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Suara Sri Andalas

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 11:26 PM PDT

Suara Sri Andalas


Halang Pemimpin KEADILAN, BN Sarawak Terdesak – Zuraida

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 09:45 PM PDT

PETALING JAYA 28 MAC: Tindakan kerajaan negeri Sarawak menghalang beberapa pimpinan KEADILAN memasuki negeri itu merupakan tindakan terdesak menjelang Pilihan Raya Kecil DUN Balingian, kata ketua Wanita KEADILAN, Zuraida Kamaruddin.

"Ini satu tindakan terdesak BN di Sarawak kerana mereka takut kepada pemimpin PKR untuk berkempen dan mengekang rakyat bergerak secara bebas dalam negara demokrasi.

"Ini hak kita. Mengapa mereka menafikan hak ini? Mereka menggunakan kuasa negeri yang tidak bertempat. Perbuatan ini memberi kesan kepada keputusan pilihan raya nanti," katanya pada satu sidang media di Ibu Pejabat KEADILAN di Petaling Jaya hari ini.

Semalam, Zuraida dihalang memasuki Sarawak sebaik tiba di Lapangan Terbang Sibu pada jam 2.30 petang dan diminta meninggalkan negeri itu pada petang hari yang sama.

Beliau merupakan pemimpin keempat dikenakan tindakan berkenaan selepas Setiausaha Agung KEADILAN, Datuk Saifuddin Nasution Ismail, Pengarah Strategi KEADILAN, Rafizi Ramli dan Naib Presiden, Tian Chua.

Sementara itu, bercakap dengan Suara Keadilan, Zuraida bimbang keadaan itu akan berterusan pada kempen Pilihan Raya Negeri di Sarawak dan menjejaskan kempen Pakatan.

"Saya khuatir jika perkara ini berterusan, ia akan menjejaskan pergerakan untuk masa akan datang seperti untuk pilihan raya negeri yang akan diadakan pada tahun 2015," katanya.

Sumber: KeadilanDaily

Balingian: It’s a ‘Buy’ Election, Says PKR

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 09:35 PM PDT

MUKAH: The number of projects and upgradings announced for Balingian since March 17 has left opposition PKR reeling in shock.

The Balingian by-election which will be held tomorrow is now literally a "buy-their-loyalties" polls, which is surprising considering the seat has been a Barisan Nasional stronghold since 2001 when former chief minister Taib Mahmud won the seat.

In the 2011 state election Taib retained the seat by 5,154 votes. In the earlier 2006 polls he locked in a majority of 5,726 votes.

Opposition PKR which is fielding Bintulu businessman Abdul Jalil Bujang is hoping to eat into BN's previous majority.

But BN, through its candidate former Dalat district officer Yussibnosh Balo, is aiming for a landslide victory.

Various state and federal BN leaders have been making their rounds in Balingian wooing and cajoling voters with declarations that a big victory will be a show of gratitude to Taib and an endorsement of his successor Adenan Satem's administration.

Balingian falls in Sarawak's 'industrial'  zone. Taib's pet project Sarawak Corridor for Renewable Energy (Score) is sited in the Mukah parliamentary constituency where Balingian sits.

An overwhelming win will also stamp BN's continued control in the rural interior which has been facing active assault by opposition DAP and PKR since the the 2011 state election.

Both parties saw unprecedented victories in the 2011 state elections. DAP won 13 seats, albeit in the urban areas. PKR took three seats, losing at least two constituency by a hairline.

Perhaps this is the reason why BN is aiming its money muscle in victory-guaranteed Balingian.
Shocking extravagance

According to state PKR vice chairman See Chee How the millions being thrown around in Balingian since the March 17 nomination, was unprecedented and  "more than the constituency has seen in decades".

The latest being a pledge by Sarawak's Infrastructure and Communication Minister Michael Manyin to build a 11-kilometre missing link road between Kuala Serumpai and Kuala Tatau at a cost of RM230 million.

The numbers shocked See, who said that on the average one kilometre stretch of road in Sarawak would cost between RM1 to RM1.5 million to build.

He questioned the need for RM230 million for 11 km road stretch, adding that it reflected the need for a better check and balance system against the ruling government and that BN was fearful of their weakening strength in Balingian.

"The extravagance is shocking. We  want people to know that the BN government has made so many promises in the Balingian by-election because of PKR's strong presence.

