This BBC Radio 4 documentary about the British nuclear deterrent and the people who operate it is absolutely cracking. Not surprisingly, the man behind it is none other than Professor Peter Hennessy (can we call him Henn-dawg yet?).
One of the things that stands out is the amount of desperate psychological coping going on. The forms vary; the RAF V-Force crews of the 1960s, who were not only expected to carry in the warheads themselves but also very likely to ditch the aircraft somewhere beyond, also had to taxy the Vulcans out for every mission past the school playground. Their wives were more than familiar with the desperate QRA launch scenarios; it seems remarkable that anyone could put up with that.
One day at RAF Cottesmore, the public-address speakers, which were wired directly to the Bomber Controller telebrief feed from High Wycombe, went click just as a group of families visited, and everyone ran like hell to the flight line without even waiting for the voice from headquarters, still less saying a word. We're talking about 1950s telecoms and electronics here - it must have gone click ten times a day.
A different style from this barely contained hysteria was reserved, indeed still is, for the top civil service and since 1969, the Royal Navy submariners; here, they deal with a much slower and more considered form of killing and dying. It's a neurotic rather than a hysterical scenario: what can I tell them? what will they think? am I doing the right thing?
Was, for example, Denis Healey doing the right thing, in the High Wycombe bunker during 1960s transition to war exercises as one of the Prime Minister's deputies for retaliation, when he repeatedly pretended to give the authorisation to scramble the V-force - although in fact, he had decided that should it come to that he wasn't going to launch? (Keighley Man Saves The World.)
Interestingly, James Callaghan, despite the conventional wisdom, was very clear that he would certainly have pressed the button - or rather, his half of the button. One thing that seems to be clearer in the memory of the top officers Hennessy interviews than has been in the past is the duality of civilian and military control - as no civilian can give a military order, the PM or the deputy can only authorise, not order, the launch. (You thought our constitution was weird? Wait 'til you see our nuclear command authority.)
There is a logical AND gate - rather as NATO shared weapons are subject to the dual-key arrangement between NATO and the host-nation, and Soviet ones were to split control between the military (for the aircraft or missile) and the Communist Party/secret police (for the warhead fusing), UK nukes are subject to a dual-key arrangement between the civilian and military authorities. Another of Hennessy's interviewees, Lord Guthrie, the Chief of Defence Staff who read Tony Blair in on the nuclear files, made clear that he thought this was very much a real constraint on both parties.
An odd feature of the whole thing was the repeated suggestion that, had the UK been devastated by Soviet missiles and the deterrent not been used, the remaining subs or aircraft might have been turned over to Australia. This would have been a challenging redeployment for the V-Force, to say the least, although they did exercise Far Eastern deployments. Of course, the submarines would have had no such difficulty. In this weird way, the last remnants of imperial feeling were to be saved from the ashes, and the deterrent's true role - to maintain credible independence from the United States - would be maintained under a slightly different flag.
Ah, the Americans. They have a sort of shadow presence in the whole thing. One thing that the broadcast makes clear is that yes, there is a UK national firing chain as well as the NATO SACLANT one. They visit the cell in the Navy's bunker at Northwood which handles the link between the Government and the extremely-low frequency transmitters - two crypto officers independently authenticate the message from the Cabinet Office and retransmit it via multiple redundant routes. They each need codebooks from two safes, neither of which can be opened at once, and which are permanently monitored by armed Marine Commandos. We hear a simulated authentication; interestingly, the crosstalk suggests that there is a specific distinction between a NATO and a UK national signal.
But each submarine, as she collects her load-out of rockets from King's Bay, Georgia, also picks up an American shakedown crew for the test launch down the Eastern rocket range from a spot off Cape Canaveral, and the actual handle the submarine Weapons Engineering Officer pulls is the butt end of a Colt .45.
In all, however, it was a story of people in an insane situation working hard at staying sane.
After the show, I looked up some news and saw this. Jamie Kenny deals with it here, but the facts are worth repeating. Some random just rang up Mr 10% and claimed to be the Indian foreign ministry, and threatened war. Pakistan responded by increasing air force readiness; fighters were placed on combat air patrols. We don't know what happened with the Pakistani nuclear weapons, which are delivered by aircraft; did the F-16s load up and move to the runway's end?
Pakistan apparently believes it really was the Indians; the Indians claim it was some maniac with a telephone. The Pakistanis also say it came from a phone number at the Indian foreign ministry. This is fairly meaningless - not many bulk SIP carriers, and not that many old fashioned telcos, check or filter the Caller Line Identification strings, and software like the Asterisk free IP-PBX will let you send whatever CLI you like. After all, the head of the Islamic Students' Movement of India is supposedly a geek.
The answer to this is of course the one the MI6 station chief in Moscow in 1962 used when the secret signal he gave Oleg Penkovsky for use in the event he learned of a nuclear attack came down the phone: do nothing. The crisis was on its way down; Penkovsky had been missing for days, and was presumably in the hands of the MVD. Therefore Frank Roberts decided to ignore the signal. Few feedback loops of such criticality can't do with some more damping.
Sunday, December 07, 2008
The Independent: Is Over
No wonder the Indy's moving in with the Daily Mail; it's taken to publishing leaders like this one, a crude bit of hard right culture war stuff which blames the Sharon Matthews case on "welfare". Yes, really. They also rehearse the old Peter Lilley thing about "single mothers who get pregnant just to jump the housing list", and sniff that the Matthews' life was "disorderly in the extreme".
Refined shudder! Let's not even imagine what might happen if various north London councils' social service departments had to look into the "orderliness" or otherwise of various well-known journalists' home lives. We could be faced with a nonsense shortage. Perhaps we should maintain a national stockpile of terrible journalism against such a possibility.
The proposed solution is of course to make the poor rather poorer, so that they will become better people. They will be scared into being more orderly; it's worth noting that this disgusting piece of writing doesn't even bother to claim that its proposals would have done anybody any good. No;
And, as we have seen recently, there is absolutely no reason to think that the State would have done anything effective had it had this information. I mean, can you imagine ringing up the social services department or the cops with this story? Yes, one of my clients at Dewsbury Job Centre. I think...I think she's going to kidnap her own daughter. Well, I know. Yes, the daughter lives with her. Don't ask me - ask her! Why? For the reward money! But at least, as the Independent puts it:
Of course, on the substance, the whole Government proposal the Indy is supporting is silly, a bit of midmarket newspaper fan service left over from the boom years, when unemployment was primarily the Thatcher legacy and not something that affected the large majority. Now, on the boom has come the slump, and we're facing the possibility of a big cyclical surge in unemployment.
The nature of cyclical unemployment is that it is caused by the business cycle and spread broadly across the economy; there is simply not enough work. There is no point making the cyclically unemployed report more often and jump through more hoops; unless your purpose is to impress Associated Newspapers with your sternness towards the undeserving poor. And, it would seem, The Independent.
Of course, this probably has something to do not only with Independent News and Media's increasing closeness to the Daily Mail, but also the arrival of Roger Alton as editor of the Independent. In fact, this piece - a first leader which was given an unusually generous word count - might be Alton's own work, just as the conversion of The Observer into a cocktail of Decent Left drivel and lifestyle wank was Alton's work.
What is the Decent line on the economic crisis? It doesn't seem at all clear yet; they don't tend to interest themselves in economics. Certainly Nick Cohen can be expected to take up the sort of Tory moralising that has infected the Indy, and Cohen's career was promoted by Roger Alton more than anyone else.
Meanwhile, the Independent is doing its bit to make life less comfortable; they just fired 20% of their journalists. Presumably, Alton (and IN&M) is preparing the Indy for a new role in a Tory period as the Mail for people who can't bring themselves to read the Mail but actually want its politics, just as David Cameron is the Conservative for people who can't bring themselves to vote for other Conservatives but actually want Conservative Party politics.
Update: Jamie Kenny has more. It seems clear there is a push on this going on - the Sunday Telegraph editoralised in the same terms today, and Tory shadow minister Chris Grayling trailed something similar in the Observer.
Refined shudder! Let's not even imagine what might happen if various north London councils' social service departments had to look into the "orderliness" or otherwise of various well-known journalists' home lives. We could be faced with a nonsense shortage. Perhaps we should maintain a national stockpile of terrible journalism against such a possibility.
The proposed solution is of course to make the poor rather poorer, so that they will become better people. They will be scared into being more orderly; it's worth noting that this disgusting piece of writing doesn't even bother to claim that its proposals would have done anybody any good. No;
Ms Matthews might then have been tracked by government agencies earlier and her life on benefits might have become less comfortable.In the next paragraph, they go on to say that she would still have had far too many children and not gone out to work. So what does this actually mean? Surely they cannot expect that some jobcentre clerk would have detected an ambition in her to fake the kidnap of her own daughter, had she only been forced to fill in some more forms and be lectured some more about Standards?
And, as we have seen recently, there is absolutely no reason to think that the State would have done anything effective had it had this information. I mean, can you imagine ringing up the social services department or the cops with this story? Yes, one of my clients at Dewsbury Job Centre. I think...I think she's going to kidnap her own daughter. Well, I know. Yes, the daughter lives with her. Don't ask me - ask her! Why? For the reward money! But at least, as the Independent puts it:
Ms Matthews might then have been tracked by government agencies earlier and her life on benefits might have become less comfortable.Surveillance of the poor is an end in itself, it seems, as is rendering their lives "less comfortable". And, of course, I mean the poor, and so does The Independent. There is no protocol for only applying more surveillance to the guilty - that's not how it works.
Of course, on the substance, the whole Government proposal the Indy is supporting is silly, a bit of midmarket newspaper fan service left over from the boom years, when unemployment was primarily the Thatcher legacy and not something that affected the large majority. Now, on the boom has come the slump, and we're facing the possibility of a big cyclical surge in unemployment.
The nature of cyclical unemployment is that it is caused by the business cycle and spread broadly across the economy; there is simply not enough work. There is no point making the cyclically unemployed report more often and jump through more hoops; unless your purpose is to impress Associated Newspapers with your sternness towards the undeserving poor. And, it would seem, The Independent.
Of course, this probably has something to do not only with Independent News and Media's increasing closeness to the Daily Mail, but also the arrival of Roger Alton as editor of the Independent. In fact, this piece - a first leader which was given an unusually generous word count - might be Alton's own work, just as the conversion of The Observer into a cocktail of Decent Left drivel and lifestyle wank was Alton's work.
What is the Decent line on the economic crisis? It doesn't seem at all clear yet; they don't tend to interest themselves in economics. Certainly Nick Cohen can be expected to take up the sort of Tory moralising that has infected the Indy, and Cohen's career was promoted by Roger Alton more than anyone else.
Meanwhile, the Independent is doing its bit to make life less comfortable; they just fired 20% of their journalists. Presumably, Alton (and IN&M) is preparing the Indy for a new role in a Tory period as the Mail for people who can't bring themselves to read the Mail but actually want its politics, just as David Cameron is the Conservative for people who can't bring themselves to vote for other Conservatives but actually want Conservative Party politics.
Update: Jamie Kenny has more. It seems clear there is a push on this going on - the Sunday Telegraph editoralised in the same terms today, and Tory shadow minister Chris Grayling trailed something similar in the Observer.
Friday, December 05, 2008
A Zero-Day Class Break!
Well I didn't expect that - it looks like the Canadians have found a rather serious exploit in Westminster 2. And as far as I can tell, it probably affects Westminster 1 through 3 as well. Yes, we've got a class break on our hands!
Now, to understand this we need to realise that a very important part of the constitution exists only as a letter to the editor of The Times. Seriously. An anonymous letter to the editor of The Times. I am not joking. The procedure I described in the last post rests on the so-called Lascelles principles, which were laid down in the early 1950s by the King's private secretary, Sir Alan "Tommy" Lascelles. Here is the text.
Now, it's also clear that this is a weird kind of constitutional text. Some of its features are obviously bound by context; the bit about the national economy would seem to give the monarch a bizarrely large role in Treasury policy, but this is very much a document of its time, a time of menacing war debts, a fixed and overvalued exchange rate, the Sterling balances, and whatnot. According to Peter Hennessy, this principle has been dropped from the Cabinet Office file some 30 or more years ago.
And of course, it's weird that Lascelles should choose to express himself in this way, rather than issuing a statement, getting a legal opinion, or asking the Government to put the matter before Parliament. Perhaps he found it so obvious that it didn't need a more formal statement? Or so controversial that he didn't want to go on the record? But then, why did he go public at all?
I don't see any reason to think that the Canadian parliament is unable to do its job, or that it no longer represents the electorate. Further, it evidently has another candidate, and written assurances to that effect. And although the Lascelles principles are a British document, they are based on Canadian precedent, so you can hardly deny they have standing. It seems there has been a grave LDQN error - can they really have allowed a prime minister just to get rid of parliament because he doesn't want to lose?
But ha. Harper didn't ask for a dissolution, but only prorogation, and Lascelles doesn't make any mention of prorogation. Here's the bug. Is there any way to stop a PM from proroguing again, and again? Is there, in effect, a way of getting root access to the executive?
This is especially interesting for a number of reasons. There have been various Acts of Parliament recently that strengthen the ability of the executive to govern by itself, notably the Civil Contingencies Act, which contains powers which almost amount to rule by decree. If it's possible to kill confidence votes by proroguing for any or no reason, a malicious PM (or actually almost any other cabinet minister, having first invoked the CCA) could declare an indefinite state of emergency with the help of a weak LDQN. And, at some point in the near future, we're going to replace ours. I'm fairly confident in the current one, but the likely replacement is both flaky and given to statements a lot of people consider unsuitably partisan.
