Stottle's Blog

I've Moved to Wordpress

2011-12-20T12:59:00.002Z

Might still publish the occasional larger piece here, but my routine blogging is now to be found here on Wordpress

Many moons past, one of my earlier readers gently tried to nudge me into daily blogging even if only a line or two. I always found blogspot to awkward for that. Stumbleupon made it simple and then, back in September, they threw their toys out of the pram and forced thousands of us serious bloggers to migrate. I have to say, now, that they did us a big favour. The Wordpress blogging experience combines the simplicity of the Stumbling version with much better editing tools and cleaner presentation.

be seeing you...

Time We Hung Parliament

2010-05-05T20:31:00.003+01:00

I have rarely been so disengaged from the political fairy story we call a "General Election"

Like the election of a new Pope, it has no relevance to me or mine. Nobody represents me. Nor could they ever. Not least because I'm a democrat who actually understands what that means and all the potential candidates demonstrate, just by standing for election, that they obviously don't.

What elections are about is persuading "We The People" to consent to another few years of incompetent dictatorship by a bunch of clowns who think they know how to run a country.

The underlying theory is that because "we" take the most trivial part in the process (limited, for the most part, to selecting one name from a short list of total strangers) and because we have the option not to select that same idiot in 4 or 5 years time, we can be bamboozled into believing that our role is significant enough to give the whole system some legitimacy. And, because "Democracy" is widely recognised as being the only legitimate form of government which does not involve some measure of tyranny, our Rulers label their system "Democracy" in the hope that the word alone will hide its deep authoritarian flaws.

And, generally speaking, the subterfuge works. Most of The People still believe they live in Democracies. A few mavericks point out from time to time that this is not true. (Famous example: Lord Hailsham's description of the British system as "Elective Dictatorship") but the media treat such outbursts as a bit of a joke and the issue sails straight over the heads of the Electorate. They have been well conditioned to accept that the way things are is the way things must remain.

We're permitted to change the bus driver from time to time, and even, occasionally, to decide where the bus will stop to pick up new passengers. But we can't be allowed to change the bus, or even get off it. And both the route and destination are always determined by the driver.

I watched the party leader debates with mild interest. To be fair, they did at least come across as reasonably intelligent articulate performers who won't make us cringe with embarrassment if they represent us on the world stage. But I only heard one statement which penetrated to the heart of the real political problems. It came from pretty boy Clegg and it could usefully become a mantra:

The Way We Got Into This Mess Is Not The Way Out.

Real Democrats understand that Democracy is about We The People making ALL the important decisions ourselves - NOT electing egotistical and incompetent Decision Makers to do the job for us. For that reason true democrats may consider it pointless to participate and even more ethical to stay away from the polling booths and ignore the whole process. But Clegg's aphorism sums up the one rational way for Democrats to cast your vote on Thursday.

What he reminds us is that the last thing we need is "more of the same" which is all we're going to get if the country elects another Tory or Labour government.

I'm certainly not about to argue that the Liberal Democrats are more competent than the other jokers or that they would make a better fist of running the country. There is no basis for such a belief. But you don't need to expect such a miracle or to support the Lib-Dem policies, such as they are, in order to welcome the one tiny step in the right direction which they represent.

If they achieve either an outright victory (somewhat unlikely) or a very significant share of the popular vote (30% or thereabouts - which, thanks to Clegg's performance in the debates, begins to look plausible) then they will - for the first time in our history - be in a position, when it comes to the post election wheeling and dealing, to insist on one vital change in our political system - the way we elect our dictators. They will be able to force the introduction of Proportional Representation.

Before I understood Democracy, I used to campaign for PR. I stopped doing that when I realised it was a bit like campaigning for women to become priests. I don't even like the idea of male priests, why the hell would I give a damn about women sharing the same set of delusions and unwarranted authority?

But there's no denying that PR does bring with it a couple of benefits. Whoever gets elected, nobody will ever represent me. But, for the sake of argument, let's assume that voting for a party means that they must represent at least one significant political belief you might share with them. Under the present system it is inevitable that even with a so-called landslide majority, less than 50% of the electorate are represented by the Party that forms the Government. This is because the majority party in Parliament usually achieves that position with less than 50% of the popular vote and a much smaller proportion of those entitled to vote.

PR will force the system to represent (at least in terms of choice of Party) more than a majority of the voters. That is a fundamental requirement in a Democratic system and forcing majority representation would be the first tiny step in the right direction.

The second is the elimination of the Authoritarian concept of "Strong Leadership" which is made possible by the inherent corruption in the system which allows 100% of the power to go to a party with less than 50% of the electoral support. This is the result the authoritarians most fear. They would actually rather have the other side win a clear victory than be forced to concede fairer representation.

