Money Is Not Wealth: Temporary - By A.R. Miller

MONEY IS NOT WEALTH

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Subsection 9 of Money Is Not Wealth.

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Laura Strickler and Henry Austin: What We Know About The Cockpit Stabbing On Israel-Bound Flight. (6-min. video, 8-min. podcast, photos and links; NBC News; Updated Oct. 1, 2026, 9:39 PM EDT)
Questions remain about HOW:
- a co-pilot from Oman managed to sneak a weapon aboard a plane and stab his fellow pilot from India, before the plane plunged thousands of feet in mere seconds.
- the attacker was thwarted, passengers said,
- and [WHY the very-damaged plane and its very-shaken passengers waited an hour for permission] to make an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.
Here is what we know about the incident, and how close it came to resulting in tragedy. What did passengers see?
- "We were so scared", Aviatar Alevi, a 17-year-old student, told NBC News yesterday after he and the rest of the passengers were flown to Tel Aviv. Alevi described a harrowing scene aboard the flight, with people "screaming, running, panicking, blood. At the start, I thought it was a plane malfunction, but then I started hearing screaming about the stabbings. We didn't know what was going to happen", he said, adding that the possibility of death "was definitely an option".
- Another passenger, Motti Cohen Or, 70, said that he heard a woman shouting that "someone is stabbing someone in the cockpit" before the aircraft dived "toward the ground".
- Yaniv Hayun was pictured in a bloody T-shirt telling cameras he had been among those to enter the cockpit and subdue the attacking pilot. At Ben Gurion Airport, after the passengers had returned to Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Hayun, whom he later identified as a plumber.
Three others helped in the effort to save the plane and those aboard, Hayun told reporters. The group struggled to open the cockpit door. "I grabbed the attacker, and choked him, pulled him out first", he said. "I started pulling the controls. Thank God, we pulled it off. We really put our heads together and worked as a team", he said. "It was between fear and a sense of a do-or-die situation. We had to win. We had to pull through and come out on top", he added.
Who is the hero pilot?
- Hailed as a hero, Indian pilot Smit ​Machchhar was credited by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on X for saving "the lives of 174 people, including Israeli citizens and other nationals." Even though he was bleeding heavily, Machchhar managed to unlock the door to the cockpit, Netanyahu told Fox News, allowing crew members and passengers to subdue his co-pilot and regain control of the plane.
- The Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia said on X that he was admitted to a hospital in Tabuk, where the plane landed, and was "reported to be in stable condition".
- According to his LinkedIn profile, Machchhar, who was also praised on social media by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, worked with India's SpiceJet ‌airline for more than 11 years before joining Flydubai. He has logged more than 9,750 flying hours, the profile says.
- Machchhar trained as a pilot at Mainland Air in the New Zealand city of Dunedin for 18 months, beginning in 2008, the school's CEO, Philip Kean, told the country’s 1News outlet. Machchhar "did very well" as a student, and later returned to India where he worked as a recruiter for the school, Kean said.
What about the alleged attacker?
- Few details have been released about the alleged attacker, including his name and his condition.
- Two senior U.S. law enforcement officials briefed on the incident told NBC News that investigators say the co-pilot who began stabbing the other pilot is from Oman.
- Omani authorities have not commented, and the Omani Foreign Ministry and the embassy in Washington did not respond to requests for comment from NBC News.
- Netanyahu said the co-pilot was being investigated in Saudi Arabia, where he was detained after the flight landed.
- Both Machchhar and the co-pilot who initiated the attack were transferred to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, today, according to a statement from the Saudi Arabian Interior Ministry, citing an unnamed “official source” at the ministry. "The source confirmed that the pilot and his co-pilot, after their health improved and the medical team cleared them, departed the Kingdom for Abu Dhabi this morning", the ministry said in the statement.
WAS it an attack?
- Based on the early results of the investigation, it increasingly looks like this was an act of terrorism, a senior American official and a Saudi Arabian official briefed on the investigation told NBC News.
- The FlyDubai incident, following [?] a reported stabbing, left at least two men badly injured and forced an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.
[What? The stabbing was NOT part of "the incident"?]
- Saudi Arabia confirmed an altercation between Machchhar and the co-pilot in the Interior Ministry statement posted today. "The source indicated that initial investigations conducted by the competent authorities in the Kingdom, with the participation of a security team from the sisterly United Arab Emirates, revealed an assault on the pilot by his co-pilot, resulting in both sustaining various injuries", the ministry said in the statement.
- The United Arab Emirates, which owns Flydubai, is also trying to determine "whether the incident was linked to any terrorist activity or ‌purpose, or involved prior planning or direction", the country's state news agency reported today.
- Without providing any evidence, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said yesterday ⁠that preliminary information indicated that the co-pilot, whom he described as a terrorist, aimed to crash the plane.
- Netanyahu described it as "a serious security incident".
- Speaking in the Oval Office yesterday, President Donald Trump said he had spoken with Netanyahu "at length about this event. It seems as though the co-pilot was perhaps a terrorist or perhaps a whack job, and he stabbed the pilot", he said.
Was Iran involved?
- There are no indications that Iran directed or was involved in the attack, a senior U.S. official briefed on the Israeli investigation told NBC News.
