
Regulators are concerned that less-savvy or less-influential investors aren’t aware of the benefits and advantages that exchanges are providing to certain clients, making it difficult for them to compete fairly, according to people familiar with the investigations.
High-speed firms use sophisticated computer systems to move rapidly in and out of markets in fractions of seconds.
 
So far, market watchdogs have done little to curb such trading, which has boomed and now makes up about half of all stock-market volume....

Quality of Singapore University going up

I posted this chart in Mar last year.




 

Universities fees were raised in concert last year. And they are doing it again this year, in concert again. Is there anything wrong when merchants acted together to raise prices, like the price of a cup of kopi in the kopitiams? My apologies, universities are not merchants.
 
This time they cited higher costs of talents, supplies and services and the expectations of students and the fee hikes are to defray these costs. So our students must be the best in the world by now with the frequent hikes to improve the quality of university education. Why are the employers still running to 3rd World countries to employ their talents and our graduates are found to lack the skills and talents needed? Or is it that the quality of our universities has always been sub par and we are still playing catching up with the 3rd World universities?
 
The fee hikes are in the region of 2.6% to 7.9% for NUS, 2.5% to 5% for NTU, 2% for SMU and 4% for SUTD. In monetary terms the increases range from $200, $850 and $1150 in NUS. The increase for PRs and international students will be higher. As an example, in SUTD, Singaporeans will pay 4% more while PRs 12% and international students by 16%. Polytechnic fees also go up with this hike.
 
Singaporeans are so lucky that the universities are upgrading their teaching quality every year with higher fees to buy better talents to teach them. At the rate it is going, all the top academic talents in the world will be bought by our universities and our graduates will be the best in the whole world that money can buy.
 
I only hope that this is true. I only hope that the employers stop rushing to 3rd World countries to employ their graduates and complain that our graduates are not good enough. I hope to see one or two of our local graduates be found fit to be the CEO of a local or foreign bank.
 
What to believe? You tell me lah.

Singapore is the most successful car manufacturer

Singapore manufactures practically every top brand cars in the world, from Rolls Royce, Mercedes, BMWs, Bentley’s, Lamborghinis and Ferraris to all the Japanese and Korean brands. And the profit margin is so high that it is becoming the envy of other car manufacturers. For every Mercedes or BMW sold, what the OEM and distributors earned is a pittance of what the Singapore Govt earned.
 
Now this is productivity Singapore style. We manufactured cars without having to do the difficult and dirty work. And our cost is practically zero with no overheads. Just ask Mercedes and BMW how much they make for each sale and go and find out how much the Singapore Govt makes. It is mind blowing.
 
Singapore is the most successful car manufacturer in the whole world.

Leong Sze Hian’s comments on the Medishield Life

Leong Sze Hian asked several questions on the Medishield Life Scheme following Gan Kim Yong’s comments in Parliament in his article, ‘Alternative daily news(81) Affordable Medishield Life?’ posted in the TRE. His questions would help many to have a better understanding of the things not said about the Scheme and is a compelling read, highly recommended for all Sinkies who are still not aware of what this Scheme is all about and how it would hit them when it comes into force.
 
I would just want to expand on a couple of points made by Sze Hian. He quoted Gan Kim Yong saying these:
 
1. “The premiums that lower- and middle-income households will have to pay for the new Medishield Life insurance that kicks in next year, will be the same or lower than what they now pay. That is after taking into account the Government’s permanent subsidies and Medisave contributions and top-ups.
 
2. “… a typical Singaporean household, comprising a working-age couple with two school-going children, will take up no more than half of their annual Medisave inflow to pay for their MediShield Life premiums.
 
In point 1, the meaning is that the gross premium would be higher but would be offset by permanent subsidies, Medisave contributions and top ups. Gan had said that the net amount to be paid would be the same or lower than what they are paying now. Would this be the same as time goes by? Would the permanent subsidies match any increases in future premiums? Would future premium hikes eat up all future Medisave contributions? Would top ups cease in the future or varies?
 
For the initial stages of the Medishield Life’s implementation, the net premiums paid could be reasonable if they are lower or the same. But there is no guarantee what the amount will be like when the gross premium will definitely be much higher.
 
As for point 2, the base reference is a typical household of two working adults and two children, and the premiums paid will be no more than half their annual Medisave contributions. Sounds fair and good. The problem comes when there is only one working adult. The problem will be further compounded for families with more than two children and only one working adult. For those single parents with 4 or more children, tough, take my word for it.
 
And the most important part that is yet to be made known, what will the Medishield Life cover and what not covered?

Kopi Level - Green

MH370 – Australian sighted debris

The plot thickens

I had this very bad feeling that the two pieces of debris reported by Australia are parts of MH370. I hope they are not as there is no reason for MH370 to be there. The distance is beyond its fuel range even if it was to fly straight through Singapore to the spot. The plane could not fly through Singapore and Indonesia without being picked up on radars. The only way was to fly through the north of Sumatra and that would make the distance even further. It would thus need to make a stopover, refuelled and continued to the location. It definitely could not make it directly. The 12 days could explain this mystery. And very likely no passengers were found among the wreckage.

There would be many questions to be asked as the Antartica was the last place anyone would think the aircraft would be, and why would they want to fly to crash in a remote corner of the deep ocean? The aircraft deliberately evaded all the radar stations and it is simply meaningless to want to do all the manoeuvres only to crash into a corner of the Indian Ocean away from civilisation. And it is also very strange, sheer coincidence that the Australians thought it could be there and found it so quickly.

Then there are questions like why weren’t the black boxes beeping? Given the time lapse, could the aircraft actually be flown somewhere first, got its black boxes stripped, passengers off loaded and then flown there to crash into the ocean? Because of the depth of the ocean at that spot, recovering it would be impossible and would be abandoned. Who would want to do it and pay for it? No one would know that the black boxes were already removed from the aircraft.

For the pilot/crew to fly and ditch the aircraft, they must then be picked up by another aircraft or ship to bring them to safety. After successfully pulling off such a stunt there was no need for them to die there.

The whole episode of the hijack was so meticulously executed and now another piece of well planned evacuation of the pilot/crew that could only be done with great resources. It is not a simple piece of terrorist work. It is a very difficult thing to do to fly from where it disappeared to where the debris appeared, assuming it is the aircraft. The mastermind must have great expertise, technological knowhow, manpower and hardware like ships and aircraft at his disposal to get this job done. It is mind boggling to think through the whole process.

The eagerness of the Aussie PM to call Najib and the media conference said that they knew something already even before any confirmation by the lab. This is the Freudian slip.

Anyone thinking of conspiracy theory? I already have an outlined of how Hollywood would have scripted it. The big question is, what is the motive or what is it all about? Would they spare the lives of the passengers while trying to get what they want?

PS. The possibility of it flying through Singapore, say to Australia, is to file a flight plan ahead, disappeared from radar cover at the edge of KLIA radar cover, change the transponder code, reappear in the civilian flight corridor like any legitimate aircraft with the transponder squawking a new identity. No air trafficker would know anything unusual. The truth could be more dramatic than fiction.