Media ignoring the obvious: The pilot did it

With few exceptions, the American media is strenuously ignoring evidence that the pilot deliberately ditched flight MH370.

A recent exception is an ABC report  on the missing airliner:

Experts agree that the most likely scenario involves the pilot purposefully taking control of the plane and driving it into the ocean.

“The captain certainly had far more opportunity than anyone else that we know of,” [former pilot and ABC consultant John]Nance said.

The biggest indicators pointing to the pilot is that a significant amount of training is needed to know how to turn off the transponder as well as going through several levels of commands on the plane’s radar system, called ACARS, which only experienced pilots know how to do.

One fault against the pilot, however, is that nothing in his background suggested that he was depressed, had financial problems, or was dealing with suicidal thoughts, all of which have been warning signs for pilots in other scenarios, Nance said. “All possibilities and probabilities settle on the captain's shoulders,” Nance said.

Simply untrue "that nothing in his background" shows that Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah might have a motive to ditch the plane and kill 239 people.

From a story in the New Zealand Herald the same month the plane disappeared:

The captain of Flight 370 was in no state of mind to fly the day it disappeared and could have taken the Boeing 777 for a "last joyride" before crashing into the Indian Ocean, a fellow pilot says. Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah's world was crumbling, said the long-time associate. He had been facing serious family problems, including separation from his wife and relationship problems with another woman he was seeing. The man, who spoke to the Herald on condition of anonymity, said Captain Zaharie was "terribly upset" when his wife told him she was leaving and believed he may have decided to take the Malaysia Airlines plane to a part of the world he had never flown in.

And there's this from the Daily Mail in Australia shortly after the plane disappeared:

Captain Shah was an ‘obsessive’ supporter of [Anwar] Ibrahim. And hours before the doomed flight left Kuala Lumpur it is understood 53-year-old Shah attended a controversial trial in which Ibrahim was jailed for five years. Campaigners say the politician, the key challenger to Malaysia’s ruling party, was the victim of a long-running smear campaign and had faced trumped-up charges. Police sources have confirmed that Shah was a vocal political activist---and fear that the court decision left him profoundly upset. It was against this background that, seven hours later, he took control of a Boeing 777-200 bound for Beijing and carrying 238 passengers and crew (emphasis added).

Anwar Ibrahim "helped Islamicise the whole government system" and played a major role in the Islamicisation of the education system when he was Education Minister[in Maylaysia] in the 1980s.

Funny but I haven't seen these two stories picked up by any media outlet in the US. Wouldn't want to upset any adherents of "the religion of peace."

Bill Maher: Openly Secular

Thanks to Alternet.