Joe Sharkey At Large

Throw the Old Spice down the well.
So my people can be free
(Repeat)
(Sorry, Borat).

I hate to kvetch on this, but I am in a hotel room in Florida, preparing to leave tomorrow morning for home.

Upon arrival for a two-day stay I went to a Walgreens near the hotel to buy small containers of 1. toothpaste and 2. deodorant. The 1.3 ounce tube of Acquafresh toothpaste cost 99 cents, as did 2.5 ounces of Old Spice Classic deodorant stick (”Original Scent”). It was the only travel-size deodorant on sale.

At the deodorant aisle, they had a great special — big containers of Arm & Hammer stick deodorant, two for $1.99. But I had to pass on that because, I realized, I was only allowed 3 ounces of such substances on an airplane. Plus I didn’t have a baggie, meaning I was not actually allowed even the three ounces. And the regulation quart-size, zip-lock baggies — one of which would have been required to display and carry any of the aforementioned products onto a plane — cost way more than the savings I would have had thanks to Walgreens’ two-for-one sale.

The result, as I pack for home, bereft of baggies: Into the trash go the 99-cent and barely used containers of Old Spice Classic (not such a tragedy there because the smell of Old Spice reminds me of 1968, which, trust me, younger people, was a year that really and truly sucked) and the barely squeezed Aquafresh toothpaste.

And what it the reason for this farce? In August, a bunch of hysterical British badges in London ran around shrieking that they had heard about a plot — details remain very mysterious — to use liquids, pastes and gels to blow things up. For a while, you couldn’t even carry a book onto a plane leaving London. Then the New York Times lost its marbles one morning with a batty editorial suggesting that all carry-on materials be permenantly banned.

American security officials echoed the hysteria on cue. Later, the ban on liquids, gels and pastes was relaxed by saying you could carry on three ounces of any one, provided you displayed it in a quart-size zip-lock baggie. (For some utterly unknowable reason, a gallon-size zip-lock baggie is not acceptable). Next, I am assuming they will require that baggie to be tied to your wrist with a nametag on it, and a little American flag sticker in the corner to affirm that you Support the Troops or whatever those litle lapel flags sweaty politicians who never served a day in the military wear are supposed to affirm.

As I said in a recent post, would somebody please reassure me? This is the country that won the Battle of Midway, cured polio and invented the computer, right?

From Brazil’s Zero Hora newspaper in Rio Grande do Sul

ZERO HORA – NOV 3, 2006 – Aviation

“We tackled problems on the fly”

[This is an interview with a 31-year old Air Force air traffic controller participating in the work-to-rule operation that has snarled air traffic in Brazil. The operation began when authorities started asking air traffic controllers about the Sept. 29 mid-air collision between a Brazilian Gol 737 airliner and a private Legacy 600 jet over the Amazon that killed 154 in the 737. Brazilian authorities have insisted that air traffic control played no part in the disaster. J.S.]

By RODRIGO CAVALHEIRO

Annoyed because he was included among 149 controllers ordered by the Brazilian Air Force to bring flight control operations back to normal, this 31-year old … was participating in the work-to-rule operation started by air traffic controllers in Brasilia, which for seven days has caused flight delays throughout the country. He is a member of the Air Force and considers the measure a type of incarceration. He agreed to be interviewed by Zero Hora on condition of anonymity, to avoid being punished by his corporation. He described to us, by phone from Brasilia, how the demonstration started. Following are the main parts of his interview:

Zero Hora – When did the operation start?

A.F. Member – It started after the Gol accident. We were questioned by the Brazilian Federal Police and the Prosecutor’s Office, but everybody knows there are problems with the radars and equipment in that region. We stopped and thought: “Look at the number of mistakes we make.” We were tackling problems on the fly, and we don’t want to run this risk anymore.

ZH – Why the delays were only felt this week?

A.F. Member – Because of the number of flights over the extended holiday.

ZH – How was the operation planned?

A.F. Member – We decided to request that any orders from above which clashed with safety standards be issued in writing. When our superiors caught on, the punishments began. As military personnel, we are forbidden to belong to unions, but we organized the Brazilian Association of Air Traffic Control.

ZH – Why did you not expose the situation before?

A.F. Member – They put pressure on us. When we adhere to the standards, we are threatened with imprisonment, and are removed from specialized training courses. The plane crash, and the removal of our colleagues after the crash is what triggered this action.