It's high time to legislate for the whole mess.
Alternatively, if a letter to The Times can be part of the constitution, surely so can a blog post? Perhaps I'd better get in there first - it's the only way to be safe. Let's just say that prorogation exists to do two or maybe three things. The first is to send the MPs on their summer holiday. The second is to start the dissolution process. The third is to stop Parliament if for some reason it's utterly impossible for it to meet.
The first we can surely leave to the Speaker. The second we could simply roll up into dissolution - it doesn't do anything useful. The third, well. In 1941 the German air force wrecked the Commons chamber, but the Commons reconvened over the road in Church House. Obviously we need some contingency planning, but we don't need a way to get rid of Parliament altogether.
Now, to understand this we need to realise that a very important part of the constitution exists only as a letter to the editor of The Times. Seriously. An anonymous letter to the editor of The Times. I am not joking. The procedure I described in the last post rests on the so-called Lascelles principles, which were laid down in the early 1950s by the King's private secretary, Sir Alan "Tommy" Lascelles. Here is the text.
To the Editor of The TimesIt should be clear enough that a Prime Minister who loses his or her majority and can't immediately restore it doesn't automatically get another chance at the polls. This is necessary, in order to observe the principle that the will of the people is expressed in a Parliament they elect.
Sir,—It is surely indisputable (and common sense) that a Prime Minister may ask—not demand—that his Sovereign will grant him a dissolution of Parliament; and that the Sovereign, if he so chooses, may refuse to grant this request. The problem of such a choice is entirely personal to the Sovereign, though he is, of course, free to seek informal advice from anybody whom he thinks fit to consult.
In so far as this matter can be publicly discussed, it can be properly assumed that no wise Sovereign—that is, one who has at heart the true interest of the country, the constitution, and the Monarchy—would deny a dissolution to his Prime Minister unless he were satisfied that: (1) the existing Parliament was still vital, viable, and capable of doing its job; (2) a General Election would be detrimental to the national economy; (3) he could rely on finding another Prime Minister who could carry on his Government, for a reasonable period, with a working majority in the House of Commons. When Sir Patrick Duncan refused a dissolution to his Prime Minister in South Africa in 1939, all these conditions were satisfied: when Lord Byng did the same in Canada in 1926, they appeared to be, but in the event the third proved illusory.
I am, &c.,
SENEX.
April 29.
Now, it's also clear that this is a weird kind of constitutional text. Some of its features are obviously bound by context; the bit about the national economy would seem to give the monarch a bizarrely large role in Treasury policy, but this is very much a document of its time, a time of menacing war debts, a fixed and overvalued exchange rate, the Sterling balances, and whatnot. According to Peter Hennessy, this principle has been dropped from the Cabinet Office file some 30 or more years ago.
And of course, it's weird that Lascelles should choose to express himself in this way, rather than issuing a statement, getting a legal opinion, or asking the Government to put the matter before Parliament. Perhaps he found it so obvious that it didn't need a more formal statement? Or so controversial that he didn't want to go on the record? But then, why did he go public at all?
I don't see any reason to think that the Canadian parliament is unable to do its job, or that it no longer represents the electorate. Further, it evidently has another candidate, and written assurances to that effect. And although the Lascelles principles are a British document, they are based on Canadian precedent, so you can hardly deny they have standing. It seems there has been a grave LDQN error - can they really have allowed a prime minister just to get rid of parliament because he doesn't want to lose?
But ha. Harper didn't ask for a dissolution, but only prorogation, and Lascelles doesn't make any mention of prorogation. Here's the bug. Is there any way to stop a PM from proroguing again, and again? Is there, in effect, a way of getting root access to the executive?
This is especially interesting for a number of reasons. There have been various Acts of Parliament recently that strengthen the ability of the executive to govern by itself, notably the Civil Contingencies Act, which contains powers which almost amount to rule by decree. If it's possible to kill confidence votes by proroguing for any or no reason, a malicious PM (or actually almost any other cabinet minister, having first invoked the CCA) could declare an indefinite state of emergency with the help of a weak LDQN. And, at some point in the near future, we're going to replace ours. I'm fairly confident in the current one, but the likely replacement is both flaky and given to statements a lot of people consider unsuitably partisan.
It's high time to legislate for the whole mess.
Alternatively, if a letter to The Times can be part of the constitution, surely so can a blog post? Perhaps I'd better get in there first - it's the only way to be safe. Let's just say that prorogation exists to do two or maybe three things. The first is to send the MPs on their summer holiday. The second is to start the dissolution process. The third is to stop Parliament if for some reason it's utterly impossible for it to meet.
The first we can surely leave to the Speaker. The second we could simply roll up into dissolution - it doesn't do anything useful. The third, well. In 1941 the German air force wrecked the Commons chamber, but the Commons reconvened over the road in Church House. Obviously we need some contingency planning, but we don't need a way to get rid of Parliament altogether.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Westminster 1.4; the developer's guide
Those crazy Canadians, eh? It looks like they're about to do that rare thing in a Westminster-type constitution, throw out the government on a confidence vote and substitute another. Not just that, they're going to do that even more rare thing in a Westminster-type constitution, form a multi-party coalition. Not just that, they're going to have a German-style toleration agreement with a party that isn't in the government. Woo. It also looks like the Canadian prime minister is trying to do something weird to the constitution to save himself, and there is a chance of a good crisis.
So why don't we have a look at how this rarely-used function works? It's not just Canada, after all - Anthony "Nate Silver before there was Nate Silver" Wells' swing projection currently shows the next election ending in a hung parliament, with the Tories 26 seats short of a majority. And there's also some interesting TYR research related to that. I was saying in one of Wellsy's threads that the polls almost seemed to make up two distinct series - one which showed the Tories with a steady lead north of 10 points, one which was much lower.
So I got the data for the last three months, split the polls into two groups, one with Tory leads of 10% or above and one with the lower ones. First observation - in the last couple of months they've practically alternated. Second, the lower ones show a marked downwards trend. I graphed them against a common timeline, drew trendlines, and computed the R-squared values. Here's the chart.
The high delta-cee series has raging volatility, but no trend. But the low delta-cee ones are marching steadily downwards with R2 = 0.77. Clearly, the variance in the polls is widening sharply, but it's only happening on one side - the bounds of the probable take in more and more chances of Tory failure. So, sitting back in Whitehall and reading this, what file would you ask to see? Surely the one on "Change of Government".
Unfortunately, although the system provides for elective government with oversight and a legislative development environment, it's not terribly well documented. There is no canonical procedure for an unplanned change of government, or for an inconclusive election - this is left up to the implementer. However, according to Peter Hennessy's The Prime Minister, the procedure used last time, in February 1974, goes like this: the PM stays PM until he resigns or another PM is appointed. This is clearly Pythonic - the variable PrimeMinister is a pointer to an object containing the PM's name, and we can change it at any time. This variable is scoped to the namespace it is declared in, unless explicitly referenced.
But who appoints the PM? I'm indebted to the folk at Making Light for this idea, but it's all down to the distributed head of state protocol. The answer is - depending on your local implementation, the Local Distributed Queenship Node. It's a bit like DNS, but for State authority; there is a root zone DQN, who is an old lady from Windsor, but she is also the LDQN for the UK. Any LDQN can subdelegate part of their zone to another they create. Some entities - like Canadian provinces - look up the root first, but they are routed back to their national LDQN via the constitutional equivalent of a CNAME. Now, the use of the LDQN's powers is subject to the approval of Parliament, so there is a sort of AND gate here.
But it's worth pointing out that the root DQN operator was appointed by an Act of Parliament; it's actually quite like a German elective monarchy, with an unusually long time-to-live value. And the operative word here is "live".
Anyway, the LDQN has the right to set the value of PrimeMinister, but this has to pass a check with the majority of the lower house of parliament. Let's see some code:
When the LDQN catches one of these signals, strange things happen. NEWPARLIAMENT is straightforward; the LDQN sets PrimeMinister to the leader of the majority. But what if there is no majority? Unfortunately this bit is largely undocumented. And what about NOCONFIDENCE?
Well, in practice it works like this. The existing PM gets a crack at forming a coalition, in the case of NEWPARLIAMENT, or talking the rebel MPs around, in the case of NOCONFIDENCE. In the early 90s, John Major's government actually experienced a NOCONF event but succeeded in passing a renewed confidence vote the same night. In this case, there is a need for an explicit confidence vote. If the PM doesn't get this, or can't form a coalition? He or she may try to call ldqn.dissolve_parliament() to trigger new elections, but this will not be granted if there has just been an election. Instead, the behaviour of the root LDQN on the last two occasions this happened was to give the PM a go at forming a government, then set PrimeMinister = LeaderOpposition.
If the leader of the Opposition can't form a government, then a new election would be called. In the code:
Fuck me, this constitution lark is more complicated than you think, especially when you remember that this whole outlandish signalling cascade isn't specified in primary legislation at all. And frankly, it's clearer in Python than English. Bugs in the process have caused serious trouble in the past, notably in Australia where the LDQN experienced a catastrophic partisanship error in 1975. But then, that's what you expect from code that's in permanent beta.
Worryingly, the Canadian prime minister seems to think he can avoid his fate by having his LDQN, Governor General Michelle Jean, prorogue Parliament. Normally, prorogation automagically triggers dissolution, which further triggers elections. But obviously that's not what he wants; he just wants the squabbling parliamentary rabble to go away. One hopes the civil servants are firm with him; due to the poor specifications, in 1974 we had to rely on them to get it right on the night. (Update: Anyone spot the deliberate mistake?)
So why don't we have a look at how this rarely-used function works? It's not just Canada, after all - Anthony "Nate Silver before there was Nate Silver" Wells' swing projection currently shows the next election ending in a hung parliament, with the Tories 26 seats short of a majority. And there's also some interesting TYR research related to that. I was saying in one of Wellsy's threads that the polls almost seemed to make up two distinct series - one which showed the Tories with a steady lead north of 10 points, one which was much lower.
So I got the data for the last three months, split the polls into two groups, one with Tory leads of 10% or above and one with the lower ones. First observation - in the last couple of months they've practically alternated. Second, the lower ones show a marked downwards trend. I graphed them against a common timeline, drew trendlines, and computed the R-squared values. Here's the chart.
The high delta-cee series has raging volatility, but no trend. But the low delta-cee ones are marching steadily downwards with R2 = 0.77. Clearly, the variance in the polls is widening sharply, but it's only happening on one side - the bounds of the probable take in more and more chances of Tory failure. So, sitting back in Whitehall and reading this, what file would you ask to see? Surely the one on "Change of Government".
Unfortunately, although the system provides for elective government with oversight and a legislative development environment, it's not terribly well documented. There is no canonical procedure for an unplanned change of government, or for an inconclusive election - this is left up to the implementer. However, according to Peter Hennessy's The Prime Minister, the procedure used last time, in February 1974, goes like this: the PM stays PM until he resigns or another PM is appointed. This is clearly Pythonic - the variable PrimeMinister is a pointer to an object containing the PM's name, and we can change it at any time. This variable is scoped to the namespace it is declared in, unless explicitly referenced.
But who appoints the PM? I'm indebted to the folk at Making Light for this idea, but it's all down to the distributed head of state protocol. The answer is - depending on your local implementation, the Local Distributed Queenship Node. It's a bit like DNS, but for State authority; there is a root zone DQN, who is an old lady from Windsor, but she is also the LDQN for the UK. Any LDQN can subdelegate part of their zone to another they create. Some entities - like Canadian provinces - look up the root first, but they are routed back to their national LDQN via the constitutional equivalent of a CNAME. Now, the use of the LDQN's powers is subject to the approval of Parliament, so there is a sort of AND gate here.
But it's worth pointing out that the root DQN operator was appointed by an Act of Parliament; it's actually quite like a German elective monarchy, with an unusually long time-to-live value. And the operative word here is "live".
Anyway, the LDQN has the right to set the value of PrimeMinister, but this has to pass a check with the majority of the lower house of parliament. Let's see some code:
while len(parliament.opposition.members) < len(parliament.government.members):
...govern()
...else:
.....if election==False:
......ldqn.send(NOCONFIDENCE)
.....else:
......ldqn.send(NEWPARLIAMENT)
When the LDQN catches one of these signals, strange things happen. NEWPARLIAMENT is straightforward; the LDQN sets PrimeMinister to the leader of the majority. But what if there is no majority? Unfortunately this bit is largely undocumented. And what about NOCONFIDENCE?
Well, in practice it works like this. The existing PM gets a crack at forming a coalition, in the case of NEWPARLIAMENT, or talking the rebel MPs around, in the case of NOCONFIDENCE. In the early 90s, John Major's government actually experienced a NOCONF event but succeeded in passing a renewed confidence vote the same night. In this case, there is a need for an explicit confidence vote. If the PM doesn't get this, or can't form a coalition? He or she may try to call ldqn.dissolve_parliament() to trigger new elections, but this will not be granted if there has just been an election. Instead, the behaviour of the root LDQN on the last two occasions this happened was to give the PM a go at forming a government, then set PrimeMinister = LeaderOpposition.
