So - it's official. We are to have a referendum on the European Constitution. And - of course - we are going to vote No. What happens next, no-one is very sure of. This depresses me deeply. After all this time, says Blair, we are going to have the grand showdown argument to whack the Eurosceptics for good. Just like the one we were meant to have about the Euro. We'll still be having that one, at some time in the future, in case anyone is worried about running out of misrepresentations, self-seeking and nonsense. I've never been very convinced by this argument that a referendum will part the seas and finally revolutionise the popular perception of Europe - it seems to me more like hurrying to hell than brilliant statesmanship, especially now with the astonishing degree of hatred for Tony Blair that exists in the country. For some time now, even before I parted company with The Party, I've not been able to understand the conventional wisdom that Mr. Blair is generally loved. In fact, as far back as 2000, I've been more impressed by the ferocious loathing so many people harbour for him personally. I wonder to what extent those old stellar poll ratings were really a reflection of the government's success dragging up the prime minister, not the other way round?
Now, with equal loathing on the Left and Iraq all over his face, what chance a revolution in opinion at his behest?
Most depressing of all is the widespread story that Irwin Steltzer, Rupert Murdoch's pet economist, was the agent of Blair's decision when he supposedly informed the prime minister that the Murdoch press "would not support Labour at the next election". And this is the national sovereignty they claim to defend. Government policy is reversed at the drop of a hat, without debate, without reasons, without Cabinets, without Parliament, on the say-so of the friend of a denationalised Australian resident in the United States, with menaces. This was nothing but blackmail. But it points up a crucial, perhaps the crucial myth of the Blair years.
This is the delusion that the Murdoch press support Labour. It is held especially strongly by those closest to the Prime Minister, I suppose because of the psychological phenomenon that, placed under stress, we tend to revert to the plans and perceptions we learnt first. Hence the flying instructors' maxim that "it's important to learn the right way first time; the way you first learn it is the way you will react in an emergency." Back in 1996-97, the first taste of power for the Blair team, the operational code of the day was to trim to the (albeit minimal) concessions given by the yellow press whilst bashing the Tories with all available means and attempting to divide opposition through triangulation. They learned it from Bill Clinton's staff and put it into practice with success. That perceptual fix is still there, and each crisis sees them reaching back to it.
The problem is, of course, that the facts have changed and the ideas have not.
Whatever promises of support were ever given to Blair have not been borne out by reality. From 1997 on, the four-barrelled barrage continues. The Sun, the Times, the Mail, the Telegraph - they pour on the vitriol daily with astonishing and probably unprecedented ferocity. Europe is the issue on which the ferocity is greatest, the unity most pronounced and the distortions most severe. And this is support? Is handing over what appears to be a pre-emptive veto on policy in general really a price worth whatever insignificant reduction in violence this "support" adds up to? The Government has an abusive relationship with Murdoch. However viciously he behaves, they cling to their promises. Oh, I know I can change him. He loves me really. Smack! Get hold of that you whore! But they aren't going to leave, and he's not going to change. They usually don't. And the longer this goes on, the worse the consequences will be in the end.
Does anyone honestly believe, for example, that now Mr. Murdoch has the latest concession tucked away his papers will not mount a savage anti-EU and anti-Blair referendum campaign? If such a paragon of good will exists and reads this, they may be educated by today's headline in the Sun. They have chosen to demonstrate the promised support by a splash in at least 72 point red lettering that "97% SAY NO!" (God knows what Uzbek polling methodology was used to get that result) The agenda is to get the referendum held as soon as possible, win it, and boost Michael Howard into power on a withdrawal ticket. Which means, I suppose, we're all going to have to sign up to help win the referendum. Which means supporting Tony Blair. What bliss.
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Monday, April 19, 2004
Logistics crisis in Iraq - and the negotiations
More and more reports suggest that the Coalition and specifically the US Army and Marines in Iraq are having serious difficulties keeping open the roads. This was no doubt behind the announcement that several major highways would be closed to civilian traffic, despite the rather pathetic attempt to spin this as "repairs". After all, by the time they got to the line about repairs they had already declared that any "civilians that attempt to drive on these roads may be "considered anti-coalition forces"", or to put it another way, shot. (link to Back to Iraq) The New York Times reports above that
Horrors! The spooks, spin doctors and staffies of the Green Zone reduced to eating the rations of the troops. No more turkeys, plastic or otherwise, if the main supply route closes... Reuters further reports that bridges have been blown between Baghdad and Hilla on the main road south, and the Washington Post reports that, even paying $700 per trip, Kellogg, Brown and Root are unable to hire Iraqi drivers. This is not good. Perhaps, though, there might be some positives. I wonder what influence the emerging logistics crisis has had on the negotiations outside Fallujah and Najaf - perhaps these have been given a chance due to the army's troubles?
"But a senior American official said Saturday that the cutoff in supplies reaching the American occupation authority's headquarters in Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace in central Baghdad were approaching a critical point. Canteens feeding 2,000 people, civilians as well as military personnel, may soon be forced to serve combat rations in plastic sleeves, known as meals ready to eat."
Horrors! The spooks, spin doctors and staffies of the Green Zone reduced to eating the rations of the troops. No more turkeys, plastic or otherwise, if the main supply route closes... Reuters further reports that bridges have been blown between Baghdad and Hilla on the main road south, and the Washington Post reports that, even paying $700 per trip, Kellogg, Brown and Root are unable to hire Iraqi drivers. This is not good. Perhaps, though, there might be some positives. I wonder what influence the emerging logistics crisis has had on the negotiations outside Fallujah and Najaf - perhaps these have been given a chance due to the army's troubles?
Which New York Times Columnist Are You?
You are Paul Krugman! You're a brilliant economist
with a knack for both making sense of the
current economic situation and exposing the
Bush administration's lies about it. You
somehow came out as the best anti-war writer on
the Op-Ed staff. Other economists hate your
guts for selling out to the liberals. To hell
with 'em.
Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
Admin - blogroll changes
I've changed the way the Ranter's blogroll works. From now on, blogs with RSS/XML feeds will be included in the RSS display under Ranter Coverage. Blogs without will simply be linked. At the moment I can't display Atom feeds, so Atom users will get a link but not feed coverage. We welcome British Spin, Bloggerheads, Overstated.net and Ray Girvan to the Ranter.
Saturday, April 17, 2004
Vouchers, vouchers, vouchers
I recently commented on this blog entry concerning the Right's fascination with vouchers - education vouchers, health vouchers - and some possible extensions. They seem to consider that all problems may be solved simply by invoking the magic of vouchers. A couple of things stand out: firstly, what's the point of a voucher? The entire argument for them is based on an analogy with perfect competition theory - all those little rational utility maximisers will simply grab their vouchers and flock to the best school/hospital/whatever and the others will either Shape Up! or Go To The Wall! But why should the nanny state presume to tell people how much they should spend on education (or whatever), then? Why not hand out a briefcase of cash for each sprog, and set the parents free to take responsibility for their own decisions? (Tory Langue de Bois set to OFF)
After all, whatever decision they came up with would be a logically valid choice based on their individual preferences as represented by an indifference curve, and taken in the totality of all choices would represent the most efficient distribution of resources at any given moment - at least if you believe in this stuff. The reason why they won't is, of course, that they don't trust Dave and Brandee Forklift not to spend it all on vitamin Stella (or conversely, Hugh and Cressida de Bolleaux to spend it on sherry). Which implies that some choices are better than others and that, after all, the state knows best. Which doesn't leave the argument in terribly good shape. But leaving that aside, why not extend vouchers into other fields of government? Why not issue each citizen with a defence voucher equivalent to their share of the MOD budget, to spend as they see fit? If they consider themselves threatened by any international crisis, they would take the voucher to whatever army or, I suppose, private security contractor offered the operational plan they preferred. Obviously, the one who out-competed would collect. Simple, I feel, and elegant.
For a start, it neatly solves the problem of getting the disciplines of private business into the subsidy-bloated deep state. It disposes of the prejudices and preconceptions of staff officers in favour of the scientific certainties of The Market. It forces public agencies to compete and hence seek efficiency, and opens up the possibility of the privatisation to end all privatisations - selling off the armed forces! If all the MOD does is to whack out the vouchers, why should it also run the service? And if not all the vouchers go to our army - and they won't, if only due to being left under sofas, torn up by pacifists, etc - the budget will steadily reduce, forcing yet better performance or more likely worse! If it's worse, the customers will go elsewhere and it will shrink and be privatised - in fact, it's exactly what Kenneth Baker wanted to do with education.
It's the modern way!
After all, whatever decision they came up with would be a logically valid choice based on their individual preferences as represented by an indifference curve, and taken in the totality of all choices would represent the most efficient distribution of resources at any given moment - at least if you believe in this stuff. The reason why they won't is, of course, that they don't trust Dave and Brandee Forklift not to spend it all on vitamin Stella (or conversely, Hugh and Cressida de Bolleaux to spend it on sherry). Which implies that some choices are better than others and that, after all, the state knows best. Which doesn't leave the argument in terribly good shape. But leaving that aside, why not extend vouchers into other fields of government? Why not issue each citizen with a defence voucher equivalent to their share of the MOD budget, to spend as they see fit? If they consider themselves threatened by any international crisis, they would take the voucher to whatever army or, I suppose, private security contractor offered the operational plan they preferred. Obviously, the one who out-competed would collect. Simple, I feel, and elegant.
For a start, it neatly solves the problem of getting the disciplines of private business into the subsidy-bloated deep state. It disposes of the prejudices and preconceptions of staff officers in favour of the scientific certainties of The Market. It forces public agencies to compete and hence seek efficiency, and opens up the possibility of the privatisation to end all privatisations - selling off the armed forces! If all the MOD does is to whack out the vouchers, why should it also run the service? And if not all the vouchers go to our army - and they won't, if only due to being left under sofas, torn up by pacifists, etc - the budget will steadily reduce, forcing yet better performance or more likely worse! If it's worse, the customers will go elsewhere and it will shrink and be privatised - in fact, it's exactly what Kenneth Baker wanted to do with education.
It's the modern way!
AC/DC in Iraq - Highway to Hell!
It is reported that a US Army psychological operations team is broadcasting the songs of AC/DC, combined with a nice line in taunts ("You shoot like a goat herder!" Well, I rather suspect Iraqi goat herders are the sort of folk who learn to shoot straight before they can walk, but it's the thought that counts..), into the centre of Fallujah. How conciliatory. Other reports give the strong impression that some fighting continues despite the negotiations - that Yahoo News story mentions snipers and even an AC-130 sortie - I wonder if the talks are really not much more than a battlefield clearing? Certainly, it seems that this week's hope - the Anglo-Iranian attempt to mediate between al-Sadr and the US - has been wrecked. The Washington Post reports that US officials in Iraq had "rebuffed" these approaches. Well, there goes the only way out of this with honour that has presented itself so far. The backstory to this was that British representatives in Basra have been pursuing a private and little-reported entente with Iran, entirely in accordance with British policy but not, of course, with the CPA neo-cons' world view. The idea was to get the world's only Shia power to make representations to al-Sadr to call off his dog and work out a modus vivendi. Oh well, so much for our special influence..the Iranian foreign minister now simply says that "the US should leave Iraq as quickly as possible".
From the same Washington Post report, it would seem that AC/DC are just the band for the situation. Highway to Hell?
From the same Washington Post report, it would seem that AC/DC are just the band for the situation. Highway to Hell?
"On Saturday, the U.S. military closed sections of two major north-south highways that run from Baghdad, in a sign of the increased danger of kidnappings and bombings on roadways. "Civilians that attempt to drive on these roads may be considered anti-coalition forces and risk being subject to attack," a military statement said."
Friday, April 16, 2004
BBC - CRB brands innocent citizens criminals
Our beloved Criminal Records Bureau has apparently owned up to incorrectly listing some 193 persons as convicted criminals, usually by mis-associating applicants with similar names to criminals on the police national computer. This is fairly typical of David Blunkett's brilliant idea, which famously couldn't actually check criminal records much and took three months to process my own CRB clearance. But what lends it significance is, of course, the Home Office bureaucrats' messianic confidence that they could make an ID card system flawlessly efficient. They deny that it would be difficult, or that anyone might be falsely accused. On this showing, it should be blindingly obvious that the original data for such a system is riddled with nonsense - about 3.6 million wrong or missing records (link to report, Spyblog article), not to mention the processing of it. And don't even think about the government's traditional cluelessness about anything to do with IT.
No surprises, though, I suppose - the people who fucked up the CRB will be in charge of ID cards!
Fills you with confidence.
No surprises, though, I suppose - the people who fucked up the CRB will be in charge of ID cards!
"John Denham did not seem to impressed with the assertions from Katherine Courtney (Director Identity Cards Programme) about the Office of Government Commerce Gateway Review process (which does not officially start until January ) with respect to this ID Card project. He noted that these were the same people who signed off on the disastrous and much less ambitious Criminal Records Bureau project.
Katherine Courtney also seemed to utter the words "literally impossible to forge" (which we will check with the transcript), which is a statement that is only ever heard from the Home Office, and not even from the most eager and enthusiastic sales people from the biometric industry itself."
Fills you with confidence.
A Brief Guide to the Non-War so far...
GlobalSecurity.org has a useful list of US Army and Marine operations in Iraq. Here goes:
Great aren't they? The putative assault on Najaf, should it occur, rejoices in the title of Op. Duke Fortitude, which some bloggers believe is a reference to Garry Trudeau's cartoon strip, Doonesbury. But - could they get any tougher, or any more propagandistic? They are beginning to sound like the way in which weird and incompetent-but-vicious rebel bands in West Africa like to use the terminology of the Western way of war: "Captain Value special forces for LURD!" or "Operation Pay Yourself", both from Liberia, crazed child soldiers calling themselves generals, Operation Rifles Fury, "listening to the silent majority" - pick the odd ones out!
Operations
Operation PLANET X (15 May 2003)
Operation PENINSULA STRIKE (9 June - 12 June 2003)
Operation DESERT SCORPION (15 June 2003 - ?)
Operation SCORPION STING
Operation SPARTAN SCORPION
Operation SIDEWINDER (29 June - 07 July 2003)
Operation SODA MOUNTAIN (12 July - 17 July 2003)
Operation IVY SERPENT (12 July 2003 - ?)
Operation IVY NEEDLE (26 August 2003 - ?)