Because PR will force higher levels of representation into the system, one- party rule becomes virtually impossible. And political compromise becomes not just necessary but the only practical way to do business.

The key word is Consensus. Authoritarians hate it. That's a damn good reason for the rest of us to pursue it. And though PR won't magically make us achieve consensus, it will at least change the mindset of our "Masters" to one where the FIRST target is consensus, rather than the last. That too, is an essential step towards Democracy which, in case you didn't already know, was adopted and perfected by the Athenians over two thousand years ago primarily as a means of preventing Tyranny - by anyone (including "Majorities") against anyone.

Despite the title of this piece, I don't actually have a strong desire to see MPs swinging from the gallows - though those responsible for taking us into the illegal invasion of Iraq certainly deserve it - but a collectively hung parliament is definitely the best result we can hope for this time around.

Is That Democracy On The Horizon?

2009-06-03T10:36:00.010+01:00

Is this the moment we've been waiting for?

According to the mouthpiece of the nation - the BBC - 85% of the UK population are no longer prepared to allow Parliament to police itself. They demand external independent scrutiny; one of the main purposes of what I call Trusted Surveillance which I've described elsewhere.

For those of us who've been banging on for decades about how we cannot and should not trust politicians this is not exactly a novel demand. But that does not reduce its historical importance by one iota. This is the first time in British History that We The People have collectively acknowledged the inevitable corruption which accompanies Political Leadership.

True, half of them are still thinking in pre 21st century terms and imagine that all we need is yet another election, to change a few of the faces of the elected dictators. More significantly, though, it looks like already at least one third of the population are waking up to the fallacy of that notion.

There is no point electing another bunch of corrupt politicians. There are NO potential politicians who can credibly guarantee that they will never yield to the temptations of power.

Once We The People dare to confront this blindingly obvious truth, we will have completed the first step in our transition to becoming an Adult Society. One, in which every citizen shares an approximately equal burden of responsibility for the way our society is run and, in return, shares an approximately equal measure of the benefits that accrue. (And, no that doesn't mean "property is theft" even though I'm a fully paid up Anarchist)

How then, if elections are not the answer, are we to proceed?

By demanding the abolition of Parliament and its replacement with Democracy. Easier, of course, said than done.

Regular readers of my ravings won't need me to rehearse the difference between the political systems we have and Democracy, but new readers might be confused. Many citizens still think that their Parliament, Congress, Knesset or whatever already is or was Democratic. [If you are new to this "paradox", you can read my bite-sized comments on dozens of related stories by grazing my "Democracy Stumbles" or you can dive in to my deeper analysis here]

About the one thing that all people - even the enemies of Democracy - agree about in defining Democracy is that it includes "the will of the people". Those of you who thought that Parliament or Congress (etc) was the triumph of Democracy simply need to consider the question: How much of what has been done by these bodies has ever truly reflected the will of the people?

Honest opponents of Democracy argue that the Political Leadership should never even attempt to reflect the will of the people and there is a very powerful line of argument to defend that position which we who advocate real Democracy must confront and resolve - even to the satisfaction of those honest opponents. As I've said elsewhere, a major problem for aspiring Democrats is the current general levels of ignorance and inability to distinguish rational from irrational arguments.

Those, for example, who deny the link between HIV and AIDS or dismiss the powerful support for the Theory of Evolution provided by the fossil record and modern genetics, or dispute the fact that Neil Armstrong landed on the moon all have one thing in common. They don't understand the science they're criticising. They do not understand how irrational they are being. And, unfortunately, on some issues, they are not in a minority.

However, while that is undoubtedly a problem for Democracy, it is just as serious a problem for the alternatives. Irrationality is certainly just as common among existing political elites as it is among the civil population. (You need look no further than the War on Drugs to confirm that proposition) That, in a sense, is precisely what the masses have been alerted to by the string of crimes and crises we've watched in the past few years and there is no good reason to argue that the population at large is significantly more or less rational than the political elites we have to suffer.

Dishonest opponents of Democracy achieve their goal (season tickets on the gravy train) by pretending that what we've got already is Democracy, so why would we need to consider change? Unfortunately, even these manipulative parasites need to be persuaded, rather than forced, to concede the changes we need to make. Why?

Because one of the most damaging distortions of the public concept of Democracy is that it equates to simple Majority Rule and that anything the "Majority" wants can legitimately be enforced. Even this dangerous delusion is diluted and perverted by so called "representative" politics such that Majority Representation is held to grant supreme authority to those parties who hold the majority of seats in the various Parliaments, even when based on "first past the post" elections which produce parliamentary majorities which "represent" minorities of the population.