If the leader of the Opposition can't form a government, then a new election would be called. In the code:
if ldqn.audience = NOCONFIDENCE:
...newGovt = (PrimeMinister).formGovt()
...if newGovt == True:
.....vote.confidence(PrimeMinister)
...else:
.....if len(parliament.opposition.likely_members) > len(parliament.government.members):
........newGovt = (LeaderOpposition).formGovt()
.....else:
........ldqn.dissolve_parliament()
if ldqn.audience = NEWPARLIAMENT and parliament.overall_majority == True:
...newGovt = (LeaderOpposition).formGovt()
elif ldqn.audience = NEWPARLIAMENT and parliament.overall_majority == False:
...newGovt = (PrimeMinister).formGovt()
...if newGovt == True:
.....govern()
...elif newGovt == False:
.....newGovt = (LeaderOpposition).formGovt()
...if newGovt == True:
.....govern()
finally:
...parties = [len(party.members) for party in Parliament.parties]
...newGovt = (leader(max(parties)).formGovt()
...if newGovt == False:
....ldqn.dissolve_parliament()Fuck me, this constitution lark is more complicated than you think, especially when you remember that this whole outlandish signalling cascade isn't specified in primary legislation at all. And frankly, it's clearer in Python than English. Bugs in the process have caused serious trouble in the past, notably in Australia where the LDQN experienced a catastrophic partisanship error in 1975. But then, that's what you expect from code that's in permanent beta.
Worryingly, the Canadian prime minister seems to think he can avoid his fate by having his LDQN, Governor General Michelle Jean, prorogue Parliament. Normally, prorogation automagically triggers dissolution, which further triggers elections. But obviously that's not what he wants; he just wants the squabbling parliamentary rabble to go away. One hopes the civil servants are firm with him; due to the poor specifications, in 1974 we had to rely on them to get it right on the night. (Update: Anyone spot the deliberate mistake?)
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
will you stop fiddling with that thing?
Cool; an application that uses rules you give it to generate weird and three-dimensional graphics. (Via Sterling, who else.) This comes to mind, though; what if it could generate STL computer-aided design files? They are the kind that the RepRap's host software eats, I think. And making them in hardware, you have to admit, is just that crucial bit cooler.
Especially when the RepRap ends up surrounding itself in increasingly tiny interlocking cubes, like that spider in the J.G. Ballard story whose web is made of brain tissue, and which eventually goes mad and strangles itself. Hey, you'd get an Arts Council grant for the film, if not the installation. A tad messy even for an art establishment that loved Tracey Emin.
Especially when the RepRap ends up surrounding itself in increasingly tiny interlocking cubes, like that spider in the J.G. Ballard story whose web is made of brain tissue, and which eventually goes mad and strangles itself. Hey, you'd get an Arts Council grant for the film, if not the installation. A tad messy even for an art establishment that loved Tracey Emin.
Mortgage Pig vs Black Swan
RIP. Gilliard was a master of the snark element, Chris Lightfoot of the hacker element, Tanta of the policy element of great blogging. Together it's the blogging triathlon. (Yes, I agree this sounds a bit chilly.)
More broadly, folk like "Black Swan" Taleb have to deal with the fact that their great unpredictable validating event was predicted, years in advance, with considerable precision, by unofficial people who weren't paid six figure bonuses in any currency, as well as by economics professors who were paid considerably more. The CR team can claim to have predicted the housing crash not like economists - There is a significant risk of this happening, but we can't say when - but like meteorologists. Something like a crash has been observed building up in the North Atlantic, and it is coming closer at a rate of 5 knots. We expect it any time after X hundred hours.
More broadly, folk like "Black Swan" Taleb have to deal with the fact that their great unpredictable validating event was predicted, years in advance, with considerable precision, by unofficial people who weren't paid six figure bonuses in any currency, as well as by economics professors who were paid considerably more. The CR team can claim to have predicted the housing crash not like economists - There is a significant risk of this happening, but we can't say when - but like meteorologists. Something like a crash has been observed building up in the North Atlantic, and it is coming closer at a rate of 5 knots. We expect it any time after X hundred hours.
Monday, December 01, 2008
ASATing with lawyers
Here's an interesting sidelight on the satellites post below - "somebody" is trying to restrict access to commercial satellite imagery of the so-called "Box on the Euphrates" in Syria, the suspected nuclear reactor the Israelis blew up.
And how are they doing it? They're buying the rights and trying to use intellectual property law. Another problem for you - satellites don't seem to be open source, let alone free-as-in-speech, or as in beer for that matter.
And how are they doing it? They're buying the rights and trying to use intellectual property law. Another problem for you - satellites don't seem to be open source, let alone free-as-in-speech, or as in beer for that matter.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Iraq withdrawal; what about the Iraqi employees?
Strangely, there has been little mention in the media that the Government is talking Iraq withdrawal blues again. It's being mentioned in news reports, in passing, as if this was certain already; the dates mentioned are some time next year. Well, that's all good; but this of course raises the question of Iraqi employees. We know some have been brought to the UK; we don't know how many are left. Also, of course, there are many more among the refugees suffering across the Middle East, as this ICG report makes clear.
The situation may be better at a macro-level than it was last year; but it's the micro-economics of violence these people have to fear. Assassination, not battle. And it seems that you can hire a killer in Basra for $100. There is apparently a wave of honour killings on; but you wouldn't imagine that someone who will stab women for coins would blink at shooting foreign "spies".
The situation may be better at a macro-level than it was last year; but it's the micro-economics of violence these people have to fear. Assassination, not battle. And it seems that you can hire a killer in Basra for $100. There is apparently a wave of honour killings on; but you wouldn't imagine that someone who will stab women for coins would blink at shooting foreign "spies".
UAV cost scissors watch
I've long been sceptical of the UAV future. Basically, back in 2005, I reckoned that as the things get more complicated their advantages over manned aircraft disappear; the biggest advantage is that they are meant to be expendable, and things that are expendable get expended. Therefore the loss rate is much higher, both from enemy action and from accidents. As they get more expensive (the RAF's new ones actually cost more than the list price of a Tornado), this must mean that their advantages will be eroded. Another issue is the satcomms requirement; therefore, I thought, the successful ones would be the cheapest and most basic, as far as possible controlled directly by ground forces rather than people at Nellis Air Force Base.
Now, looky here. Yes, it's Lewis "The navy only needs two ships" Page, but the story checks out. The British Army, and also the RAF, have been buying twin-engine light aircraft to fit out as advanced tactical reconnaissance platforms. Specifically, we're dealing with a Canadian plane called a Twin Star, prized for its highly efficient diesel engines which give it a very long endurance. This is also likely to be used for the missions flown by Army Islanders over the UK at the moment from Northolt.
Now, looky here. Yes, it's Lewis "The navy only needs two ships" Page, but the story checks out. The British Army, and also the RAF, have been buying twin-engine light aircraft to fit out as advanced tactical reconnaissance platforms. Specifically, we're dealing with a Canadian plane called a Twin Star, prized for its highly efficient diesel engines which give it a very long endurance. This is also likely to be used for the missions flown by Army Islanders over the UK at the moment from Northolt.
a network of friendly militias
Packer vs. Kilcullen in the New Yorker. Here's the key paragraph:
Beyond that, I was struck by how much the Gesamteindruck of the whole thing reminded me of the sort of thing John Vann was saying in 1969 or thereabouts - it's still possible, really it is, and we can probably find a reduction in the number of troops at the same time by realigning completely around a classical counterinsurgency strategy. Kilcullen is hardly optimistic, but he's still desperately committed. (I think I've mentioned before that A Bright Shining Lie was this blog's secret sauce right back to 2003, when Donald Rumsfeld was still denying there were insurgents in Iraq.)
Now, consider this story; first of all, the Indian navy was being lionised for giving a pirate vessel the good old sturm und drang off Somalia and chastening the eurosexual NATO-weenies. It was like 2006 and the Ethiopian army all over again. However, it was only a few hours before it turned out that the Indians had sunk a Thai trawler which they apparently mistook for a pirate mothership - effectively, they saw a funny looking fisherman and just executed 14 people. Now, it's very true that foreign trawlers are a big part of the problem. Perhaps the international naval patrol could do something about it, if it can find the ships whilst also dealing with pirates.
But this is no way to do anything; I've pointed out before that the recent history of Islamist movements shows that given the choice, people will choose law in general over lawlessness.
Police are another main issue. We have built the Afghan police into a less well-armed, less well-trained version of the Army and launched them into operations against the insurgents. Meanwhile, nobody is doing the job of actual policing—rule of law, keeping the population safe from all comers (including friendly fire and coalition operations), providing justice and dispute resolution, and civil and criminal law enforcement. As a consequence, the Taliban have stepped into this gap; they currently run thirteen law courts across the south, and ninety-five per cent of the work of these courts is civil law, property disputes, criminal matters, water and grazing disuptes, inheritances etc.—basic governance things that the police and judiciary ought to be doing, but instead they’re out in the countryside chasing bad guys. Where governance does exist, it is seen as corrupt or exploitative, in many cases, whereas the people remember the Taliban as cruel but not as corrupt.
Beyond that, I was struck by how much the Gesamteindruck of the whole thing reminded me of the sort of thing John Vann was saying in 1969 or thereabouts - it's still possible, really it is, and we can probably find a reduction in the number of troops at the same time by realigning completely around a classical counterinsurgency strategy. Kilcullen is hardly optimistic, but he's still desperately committed. (I think I've mentioned before that A Bright Shining Lie was this blog's secret sauce right back to 2003, when Donald Rumsfeld was still denying there were insurgents in Iraq.)
Now, consider this story; first of all, the Indian navy was being lionised for giving a pirate vessel the good old sturm und drang off Somalia and chastening the eurosexual NATO-weenies. It was like 2006 and the Ethiopian army all over again. However, it was only a few hours before it turned out that the Indians had sunk a Thai trawler which they apparently mistook for a pirate mothership - effectively, they saw a funny looking fisherman and just executed 14 people. Now, it's very true that foreign trawlers are a big part of the problem. Perhaps the international naval patrol could do something about it, if it can find the ships whilst also dealing with pirates.
But this is no way to do anything; I've pointed out before that the recent history of Islamist movements shows that given the choice, people will choose law in general over lawlessness.
Given the choice of what is marketed as order without law, but which as always turns out to be chaos, and some sort of legal order, the people pick the latter.We're still offering them the Behemoth; we're on the wrong side of history, supporting the pirates, Viktor Bout, and a world of bent coppers. The upshot, as Arif Rafiq observes in an instant classic post, is that Pakistan is being turned into Iraq.
Is this the CIA? Is this the IRA? Is this the UDA? No, it’s the Grauniad…
An interesting document was turned up in the course of the row about John Brennan, the CIA officer who was the Obama team's original choice as intelligence chief before he was dropped as being insufficiently opposed to torture, under a volley of criticism from the blogosphere. ("Opposition was mostly confined to liberal blogs," said the NYT.) Here's an interview he did with PBS television.
Miaow. So catty you could throw him a ball of wool!
Yes. Yes. Which is also why it's important to maintain a independent career-path there, like it is in the civil service. I was very surprised to learn that had Brennan been appointed, he would have been a rare bird as a career spook in charge of The Community. Mind you, the three best MI5 chiefs - Guy Liddell, David Petrie, and Martin Furnival-Jones, in my opinion - were respectively an army officer, a cop, and a professional spook, so British experience doesn't necessarily corroborate this.
Clearly it was right to drop him; but it worries me that getting rid of the neocons and torture fans will require people who are a) clued-in about the intelligence service, b) committed to cleaning up, c) ruthless bureaucratic thugs, and if possible d) personally untainted.
Regarding intelligence and independence, meanwhile, this blog has often said that one of the main reasons why the UK got involved in all this is that we don't have an independent reconnaissance satellite capability. Out of the major powers in Europe, the UK, Spain and Italy went to the war; neither the UK nor Spain has an imagery satellite, and Italy launched one jointly with France a few months after Iraq. France and Germany both have their own synthetic-aperture radar sats, and didn't go to the war. Poland, Romania, et al have large armies but no recce capability and they went.
But perhaps this isn't as significant as it used to be. It appears that The Guardian is the first newspaper to become an independent space-faring power. Seriously.
What might have happened or not happened had somebody tried this earlier is a very interesting question. Of course, finding the Sirius Star is a fairly easy challenge - we know where to look, she is a huge and unambiguous target, and she is nicely contrasting with the sea in a part of the world where the skies are usually clear. We still need SAR capability of our own, quite possibly more than we need Trident, and IKONOS won't sell you that.
[INTERVIEWER]:Just before 9/11, in that summer and the spring, how hard was Tenet pushing on the terrorism threat?You heard the guy - they didn't appreciate the threat from Al-Qa'ida because they were busy ginning-up a war with Iraq. And who was responsible for this?
[BRENNAN]:I think he was pushing at every opportunity he had. ... George and [former CTC Director] Cofer [Black] were very much of a mind-set that we can't sit back and wait; we need to do things. We need to do things in Afghanistan. We need to go after Al Qaeda. We need to ratchet up the pressure on the Taliban.
George took several trips out to Saudi Arabia and other places to try to gain support from the Arab states to try to put pressure on the Taliban to give up bin Laden and others. George would knock on any door. He would pursue any course. I think what he was trying to do, prior to 9/11, was to make sure the administration was focused on that.
[INTERVIEWER]: And were they?