"This has shown how important it is to have a dual party system.  We need a good check and balance of the government.

"We urge all voters to come to vote on March 29," said See alluding to the Kajang by-election which saw a low voter turnout. Nonetheless PKR retained the Kajang seat.

Source: FreeMalaysiaToday

Anwar’s Conviction: The Ugly Truth About BN

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 09:30 PM PDT

By Eric Paulsen

Ever since Anwar Ibrahim was sacked as Deputy Prime Minister in 1998, the government has continuously misused state institutions, especially the police, the Attorney-General's Chambers and the judiciary to persecute him on what were clearly politically motivated and trumped up charges.

Anwar was beaten to within an inch of his life by then Inspector-General of Police Rahim Noor while handcuffed and blindfolded, and after a series of sham trials that were universally condemned, he ultimately spent six years in jail.

With Anwar once again poised to challenge and reshape the dynamics of opposition politics by contesting in the Kajang by-election and in all likelihood be appointed as Selangor Menteri Besar, something had to give – and the government once again called upon the services of the AG's Chambers and judiciary to eliminate Anwar.

Although not expecting a fair trial, the skulduggery and lightning speed involved to bring forward and fully hear the AG's Chambers appeal against Anwar's acquittal, having him convicted and sentenced to five years' imprisonment in order to disqualify him from contesting in the by-election was breathtaking and represented a new abysmal low for the judiciary.

To describe the judiciary as not independent is a serious understatement.

In such cases, these judges actively collaborate with the authorities and deliver perverse judgments on cue.

It is just a matter of time before our judiciary, deservedly mocked, reaches the farcical level of summary trials currently seen in Egypt in cases against the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Court of Appeal judges involved, Balia Yusof, Aziah Ali and Mohd Zawawi Salleh surely must be remembered as being responsible for one of the worst miscarriages of justice in recent memory.

Their names will live in infamy together with other infamous judges like Augustine Paul and Arifin Jaka who similarly perverted the law in order to convict Anwar on false charges.

The hardliners in the government clearly think that the overwhelming misuse of state institutions is the answer even though such actions are preposterously self-defeating.

There has been a stream of criticism both inside Malaysia and abroad including from the US, EU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Inter-Parliamentary Union and numerous other human rights and lawyers' organisations.

Many are ridiculing a legal system that allows for a travesty of justice on this scale to take place, which lacked basic standards of fair trial and even involved Mohd Shafee Abdullah, prominent Umno lawyer and legal adviser to Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Najib Tun Razak, to prosecute Anwar.

But coming down hard on Anwar and many other opposition leaders, members of parliament, student leaders and dissidents on spurious sedition and peaceful assembly charges among others, makes Najib look more repressive than the modern and democrat leader that his spinners want to portray.

It also adds to the perception that Anwar and the opposition are clear victims, despite the fact that Barisan Nasional still enjoys almost half of the electorate's support.

Given that the judiciary will at some point be called again to adjudicate on significant matters between the government and the opposition including on electoral fraud, gerrymandering and other unlawful practices, fundamental freedoms and transition of government at state or federal level, anything that undermines its independence will cast a long shadow over these processes.

Anwar's verdict comes at a crucial moment in Malaysia's muddled transition from authoritarian rule with nominal democracy and periodic elections to what many still hope, despite the troubling signs, a greater democracy with genuine free and fair elections.

The verdict is not just about Anwar or the opposition's political ambition.

By convicting Anwar in a ludicrous trial that broke every known fair trial standards, it represents the ugly truth of BN, of desperation to hold on to power come what may, regardless of the damage it may do to Malaysia.

It is therefore all the more imperative to reject Anwar's verdict and work towards reclaiming Malaysia's democratic future without BN at the helm.

Eric Paulsen is the executive director of Lawyers for Liberty. Follow us on Twitter @lawyers4liberty

Kalaulah Sarawak Seperti Selangor - Jaytson

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 09:20 PM PDT

KUALA LUMPUR: "Kalaulah Sarawak seperti Selangor…," kata Jaytson Lenjau Lian, yang membandingkan perbezaan ketara pentadbiran kerajaan Pakatan Rakyat Selangor dengan negerinya yang lebih 50 tahun dikuasai Barisan Nasional (BN), lapor Roketkini.