ZH – Are controllers stressed?

A.F. Member – After the plane crash, 30 controllers have gone on medical leave in Brasilia. The situation is very stressful. We have colleagues who vomited, felt sick, etc. I have insomnia, and I can’t concentrate any more. Now imagine the 12 people who were removed! Three of them were directly involved, because they were working in the station at the moment of the collision. I heard two of them crying: “I killed those people”.

ZH – Why the guilt feeling? Is it because the control could have warned the Gol aircraft about the risk?

A.F. Member - (Silence) I participated in the investigation of the crash, and this aspect may have contributed to the collision. However, this was not the main cause.

ZH – It has been informed that the Legacy was authorized by controllers to be at that height. Was this the first error?

A.F. Member – It may have been, but in this area an accident is not caused by a single error. The controllers may have made a mistake, but it was the lack of structure that brought on the accident.

ZH – But making life difficult for so many passengers, is that a solution?

A.F. Member – People who fly represent only 2% of the population, they are higher income people. I imagine they would prefer to spend hours on the ground instead of 50 minutes risking their lives in midair. I myself had to sleep for three hours on the floor while waiting for a flight to Porto Alegre, and then another hour and a half in São Paulo. I became a victim of our own poison.

ZH – Will the situation be normal by Sunday?

A.F. Member – We demanded that this activity be demilitarized, among other things. In exchange, we’ll work extra during breaks to cover the extended holiday.

-end

Your airport security forces are on duty, measuring baggies and calculating the potential volume of in-use toothpaste tubes round the world. Yes, it’s high school physics class all over again!

A friend of mine went through security at the Philadelphia International Airport the other day and was busted. Yup, he had the wrong size toothpaste container displayed in his regulation quart-size zipper baggie. “The tube was all rolled up with maybe two brushes worth of toothpaste left,” he said. Don’t try that trick in Philadelphia, potential wrongdoer! While the amount of actual paste in the rolled up tube was well less than an ounce, the screener, using his finest skills of police detection, managed to ascertain that the tube had ONCE contained over 4 ounces.

Into the trash bin it goes and the next time let that be a warning to you.

Meanwhile, off to the airport I go this morning for a trip to Florida. I am not taking toothpaste, as like millions of us, I have now simply become conditioned to arriving somewhere and finding the nearest Walgreen’s to buy still another new tube. Hasn’t this yet become a recycling issue?

And quick, somebody reassure me. This is the country that won the Battle of Midway, right?

Meanwhile, in London, the Brits are standing down at last. Last week, the authorities, having determined that the coast is clear, changed security procedures to allow passengers to carry on 3.5 ounces of gels, pastes and liquids, “carried in a clear plastic, zip-top or resealable bag” that does not exceed one quart in capacity.

It seems the threat has sufficiently passed from the alleged terrorist plot that had the British authorities shrieking in fear in August. You know the plot I mean. The one where … uh, some Islamists were talking about … uh, blowing up, what was it now? Ten airplanes over the U.S.? No, that turned out not to be true. SOME airplanes. Maybe. They had some videotapes of bat-shit crazy young men talking about that. Yeah, that’s it. And what happened into the investigation of that plot. Hey, don’t ask. Very secret. Was this a real plot or a case of some wobbly British constables going off half-cocked like John Cleese after a wayward guest in Fawlty Towers? Don’t ask, I told you!

That is the country that stood defiant during the Blitz. Right?

And remember, QUART size baggies only. Don’t ask the rationale for that or it’s trouble for you, bub. And onlt three-ounce containers of your gels and whatnot, unless your gels are in contained a bra, for which the rules do not apply (if you think I am joking here, see earlier posts on T.S.A. exemptions for gel-bras, both as proestetics and as fashion wear).

Last week, the Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. uncovered serious screening violations at the Newark Liberty Valance International Airport. No, I’m joking about the Valance, but not the security scew-up. The airport’s response? “They’ve launched a full-scale investigation to find out just who leaked that information to the press. Not, mind you, an investigation into the 90 percent failure rate of screeners, or the political yum-yums who are managing the TSA at EWR,” the ever-trenchant aviation consultant Mike Boyd wrote in his weekly essay yesterday (www.aviationplanning.com –I read it faithfully each week).

The qualifications of the security director at Newark, besides political connections? He’s a former public relations man for the T.S.A.

Hey, spin this.