Operation Longstreet (September 2003 - )
Operation CHAMBERLAIN (15 October 2003 - )
Operation SWEENEY (15 October 2003 - )
Operation Ivy Cyclone (07 November 2003 - )
Operation Ivy Cyclone II (17 November 2003 - )
Operation Iron Hammer (12 November 2003 - )
Operation Bulldog Mammoth (4 December 2003 - )
Operation Red Dawn (13 December 2003)
Operation Iron Justice (18 December 2003 - )
Operation Rifles Fury (21 December 2003 - )
Operation Iron Grip (24 December 2003)
Operation Market Sweep (13 Jan 2004)
Operation Saber Turner II (Feb 2004)
Operation Trailblazer (Feb 2004)
Operation Iron Promise (Mar 2004)
Operation Suicide Kings (17 Mar 2004)
Operation Devil Thrust (?? Mar 2004)
Operation Vigilant Resolve (5 Apr 2004)
Operation Resolute Sword (8 Apr 2004)
Great aren't they? The putative assault on Najaf, should it occur, rejoices in the title of Op. Duke Fortitude, which some bloggers believe is a reference to Garry Trudeau's cartoon strip, Doonesbury. But - could they get any tougher, or any more propagandistic? They are beginning to sound like the way in which weird and incompetent-but-vicious rebel bands in West Africa like to use the terminology of the Western way of war: "Captain Value special forces for LURD!" or "Operation Pay Yourself", both from Liberia, crazed child soldiers calling themselves generals, Operation Rifles Fury, "listening to the silent majority" - pick the odd ones out!
Thursday, April 15, 2004
"When we get to the far side, I've got absolutely no clue where we are going."
Another damn good WaPo article from Iraq
"A few miles to the south, at 4:30 a.m., Capt. John Combs, the convoy commander, radioed back, "This is a known ambush point." It was a message he repeated frequently on the first part of the journey.
Near dawn, he radioed back with another worrisome message: The bridge ahead had been hit with explosives. "We'll have to find another route, maybe through Baghdad," Combs said. An hour later he called to report that the convoy had adopted Plan C: "The bridge at the secondary route is untenable, so we're going with a new route."
(just in case you thought our near-obsessive focus on Iraq was weakening)
"A few miles to the south, at 4:30 a.m., Capt. John Combs, the convoy commander, radioed back, "This is a known ambush point." It was a message he repeated frequently on the first part of the journey.
Near dawn, he radioed back with another worrisome message: The bridge ahead had been hit with explosives. "We'll have to find another route, maybe through Baghdad," Combs said. An hour later he called to report that the convoy had adopted Plan C: "The bridge at the secondary route is untenable, so we're going with a new route."
(just in case you thought our near-obsessive focus on Iraq was weakening)
CPS - still a hive of indolence?
The Guardian is currently running a series of reports by the excellent Nick Davies on the criminal justice system and how crap it is (I paraphrase). Today's story focused on the huge percentage of trials that simply don't happen because the bureaucracy bungles, people don't turn up, the court is double booked (really).
Indeed. Years ago I worked for the CPS, and that would have been a fair characterisation of our office. Remove the Chelsea flower show (we were in Bradford), but include the great piles of files slumbering on the floor, in doorways, on desks...and the computers installed in 1982 that did file tracking but nothing else, not even word processing...and the entire rape case I found in a wastepaper basket... I don't recall anyone being caught sleeping, but certainly about 50% of the people in the office at any one time were doing nothing. We had a pompous-git lawyer whose chief recreation was bullying women and phoning me at my desk to ask me to make phone calls. We had two women who did nothing but chat across their desks and glare at people, surrounded by sleeping files. We had a chap called Shahid who went to Pakistan without telling anyone and, once the heat was on, reported sick so as to keep drawing his pay. I suppose it amounted to a prince's ransom in Pakistani rupees. Not that his frequent absences prior to that affected the unsmooth functioning of "H Team". We had the manager who told me "Do not use your initiative!" Bwaagh. I thought things had got better - I am told that West Yorkshire is now a model of efficiency - but it seems that some traditions, at least, are being kept up.
"A lot of CPS lawyers make a huge effort to avoid work - it is a civil service career without the same responsibility as private lawyers. There is a vacuum in management, from the middle up.
Last week I was in the office and a senior lawyer was sitting at his desk, fast asleep, while his manager sat just four or five feet away, taking not a blind bit of notice. No one even queries it. CPS lawyers spend a lot of time finding excuses to pass on files to somebody else. They will just dump files on somebody else's desk with a memo sticker saying, 'You worked on this earlier,' or some other excuse. And there is a massive sickness rate, with people just not turning up for work. If you have a bad court coming up, you phone in sick and leave it to somebody else, even if that does mean that witnesses and police and court staff all have a wasted morning. Our head of trials went off sick. We needed to check something with him; he was at the Chelsea flower show."
Indeed. Years ago I worked for the CPS, and that would have been a fair characterisation of our office. Remove the Chelsea flower show (we were in Bradford), but include the great piles of files slumbering on the floor, in doorways, on desks...and the computers installed in 1982 that did file tracking but nothing else, not even word processing...and the entire rape case I found in a wastepaper basket... I don't recall anyone being caught sleeping, but certainly about 50% of the people in the office at any one time were doing nothing. We had a pompous-git lawyer whose chief recreation was bullying women and phoning me at my desk to ask me to make phone calls. We had two women who did nothing but chat across their desks and glare at people, surrounded by sleeping files. We had a chap called Shahid who went to Pakistan without telling anyone and, once the heat was on, reported sick so as to keep drawing his pay. I suppose it amounted to a prince's ransom in Pakistani rupees. Not that his frequent absences prior to that affected the unsmooth functioning of "H Team". We had the manager who told me "Do not use your initiative!" Bwaagh. I thought things had got better - I am told that West Yorkshire is now a model of efficiency - but it seems that some traditions, at least, are being kept up.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
Your crime? Other...
SpyBlog reports that contracts have been issued for a database of information on children in Lewisham, partly at least as a pilot for the national record of all kids planned under the Children Bill. Now, this idea came up as a result of the investigation into the Victoria Climbie case, but it's very hard not to see a strong link with ID cards - after all, if you were trying to set up an ID card scheme, wouldn't you want a database of all new people as a start? It would appear that the users of this new system will be able to flag any child's record with a "notification of concern" for a wide variety of reasons - in fact, too many reasons.
Apart from obvious and reasonable ones, like health concern, suicide or self-harm risk, drug abuse, bullying and the like, there are some real shockers. They could apparently start a file on your kids for reasons like these:
"Denies part in/does not believe commits anti-social behaviour" (so - if you are innocent you are obviously a real bastard!)
"Non-constructive spare time/easily bored" (Is there any child who this does not apply to? And isn't it just so New Labour to want to keep a searchable database of anyone found doing "non-constructive" things in their spare time - you know, so they can make you do something more dull.)
"Criminal area of residence" (WHAT? Does this mean any kid in a postcode considered dodgy can be monitored?)
And, to cap the lot, "OTHER".
Personally, this horrifies me - Christ only knows what horrors Bradford Council's files contain about my school life, for a start. Clearly, Martin Sixsmith's novel isn't quite as bad as I assumed (it postulates a near future where the government wants to issue parenting licences).
Apart from obvious and reasonable ones, like health concern, suicide or self-harm risk, drug abuse, bullying and the like, there are some real shockers. They could apparently start a file on your kids for reasons like these:
"Denies part in/does not believe commits anti-social behaviour" (so - if you are innocent you are obviously a real bastard!)
"Non-constructive spare time/easily bored" (Is there any child who this does not apply to? And isn't it just so New Labour to want to keep a searchable database of anyone found doing "non-constructive" things in their spare time - you know, so they can make you do something more dull.)
"Criminal area of residence" (WHAT? Does this mean any kid in a postcode considered dodgy can be monitored?)
And, to cap the lot, "OTHER".
Personally, this horrifies me - Christ only knows what horrors Bradford Council's files contain about my school life, for a start. Clearly, Martin Sixsmith's novel isn't quite as bad as I assumed (it postulates a near future where the government wants to issue parenting licences).
And there's more - co-ordinated bridge blowing in Iraq
Insurgents Display New Sophistication
The Washington Post reports that Iraqi insurgents have apparently been tracking the movement of the US 1st Infantry Division units sent south from the Baghdad area and arranging for bridges to be blown up ahead of them.
Neither is this very encouraging:
Meanwhile, some kind of record in stupidity was set by the CPA spokesman, Dan Senor, when he stated that they were "listening to the silent majority". You couldn't make it up. It's worrying that the best men the United States could find seem to be provincial PR execs who have never previously left the country, but I suppose there is a tradition for this. (Didn't Harry Truman think that Stalin was just like a now-obscure party boss in Kansas City?) In the old saying: Luck will do for skill, but not consistently..
The Washington Post reports that Iraqi insurgents have apparently been tracking the movement of the US 1st Infantry Division units sent south from the Baghdad area and arranging for bridges to be blown up ahead of them.
""The dropping of the bridges was very interesting, because it showed a regional or even a national level of organization," Pittard said in an interview. He said insurgents appeared to be sending information southward, communicating about routes being taken by U.S. forces and then getting sufficient amounts of explosives to key bridges ahead of the convoys."
Neither is this very encouraging:
"In a separate ambush east of Najaf, a group of fighters suspected to be part of Sadr's militia let a group of six U.S. armored vehicles pass their position, then placed obstacles across the highway behind them, cutting off their line of retreat. The armored vehicles were forced to move forward across a bridge. While they were on the bridge approaching a police checkpoint, Iraqi fighters, some of them wearing police uniforms, began firing on them. No U.S. troops were hurt in the incident."
Meanwhile, some kind of record in stupidity was set by the CPA spokesman, Dan Senor, when he stated that they were "listening to the silent majority". You couldn't make it up. It's worrying that the best men the United States could find seem to be provincial PR execs who have never previously left the country, but I suppose there is a tradition for this. (Didn't Harry Truman think that Stalin was just like a now-obscure party boss in Kansas City?) In the old saying: Luck will do for skill, but not consistently..
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
Troops in Iraq Strain to Hold Lines of Supply
New York Times: Troops in Iraq Strain to Hold Lines of Supply
This is not good. Some news stories recently have given me the strong impression that the world focus on the centres of drama in Iraq - Fallujah and Najaf - has obscured a worsening crisis in the countryside, and that the coalition is quite happy that this is so.
This is not good. Some news stories recently have given me the strong impression that the world focus on the centres of drama in Iraq - Fallujah and Najaf - has obscured a worsening crisis in the countryside, and that the coalition is quite happy that this is so.
""We've had to take extraordinary steps to get stuff to them, fighting to open up some of the routes," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the deputy director of military operations, said in a telephone interview from Baghdad about clearing the supply routes.
General Kimmitt told reporters that none of the routes in Iraq were now classified by the military as "black" or "red," meaning too dangerous to use. But he said most were "amber," a classification that means convoy operators assume "a certain measure of risk." He added, "It is certainly not green yet."
Collapse of authority
Well, resuming blogging after a break over Easter, it's time to round up the Iraq situation. (I know, it's been a very Iraq blog lately but it's hardly surprising, no?) Although the initial crisis now seems to be past, or at least in suspension, we can't honestly believe things are getting any better. Not when two helicopters have been shot down in two nights - an AH64 Apache, and a MH53 Pave Hawk. Note that last one. It was destroyed near Fallujah, and the US spokesmen stated that it did not belong to the US Marines operating there. It certainly didn't - the MH53 is the fancy special forces variant of the UH53 Blackhawk transport, which suggests that their helicopter-shooting party is getting good. And, for the first time, we have a hostage problem. Although the some have been released, the agenda is pretty clear - kick the fear up a notch and spread the targets. Two coalition states have decided to withdraw, and one (the Ukraine) has admitted that its force in Iraq was "not fit for hostilities" when it was chased out of Kut. There is now ample evidence that the various Iraqi paramilitary forces are unreliable at best. Although al-Sadr's militia have apparently permitted Iraqi police in Najaf to return to their police stations, one has to wonder how far that development just represents a legitimisation of Shia street muscle - if the cops are the rebels, it makes sense to put them back in charge.
President Bush's remarks yesterday - when he declared that "gangs" were behind it all, but in the same sentence said they were "trying to make a statement before June 30th", thus neatly contradicting his own attempt to deny them any political agenda or legitimacy - demonstrate the gap between reality and understanding. The situation is in some ways very comparable with certain phases of the Vietnam war, however much screaming and moaning this evokes - the forces the US is trying to build up have proven to be a means of supplying the other side with arms, to the extent that when the US Marines reoccupied Kut they had to disarm the police. There seems to be none of what was called psycho-political control back then - and this is a question of legitimacy, most of all.
Good story here (Washington Post). Note the reference to members of the ICDC. And what about this new policy? BBC News
President Bush's remarks yesterday - when he declared that "gangs" were behind it all, but in the same sentence said they were "trying to make a statement before June 30th", thus neatly contradicting his own attempt to deny them any political agenda or legitimacy - demonstrate the gap between reality and understanding. The situation is in some ways very comparable with certain phases of the Vietnam war, however much screaming and moaning this evokes - the forces the US is trying to build up have proven to be a means of supplying the other side with arms, to the extent that when the US Marines reoccupied Kut they had to disarm the police. There seems to be none of what was called psycho-political control back then - and this is a question of legitimacy, most of all.
Good story here (Washington Post). Note the reference to members of the ICDC. And what about this new policy? BBC News
"Many newly-trained Iraqi police and army personnel refused to fight Shia and Sunni rebels in the recent unrest, the head of US Central Command says.
Gen John Abizaid said this was a "great disappointment" - and announced the coalition would draw top officers from the disbanded army of Saddam Hussein."
Thursday, April 08, 2004
More horrors, Ranter proved right. Sometimes I really don't like me
In a long post on the Shia uprising in Iraq on Tuesday, I argued that the Mahdi Army was following a strategy seen in numerous civil wars - seizing the locations of legitimate power and co-opting the police and administration. According to this story in the Indy, I was right..
And there's more..
Indeed. With the police, paramilitaries and others either supportive or thoroughly intimidated and at least one coalition force (the Ukrainians in Kut) apparently beaten, it isn't looking good. But this is futile gloating in the light of the US airstrike on a mosque in Fallujah, in which as many as 40 people may have died. US officers quite correctly referred to international law, citing the principle that a protected location or person loses that status if they are used for military purposes. Quite right, although one might argue that the attack was disproportionate to the direct military advantage expected, a test which is used in this case. Not that this will do any good in terms of ethics, or of policy.