I think they were aware of the issue. I don't think they, in fact, appreciated the seriousness of it, because I think they were trying to get their ducks in a line on a number of fronts to include Iraq prior to 9/11.
[INTERVIEWER]: When did you get the first hints ... that there was this movement in the direction of Iraq ...?
[BRENNAN]: The train started to leave the station before the election of 2000, with the neocons putting things out. There was a real focus that we needed to do something about Iraq. It was gaining momentum and strength. And with [Iraqi National Congress founder Ahmad] Chalabi and [former Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard] Perle and others feeding those fires, I do think they just had a complete lack of understanding of the complexity of doing something like that.
They're very outspoken and vocal about the need to take action. It's easy to execute; if there is criticism that is being made of this administration, [it] is that the decision to take action is only part of the challenge. It's the follow-through; it's the strategic planning afterward. Those areas really need to be paid attention to, because the U.S. military [has] no problem as far as just decimating the Iraqi army, but the people like Chalabi and the other neocons, and people like [then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy] Doug Feith, who I think has a very superficial understanding of some of these issues -- I don't know how much time Doug Feith has spent in the Middle East or in Iraq, but it's a very, very complex society.
Miaow. So catty you could throw him a ball of wool!
[INTERVIEWER, talking about Paul Pilar and the Iraq NIE]: He told us that ... even at the time, he wasn't aware about how politicized it was, but he was -- especially as he looks back on it, especially around the "white paper" -- really embarrassed, I think is the word he used at how faulty it was. Did it feel that way at the time, or does it just look that way in hindsight?Ah, I see. The facts were being fixed around the policy. The intelligence was being, ah, sexed up. Recognising this ought to be the criterion of seriousness for anyone seeking a post in the intelligence/foreign policy complex, or indeed anything else. That Brennan does so and says so openly is a very strong mark in his favour, as is this:
[BRENNAN]: At the time there were a lot of concerns that it was being politicized by certain individuals within the administration that wanted to get that intelligence base that would justify going forward with the war.
[INTERVIEWER]: Could I ask you who?
Some of the neocons that you refer to were determined to make sure that the intelligence was going to support the ultimate decision.
That's where the issue of maintaining an independent intelligence organization is so critically important, because departments have certain policy objectives and goals. If you have a department such as the Department of Defense that controls the intelligence function as well, there is a great potential for that intelligence to be skewed, either wittingly or unwittingly, in support of policy objectives.
Yes. Yes. Which is also why it's important to maintain a independent career-path there, like it is in the civil service. I was very surprised to learn that had Brennan been appointed, he would have been a rare bird as a career spook in charge of The Community. Mind you, the three best MI5 chiefs - Guy Liddell, David Petrie, and Martin Furnival-Jones, in my opinion - were respectively an army officer, a cop, and a professional spook, so British experience doesn't necessarily corroborate this.
Clearly it was right to drop him; but it worries me that getting rid of the neocons and torture fans will require people who are a) clued-in about the intelligence service, b) committed to cleaning up, c) ruthless bureaucratic thugs, and if possible d) personally untainted.
Regarding intelligence and independence, meanwhile, this blog has often said that one of the main reasons why the UK got involved in all this is that we don't have an independent reconnaissance satellite capability. Out of the major powers in Europe, the UK, Spain and Italy went to the war; neither the UK nor Spain has an imagery satellite, and Italy launched one jointly with France a few months after Iraq. France and Germany both have their own synthetic-aperture radar sats, and didn't go to the war. Poland, Romania, et al have large armies but no recce capability and they went.
But perhaps this isn't as significant as it used to be. It appears that The Guardian is the first newspaper to become an independent space-faring power. Seriously.
From a vantage point 423 miles above the Earth, the lawless waters of the Gulf of Aden appear tranquil and the 330-metre-long ship sitting low under a £68m cargo looks like a tiny green cigar floating on an inky ocean.I love the "commissioned by the Guardian and hurtling over Africa at four miles a second" bit. That's incredibly science-fiction, and in a good way - Arthur C. Clarke would be delighted. This has been possible for some time; who else remembers poring over GlobalSecurity.org's IKONOS or DigitalGlobe shot of the day in the bullshit-rockin' autumn of 2001? But as far as I know, this is the first attempt by a media organisation to acquire overhead imagery on an operational timescale. Hey, it's Tim Worstall's worst nightmare - Polly Toynbee in spaaace!
These pictures, taken by a satellite commissioned by the Guardian and hurtling over Africa at four miles a second, show the Sirius Star, the Saudi supertanker which 12 days ago became the biggest prize ever seized by the Somali pirates who have claimed the Gulf of Aden as their hunting ground.
What might have happened or not happened had somebody tried this earlier is a very interesting question. Of course, finding the Sirius Star is a fairly easy challenge - we know where to look, she is a huge and unambiguous target, and she is nicely contrasting with the sea in a part of the world where the skies are usually clear. We still need SAR capability of our own, quite possibly more than we need Trident, and IKONOS won't sell you that.
Saturday, November 29, 2008
the world's deadliest novel strikes again
Quite a score for our reader "Ajay", who I think is the first to spot that the Mumbai terrorist attack bears a very close resemblance to the coup plot in Frederick Forsyth's The Dogs of War, which makes it the third and possibly fourth case of someone actually using Forsyth's book as a practical handbook. The exact number depends on whether you believe the story that Forsyth actually took part in planning a coup in Equatorial Guinea in 1977 which didn't go ahead, and recycled the work he did on it as a novel. Forsyth now semi-confesses to this, but this may be self-publicity from a man who was, after all, sacked from the BBC for making up the news.
Certainly, however, the so-called "Wonga Coup" team in Equatorial Guinea read the book, Mike Hoare's "Froth Blowers' Society" attack on the Seychelles apparently issued a copy to every participant, and now this. How does, say, Curzio Malaparte's Theory of the Coup d'Etat compare to that? Forsyth can probably claim that more people have died as a direct result of his book than any other book not written by an economist.
In fact it's closer than you might think; the Grauniad, whose coverage of the whole incident was excellent, has a neat map you might want to consult. Apparently, two of the Zodiacs used were found at the north end of Back Bay, on the west/left hand side of the map; this suggests the attack plan was very close indeed to Forsyth's. There are two groups of targets, and each group is fairly close to a beach on that side of the peninsula, even though some of them are closer to the east (harbour) side. But doing it this way saves navigating around the headland and keeps away from the main port, where you could expect a police presence.
View Larger Map
Very roughly, it's about 2,050 feet from each of two landing spots near the targets to a point exactly half-way across the entrance of the bay, so you'd know when to set course - this is exactly how the mercenaries in TDOW set up their attack, launching further out to sea in a big group and using the ship as a mark to lay their course to the jumping-off point, which they identify by a transit between two landmarks. Of course, there are plenty of buildings they could line up to identify this waypoint laterally (the Wankhede Stadium looks like a candidate).
Politically, this implies that the "Deccan Mujahideen" weren't from Deccan at all - otherwise, as someone pointed out, they'd just have taken the train in. Clearly they needed to cross a border, or else the ship and the Zodiacs would have been just more moving parts. This also suggests that they couldn't rely on getting arms in India. I wonder what they did with the ship? One option would be to have her sink; another for her to sail quietly on, although the chances of getting away wouldn't be great.
There was worrying reporting that a Pakistani merchant ship had been stopped by the Indian navy but fortunately, if you like your Ganges without plutonium, a search of the ship revealed nothing suspicious.
There's another question - this wasn't designed as a suicide attack. Suicide attackers have no need of false papers, cash, and certainly not credit cards:
This of course carries some information as to what kind of group carried it out. Clearly, they weren't the sort of people who you recruit because all you need is someone to carry the bomb. They had to take independent action, and they had to sustain their will over an extended period of time. Good relations between India and Pakistan don't really provide much net information; when things are bad, you'd expect terrorism, and when things are good there are people who want them to be bad again.
Meanwhile, the Dogs of War parallel holds in another way - the mercenaries' exit strategy is the weakest bit of the plot, and had it been put into action the endgame would probably have been a lot like the last day or so in Mumbai, with the coupsters being gradually picked off around the presidential palace as they ran out of time, ammunition and ideas.
Certainly, however, the so-called "Wonga Coup" team in Equatorial Guinea read the book, Mike Hoare's "Froth Blowers' Society" attack on the Seychelles apparently issued a copy to every participant, and now this. How does, say, Curzio Malaparte's Theory of the Coup d'Etat compare to that? Forsyth can probably claim that more people have died as a direct result of his book than any other book not written by an economist.
In fact it's closer than you might think; the Grauniad, whose coverage of the whole incident was excellent, has a neat map you might want to consult. Apparently, two of the Zodiacs used were found at the north end of Back Bay, on the west/left hand side of the map; this suggests the attack plan was very close indeed to Forsyth's. There are two groups of targets, and each group is fairly close to a beach on that side of the peninsula, even though some of them are closer to the east (harbour) side. But doing it this way saves navigating around the headland and keeps away from the main port, where you could expect a police presence.
View Larger Map
Very roughly, it's about 2,050 feet from each of two landing spots near the targets to a point exactly half-way across the entrance of the bay, so you'd know when to set course - this is exactly how the mercenaries in TDOW set up their attack, launching further out to sea in a big group and using the ship as a mark to lay their course to the jumping-off point, which they identify by a transit between two landmarks. Of course, there are plenty of buildings they could line up to identify this waypoint laterally (the Wankhede Stadium looks like a candidate).
Politically, this implies that the "Deccan Mujahideen" weren't from Deccan at all - otherwise, as someone pointed out, they'd just have taken the train in. Clearly they needed to cross a border, or else the ship and the Zodiacs would have been just more moving parts. This also suggests that they couldn't rely on getting arms in India. I wonder what they did with the ship? One option would be to have her sink; another for her to sail quietly on, although the chances of getting away wouldn't be great.
There was worrying reporting that a Pakistani merchant ship had been stopped by the Indian navy but fortunately, if you like your Ganges without plutonium, a search of the ship revealed nothing suspicious.
There's another question - this wasn't designed as a suicide attack. Suicide attackers have no need of false papers, cash, and certainly not credit cards:
A bag found in the Taj Mahal hotel contained 400 rounds of ammunition, grenades, identity cards, rations, $1,000 (£650) in cash and international credit cards, indicating a meticulously planned operation.That certainly sounds like the equipment of someone who at least wanted to keep the option of escape open, and of course we have little idea how many people landed. It was quite possibly a suicidal mission, but that's not the same thing. The special horror here was that the violence was dispersed and prolonged; it happened all over the place, and it kept happening.
This of course carries some information as to what kind of group carried it out. Clearly, they weren't the sort of people who you recruit because all you need is someone to carry the bomb. They had to take independent action, and they had to sustain their will over an extended period of time. Good relations between India and Pakistan don't really provide much net information; when things are bad, you'd expect terrorism, and when things are good there are people who want them to be bad again.
Meanwhile, the Dogs of War parallel holds in another way - the mercenaries' exit strategy is the weakest bit of the plot, and had it been put into action the endgame would probably have been a lot like the last day or so in Mumbai, with the coupsters being gradually picked off around the presidential palace as they ran out of time, ammunition and ideas.
Friday, November 28, 2008
a short film about killing turkeys
The Rude Pundit has a very good point.
But it's not just ridiculous; it's morally repellent and politically more than dubious. After all, what is the turkey's crime? Being a turkey? Pardon implies that you committed a crime, and also that you were punished by some legitimate authority, which has now offered you mercy out of the goodness of its heart. It's a sort of reversed sacrifice - rather than killing a goat to expiate your sins, it's not killing a turkey so as to go off and eat millions of 'em with a clean conscience.
Pardon is also interesting because it can't be separated from executive power. To pardon someone means that the head of state decided, whatever the law happened to be, whatever the judiciary thought of the case, whatever the jury thought of the evidence, just to intervene and make an exception. It's only possible, after all, because the executive has the power to execute. It also means that the executive agreed to all the other executions; what, after all, would happen if the president pardoned everyone? That would be about as likely as pardoning all the turkeys. Executive clemency is the flip side of executive cruelty. (Note, of course, that a British prime minister isn't the head of state.)
It's therefore a profoundly anti-rational, authoritarian custom; no wonder it's a holdover from absolute monarchy. And this, I think, is what worries me about this ceremony - it's the sacralisation of the executive branch. Like the King's touch for scrofula. (He can even un-turkey a turkey!) No wonder, as Rude so wisely points out, Bush loves it.
Before we go on, here's a video from Talking Points Memo in which you can see both Bush doing the turkey thing and also Sarah Palin's now-notorious performance in which she pardoned a turkey while a worker slaughtered turkeys in the background. It will help your comparative turkeyology to watch closely.
Now, what about the well-known cockup in Alaska? A couple of points come to mind. For a start, as befits an anti-rationalist movement, neoconservatism has no culture of competence. They never run anything; their natural habitat is the thinktank, the university campus, the elite circle. Hence the Schlamperei that follows them around, like a drugfuddled burglar in a darkened room full of gym equipment. Of course they'd fuck it up - even in Washington, Bush managed to grant the bird a "full unconditional unconditional pardon".
The second is that perhaps they aren't trying. Looking back, when did they lie convincingly? The case for war was based not on lies, but on the unwillingness to confront the lies. Later, on things like torture and mass surveillance, they moved beyond this and simply admitted the facts while denying the form. Yes, we waterboarded the guy and pulled your call-detail records - are you with the terrorists? Of course, we do not support torture or illegal surveillance. In a very real sense, they were pardoning turkeys in front of the slaughter live on TV all the time.
