A Hamas commander at the scene said people had gathered to show that the demolition strategy of the Israelis could be defeated.
An Israeli military spokesman confirmed to Reuters news agency that the raid had been called off because of the Palestinian action.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
Van Creveld in Gaza
The great Israeli historian Martin van Creveld argued, years ago, that the occupation must end because of the "power of the weak", that eventually the degree of violence that would be needed to maintain it would destroy Israeli moral cohesion. It seems someone on the other side has read him. Within the last month we've seen a mass protest by hundreds of women being staged to spring a group of Hamas men from a building they were surrounded in, and now an airstrike is called off as civilians surround the target. Ruthlessness is harder than you think.
The Hunt question
The Bath University RepRap project (to build a rapid-prototyping tool that can make copies of itself) is coming on with all due speed, and I especially like their latest test part, a natty Linux penguin. Which is fitting for a project that's all open-source. Back when they got started, Phil Hunt of Cabalamat Journal posed the fascinating question of what happens when every workshop in the DRC can make surface-to-air missiles.
DefenceTech is nearly there, discussing the spread of cheap CNC machine tools and the US Army's mobile parts hospital, a workshop in a shipping container that can run off parts for almost anything they use. It's not true RepRapping, but it's close, especially as the RepRap team has discussed using signmakers' CNC plastic jigs to multiply first-generation RepRaps.
DefenceTech is nearly there, discussing the spread of cheap CNC machine tools and the US Army's mobile parts hospital, a workshop in a shipping container that can run off parts for almost anything they use. It's not true RepRapping, but it's close, especially as the RepRap team has discussed using signmakers' CNC plastic jigs to multiply first-generation RepRaps.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Goalposts
There's been plenty of debunking aimed at the Weekly Standard's claim that more US troops in Iraq always means less violence, but I haven't seen this point. Stuntz argues that 18,000 more troops were deployed between November, 2004 and February, 2005, and the butcher's bill fell.
Well, it would. November, 2004 was the peak of the Fallujah campaign, the second Shia rising, and the insurgent seizure of Mosul. Violence continued fearsome into January, then dropped off some as the offensive wound down. It's simply an exercise in choosing a stretch of the trendline that agrees with you, then placing the goalposts at each end. Or to put it another way, an egregiously dishonest abuse of statistics.
Well, it would. November, 2004 was the peak of the Fallujah campaign, the second Shia rising, and the insurgent seizure of Mosul. Violence continued fearsome into January, then dropped off some as the offensive wound down. It's simply an exercise in choosing a stretch of the trendline that agrees with you, then placing the goalposts at each end. Or to put it another way, an egregiously dishonest abuse of statistics.
Risible claims
Christmas is coming, so it must be time to start raking over old quarrels and scratching at old wounds. The Ministry has at Torygraph hack Con Coughlin, among other things because of this WMD furphy from December, 2003.
I remember it well. The weapons were supposedly WMD-tastic warheads for RPGs, which is incredibly silly, and the source was an anti-aircraft unit's officer. Why would they have them? I don't remember anyone asking the simple, all-clarifying question of what kind of WMD would anyone use within a maximum of 920 metres of their own position.
I remember it well. The weapons were supposedly WMD-tastic warheads for RPGs, which is incredibly silly, and the source was an anti-aircraft unit's officer. Why would they have them? I don't remember anyone asking the simple, all-clarifying question of what kind of WMD would anyone use within a maximum of 920 metres of their own position.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Option 8
In this post, we analysed the options open to the Iraq Study Group. Supposedly, the original brief foresaw 8. Number 8 was one last push, and it seems that this is exactly what we're going to get. Note that it is sourced to the President and "Pentagon officials", rather than the Group itself.
In that post, I pointed out that option 8 was absurd because there was no discrete strategic, or even operational, aim that could be achieved by a "last push". I theorised that it was included as a debate framing exercise to make some version of option 3, phased withdrawal, seem palatable through the false impression of "balance" or "moderation." Well, it seems that George W. Bush has bought the dummy so completely he thinks it's a real option.
Years ago, I had a dog, a big friendly barky one that was not perhaps very bright. One day, out for a walk by the Wharfe, the dog smelt a rabbit and plunged off after the creature. Normally, the bunny would have outmanoeuvred him within a couple of turns - I'm sure one of them managed to get on his tail once and claim a Fox-10 - but this one made a fatal mistake. Assuming the dog was intelligent, he reefed into a sharp turn one way, then back the other, then threw a dummy the other way but kept going the same way. The dog, however, wasn't clever enough to notice the dummy, and the rabbit ran right into his jaws.