""The Americans are just as bad as Saddam Hussein," said Hamid al-Ugily, the leader of six men from Sadr city carrying a green flag who are spending two to three days walking to Kerbala. "We think they will attack Muqtada in Najaf. We will defend our religious leaders." What is menacing for the US is that all of the men marching to Kerbala, something they once did secretly under Saddam Hussein, are soldiers in the Iraqi Civil Defence Corps (ICDC)."
And there's more..
"If the US army uses its massive fire power to fight its way into Najaf in pursuit of Sadr it well be seen by Shias as a repetition of the Iraqi army offensive. This was against rebels in Najaf and Kerbala during their great uprising against Saddam Hussein at the end of the first Gulf War in 1991.
In many of the southern cities of Iraq where Shia are the majority of the population, the local Iraqi police and paramilitary units - supposedly under orders from the coalition - have shown they are not prepared to fight fellow Shia in the Mehdi army."
Indeed. With the police, paramilitaries and others either supportive or thoroughly intimidated and at least one coalition force (the Ukrainians in Kut) apparently beaten, it isn't looking good. But this is futile gloating in the light of the US airstrike on a mosque in Fallujah, in which as many as 40 people may have died. US officers quite correctly referred to international law, citing the principle that a protected location or person loses that status if they are used for military purposes. Quite right, although one might argue that the attack was disproportionate to the direct military advantage expected, a test which is used in this case. Not that this will do any good in terms of ethics, or of policy.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
"It Seemed Like Everyone In The City Who Had A Gun Was Out There"
Damn good coverage from the Washington Post of the Fallujah battle - which rather invalidates the last sentence of the last post. The US Marines have an institutional history of being rather better at political war than the Army, going back to their 19th century role in Latin America - as evidenced by this quote:
I think that was the point I was trying to make earlier. But it doesn't bode well that AC130 Spectre gunships were called in - even if they are trying to avoid using the "big guns", there are few more devastating forms of supporting firepower than one of these.
"One Marine officer described that attack as a piece of "well-organized street theater" that was designed to "whip up a mob mentality." He said local Muslim clerics had issued an order saying the mutilation of the corpses was an offense to Islam, but that a locally made videotape of the attack was already selling in many shops."
I think that was the point I was trying to make earlier. But it doesn't bode well that AC130 Spectre gunships were called in - even if they are trying to avoid using the "big guns", there are few more devastating forms of supporting firepower than one of these.
Getting worse - al-Sadr supposedly controls Najaf
CNN link
Same pattern again - target the political space of power. God knows what will happen if they have to get them out of the Imam Ali mosque - not a good place to be letting off the big guns, especially as the man himself has taken up residence in it. Did nobody see that one coming?Back to Iraq quotes the insane statement of Bremer's in the CNN story and points out that a fat 77% of the Iraqi population lives in the towns currently experiencing fighting.
In Fallujah,things are worse, and they ain't great in Nasiriyah either. In fact, the fighting in Nasiriyah sounds well-planned:
So - as well as the police station, the mosque and the governor's palace, those bridges that the US Marines had so much pain securing in the war (the last war?). According to Der Standard, three US soldiers were killed storming al-Sadr's party offices in Baghdad. Der Standard is also the first media source I have seen to pick up on the issue of al-Sadr's presence in the Imam Ali mosque as mentioned above - good work, Austrians. The BBC news ticker is currently announcing that "US soldiers control part of Fallujah after heavy fighting". Given that they are occupying it, this is one of those lines that says less than it seems.
"Supporters of maverick Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr controlled government, religious and security buildings in the holy city of Najaf early Tuesday evening, according to a coalition source in southern Iraq.
The source said al-Sadr's followers controlled the governor's office, police stations and the Imam Ali mosque, one of Shia Muslim's holiest shrines.
Iraqi police were negotiating to regain their stations, the source said.
The source also said al-Sadr was busing followers into Najaf from Sadr City in Baghdad and that many members of his outlawed militia, Mehdi's Army, were from surrounding provinces."
Same pattern again - target the political space of power. God knows what will happen if they have to get them out of the Imam Ali mosque - not a good place to be letting off the big guns, especially as the man himself has taken up residence in it. Did nobody see that one coming?Back to Iraq quotes the insane statement of Bremer's in the CNN story and points out that a fat 77% of the Iraqi population lives in the towns currently experiencing fighting.
In Fallujah,things are worse, and they ain't great in Nasiriyah either. In fact, the fighting in Nasiriyah sounds well-planned:
"About 500 Italian troops came under fire as they launched a pre-dawn operation to dislodge fighters controlling key bridges in Nasiriya.
The Italians returned fire and, after a gunbattle, regained control of the bridges, said a statement issued in Rome by the Italian defence ministry."
So - as well as the police station, the mosque and the governor's palace, those bridges that the US Marines had so much pain securing in the war (the last war?). According to Der Standard, three US soldiers were killed storming al-Sadr's party offices in Baghdad. Der Standard is also the first media source I have seen to pick up on the issue of al-Sadr's presence in the Imam Ali mosque as mentioned above - good work, Austrians. The BBC news ticker is currently announcing that "US soldiers control part of Fallujah after heavy fighting". Given that they are occupying it, this is one of those lines that says less than it seems.
Nuclear explosions - illegal in UK!
Thanks to the excellent Spy Blog, the blog operated by the Watching Them Watching Us campaign for the regulation of surveillance technology, I now know that the controversial Anti-Terrorism, Crime, and Security Act 2001 made it a criminal offence to "detonate a nuclear weapon in the UK without permission". What? All these years it was quite legal to let off nukes - and I never even tried! And - where do you apply for permission?
Prosaically, I suppose the bit about permission is to cover the possibility that the govt. might one day resume tests and do it in British territory, on an island perhaps. Is that form U-235, I wonder?
Prosaically, I suppose the bit about permission is to cover the possibility that the govt. might one day resume tests and do it in British territory, on an island perhaps. Is that form U-235, I wonder?
Iraq - the black weekend and the new war
Well, it has all finally happened. The potential for trouble represented by the Shia militias has been converted into actuality, and General Abizaid's staff have supposedly been given 48 hours to think of possible sources of reinforcement (link). A cynic might say that Muggins Britain will be top of the begging letter list when it comes to putting out this American-induced fire. The decision to shut down Moqtada al-Sadr's newspaper is shaping up to be the worst decision taken since - well, the decision to invade Iraq. After all, it had a circulation not that much greater than that of this blog - it claimed 10,000 readers, but I suspect audited circulation is a concept strange to Iraq and likely to stay that way. And just look at the results. Black-clad gunmen invading police stations, screaming mobs, firefights in packed city centres, chaos and terror. Not trrr, the real chest-heaving gutgripping kind. No, I think (with hindsight, I know) we could have put up with that paper, don't you? Depressingly, one of the reasons for Al-Hawza's closure was that the US governor was personally annoyed about its coverage of the governor. I'm not sure having the ranking western official in Iraq behaving like a film star does anyone any good.
If it was a film, though, it would have been a good one. The political theatre of the last few days has been extreme in a way that suggests premeditation. Note that everywhere - from the governor's office in Basra to the suburbs of Baghdad - Al-Sadr's gunmen seized police stations, mosques, and other symbols of authority. The message is clear - we are the masters now. The aim is slightly less clear, but all the more important for that. They do not seem to have insisted on the police pulling out completely. The Guardian reported today that at one occupied police station, the head cop and some others were still in residence albeit demoralised. This is serious. Taking over the police and military institutions and then co-opting their members is a strategy seen in numerous civil wars - Spain, Bosnia, Rwanda come to mind, as does Palestine in 1948. When the British army withdrew it was a race to seize the fortified police and army posts and to either co-opt or eliminate the local personnel. In the Shia-majority cities, it's likely that the police are Shia-majority too. That leaves a minority element to be terrorised or bribed - and we have Iraqi B Specials for al-Sadr, complete with whatever arms and training the occupation authorities provided for them. It is possible (I'd say likely) that the militias had a plan for this, ready for the struggle for power post-30th of June - and that Bremer's press crackdown triggered it early.
The response? It doesn't look brilliant so far. Lots of the usual Bush-team political theatre: beautifully tailored spokesmen and pistol packin' officers give bullish briefings about the latest offensive. The same words come up again and again: the perpetrators of the Fallujah atrocity will be punished with "overwhelming force", "at a time of our choosing". That last one especially. The same idea came up when a warrant for al-Sadr's arrest was announced - there would, we are told, be "no advanced warning". The source of this insistence on timing is clearly current military doctrine - the Americans want to be more like the Israeli or British armies in terms of tactics, moving towards the ideas of manoeuvre warfare theory, where one strives to bring your strengths to bear against the enemy's weaknesses and to get ahead of the other side's decision process - acting before they can understand what has happened and react. All good, and certainly an improvement on the scared 90s obsession with that other phrase above, overwhelming force, that induced the US to practically resign from peacekeeping. But what can it mean here? Whatever it says in The Spokesman's Boys' Book of Manoeuvreism, anti-terrorist and counter-insurgency warfare do not permit such imperial confidence. You can only act when you know who to act against, where they are, when they are - operations are dictated by information gathering and testing. No amount of bluster (Operation VIGILANT RESOLVE? Please.) changes that, and a failure to realise it will trap you in the belief that you can plan all your moves. Sweeping Crackdown! Decisive Action! Overwhelming Force!
And that is when you end up doing things like VIGILANT RESOLVE. The US Marines carrying it out have built a huge concrete wall - that looks exactly like a section of the Israelis' "security fence" or "terrorism prevention fence" or whatever it is called this week, just for good measure - across the road west from Fallujah to Jordan. No-one may pass. Unfortunately, this also means that all overland trade between Iraq and Jordan - and this means in effect most of the world - is cut off. No marks for joined-up thinking there. And just to help matters, the British army in Iraq is about to plunge into a major troop rotation - the 20th Armoured Brigade is leaving next week and being replaced by 1st Mechanised Brigade, so the troops who are acclimatised, briefed and experienced will go and be replaced by others who will need to go through the same process before being fully effective - just when they will need all the effectiveness they can get. As the controller in Airplane! put it, looks like I chose the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
If it was a film, though, it would have been a good one. The political theatre of the last few days has been extreme in a way that suggests premeditation. Note that everywhere - from the governor's office in Basra to the suburbs of Baghdad - Al-Sadr's gunmen seized police stations, mosques, and other symbols of authority. The message is clear - we are the masters now. The aim is slightly less clear, but all the more important for that. They do not seem to have insisted on the police pulling out completely. The Guardian reported today that at one occupied police station, the head cop and some others were still in residence albeit demoralised. This is serious. Taking over the police and military institutions and then co-opting their members is a strategy seen in numerous civil wars - Spain, Bosnia, Rwanda come to mind, as does Palestine in 1948. When the British army withdrew it was a race to seize the fortified police and army posts and to either co-opt or eliminate the local personnel. In the Shia-majority cities, it's likely that the police are Shia-majority too. That leaves a minority element to be terrorised or bribed - and we have Iraqi B Specials for al-Sadr, complete with whatever arms and training the occupation authorities provided for them. It is possible (I'd say likely) that the militias had a plan for this, ready for the struggle for power post-30th of June - and that Bremer's press crackdown triggered it early.
The response? It doesn't look brilliant so far. Lots of the usual Bush-team political theatre: beautifully tailored spokesmen and pistol packin' officers give bullish briefings about the latest offensive. The same words come up again and again: the perpetrators of the Fallujah atrocity will be punished with "overwhelming force", "at a time of our choosing". That last one especially. The same idea came up when a warrant for al-Sadr's arrest was announced - there would, we are told, be "no advanced warning". The source of this insistence on timing is clearly current military doctrine - the Americans want to be more like the Israeli or British armies in terms of tactics, moving towards the ideas of manoeuvre warfare theory, where one strives to bring your strengths to bear against the enemy's weaknesses and to get ahead of the other side's decision process - acting before they can understand what has happened and react. All good, and certainly an improvement on the scared 90s obsession with that other phrase above, overwhelming force, that induced the US to practically resign from peacekeeping. But what can it mean here? Whatever it says in The Spokesman's Boys' Book of Manoeuvreism, anti-terrorist and counter-insurgency warfare do not permit such imperial confidence. You can only act when you know who to act against, where they are, when they are - operations are dictated by information gathering and testing. No amount of bluster (Operation VIGILANT RESOLVE? Please.) changes that, and a failure to realise it will trap you in the belief that you can plan all your moves. Sweeping Crackdown! Decisive Action! Overwhelming Force!
And that is when you end up doing things like VIGILANT RESOLVE. The US Marines carrying it out have built a huge concrete wall - that looks exactly like a section of the Israelis' "security fence" or "terrorism prevention fence" or whatever it is called this week, just for good measure - across the road west from Fallujah to Jordan. No-one may pass. Unfortunately, this also means that all overland trade between Iraq and Jordan - and this means in effect most of the world - is cut off. No marks for joined-up thinking there. And just to help matters, the British army in Iraq is about to plunge into a major troop rotation - the 20th Armoured Brigade is leaving next week and being replaced by 1st Mechanised Brigade, so the troops who are acclimatised, briefed and experienced will go and be replaced by others who will need to go through the same process before being fully effective - just when they will need all the effectiveness they can get. As the controller in Airplane! put it, looks like I chose the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Our strangest search request
I've just taken a peek into our search referrals. The horror..the horror..and that's without the horde of perverted googlers who the last post will no doubt draw to us like flies to shit. (Still, it's all traffic..) Who the hell searched for "email a-z information of churches" and hit the Ranter? Now that's just filthy.
Now that's a real cockup
CNN reports that a man from Los Angeles (where else?) has gone to jail after meeting a woman in a chatroom dedicated to rape fantasies. Unfortunately for all concerned he broke into the wrong flat....
"The victim stopped the attack by yelling and attacking Howard's testicles. Howard then asked for the name the victim used in the chat room and she responded by saying she had never visited a chat room and did not have a personal computer."Doh.
More on the nanniebots - a fit of childishness
Mr. Wightman has now declared on his website first that he would close down the site because he was being "treated like a criminal for trying to save kids" (puke!), and now apparently that the whole thing will be translated into Portuguese. One wonders why, but not what. The what is pretty clear - he's had a childish fit and is now going to eject the teddies, spit the dummy etc. In the "news" section of his homepage sits this message - 02/04/2004 190800 Deal to translate the site and AI into Portuguese nears completion. (link) Sadly, this seems to be trudging unmistakably towards the arena of bollocks.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Wolverhampton's Turing..what happened next?