Democracy was invented, over two and half thousand years ago, to eliminate Tyranny and Dictatorship - by anyone against anyone. This included preventing the dictatorship of the Majority against the Minority.

What that means is that a true Democracy attempts to get everyone on board. Not just "no child left behind" but "no citizen left behind".

It is, of course, impossible to achieve that ambition in every case. There are inevitably occasions when a decision must be made, in order to allow X, and true consensus (the genuine absence of ANY dissent) cannot be achieved. An uncontroversial example I frequently use is "which side of the road shall we drive on?" There are only three possible answers which do not result in mass casualties; Left, Right and One Way Roads (dual carriageways).

a) we MUST reach agreement or we couldn't (relatively) safely drive on the roads at all and
b) whatever that agreement is MUST be enforced, even if that occasionally requires coercion. We cannot afford to allow dissidents to speed the wrong way down the highway.

However, that does not mean we cannot reach sensible compromises with the dissidents. They might, for example, prefer one side to the other because they've already invested in a vehicle suited to driving on that side of the road. They would either need to have their vehicle converted to drive on the other side, or, if that is not feasible, they need a new car of similar value.

It would be unfair and unreasonable to impose that cost on the dissidents alone. It should be shared by the whole community who will benefit from the imposition of the new rule. If, for instance, 90% own vehicles adapted for driving on the right, while 10% are designed for the left, 90% of the cost of the conversions or replacements could (and, in my view should) be borne by the 90% majority while the remaining 10% is borne by the minority. In short, we all pay a fair share of the costs and can all then fairly share the benefits.

That is an example of how a Democracy can yield a fair result, where the majority do indeed dictate the final decision but they recognise and protect the legitimate interests of the minority in the process. Think of it as a model for any other "split decision" and then compare it to what has actually been happening throughout our history, including recent history in which we have allowed the elected dictators to pretend they are democrats.

A genuine Democrat is not hell bent on getting things "his way". A genuine Democrat wants everybody to be content with the decision, not least because that provides the strongest guarantee possible that the decision will be implemented consistently, universally and fairly, with minimum dissent and, thus, minimum enforcement costs.

The question is, how the hell do we get there from here?

First and foremost by agreeing, as widely as possible, that we actually WANT to get there and that all our subsequent decisions will be designed to move us in that direction. Clearly if we cannot even reach that initial consensus, we will never have a chance of reaching the final goal.

The extraordinary opportunity we have now arises from the sudden mass awakening of We The People to their Leaders' feet of clay. For perhaps the first time since ancient Athens, a critical mass of the population is prepared to accept the possibility that we need a real revolution in Political arrangements which prevents the corruption and self serving incompetence we've suffered for several thousand years. Perhaps we've matured sufficiently to realise that it's not just a matter of choosing a bright sparkling new Leader and hoping that he or she can correct all the errors made by their predecessors.

In Britain today, the circumstances have created a perfect storm. The Financial meltdown which we're still undergoing (and is likely, in my view, to go much further still) demonstrated the astronomical incompetence of the ruling and monied elite. Not just, of course, in Britain, but around the World.

Prior to that, we were used to seeing governments of all colour demonstrate their own breathtaking stupidity over the decades, but to see the sheer scale of the global collapse and to appreciate the level of public and self deception required to manufacture it has been truly educational to those who used to have faith in Leaders.

But the straw which looks like it might break the camel's back took me by surprise. If you'd been taking bets on which events would provoke political rebellion over the past 10 years, my money would have been on a bent leadership taking us into an illegal war based on lies and distortions and in clear opposition to at least half the population. When the biggest ever street demonstrations took place in the run up to the Iraq War, that was the moment - when We The People were so pointedly ignored - that I thought the spark was going to hit the tinder box.

Hardly a whimper.

When they demolished the 800 year old protection against the arbitrary actions of a tyrant - the effective abolition of Habeas Corpus and the introduction of 28 day detention without trial, I imagined V type waves of popular insurgency.

Minor ripples among the chattering classes.

When they proposed an ID Card requiring the infrastructure coincidentally required for Totalitarianism, I remembered the Poll Tax riots and mass refusal to pay and thought "They'll never get away with that!"

Muted protest - somewhat less effective than the campaign against the 3rd runway at Heathrow.

And so on. All these major outrages against the civilised management of Society have been allowed to stand. We The People, for the most part, stayed dumb and dormant.

But on learning (for example) that an MP claimed £1500, from the public purse, to build a house for his ducks, the public shit hits the fan and the British Citizen is up in arms! Bombing foreigners, curbing liberties and spying on the citizens is one thing, but fiddling your expenses? That, apparently, takes the biscuit.