So George and Dick are going to send for more troops, 20,000 of them - presumably this is "whatever is left in the bag" rather than any specific tactical formation - in order to "secure Baghdad". Ah, that again. I see no reason why they will be any more successful at this than the last three times. One sane use for more troops, incidentally, would be to concentrate a reserve strike force in the MND(SE) zone in case it becomes necessary to re-open the roads by force. But they could be provided by pulling out of Anbar.
They are also flirting with the idea of a international conference, but can't quite bring themselves to say "talk to Iran". It is hinted at, but they prefer to talk about Saudi Arabia and Kuwait - who are the least influential Arab nations in Iraq by a distance. And the idea of encouraging the Saudis to get involved in a fight with SCIRI and Sadr inspires, well...fear more than anything else except perhaps astonishment.
So it looks like Charlie Whitaker was right.
They also want to revive the national reconciliation process and ask Congress for more resources. On this, frankly, I'm disappointed they didn't also get to grips with the urgent question of ponies.
In that post, I pointed out that option 8 was absurd because there was no discrete strategic, or even operational, aim that could be achieved by a "last push". I theorised that it was included as a debate framing exercise to make some version of option 3, phased withdrawal, seem palatable through the false impression of "balance" or "moderation." Well, it seems that George W. Bush has bought the dummy so completely he thinks it's a real option.
Years ago, I had a dog, a big friendly barky one that was not perhaps very bright. One day, out for a walk by the Wharfe, the dog smelt a rabbit and plunged off after the creature. Normally, the bunny would have outmanoeuvred him within a couple of turns - I'm sure one of them managed to get on his tail once and claim a Fox-10 - but this one made a fatal mistake. Assuming the dog was intelligent, he reefed into a sharp turn one way, then back the other, then threw a dummy the other way but kept going the same way. The dog, however, wasn't clever enough to notice the dummy, and the rabbit ran right into his jaws.
So George and Dick are going to send for more troops, 20,000 of them - presumably this is "whatever is left in the bag" rather than any specific tactical formation - in order to "secure Baghdad". Ah, that again. I see no reason why they will be any more successful at this than the last three times. One sane use for more troops, incidentally, would be to concentrate a reserve strike force in the MND(SE) zone in case it becomes necessary to re-open the roads by force. But they could be provided by pulling out of Anbar.
They are also flirting with the idea of a international conference, but can't quite bring themselves to say "talk to Iran". It is hinted at, but they prefer to talk about Saudi Arabia and Kuwait - who are the least influential Arab nations in Iraq by a distance. And the idea of encouraging the Saudis to get involved in a fight with SCIRI and Sadr inspires, well...fear more than anything else except perhaps astonishment.
So it looks like Charlie Whitaker was right.
They also want to revive the national reconciliation process and ask Congress for more resources. On this, frankly, I'm disappointed they didn't also get to grips with the urgent question of ponies.
Bleg to Fr8ter
Commenter Fr8ter says Kuwait has banned Kyrgyz-registered (EX-) aircraft from landing or overflying the country, which is significant becase all flights from the south to Iraq enter Iraqi airspace over Kuwait. But the Dubai and Sharjah airport sites continue to show several flights a day to Baghdad and elsewhere, operated by British Gulf International and Click AW - whose aircraft are all EX-registry. Any clues?
What planet is he on?
Can Iain Dale really be so ignorant of the world as to wonder why no-one votes Conservative in Rotherham?
Please. A bit of humility would be becoming. Responsibility is too much to ask, I realise, but it's because you shut down their steelworks.
Please. A bit of humility would be becoming. Responsibility is too much to ask, I realise, but it's because you shut down their steelworks.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
The what and the why
Not at all sure what to make of this UN Expert Panel report on Somalia. Some things are clear enough, for example that Ethiopia is supporting the old not-government and Eritrea the Islamic Courts in order to piss off the Ethiopians. But what is all this James Bond stuff about Iranians trading arms for uranium?