Butir bicaranya jelas menggambarkan rasa marah dan kecewa, mengenangkan negerinya yang kaya dengan sumber asli, namun hanya dinikmati sekelompok kecil penguasa BN.

Jaytson adalah seorang daripada peserta lawatan sambil belajar empat hari tiga malam Pemimpin Tempatan Bintulu Belaga ke Selangor anjuran bersama NGO Borneo Care dan DAP Sarawak, bagi melihat kaedah pentadbiran Pakatan Rakyat di Selangor.

Katanya, pengertian sebenar Persekutuan Malaysia ketika ia mula ditubuhkan dulu adalah untuk semua negeri berkongsi kekayaan dan bersama-sama maju sebagai sebuah negara merdeka.

"Memanglah saya terpegun melihat Selangor. Kalaulah dapat Sarawak juga macam ini, hidup (sejahteralah) kita dalam Persekutuan Malaysia ini," katanya selepas sesi lawatan ke Dewan Negeri Selangor (DNS) di Shah Alam, semalam.

Menurutnya lagi, pentadbiran Selangor jauh lebih telus dan bersungguh-sungguh berkhidmat kepada rakyat, berbanding BN yang sehingga kini masih gagal memberi kemudahan asas kepada penduduk di Bumi Kenyalang.

"Tambahan pula, YB-YB kita di sini, kita boleh berjabat tangan, berbincang dengan dia. Di Sarawak, nak tengok pun tak dapat. Polis kata 'jangan dekat, ini YB!'," katanya lagi.

Program semalam dimulakan dengan lawatan ke Parlimen yang mana mereka diberi taklimat berhubung prosedur penggubalan undang-undang dan dasar oleh Ahli Parlimen DAP Bukit Bendera dan Bukit Mertajam, Zairil Khir Johari dan Steven Sim Chee Keong.


Sumber: HarakahDaily

Kit Siang: Andaian Bakri Parahkan 'Krisis Kredibiliti'

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 09:15 PM PDT

Timbalan Menteri Pertahanan Datuk Abdul Rahim Bakri patut berundur atau dipecat kerana  membuat andaian berhubung kehilangan MH370 yang didakwa menjadikan "krisis kredibiliti" kerajaan menjadi lebih parah.

Ketua Parlimen DAP Lim Kit Siang menganggap, andaian bahawa MH370 berpatah balik atas arahan pusat kawalan yang dibuat Rahim itu tidak bertanggungjawab, cuai dan karut.

"Kesilapan Abdul Rahim menjadi lebih parah apabila beliau kelmarin mendakwa bahawa jawapan lebih tepat akan diberikan hanya setelah sisa pesawat ditemui," kata angggota Parlimen Gelang Patah itu.

Abdul Rahim semalam berkata, kenyataannya sebelum ini, bahawa MH370 berpatah balik kerana mendapat arahan pusat kawalan, hanya andaian dan ia tidak tepat.

Dalam kenyataannya hari ini, Lim mempersoalkan kenapa penjelasan itu ditangguhkan sedangkan rakyat Malaysia berhak tahu mengenainya.

"Apakah Abdul Rahim ingin mengatakan bahawa tidak mungkin untuk mengetahui mengapa tiada tindakan susulan oleh TUDM (tentera udara) ketika MH370 hilang dari radar awam, tetapi berjaya dikesan oleh radar tentera melainkan jika 'kotak hitam' ditemui?"


Sumber: MalaysiaKini

TAWAS: Peserta Bawah 18 Tahun Layak Terima Skim Baru Khairat RM1,500

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 03:00 AM PDT

SHAH ALAM, 27 MAC: Kerajaan Selangor terus komited membela kebajikan rakyat negeri itu dengan memperkenalkan satu lagi skim khairat kematian.

Skim yang dinamakan Manfaat Khairat Kematian YAWAS itu membolehkan ibu bapa peserta Tabung Warisan Anak Selangor (TAWAS) yang meninggal dunia sebelum mencapai umur 18 tahun menerima sumbangan RM1,500 daripada Nerajaan Negeri.

Pengurus Besar Yayasan Warisan Anak Selangor (YAWAS), Mohd Noor Mohd Zain, berkata skim terbabit mula diperkenalkan, pada 1 Mac lalu.
 