- And there have been no official suggestions from Israel that the Islamic Republic was behind the attack. Two Israeli security officials told The Associated Press that Israel had not identified any Iranian involvement so far.
- Today, Trump told reporters at the White House that the co-pilot who initiated the attack could be linked to Iran. "I would say the answer, based on what I'm hearing, is yes. But we're working on it right now", he said. Asked whether the co-pilot could have been radicalized or working with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Trump replied, "Could have been, yeah".
- Trump also told reporters today that there would be renewed strikes against Iran if it was behind the attack. Asked if the U.S. would retaliate against Iran if it was involved in the attack, Trump said, "Oh, they'll be hit very hard, don't worry. You just ask them. They know what happened. They'll be hit very hard."
Does it alter anything for American flights?
- There are "no credible threats" to U.S. airlines, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told a news conference yesterday. But he said the U.S. took every incident like this very seriously "and we continue to look at the procedures that we have in place, and continue to make sure the American people are safe."
What questions remain?
- Aside from his nationality, little is known about the co-pilot who carried out the attack or his motives for doing so.
- Pilots undergo rigorous screening, and it is standard for airlines to vet their backgrounds and check their criminal and employment histories.
- Pilots also pass through metal detectors and checkpoints at airports, so it is unclear how he sneaked a weapon aboard the plane. Netanyahu said in his interview with Fox News that Machchhar had apparently been stabbed or hit with ⁠an axe.
- It also remains unclear whether air marshals were on board the flight at the time of the incident.
- Saudi Arabia has warned that it is too early to draw definitive conclusions about who was responsible for the incident.
- Israel and the UAE have announced investigations into what exactly happened on Flydubai Flight 1073.
[Some more questions answered; many more are being addressed.]
Samy Magdy, Melanie Lidman, Isaac Scharf and Josh Funk: Co-Pilot Stabs Captain On Flight To Israel, Before Passengers Storm Cockpit And Stabilize Jetliner. (photos, podcasts, videos, links; AP News; September 30, 2026)
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) - A co-pilot stabbed a captain today on a flight to Israel, before passengers burst into the cockpit and wrestled with the attacker as the plane descended sharply and passengers screamed, witnesses said. The jetliner was stabilized, and made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia.
It was not clear what motivated the attack, which led Israel to scramble warplanes amid concerns about a possible hijacking. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Saudi Arabia arrested the co-pilot, who was not identified.
The shaken passengers from the FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv landed this evening in Israel on another flight, as onlookers cheered.
"We're going to die", passenger Naama Bershadski recalled thinking as she closed her eyes and prayed for a good ending.
Aviation experts were surprised that the plane did not crash, after a descent so extreme that most of the rudder was ripped off the tail.
A video shared by Netanyahu's office showed passenger Yaniv Hayoun, who grappled with the attacker, wearing a bloodied shirt and hugging the prime minister, who told him: "I look at you and I see a lion. I see a great hero."
Responders knew they had seconds to act: After a passenger saw one pilot stab the other and called out for help, Yaniv said, he and others pushed their way into the cockpit, where he saw the co-pilot apparently trying to destroy the controls, Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 reported.
"The door apparently wasn't locked, and we managed to open it somehow", Hayoun told journalists. "What made it difficult for us was the (other) pilot himself. He had been stabbed and was on the other side of the door."
As people wrestled with the attacker, Yaniv said he grabbed the controls and pulled them the way he had seen on television.
Then other crew members took over. FlyDubai said the aircraft was secured by on-duty crew "who diverted and landed the aircraft safely".
The emergency landing in Saudi Arabia was not the first for a plane carrying Israelis home. The kingdom does not have formal diplomatic ties with Israel, but it ended its long-standing ban on Israeli flights over-flying its territory in 2022. Since then, Saudi Arabia has coordinated emergency landings for Israeli passengers, including in 2023 when a plane experienced an electrical malfunction.
The UAE has become a popular vacation destination for Israeli tourists since the countries normalized ties in 2020.
[Never Forget: Israel did not "start a war" until Hamas attackers raided Israeli villages one by one, and in the major battles beginning October 7, 2023. Israel stands ready to end the war when its opponent countries decide to abide by the original UN decision, and to stop protecting the fanatics who DID start it, many SINCE then, and one or more fanatics TODAY - who would have been quite happy to kill another 174 on a peaceful airplane or perhaps to start WW3.
    Many experts are astonished that, after the plane rapidly lost half of its 33,000-feet flight altitude AND with most of its rudder gone, a non-pilot was able to break the fall until more knowledgeable people could help. Also note that many of the nearby Arab nations ARE taking significant steps toward peace.]
David French: Trump Is No Longer the Most-Important American. (8-min. podcast; New York Times, via Archive.Today; May 11, 2025)
President Trump is no longer the most important American in the world.
He is certainly the most powerful, at least for three more years, but power is only one measure of importance. On Thursday, a Chicago native and Villanova University graduate named Robert Prevost supplanted Trump. He became the first American pope, taking the name Leo XIV.
And it happened at exactly the right time.