All Iranian-uranium stories must be subject to a large bullshit adjustment for the very simple reason that Iran has uranium mines on its own territory. I've never heard of uranium in Somalia, but I am willing to be informed by any experts who may be around. Equally, what is this tale of 700-odd Somali volunteers going to Lebanon to fight with Hezbollah? It seems very unlikely - after all, before the Courts' success, the airport wasn't operational. The only ones that were working are in Puntland or other warlord territories, which means we are expected to believe that they happily permitted several 747-loads of their enemies to transit their territories. On arrival, they would have had to transit the roads under the Israeli air force's nose, to say nothing of the Maronites' and Druzes' intelligence services.
And, of course, wouldn't they have been a wee bit conspicuous in Lebanon? According to other newspaper reports, they are meant to have arrived there in the heart of the war, and then gone again - not infiltrating over the border in dribs and drabs, but showing up as a battalion-sized chunk. This sounds very much like the Dr. Evil theory of state sponsorship at work.
Update: 1225GMT, 16/11/06: Israeli UN mission sez they never saw any Somalis up north. Plot thickens.
All Iranian-uranium stories must be subject to a large bullshit adjustment for the very simple reason that Iran has uranium mines on its own territory. I've never heard of uranium in Somalia, but I am willing to be informed by any experts who may be around. Equally, what is this tale of 700-odd Somali volunteers going to Lebanon to fight with Hezbollah? It seems very unlikely - after all, before the Courts' success, the airport wasn't operational. The only ones that were working are in Puntland or other warlord territories, which means we are expected to believe that they happily permitted several 747-loads of their enemies to transit their territories. On arrival, they would have had to transit the roads under the Israeli air force's nose, to say nothing of the Maronites' and Druzes' intelligence services.
And, of course, wouldn't they have been a wee bit conspicuous in Lebanon? According to other newspaper reports, they are meant to have arrived there in the heart of the war, and then gone again - not infiltrating over the border in dribs and drabs, but showing up as a battalion-sized chunk. This sounds very much like the Dr. Evil theory of state sponsorship at work.
Update: 1225GMT, 16/11/06: Israeli UN mission sez they never saw any Somalis up north. Plot thickens.
BRD outbreak rages!
David Axe is out with the Queen's Royal Hussars group again, and he is still in the grip of raging Brit Romanticisation Disorder. Please, enough with the Lawrence of Arabia stuff. Or, well, get a room, or a secluded tent at least.
More seriously, he's impressed by the tactics and the determination to keep the support structure and insult to society to a minimum. Very wise, I agree. But it gives little sense of security. The weekend's IED attack on a boat in central Basra, with four dead, shows a continuing deterioration of security in southern Iraq. The explosion occurred not far from the Old State Building camp, under a pontoon bridge - it should surely be worrying that bombs get under one of the main bridges over the Shatt al-Arab. Last week, another soldier was shot by a sniper inside the same camp. The zone of insecurity is widening.
So how is the C-130 explosion-suppressant foam getting on? When Labouchere calls for stores or reinforcement that won't fit in a Merlin chopper, one of the RAF's Hercules fleet makes a tactical landing at a flat bit of desert chosen by the troops and makes off as swiftly as possible. So far, after the aircrews' rebellion over the loss of XV179, there are a total of 2 Hercules with the foam installed. The problem is that Marshall Aerospace in Cambridge has done the sort of thing your dad did with that IKEA wardrobe with the first plane.
They got the foam in there all right, but they had some trouble getting the plane back together. I'm not informed whether there were any bits left over, but when they tried to fill the tanks, deliciously inflammable kerosene drifted out of sloppy cracks and soaked the whole thing. A wee spark would have fieryd-up the ship and all who sailed in her.
More seriously, he's impressed by the tactics and the determination to keep the support structure and insult to society to a minimum. Very wise, I agree. But it gives little sense of security. The weekend's IED attack on a boat in central Basra, with four dead, shows a continuing deterioration of security in southern Iraq. The explosion occurred not far from the Old State Building camp, under a pontoon bridge - it should surely be worrying that bombs get under one of the main bridges over the Shatt al-Arab. Last week, another soldier was shot by a sniper inside the same camp. The zone of insecurity is widening.
So how is the C-130 explosion-suppressant foam getting on? When Labouchere calls for stores or reinforcement that won't fit in a Merlin chopper, one of the RAF's Hercules fleet makes a tactical landing at a flat bit of desert chosen by the troops and makes off as swiftly as possible. So far, after the aircrews' rebellion over the loss of XV179, there are a total of 2 Hercules with the foam installed. The problem is that Marshall Aerospace in Cambridge has done the sort of thing your dad did with that IKEA wardrobe with the first plane.