"Manfaat ini diperkenalkan kepada anak kelahiran Selangor yang mendaftar sebagai Ahli TAWAS. Dengan manfaat terbaru ini, jika peserta TAWAS itu meninggal dunia sebelum mencapai umur 18 tahun, ibu bapanya boleh menuntut khairat kematian bernilai RM1,500.

"Tuntutan itu boleh dibuat di pejabat YAWAS dengan membawa Sijil kematian, Kad SiManja dan Penyata Simpanan TAWAS jika ada," katanya kepada Selangor Kini, di sini, hari ini.

Mohd Noor berkata, rakyat Selangor digalakkan mendaftarkan anak mereka dalam Skim TAWAS bagi membolehkan anak terbabit tidak keciciran dalam menikmati pelbagai kemudahan yang disediakan Kerajaan Negeri.

Apabila seorang anak yang baru lahir didaftarkan dalam Skim TAWAS mereka akan dihadiahkan tabung simpanan RM100 dan pada usia 18 tahun, peserta berpeluang menerima RM1,500 seorang hasil daripada pelaburan dalam TAWAS.

Pendaftaran TAWAS boleh dibuat di Pejabat Ahli Dewan Undangan Negeri (ADUN), Pejabat Daerah, Pejabat Penghulu/Ketua Kampung, Pihak Berkuasa Tempatan, Jabatan Pendaftaran Negara (JPN) terpilih atau terus ke pejabat Yawas di alamat A1-11-2 & A1-11-3 Jalan Multimedia 7/AH, Park City, I-City, Shah Alam.

Sebelum ini,di bawah program Merakyatkan Ekonomi Selangor (MES) Kerajaan Selangor memperkenalkan Skim Mesra Usia Emas (SMUE) yang membolehkan waris peserta skim itu menerima sumbangan khairat kematian bernilai RM2,500 dari Kerajaan Negeri.

Sumber: SelangorKu

Selangor Laksana Sukan Luar Sekolah, Elak Guru Jadi Mangsa Kerajaan Pusat

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 02:30 AM PDT

SHAH ALAM, 27 MAC: Kerajaan Negeri mempunyai pendekatan tersendiri untuk berdepan dengan sikap Kerajaan Pusat yang kurang memberi penekanan terhadap pembangunan sukan di Selangor.

Exco Belia dan Sukan, Dr Ahmad Yunus Hairi, berkata Kerajaan Negeri memilih untuk tidak bersikap konfrontasi dalam situasi berkenaan bagi memastikan tidak ada pihak yang terbabit terjejas terutama guru.

Katanya, setakat ini belum ada sebarang program pembangunan sukan dilakukan secara langsung dengan pihak sekolah.
 
"Kita mengambil sikap ini bagi menjaga semua pihak. Pada masa sama, program pembangunan sukan terus giat dijalankan.

"Kita juga tidak mahu apabila Kerajaan Negeri bersama sekolah terbabit secara langsung, guru pula dijadikan mangsa oleh Kerajaan Pusat.

"Mungkin mereka dikenakan tindakan disiplin, surat tunjuk sebab atau ditukarkan hanya kerana bekerjasama dengan Kerajaan Negeri," katanya kepada Selangor Kini, di sini, baru-baru ini.

Perkara itu dibangkit Yunus apabila wujudnya halangan yang  tidak membolehkan Kerajaan Negeri terbabit secara langusung bersama sekolah dalam pembangunan sukan.

"Contohnya, Sekolah Sukan Seksyen 11 sebelum Pakatan Rakyat ambil alih Kerajaan Negeri, Majlis Sukan Negeri (MSN) Selangor dan Exco Sukan ketika itu boleh masuk. Tetapi, kini secara tidak rasminya kita tidak dibenarkan masuk.

"Namun, Kerajaan Negeri melalui MSN masih lagi berhubung dan memberi bantuan keperluan pembangunan sukan di sekolah terbabit," katanya.

Beliau berkata, pihaknya mengariskan beberapa komitmen sebagai jalan keluar dalam usaha memastikan program pembangunan sukan di negeri itu terus terlaksana.

"Saya cuba mencari jalan yang terbaik untuk anjurkan kejohanan sukan. Tahun lepas, saya berjaya anjurkan kejohanan bola sepak bawah 16 tahun, yang mana ia tidak dipertandingkan di peringkat sekolah.