Don't ask me!

I can only speculate that it is a cumulative effect of all the above and that the issue of expenses is almost literally the final straw. Be that as it may...

For the first time, in my life, I'm hearing Mainstream discussion of the possibility of introducing a Recall Law into the British system. You know, like the one that put Arnie where he is today. I needed a new keyboard - and a new cup of coffee - after I first heard that on Radio 4.

Don't get me wrong, a Recall system isn't a fix for the system. But it's a bloody big step in the right direction. It puts a cap on their powers. Would Blair have dared to play Bush's fig leaf in Iraq if he had known that his constituents could recall him?

That's a very serious constraint and well worth having. As is Proportional Representation which is, again, being discussed in the Mainstream, though not, it is true, for the first time.

I used to campaign for PR before I learned about Democracy. If you must have representative politics, duly constrained by the Recall system, then at least ensure that the final body loosely (i.e. proportionally) represents the myriad opinions in the wider community. Such a condition should be no more than common sense but listen carefully to the Authoritarian arguments against it.

And all the arguments against PR ARE Authoritarian. Principally that PR prevents "clear" or "bold" or "unpopular" decision making. This is authoritarian code for an admission that PR prevents decisions which do not reflect the will of the people.

Pre 'king cisely.

Their second major objection is that PR over-represents the interests of the minority. This is partially true, particularly if you retain simple majoritarianism in the Parliaments - which allows tiny minority parties to tip a large minority party into absolute power for the price of a slice of that power.

The solution to that is to end simple majoritarianism. Require 75% majorities for legal force and now the coalition has to be much more widely representative. But, of course, that would mean that those who insist they know what is right for us - the Authoritarians - would rarely get their way.

We've even heard serious discussion about taking a step down the Swiss path and introducing a primary element of Real Democracy - the ability of We The People to trigger government policy on any issue subject only to the gathering of sufficient signatures on a petition. The Tory proponents of this idea don't actually dare to propose direct referenda but they're moving in that direction.

This is truly revolutionary stuff and all represent major steps on the road to Democracy.

So it may be that bumbling British bureaucracy, petty deception and political incompetence has finally created the conditions for that Revolution we never quite managed to have. And who knows, perhaps once we in Britain have ironed out the bugs and created a workable system, Europe, the United States and, eventually, most of the rest of the planet might join us in creating the first global Democracy...

Social Networking Damages Your Brain

2009-02-25T10:50:00.017Z

Though, apparently, not half as much as watching it and commenting on it from the outside.

This just stopped being amusing. Even 'king Newsnight is warbling on about it now. But stop right there. Just compare the headlines on those two pages.

The Daily Mail:
Social websites harm children's brains: Chilling warning to parents from top neuroscientist

Newsnight:
Online risks: from cancer to autism?

Note the note of certainty present in the first and prominently absent from the second. A note of certainty that constitutes a barefaced lie because it imputes content in the statement from a scientist (Prof Susan Greenfield) which simply wasn't there. She could, I imagine, sue them for libel. All she announced were her fears, which we'll deal with in a moment. What the Mail trumpeted was a declaration of actual ongoing harm. There should be a law against that!

Fortunately the Newsnight studio debate (If that link evaporates, here's a youtube backup) was a reasonably balanced affair between Dr Aric Sigman (the source of the Cancer concerns) and Dr Ben Goldacre (author of "Bad Science" and the Grauniad column of the same name.) Newsnight's intro included reference to previous social panics over "New Technology" from the introduction of clocks (which would separate us from "natural time"!), through the Printing Press (which would make us all intellectually lazy!!) and the Telephone (which would make us all antisocial!!!)

And purely by coincidence, I stumbled this only this afternoon:

Anyway, Goldacre quickly demolished not so much the notion, (it is entirely plausible that kids brains are affected by the new media - I'd be 'king amazed if they weren't) but the claim that the result is "damaging". There is simply zero evidence to support that. And, to be fair to Greenfield (which is why she should sue the Mail) she made no such claim. Even the hyperbolic article beneath the deliberately deceptive headline made that clear with the quote from the Baroness:

My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.'

(emphasis added)

...and, elsewhere, her concern that "repeated exposure could effectively 'rewire' the brain" (again, emphasis added)

These are not unreasonable concerns and nobody should object to some serious research on the issue. Personally, however, the only real concern I share regarding the amount of time spent at the computer (on all business, not just social networking) is that, if you're still in the larval stage (i.e. younger than about 25), and spending more than a couple of hours a day at the keyboard, you are probably depriving yourself of major amounts of physical activity which you need for optimal physical development, including the development of your immune systems, reasonable aerobic fitness, good muscle tone, flexibility etc etc. If you're not doing at least 30 minutes a day of pretty serious exercise, at that age, you're asking for trouble in later life. In this respect I am more sympathetic to Sigman's concerns than Greenfield's.