They got the foam in there all right, but they had some trouble getting the plane back together. I'm not informed whether there were any bits left over, but when they tried to fill the tanks, deliciously inflammable kerosene drifted out of sloppy cracks and soaked the whole thing. A wee spark would have fieryd-up the ship and all who sailed in her.
A Bosnian strategy
Not so long ago, the Indy's Patrick Cockburn suggested that the Sunni insurgents - the New-Old Iraqi Army, as I call them - are pursuing a strategy of encirclement as a counter to the Shia majority in Baghdad, pressing hard around Baqubah and Muqdadiyah to the north and the Mahmoudiyah/Iskandariyah area to the south in order to control the road and rail exits from the city. There has been a great deal of fighting in these places, and the Baqubah area has been very bad recently. It's in Diyala province, which is a near-even mix religiously, and commands the last major road out of Shia Baghdad. Cockburn's sources described a typical process - a big bang, then the intimidation of the police, then the elimination of local businesses so as to force everyone else out. Then, Sunni refugees from Baghdad appear in a convoy and move in. No doubt they will be asked to find a self-defence force, as was done in 1940 in the Warthegau of German-occupied Poland.
The NYT reports on the counterstrategy, which is to do the same to the Sunnis on the remaining road out in the hope of incorporating that territory in the future Shia state. The ethnic cleansing is indeed under way. It's a horrible old European story - kill one lot, move them out, find enough of yours to secure the ground.
Here is a useful suggestion, now that the field is apparently open to useful suggestions - in the interval between now and withdrawal, the Coalition and the Iraqi government should declare the neutralisation of the roads north and south out of Baghdad, and bomb the hell out of anyone who interferes. If you want a humanitarian intervention, permitting the citizenry to escape Baghdad is it, as is staving off either an assault by the NOIA or a breakout by the SCIRI a while longer.
Update, 1231GMT 16/11/06: The Saudis are shitting bricks, as are the Syrians, the Turks and the GCC. But can we not take up Nawaf Obeid of CSIS on his suggestion, though? The last thing we need is Saudi Arabia warning Iran that, unless it stops it's messing around, the Saudis will start their own proxy-war effort in Iraq. To be filed under "fighting fires with petrol".
The NYT reports on the counterstrategy, which is to do the same to the Sunnis on the remaining road out in the hope of incorporating that territory in the future Shia state. The ethnic cleansing is indeed under way. It's a horrible old European story - kill one lot, move them out, find enough of yours to secure the ground.
Here is a useful suggestion, now that the field is apparently open to useful suggestions - in the interval between now and withdrawal, the Coalition and the Iraqi government should declare the neutralisation of the roads north and south out of Baghdad, and bomb the hell out of anyone who interferes. If you want a humanitarian intervention, permitting the citizenry to escape Baghdad is it, as is staving off either an assault by the NOIA or a breakout by the SCIRI a while longer.
Update, 1231GMT 16/11/06: The Saudis are shitting bricks, as are the Syrians, the Turks and the GCC. But can we not take up Nawaf Obeid of CSIS on his suggestion, though? The last thing we need is Saudi Arabia warning Iran that, unless it stops it's messing around, the Saudis will start their own proxy-war effort in Iraq. To be filed under "fighting fires with petrol".
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Confoblogging: Trust, consent, and standards
"How would a Galileo-based road pricing scheme fit into the code of practice requirement of a direct relationship with the user?" Good fucking question. We've got David Smith, the deputy information commissioner, and among others Richard Clayton of the Cambridge Computer Lab's security engineering group - that's right, the guy from Light Blue Touchpaper - to argue the point.
Clayton: "We mistake data protection for privacy and vice versa. We mistake statistical data mining for precise knowledge of events. Most of all, the politicians and the systems builders must realise that when it matters, people cheat."
Now, Bowden asks a question from the floor regarding user notification on behalf of Ben "Badscience" Goldacre, thus soaring in my estimation.
Clayton: "We mistake data protection for privacy and vice versa. We mistake statistical data mining for precise knowledge of events. Most of all, the politicians and the systems builders must realise that when it matters, people cheat."
Now, Bowden asks a question from the floor regarding user notification on behalf of Ben "Badscience" Goldacre, thus soaring in my estimation.