"Sebaliknya, masih membabitkan pelajar apabila mereka menyertai kejohanan terbabit ketika cuti sekolah. Dengan cara itu, kita masih mempunyai ruang mencungkil bakat pelajar yang berpotensi besar dalam sukan bola sepak," katanya.

Sumber: SelangorKu

Anwar Ibrahim

Posted: 27 Mar 2014 07:43 PM PDT

Anwar Ibrahim


Egypt’s bloody purge is just beginning

Posted: 26 Mar 2014 11:27 PM PDT

Foreign Policy

As hundreds of young men are sentenced to death for the killing of one policeman, the state is gearing up to crush its Islamist enemies.

gyptian Judge Saeed Youssef Mohamed presided over the mass trial of 683 people on charges of murder, incitement to violence, and sabotage on March 25 — including Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie — in the southern Egyptian city of Minya. The defense lawyers in the case boycotted the proceedings, but Mohamed demanded that the case go forward anyway.

It’s not hard to see why the defendants might not like their chances. On March 24, Mohamed handed down one of the world’s largest death penalty verdicts ever, ruling that 529 supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi would face the gallows for killing a police officer and attacking a police station last summer.

None of the accused or their lawyers was present on March 24, when Mohamed issued his sentence. The presiding judge in this Upper Egyptian court issued his damning ruling after a trial that lasted just two sessions. The verdict has not only dealt another blow to Egypt’s reputation abroad, but it has shown how far some elements of the state are prepared to go in crushing supporters of the former Islamist government. It is impossible to know whether Mohamed was acting alone or on orders from the central government.

The defendants, many of whom are members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, were accused of jointly murdering Mostafa El-Attar, deputy police commander of the southern town of Matay. The killing occurred on Aug. 14 in the aftermath of the forced dispersals of two pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo that left hundreds dead.

The 545 people in the mass trial were also charged with attempting to murder two security officers, participating in an illegal rally, and vandalizing public and private property. Only 16 defendants were acquitted.

The news of the mass death sentence sent shock waves across the world. Human Rights Watch referred to the ruling as a “sham,” while Amnesty International’s Middle East deputy director, Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, said it was “the largest single batch of simultaneous death sentences we’ve seen in recent years.”

Not everyone, however, condemned the ruling. Several figures within pro-government Egyptian media celebrated the expanding crackdown on Morsi supporters. “I salute the fairness and justice of our judiciary in defiance of those killers and all those who attack it,” said Ahmed Moussa, the presenter of a show on a private Egyptian satellite channel. “May they be 10,000 [sentenced to death], 20,000, not 500. We are not sad; we are happy.”

The extraordinary hearings, which began on March 22, were in shambles from the beginning. During the first hearing, 147 defendants were crammed into a courtroom cage that had been specially modified to fit the enormous number of people on trial.

Judge Mohamed yelled at the defense lawyers, accusing them of being disruptive and “discussing politics,” reported Reuters. The defense teams, meanwhile, furiously argued with him in an unsuccessful attempt to get the judge changed.

“We simply couldn’t prepare the court case in time. The case file is 4,000 pages long,” said Ahmed Shabeeb, one of the defendants’ lawyers. “The court didn’t even listen to our request for more time. We couldn’t defend them,” he said.

The hearing lasted just 45 minutes, during which key witnesses were barred from giving their testimonies. The judge then adjourned the session and demanded that the lawyers submit a written defense. “He didn’t even look at the evidence,” Shabeeb said.

Two days later, Mohamed forbade the lawyers from attending the final hearing and issued the verdict to a courtroom of police officers.

The verdict, however, doesn’t necessarily mean that Egypt will actually execute the 529 defendants. The case will next head to the Court of Cassation, which examines whether the legal process of criminal court cases followed the letter of the law. In this case, the procedural errors were so blatant that it is unlikely that the verdict will be upheld, said Karim Ennarah, a criminal researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

But even if the sentence is not carried out, the verdict has propelled Egypt back into international headlines for all the wrong reasons — and has wrecked some tentative signs of improvement in the country’s human rights environment. Prominent secular activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah, who has been in jail since December and is on trial for allegedly organizing an illegal protest and assaulting a police officer, was finally released on bail on March 23. Meanwhile, interim President Adly Mansour personally wrote letters to jailed Al Jazeera correspondents Peter Greste and Mohamed Fahmy promising them a free and speedy trial.