Here are excerpts from a report Friday from McClatchy Newspapers, a news organization that seems to be reflecting a quality that I find dying in much of the mainstream media:

Curiosity.

Incidentally, all of this information you will have read here before in previous posts on this blog.

McClatchy Newspapers

RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazilian air traffic has been paralyzed for almost a week as flight controllers across the country have taken unauthorized safety measures following the nation’s worst air accident, a September collision that killed 154 people.

Flight controllers, who say they are working with too little manpower, have taken it upon themselves to make changes. They have reduced the maximum number of flights they monitor at one time from as many as 20 planes to 14, and they have lengthened the time between takeoffs from three to as much as 20 minutes, creating enormous backups on runways. … dozens of flights have been canceled daily, and airports have become campsites for weary travelers …

Controller Vinicius Araujo said he and colleagues had launched the measures in response to the Sept. 29 midair collision between a Brazilian airliner and an executive jet piloted by two Americans. He said the accident highlighted the system’s dangers.

“We’ve been working at the limits for years, and this situation is a gamble and could cause accidents, which is what we’re trying to avoid,” Araujo said. “It’s safer to keep these planes on the ground.”

Just what is their story down there in Brazil?

The Brazilian military brass keeps insisting the country’s air-traffic control system, for which the military is reponsible, is the finest in the world and could not possibly have been responsible for the Sept. 29 mid-air collision over the Amazon that killed 154 people. The military, by the way, is also responsible for investigating aviation disasters.

Last week, Brazil’s air traffic controllers staged a work slowdown. This came a day after 10 of their comrades who had been asked to testify about the collision that occurred on their watch called in sick — under psychiatric treatment, they claimed, and unable to even think about answering questions till mid-November.

From Latinnews Daily: On Thursday, as the work slowtown got traction during the big five-day holiday-travel season of All Souls Day, “The situation in airports was so tense, due to the long delays (some of 16 hours) that the police were called to intervene in passenger mutinies in Sao Paulo and Salvador. … To bring the situation back under control, the Brazilian air force ordered all air-traffic controllers to resume their duties under threat of detention.”

The article goes on: “Air traffic controllers complain they are overloaded with work. They usually control 17 to 20 flights at a time, many more than the maximum of 12 according to international safety reguations. … So far this year the government has disbursed only 54 percent of all the [$127.5 million] allocated in this year’s budget for air safety. …”

Now, like some of the journalism that comes out of Brazil, and nearly all of it on the subject of the Sept. 29 mid-air collision, this dispatch has certain incorrect elements. The number of deaths was 154, not the 157 claimed in this report. And the Legacy 600 corporate jet that survived the crash at 37,000 feet with a 737 did not land at a “farm,” as this report says, but rather at an obscure Air Force base hidden in the jungle.

However, the gist of the story just adds more support to the growing awareness that Brazil’s air traffic control is in crisis, and has been for some time. And it follows a report earlier this week, undisputed by the authorities, that the Legacy 600 was flying at 37,000 feet [and thus on a collision course with the Gol airlines 737 approaching at the same altitude from the opposite direction] under explicit instruction from air traffic control.

Also today the wonderfully nutty Brazzil.com online magazine offers some more Amazonian logic that inadvertently supports the case the Brazil’s air traffic control might be out of control:

“Are the flight controllers right?” it asks. “Sure. Weren’t they accused of failure in the Gol’s plane accident? Unjustly and foully they were charged.” [My note: This is a fiction. In Brazil, all of the wild charges and villification have been directed at the two American pilots of the Legacy 600, who are still unable to leave Brazil]. Brazzil.com sympathetically notes of the overworked pilots, many of whom have two jobs to make ends meet: “… because despite their work load, they, day in and day out still strive for putting some order in the skies.”

An overworked, stressed-out air-traffic control force striving “for putting some order in the skies” is hardly indicative of what the Brazilian authorities insist is the world’s finest air-traffic control system — an assertion that, incidentally, draws bellylaughs from international pilots who have told me that the system is riddled with communications black holes, not to mention unruly chatter and noise.

Brazzil.com adds: “If someone should be blamed for this horror taking place in our airports this someone is the federal government, which … keeps cutting the budget set aside to meet the air traffic growth. In the last three years 3 billion reais ($1.4 billion) ended up being reallocated — they is, they were never appropriated.”

All’s I know is what I read in the papers, folks. Meanwhile, the two American pilots remain in detention in Rio, with no sign of release.