Confoblogging: The NIR and the surveillance that goes with it
Gareth Crossman of Liberty: "The only way the National Identity Register can fight terrorism is if the amount of information on it is increased to make profiling possible." Next up: Simon Watkin. Former head of David Blunkett's private office at the Home Office, he now runs the HO's Covert Investigations Policy team and the ACPO steering group on covert investigation. To put it another way, he's responsible for all the stuff I despise. We shall try to be civil.
"I am currently looking into an anecdote in which a member of a public authority acted in their own interest rather than the public interest," he says. What can he mean? "Public authorities are constantly coming to us, wanting to spy on the public. We say, have you done so in the past? No. So why do you want to? Because, well, we might, they say. That isn't enough."
Interestingly, he suggests that a much more serious criminal offence of abusing private data is needed. That might actually happen; it involves a new crime and more powers, after all.
We now have a panel discussion chaired by Casper Bowden of Microsoft. "We need to think of a new kind of personal data, this behavioural, tracking data, and how we can bring it in front of the user, create an interface for the user to reach into their data shadow," he says. This is a running theme - Hailes also mentioned the lack of a user interface to the embedded systems world.
Watkin suggests that public authorities ought to be subject to a "privacy impact assessment". Not a bad idea. Bowden remarks that it's been tried in Canada, but it will have to be carried out by experts - and independent experts, or perhaps a statutory "privacy regulator." He also points out that with a weak regulatory environment, there is no incentive to make the kind of investment in security engineering required to make embedded, self-organising networks both secure and private.
When I asked him if he thought such an assessment should be required by the government's procurement process, and if in that case he thought the NIR would have passed Main Gate Review, Watkin stated that he tried not to talk about ID cards and that he was not responsible for them, and refused to speak on-the-record.
"I am currently looking into an anecdote in which a member of a public authority acted in their own interest rather than the public interest," he says. What can he mean? "Public authorities are constantly coming to us, wanting to spy on the public. We say, have you done so in the past? No. So why do you want to? Because, well, we might, they say. That isn't enough."
Interestingly, he suggests that a much more serious criminal offence of abusing private data is needed. That might actually happen; it involves a new crime and more powers, after all.
We now have a panel discussion chaired by Casper Bowden of Microsoft. "We need to think of a new kind of personal data, this behavioural, tracking data, and how we can bring it in front of the user, create an interface for the user to reach into their data shadow," he says. This is a running theme - Hailes also mentioned the lack of a user interface to the embedded systems world.
Watkin suggests that public authorities ought to be subject to a "privacy impact assessment". Not a bad idea. Bowden remarks that it's been tried in Canada, but it will have to be carried out by experts - and independent experts, or perhaps a statutory "privacy regulator." He also points out that with a weak regulatory environment, there is no incentive to make the kind of investment in security engineering required to make embedded, self-organising networks both secure and private.
When I asked him if he thought such an assessment should be required by the government's procurement process, and if in that case he thought the NIR would have passed Main Gate Review, Watkin stated that he tried not to talk about ID cards and that he was not responsible for them, and refused to speak on-the-record.
Privacy: A Fine Balance
I'm currently at the Royal Society's "Privacy: A Fine Balance" conference, a DTI-sponsored shindig for eggheads, ubergeeks, cash grabbers and Home Office/defence industry control bureaucrats to thrash out digital rights issues. First speaker is Stephen Hailes of UCL, who's talking about embedded computing. He says that we need to realise that statistically, most multicellular life is insects - and it's the same with computing. 90 per cent of processors are microcontrollers - there are seven billion on the things on earth, rather more than there are people. And now they are getting networked.
As an example, he points to a device including a 250Kbits/s IEEE802.15.4 transceiver, a microcontroller, and a dab of Flash memory - a complete computer - the size of a one euro coin. But things get really interesting when you look at actuators. Karl Marx said that philosophers had analysed the world in different ways, but the point was to change it - which is what they do. "You can have a glucose sensor and an insulin pump connected by a wireless network - there are some interesting security implications from that. And it's not the future - here's the product," says Hailes.
"Fear of loss of control, the increased possibility of surveillance, profiling and security risks, new opportunities for crime, and the complexity of decision making processes within embedded systems" are the main concerns Hailes' research has raised. "Individuals are completely transparent - they feel they are not in control of these technologies but are controlled by the circuits in the car they buy from Ford. The power structures tend to be opaque."