You can't even picture Obama pardoning a fucking turkey. Sure, he'll probably do it. But unlike Bush, who approached such obligations with dunce-like glee, for Obama it'll be like a kick in the groin.As usual with Rude, there's a serious point here, sneaking past the guards while all the noise and snark and chainsaw dust draw their attention. Pardoning a turkey is, let's face it, exactly the kind of stupid crap most British people look at as just the kind of stupid crap Americans get up to. Can you imagine a British prime minister trying this? He or she would be laughed out of the country; probably they'd end up doing a John Profumo and choosing a life of deliberate monkish obscurity.
But it's not just ridiculous; it's morally repellent and politically more than dubious. After all, what is the turkey's crime? Being a turkey? Pardon implies that you committed a crime, and also that you were punished by some legitimate authority, which has now offered you mercy out of the goodness of its heart. It's a sort of reversed sacrifice - rather than killing a goat to expiate your sins, it's not killing a turkey so as to go off and eat millions of 'em with a clean conscience.
Pardon is also interesting because it can't be separated from executive power. To pardon someone means that the head of state decided, whatever the law happened to be, whatever the judiciary thought of the case, whatever the jury thought of the evidence, just to intervene and make an exception. It's only possible, after all, because the executive has the power to execute. It also means that the executive agreed to all the other executions; what, after all, would happen if the president pardoned everyone? That would be about as likely as pardoning all the turkeys. Executive clemency is the flip side of executive cruelty. (Note, of course, that a British prime minister isn't the head of state.)
It's therefore a profoundly anti-rational, authoritarian custom; no wonder it's a holdover from absolute monarchy. And this, I think, is what worries me about this ceremony - it's the sacralisation of the executive branch. Like the King's touch for scrofula. (He can even un-turkey a turkey!) No wonder, as Rude so wisely points out, Bush loves it.
Before we go on, here's a video from Talking Points Memo in which you can see both Bush doing the turkey thing and also Sarah Palin's now-notorious performance in which she pardoned a turkey while a worker slaughtered turkeys in the background. It will help your comparative turkeyology to watch closely.
Now, what about the well-known cockup in Alaska? A couple of points come to mind. For a start, as befits an anti-rationalist movement, neoconservatism has no culture of competence. They never run anything; their natural habitat is the thinktank, the university campus, the elite circle. Hence the Schlamperei that follows them around, like a drugfuddled burglar in a darkened room full of gym equipment. Of course they'd fuck it up - even in Washington, Bush managed to grant the bird a "full unconditional unconditional pardon".
The second is that perhaps they aren't trying. Looking back, when did they lie convincingly? The case for war was based not on lies, but on the unwillingness to confront the lies. Later, on things like torture and mass surveillance, they moved beyond this and simply admitted the facts while denying the form. Yes, we waterboarded the guy and pulled your call-detail records - are you with the terrorists? Of course, we do not support torture or illegal surveillance. In a very real sense, they were pardoning turkeys in front of the slaughter live on TV all the time.
further Osbornewatch
Back in the spring of 1997, the sterling trade-weighted index stood at 93, exactly the average since 1990, and the deficit (PSBR at the time) was 8% of GDP (See note). This, according to the Conservative Party, was a golden legacy Labour were squandering. Now, the sterling trade-weighted index is at 93, exactly the average since 1990, and the Treasury is forecasting a deficit (PSNCR this time) of 8% of GDP. This, according to the Conservative Party, is national bankruptcy, brought about by the Labour Party for its own inscrutable ends (dog whistle: they're all communists).
Further, according to the Conservative Party, the State should establish "an institution to lend to small businesses". (Hey, we could call it the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, or maybe the National Enterprise Board - that one has just the right sound to it, no?) Let's recap: first of all, the Bank of England was right to lend taxpayers' money to Northern Rock. Then the Government was wrong to do so. Then the Government was wrong to nationalise Northern Rock because it put taxpayers' money at risk, and (dog whistle) they're secretly plotting to take over all the banks. Instead, the Government should have the Bank of England pay for it because its funds suddenly weren't taxpayers' money any more. The same procedure was followed for Bradford & Bingley, but the Conservative Party also held that there was no need for this because everything was really OK.
Then it turned out to be not OK at all, and for a while the Conservative Party kept schtum. The Government came up with a plan, which was rapidly taken up by every other OECD nation, to (essentially) underwrite an absolutely huge rescue rights issue for several banks, to guarantee wholesale interbank lending, and to top the whole lot off with a fiscal reflation. The Tories were silent. Now, with this actually in place, they are incoherent with rage; things are so bad, apparently, that the assets of NR, B&B, RBS, and HBOS are worth absolutely nothing and the interbank guarantees will all be called in (even though most of them will net-out). However, things are still not actually so bad that we need the reflation.
Now, apparently, although the Government should not be spending any taxpayer funds, it should also be lending them directly to industry to substitute the banks, which you will recall there is nothing wrong with, but which are also worthless.
On top of this, Private Finance Initiative costs are now, according to the Conservative Party which invented the things so as not to include them in the national debt, part of the national debt. If they really believed that, this would imply that Ken Clarke, John Redwood, Malcolm Rifkind, and William Hague should be drummed out of the party as a gang of fraudsters. Hey, they were plotting to conceal the government's true indebtedness in sinister Enronlike off-balance sheet vehicles!
All these funny figures are necessary to keep Gideon and Dave from PR from being caught deceiving the House of Commons. Why? Because he decided to say that the UK "has the debt levels of Italy". Italy has a national debt equal to 103% of GDP; the peak forecast figure for the UK is 57%. But if you torture the data enough, by reclassifying the PFIs, by deciding that all those square miles of Victorian terraces with HBOS mortgages don't keep the rain out any more, by capitalising all the future public pension liabilities (but strangely not the "unfunded nuclear missile liability" or the "unfunded tax break for Conservative client groups liability") you can kindasorta get there - if you have absolutely no intellectual integrity at all, that is. After all, if you did that, you'd have to do the same for the Italian public sector as well - and can you imagine what that balance sheet would look like if it had to roll up all those retired posties' pensions to an infinite horizon? If you want any more of this stuff, try Daniel Davies.
The ideal response to this is already available, thanks to Mark Easton of the BBC.
Bravo! Remind me why we have to put up with these fucking people. Meanwhile, for everything else, I think it would be better to spend more of this money on capital investments rather than a VAT cut. Which apparently puts me in harmony with the political party I'm a member of. Perhaps I should take maverick lessons.
Update: Mea maxima culpa. As part of our commitment to quality, I feel compelled to note that the figure of 8% of GDP, £46bn, was the government deficit at the peak in 1993-1994; it was down to £28bn in 1996-1997. It remains true that 8% now is no worse or better than 8% then.
Further, according to the Conservative Party, the State should establish "an institution to lend to small businesses". (Hey, we could call it the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, or maybe the National Enterprise Board - that one has just the right sound to it, no?) Let's recap: first of all, the Bank of England was right to lend taxpayers' money to Northern Rock. Then the Government was wrong to do so. Then the Government was wrong to nationalise Northern Rock because it put taxpayers' money at risk, and (dog whistle) they're secretly plotting to take over all the banks. Instead, the Government should have the Bank of England pay for it because its funds suddenly weren't taxpayers' money any more. The same procedure was followed for Bradford & Bingley, but the Conservative Party also held that there was no need for this because everything was really OK.
Then it turned out to be not OK at all, and for a while the Conservative Party kept schtum. The Government came up with a plan, which was rapidly taken up by every other OECD nation, to (essentially) underwrite an absolutely huge rescue rights issue for several banks, to guarantee wholesale interbank lending, and to top the whole lot off with a fiscal reflation. The Tories were silent. Now, with this actually in place, they are incoherent with rage; things are so bad, apparently, that the assets of NR, B&B, RBS, and HBOS are worth absolutely nothing and the interbank guarantees will all be called in (even though most of them will net-out). However, things are still not actually so bad that we need the reflation.
Now, apparently, although the Government should not be spending any taxpayer funds, it should also be lending them directly to industry to substitute the banks, which you will recall there is nothing wrong with, but which are also worthless.
On top of this, Private Finance Initiative costs are now, according to the Conservative Party which invented the things so as not to include them in the national debt, part of the national debt. If they really believed that, this would imply that Ken Clarke, John Redwood, Malcolm Rifkind, and William Hague should be drummed out of the party as a gang of fraudsters. Hey, they were plotting to conceal the government's true indebtedness in sinister Enronlike off-balance sheet vehicles!
All these funny figures are necessary to keep Gideon and Dave from PR from being caught deceiving the House of Commons. Why? Because he decided to say that the UK "has the debt levels of Italy". Italy has a national debt equal to 103% of GDP; the peak forecast figure for the UK is 57%. But if you torture the data enough, by reclassifying the PFIs, by deciding that all those square miles of Victorian terraces with HBOS mortgages don't keep the rain out any more, by capitalising all the future public pension liabilities (but strangely not the "unfunded nuclear missile liability" or the "unfunded tax break for Conservative client groups liability") you can kindasorta get there - if you have absolutely no intellectual integrity at all, that is. After all, if you did that, you'd have to do the same for the Italian public sector as well - and can you imagine what that balance sheet would look like if it had to roll up all those retired posties' pensions to an infinite horizon? If you want any more of this stuff, try Daniel Davies.
The ideal response to this is already available, thanks to Mark Easton of the BBC.
We might as well report that the date, 2008, is a record number of recorded years. More than in any other year since records began 2008 years ago. Beating by one the record held only last year, of 2007. And that if the trend continues we will see another record number of years recorded in the year as early as next year.
Bravo! Remind me why we have to put up with these fucking people. Meanwhile, for everything else, I think it would be better to spend more of this money on capital investments rather than a VAT cut. Which apparently puts me in harmony with the political party I'm a member of. Perhaps I should take maverick lessons.
Update: Mea maxima culpa. As part of our commitment to quality, I feel compelled to note that the figure of 8% of GDP, £46bn, was the government deficit at the peak in 1993-1994; it was down to £28bn in 1996-1997. It remains true that 8% now is no worse or better than 8% then.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
killed by the puppet forces, 2008
Oh dear, oh dear.
The Herald Tribune is too polite to say it, for some reason, but we all know which map he's talking about. It's the one in this post, the one risible carta de'll oro wingnut Ralph Peters crapped into the public water supply back in October, 2006 in this article. The map is here; personally, I still can't get past the fact he proposed a complete re-drawing of every border in South-West Asia but couldn't bring himself to do anything about Palestine, but left it as "status undetermined". That's a hard one, Miss! Not fair!
Deeds have consequences, and so do words. Now, it looks like more people are going to die in northwestern Pakistan because of fucknuts Peters' shitty little effort. I guess he doesn't particularly care about Subedar Khan of the Frontier Corps, or his opposite number in the North Waziristan Not-The-Taliban; but didn't he give any thought to the actual US soldiers in ISAF Regional Command East? I often wonder whether blogs in general put too much time and effort into arguing with idiots. "Someone is wrong on the Internet", indeed.
But of course it's worth it; or the buggers will just keep ralphing away. Political maniacs of every stripe have a weird fondness for fantasy cartography - it's probably a relic of sympathetic magic, or else a sort of military cargo cult. If I stick pins in enough maps, perhaps someone will actually follow the orders.
Relatedly, it looks like some of the general enemy have also concluded that the e-mail bomber approach failed them in the presidential election campaign. I've described it elsewhere as an airpower theory approach to politics - you build a big centralised machine to deliver talking points, hurtling over an unresisting political landscape devoid of agency, and the best bit is that it's capital intensive. You don't need an army of volunteers - just money.
Still, survival is optional. If they want to start a US Christian Democratic Union, more power to their elbow - whatever happens, one day they'll be back, and on that day it will make a big difference whether the "they" is a zombie version of the party of 2004 or, well, something less stupid, destructive, and fanatical.
And if there is anything that the last 11 years of British politics will tell you, it's that a democracy where you can't responsibly vote for the other lot and remain a decent human being has a problem. At some point, he'll come up with something so stupid and abhorrent to some peculiar interest of yours that you'll sweat purple piss (they all do), and it's at that point you'll see the value of opposition.
A redrawn map of South Asia has been making the rounds among Pakistani elites. It shows their country truncated, reduced to an elongated sliver of land with the big bulk of India to the east, and an enlarged Afghanistan to the west.
That the map was first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some U.S. neoconservative circles matters little here. It has fueled a belief among Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the United States really wants is the breakup of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear arms.
"One of the biggest fears of the Pakistani military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan," said a senior Pakistani government official involved in strategic planning who insisted on anonymity in accordance with diplomatic rules. "Some people feel the United States is colluding in this."..
The Herald Tribune is too polite to say it, for some reason, but we all know which map he's talking about. It's the one in this post, the one risible carta de'll oro wingnut Ralph Peters crapped into the public water supply back in October, 2006 in this article. The map is here; personally, I still can't get past the fact he proposed a complete re-drawing of every border in South-West Asia but couldn't bring himself to do anything about Palestine, but left it as "status undetermined". That's a hard one, Miss! Not fair!