I could speculate, on the same day that another famous Newspaper warned of imminent internet induced collapse, that the Mail's not so hidden agenda is that anything which drags people away from the web is good for their business. But I have no evidence for that so, unlike the Mail, I won't pretend there is any.

Greenfield, however, is, unfortunately, one of those who "just don't get it". She's been rabbiting on about how the Web is damaging attention spans and people's ability to focus for months now and frankly, I find her comments both ignorant and insulting.

Take, for example, her repeated speculations that Social Networking interactions are preventing participants learning how to form real world relationships and attachments. If she bothered to lurk a sample of what's going on, she would quickly learn that when they're not discussing the perennial favourites of Teenagers for at least the past half century (Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll) the Number Four obsession is relationships in the real world and what they should do about them.

Hence, far from reducing their abilities in this respect, what they are equally likely to be involved in is "peer review" about the best way to handle such development problems; which, almost certainly, means that the average quality of such advice is increasing because the daft stuff is much more quickly identified online - and kicked into touch - than it is offline.

Suicide
A similar huge unresearched kerfuffle is regularly kicked up (particularly by Webophobes like the Mail) about such phenomena as "Suicide sites" where angst driven teenagers gather together to discuss why they should not go on living and how best to end it all. Occasionally we hear that one of them has topped himself. You'd be forgiven if you formed the impression that this was becoming a major problem. After all, what else would lead to government promises to shut them down? But if you go looking for evidence of the numbers of "online suicides" they're remarkably difficult to find, considering how much of a problem they're supposed to be. The best I could manage was this site talking of 70 deaths linked to suicide sites in 2008 "eclipsing" the 55 from 2005. And that's the GLOBAL estimate.

In contrast, we learn here, that over 1700 teenagers killed themselves in Britain alone between 1997 and 2003 - and this turns out to be good news! Because it actually marks a 28% decline in the Suicide rate over that period, with males experiencing an even more dramatic 35% improvement. Just at the time the explosion of online activity got going. Fancy that.

So, in fact, despite the routine authoritarian hype, online suicide, is - particularly compared to offline suicide - very rare indeed. So rare, in fact, that it makes me wonder how many lives such sites are actually saving. How? I suspect it is a result of simply allowing the sufferers to get together. For the first time in human history, suicidal teenagers can communicate deeply and intimately enough to share their suffering. And I strongly suspect that it will emerge that, while it may push the occasional sufferer over the edge, for the majority this contact alone is enough to lift many of them out of the gloom and back to normality. That's something else we need to research.

Research
But as Goldacre pointed out, there is already considerable serious research on the phenomenon of Social Networking. Danah Boyd has made herself one of the leading researchers in the field and she maintains this portal giving access to much of it.

None I could find supports any significant negative effects and some indicates some positive effects. Clearly it's too early to make lasting judgements and the jury is still out, but just on the question of the effect on real world relationships, Boyd's own research found:

When I ask teenagers why they joined MySpace, the answer is simple: “Cuz that’s where my friends are.” Their explanation of what they do on the site is much more vague: “I don’t know… I just hang out.” Beneath these vague explanations is a clear message: the popularity of MySpace is deeply rooted in how the site supports sociality amongst preexisting friend groups. Teens join MySpace to maintain connections with their friends.

(emphasis added) (1)

Before getting back to the Newsnight debate, we can't ignore Greenfield's concerns regarding Autism, which are frankly bizarre and badly misinformed, especially for an academic.

She told peers in the House of Lords it would be worth considering whether the rise in autism - a condition marked by difficulties forming attachments - was linked to the increasing prevalence of screen relationships.

Just one wee problem with that wild speculation. The average age of diagnosis of Autism remains below 4 years old. I don't know about you, but I don't see many 4 year-olds (or under) trolling the Social Networks. (although I've had my doubts about one or two)

TV v The Web
Meanwhile back on Newsnight, I was desperately waiting for somebody to make two obvious points. Right at the end of the piece, they got close and I was sure Goldacre would nail Sigman. He let me down. Though, to be fair, Paxman may have cut in too soon to give him the chance of replying.

Sigman made the point (in defence of his own case against Social Networking) that there is mounting evidence of the damage to young kids who watch more than an hour a day of Television, particularly if they do so before the age of 3.