We have two parrots and when I get home from the airport one of the great joys in my life is to see my wife at the door with the parrots. Kisses all around. Petey, the rambunctuous blue-and-gold macaw, shrieks like a little girl and flaps his wings with great grace and beauty, the way his cousins in the rainforests of Brazil, where this kind of parrot is native to, do on those long swooping twilight mass flights over the Amazon.

Rosie, the younger and far more talkative African gray, gives up a little kiss, but she usually says this: “Joesharkey 97344823667.” I know, it sounds like a prisoner’s number. And sometimes she changes the numbers and either adds or subtracts some after the first “973,” which is, in fact, our area code. But what she’s really doing is greeting me by essentially repeating what she hears me say on the telephone when I’m leaving someone a message: Name and phone number. She calls me “Joesharkey,” one word. When I’m gone, she asks my wife, “Where’s Joesharkey,” though when my wife is away, she asks me, “Where’s Nancy?”

I’m not sure what I want you to make of that, except that I am trying to convey the joy of being alive and being home from a long trip to Tucson, and the irony that one of the joys in my life, besides a wife I adore, are two parrots, including the boisterous blue-and-gold macaw, Petey, who simply radiates the energy, happiness contentiousness, confoundedness and full-blown Amazonian essence of Brazil (even if his shrieking, flapping, squawking and unprovoked dancing do at times affirm that he is operating under the power of a bird brain).

O.K., back to the actual Brazil. And to my new favorite online magazine, the Gracie Allen of Brazilian journals, Brazzil.com

As anyone following this story knows, it is now no longer in any serious dispute that the two American pilots of the business jet that collided with a 737 over the Amazon on Sept. 29 had been instructed by Brazilian air traffic control to maintain an altitude of 37,000 feet. The 737 that collided with the business jet, and on which 154 people plunged to horrible deaths, was also authorized to be at 37,000 feet –in the exact opposite direction.

During the more than two days I spent in Brazil with those two pilots after the mid-air collision, and consistently afterward, they insisted that they were flying at the altitude they had been ordered to maintain by air traffic control. For this, they were denounced as “flippant” and “impertinent” by a Brazilian defense minister who is among those in charge of the investigation.

Now, other factors besides misfeasant or malfeasant air-traffic control may have contributed to this disaster. There is lots of talk — but no evidence that I’ve seen so far — that the business jet’s transponder communications device may have been faulty. If so, this might help account for why the plane was out of contact with air traffic control at the collision crash site roughly between Brasilia and Manaus. (On the other hand, incompetence or technological fault at Brasilia or Manaus air traffic control could also account for this). The transponder issue, if it is indeed an issue, would almost certainly be a mechanical fault. Civil litigation, it can be said without hesitation, would ensue. You don’t want to be caught in the stampede of the lawyers to the courthouse door.

Yet the two American pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, are still being held without charges by the Brazilian authorities. Yes, I know they are not technically under “arrest.” They are holed up in a hotel in Rio, unable to leave their rooms because a Brazilian media mob quivering with anti-American hysteria would immediately be alerted by one of those paid informers who sit in the lobby with their cell phones ready.

Some Brazilian authorities have denounced me for insisting the pilots are being detained. Maybe they have a different word for it in Portuguese. Are they free to leave Brazil? Well, no. In English, the definition of that is “detained.”

Newsday, the pilots’ hometown paper, reports today that the pilots remain in “legal limbo” because three separate investigations are continuing into the crash, amid squabbling over “which one will take the lead.”

“I think we’re paralyzed,” Theo Diaz, a Sao Paulo lawyer for the pilots, told the Long Island newspaper. “The Federal Police want evidence from the Air Force; the Air Force won’t give it, and the judge says he doesn’t know if he has jurisdiction.”

Man, I hear that. After the collision, as soon as we made the emergency landing in the damaged Legacy 600 corporate jet at an obscure Air Force base in the Amazon, it became abundantly clear to me that various jurisdictions were battling for a piece of the action. That was reinforced late the next afternoon, when we were all flown from the air base hundreds of miles south to police headquarters in Mato Grosso, where we were questioned till after dawn. The assemblage of regional police and civil panjandrums that greeted us there was slightly reminiscent of that Marx Brothers movie set in Freedonia. And everybody wanted to get into the act.