David Nasaw: Elon Musk Thought He Could Break History. Instead It Broke Him. (6-min. podcast; New York Times, via Archive.Today; May 11, 2025)
The partnership between the president and the richest man in the world is coming to an end. There is one clear loser in the breakup of this affair, and it is Elon Musk.
He fell from grace as effortlessly as he rose. Like a dime-store Icarus, he took too many chances, never understood the risks and flew too close to the sun. Wrapped in the halo of his social-media super-stardom, he was blinded to the reality of his circumstances until it was too late.
Mr. Musk has already inked several lucrative federal contracts and could get far more, but he leaves Washington with his reputation as a genius jack-of-all-trades - a reputation he relied on to boost his company's stock prices and win investors for his ambitious adventures - severely damaged. Once likened to the Marvel superhero Tony Stark, he is becoming increasingly unpopular. Many formerly proud owners of his Tesla electric cars are trading them in or pasting apologies on their bumpers. Sales have plummeted.
Mr. Musk is hardly the first wealthy businessman to decamp to Washington: The Gilded Age millionaires, top hats in hand, focused on currying favor with the Senate, where laws were made and tariffs determined. With the collapse of the economy, the New Deal and the coming of a world war, the White House began to play a significantly-larger role in directing the economy, and the businessmen paid it more attention. Dozens of them descended on the capital; others joined the cabinet. No matter when or in what position they served, however, they played by Washington's rules, taking on well-defined, limited responsibilities and, for the most part, staying out of public view.
Mr. Musk broke with that tradition. Nobody was going to shut him up or rein him in. ... He and his Department of Government Efficiency deputies spread chaos through Washington, locking staff members out of computer systems, gaining access to personal data on private citizens and identifying government employees they deemed expendable.
At first, President Trump appeared to endorse every cost-cutting move by his unorthodox adviser, declaring on social media that he and his cabinet were "EXTREMELY HAPPY WITH ELON". But Mr. Musk then violated the cardinal rule of Trumpland by daring to criticize the president's policies and appointees - not just once or twice, but with remarkable consistency.
He jumped on his X platform to deride a White House proclamation that Sam Altman, the top artificial intelligence executive and his archrival, and others were going to invest $100-Billion in data centers and in generating the electricity required to power A.I. programs. Mr. Musk proclaimed in an interview that Social Security was "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time", ignoring the fact that the president had vowed not to cut such spending. He even took issue with Mr. Trump's triumphant "Liberation Day" announcement of sweeping new tariffs.
His bullying and lack of remorse as he slashed federal spending and dismissed tens of thousands of government employees eroded his popularity. He infuriated cabinet members by criticizing them in public, trespassing on their authority and refusing to recognize the White House chain of command.
Fittingly, his reign was effectively brought to an end on April Fools' Day, when the $20-Million he donated to elect a Trump-backed Republican to an open State Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin backfired, propelling more Democrats than Republicans to the polls. It was no longer possible to overlook the reality that the richest man in the world had become a political liability. The day after the Wisconsin debacle, Politico reported that the president had "told his inner circle" that Mr. Musk would be "stepping back in the coming weeks from his current role". In mid-April, Mr. Trump signaled his dwindling regard for Mr. Musk, by replacing his choice for I.R.S. acting commissioner with the candidate favored by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
On April 22, Mr. Musk announced that he was cutting back on his government work so he could spend more time at Tesla, which by then was in so much trouble, reports emerged that the board was considering replacing him as chief executive. (The company denied the assertion.) The reality that hit Wisconsin's polls hit his car company even harder: Sales dropped 20% in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the year before; profits dropped by 70%. The flashy, impractical Cybertruck he had championed proved a flop. In the meantime, Tesla is rapidly losing market share to the Chinese automaker BYD and other established carmakers.
That's not to say Mr. Musk's other business interests - particularly his rocket-launch company, SpaceX, and his satellite unit, Starlink - are suffering. SpaceX is poised to gain billions of dollars from government contracts. The Trump administration has already cleared the way for Starlink to be eligible for the government’s $42-Billion rural-broadband push and even encouraged other nations eager to reduce U.S. tariffs to do business with Starlink. But such promotions would most likely have been the case had Mr. Musk not joined Mr. Trump's administration.
The lesson to be learned here is that there is no room in the American system of government for an un-elected co-president. While elections often yield results we do not expect or desire, we have long proved to be better off with a government composed of elected officials and senior appointments that have gone through the constitutionally-mandated confirmation process. Mr. Musk thought he could be an exception. And that was his undoing.

