By Brian Carnell

Thursday, February 5, 2004

While much of the world celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers finally achieving controlled flight in December 17, 1903, Guardian columnist George Monbiot bemoaned that the day should actually be one of mourning,

Tomorrow should be a day of international mourning. December 17 2003 is the centenary of the world's most effective killing machine.

Monbiot then provides a brief history of the use of airplanes in war, including the first bombing raid in 1911 carried out by the Italian army,

I doubt much mention will be made of all this at the centenary celebrations tomorrow. Instead we will be encouraged to concentrate upon the civil applications of this military technology. We will be told how the airplane. has made the world a smaller place, how it has brought people closer together, fostering understanding and friendship. There is something in this: the people of powerful nations might be reluctant to permit their leaders to destroy the countries they have visited. But commercial flights, like military flights, are an instrument of domination. As tourists, we engage with the people of other nations on our own terms. The world's administrators can flit from place to place enforcing their mandate. The corporate jet-set shrinks the earth to fit its needs. Those with access to the airplane. control the world.

The men who attacked New York and Washington on September 11 2001 drove one symbol of power into another. The airplane, more precisely than any other technology, represents the global ruling class. In the past we raised our eyes to the men on horseback. Today we raise our eyes to the heavens.

If Monbiot were consistent and wanted to highlight the technology that has been responsible for far more deaths than the mere airplane, he should have chosen writing. Lets all take 12 seconds to mourn Monbiot's killing machine of choice.

Finally, it isn't relevant to Monbiot's "argument," but once again he proves that he can't even get basic facts straight. Monbiot opens his column with this flourish,

They will probably be commemorating the wrong people in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, tomorrow. Five months before the Wright brothers lifted a flying machine into the air for 12 seconds above the sand dunes of the Outer Banks, the New Zealander Richard Pearse had traveled for more than a kilometer in his contraption, without the help of ramps or slides, and had even managed to turn his plane in mid-flight.

In fact the disputed flight by Pearse took place nine months before the Wright Brothers flight on March 31, 1903. Pearse's plane flew for just a few seconds and travelled at most 300-400 yards (and more likely just 100-150 yards). Like the Wright Brothers, Pearse's plan lacked controls for turns, unless Monbiot considers Pearse's crash into a 12-foot hedge -- which destroyed his plane -- to have constituted a mid-flight turn. In fact the reason the Wright Brothers are generally credited with controlled flight rather than Pearse is precisely because of Pearse's lack of control over his plane (that and there were very few witnesses and Pearse's accomplishment didn't become known until about 1909 when it was no longer possible to easily verify it).

Can't somebody at The Guardian be bothered to fact check Monbiot once in awhile? Is that too much to ask?

Source:

A weapon with wings. George Monbiot, The Guardian (UK), December 16, 2003.

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