Meanwhile, my new favorite online magazine, the combative, tenacious, energetic, highly democratic and occasionally batty Brazzil.com is out today with a new story headlined: “Brazil Admits ‘Imprecision’ But Doesn’t Exonerate U.S. Pilots from Blame.”

The Brazilian Air Force confirmed that air traffic control authoritzed the Legacy to fly at 37,000 feet to Manaus, Brazzil.com reports, adding “Brazilian authorities, however, don’t call their mistake an error, but just an imprecision.”

I had a look at the schematics the Brazilian Air Force has drawn up showing how (but not why) the crash occurred. The left wing of the 737 is shown clipping the left wing of the Legacy at its winglet. A good 10 feet of the 737 wing is then shorn off, and strikes the Legacy tail as the 737 flips and plummets to the jungle.

It’s very precise. Had the 737 wing been pitched 10 inches lower, my parrots would be wondering today when the hell Joesharkey was coming home.

Having just arrived home from Tucson, I have several trivial reports and one substantive one to make, and the clock in the eastern zone is approaching midnight.

One: Continental Airlines continues to get me from Newark to Tucson and back (and also from Newark to L.A.), at a fare that discourages competitors on the route (about $350 round trip, Tucson), while providing pretty good service and even on occasion a mileage upgrade to first class. While I think they should lose the “hot cheese pizza” served in coach — I defy anyone to cite a worse pizza, and bad pizza is quite a universe — Continental does nevertheless serve food in coach, and with a salad, and the flight attendants seem happy to see you. Yes, Newark is one of Continental’s “fortress” hubs, but fine: I remain inside the fort.

This is being written late, just a little update. I have already mentioned my new favorite Brazilian Web site, the uproarious, sometimes smart, sometimes batty online magazine Brazzil.com, where the headlines currently list the following: “RIO CELEBRATES NUDITY AND BRAZIL PREPARES TO GET NUDISTS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD,” followed two down in ths list by “BRAZIL ADMMITS ‘IMPRECISION’ BUT DOESN’T EXONERATE U.S. PILOTS FROM BLAME.” More on the imprecision tomorrow.

MEANWHILE, The following was written earlier, at dawn on Friday, as I was leaving Tucson to return home:

I’m always sad to leave our Tucson hideaway but glad to be going home, and that’s the feeling now with the rising sun just outlining the Rincons. This is a good place to work and clear the head in the Sonoran desert, but it’s time to go home.

My wife was here for a week but then had to go L.A. 10 days ago for a business trip, and then home.

I am not meant to live alone. I’ve found that after about five days of it, the hour of the day during which I shave gets later and then starts lapping over to the next morning.

The degree of civil politeness is impressive in Tucson, a town that still retains a western culture while Phoenix and its suburbs strive to become Brentwood.

I mean, men hold doors for other men here. People behind the counter at stores are invariably friendly. But after about seven days alone, I realize that I’m conversing just a little too long with, say, a young woman at the convenience store counter. Fifteen seconds is the accepted norm, and I find myself hitting 30 seconds and see her looking just a bit apprehensive.

The first few days alone, I barbeque dinner and whip up a nice salad. Last night, I bought Raman Noodles at Walgreen’s and had them for dinner and washed the container for future use.

Yes, it is time to head for the airport. Luckily, the Tucson Airport has not yet even heard of the word hassle. Even the security people seem glad to see you and help move you along.

I am, though, glad that I am not traveling in Brazil today, because flights have been a mess — delays of 20 hours have been reported during a big extended holiday travel week (All Souls Day is a big holiday, go figure).

My new favorite online magazine, the always engaging, energetic, and occasionally batty Brazzil.com, reports this morning that Brazilian air traffic controllers are being forced to work overtime to help with the current mess. The controllers say “they’re being kept as prisoners” and forced to stay overnight at air-traffic control centers without being able to go home.

The controller shortage is exacerbated by the fact that 10 controllers from Brasilia and Manaus called in sick en masse on Monday after being summoned to testify in the interminable secret investigation being conducted by police and military authorities into the Sept. 29 mid-air collision over the Amazon between a 737 and a corporate jet, in which the 154 people on the 737 were killed.

The controllers said they were under psychiatric treatment and unable to testify till at least mid-November.