As this study reveals, he's completely correct. It is quite frightening. They are being programmed for passivity and a short attention span, particularly if they watch American commercial TV, which cannot maintain focus on anything for more than 10 minutes. That was the first point I was waiting for.

By contrast - and this is the second point which should have been made but wasn't - comparing the passive behaviour of watching TV with the active involvement required for participation in Social Networking is like comparing watching the Grand Prix with taking part in it! And the consequences of the difference are utterly profound and seem to skate miles over the heads of the whingers like Greenfield, the Mail and last year's over-hyped doom-monger Andrew Keen.

SOCIAL NETWORKING DOESN'T WORK IF YOU'RE PASSIVE.
You're simply not noticed and essentially fail to form or link into a network!

This is the kind of thing I touched on in a recent Stumble about other people who "don't get it". There is no doubt in my mind that Social Networking (and Web 2.0 generally - popular publishing) is dramatically transforming Society forever. And in ways the political class will not like at all.

The Real Fear
All these conservatives, naysayers and authoritarians claim concern about the loss of community, the weakening of real world relationships, reduced attention span etcetera, etcetera. They try to frighten parents with talk of increasing loneliness and isolation amongst the generation of Social Networkers. Well, if you're reading this, and you've got this far, then no-one can accuse you of reduced attention span. And, given that you're one of the victims of this poisonous environment, are your Stumbling/Blogging/Facebooking/Myspacing etc activities leaving you feeling isolated and depressed? If so, I have to wonder why so many millions of us are doing it! Are we all masochists?

Dickheads!

What they're really concerned about, even they have the sense not to mention (in public). It's not the loss of community they fear. It's the loss of control. Our online communities are beginning to get organised and, as Obama's election showed, beginning to have an effect in the real world. And it's not a reduced attention span they're really afraid of, it's the focus of our "limited" attention being on things they'd really rather not have exposed to such an intense gaze - like 9-11 and the illegal invasion of Iraq; like the illegal torture, "extraordinary rendition" and other attacks on civilised values and liberty allegedly required in pursuit of the War on Terror; like the thousands of illegal attacks by Police on Citizens; like the activities of Big Pharma or the fraudulent basis of the American dollar or the IRS. We ain't just exposing naked emperors, we're examining the bastards - in public - with a proctoscope.

Evolution at Revolutionary Speed
What is really happening may appear to be rather slow if you're stuck in the middle of it, because "real time" is pedestrian. But in historical terms, we are going through a lightning speed transition. Just consider the fact that half the people reading this probably cannot remember a time when people didn't walk down the street talking into a mobile phone. Many Social Networkers have had an email account since they learned to read - and those few who read this will be surprised that I even consider that worth mentioning. They'll have learned to use a mouse at about the same age I was catching sticklebacks in a jam jar.

Is this dramatically different lifestyle going to produce a dramatically different kind of human brain? I bloody well hope so, 'cos I certainly haven't been too impressed with Version 1.

The key thing is that while ALL computer related activities, including those online, are undeniably far too sedentary - though things like the Wii are beginning to address that issue - the online life is certainly NOT "inactive". Yes, you can sit and watch youtube for hours, but, though it offers a welcome respite from time to time, it's actually rather tame compared to all the other shit you can do online. And a helluva lot of that other stuff requires some activity on your part, even, occasionally, some intelligent thought.

And once you take it to the Social Networking level, it requires even greater levels of engagement. Blogging takes it one step higher. Now you're laying yourself open to the world and his dog to attack you, in public, for your unsolicited views.

Overall, far from isolating people, the Social Networks and blogs are allowing a far larger proportion of humanity to have both low and high level conversations, across a far broader population base than we've ever previously even dreamed about. And out here, it is, at last, obvious how artificial and unnecessary tribal, religious and national boundaries really are - together with the artificial human constructs on which they are based.

No, we're certainly NOT isolated. What We The People are doing is evolving at revolutionary speed. At this crucial stage we are still learning how to participate in intelligent discussion and the decision making process. We are still learning how to moderate - at least verbal - conflict. We are still learning how to take control of - at least - our virtual lives, and, I would argue, we are beginning to see the signs that this is spilling over into management of our real lives.

In particular, there is a huge gap between the intelligence level of Society online and Society offline. Such that many of the comments you'll get away with in the schoolyard, the workplace, or even the dinner party will get short shrift online. Make a claim about a "fact" online, and, if it isn't true, someone will shoot you down pdq. Would that this happened more often in real life - particularly to politicians and other professional liars.

The Genie Won't Climb Back Into The Bottle
This is not, in any way to ignore the blatant frauds, the scams, the spam, the virulent misanthropy or the crass stupidity of many of the bitizens hereabouts. But they do a lot less damage in cyberspace than they do in the real world, and, in the real world, you can't do much to keep the buggers out.