Due to an unaccountable outbreak of laziness, when I saw the story about an IT consultant from Wolverhampton and his chatroom monitoring programs (Nanniebots) that appeared to pass the Turing test I didn't blog it. (Original New Scientist story and transcript here, The Register, BBC news, Need To Know) Basically, his claim was that he had developed a suite of bots, autonomous software agents, that logged into chatrooms and took part in conversations. If (I suppose) anything on a watchlist intended to signal paedophile activity came up, the bot would log it to raise the alarm. Pretty clear, but this implied that the chatbot could converse with a human being without their noticing it was a machine. Alan Turing famously theorised that the defining case for artificial intelligence was a machine capable of carrying on conversation indistinguishable from that of a human being. Was this a brilliant breakthrough in AI or a fake?
Well, I for one was really hoping that this might be a real future burst. The idea of a chap in a shed in Wolverhampton discovering everything Cambridge, Imperial, Stanford, MIT and everywhere else with a multizillion budget couldn't (after all, Frank Whittle built the jet engine in a shed in Leicester) was too great to turn aside, as was the hope that this time - this time - we might not make a horrible potmess out of it and spend the next hundred years paying the Yanks billions annually for the use of our own inventions. Unfortunately, a quantity of debunking matter has appeared. For one, he's supposedly been caught boasting about non-existent software before. And the Guardian's Bad Science column, which had already secured a promise of an independent trial of the bot, has outed him as a Holocaust denier - quoting some pretty ugly posts on newsgroups for that particular online community. Puke! (He claims it's not his fault, but the posts came from his IP address.) Jim Wightman, the chap concerned, has been posting heavily on comment threads associated with the subject. Or at least people using his identity...on the Internet, no-one knows you're a dog. (They know you're a blog, though.) Check this out:
It's getting too postmodern in here! Meanwhile, over at overstated.net, Cameron Mackintosh reported a conversation with what was claimed to be one of Mr. W's menagerie. This has been heavily debated on other sites, especially the moment when the alleged bot came up with an error message. This was widely seen as a transparent attempt to make the beast seem more mechanical. Other critics suggested that it lacked the damage control procedures to be expected from a machine - the devices used to elicit repetitions if the machine fails to understand a remark, what linguists would call a help strategy. These tags litter our own speech, oiling the wheels of conversation, organising turn-taking and clearing up misunderstanding. "Can you repeat that?" or "Huh?" for example. I'm not so sure - there appear to me to be several points where the alleged machine does apply such a strategy.
Now that sounds to me like a tactic to get something less inscrutable to work on. I agree with most of those commenters, though, that the end of the conversation where Cameron first accuses the "bot" of being a bot, and then claims to be one himself is handled with almost suspicious cleanliness. That brings up the logical problem of the whole case - the only evidence that will convincingly demonstrate that Mr. Wightman is not a gifted hoaxer is a failure that would show up the bot for what it was - and that would, of course, invalidate his claims! In a sense, that should be enough - Karl Popper would have thought so. We have a hypothesis capable of refutation. We have a repeatable way of attempting to refute it. All good, no? The problem is, of course, that Popper's method excludes the possibility of bad faith, and requires complete openness. Unless both possibilities can be trusted - that it doesn't work or that it does - we need some positive proof. The only way to secure that would be to exclude the possibility of the bot being a human operator. What's needed is a double blind trial with the machinery under impartial supervision. Mr. Wightman seems horrified at the idea. And his (at least, the chap calling himself him's) behaviour on threads discussing the issue is not helpful. He claims that critics are "below him" and that he "looks forward to nuclear holocaust". Nice. It fits with the nazi spammer, and doesn't bode well for any real proof.
Well, I for one was really hoping that this might be a real future burst. The idea of a chap in a shed in Wolverhampton discovering everything Cambridge, Imperial, Stanford, MIT and everywhere else with a multizillion budget couldn't (after all, Frank Whittle built the jet engine in a shed in Leicester) was too great to turn aside, as was the hope that this time - this time - we might not make a horrible potmess out of it and spend the next hundred years paying the Yanks billions annually for the use of our own inventions. Unfortunately, a quantity of debunking matter has appeared. For one, he's supposedly been caught boasting about non-existent software before. And the Guardian's Bad Science column, which had already secured a promise of an independent trial of the bot, has outed him as a Holocaust denier - quoting some pretty ugly posts on newsgroups for that particular online community. Puke! (He claims it's not his fault, but the posts came from his IP address.) Jim Wightman, the chap concerned, has been posting heavily on comment threads associated with the subject. Or at least people using his identity...on the Internet, no-one knows you're a dog. (They know you're a blog, though.) Check this out:
I have a crazy theory. The other project of ChatNannies is humans monitoring and reporting on chatrooms. What if the bots are actually humans? You could describe this as collecting pop culture references from the internet. An experiment in tapping the power of a distibuted human brain network to create an "AI". Perhaps the figure of 100,000 is his report database capacity.
posted by Zombywuf on March 25, 2004 03:31 PM
I think Jim Wightman is actually a bot.
posted by Michael Williams on March 25, 2004 03:54 PM
Has anyone thought of the wider ethical implications of this?
a) When "nanniebots" are running on many chatrooms, children obviously won't know if they're talking to another child or a nanniebot. Is it right to deceive millions of children in this way?
b) What if the system was used for evil instead of good? "Nanniebots" could befriend children, set up real-world meetings, and let pedophiles know the time/location automatically by email. Takes all the hard work out of "grooming" children...
But luckily, I doubt either of these are real problems, given that the whole idea is so infeasible and must be a hoax of some sort.
posted by James on March 26, 2004 09:05 AM
James: Why not bot children that lure in pedophiles? Then the bots could all just "seduce" each other and cut out the middle-man.
posted by Michael Williams on March 26, 2004 10:04 AM
It's getting too postmodern in here! Meanwhile, over at overstated.net, Cameron Mackintosh reported a conversation with what was claimed to be one of Mr. W's menagerie. This has been heavily debated on other sites, especially the moment when the alleged bot came up with an error message. This was widely seen as a transparent attempt to make the beast seem more mechanical. Other critics suggested that it lacked the damage control procedures to be expected from a machine - the devices used to elicit repetitions if the machine fails to understand a remark, what linguists would call a help strategy. These tags litter our own speech, oiling the wheels of conversation, organising turn-taking and clearing up misunderstanding. "Can you repeat that?" or "Huh?" for example. I'm not so sure - there appear to me to be several points where the alleged machine does apply such a strategy.
[cameronfactor] i'm learning about stuff and junk
[Guest8474860] !
Now that sounds to me like a tactic to get something less inscrutable to work on. I agree with most of those commenters, though, that the end of the conversation where Cameron first accuses the "bot" of being a bot, and then claims to be one himself is handled with almost suspicious cleanliness. That brings up the logical problem of the whole case - the only evidence that will convincingly demonstrate that Mr. Wightman is not a gifted hoaxer is a failure that would show up the bot for what it was - and that would, of course, invalidate his claims! In a sense, that should be enough - Karl Popper would have thought so. We have a hypothesis capable of refutation. We have a repeatable way of attempting to refute it. All good, no? The problem is, of course, that Popper's method excludes the possibility of bad faith, and requires complete openness. Unless both possibilities can be trusted - that it doesn't work or that it does - we need some positive proof. The only way to secure that would be to exclude the possibility of the bot being a human operator. What's needed is a double blind trial with the machinery under impartial supervision. Mr. Wightman seems horrified at the idea. And his (at least, the chap calling himself him's) behaviour on threads discussing the issue is not helpful. He claims that critics are "below him" and that he "looks forward to nuclear holocaust". Nice. It fits with the nazi spammer, and doesn't bode well for any real proof.
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
The joy of headline
Just to put this on record - the Daily Express is running with "THE TEEN BOMBERS" as its (huge) headline today. The story is apparently the arrest of a suspected al-Qa'ida cell as detailed below, but the headline sounds so much like a band that I had an odd feeling that I might have been to one of their gigs. Strange. The Sun, of course, produced its usual contribution to race relations by running "MOSQUE FULL OF BOMBERS!" At least they couldn't find an asylum seeker.
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
BBC NEWS Terror suspects held in raids
BBC NEWS link
Police have seized half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, in a self-storage warehouse near Heathrow Airport. Further action resulted in eight arrests. Those arrested are apparently all British. (What was that about fighting a war on terrorism in Iraq?) The stuff in question is a old favourite in the terrorist kitchen. Mixed with diesel or something similar and provided with a small quantity of something stronger as a detonator, it is an effective low explosive. The legality and cheapness of the ingredients mean that, although the power by weight is low, quantity can easily make up for it. Practically every terrorist group has used it at some time in the past, especially the IRA.
Now, I seem to remember suggesting on this blog that self-storage is a weird and alien phenomenon. I wait for David Blunkett to announce new restrictions on them... Curiously enough, I noticed a business-page share tip the other day for a self-storage firm. (Full disclosure, and Ranter investment advice: it was Lok'n'Store plc.) Apparently, "there is roughly 14 times as much self-storage space per capita in the United States, so the only obstacle to growth appears to be finding suitable sites". Quelle horreur!
Police have seized half a ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser, in a self-storage warehouse near Heathrow Airport. Further action resulted in eight arrests. Those arrested are apparently all British. (What was that about fighting a war on terrorism in Iraq?) The stuff in question is a old favourite in the terrorist kitchen. Mixed with diesel or something similar and provided with a small quantity of something stronger as a detonator, it is an effective low explosive. The legality and cheapness of the ingredients mean that, although the power by weight is low, quantity can easily make up for it. Practically every terrorist group has used it at some time in the past, especially the IRA.
Now, I seem to remember suggesting on this blog that self-storage is a weird and alien phenomenon. I wait for David Blunkett to announce new restrictions on them... Curiously enough, I noticed a business-page share tip the other day for a self-storage firm. (Full disclosure, and Ranter investment advice: it was Lok'n'Store plc.) Apparently, "there is roughly 14 times as much self-storage space per capita in the United States, so the only obstacle to growth appears to be finding suitable sites". Quelle horreur!
Juan Cole - how the Israelis got it wrong and helped us do likewise
Juan Cole's Informed Comment link
"A subcommittee of the Israeli Parliament has issued a report sharply critical of Israeli intelligence failures concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It notes that Mossad thought Iraq's programs and stockpiles were a threat, which they were not, and yet seemed unaware of how much progress Libya had made on nukes.
The fact is that Israeli intelligence failures in Iraq contributed to drawing the United States into the war (pace the Knesset report). Undersecretary of Defense for Planning Douglas Feith, a representative of the American branch of the Likud Party, met repeatedly with Israeli generals at the Pentagon (who were not properly signed in, contrary to post-9/11 regulations), and they gave him fodder for his pre-determined insistence on ginning up a war against Iraq, reinforcing what was being said by liars like Ahmad Chalabi. They were conveying Israeli intelligence to a key American policy maker, and it was wrong..."
Cole theorises that something similar to the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and the White House Iraq Group must have existed in the Israeli security establishment - hence the dodgy information passed to the Americans. It is a feature of psychology that we are more likely to accept information that appears to come from multiple sources. This is rational enough, but it is also true that we seem to rate information from sources close to us (or better still, first-hand information) far above even the most massive evidence from less familiar sources. People tend to generalise from these first-priority sources in forming their images of the world - given just a little external support, especially from a familiar source, we can become extremely resistant to even overwhelming refutation. It's all part of our evolutionary heritage, I suppose - a useful way of organising the flood of data pouring in - but it can easily be toxic. It seems plausible that the neo-conservatives' image of policy was reinforced by the fact that their information came from their closest allies - Israel, Chalabi, and Britain. From a British perspective, the fact that the Americans and Australians were so convinced must have had a similarly powerful effect. The exchange of information across the Atlantic was then doomed to be a self-confirming dialogue.
"A subcommittee of the Israeli Parliament has issued a report sharply critical of Israeli intelligence failures concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It notes that Mossad thought Iraq's programs and stockpiles were a threat, which they were not, and yet seemed unaware of how much progress Libya had made on nukes.
The fact is that Israeli intelligence failures in Iraq contributed to drawing the United States into the war (pace the Knesset report). Undersecretary of Defense for Planning Douglas Feith, a representative of the American branch of the Likud Party, met repeatedly with Israeli generals at the Pentagon (who were not properly signed in, contrary to post-9/11 regulations), and they gave him fodder for his pre-determined insistence on ginning up a war against Iraq, reinforcing what was being said by liars like Ahmad Chalabi. They were conveying Israeli intelligence to a key American policy maker, and it was wrong..."
Cole theorises that something similar to the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and the White House Iraq Group must have existed in the Israeli security establishment - hence the dodgy information passed to the Americans. It is a feature of psychology that we are more likely to accept information that appears to come from multiple sources. This is rational enough, but it is also true that we seem to rate information from sources close to us (or better still, first-hand information) far above even the most massive evidence from less familiar sources. People tend to generalise from these first-priority sources in forming their images of the world - given just a little external support, especially from a familiar source, we can become extremely resistant to even overwhelming refutation. It's all part of our evolutionary heritage, I suppose - a useful way of organising the flood of data pouring in - but it can easily be toxic. It seems plausible that the neo-conservatives' image of policy was reinforced by the fact that their information came from their closest allies - Israel, Chalabi, and Britain. From a British perspective, the fact that the Americans and Australians were so convinced must have had a similarly powerful effect. The exchange of information across the Atlantic was then doomed to be a self-confirming dialogue.
Monday, March 29, 2004
Security: the occult way!
As a further contribution to our occasional series on aviation security, I'd like to call this to your attention.
Well, I have suggested in the past that the US Transportation Security Administration could improve its methods of analysing the terrorist threat by using the golden legacy of Roman civilisation - dispensing with intrusive, expensive data mining and surveillance and instead killing a chicken and reading the auguries of its entrails before despatching each flight. It could hardly be worse. It would appear from this report, though, that the TSA is showing the rest of American government a good example by listening to world opinion and, hence, doing as I say. Perhaps the workers who put themselves through an X-ray screening machine to "see what their brains looked like", far from being pig-ignorant victims of a clearly hopeless selection procedure, were attempting to divine the future the modern way?
"A psychic's warning that a bomb might be on a Dallas-bound passenger jet at Southwest Florida International Airport prompted federal and local officials to search it with bomb-sniffing dogs."
Well, I have suggested in the past that the US Transportation Security Administration could improve its methods of analysing the terrorist threat by using the golden legacy of Roman civilisation - dispensing with intrusive, expensive data mining and surveillance and instead killing a chicken and reading the auguries of its entrails before despatching each flight. It could hardly be worse. It would appear from this report, though, that the TSA is showing the rest of American government a good example by listening to world opinion and, hence, doing as I say. Perhaps the workers who put themselves through an X-ray screening machine to "see what their brains looked like", far from being pig-ignorant victims of a clearly hopeless selection procedure, were attempting to divine the future the modern way?