A few days later, a big Sao Paulo newspaper printed a story that said the two American pilots of the corporate jet, who are still being held in Brazil, were correct in their insistence — reported here from Day One — that they had been ordered by air traffic control to fly at 37,000 feet all the eway to Manaus. This is exactly the altitude air traffic control had the 737 on, in the opposite direction, when the two planes collided over one of the most desolate stretches of the Amazon. The badly damaged corporate jet made an emergency landing, but its pilots and five passengers were uninjured.

Air traffic control in Brazil is run by the same military conducting the investigation into the crash, so you can see that forces other than holiday traffic are at work here.

According to a spokesman for the Brazil Flight Controllers Association, 80 controllers are now being kept in their control centers as “prisoners” and threatened with courts-martial if they leave before the holiday period ends Sunday.

“If they are court-martialled, they lose their rights,” he said.

That’s 80 controllers protesting about being detained. And oh, I almost forgot, there are also the two American pilots, detained in Brazil without charges since the crash.

So let’s do that math and make that 82, then.

Waldir Pires, Brazil’s dazzling dissembler of a defense minister, the man chiefly responsible (abetted by hysterical elements of the Brazilian media) for villifying two American pilots for the Sept. 29 mid-air collision, might have some explaining to do next week. Let’s see him fandango his way around the latest developments.

Most recent is a report from Sao Paulo today in which Brazil’s biggest newspaper says the black box recorder from the private jet shows clearly that the American pilots were instructed by air traffic control to maintain an altitude of 37,000 feet (as the pilots have insisted all along).

That would seem to knock from their high horses the virulently anti-American elements who have brayed that the American pilots of the corporate jet that landed safely in the jungle, while the 154 on the commercial 737 died, were criminally culpable for the collision because they ignored air-traffic control orders. Some have even accused the corporate pilots of deliberately turning off air-to-ground communications equipment so they could play at “trick maneuvers” in the Amazon skies.

The pilots have insisted from Day One that they were under orders from air traffic control to maintain altitude at 37,000 feet, and that they lost contact with air traffic control after passing Brasilia. Shortly after the secret investigation began weeks ago, and before much evidence had been gathered, Minister Pires called the American pilots “frivolous” and “irresponsible” for insisting they were told to be at 37,000 feet.

Brazil air traffic control, the authorities harrumphed, could not have been responsible for putting the corporate jet on a collision course with the 737 because it is the world’s finest, having recently been the subject of a $1.4 billion renovation. To question air traffic control was to insult the honor of Brazil, they said.

Those who did question the quality of Brazilian air traffic control — and they would include dozens of international pilots I’ve heard from and several who stood up publicly in Brazil and said air traffic control has communications dead zones and other serious problems — were called “frivolous” and “flippant” by the military authorities responsible for both running the system AND investigating accidents.

But according to the A.P. today, “The flight recorder transcript from the executive jet involved in Brazil’s worst air disaster shows that the jet’s American pilots were told by Brazilian air traffic control to fly at the same altitude as a Boeing 737 before the planes collided over the Amazon rain forest, the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper reported Thursday.”

The pilots were instructed to maintain that altitude — which put the Legacy 600 business jet directly on a path with the approaching 737 — all the way to their destination in Manaus, that report says.

This comes a few days after 10 Brazilian air controllers who work at airports in Brasilia and Manaus, the two points between which the collision occurred, were finally asked to testify this week before the secret military tribunal investigating the crash. But the controllers en masse informed the authorities that they could not come in for testimony because they all are under psychiatric care until mid-November. Yup, as I said before, they called in sick.

Yesterday, I mentioned an online Brazilian magazine, Brazzil.com. Reading it, I get a much better sense of what Brazil is like — full of emotion and energy, bursting with opinion yet constantly working on its national self-esteem. The comments following the stories are flippant, frivolous and often uproarious, including the anti-American ones. But they’re not all anti-American. “Now Brazil you must look at your third-world air traffic control system” one fellow posted today under the story about the American pilots receiving authorization to maintain 37,000 feet altitude. “In fact, it was not the professional American pilots who killed your citizens, but your lazy, incompetent and probably drunk controllers …” That’s a little harsh, I would say, but it does give me an sense of another Brazil than the one I see in the hate mail piled up in my inbox.

Another poster: “For the true knuckle-dragging Che Guevara-t-shirt-wearing Brazilian-imperialist-Yank-hater, put down your rope and back away from the tree. It looks like there will be no lynching this time around and you’ll need anoither issue to kick-start your revolution.”

That more than makes up for the “Die Assassin Pig” e-mails, including one I got today warning me that “it will be dangerous for you if you visit Brazil again.”