And because the well informed bitizen knows that there is a serious risk of deception, they have much better strategies for testing what they are told. The kind of lies that Politicians routinely get away with in the real world are quite impossible to peddle here. This is one of the reasons Politicians the world over are so keen to try to put this genie back in the bottle.

Hence we see the hopelessly naive and positively Victorian attempts by the Australian government to make access to porn impossible (which is, itself, impossible); and the Chinese firewall designed to suppress dissent and the tools you need to spread it; and the British government's illicit instruction to the ISPs to retain private web browsing data for two years (soon to be adopted Europe-wide); and the illegal American ban on online gambling; and the German government's ban on Holocaust Denial sites (and proposal to follow the Australian porn filtering route); and the bizarre ban by the French on one of the single most important uses of the web - citizen journalism featuring, for example, the filming of violent attacks by citizens on citizens or, increasingly often, by police on citizens. And so on. We won't even talk about what they're up to in the 3rd World or Islamic countries

All around the world, governments, made up of thousands of people who "just don't get it" are trying their hardest to roll the clock back to the days before we had the liberty to speak our own minds on the global stage; make our own alliances without regard to tribal norms or national boundaries; watch or read whatever we want, whenever we want, share it and comment on it with whoever will listen and generally conduct our virtual lives completely beyond the control of governments. They REALLY don't like this game and they will do whatever they can to bring it down.

They Cannot Control What They Don't Understand
They haven't got a hope. If you really want to dismantle or control something as colossally complex as the Web, you MUST have a very deep understanding of what you are attacking. And ALL the people who have that level of understanding, the ones who really DO get it, have no intention of giving it up. And even at the shallow end, it's a beautifully subversive technology. As soon as you do get it, at all, you become "one of us".

The online communities are, of course, fully aware that we are under attack from "yesterday's men". We know how much bullshit they spout in the real world and how they try to emulate it in this one. But if you want a couple of examples of how their approach fails miserably in cyberspace, take a look at the War on Drugs and see how little traffic their message gets against ours. Or compare the number of Atheist sites to Christian ones - and then compare that to our populations in the real world.

How many atheists do you suppose have been converted to Christianity in the past few years? I can name the only one I know of: Anthony Flew. In contrast, I've given up counting how many wavering Christians have thanked me personally for this story which, they tell me, has steered them away from "the path of Christian righteousness". And I don't get anything like the traffic of the prominent Atheist sites.

We Won't Get Fooled Again
One of the consequences of all this is that online communities are developing a much deeper sense of integrity and honesty. Yes, of course, we can still find a million flame wars, megatonnes of bullshit, groundless conspiracy theories and all kinds of crap. But unlike the entirety of human history prior to this time, any well motivated individual can, generally without expense and without requesting permission or assistance from any other, step out onto the web and unravel "The Truth" in much greater detail and quantities than we've ever previously been exposed to - even if we were yesterday's World Leaders.

Does anyone think that the present corrupt political systems will survive this growing clarity?

Does anyone really believe that, We The People, having taught ourselves, by playing with the frivolous, how to conduct the serious, will ever again be stupid enough to trust the pompous incompetent charlatans who have led us into the mess the world is in today?

Why, having taught ourselves what's really been going on behind the scenes throughout most of human history and having taught ourselves that - when it matters - it is actually possible to prevent people lying to us, why would we ever again permit the politicians or the police or the bankers etc to get away with their organised crime?

The political class has had its day. We The People are about to take control; perhaps not this year or this decade but in the not too distant future. It's no longer a question of If, but When.

If you are one of "them", (as if) don't worry, I'm sure we'll find you a nice little home...

*********************************

(1 boyd, danah. (2007) “Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Learning – Youth, Identity, and Digital Media Volume (ed. David Buckingham). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press)

The Authoritarians

2009-01-11T16:02:00.009Z

Imagine No Religion.

You think that's difficult? Try this:

Imagine No Government.

Such is the extent to which most people have been conditioned, that I am confident that less than 1% of even those most likely to read these words will dare to believe that I'm making a serious proposition.

Asking people to imagine how the world could possibly work without "the authorities" making decisions on our behalf and generally "taking care of business" is like asking the planets to stay in orbit around the sun without gravity to hold them in position. Or so we have been trained to believe.

Undoing that deeply embedded conditioning is far more than I can hope to achieve in one simple blog. But I can try, at least, to introduce you to three strands of the argument, one of which I wish to cover in some detail.

Strand One - Look Around You.

Do you see evidence of well managed successfully run society?