Sunday, March 28, 2004
"Not actually doing anything wrong" - but Miliband wants our kids locked up
Story
David Miliband, the quintessential Blairite (he was the head of the No.10 Policy Unit before feeling - y'know - a need to get back to the, ah, communities - and getting himself elected for South Shields, a Labour fortress so safe that it is usually the first seat in the country to announce its election results) and School Standards Minister, has issued a rant in which he heaped praise on Swanlea School in East London for keeping its pupils in the school at lunchtime. Not an astonishing leap of policy, you might think, but Mr. Miliband attributes all kinds of good things to this simple measure.
So - it makes them cleverer! Wow! We shall note a couple of points regarding this speech. First, notice the fingerprints of our most tiresome and usually wrong politicians. "All day, no exceptions, end of story" - feel the hacked language, the unconvincing tough-guyisms, and the hectoring tone. Smell the cliches - roaming the streets! There's one I haven't heard in years. In fact, I haven't heard it since I was a teenager myself, in the defunded paint-peeling years of Major when it rained every day (at least that's how I remember it) and the government was trying to make "music characterised by repetitive beats" illegal. It seems positively antediluvian now, on the other side of a cosmic cultural chasm. Were we really that lame? But suddenly, it seems that the mid-90s are with us once more - the decade of revival fashion is itself about to be revived. Michael Howard, the icon of the time, is back on the front bench and pages. Malcolm Rifkind is back in the Commons. The government is quite evidently a bunch of bunglers with the credibility of a fortune cookie in a weather station and the morals of a crack-riddled goat. This time, it could even be worse - after all, the first bunch of goatish incompetents are the alternative! And the music is so much worse this time! Listen to the headteachers' association president has to say:
By 'eck! This is so familiar as well! Let us recap - Mr. Miliband feels that children ought to be kept in school grounds - locked up, I suppose - in case they do not actually do anything wrong. Great. I remember Howard being very proud of legislating to give the police powers to stop "youths" and take their names and addresses, and inform their parents. Why was never made clear, but it at least gave the police another reason to alienate the citizenry in case they ran out. Instead, Mr. Miliband wants the little buggers to be subjected to "an enriching lunchtime programme of mentoring by local business people, reading groups for support with literacy, sporting activities supervised by youth workers, as well as a wide range of language classes." I'm sure the reading groups are all very laudable, even if you may wonder what they do in class if they have to have classes at lunchtime. But I strongly suspect that an enriching lunchtime programme of mentoring by local business people translates as "being forced to give up your lunch break to absorb the platitudes of unwilling small-town car dealers". And what kind of sense does it make to have compulsory voluntary sport at lunchtimes if you can't have it in games lessons because Mr. Miliband's previous advice to the prime minister on finance means that the school doesn't have a playing field? What is the point of preventing kids who might otherwise play football in their lunch break from doing so, in order to force them to (after, of course, an improving talk from your friendly local dealer)?
Which answers, I suppose, the question of why Mr. Miliband found it necessary to tell us that he supports innovations that are "good", presumably as opposed to bad ones. You might have been forgiven the mistake. One day, could we possibly have a policy initiative that doesn't involve somebody being locked up?
David Miliband, the quintessential Blairite (he was the head of the No.10 Policy Unit before feeling - y'know - a need to get back to the, ah, communities - and getting himself elected for South Shields, a Labour fortress so safe that it is usually the first seat in the country to announce its election results) and School Standards Minister, has issued a rant in which he heaped praise on Swanlea School in East London for keeping its pupils in the school at lunchtime. Not an astonishing leap of policy, you might think, but Mr. Miliband attributes all kinds of good things to this simple measure.
"...an end to the tipping out on to the streets at lunchtime. Pupils here are in school all day, no exceptions, end of story.....A culture of high achievement helps to reinforce good behaviour. Of course, children need a break at lunch. And they need something healthy to eat to set them up for the afternoon. But they don't have to be out of school, roaming the streets, to do it."
Mr Miliband said that at Swanlea, in Bethnal Green, "students stay on the school premises, and the school provides an enriching lunchtime programme of mentoring by local business people, reading groups for support with literacy, sporting activities supervised by youth workers, as well as a wide range of language classes.
"That is the kind of innovation I support. Good for pupils. Good for the school. Good for the reputation of education in the local community."
So - it makes them cleverer! Wow! We shall note a couple of points regarding this speech. First, notice the fingerprints of our most tiresome and usually wrong politicians. "All day, no exceptions, end of story" - feel the hacked language, the unconvincing tough-guyisms, and the hectoring tone. Smell the cliches - roaming the streets! There's one I haven't heard in years. In fact, I haven't heard it since I was a teenager myself, in the defunded paint-peeling years of Major when it rained every day (at least that's how I remember it) and the government was trying to make "music characterised by repetitive beats" illegal. It seems positively antediluvian now, on the other side of a cosmic cultural chasm. Were we really that lame? But suddenly, it seems that the mid-90s are with us once more - the decade of revival fashion is itself about to be revived. Michael Howard, the icon of the time, is back on the front bench and pages. Malcolm Rifkind is back in the Commons. The government is quite evidently a bunch of bunglers with the credibility of a fortune cookie in a weather station and the morals of a crack-riddled goat. This time, it could even be worse - after all, the first bunch of goatish incompetents are the alternative! And the music is so much worse this time! Listen to the headteachers' association president has to say:
"Sometimes people, particularly old people, feel intimidated even when the young people are not actually doing anything wrong."
By 'eck! This is so familiar as well! Let us recap - Mr. Miliband feels that children ought to be kept in school grounds - locked up, I suppose - in case they do not actually do anything wrong. Great. I remember Howard being very proud of legislating to give the police powers to stop "youths" and take their names and addresses, and inform their parents. Why was never made clear, but it at least gave the police another reason to alienate the citizenry in case they ran out. Instead, Mr. Miliband wants the little buggers to be subjected to "an enriching lunchtime programme of mentoring by local business people, reading groups for support with literacy, sporting activities supervised by youth workers, as well as a wide range of language classes." I'm sure the reading groups are all very laudable, even if you may wonder what they do in class if they have to have classes at lunchtime. But I strongly suspect that an enriching lunchtime programme of mentoring by local business people translates as "being forced to give up your lunch break to absorb the platitudes of unwilling small-town car dealers". And what kind of sense does it make to have compulsory voluntary sport at lunchtimes if you can't have it in games lessons because Mr. Miliband's previous advice to the prime minister on finance means that the school doesn't have a playing field? What is the point of preventing kids who might otherwise play football in their lunch break from doing so, in order to force them to (after, of course, an improving talk from your friendly local dealer)?
Which answers, I suppose, the question of why Mr. Miliband found it necessary to tell us that he supports innovations that are "good", presumably as opposed to bad ones. You might have been forgiven the mistake. One day, could we possibly have a policy initiative that doesn't involve somebody being locked up?
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Blair appoints former John Major spin doctor
Like asking the Kennedys for security advice....like asking Jeffrey Archer to look over your CV....like taking a nap at Dr. Shipman's surgery...you wouldn't think anyone would seriously seek PR advice from the chap who ran John Major's 1997 campaign. But that's just what the prime minister has done! The man chosen for the new job of Permanent Secretary for Government Communications is one Howell James, who ran the Tory '97 campaign and was also briefly the Hinduja brothers' PR. This job was created post-Hutton on the odd, semi-theological grounds that if the Government's PR was run by someone who was officially a Civil Servant rather than a Special Adviser, then there was no chance that any spin might creep in. How the government communications service can possibly not be accused of serving the government's interests bewilders me, I have to say. Isn't that what it's for? And what sort of mysterious breath of heaven cleanses these characters of any possible political taint? Couldn't a life spent in the service of the State render you more, not less, likely to bow to the will of power?
But exactly what makes Mr. James an impartial civil servant and not a political appointee is hard to say. He has leapt directly into a permanent secretaryship from his business without passing through any time spent in the public sector. Whoosh! I know that, of course, his appointment is under the Nolan rules and was carried out by a selection panel blah, blah, blah - but it does sound vaguely like patronage still. He will be pulling down a salary somewhere between £121,000 and a thick £203,000 annually. Now, whatever they may say, it is utterly certain that Mr. James's efforts will be irrelevant to the front line delivery of public services or to the formation of sound policy. He is a propagandist. Which is odd, when the Civil Service is meant to be disposing of 40,000 employees. As a comparison, the job of deputy head of emergency planning for London was advertised yesterday. The salary? A princely £31,000. Now that's what I call efficiency, and far more important than the Tory beef that James is a friend of Peter Mandelson, as if that was a vetting criterion.
But exactly what makes Mr. James an impartial civil servant and not a political appointee is hard to say. He has leapt directly into a permanent secretaryship from his business without passing through any time spent in the public sector. Whoosh! I know that, of course, his appointment is under the Nolan rules and was carried out by a selection panel blah, blah, blah - but it does sound vaguely like patronage still. He will be pulling down a salary somewhere between £121,000 and a thick £203,000 annually. Now, whatever they may say, it is utterly certain that Mr. James's efforts will be irrelevant to the front line delivery of public services or to the formation of sound policy. He is a propagandist. Which is odd, when the Civil Service is meant to be disposing of 40,000 employees. As a comparison, the job of deputy head of emergency planning for London was advertised yesterday. The salary? A princely £31,000. Now that's what I call efficiency, and far more important than the Tory beef that James is a friend of Peter Mandelson, as if that was a vetting criterion.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Monday, March 22, 2004
Whacking the lies - Madrid and Iraq
As a brief guide, here are some reasons why the bashers who are still spewing vitriol about the Spanish elections are lying. Now, their main line is that this is "appeasement". Further to this, they claim that the PSOE was "opportunistic" and "took orders from terrorists". The point is apparently that "you cannot run away from terrorism". We shall take this point by point.
1. Appeasement.
The point of this is to recall the language of the 1930s, trying to position the global Right as the opponents of Nazism - and everyone else as either weak Chamberlains or complicit Lavals. (The special viciousness of applying this to Spanish socialists does not need or deserve further highlighting.) Obviously, the idea of appeasement implies that there is a morally and pragmatically better course of fighting. And this relies on the central belief that invading Iraq is in fact the "war on terrorism". Otherwise, how could not taking part be "appeasement"? We will hear more of this. In passing, note that the use of the language of 1938 has a two-fold effect: not only does it portray your opponents as the next best thing to real Nazis, but it validates your own Churchill fantasies.
2. Opportunism.
Simply disposed with. If the PSOE were "opportunistic", they must have changed their policy to take advantage of opportunity. They opposed the deployment of Spanish troops in Iraq before the deployment. They still opposed it the day before the blasts. They opposed it the day afterwards. I suppose they stuck to their principles - opportunistically?
3. Taking orders from terrorists.
See 3. Policy determined months beforehand. Logically insane.
4. Running away.
This implies that invading Iraq was a blow against al-Qa'ida, and that the continuing war there is a struggle against it, and that our anti-terrorist interests are best served by war in Iraq. Otherwise, what would be shameful about liquidating a wasteful and unnecessary commitment? Let us recall a few facts. No-one has produced one scintilla of evidence to show any al-Qa'ida presence in Ba'athist Iraq or Iraqi involvement in al-Qa'ida activity. What good did the Spanish brigade's presence in Iraq do for the fight against al-Qa'ida? The bombs exploded in Madrid. They did not explode in Hillah. The attack was prepared by Moroccans (it seems) in Spain. Would the soldiery not have been better employed elsewhere? Let us consider the effects of the British invasion fo southern Iraq on our own anti-terrorist efforts. The emergency planning budget - which funds the local authority emergency departments who would have to cope with the logistics of recovery after a major attack - has been pegged at £19 million since April, 2001. April! That means that its value has FALLEN. The deployment in southern Iraq is estimated to cost £125 million MONTHLY! Muslim opinion has been provoked as never before. The real pursuit of al-Qa'ida was effectively shut down for months. Our army is (to use a Churchillism) sprawled in costly and rewardless occupation, its budget drained, its reserves raided, its stocks exhausted, rather than crouched and ready to spring at opportunity. What a brilliant success! Heroically, with undiminished resolve, the neocons and their pals march doggedly forward - in the wrong direction!
1. Appeasement.
The point of this is to recall the language of the 1930s, trying to position the global Right as the opponents of Nazism - and everyone else as either weak Chamberlains or complicit Lavals. (The special viciousness of applying this to Spanish socialists does not need or deserve further highlighting.) Obviously, the idea of appeasement implies that there is a morally and pragmatically better course of fighting. And this relies on the central belief that invading Iraq is in fact the "war on terrorism". Otherwise, how could not taking part be "appeasement"? We will hear more of this. In passing, note that the use of the language of 1938 has a two-fold effect: not only does it portray your opponents as the next best thing to real Nazis, but it validates your own Churchill fantasies.
2. Opportunism.
Simply disposed with. If the PSOE were "opportunistic", they must have changed their policy to take advantage of opportunity. They opposed the deployment of Spanish troops in Iraq before the deployment. They still opposed it the day before the blasts. They opposed it the day afterwards. I suppose they stuck to their principles - opportunistically?
3. Taking orders from terrorists.
See 3. Policy determined months beforehand. Logically insane.
4. Running away.
This implies that invading Iraq was a blow against al-Qa'ida, and that the continuing war there is a struggle against it, and that our anti-terrorist interests are best served by war in Iraq. Otherwise, what would be shameful about liquidating a wasteful and unnecessary commitment? Let us recall a few facts. No-one has produced one scintilla of evidence to show any al-Qa'ida presence in Ba'athist Iraq or Iraqi involvement in al-Qa'ida activity. What good did the Spanish brigade's presence in Iraq do for the fight against al-Qa'ida? The bombs exploded in Madrid. They did not explode in Hillah. The attack was prepared by Moroccans (it seems) in Spain. Would the soldiery not have been better employed elsewhere? Let us consider the effects of the British invasion fo southern Iraq on our own anti-terrorist efforts. The emergency planning budget - which funds the local authority emergency departments who would have to cope with the logistics of recovery after a major attack - has been pegged at £19 million since April, 2001. April! That means that its value has FALLEN. The deployment in southern Iraq is estimated to cost £125 million MONTHLY! Muslim opinion has been provoked as never before. The real pursuit of al-Qa'ida was effectively shut down for months. Our army is (to use a Churchillism) sprawled in costly and rewardless occupation, its budget drained, its reserves raided, its stocks exhausted, rather than crouched and ready to spring at opportunity. What a brilliant success! Heroically, with undiminished resolve, the neocons and their pals march doggedly forward - in the wrong direction!