You know what? I was in detention most of the time I spent in Brazil. I think I’d probably love the place if I didn’t have to spend nights in a police station.

Meanwhile, back to the collision, there is a key point that I do not undertand, and am not taking a tendentious attitude toward. I keep reading stories, including the one today in Folha de Sao Paulo, that declare that the transponder on the Legacy was not working as it passed through Brasilia’s air space.

Is this so? I keep reading it, but so far I have not seen one account that points to evidence that the Legacy transponder, a key piece of equipment that helps link electronic communications between air and ground, was not operating. “Inoperable transponder” just keeps getting repeated, without attribution for the information. If that information is out there (from a reliable source, not from some delusional Internet know-nothing) I sure would like to know about it.

The American pilots remain in detention in Rio, where they have been held without charge since shortly after the collision. Where, by the way, is the American embassy in all of this?.

My guess is the humiliated authorities will try to untangle this Amazonian knot with a proclamation that will say something like this: “We can’t say for sure what occurred. Everybody is a little bit responsible, including air traffic control, the four pilots [two now dead, of course, and unable to defend themselves with "flippant" statements] and a broken transponder — so let’s just seal the books, move on and fix what needs to be fixed and forget about it.”

Nuh-uh. I want answers. I was on that Legacy.

This just in from my friend Joe Brancatelli, the publisher of JoeSentMe.com and perhaps the most deeply committed skeptic as regards the vaunted Registered Traveler program that promises expedited airport security screening passage to enrollees who pass a federal background check and pay an anual fee for a biometric I.D. card:

“It’s now November 1, and the TSA has not approved any further developments in Registered Traveler. Bottom line: There won’t be anything in 2006, either…”

Good point. I’ve written an awful lot about Registered Traveler — currently operating in only one location, Orlando. Among the purported benefits of the program as it purportedly rolls out nationwide are that members will be processed by T.S.A.-approved technology that will allow them to pass through security in special lanes without having to remove jackets and shoes, and without having to remove laptops from their cases. For about a year now, the T.S.A. has been saying these things are under review.

But as Joe points out, it is now Nov. 1.

More on that next week, after I get home from Tucson.

Meanwhile, I’m still sorting through the shipments of Brazil nuts that keep tumbling into my in-box, as a secret military inquiry drags on into the Sept. 29 mid-air collision over the Amazon that killed 154 people in a 737 while a coporate jet with seven aboard managed to land safely.

According to Brazzil.com, (yes, two “z’s”) an online English language magazine published in Brazil, a lawyer for the two American pilots who have been detained in Brazil since the accident has called the seizure of the pilots’ passports “illegal” and denounced the Brazilian air force for dragging its heels in not cooperating with the order of a federal judge to present information about the crash.

I can’t quite figure out Brazzil.com, which yesterday ran an article saying the collision — which evidence increasingly suggests was at least in large part the result of Brazilian air-traffic control error — was evidence instead of: “North American imperialism. Here we have a live and in-color presentation.” In denying culpability for the accident, the Americans are “attempting to shift the blame,” Brazzil.com declared.

Well, yeah. In truthfully DENYING that you are to blame for a disaster, by definition that would amount to attempting to shift the blame to whoever IS to blame — imperialism notwithstanding. That statement reminded me of the Brazilian military authorities’ repeated insistence that the pilots are not being “detained;” they are just not free to leave.

It is quite remarkable how American political issues associated with the Patriot Act and other Bush Administration anti-terrorist initiatives have entered into this controversy about a mid-air collision, by the way.

I have received well over a thousand e-mails from Brazil, some with barely veiled death threats, many denouncing me as an “American assassin,” because I was one of the seven who walked away uninjured from the collision while those 154 people in the 737 died so horribly. Many of these e-mails are obviously orchestrated, ending with the same two sentences (only one of which I dispute): “YOU ARE SUCH A SHIT OF A JOURNALIST” and “WE DO NOT HAVE A GUANTANAMO IN BRAZIL.”

These broiling themes call out for more intelligent evaluation because they underly the political dynamics at work and the plight of the two American pilots who have been detained for over a month, with no release in sight.

On Monday, after the military authorities conducting the investigation decided they would finally get around to actually questioning air traffic controllers this week, and as noted in an earlier post here, the 10 air traffic conrollers working in Brasilia and Manaus at the time of the accident all said they were ill and under psychiatric care, and thus unable to testify until mid-November. Yup, they all called in sick.