Deeds have consequences, and so do words. Now, it looks like more people are going to die in northwestern Pakistan because of fucknuts Peters' shitty little effort. I guess he doesn't particularly care about Subedar Khan of the Frontier Corps, or his opposite number in the North Waziristan Not-The-Taliban; but didn't he give any thought to the actual US soldiers in ISAF Regional Command East? I often wonder whether blogs in general put too much time and effort into arguing with idiots. "Someone is wrong on the Internet", indeed.
But of course it's worth it; or the buggers will just keep ralphing away. Political maniacs of every stripe have a weird fondness for fantasy cartography - it's probably a relic of sympathetic magic, or else a sort of military cargo cult. If I stick pins in enough maps, perhaps someone will actually follow the orders.
Relatedly, it looks like some of the general enemy have also concluded that the e-mail bomber approach failed them in the presidential election campaign. I've described it elsewhere as an airpower theory approach to politics - you build a big centralised machine to deliver talking points, hurtling over an unresisting political landscape devoid of agency, and the best bit is that it's capital intensive. You don't need an army of volunteers - just money.
The GOP is the talk-radio party -- for the most part, it's centralized, top-down. Even though Rush Limbaugh is "perhaps the best exponent of across-the-board conservatism," as Ruffini wrote, "he has no lists and no way to mobilize his audience directly to donate and volunteer." (But it must be noted that Limbaugh urged his Republican listeners to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton in Indiana's open primary to prolong the Democratic duel. And Clinton won.)Whether a party that's spent the last 30 or so years specialising in attracting the fat tail on the social authoritarianism curve is structurally capable of doing that is another matter, and I think we shall soon see the answer. Similarly, whether a party so given intellectually to the rhetoric of authoritarianism would survive such a change in any recognisable form seems doubtful.
The Democrats, meanwhile, are the party of the Web: decentralized, chaotic, bottom-up. The bloggers at DailyKos.com, for example, argue about policy and ideology, too. But all that blogging leads to raising money, which leads to organizing, which leads to having a say in the party. When Howard Dean, whose presidential primary campaign was largely funded by online donors, was elected DNC chairman in 2005, there was no doubt that a new Democratic era had arrived.
But clout didn't come overnight for the Democratic "netroots." In a way, its influence was predicated on being independent of the party. Says Jerome Armstrong, who created the liberal blog MyDD in 2001: "The netroots is not the DNC. The netroots challenges the DNC." A similar dynamic needs to occur between the rightroots and the RNC, bloggers such as Ruffini and Finn say. The rightroots should push their party's leadership and entrenched consulting class the same way the netroots lashed the Democratic leadership years ago.
Still, survival is optional. If they want to start a US Christian Democratic Union, more power to their elbow - whatever happens, one day they'll be back, and on that day it will make a big difference whether the "they" is a zombie version of the party of 2004 or, well, something less stupid, destructive, and fanatical.
And if there is anything that the last 11 years of British politics will tell you, it's that a democracy where you can't responsibly vote for the other lot and remain a decent human being has a problem. At some point, he'll come up with something so stupid and abhorrent to some peculiar interest of yours that you'll sweat purple piss (they all do), and it's at that point you'll see the value of opposition.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Even More BNP Data...
Various people asked what would happen if I excluded London and Northern Ireland from the BNP analysis. Here's a table showing the R-squared for each factor, first for the whole data set and then excluding these two outliers. (After all, who needs statistical analysis to know those two are weird?)
I'm still not convinced there is any rational pattern here at all. Immigration is still astonishingly weak as a predictor of BNP membership; weirdly, economic growth is even weaker, and positive! (I'm feeling so prosperous...I'm going to join the BNP!) In fact, the only factor in the second set of numbers that has an effect measurable without going into three significant figures is the proportion of GDP accounted for by agriculture. Northern Ireland is both surprisingly agricultural (2.3% of GDP - 130% of the UK average) and unsurprisingly low in BNP members (0.0024 per 100), so we wouldn't have seen this earlier on.
The Thatcher legacy - long term unemployment as a percentage of all unemployment - was the strongest correlate with R-squared = 0.2078, but when you drop London and NI, it vanishes, as does unemployment in general.
| Factor | R-Squared | R-Squared Excluding NI, London |
| Immigration | 0.0364 | 0.0810 |
| Emigration | 0.0330 | 0.0460 |
| Migration | 0.0343 | 0.0843 |
| Services % GDP | 0.0639 | 0.0009 |
| Industry % GDP | 0.0885 | 0.0066 |
| Agriculture % GDP | 0.0659 | 0.1697 |
| Long Term Unemployment | 0.2078 | 0.0074 |
| Unemployment % | 0.1080 | 0.0235 |
| Economic Growth %, 1991-2006 | 0.0782 | 0.0692 |
| Density Change 1991-2006 % | 0.0369 | 0.0035 |
| Population Change % | 0.0008 | 0.0160 |
I'm still not convinced there is any rational pattern here at all. Immigration is still astonishingly weak as a predictor of BNP membership; weirdly, economic growth is even weaker, and positive! (I'm feeling so prosperous...I'm going to join the BNP!) In fact, the only factor in the second set of numbers that has an effect measurable without going into three significant figures is the proportion of GDP accounted for by agriculture. Northern Ireland is both surprisingly agricultural (2.3% of GDP - 130% of the UK average) and unsurprisingly low in BNP members (0.0024 per 100), so we wouldn't have seen this earlier on.
The Thatcher legacy - long term unemployment as a percentage of all unemployment - was the strongest correlate with R-squared = 0.2078, but when you drop London and NI, it vanishes, as does unemployment in general.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Blog
Arms Control Wonk has been running a series on how Iranian missiles work and how well. It's bloody brilliant; go read, and you'll come away thinking you could maybe start your own launcher project. Elsewhere, incredible interview with Bill Janeway about the financial crisis, Ministry of Truth on Baby P, Felix Salmon spanks rightwing mythology about car workers' wages, Anthony "Nate Silver before there was Nate Silver" Wells works through the general election scenarios. Parasites control red tides. Unicellular organism bigger than some frogs. Cows: fertiliser, energy..and meat! How rightwing propaganda works.
conradblackalicious
Conrad Black: it has come to this. It's been an intermittent amusement to see his rants issued from jail, what with their deluded certainty that the courts would eventually understand him. Now, however, he's given up on vindication to beg for mercy. In a signature move, he's also tried to bill his old newspaper for legal costs incurred in begging Bush for a pardon.
I think this points up the horror of the times in two ways. For a start, the very idea of pardoning Black is sordid. But on the other hand, I suspect Bush won't do it, and that is even worse; he doesn't, I think, have enough gut decency to bail out his friend. You can understand a man who does the E.M. Forster and betrays his country rather than his friends, you can grudgingly respect someone who sticks to the law; someone who does neither is a common enemy.
Anyway, it's scrambling time; the handover modalities are set, and apparently the Iraqi government is asserting a right to look at the US Army's mail. And the staff college students are studying the problems of withdrawal. Even if this guy's still being asked for five pick-up trucks, a VSAT, coffee, and 10 tons of gravel, it's over.
I wonder if Conrad Black, however, might be the first out having been the first in. Not only did he turn his newspapers into an all-singing, all-dancing neocon wankapalooza, he did it early; arguably, the turn came not long after Max Hastings was outed from the Telegraph, and perhaps the whole affair of William Hague's assurances about his peerage should have told us more than it did at the time. And the Jerusalem Post was barely coherent in 2001, let alone later. Black was the first of the movement to be disgraced; he's ahead of the curve. It's probably worth watching him as a leading indicator.
I think this points up the horror of the times in two ways. For a start, the very idea of pardoning Black is sordid. But on the other hand, I suspect Bush won't do it, and that is even worse; he doesn't, I think, have enough gut decency to bail out his friend. You can understand a man who does the E.M. Forster and betrays his country rather than his friends, you can grudgingly respect someone who sticks to the law; someone who does neither is a common enemy.
Anyway, it's scrambling time; the handover modalities are set, and apparently the Iraqi government is asserting a right to look at the US Army's mail. And the staff college students are studying the problems of withdrawal. Even if this guy's still being asked for five pick-up trucks, a VSAT, coffee, and 10 tons of gravel, it's over.
I wonder if Conrad Black, however, might be the first out having been the first in. Not only did he turn his newspapers into an all-singing, all-dancing neocon wankapalooza, he did it early; arguably, the turn came not long after Max Hastings was outed from the Telegraph, and perhaps the whole affair of William Hague's assurances about his peerage should have told us more than it did at the time. And the Jerusalem Post was barely coherent in 2001, let alone later. Black was the first of the movement to be disgraced; he's ahead of the curve. It's probably worth watching him as a leading indicator.
beating the statue with my shoes
OK, so about them Iranian superbomb spookologists. We're not convinced. Even at the height of the nonsense, a lot of the military in Iraq were regularly quoted pouring cold water on the tale. Later, we looked into just how hard it would be to find out how to make an EFP. (All you need is Wikipedia, a search engine, and love. Or hate.)
Further, we were able to identify the stuff in the official photos as ball bearings made in India and trivially available in commerce. So, what about them Iranian superbombs? Not so much. IPS wire service has a fine story following the matter up. Their source is the US Army's intelligence operation set up to analyse the sources of arms used by the Sadrists.
There's more.
None. Zero.
The idiocy of trying to lie to a government essentially based on Iranian-backed militiamen and their political mouthpieces about Iranian support to their own side should be obvious. And them bombs:
MACHIAVELLIAN PROPAGANDA; YR DOIN IT RONG. And finally, there's the "and finally..." moment.
You wonder how many of the toxic HELOC-backed credit card bills were actually run up getting Amazon.com deliveries of IDI explosives. Ram it to Washington Mutual and screw Chalabi, in one easy package. No wonder DHL was so keen to resume service to Iraq.
Further, we were able to identify the stuff in the official photos as ball bearings made in India and trivially available in commerce. So, what about them Iranian superbombs? Not so much. IPS wire service has a fine story following the matter up. Their source is the US Army's intelligence operation set up to analyse the sources of arms used by the Sadrists.
The task force database identified 98 caches over the five-month period with at least one Iranian weapon, excluding caches believed to have been hidden prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion.
But according to an e-mail from the MNFI press desk this week, the task force found and analysed a total of roughly 4,600 weapons caches during that same period. The caches that included Iranian weapons thus represented just 2 percent of all caches found. That means Iranian-made weapons were a fraction of one percent of the total weapons found in Shi'a militia caches during that period.
The extremely small proportion of Iranian arms in Shi'a militia weapons caches further suggests that Shi'a militia fighters in Iraq had been getting weapons from local and international arms markets rather than from an official Iranian-sponsored smuggling network....
There's more.
In late April, the U.S. presented the Maliki government with a document that apparently listed various Iranian arms found in Iraq and highlighted alleged Iranian arms found in Basra. But the U.S. campaign to convince Iraqi officials collapsed when Task Force Troy analysed a series of large weapons caches uncovered in Basra and Karbala in April and May.
Caches of arms found in Karbala late last April and May totaled more than 2,500 weapons, and caches in Basra included at least 3,700 weapons, according to official MNFI statements. That brought the total number of weapons found in those former Mahdi Army strongholds to more than 6,200 weapons. But the task force found that none of those weapons were Iranian-made....
None. Zero.
Only two months before the new high-level propaganda push on alleged Iranian weapons supply to Shi'a militias, the U.S. command had put out a story suggesting that large numbers of Iranian-supplied arms had been buried all over the country. On Feb. 17, 2008, U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith told reporters that Iraqi and coalition forces had captured 212 weapons caches across Iraq over the previous week "with growing links to the Iranian-backed special groups".
The Task Force Troy data for the week of Feb. 9-16 show, however, that the U.S. command had information on Iranian arms contradicting that propaganda line. According to the task force database, only five of those 212 caches contained any Iranian weapons that analysts believed might have been buried after the U.S. invasion. And the total number of confirmed Iranian-made weapons found in those five caches, according to the data, was eight, not including four Iranian-made hand grenades.
The idiocy of trying to lie to a government essentially based on Iranian-backed militiamen and their political mouthpieces about Iranian support to their own side should be obvious. And them bombs:
The task force database includes 350 armour-piercing explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) found in Iraqi weapons caches. However, the database does not identify any of the EFPs as Iranian weapons. That treatment of EFPs in the caches appears to contradict claims by U.S. officials throughout 2007 and much of 2008 that EFPs were being smuggled into Iraq by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The allegedly Iranian-manufactured EFPs had been the centrepiece of the U.S. military's February 2007 briefing charging Iran with arming Shi'a militiamen in Iraq.
Press reports of a series of discoveries of shops for manufacturing EFPs in Iraq in 2007 forced the U.S. command to admit that the capacity to manufacture EFPs was not limited to Iran. By the second half of 2008, U.S. officials had stopped referring to Iranian supply of EFPs altogether.
MACHIAVELLIAN PROPAGANDA; YR DOIN IT RONG. And finally, there's the "and finally..." moment.
The co-authors note that Iranian arms can be purchased directly from the website of the Defence Industries of Iran with a credit card.
You wonder how many of the toxic HELOC-backed credit card bills were actually run up getting Amazon.com deliveries of IDI explosives. Ram it to Washington Mutual and screw Chalabi, in one easy package. No wonder DHL was so keen to resume service to Iraq.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Yet More BNP Data Analysis: Does Not Compute!