First with the news, and the death of Sheikh Yassin
On Wednesday, I reported that Ha'aretz was covering a British programme of semi-military aid to the Palestinian security organisations in Gaza. By Saturday, The Guardian was running this.
Who says blogs aren't the wave of the future? But enough basking. This morning, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed by an Israeli air raid. (
details) This has brought the expected storm: of outrage in Gaza, self-congratulation in Tel Aviv, of diplomatic platitudes everywhere else. Certainly, Hamas are the big problem in terms of terrorist potential in Gaza. I'm sure Yassin bore some responsibility for Hamas's actions, even though not even Ariel Sharon believes he had any operational role. But I doubt blowing up an elderly priest in a wheelchair will do anything at all to prevent further terrorist attacks. Not when they are willing to attack with axes. It wasn't as if crazy-eyed kamikazes filed past his zimmer frame to personally draw explosives from his very hands. The argument for his assassination is that he "inspired" them. The problem with people who inspire others, as ideas, idols, icons, is that they don't have to be alive. In fact, their symbolic power is often greater dead. The leader myth can only be exploded in the metaphorical sense, not the physical.
And if there is anywhere on earth that the power of martyrdom and the myth of the dead hero should be blindingly obvious, it is the Holy Land. You don't need to go back as far as Christ - the dead Lebanese warlords whose recorded voices were broadcast daily by their factions' radio stations through the 1980s to incite their followers are an equally harsh and much closer example.
Those British advisors' job just got even worse.
"The British involvement is initially modest, limited to providing financial, logistical and other support on security matters to the PA. But if the pilot schemes are successful Britain intends to offer much more in the way of finance and personnel.
This would include sending security staff experienced in Northern Ireland and helping to rebuild the Palestinian security infrastructure, such as police headquarters and prisons, destroyed by the Israelis."
Who says blogs aren't the wave of the future? But enough basking. This morning, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, was killed by an Israeli air raid. (
details) This has brought the expected storm: of outrage in Gaza, self-congratulation in Tel Aviv, of diplomatic platitudes everywhere else. Certainly, Hamas are the big problem in terms of terrorist potential in Gaza. I'm sure Yassin bore some responsibility for Hamas's actions, even though not even Ariel Sharon believes he had any operational role. But I doubt blowing up an elderly priest in a wheelchair will do anything at all to prevent further terrorist attacks. Not when they are willing to attack with axes. It wasn't as if crazy-eyed kamikazes filed past his zimmer frame to personally draw explosives from his very hands. The argument for his assassination is that he "inspired" them. The problem with people who inspire others, as ideas, idols, icons, is that they don't have to be alive. In fact, their symbolic power is often greater dead. The leader myth can only be exploded in the metaphorical sense, not the physical.
And if there is anywhere on earth that the power of martyrdom and the myth of the dead hero should be blindingly obvious, it is the Holy Land. You don't need to go back as far as Christ - the dead Lebanese warlords whose recorded voices were broadcast daily by their factions' radio stations through the 1980s to incite their followers are an equally harsh and much closer example.
Those British advisors' job just got even worse.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Please Note: Our RSS Feed
Blogmatrix, providers of our RSS feed, are no more. We are now back to Blogstreet, and the feed is now here. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Dancing terrorism banana
The dancing banana visible in the sidebar's colour shows the current Homeland Security terrorism alert state. Thanks to Victor is Dead and Supermum.
Blogroll: The Hegemo and The Fudgie Project
The Ranter welcomes two new blogs linking to us: The Hegemo's Creative Class Warfare, and The Fudgie Project. The last one belongs to Jenny Paton, who is currently researching the blogging phenomenon and recently emailed questions to numerous bloggers. Thanks.
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Brits in Gaza...
According to Haaretz, plans for British security assistance to the Palestinian Authority are already underway. "With grudging consent from the Americans, the British are now setting up two new operation control rooms, one in Ramallah and one in Gaza, for Palestinian security organizations. The money that Britain is spending is earmarked for the purchase of a new communications system, ancillary equipment and vehicles. The new operations room in Ramallah has already been completed and the facility in Gaza will be completed soon." We are apparently making an effort to help wallop Hamas, thus (hopefully) reducing the chances of either further suicide bombings or Israeli raids. And furthering peace. I'd be the first to call it fantastic, but there are some flies. There has recently been some talk of UK military advisers being sent. That sounds like a hiding to nothing to me - no power to give orders, a target for continued Israeli air raids and armoured drives, and a target for the terrorists. Wonderful.
Not that Haaretz's Ze'ev Schiff noticed it, though. He was more concerned with our outrageous ingratitude in telling Yasser Arafat about it:
Obviously, we are all meant to conveniently forget that the US does not appoint the Palestinian government. He was elected, dammit! And I really don't want to hear any more about soft Europeans and Brits who won't risk their skins, got that? Good luck to the advisers - they'll need it..
Not that Haaretz's Ze'ev Schiff noticed it, though. He was more concerned with our outrageous ingratitude in telling Yasser Arafat about it:
"Experts in Israel believe that the British have sincere intentions, but harbor immense suspicion of the Palestinians. It is strange that Britain is prepared to cooperate with Arafat on security matters, since he has declined to take a single step toward implementing reforms in the Palestinian security organizations (among other things, reducing the number of men under arms, and ensuring their genuine subordination to the prime minister or the interior minister). The fact that he is the boss and that everything has to go through him, including all security matters, does not justify cooperation with him under these conditions. If the postponed meeting between Qureia and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon takes place and Qureia raises the matter, he will presumably be met with a negative answer to the proposal for cooperation, in the same way that were he to request that he be consulted on the disengagement plan, this too would be turned down."
Obviously, we are all meant to conveniently forget that the US does not appoint the Palestinian government. He was elected, dammit! And I really don't want to hear any more about soft Europeans and Brits who won't risk their skins, got that? Good luck to the advisers - they'll need it..
A Gun in my Suitcase, a Dove at my Window...
In our occasional series, When Aviation Security Attacks, we bring you this, the story of a man who:
"discovered the weapon while unpacking in Israel after a visit to Germany, reports Israeli daily Haaretz.Link Good job he didn't transfer to another flight..
He immediately reported the find to the police only to be told that the weapon, which had been de-activated, was part of a security drill for airline staff.
Security officers sometimes put replica guns in luggage to keep bag checkers on their toes, Haaretz says. "
Just been reading the Commons Defence Committee's Iraq report..
An interesting document to say the least. For a start, there is that old Ranter issue concerning Geoff Hoon and his remarkably confident denials that anything had gone wrong at all. You may remember that he stated in Parliament that: "All the requisite numbers of boots and clothing and equipment were there and, having only had a brief opportunity of inviting editors of newspapers to devote an appropriate amount of space to the success of the equipment, given the hugely disproportionate amount of space they wasted on making facile criticisms of equipment that proved its worth in the conflict, I am still waiting to see any signs of apology from either individual journalists or from their editors. I am certainly suggesting that, in a force of around 45,000 people across three Services, there may have been the odd person who, for example, did not get the right sized pair of boots. There may have been the odd soldier who one day did not get his lunchtime ration pack. There may have been the odd soldier who did not like his ready-to-eat meal of the sort issued by the United States to their forces."
Now, I dealt with that here. Geoff was lying. Otherwise, how did the Royal Marine pictured in the NAO report in southern Iraq manage to be wearing woodland camouflage?
The Committee took evidence from the chief of joint operations at Permanent Joint HQ, Lieutenant General John Reith, on the kit scandal. Here's what he had to say:
Indeed. It also begs the much-asked question as to why Mr. Hoon has yet to resign in disgrace. But there is much, much more. The Committee repeats the previous bashings about the supply of nuclear, biological and chemical defence gear, hopeless asset-tracking and all the stuff we already know. Curiously, given Hoon's crack about meals "of the sort issued by the United States", the MPs were especially impressed by the cooks' efforts. But the interesting stuff was much earlier. According to General Reith, the US Central Command was working on plans in the spring of 2002. General staffs exist to plan for anything, all the time, but I have a real feeling that this may have had baleful political implications. Especially as,
it sez here, the British forces were already discussing UORs, urgent operational requirements (the process by which extra kit needed for a given current purpose is purchased), with industry. Curiously, both Sir Kevin Tebbit and the director of policy at the MoD were convinced nothing had been said that would make a commitment - especially not before June. But if materiel was already being purchased in May? It has a smell of 1914 and railway timetables. And Geoff Hoon, of course, said that no decisions on a specific military operation had been taken before the prime minister's statement of the 24th of September, 2003.
Besides the pure Iraq-war bash factor, some interesting points arise concerning close air support, the key to the MoD's wishes for a new, lightweight, highly deployable and networkcentric army. The entire idea that these jargon words convey is one of substituting army aviation, especially the new Apache helicopters, and air power for tanks and heavy artillery. For this to work, for aerial firepower to be as present as a tank, what is needed is very close integration of the army and the air force at the lowest possible level. A couple of tiresome blots on the flawless Hoon escutcheon might suggest this remains to be achieved - like the Household Cavalrymen who were slaughtered by the US Air Force. Pars 100 to 102 of the report are better:
Any big change to an organisation requires two things: the take away, of whatever is supposedly no longer needed, and the add, of whatever good stuff is considered to be progress. It would seem that the takeaway is well under way - it is budget positive and hence career enhancing - but no add has arrived yet. How Hoon...
Now, I dealt with that here. Geoff was lying. Otherwise, how did the Royal Marine pictured in the NAO report in southern Iraq manage to be wearing woodland camouflage?
The Committee took evidence from the chief of joint operations at Permanent Joint HQ, Lieutenant General John Reith, on the kit scandal. Here's what he had to say:
"251. Notwithstanding the Secretary of State's comments in May 2003 about desert boots and clothing, Air Marshal Burridge told the Committee in June 2003 that that he had encountered personnel wearing black boots when he visited Basra on 23 April.[380] This was confirmed during our visits when we were told that some desert boots and combats arrived after the major combat phase. In July 2003 General Reith told us that:
!Turning to the clothing and the boots, I was not concerned about that at all. The temperate equipment we have, the combat clothing is designed up to 39 degrees centigrade and the boots up to 35 degrees centigrade."[381]
252. General Reith's comment that he was not concerned about the desert clothes and boots issue appears to ignore the fact that green combat clothing does not provide the same camouflage effect as desert clothing in an environment such as Iraq. It also begs the question as to why MoD procured desert clothing and boots specifically for the combat operation."
Indeed. It also begs the much-asked question as to why Mr. Hoon has yet to resign in disgrace. But there is much, much more. The Committee repeats the previous bashings about the supply of nuclear, biological and chemical defence gear, hopeless asset-tracking and all the stuff we already know. Curiously, given Hoon's crack about meals "of the sort issued by the United States", the MPs were especially impressed by the cooks' efforts. But the interesting stuff was much earlier. According to General Reith, the US Central Command was working on plans in the spring of 2002. General staffs exist to plan for anything, all the time, but I have a real feeling that this may have had baleful political implications. Especially as,
it sez here, the British forces were already discussing UORs, urgent operational requirements (the process by which extra kit needed for a given current purpose is purchased), with industry. Curiously, both Sir Kevin Tebbit and the director of policy at the MoD were convinced nothing had been said that would make a commitment - especially not before June. But if materiel was already being purchased in May? It has a smell of 1914 and railway timetables. And Geoff Hoon, of course, said that no decisions on a specific military operation had been taken before the prime minister's statement of the 24th of September, 2003.
Besides the pure Iraq-war bash factor, some interesting points arise concerning close air support, the key to the MoD's wishes for a new, lightweight, highly deployable and networkcentric army. The entire idea that these jargon words convey is one of substituting army aviation, especially the new Apache helicopters, and air power for tanks and heavy artillery. For this to work, for aerial firepower to be as present as a tank, what is needed is very close integration of the army and the air force at the lowest possible level. A couple of tiresome blots on the flawless Hoon escutcheon might suggest this remains to be achieved - like the Household Cavalrymen who were slaughtered by the US Air Force. Pars 100 to 102 of the report are better:
"100. An innovation for the RAF in Iraq was the use of 'kill-box interdiction and close air support' or KI-CAS, long practised by the United States' air forces (Navy, Marines and USAF). Air Vice Marshal Torpy explained the concept:
There are two discrete, different bits to this. Close Air Support is when air is used when forces on the ground are in close contact and need air support quickly. Kill box interdiction is a more methodical way of attacking targets in particular areas. A kill box is an area which has been defined. Aircraft are tasked into that area to attack mobile targets—so fielded artillery, tanks and those sort of targetS.[154]
But we have heard that the targeting pods (the sensors that allow the pilot to identify a target) on British aircraft were not sophisticated enough to support the kill-box approach, which requires the aircraft to identify small targets from a medium to high altitude. The Air Component Commander conceded there was a problem:
One of the lessons that we have learned out of the campaign, [is] that our targeting pods need longer range, better fidelity… positively identifying that a target is a military target.[155]
101. He also accepted that more needed to be done in terms of air-land integration:
I think we are probably victims of past campaigns in that Operation Desert Storm was a discrete air operation followed by a short land campaign, and very little integrated air-land operation took place. Afghanistan was the first time we saw closer integration between air and land, but on a relatively small scale in terms of the land component. This was the first operation that I have certainly seen for many years where we have seen such close linkage between the air and land components…we have forgotten some of the things that we were quite good at during the Cold War…We have probably neglected the exercising of those over the years.[156]
Worryingly we heard reports that there was a serious lack of air to ground communications capability, with RAF aircraft unable to communicate with the forces on the ground in the vast majority of missions flown. Additionally there was a lack of understanding on the part of land force commanders about the need to have cleared specific targets to be struck from the air through the appropriate channels. We heard reports of some one third of missions being aborted because of problems in the air-land interface. The intention is now to increase the RAF involvement in the BATUS exercises in Canada and to improve the use of targeting pods, extending it to all aircraft that engaged in KI-CAS and to exercise the whole command and control organisation from the Combined Air Operations Centre.[157]
102. During the ground campaign there were also some delays in the provision of air support. This was a matter of concern to some UK land forces. General Brims, however, believed that overall the system had worked well and particularly highlighted the work of the ANGLICOs discussed above:
"Utilising 3rd MAW, the Marine Air Wing, as a tactical air wing; in order to do it, we had to receive…ANGLICO battalions…they come with communications, life support vehicles, and everything else, and you could say to them, 'We need the fire there,' they will call for it, and we had them embedded throughout our chain of command and it worked wonderfully well.[158]"
Any big change to an organisation requires two things: the take away, of whatever is supposedly no longer needed, and the add, of whatever good stuff is considered to be progress. It would seem that the takeaway is well under way - it is budget positive and hence career enhancing - but no add has arrived yet. How Hoon...