MIT researchers gathered data on 100 students using Nokia 6600 phones and Bluetooth. Based on the lunchtime state of the database, it was possible to predict their activities for the rest of the day with 79% confidence - and their social group affiliations with 96%.
As an example, he points to a device including a 250Kbits/s IEEE802.15.4 transceiver, a microcontroller, and a dab of Flash memory - a complete computer - the size of a one euro coin. But things get really interesting when you look at actuators. Karl Marx said that philosophers had analysed the world in different ways, but the point was to change it - which is what they do. "You can have a glucose sensor and an insulin pump connected by a wireless network - there are some interesting security implications from that. And it's not the future - here's the product," says Hailes.
"Fear of loss of control, the increased possibility of surveillance, profiling and security risks, new opportunities for crime, and the complexity of decision making processes within embedded systems" are the main concerns Hailes' research has raised. "Individuals are completely transparent - they feel they are not in control of these technologies but are controlled by the circuits in the car they buy from Ford. The power structures tend to be opaque."
MIT researchers gathered data on 100 students using Nokia 6600 phones and Bluetooth. Based on the lunchtime state of the database, it was possible to predict their activities for the rest of the day with 79% confidence - and their social group affiliations with 96%.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Watch out!
As usual for events that are meant to be a Turning Point in Iraq, temporary calm has been enforced by a total curfew and vehicle ban during Saddam's judgment. It works, of course, for a few days - but it can't last, as people have to buy food and go to work. Consider it a radical drug from a kit of extreme measures, only for use in a desperate crisis and to be dropped as soon as possible.
Reuters AlertNet reports that the curfew expires at 0600 local time tomorrow. That's 0300Z, 2300 US Eastern Standard Time - or in other words, in time for the first US news cycle on polling day. Haifa Street, a NOIA stronghold area, is around 400 yards from the Green Zone. Snipers have been active in the area for weeks to intimidate US and Iraqi patrols. They could also serve as a stopgroup to hold up relief from outside.
I doubt the NOIA will let their king hang without trying a spectacular.
Reuters AlertNet reports that the curfew expires at 0600 local time tomorrow. That's 0300Z, 2300 US Eastern Standard Time - or in other words, in time for the first US news cycle on polling day. Haifa Street, a NOIA stronghold area, is around 400 yards from the Green Zone. Snipers have been active in the area for weeks to intimidate US and Iraqi patrols. They could also serve as a stopgroup to hold up relief from outside.
I doubt the NOIA will let their king hang without trying a spectacular.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
So much for the Iraqi curfew
Widely reported that, due to the verdict on Saddam, most of Iraq is under an indefinite curfew and the airport is closed. Except for British Gulf International and Click, though. Two flights from Baghdad arrived in Sharjah today.
05-Nov 12:30 Baghdad International Airport British Gulf International Airlines BGK 1234
05-Nov 15:30 Baghdad International Airport Click Airways CGK 914
And three are scheduled outbound to Baghdad.
05-Nov 23:45 Baghdad International Airport British Gulf International Airlines BGK 1233
05-Nov 23:45 Baghdad International Airport British Gulf International Airlines BGK 1232
06-Nov 03:00 Baghdad International Airport Click Airways CGK 913
Source: Sharjah Airport.
05-Nov 12:30 Baghdad International Airport British Gulf International Airlines BGK 1234
05-Nov 15:30 Baghdad International Airport Click Airways CGK 914
And three are scheduled outbound to Baghdad.
05-Nov 23:45 Baghdad International Airport British Gulf International Airlines BGK 1233
05-Nov 23:45 Baghdad International Airport British Gulf International Airlines BGK 1232
06-Nov 03:00 Baghdad International Airport Click Airways CGK 913
Source: Sharjah Airport.
Book alert!
Le Monde reviews a new French book on the arms trade and our friend Viktor. Trafics d'armes : enquête sur les marchands de mort by Laurent Léger. The publisher is Flammarion. Another review here suggests that the author succeeded in interviewing Michel Victor-Thomas, the French aviation identity who co-founded TAN Aviation Network NV in Ostend with Viktor Bout, the company that was transferred to CET Aviation in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea and Transavia Travel in Sharjah when they were run out of town.
In a possibly related incident, I'm getting a lot of googlers for "viktor bout sarkozy". What on earth can be going on?
In a possibly related incident, I'm getting a lot of googlers for "viktor bout sarkozy". What on earth can be going on?