Mira Rojanasakul: Across America, Big Cities Are Sinking. Here's Why. (New York Times, via Archive.Today; May 8, 2025)
A major reason is too much groundwater is being pumped out, new research shows, threatening buildings and infrastructure nationwide.
A new analysis of America's 28 largest population centers found that all but three are sinking overall, and in many cases significantly.
Several of the most affected areas are in Texas, particularly around Fort Worth and Houston. But the problem is nationwide, affecting cities as scattered as Seattle, Detroit and Charlotte, N.C.
The sinking of land, also called subsidence, can worsen the effects of sea-level rise, intensify flooding and strain the very foundations of urban infrastructure.
The new research, published in the scientific journal Nature Cities, built on previous work using satellite measurements to paint a detailed picture of rising and falling land. It also closely examined the connection between changes in land elevation and changes in groundwater, using data from individual monitoring wells.
Water pumped from wells isn’t something that people think about often. “You just turn on your tap, do what you need to do, and you go on your way,” said Leonard Ohenhen, a researcher at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and lead author of the study.
But extracting more water than can be replenished “can have a direct relationship with what happens on the surface,” he said. “You can cause the ground to sink significantly."
A 2023 New York Times investigation found that unsustainable pumping of water from underground aquifers can be a major cause of sinking land.
Other factors also influence land elevation. For example, a vast expanse of bedrock beneath parts of the country, pressed downward by enormous glaciers during the last ice age, is slowly rebounding back into place. But over time it creates a sort of see-saw effect that today is adding 1 to 2 millimeters per year to subsidence rates in much of the northern United States.
Texas draws immense amounts of groundwater for agriculture, industry and the public water supply. The extraction of oil and gas, including the growing use of “monster fracks,” can also cause the land surface to slump.
Climate change can worsen the issue. Hotter temperatures and more extreme droughts, particularly in the West, dry out soil, streams and reservoirs, leading people to pump larger quantities of freshwater from underground.
Americans have also been moving in droves to some of the hottest and driest parts of the country. In the past few decades, metro areas in Texas have ballooned in population and sprawl.
Groundwater depletion was the main cause of subsidence in Houston between the 1950s and 70s, when nearly all water usage came from the ground, said Bob Wang, a professor of geophysics at the University of Houston. Cracked roads and buildings were a common sight.
Several subsidence-management districts were established in the area to address the issue. Among other things, groundwater use was reduced and instead more water was taken from surface-water sources such as rivers. Subsidence has since slowed in the city center.
However, when new neighborhoods developed to support growing populations, the most affordable source of water was often what people could pump from below.