This ruling, however, is a sign that some elements within the Egyptian state still favor a drastic escalation of violence against Morsi supporters. Doing so might come at the cost of the rule of law: After the trial’s March 22 opening session, Tarek Fouda, head of the lawyer’s syndicate in Minya, said that the presiding judge had “veered away from all legal norms and that he breached the rights of the defense.”

Fouda promised to submit a report on what had occurred to Egypt’s justice minister. The Justice Ministry was unavailable for comment on the case.

“I think it’s safe to say all 529 people were not involved in collectively killing one police officer. That would be an unprecedented feat of group work,” said Ennarah. He said March 24′s ruling was part of an “alarming” six-month trend of Egyptian courts giving “reckless and brutal rulings to intimidate and terrorize opposition protesters.”

The families of those sentenced, meanwhile, have been thoroughly disillusioned about the state of the judicial process. For them, this is solely a political attack on supporters of the former Islamist government.

“We don’t even consider it a verdict. At first we were surprised by the huge numbers on trial; now we just think it’s nonsense,” said Mohamed Hafez, whose two brothers, Hossam, 30, and Mostafa, 31, both businessmen, were sentenced to death on March 24.

Hafez told Foreign Policy that the investigation actually uncovered proof that his siblings are not in the Muslim Brotherhood — but they were sentenced to death anyway. “Maybe they’re trying to terrify people to stop going to demonstrations or oppose the regime,” he said.

The verdict comes just a few months before Egyptians are supposed to vote for a new president — a critical step in the military-authored “road map to democracy.” But as Egypt’s newest 529 occupants of death row can attest, the country remains a long way from the stability and rule of law that Morsi’s ouster was supposed to usher in.

“This is the largest death penalty in Egypt to the best of my knowledge,” Mohamed Zaree, program manager at the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, concluded. “This is not a verdict; it is a massacre.”

Lost in Airspace

Posted: 26 Mar 2014 11:24 PM PDT

Foreign Affairs

MH370′s Humbling Reminder About Technology — And Its Operators

The tale of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 evolves by the minute. Most likely it will have changed yet again by the time you finish reading this. But whatever the ultimate solution to the puzzle may be, it is not too early to start asking what it means.

Here are the facts as we understand them at the moment. On March 8, a plane en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing went missing. There was no indication that anything untoward was happening before it stopped communicating with air traffic controllers. Shortly after it went silent, it began to deviate dramatically from its preprogrammed flight path — again, with no indication of trouble. The plane managed to cross the Malay Peninsula and head into the Strait of Malacca without attracting any attention before it disappeared from radar entirely. According to the British firm Inmarsat, the plane was still airborne somewhere along a giant arc stretching from the southeastern Indian Ocean to Kazakhstan more than seven hours after departing from Kuala Lumpur.

One clear lesson, as Jessica Trisko Darden, an assistant professor at the University of Western Ontario, has recently argued, is that the countries of Southeast Asia are incapable of monitoring, let alone controlling, their airspace. They are also poor at mounting a swift, coordinated response to disaster. They excel, however, at blaming each other. This should raise eyebrows in Washington as the United States "pivots" to Asia. Their response illustrates that any cordiality among players in the region is but a thin veneer. It also calls into question the competence and reliability of the very states on which the United States would depend in the event of a serious confrontation with China. Perhaps even more ominously, China's eagerness to outperform the United States in finding the missing plane would appear to have unseemly geopolitical overtones. It may even reflect Beijing's sensitivity to domestic legitimacy, in view of the fact that most of the passengers aboard MH370 were Chinese nationals.

But there are larger lessons as well — lessons with more than just regional significance. First, the good news. There is no evidence, and by most expert accounts it is extremely unlikely, that MH370 vanished as a result of malfunction. When vital systems in modern airliners fail, they trigger alarms. Backup systems kick in. Pilots report trouble if they are in radio range. There is no indication that any of this happened. Modern airliners are marvels of engineering, so it is no wonder that the odds of being in a fatal commercial airline accident are a mere 1 in 3.4 million. Fewer than a quarter of the fatal accidents that do occur are the result of mechanical failure. You are safer in an airplane than in a bathtub.