A double dose of hypocrisy
A non-Christian demands that everyone else in Europe become Christian, or more so if they are already, and someone immediately leaps in to defend her by arguing that it is "risible" that the generation who are fighting the war she propagandised "would fight for anything more than a football team."
One of the sickest things about this war has been the number of people whose only contribution to it has been tendentious ranting who seem to think that the people who are actually fighting aren't up to it.
One of the sickest things about this war has been the number of people whose only contribution to it has been tendentious ranting who seem to think that the people who are actually fighting aren't up to it.
Talking to Iran, part 3
Right, I've already given reasons why it's urgently necessary to start staff talks with Iran about how we can get out of Iraq. Someone asked what incentive the Iranians had to participate. I suggested, essentially, that they would rather not have us shoot our way out with AC-130s down Highway 8. Well, here's a better answer. From Reuters AlertNet:
Iran said on Sunday it would consider entering talks with the United States on security in Iraq if it received an official request.
Talks with between Washington and Tehran are expected to be one option for quelling violence in Iraq to be suggested in a report due out from the Iraq Study Group, a U.S. bipartisan commission headed by former secretary of state James Baker.
But the idea has previously been rejected by U.S. President George W. Bush. The United States accuses Iran of aiding the insurgency and stoking sectarian strife in Iraq, a charge Tehran denies.
Asked if Iran should talk directly to the United States about security in Iraq, Tehran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said: "If they officially ask for that, it will be reviewed by Iran.
"At the present time, some American and Iraqi officials have raised the question of a dialogue. If we receive such a request we are ready to examine it."
Saving the planet in the slowest possible way
This pissed me off all week. Yesterday, the world's biggest container ship, M/V Emma Maersk arrived in Felixstowe on her first trip from China to Europe. There has been a degree of pre-Christmas hype about this sailing, revolving around the notion that she is packed with nothing but Christmas presents-to-be. This may be a little off target, as Marc Levinson notes in his history of container shipping, The Box: only one-third of containers transiting Long Beach in 1998 contained consumer goods, the rest being stuffed with intermediate inputs to some industrial process or other. It is, however, an interesting culture echo - Peter Davidson mentions in The Idea of North that Holland is the only country in Europe where Saint Nicholas/Father Christmas doesn't come from the north, instead coming from Spain on a steamship.
Anyway, Green MEP for the South-East, Dr. Caroline Lucas is furious about the arrival of the Emma Maersk.
Further, I struggle to see why poorer people in China should be made poorer in order to repatriate low-value manufacturing industries. After all, what kind of a tariff would it take to make Chinese products uncompetitive? I can't see this happening without big wage cuts for the prospective European workers. After all, though, presumably it won't be Lucas's south-eastern constituents who are asked to take a pay cut and a worse job. It'll be the, ahem, working class.
What on Earth is a Green doing talking the crudest and most aggressive 1980s Tory's book? We must slash labour costs to compete with China! Keep slashing! Until we're cheaper than the Chinese! Presumably, Dr. Lucas hasn't given up the rest of the Green platform, which (rightly) wants a massive reconstruction of the UK's transport infrastructure, power grid and housing stock. But any such drive to bring back toy assembly jobs would compete directly with infrastructure projects for short-supply trades - an electrician wiring a new factory can't simultaneously work on an offshore wind turbine.
Charlie Stross predicted, years ago, that environmentalism might split into an anti-technology faction and a "green extropian" one. I think he is right. There is a more fundamental fault line here than the famous realo/fundi divide of the 1980s, which was more like the traditional debate on the Left between democratic change and revolution. On the one hand you have the Worldchanging crowd, who are solution-focused and technophile, on the other you have a spectrum of PR greens from Diddy Dave Cameron to Greenpeace (a great week they chose to try to shut down Didcot power station, no?), the remaining 70s/80s social-revolutionary types, and the increasingly nasty U.S-based apocalypse bunnies. I predict that the media-activists will be forced to choose, that the WC/Worldwatch ones will see their ideas sucked up into the mainstream, where they will have to watch closely that they do not become a figleaf for inaction, and the extremists will shade into the far right at the edges. I also second Blacktriangle's point here, who quotes the director of the Met Office Tyndall Centre complaining of the demand for "environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric". I always thought some of the founding ideas of the Green movement were basis democracy and citizens' right to know, not debate-framing trickery and bullshit.
The serious stuff over, what about some gratuitous ship porn?