OK, so I've spent some time getting more data together on the correlates of BNP membership. I've created a table which contains the following metrics: population growth (%), change in population density (%), Gross Value Added(GVA) in 1991, 2006, change in GVA, % GVA growth, unemployment, long-term unemployment as a % of total unemployment, the shares of GDP accounted for by agriculture, industry, and services, total immigration between 1994 and 2002 per capita, total emigration per capita for the same period, total migration per capita, and BNP members per 100 citizens.
And you know what? I was expecting to find a correlation with the economic variables. I had a theory that long-term, Thatcher legacy unemployment, especially, would be a strong correlate of BNP recruitment. But nothing correlates. None of those metrics have any predictive power. Have a look at this.
Immigration per head is up the Y-axis, bigotry on the X-axis, and the data points are scaled by the unemployment rate. It doesn't seem to track any of these variables at all; I urge you to visit the visualisation home page, where you can try the different data series for yourself.
This strongly suggests that some completely different force is at work; perhaps BNP membership is driven by something else entirely. It could be the distribution of social authoritarian tendencies in the population, as Robert Altemeyer theorises. Or alternatively, it could just be that a gratifyingly small percentage of people are completely fucking stupid and pig-ignorant, that this is normally distributed in the population, and it's essentially a matter of chance what pig-ignorant fucking stupidity they get up to.
It's probably worthwhile pointing out that the average concentration of BNP members is 0.0203 per 100 citizens and the standard deviation is 0.0116. So with the sole exception of Northern Ireland, 1.54 standard deviations below the mean and therefore staggering towards the edge of the 90% confidence interval, the variation between regions is entirely explicable by chance - strong backing for the wanker theory.
(For some reason, this post has started to remind me of Donald Crowhurst's campaign leaflet, which bore the headline "YOU MAY THINK YOU ARE LOGICAL - BUT DARE YOU TAKE THIS TEST?" Inside was a sort of flowchart designed to explain logically why everyone should vote Liberal.)
And you know what? I was expecting to find a correlation with the economic variables. I had a theory that long-term, Thatcher legacy unemployment, especially, would be a strong correlate of BNP recruitment. But nothing correlates. None of those metrics have any predictive power. Have a look at this.
Immigration per head is up the Y-axis, bigotry on the X-axis, and the data points are scaled by the unemployment rate. It doesn't seem to track any of these variables at all; I urge you to visit the visualisation home page, where you can try the different data series for yourself.
This strongly suggests that some completely different force is at work; perhaps BNP membership is driven by something else entirely. It could be the distribution of social authoritarian tendencies in the population, as Robert Altemeyer theorises. Or alternatively, it could just be that a gratifyingly small percentage of people are completely fucking stupid and pig-ignorant, that this is normally distributed in the population, and it's essentially a matter of chance what pig-ignorant fucking stupidity they get up to.
It's probably worthwhile pointing out that the average concentration of BNP members is 0.0203 per 100 citizens and the standard deviation is 0.0116. So with the sole exception of Northern Ireland, 1.54 standard deviations below the mean and therefore staggering towards the edge of the 90% confidence interval, the variation between regions is entirely explicable by chance - strong backing for the wanker theory.
(For some reason, this post has started to remind me of Donald Crowhurst's campaign leaflet, which bore the headline "YOU MAY THINK YOU ARE LOGICAL - BUT DARE YOU TAKE THIS TEST?" Inside was a sort of flowchart designed to explain logically why everyone should vote Liberal.)
Thursday, November 20, 2008
The Swamping Myth
You will hear all kinds of people in authority say that immigration, or population growth, is causing people to turn into racists and vote BNP, either just because (the rightwing version) or because of "pressure" on public services (the Decent Left version).Therefore, they usually say, we need a stingier immigration policy. If you're reading this, you probably think this is crap. But now, I can prove this scientifically. Thanks to the leaked BNP membership list, we can empirically measure how many people are active racists, active and committed enough that they joined a political party and paid a subscription. Using the data by county, I established a table that matched the UK regions.
Now, if immigration or population growth really is causing people to go fascist, we'd expect to find a correlation between population growth and BNP membership. Or, perhaps, we might find that places that are losing population are economically depressed and hence susceptible. A further detail might be changes in population density; becoming more urban might lead to a perception of being "swamped", or becoming more rural/exurban might lead to one of isolation. So I drew up a table of population growth from 1991 to 2006, change in density for the same period, and BNP members per 100 citizens.
Here are the results.
Population growth is on the Y axis, bigots on the X axis; the size of each dot represents the change in density. There is no correlation whatsoever. Anyone who tells you this story is talking nonsense.
Now, if immigration or population growth really is causing people to go fascist, we'd expect to find a correlation between population growth and BNP membership. Or, perhaps, we might find that places that are losing population are economically depressed and hence susceptible. A further detail might be changes in population density; becoming more urban might lead to a perception of being "swamped", or becoming more rural/exurban might lead to one of isolation. So I drew up a table of population growth from 1991 to 2006, change in density for the same period, and BNP members per 100 citizens.
Here are the results.
Population growth is on the Y axis, bigots on the X axis; the size of each dot represents the change in density. There is no correlation whatsoever. Anyone who tells you this story is talking nonsense.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
don't compromise, visualise
Oh yes, gleeful leftie hacker tournament after the BNP did a 0.16 megarecord datafart. My effort contains absolutely no personally-identifying data; it's made with this guy's count by region and population data from National Statistics, to show the number of BNP activists per 100 citizens in each UK region. People kept asking for that kind of information, so I made it. Note that the g-spreadsheet guy used classifications that don't quite map to NatStats' regions, so I decided to assume that his "South Central England" was the West Midlands and "Midlands" was the East Midlands, and total Yorks & Humber and North-East to match his "North East England".
Update: Well, in the end I used his numbers by county to create a table that matches the regions. Here's a new and correct visualisation that shows Yorkshire where it should be, in the lead. Ernst Wilhelm Bohle lives!
Update: Well, in the end I used his numbers by county to create a table that matches the regions. Here's a new and correct visualisation that shows Yorkshire where it should be, in the lead. Ernst Wilhelm Bohle lives!
we give it straight, it ain't no trivia...
OK, so there's this Il-76 with something called "East Wing" stuck a week in northeastern Brazil on its way from Dakar to Cochabamba in Bolivia. Not the busiest route, you might think.
But "East Wing" was formed as a successor to none other than GST Aero, sez ATDB.aero; and out of their six aircraft, three are immediately ex-GST and another is none other than 23442218, the former ST-AQA of Phoenix Aviation and before that, GST. UP-I7622 has even more form. Serial number 3426765, she clocked up time at Air Cess, Air Pass, Centrafrican Airlines, and GST Aero - thus linking up the whole history of the Bout system, from the Swazi to the Central African to the Kazakh registry. Just to sign the lot, East Wing's ICAO code is EWZ - Air West/East West's was AWZ.
Further, Russia Today interviewed VB, and apparently the BBC broadcast something - anyone see it?
And this photo is a work of art. Jazz for the eyes, as someone said.
Update: Thanks to Matthieu in comments for this link to a New York Times story on Cochabamba, the place.
Update Update: Look who's reading the blog.
But "East Wing" was formed as a successor to none other than GST Aero, sez ATDB.aero; and out of their six aircraft, three are immediately ex-GST and another is none other than 23442218, the former ST-AQA of Phoenix Aviation and before that, GST. UP-I7622 has even more form. Serial number 3426765, she clocked up time at Air Cess, Air Pass, Centrafrican Airlines, and GST Aero - thus linking up the whole history of the Bout system, from the Swazi to the Central African to the Kazakh registry. Just to sign the lot, East Wing's ICAO code is EWZ - Air West/East West's was AWZ.
Further, Russia Today interviewed VB, and apparently the BBC broadcast something - anyone see it?
And this photo is a work of art. Jazz for the eyes, as someone said.
Update: Thanks to Matthieu in comments for this link to a New York Times story on Cochabamba, the place.
Cochabamba is on the western edge of the Chapare, the main coca-growing region in an otherwise impoverished country that is the world's second largest producer of cocaine. Farmers and chemicals for processing cocaine stream out of Cochabamba into the Chapare jungle. Awesome wealth flows back. ''The cocaine is without doubt the thing that yields the most money to this area,'' said Alfonso Canelas, a co-director with his father of Los Tiempos, Cochabamba's leading daily newspaper.Klaus Barbie? Now that's a detail that should be on the interwebs, the spiritual home of the lurid. Meanwhile, someone wants to know about Imtrec, in Russian.
Some of the major figures in the cocaine world have built mansions here and peasants have begun buying color television sets. The average Bolivian earns $500 annually. Some legitimate businessmen and some of the old families of Cochabamba say they resent the cocaine money. But the cocaine barons have nonetheless gained entry to the city's elite social clubs.
People still talk about the gala wedding a few years ago of a daughter of Roberto Suarez, a powerful drug dealer who was the subject of a cameo appearance in the violent film ''Scarface'' and who is now in jail. ''Almost everybody who counts was there,'' said a woman at the center of Cochabamba society. ''People who didn't get invited were really mad.''
Klaus Barbie, who was the Gestapo chief in Lyons, lived quietly in Cochabamba until shortly before he was deported in 1983 to France, where he was tried and sentenced to life in prison.
Update Update: Look who's reading the blog.
inetnum: 92.54.151.112 - 92.54.151.119And something called finansolymp.ru, which turns out to be a small ISP.
netname: UK-VTL-AVIENT-LTD-00184232
descr: Avient Ltd
country: GB
admin-c: GH2118-RIPE
tech-c: VINO3-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PA
mnt-by: VIATEL-MNT
source: RIPE # Filtered
Monday, November 17, 2008
the blog cabala and a wall of fire
This is fascinating; Laura Rozen has details of the Italian inquiry into the Abu Omar rendition case. You know the one - when the CIA agents foolishly brought their own roaming mobile phones and spent a fortune staying in Bondesque hotels. The really interesting thing is that the inquiry is throwing up more and more cross-links with the Italian branch of the Niger uranium story.
It seems, if I understand the document correctly, that the same semi-official skunkworks inside Italian military intelligence that was responsible for the Abu Omar case was also the point of contact for the effort to gin-up the WMD story - and the various other weird things going on with Michael Ledeen, Larry Franklin and pals. And it was also the handler of a journalist who the SISMI used to a) smear various journalists, and b) blame the French for the forgery.
Here is a sample of this material; it's no accident, surely, that it ended up on FreeRepublic.com in September, 2004. That joint must have been thick with dark actors playing games back then. Note also that the smear campaigners tailored the material to its use very carefully. The entire thrust of it is intended to flip the story on its head - rather than the reality, in which people very close to the US and Italian governments conspired to fake the WMD story for their own ends, the fake explains how the French conspired with a secret Democratic Party group, Laura Rozen, Josh Marshall, and Kevin Drum(!) to fake the fake documents, in order to attack "3B - Bush, Blair and Berlusconi". It's hella Stiftung.
It's also wonderfully wingnut, especially the bit in comments where some of them start arguing that Niger should be spelt properly, with two Gs, and others explain patiently that, no, it rhymes with "tiger".
But what I want to know about this is...what was in it for the Italians?
It seems, if I understand the document correctly, that the same semi-official skunkworks inside Italian military intelligence that was responsible for the Abu Omar case was also the point of contact for the effort to gin-up the WMD story - and the various other weird things going on with Michael Ledeen, Larry Franklin and pals. And it was also the handler of a journalist who the SISMI used to a) smear various journalists, and b) blame the French for the forgery.
Here is a sample of this material; it's no accident, surely, that it ended up on FreeRepublic.com in September, 2004. That joint must have been thick with dark actors playing games back then. Note also that the smear campaigners tailored the material to its use very carefully. The entire thrust of it is intended to flip the story on its head - rather than the reality, in which people very close to the US and Italian governments conspired to fake the WMD story for their own ends, the fake explains how the French conspired with a secret Democratic Party group, Laura Rozen, Josh Marshall, and Kevin Drum(!) to fake the fake documents, in order to attack "3B - Bush, Blair and Berlusconi". It's hella Stiftung.
It's also wonderfully wingnut, especially the bit in comments where some of them start arguing that Niger should be spelt properly, with two Gs, and others explain patiently that, no, it rhymes with "tiger".
But what I want to know about this is...what was in it for the Italians?
Sunday, November 16, 2008
the third decade, our move
Here's one political movement struggling with the technological environment, at the Washington Monthly:
Here's more, in an instant-classic post by Marc Lynch.
Frank Luntz, speaking at a panel discussion at the Republican Governors Association yesterday, noted Barack Obama's enormous email list. "He's got 10 million names and our candidate doesn't know how to use this," Luntz said, holding up a BlackBerry. "There is a problem there."Here's the real issue, though; the guy who's hammering them for not knowing anything about the Internet's best argument is that the other side have a huge pile of e-mail addresses. Luntz is thinking in terms of 1990s hard-right campaigning - blast-faxing, talk radio, direct mail, robocalls. We need to collect more e-mail addresses so we can spam them with talking points, beg for money, and push out plausibly deniable scare stories they can circulate. We'll club them to death with our spam.
Yes, and his running mate is so far behind, she thinks bloggers are pajama-clad basement-dwellers.
Here's more, in an instant-classic post by Marc Lynch.