The only onboard systems whose performance is in question at the moment in this case are the transponder, which enables ground operators to identify the aircraft and provides crucial flight information, and the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which monitors system health and automatically relays faults to maintenance bases. These stopped working within minutes of the crew's final, perfectly routine radio contact with ground controllers on the morning of March 8. It seems increasingly certain that these systems were switched off deliberately.

As far as anyone can tell, all of the ground-based hardware also worked. Primary radars, secondary radars, and radio communications all held up their end of the bargain in trying to maintain contact with MH370. Again, this is what we should expect. The relevant technology is very good, and is getting better all the time. TheHuffington Post notwithstanding, there is no valid comparison between MH370 and Amelia Earhart's fateful final flight. A Boeing 777 operating in well-monitored airspace today is to Earhart's plane as the Internet is to smoke signals.

Now, the bad news. Although the mechanical systems seem to have worked well, the human systems failed repeatedly, both at the individual and group levels. For one, if the disappearance of MH370 was deliberate, then existing security measures failed to thwart it. In addition, Malaysian military radar operators failed to notice, misperceived, or wilfully ignored the plane's radar track as it headed westward. Thai radar operators noticed, but failed to report it because no one askedOther countriesmay have failed to notice or report the plane's odd path as well because of incompetence, flawed procedures, or fear of embarrassment. For days after the plane disappeared, although there was ample information indicating that the jet had headed toward the Indian Ocean, Malaysia and an increasing number of other countries kept looking for it in the Gulf of Thailand.

There is even worse news. Much of the confusion and uncertainty could easily have been prevented. It is almost inconceivable that, nearly 13 years after 9/11, pilots can still turn off transponders by themselves. (In those rare circumstances when it might be desirable for a pilot to turn off a transponder, there is no technical obstacle to requiring an additional ground-based signal to do it.) Moreover, there is an eight-year-old technology available — Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B — that provides more detailed and more reliable flight and positioning information than does a standard-issue transponder. Although MH370 had ADS-B, and although amateurs on the ground picked up its signal, air traffic controllers did not. Across the world, countries have been slow to embrace it because of bureaucratic inertia and misplaced safety concerns. (In the United States, the FAA does plan to adopt it nationwide, but not before 2020.)

If ADS-B isn't your style, continuous-broadcast GPS is another readily-available technology that airlines can use to monitor their fleets. But as Peter Parrish, vice president of operations for Latitude Technologies, which produces such a system, has lamented, "For some reason, the major carriers continue to rely exclusively on old technology to track their aircraft when one of our boxes could be tucked into an out-of-the-way spot on the aircraft to report location on a continuous basis, including on an accelerated basis right up to the point of impact in the event of a crash." Ironically, while Malaysia Airlines' regional subsidiary, MASwings, has embraced this technology, its parent company has not.

In one sense, the bad news is not surprising. Although technology advances by leaps and bounds, improvement in our mental ability to perceive and analyze the world takes place on an evolutionary timescale. Cognitive, bureaucratic, social, and cultural barriers to learning are ubiquitous. I have spent most of my professional career trying to understand why national leaders — who are almost always very smart people — make so many mistakes, and the answer is simply that they are human. As former Secretary of State Dean Rusk said to me toward the end of his life, "I’ve met and worked with a good many people whose names are in the history books or in the headlines. I have never met a demigod or a superman. I have only seen relatively ordinary men and women groping to deal with the problems with which they are faced."

We have come to appreciate that our rapidly increasing technological sophistication — which has brought to us such benefits as safe, convenient air travel — carries with it great potential cost. It gives us a greater ability to destroy, of course. But, as my colleague Thomas Homer-Dixon, CIGI Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, has pointed out, it can also lead to the creation of vulnerable, overly-tightly-connected, and inadequately resilient systems unless we pay careful attention. We have great difficulty appreciating, apparently, that individuals and organizations are often the weakest links in those systems. National leaders don't think of themselves or their counterparts elsewhere as ill-informed, confused, emotional, fallible, and perhaps even slightly mad some of the time. Nor do they think of the complex departments, ministries, agencies, and militaries over which they have authority and nominal control as marginally to severely dysfunctional virtually 100 percent of the time. But they are.

In a tense, heavily-armed region such as East or Southeast Asia, it would be a good idea for leaders to reflect on the limited capacities of individuals and organizations and the inevitability that they will make mistakes. And at no time are mistakes more likely than in times of crisis. The bizarre story of MH370 should make the importance of that insight painfully clear.

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