Saturday, March 13, 2004
A new word - "security theatre"
An interesting article in Wired seems to agree rather with my last post, as well as giving me the priceless gift of a new word, "security theatre", or official activity intended to convey a false impression of security. (Thanks due to Slugger O'Toole)..Mind you, it also bears out something I think I lost given the surprising doom-sodden tone below, which is that even if it is impossible to prevent terrorism, the numbers are on our side. Given the chances of being a victim, and the effectiveness of fairly simple precautions, it's possible to knock a big chunk out of the odds. The best may well be the enemy of the good here - it's very possible that, in a futile search for absolute security, we render life intolerably vexing, expensive, inefficient, oppressive and wearyingly paranoid.
Friday, March 12, 2004
Barking up the wrong tree in an infinite forest
I'm beginning to think that the real strength of terrorism is the fact that its targets can be diversified faster than countermeasures. Whatever is hardened or checked or monitored, there will always be something else. Probably because the nature of terrorism is to use the social infrastructure as a weapon - trains are of course a near perfect way of placing your explosives at a given time, in fact at given times, into a concentration of people. And they even publish timetables. God forbid anyone has a go at the utilities - power, gas, water... (In fact we may already have narrowly escaped a mass water attack. When I were a lad, a deranged citizen of Leeds whose psychosis included an obsession with Hitler prepared to add cyanide to Eccles Reservoir before being arrested for an unconnected murder.) Not so long ago I was told by a former naval person that maritime terrorism was rare "because it's difficult, and the oil in a tanker won't explode". (We'll set aside the vapour in the empty tanks) He did concede the possible vulnerability of a liquid petroleum gas tanker - they come from Algeria and would explode with the power of a small nuclear warhead - but, to my mind, didn't really imagine it could happen. I wonder if we are committing the fallacy of trying to solve social, mental problems with hardware.
Mind you, this is where the historical fallacy of taking either side in the structure/free will debate bites - whatever the deep social forces bubbling and heaving suggest, a different action would so often have changed life entirely. If it's foolish to believe (say) that had Gavrilo Princip been unable to shoot straight, the world would have remained at peace, it's equally foolish to imagine that the 2000 US presidential elections were entirely defined by inevitable economic and demographic shifts, or that the development of population structure in the Middle East would have meant much if the suicide hijackers had been searched at Boston airport. History can be seen as a struggle between those vast narratives, megatrends, and the perpetual and equal power of accident and defiance. In this case, Al-Qa'ida's addiction to deep history - the Spanish Reconquista as equally pertinent as the Gulf War - set against its true enemy, the security guards and cops, cleaners and track inspectors most likely to foil them. What is the point? Probably that although defensive measures (taking away dustbins, installing radiation detectors at the container wharves of Felixstowe) are certainly of value, and that offensive ones may also help, terrorism can only in the end be contained, managed, endured. It's usual that any terror group with a sufficient base of support can only ever be kept in bounds - victory is impossible. With traditional terrorists, this was the moment of negotiation. That would have been the course I would have suggested for Spain, but if the Madrid massacre is Eta's work, I wonder if it is still possible? Have they not joined the new terrorists, Walter Laqueur's postmodern terrorists - no concrete aims, or wildly impossible ones, like that of reversing the last 400 years of history and revolutionising the world, reconquering the lost and, I'm sure, ungrateful kingdom of al-Andalus.
Mind you, this is where the historical fallacy of taking either side in the structure/free will debate bites - whatever the deep social forces bubbling and heaving suggest, a different action would so often have changed life entirely. If it's foolish to believe (say) that had Gavrilo Princip been unable to shoot straight, the world would have remained at peace, it's equally foolish to imagine that the 2000 US presidential elections were entirely defined by inevitable economic and demographic shifts, or that the development of population structure in the Middle East would have meant much if the suicide hijackers had been searched at Boston airport. History can be seen as a struggle between those vast narratives, megatrends, and the perpetual and equal power of accident and defiance. In this case, Al-Qa'ida's addiction to deep history - the Spanish Reconquista as equally pertinent as the Gulf War - set against its true enemy, the security guards and cops, cleaners and track inspectors most likely to foil them. What is the point? Probably that although defensive measures (taking away dustbins, installing radiation detectors at the container wharves of Felixstowe) are certainly of value, and that offensive ones may also help, terrorism can only in the end be contained, managed, endured. It's usual that any terror group with a sufficient base of support can only ever be kept in bounds - victory is impossible. With traditional terrorists, this was the moment of negotiation. That would have been the course I would have suggested for Spain, but if the Madrid massacre is Eta's work, I wonder if it is still possible? Have they not joined the new terrorists, Walter Laqueur's postmodern terrorists - no concrete aims, or wildly impossible ones, like that of reversing the last 400 years of history and revolutionising the world, reconquering the lost and, I'm sure, ungrateful kingdom of al-Andalus.
Thursday, March 11, 2004
The Ranter welcomes the Social Democracy webring
We have been invited to join the Social Democracy webring.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Blogroll: Gregorian Rants, Life in the Crescent
The Ranter welcomes two new blogrollers, Gregorian Rants, and Life in the Crescent. Thanks.
I think I'm going to give up Radio 5
Why? Because it scares me. Because it endangers my mental health by inducing me to snarl and grrr at the babbling noisebox in my living room. Because it makes me feel fascism is coming soon. No, this is not the beginning of a counter-I Believe in the BBC campaign. It's not the reporting or the presenters or the guests - it's the public! I realised I must give it up this morning when I was desperately tempted to do the unthinkable and take part in a phone-in myself. The horror. Shuddering, I placed the spared mobile back on a table and took deep breaths. That way madness lay. I'd looked into the abyss and for a moment had thought - it wasn't that deep after all!
They had been discussing the return to the UK of several Guantanamo Bay inmates, who have been arrested on arrival in order that the Metropolitan Police can formally decide whether or not they have committed a crime. The string of callers were sick-shocking. Here, behold the chappie who first of all demanded to know "If some Christians had gone to fight for the Serbs against...the KLA, would they have got a Catholic priest? Eh? WELL WOULD THEY?" The answer is in fact "yes, it's in the Geneva Conventions, and British forces' standing orders on these things require it", but no-one had the wit to wap him with that one. No, he was convinced that it was a special and unfair privilege granted to Muslims that they might have the services of a priest. Oh dear. It only got worse, though, as he wanted them to be shot. "Of course, you would put them on trial first". No. He nearly bust an eyeball over this. "What were they doing in a war zone? That's what I wanna know!" But he stuck by the proposal of extrajudicial shootings.
It didn't improve. A string of dopes came out with the same war-zone remark, usually demanding that the men "explain what they were doing in Afghanistan". No-one raised the idea of presumption of innocence, prima facie evidence etc. Tiresome details. Apparently the same government who had invaded Iraq and detained a number of persons right here without trial or charge were "wimps". From evil and stupidity we descended to corruption. First a Sikh, then a Muslim came on the line to denounce treachery and demand greater viciousness. "I think they should go to Afghanistan if they want to be there - I love England!" A Cockney Wanka: "And I'll buy the ticket!" No notice to the point that one poor man had actually been seized from a Taliban prison. No inkling that no evidence has ever, anywhere, in any way been offered to even suggest their involvement. The constant reiteration of the phrase "war zone". This needs scrutiny.
So many said that (in effect) the alleged fact of their presence in a "war zone" was proof of guilt - specifically of direct acts against British interests. What can this mean? Especially as a) some of the men involved were arrested many hundreds of miles from the area of the fighting, and b) some may actually have been in Pakistan at the time. Clearly, it is assumed by these folk that all of Afghanistan was in effect a free fire zone: everyone there was "in the war zone", hence on the enemy side and hence legitimate targets. Not to mention the fact that after the main fighting was over, guerrilla activity went on and US forces conducted large cordon and search operations, that is to say encircling a given locality and then searching it. Obviously, anyone within the cordon was possibly subject to arrest. As most of this activity took place near the Pakistani border, that might easily include persons trying to leave the "war zone". There is no status in law for any presumption that civilians of any nationality or none in a "war zone" are aiding one side or the other. Justifications like this have been used by all sorts of very unpleasant armies: the Germans on the Eastern Front in 1941-5 were exhibit A, effectively declaring the eastern theatre of operations to be a zone without law.
It's frightening to see just how many people of all races in one's country are potential concentration camp guards - harbouring the justifications of war criminals..
They had been discussing the return to the UK of several Guantanamo Bay inmates, who have been arrested on arrival in order that the Metropolitan Police can formally decide whether or not they have committed a crime. The string of callers were sick-shocking. Here, behold the chappie who first of all demanded to know "If some Christians had gone to fight for the Serbs against...the KLA, would they have got a Catholic priest? Eh? WELL WOULD THEY?" The answer is in fact "yes, it's in the Geneva Conventions, and British forces' standing orders on these things require it", but no-one had the wit to wap him with that one. No, he was convinced that it was a special and unfair privilege granted to Muslims that they might have the services of a priest. Oh dear. It only got worse, though, as he wanted them to be shot. "Of course, you would put them on trial first". No. He nearly bust an eyeball over this. "What were they doing in a war zone? That's what I wanna know!" But he stuck by the proposal of extrajudicial shootings.
It didn't improve. A string of dopes came out with the same war-zone remark, usually demanding that the men "explain what they were doing in Afghanistan". No-one raised the idea of presumption of innocence, prima facie evidence etc. Tiresome details. Apparently the same government who had invaded Iraq and detained a number of persons right here without trial or charge were "wimps". From evil and stupidity we descended to corruption. First a Sikh, then a Muslim came on the line to denounce treachery and demand greater viciousness. "I think they should go to Afghanistan if they want to be there - I love England!" A Cockney Wanka: "And I'll buy the ticket!" No notice to the point that one poor man had actually been seized from a Taliban prison. No inkling that no evidence has ever, anywhere, in any way been offered to even suggest their involvement. The constant reiteration of the phrase "war zone". This needs scrutiny.
So many said that (in effect) the alleged fact of their presence in a "war zone" was proof of guilt - specifically of direct acts against British interests. What can this mean? Especially as a) some of the men involved were arrested many hundreds of miles from the area of the fighting, and b) some may actually have been in Pakistan at the time. Clearly, it is assumed by these folk that all of Afghanistan was in effect a free fire zone: everyone there was "in the war zone", hence on the enemy side and hence legitimate targets. Not to mention the fact that after the main fighting was over, guerrilla activity went on and US forces conducted large cordon and search operations, that is to say encircling a given locality and then searching it. Obviously, anyone within the cordon was possibly subject to arrest. As most of this activity took place near the Pakistani border, that might easily include persons trying to leave the "war zone". There is no status in law for any presumption that civilians of any nationality or none in a "war zone" are aiding one side or the other. Justifications like this have been used by all sorts of very unpleasant armies: the Germans on the Eastern Front in 1941-5 were exhibit A, effectively declaring the eastern theatre of operations to be a zone without law.
It's frightening to see just how many people of all races in one's country are potential concentration camp guards - harbouring the justifications of war criminals..
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
How to have a constitutional crisis: advice!
1. Somebody has to be unnecessarily arrogant.
2. Someone else has to be unreasonably stubborn.
3. Both have to develop severe target fixation.
4. The whole must involve the institutions society sets up to prevent these occasions.
5. Stir.
So - all these have now been followed, and we have a crisis! Now, the Ranter would like to offer some useful hints as to how to beat back the nonsense both parties to the crisis will offer in the next few days. Because they will. David Blunkett has already been snarling about "unelected judges blocking the will of parliament". Various conservative types have predictably pomped that it is outrageous, unthinkable etc to tamper with ancient institutions of blah without even consulting the Queen (unproven, AFAIK) blah blah. The conservative response to the constitutional reform bill should remind us of one thing: much of it is a good and honest idea. The lord chancellorship is a weird beast - an unelected legislator who is also a judge and an equally unelected minister - and it is overdue that it changes. But the deep purpose of the bill is not that. We all know that it is a quick fix to "complete" House of Lords reform without doing anything scary, difficult or democratic. The rest has been included as a sweetener. And this is the problem - the basic project has gone badly wrong.
The Government will appeal to a crude understanding of democracy as identical with a parliamentary majority. This may be described as the "will of parliament", "democracy", "the voice of the people". It is untrue. Democracy does not mean the absolute power of whoever had majority support up to five years ago in entirely different circumstances. On that understanding, the government might declare an end to elections - it has a majority! - and force it through by the Parliament Act, and we should all be expected to clap. Where is our protection against the government, or against the ultra vires actions of its agents, between elections? In Parliament? Only given a minimal majority. A working majority means no effective protection. Anything over 50 means we have to rely on the courts. Why? Here Blunkett will say that judicial review is only recent. What of it? The doctrine that the Crown itself is as subject to the law as its subjects is first stated in Magna Carta. Like any legal principle, it is meaningless without an operational tribunal of judgement with the executive power of redress. If Mr. B means what he says, he believes in fake rights, fake law. You can have impressive rights in law, but no redress should he wish to violate them. And this is very foreign indeed. The raison d'etat has no status in the British constitution - all power stems from law.
2. Someone else has to be unreasonably stubborn.
3. Both have to develop severe target fixation.
4. The whole must involve the institutions society sets up to prevent these occasions.
5. Stir.
So - all these have now been followed, and we have a crisis! Now, the Ranter would like to offer some useful hints as to how to beat back the nonsense both parties to the crisis will offer in the next few days. Because they will. David Blunkett has already been snarling about "unelected judges blocking the will of parliament". Various conservative types have predictably pomped that it is outrageous, unthinkable etc to tamper with ancient institutions of blah without even consulting the Queen (unproven, AFAIK) blah blah. The conservative response to the constitutional reform bill should remind us of one thing: much of it is a good and honest idea. The lord chancellorship is a weird beast - an unelected legislator who is also a judge and an equally unelected minister - and it is overdue that it changes. But the deep purpose of the bill is not that. We all know that it is a quick fix to "complete" House of Lords reform without doing anything scary, difficult or democratic. The rest has been included as a sweetener. And this is the problem - the basic project has gone badly wrong.