In short, Movement X adapted very quickly and effectively to the multichannel television revolution.. but its competitors have caught up, its advantage has diminished, and it is not likely to ever again enjoy the TV advantage it had in the past. Information overload, intense competition and fragmentation, and the increasingly aggressive counter-ideology campaigns all stand in the way.You'll probably have guessed by now that Movement X is actually Al-Qa'ida. I suppressed it in this post and made a couple of small changes so as to point up the astonishing similarities. You may also notice that the last paragraph is a case of the Daniel Davies theory of Internet counter-mobilisation. But I found this bit especially interesting:
What about internet forums? Such forums allowed X to circumvent editors by posting videos and statements directly to forums where all news producers could pick them up directly - and once anybody, however obscure, ran with it the others were sure to follow. Beyond that, though, they were not really useful for mass audiences, who were unlikely to find their way to the forums, whether or not they were password protected. Instead, they were 'semi-public spheres' where those already committed to the identity could download materials and engage in arguments about tactics and strategy and doctrine. The forums built group cohesion, boosting morale and strengthening identity - and offering recruiters a pool of potentials.
But forums also had problems. Their audience was limited to those already at the second or even third stage of mobilization. The doctrinal arguments on the forums tended to reward the most doctrinaire at the expense of the pragmatists, arguably driving X's doctrine even farther from the mainstream. Sometimes, the debates could undermine morale or turn into open dissent, to the dismay of movement leaders.
This could potentially strengthen the 'organization' part... but at the expense of a greater distance from the pool of potential recruits who would not be sufficiently trusted to join. Overall it's hard to see how AQ could adapt social networking without creating such vulnerabilities. Its rivals, on the other hand, have no such problems - Muslim Brotherhood youth are all over Facebook.This is a special case of a general trend. Are we not seeing a structural shift away from the elite model of political organising - neoconservatives and Al-Qa'ida International, as opposed to its local franchises - towards something else we haven't quite defined yet, like the Obama campaign, the European Union, and Hezbollah? In the first, it's all about message discipline, ideological purity, and entryism. You seek inner purity in order to contaminate the others. In the second, it's almost as if you're aiming to be subverted yourself.
Thinktanks we can believe in
Did I say I like Touchstone?
But he ignores the fact that the European left did not soar in the polls within days of the Great Crash. It took a World War and 15 years - does Tony Barber really not know this, or does he not mind displaying faux ignorance so publically?Now that's thinktankery you can believe in. Policy Exchange? Pathetic. And who knew Two Brains was a concert-party star?
Mind you, at least his sin is only to appear ignorant. Gideon Rachman seems rather proud, for a journalist, of eschewing the real world for the claret-swilling elite in his fearless pursuit of the facts.
He stresses how vital it is to share vintage port over the cheese course with diplomats and politicians if you want to find out what’s really going on in the Middle East peace process and the Doha Development Round trade talks.
I’ve been to these country-house colloquia myself, and of course I love them to bits. I prefer Wilton Park to the Ditchley venue that Gideon cites, but that may be because last time I was at Ditchley I had to suffer the indignity of having my workshop report sung in the bar by Shadow Cabinet member David Willets to a piano accompaniment (the tune was “Waltzing Matilda”) by the then Director General of the OECD (I’m not making this up - how could you?)
But I do rather feel that I find out more about the Middle East from my Palestinian mate Fathi whose door got kicked down by Israeli goons who thought his son was a member of Hamas last time he went to a conference.
George Osborne: A National Embarrassment
George Osborne is not getting any better. His latest shaft of brilliance is to threaten everyone with a sterling crisis - Chris Dillow has details and more. The problem here is that for a start, he is deliberately beating the water to drive sharks away from his vulnerable ideological underbelly. The Conservatives' "economic plan" currently foresees a range of stupid and incoherent things - they are for tax cuts, specifically in employer National Insurance contributions, but the cuts are to be funded by spending cuts elsewhere, and savings in that eternal demagogue's standby, "waste".
So this isn't a response to the economic crisis in any way; a basic Keynesian accounting - and before you all speak up, this particular one is basic to essentially everyone's view of economics - shows us that aggregate demand equals (C+I+G+X)-(S+T) where C is consumption, I is investment, G is government spending, X is net exports, S is savings and T is taxation. If you reduce T, you obviously increase aggregate demand. But if you're paying for this by reducing G, the net effect depends on the percentage of an increase in income that isn't spent - the marginal propensity to save. The value in terms of aggregate demand of a tax cut is given by dT/(1/marginal propensity to save), known as the balanced budget multiplier. This can in fact be quite significant, for example if the tax change is highly progressive, so that the rich (who have a high marginal propensity to save) pay more and the poor (who don't - they don't have the spare cash) pay less.
Actually, even if the cut was to be paid for by borrowing, it still wouldn't help very much. The Tories intend to only cut NI for those businesses who haven't laid anyone off - which will be how many in a year's time? Surely, if they are consistent conservatives, they should be encouraging companies to sack people so as to bring about a fall in prices and the realignment of demand with long term aggregate supply? After all, if they still reject Keynes, as Osborne seems to, this is what they presumably want.
Sometimes, the inchoate voice of the Internet-at-large tells you more than any amount of data: like this.
Further, it is not any Conservative's place to complain that the pound is in jeopardy. The UK has been running a structural current-account deficit for many years, and the vast growth of the financial services sector is a consequence and apparently a deliberate one. When an economy has a current account deficit, this means it imports more than it exports. In order to pay for this, it needs to run a corresponding surplus on the capital account - it needs to import capital. Down at the micro level, this means that banks are lending money to people who want to buy imports, that the savings of exporters are not enough to fund this, and therefore that the banks must borrow on the wholesale market (or issue shares to overseas investors, etc).
A further important factor is the role of the housing economy; if house prices grow faster than GDP, which in the UK they always do during the boom phases, this means that the new mortgage lending cannot be funded from the repayments on the old, and that housing must import capital from the rest of the economy. And, as the rest of the economy has to import capital for its own needs, therefore the mortgage banks must use the world market for money.
As a further twist, the banks got very good at importing capital and then re-exporting it, taking a turn on the deal and therefore significantly contributing to the current account. Everyone who praised the growth of the City since 1986 implicitly supports this state of affairs. But all this is predicated on the import of capital, which implies a current account deficit and therefore a significant currency risk. (No wonder City Tories have no confidence in Osborne.) The Conservative Party, especially, has no right to complain about it whatsoever, having essentially invented this entire structural model, as Ross McKibbin explains in a now-seminal article.
But even this isn't the worst. Consider Osborne's actual remarks.
The electoral, regional and class distribution of the impact would also be helpful for the Conservatives - the costs would fall disproportionately in South-Eastern marginals and on swing voter groups, whereas the benefits would arrive later, handily after a hypothetical Chancellor Osborne took office, and would be concentrated in the export economy, that is to say in the West Midlands, the North, and the new town techie belt. Or,just where the Tories worry that they need to build strength in the long term.
And if you want to know the sort of thing they actually think is good for us, under the exoteric surface, check out this beauty from Alan Duncan. Constrained by the existing law, Dunc can't promise to get rid of your workplace rights, so instead he's hoping to scare people off exerting them, by making anyone who loses an industrial tribunal case pay the employer's costs. Now, that might well be appropriate in the majority of the civil law, but it's wildly inappropriate for employment law because of the structural inequality of power involved. Arguably, the ancient legal principle of "equality of arms" can only be maintained in this field if you can't be scared into silence by the risk of paying Sir Bufton Tufton QC's bill.
Mind you, there are reasons to be cheerful. Osborne has just staked his career on a forex trade, only weeks after making an enemy of Nathan Rothschild. And even super-europhobe Tory funder Stanley Kalms is making noises about needing "more heavyweight, more grey hair on the front bench"; if that isn't a reference to Kenneth Clarke I don't know what is. Who else could it be? Heavyweight rules out Redwood, Franciscus Mediocritus and a bunch of others. Grey hair? Can't be William Hague then..
So this isn't a response to the economic crisis in any way; a basic Keynesian accounting - and before you all speak up, this particular one is basic to essentially everyone's view of economics - shows us that aggregate demand equals (C+I+G+X)-(S+T) where C is consumption, I is investment, G is government spending, X is net exports, S is savings and T is taxation. If you reduce T, you obviously increase aggregate demand. But if you're paying for this by reducing G, the net effect depends on the percentage of an increase in income that isn't spent - the marginal propensity to save. The value in terms of aggregate demand of a tax cut is given by dT/(1/marginal propensity to save), known as the balanced budget multiplier. This can in fact be quite significant, for example if the tax change is highly progressive, so that the rich (who have a high marginal propensity to save) pay more and the poor (who don't - they don't have the spare cash) pay less.
Actually, even if the cut was to be paid for by borrowing, it still wouldn't help very much. The Tories intend to only cut NI for those businesses who haven't laid anyone off - which will be how many in a year's time? Surely, if they are consistent conservatives, they should be encouraging companies to sack people so as to bring about a fall in prices and the realignment of demand with long term aggregate supply? After all, if they still reject Keynes, as Osborne seems to, this is what they presumably want.
Sometimes, the inchoate voice of the Internet-at-large tells you more than any amount of data: like this.
What a lot of people who should have known better forgot at the election was - HE'S A TORY.
Further, it is not any Conservative's place to complain that the pound is in jeopardy. The UK has been running a structural current-account deficit for many years, and the vast growth of the financial services sector is a consequence and apparently a deliberate one. When an economy has a current account deficit, this means it imports more than it exports. In order to pay for this, it needs to run a corresponding surplus on the capital account - it needs to import capital. Down at the micro level, this means that banks are lending money to people who want to buy imports, that the savings of exporters are not enough to fund this, and therefore that the banks must borrow on the wholesale market (or issue shares to overseas investors, etc).
A further important factor is the role of the housing economy; if house prices grow faster than GDP, which in the UK they always do during the boom phases, this means that the new mortgage lending cannot be funded from the repayments on the old, and that housing must import capital from the rest of the economy. And, as the rest of the economy has to import capital for its own needs, therefore the mortgage banks must use the world market for money.
As a further twist, the banks got very good at importing capital and then re-exporting it, taking a turn on the deal and therefore significantly contributing to the current account. Everyone who praised the growth of the City since 1986 implicitly supports this state of affairs. But all this is predicated on the import of capital, which implies a current account deficit and therefore a significant currency risk. (No wonder City Tories have no confidence in Osborne.) The Conservative Party, especially, has no right to complain about it whatsoever, having essentially invented this entire structural model, as Ross McKibbin explains in a now-seminal article.
But even this isn't the worst. Consider Osborne's actual remarks.
Mr Osborne suggests that Mr Brown “doesn’t care” how much he borrows. “His view is he probably won’t win the next election. The Tories can clear this mess up after I’ve gone. That is deeply irresponsible. It’s a scorched-earth policy, which I think the history books will write up as a total disaster and which the public will see through between now and the election.”Osborne is being positively Straussian here, in attributing the worst of his own motives to others. And he's got form for this. After all, in the event of a major sterling crisis, he would stand to gain impressively, although for the reasons I've given above it would do the country a power of bad. It would look catastrophic, and the J-curve effect means that the short-term effect of devaluation is deflationary - the recession would initially be worse. Further, the sectors most affected by this would be finance (obviously) and the import-heavy consumer economy.
The electoral, regional and class distribution of the impact would also be helpful for the Conservatives - the costs would fall disproportionately in South-Eastern marginals and on swing voter groups, whereas the benefits would arrive later, handily after a hypothetical Chancellor Osborne took office, and would be concentrated in the export economy, that is to say in the West Midlands, the North, and the new town techie belt. Or,just where the Tories worry that they need to build strength in the long term.
And if you want to know the sort of thing they actually think is good for us, under the exoteric surface, check out this beauty from Alan Duncan. Constrained by the existing law, Dunc can't promise to get rid of your workplace rights, so instead he's hoping to scare people off exerting them, by making anyone who loses an industrial tribunal case pay the employer's costs. Now, that might well be appropriate in the majority of the civil law, but it's wildly inappropriate for employment law because of the structural inequality of power involved. Arguably, the ancient legal principle of "equality of arms" can only be maintained in this field if you can't be scared into silence by the risk of paying Sir Bufton Tufton QC's bill.
Mind you, there are reasons to be cheerful. Osborne has just staked his career on a forex trade, only weeks after making an enemy of Nathan Rothschild. And even super-europhobe Tory funder Stanley Kalms is making noises about needing "more heavyweight, more grey hair on the front bench"; if that isn't a reference to Kenneth Clarke I don't know what is. Who else could it be? Heavyweight rules out Redwood, Franciscus Mediocritus and a bunch of others. Grey hair? Can't be William Hague then..
the stars are right...
This looks like being the ultimate TYR event. Via Ballardian, yer man from BLDGBLOG is going to be speaking at UCL on the 26th November on Feral Cities and the Scientific Way of Warfare. Quote:
I can't help feeling that a Dadaist response is appropriate somehow.
At the very least, you'll get an early preview of Antoine's forthcoming book – in which he introduces the term chaoplexic warfare in a survey of everything from ant "swarms" and the use of 18th-century battlefield metaphors to the distributed geographies of the Russian mafia, the Medellín drug cartel, and Al-Qaeda – and that's already quite a lot right there.It's being organised by the Complex Terrain Lab. And it's going to be held in the J.Z. Young Lecture Theatre - yes, that's J.Z. Young as in the squid expert. Surely I can't miss that? We could make this into a little rantercon, perhaps.
I can't help feeling that a Dadaist response is appropriate somehow.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)