The Most-Corrupt Presidency In American History:
Julia Angwin: "This Is What We Were Always Scared of": DOGE Is Building a Surveillance State. (7-min. podcast; New York Times, via Archive.Today; April 30, 2025)
Elon Musk may be stepping back from running the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, but his legacy there is already secured. DOGE is assembling a sprawling domestic surveillance system for the Trump administration - the likes of which we have never seen in the United States.
President Trump could soon have the tools to satisfy his many grievances by swiftly locating compromising information about his political opponents or anyone who simply annoys him. The administration has already declared that it plans to comb through tax records to find the addresses of immigrants it is investigating - a plan so morally and legally challenged, it prompted several top I.R.S. officials to quit in protest. Some federal workers have been told that DOGE is using artificial intelligence to sift through their communications to identify people who harbor anti-Musk or -Trump sentiment (and presumably punish or fire them).
What this amounts to is a stunningly fast reversal of our long history of siloing government data to prevent its misuse. In their first 100 days, Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump have knocked down the barriers that were intended to prevent them from creating dossiers on every U.S. resident. Now they seem to be building a defining feature of many authoritarian regimes: comprehensive files on everyone so they can punish those who protest.
"This is what we were always scared of", said Kevin Bankston, a longtime civil-liberties lawyer and a senior adviser o        n A.I. governance at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a policy and civil-rights organization. "The infrastructure for turnkey totalitarianism is there, for an administration willing to break the law."
PoliticsJOE: Anne Applebaum: Donald Trump Has Re-invented Reality. (12-min. YouTube video; January 1, 2026)
This year we had Anne Applebaum in the studio to discuss the ideas in her book "Autocracy Inc." During the conversation, Anne went into great depth about the MAGA movement's dismantling of democracy while in power, and how it has moved to question the very basis of fact.
NEW: David Frum Show: Anne Applebaum: The Most-Corrupt Presidency in American History (from 10-min. to 54-min., in 62-min. video; The Atlantic; May 7, 2025)
In this episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic's David Frum reflects on the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, examining how post-war reconciliation - not battlefield triumph - became America's true finest hour. He contrasts that legacy with Donald Trump's recent bombastic Victory Day statement, urging a re-dedication to the values that built a more peaceful world.
David is then joined by The Atlantic's Anne Applebaum (from 10-min. to 54-min. in the 62-min. video) to discuss the astonishing and brazen corruption of the Trump presidency, how authoritarian regimes seek to break institutions, and the hardship of losing friendships to politics.
Finally, David answers listener questions on:
- fostering open-minded political dialogue among polarized high-school students,
- why America hasn't developed a strong worker-based political movement like its European counterparts,
- how to think about class in modern U.S. politics,
- the risk of data suppression under the Trump administration, and
- reflects on whether his long-held conservative values still belong to the political right.
NEW: Irineo Cabreros and Aatish Bhatia: Eight Charts That Sum Up Trump's First 100 Days (data and graphs; New York Times, via Archive.Today; April 29, 2025)
The first 100 days of Donald J. Trump's second presidency have been a study of extremes, especially when compared with the start of presidential terms over the last century.
Compared with other modern presidents, he has:
- signed the most executive orders in this period,
- collected the most tariffs and
- had the most lawsuits filed against him.
- Markets have slumped,
- as have his approval ratings.
Below are eight ways Mr. Trump's first 100 days stand out:
1. He issued more executive orders than any modern president.
2. … and was sued in federal court more, too.
3. Revenue from tariffs increased.
4. The dollar plunged.
5. Markets fell, too.
6. The State Department was quiet.
7. Federal funding for medical research slowed.
8. Trump went from being popular to unpopular.
Although Mr. Trump won the 2024 election only narrowly, he entered office with important strengths and opportunities. Voters said they trusted him to handle issues like the economy, immigration and energy. On each of these issues, the new president had a chance to find public backing for his conservative agenda.
One hundred days into his second term, Mr. Trump's approval rating is underwater. Polls show that he has managed to turn long-term strengths on the economy and immigration into weaknesses.
[For more data and graphs, click above.]

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NEW: Bob Rankin: Tech-Support Rage: Is It Intentional?
(Ask Bob Rankin; August 15, 2022)
If you own any modern appliance or electronic gadget, you've probably suffered the dreaded agony of calling for "Tech Support". Even the most even-tempered human quickly experiences alarming symptoms: sharply increased blood pressure, trembling fingers, reddening face, rising voice, and colorful language. Is it possible that tech-support services are in fact *designed* to elicit such a response from you? Read on for the full story...

NEW: The Top 20 - New Posts In Ask Bob Rankin
- Bob Rankin, 2024

Global Weirding Is Here.
- Thomas L. Friedman (New York Times, February 17, 2010)

NEW: The Lake Book: A Handbook For Lake Protection (4th Ed.; Maine Lakes, 2022)
[Excellent, and free to share. Would that I had this to share, when I was the Executive Director of the Lake Cochituate Watershed Association (LCWA)!]

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