The Government will appeal to a crude understanding of democracy as identical with a parliamentary majority. This may be described as the "will of parliament", "democracy", "the voice of the people". It is untrue. Democracy does not mean the absolute power of whoever had majority support up to five years ago in entirely different circumstances. On that understanding, the government might declare an end to elections - it has a majority! - and force it through by the Parliament Act, and we should all be expected to clap. Where is our protection against the government, or against the ultra vires actions of its agents, between elections? In Parliament? Only given a minimal majority. A working majority means no effective protection. Anything over 50 means we have to rely on the courts. Why? Here Blunkett will say that judicial review is only recent. What of it? The doctrine that the Crown itself is as subject to the law as its subjects is first stated in Magna Carta. Like any legal principle, it is meaningless without an operational tribunal of judgement with the executive power of redress. If Mr. B means what he says, he believes in fake rights, fake law. You can have impressive rights in law, but no redress should he wish to violate them. And this is very foreign indeed. The raison d'etat has no status in the British constitution - all power stems from law.
Monday, March 08, 2004
Ballet, war and blogs
"Ballet is the one form of theater where nobody speaks a foolish word all evening—nobody on the stage at least. That's why it becomes so popular in any civilized country during a war."
Edwin Denby, Dance Writings from
Dual Loyalty.
Very wise. I wonder if, had he heard about this, his attitude might have been different? And who would have thought that French ballet dancers were represented by the Communist and metal-bashingly, red-meat chompingly blokish CGT? Like the cheminots, shipbuilders, truckers etc? What a strange affair conference must be... This has to be the most French event anyone could imagine, anyway.
Edwin Denby, Dance Writings from
Dual Loyalty.
Very wise. I wonder if, had he heard about this, his attitude might have been different? And who would have thought that French ballet dancers were represented by the Communist and metal-bashingly, red-meat chompingly blokish CGT? Like the cheminots, shipbuilders, truckers etc? What a strange affair conference must be... This has to be the most French event anyone could imagine, anyway.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
The Iraq Communications Group, Valerie Plame and something called WHIG
Does anyone remember something called the Iraq Communications Group? It was the team of spindoctors and spooks chaired by Alastair Campbell in the run-up to the war with Iraq that - depending on who you believe - either did or didn't sex up the dossiers. After all, Ali C stated to the Foreign Affairs Committee that this outfit was behind the "dodgy" dossier (link) but that it had explicitly not had anything to do with the nonupsexed September dossier. Later, the Hutton inquiry exploded this denial, when it transpired that the people who took part in the initial meetings preparing that fateful document were the same men (and they were all men) who later formed the ICG - they just weren't called that yet.
Obviously, this close connection between propagandists like Ali C, spooks like John Scarlett, and No.10 in the person of David Manning, the Prime Minister's foreign policy advisor was the sort of stuff that made it very likely that political influence had been exerted, especially as the same bunch went on to give the world the second dossier with its ripped-off thesis material. What has not been widely known was that the Americans had one too. The White House Iraq Group has only been mentioned once before this week in the media, in the Washington Post of the 10th of August 2003. Thanks to Talking Points Memo, its possible significance has been pointed up. The grand jury investigating the otherwise unrelated Valerie Plame affair (when the White House blew the cover of a CIA agent who happened to be married to the guy they sent to Niger to find out if the story about Iraq buying uranium was true...) has demanded the WHIG's papers, as well as the phone records for a whole week on Air Force 1, the week immediately before she was outed. What's the connection?
Well, look at the sort of people who made up WHIG and its role:
So - a team of spin doctors and National Security Council staff (i.e. semi-spooks), headed by the man who is Bush's top spinner and virtual office chief, Rove. Does that sound at all familiar? And look what it was up to:
Now that's almost uncannily similar to - ah - certain other alleged events that may or may not have happened to a not entirely unrelated document being prepared by a possibly similar group in a certain country shortly afterwards. (Post-Hutton mode OFF.)
In fact, it's absolutely upsextastic. I strongly suggest you read the whole Washington Post story - it's total dynamite, and a reminder of what a shithot paper it is, and what a poisonous bunch of mendacrats are in charge of the world. I also suggest you all ponder the meaning of this:
The what? The Coalition Information Centre, that's what. The long-memoried will recall that this was a British-American spin office set up in November, 2001 to counter bad publicity in the Afghan war (official description here), with the deep involvement of Ali C and other British spin doctors. There are 3 CICs, in London, Washington and Islamabad. Now, I wonder what role this curious form of spinner-to-spinner diplomacy might have had? And wouldn't it be nice to live in a country where inquirers can demand the comms records from the president's plane?
"At a meeting on September 5 a group of advisers gathered to discuss how the dossier would be produced. This group went onto become the Iraq communications group, and those present included Mr Campbell, Mr Scarlett, David Manning, Julian Miller, Tom McCane, Desmond Bowen, Paul Hamill, Edward Chaplin and Stephen Wright."link
Obviously, this close connection between propagandists like Ali C, spooks like John Scarlett, and No.10 in the person of David Manning, the Prime Minister's foreign policy advisor was the sort of stuff that made it very likely that political influence had been exerted, especially as the same bunch went on to give the world the second dossier with its ripped-off thesis material. What has not been widely known was that the Americans had one too. The White House Iraq Group has only been mentioned once before this week in the media, in the Washington Post of the 10th of August 2003. Thanks to Talking Points Memo, its possible significance has been pointed up. The grand jury investigating the otherwise unrelated Valerie Plame affair (when the White House blew the cover of a CIA agent who happened to be married to the guy they sent to Niger to find out if the story about Iraq buying uranium was true...) has demanded the WHIG's papers, as well as the phone records for a whole week on Air Force 1, the week immediately before she was outed. What's the connection?
Well, look at the sort of people who made up WHIG and its role:
"Systematic coordination began in August, when Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. formed the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad. A senior official who participated in its work called it "an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities."Washington Post link
In an interview with the New York Times published Sept. 6, Card did not mention the WHIG but hinted at its mission. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," he said.
The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff."
So - a team of spin doctors and National Security Council staff (i.e. semi-spooks), headed by the man who is Bush's top spinner and virtual office chief, Rove. Does that sound at all familiar? And look what it was up to:
"In its later stages, the draft white paper coincided with production of a National Intelligence Estimate and its unclassified summary. But the WHIG, according to three officials who followed the white paper's progress, wanted gripping images and stories not available in the hedged and austere language of intelligence.
The fifth draft of the paper was obtained by The Washington Post. White House spokesmen dismissed the draft as irrelevant because Rice decided not to publish it. Wilkinson said Rice and Joseph felt the paper "was not strong enough."
Now that's almost uncannily similar to - ah - certain other alleged events that may or may not have happened to a not entirely unrelated document being prepared by a possibly similar group in a certain country shortly afterwards. (Post-Hutton mode OFF.)
In fact, it's absolutely upsextastic. I strongly suggest you read the whole Washington Post story - it's total dynamite, and a reminder of what a shithot paper it is, and what a poisonous bunch of mendacrats are in charge of the world. I also suggest you all ponder the meaning of this:
"We conclude that the degree of autonomy given to the Iraq communications group chaired by Mr Campbell and the Coalition Information Centre which reported to him, as well as the lack of procedural accountability, were contributory factors to the affair of the "dodgy dossier".the FAC report again
The what? The Coalition Information Centre, that's what. The long-memoried will recall that this was a British-American spin office set up in November, 2001 to counter bad publicity in the Afghan war (official description here), with the deep involvement of Ali C and other British spin doctors. There are 3 CICs, in London, Washington and Islamabad. Now, I wonder what role this curious form of spinner-to-spinner diplomacy might have had? And wouldn't it be nice to live in a country where inquirers can demand the comms records from the president's plane?
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Massacre in Iraq - is this the first shot of the civil war?
Link
The terrorists - and I mean terrorists, no Robert Fisk fastidiousness with language this time - are back in town. At least 140 dead in two attacks on mosques on the holiest day in the Shia calendar, one in Baghdad and one in Karbala. Hard not to read the symbols - Karbala, the holy city, and Baghdad, the seat of power. Hard not to read the message - which one depends on who you are, though. For the Shias: we're still here and there's nothing Sistani can do to protect you. For the Sunnis: we're still here and the Americans can't stop us - PS, you'd better toe the line. For the West: you don't know who we are, but that doesn't matter. Whether the "we" was al-Qa'ida or Sunnis or Shia extremists trying to discredit Sistani or Ba'athists - the message was that no amount of interim councils could solve this one. The style was al-Qa'ida - maximum extreme horror, staged for total outrage - but the methods seem to have been more Ba'athist or ex-Ba'athist. Both attacks are believed to have used concealed mortars, an ominous old IRA move.
And the tribal, sectarian targeting speaks of a very local Iraqi motivation. But on the same day, 41 more Shias were slaughtered in Quetta, Pakistan, with very similar tactics.
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has already lashed the coalition for failing to secure the borders. Mobs reportedly set on army medics treating the wounded, a grim portent if ever there was one. Is this revolutionary terror, intended to whip up rage that might turn against the west, or is it pure religious cleansing, a horrific re-assertion of Sunni power?
In reality, I suppose, it doesn't matter. Whatever the aim was, the result will likely be the same - escalating chaos. And the real result is completely independent of any such babbling - pain.
The terrorists - and I mean terrorists, no Robert Fisk fastidiousness with language this time - are back in town. At least 140 dead in two attacks on mosques on the holiest day in the Shia calendar, one in Baghdad and one in Karbala. Hard not to read the symbols - Karbala, the holy city, and Baghdad, the seat of power. Hard not to read the message - which one depends on who you are, though. For the Shias: we're still here and there's nothing Sistani can do to protect you. For the Sunnis: we're still here and the Americans can't stop us - PS, you'd better toe the line. For the West: you don't know who we are, but that doesn't matter. Whether the "we" was al-Qa'ida or Sunnis or Shia extremists trying to discredit Sistani or Ba'athists - the message was that no amount of interim councils could solve this one. The style was al-Qa'ida - maximum extreme horror, staged for total outrage - but the methods seem to have been more Ba'athist or ex-Ba'athist. Both attacks are believed to have used concealed mortars, an ominous old IRA move.
And the tribal, sectarian targeting speaks of a very local Iraqi motivation. But on the same day, 41 more Shias were slaughtered in Quetta, Pakistan, with very similar tactics.
Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has already lashed the coalition for failing to secure the borders. Mobs reportedly set on army medics treating the wounded, a grim portent if ever there was one. Is this revolutionary terror, intended to whip up rage that might turn against the west, or is it pure religious cleansing, a horrific re-assertion of Sunni power?
In reality, I suppose, it doesn't matter. Whatever the aim was, the result will likely be the same - escalating chaos. And the real result is completely independent of any such babbling - pain.
How the great power blackouts happened..
Interesting article, if a little techy, on the giant power failures in the USA last summer and their cause - the gap between the engineering realities of the electricity system and the tortuous attempt to impose a market system on it. Basically, the problem was that the marketisers saw the system as a large number of competing factories selling a location-neutral product - when in fact it was "the world's largest machine", as closely interconnected as the players in an orchestra.
Feel free to draw your own conclusions on rail privatisation, Britain's national sport of infrastructural crisis, and that old Ranter standby - tax deficiency...
Feel free to draw your own conclusions on rail privatisation, Britain's national sport of infrastructural crisis, and that old Ranter standby - tax deficiency...
Monday, March 01, 2004
US Transportation Security Administration follow the Ranter
Reuters - US to station inspectors at foreign airports
Well, I proposed the establishment of British security controls on British aircraft and shipping in US ports right here on the blog not so long ago, in response to the regular US-inspired security scares. But it seems to have become US policy to do the opposite - to send (I suppose) agents from the failed TSA to major airports outside the US. Like Heathrow. Here's the link
Indeed.
Well, I proposed the establishment of British security controls on British aircraft and shipping in US ports right here on the blog not so long ago, in response to the regular US-inspired security scares. But it seems to have become US policy to do the opposite - to send (I suppose) agents from the failed TSA to major airports outside the US. Like Heathrow. Here's the link
The obvious objection is that this way madness lies - will every major airport soon be a weird multinational broth of policemen? And, of course, I objected to the sky marshals on those grounds among others. Here's the problem - this will eventually happen if there is no confidence in land-side states' efforts (or indeed good faith) and continued alerts, because things will get intolerable.
Indeed.
Thursday, February 26, 2004
US airport security staff "X-ray own brains"
9NEWS.com - Story
Some of the Transportation Security Administration's highly trained security screeners have taken their zeal for total security one step further by apparently attempting to make sure terrorists were not hiding in their heads. Or something.
"The Transportation Security Administration is not saying exactly who x-rayed themselves or when because of privacy reasons, but a source tells 9NEWS the six screeners were working at passenger checkpoints when they decided to x-ray their own bodies.
Like a piece of luggage, the screeners would have rolled down the conveyor belt into the opening, about 2.5 feet high and a foot and a half wide.
"There's enough training, enough education available in the public domain, let alone the circumstances of the TSA, to know this is a foolhardy thing to do,” said David Forbes, president of Boydforbes, Inc. “The questions that come out of this though are - what is the level of supervision?"
Indeed. Apparently they wanted to know "what their brains looked like" - some churlish and cruel cynics might suggest it came as a surprise to discover a brain, but the Ranter eschews such petty vitriol. A TSA spokesman, Mike Fierberg, said "It was just someone doing something stupid." Indeed. One wonders if they would recognise a weapon were they to come across one..."Hey, that's a really neat Osama bin Laden costume, sir!"
Some of the Transportation Security Administration's highly trained security screeners have taken their zeal for total security one step further by apparently attempting to make sure terrorists were not hiding in their heads. Or something.
"The Transportation Security Administration is not saying exactly who x-rayed themselves or when because of privacy reasons, but a source tells 9NEWS the six screeners were working at passenger checkpoints when they decided to x-ray their own bodies.
Like a piece of luggage, the screeners would have rolled down the conveyor belt into the opening, about 2.5 feet high and a foot and a half wide.
"There's enough training, enough education available in the public domain, let alone the circumstances of the TSA, to know this is a foolhardy thing to do,” said David Forbes, president of Boydforbes, Inc. “The questions that come out of this though are - what is the level of supervision?"
Indeed. Apparently they wanted to know "what their brains looked like" - some churlish and cruel cynics might suggest it came as a surprise to discover a brain, but the Ranter eschews such petty vitriol. A TSA spokesman, Mike Fierberg, said "It was just someone doing something stupid." Indeed. One wonders if they would recognise a weapon were they to come across one..."Hey, that's a really neat Osama bin Laden costume, sir!"
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