Now I think it might be useful to examine some quotes from Brazzil.com, including readers’ comments. (The English is generally o.k., but very wobbly in spots — which, incidentally, is how international pilots describe air-traffic control over the Amazon).

From the Oct. 31 article “Brazil’s Worst Air Accident Ever Reveals How Arrogant the U.S. Can Be,” by David Lerer, a former Brazilian House representative and a doctor:

“As a Brazilian Air Force’s incensed officer said, ‘If it were a Brazilian plane hitting a North American commercial plane over there and causing more than a hundred deaths, the pilot would already be behind bars in the Guantanamo base and being treated as a terrorist.”

Dr. Lerer went on: “My friend Abelardo Gomes de Abreau … went two months ago to represent Brazil in an oar championship in the United States and he had to undress at the airport to be frisked from head to toe. … A Brazilian tourist in the United States is always treated as a suspect, while two Americans hyper-suspect of having caused Brazil’s worst air disaster ever have to be treated as tourists on vacation.”

Dr. Lerer here is refering to the fact that the two pilots, Joe Lepore and Jan Paladino, are being detained in a hotel in Rio. He neglects to point out that they have been pretty much confined to their rooms, because a pack of hostile Brazilian media is camped outside the hotel, where a mob is also easily assembled.

Ah, but Dr. Lerer does give us another clue into this particular Amazononian region of the Brazilian psyche: The fact that Brazilian-made Legacy 600 corporate jet flew on to make an emergency jungle landing with a badly damaged wing and bunged-up tail, while the American-made Boeing 737-800 plunged 37,000 feet into the jungle after impact, proves that … uh, Brazil rules!

“In this painful September air tragedy, the only one with some chance of success is the Legacy, manufacturered [by Embraer] in Sao Jose dos Compos, in the interior of Sao Paulo. It is going to sell like crazy. After all, if a little plane like that can bring down a Boeing while only damaging its wing’s tip and a small section of its tail, it’s because it’s pretty good.”

Online reader reaction to this screed was mixed, indicating that perhaps Brazil really doesn’t have as many nuts as might be surmised by the reaction I myself have been subject to. A lot of these people seemed to make sense.

“It is quite funny that the reporter (Dr. Lerer) accuses the U.S. as arrogant, when from Day One it was the Brazilian press and ALL the Brazilian governments who accused openly the U.S. pilots — before the end of the investigations,” one wrote.

“It will be a greater tragedy if innocent people are sent to prison while those responsible remain free,” said another. “It wouldn’t be the first time that a foreigner was railroaded by a kangaroo court.”

And another: “For you lovers of the Brazilian air traffic control system, just have a read in the news of the current problems in Brazil. … This is just more of the rhetorical diatribes that losers use to justify their impotent lack of self-esteem, inferiority complex, and to shift the blame from their own corruption to the attention of a mythical adversary.”

Said another said the media yowling to hang the pilots was a “simple demonstration that Brazilians are either stupids, or ignorants or cheaters by hiding important facts in their articles.”

And another: “Stop exploiting a tragedy so you can act superior. It is a tragedy of everyone. What we need is changes in air traffic control and other regulations and policies so this never happens again.”

Not that all of the comments called for reason and a transparent, honest investigation. Many reflected the sort of e mail I’ve been getting:

Wrote one reader replying to someone’s post about Brazil’s shockingly high homicide rate: “I guess that makes Americans and British to commit murder and get away with it acceptable, does it? The American pilots screwed up and justice must be made. … Thanks, Gringos, you screwed up once again!”

But someone else reiterated that evidence is mounting that air-traffic control in Brazil needs to be carefully scrutinized.

“Today, the press has been forced by facts to accept that air traffic controllers had an important role in this tragecy.”

And a day later, in a post about the continued howling for the pilots’ heads:

“This is nothing but a witch-hunt. There is no serious investigation being conducted. The authorities could save time and money, and they might actually gain some international respect … if they brought the pilots out publicly to Copacabana [and], tossed them into a barrel of water to see if they float.”

Look, as I have said from Day One, I am no authority on aviation or flying. All I know about an airplane is how to sit in one. But I can read. All I know is what I read in the papers, as Will Rogers used to say. Since the story has dropped off the radar screen in the U.S., it’s part of my job to keep you updated.