Update: To answer a comment, my point about Dr Lucas and labour is that she does not make clear, or does not realise, that making Chinese goods cost-prohibitive would go beyond what could be done with a tariff - a new industry would sprout overnight taking goods out of boxes and putting them back in to disguise their source. As the cost of capital and capital goods is probably equal, and the cost of land far higher in Europe, something has to give. The something is wages.
Anyway, Green MEP for the South-East, Dr. Caroline Lucas is furious about the arrival of the Emma Maersk.
""These are the goods that Europe used to make. We are faced with a country that has an almost absolute advantage in an increasing number of sectors. This a triumph for multinational capital, not for Chinese workers who, as well as suffering from some of the worst labour exploitation on record, are also losing jobs at a phenomenal rate," she said.The enviroment, eh? According to the Department of Transport, a container ship uses some 0.12MJ of energy per kilometre and a truck as much as 1.2. Plugging in the numbers for a wholly notional trip of 10,000 KM, and noting that the Emma's capacity is given as 14,500 TEU=7,250 trucks, we get energy usage of 83,333MJ for the ship with a full load. But if the trucks only go 50 kilometres away from the docks, they have already hugely exceeded that. 7,250x1.2=8,700. Multiplied by 50 that's 435,000MJ of energy use - and that isn't even as far as London.
The real cost of the goods that the Emma Maersk is bringing in should include the environment, the markets destroyed in developing countries and the millions of jobs lost."
Further, I struggle to see why poorer people in China should be made poorer in order to repatriate low-value manufacturing industries. After all, what kind of a tariff would it take to make Chinese products uncompetitive? I can't see this happening without big wage cuts for the prospective European workers. After all, though, presumably it won't be Lucas's south-eastern constituents who are asked to take a pay cut and a worse job. It'll be the, ahem, working class.
What on Earth is a Green doing talking the crudest and most aggressive 1980s Tory's book? We must slash labour costs to compete with China! Keep slashing! Until we're cheaper than the Chinese! Presumably, Dr. Lucas hasn't given up the rest of the Green platform, which (rightly) wants a massive reconstruction of the UK's transport infrastructure, power grid and housing stock. But any such drive to bring back toy assembly jobs would compete directly with infrastructure projects for short-supply trades - an electrician wiring a new factory can't simultaneously work on an offshore wind turbine.
Charlie Stross predicted, years ago, that environmentalism might split into an anti-technology faction and a "green extropian" one. I think he is right. There is a more fundamental fault line here than the famous realo/fundi divide of the 1980s, which was more like the traditional debate on the Left between democratic change and revolution. On the one hand you have the Worldchanging crowd, who are solution-focused and technophile, on the other you have a spectrum of PR greens from Diddy Dave Cameron to Greenpeace (a great week they chose to try to shut down Didcot power station, no?), the remaining 70s/80s social-revolutionary types, and the increasingly nasty U.S-based apocalypse bunnies. I predict that the media-activists will be forced to choose, that the WC/Worldwatch ones will see their ideas sucked up into the mainstream, where they will have to watch closely that they do not become a figleaf for inaction, and the extremists will shade into the far right at the edges. I also second Blacktriangle's point here, who quotes the director of the Met Office Tyndall Centre complaining of the demand for "environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric". I always thought some of the founding ideas of the Green movement were basis democracy and citizens' right to know, not debate-framing trickery and bullshit.
The serious stuff over, what about some gratuitous ship porn?
Update: To answer a comment, my point about Dr Lucas and labour is that she does not make clear, or does not realise, that making Chinese goods cost-prohibitive would go beyond what could be done with a tariff - a new industry would sprout overnight taking goods out of boxes and putting them back in to disguise their source. As the cost of capital and capital goods is probably equal, and the cost of land far higher in Europe, something has to give. The something is wages.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Best visit ever
Yesterday, October 31st, at 1126 Central European Time, we had the following entry in the server log...
That is to say, someone aboard CVN-65, the USS Enterprise, read this post. You know who you are. You know where the comments are, too.
205.65.1.21 [entrypoint #424] 2006/10/carrierwatch-update_30.html
Oct 31, 11:26:28 [0:00:00] views: 1
Proxy: noca-b1.uar.navy.mil - CVN65UCSDC2, 1.0
webc2.uar.navy.mil:80 (squid/2.5.STABLE3)
That is to say, someone aboard CVN-65, the USS Enterprise, read this post. You know who you are. You know where the comments are, too.
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