No, you see a continual series of cockups, conspiracies and catastrophes caused almost exclusively by those "in charge". And, if you've taken any interest in history, you'll be fully aware that this is not a novel situation, but the normal condition of humanity.

The degree of incompetence, ignorance and corruption which accompanies the efforts of the elite to remain in control is truly breathtaking. The only novelty in the current era is that we are finally beginning to see it in "real time" rather than having to wait a generation or two to read about it history books.

That we have made the obvious collossal technical and social progress which separates us from our Hunter-Gatherer ancestors, is a tribute to the sheer genius of humanity and its ability to overcome even the obstacle of inept Government. Human social progress in particular has rarely - if ever - been a result of intelligent planning and forethought.

Most of our progress has been made in spite of government rather than because of it. Indeed even the vast majority of so called "political progress" can usually be shown to be the necessary corrections by an incoming elite of the disastrous mistakes made by their predecessors. They usually survive long enough to create their own disasters and are in turn partially corrected and "improved upon" by their successors.

I and thousands of others are continually ranting about this strand of the argument (most of the entries in this blog have been about little else) and I will take up no more of your time with it today.

Strand Two - Democracy

Democracy is so poorly understood, that hundreds of millions of people actually believe they live in one. A few million think it's an evil force matched only by history's worst Tyrannies.

I spend a great deal of my time writing about that too, so, again, I'm not going to repeat myself today. For now, I will remind you of only one main principle. Democracy has NOTHING to do with elections.

Democracy is ONLY about We The People making ALL the IMPORTANT decisions. In all other systems - which we call Governments - the clue is in the name. They - the dictatorship or ruling elites "Govern". They dictate the laws, perhaps with the consent of a few hundred lesser governors, but nearly always without requiring the consent of the Governed. (With the sole and notable exception of Switzerland)

And as long as We The People continue to delegate our Authority with our craven demands for Leadership, we will continue to avoid even the option of implementing Democracy.

True, electing a dictator is marginally better than one who elects himself, but as the examples of Hitler and the soon to expire Bush regime clearly demonstrate, the elected ones are often no better than the alternatives. Who, for example is best placed to weather the current financial storm, the American "Democracy" or the Chinese "Democracy" (and note well how both call themselves Democracies)

Strand Three - Authoritarianism

This (if you hadn't guessed from the title) is my main focus today.

I think we are all born with what Authoritarians would probably describe as a "prejudice against authority". As young children,we have tantrums whenever we cannot get our own way and we spend our early years learning how to circumvent the controls put in place to prevent us doing our own thing.

Our later attitude to Authority is dictated by what happens to us in these formative years. If the need for constraint is patiently explained and any punishments proportionately and humanely administered, we may come to see that the Authority wasn't trying to bully us into submission. They were trying to protect us from harming ourselves or those around us and most of the constraints were sensible and necessary. As a result, we reach an age when the constraints are no longer necessary because we understand how the world works and how to conduct ourselves within it without causing harm to others, and generally, unless we really want to, without causing harm to ourselves. We learn to become Autonomous.

Conversely, if childhood constraints are applied without patient explanation and with the excessive use of brute force or emotional violence, we create Authoritarians. These are the emotionally and, usually, intellectually stunted individuals who believe what their parents obviously believed, including, most importantly, that Might is Right and that almost any means is justified by their Ends.

Authoritarians have been taught from a tender age that it is Wrong to Question Authority. Some of them grow up to become Authorities themselves and take the dimmest possible view of any challenges to their own Authority. Others grow up "knowing their place" and fully trained to submit to the whims of Authority almost regardless of what those whims might be.

I've always been subliminally aware of this split, but until recently, I'd almost regarded it as a personal prejudice left over from my childhood. I had one Autonomist parent and one Authoritarian. I think you can guess which one influenced me most!

And then I Stumbled across Bob Altemeyer, who turns out to be The Authority on The Authoritarians!

I think you should read that (free online) version first. It's well worth it. But there are a couple of reasons you might want to cheat and read this version (pdf 2.5mb) instead. It is my "commented" version. I've highlighted, in two shades, what struck me as the most important passages (the brighter being the more important) and that lets you zip through it in about a fifth of the time. Unless, of course, you stop to read my comments as well, which will take you back up to around half the time.

I think it is possibly the most important book you can read right now. Ever since I read it, most of my Stumbling comments have been influenced by it. All those Atheist evangelist sites trying to argue with Creationists; all the anti drug-war sites trying to argue with prohibitionists; all the moderate Muslims trying to argue with the Takfirists; all the opponents of ID Cards trying to argue with government...

All completely wasting their time. And once you've read The Authoritarians, you'll finally understand why.

I got close to it myself. When I asked (and tried to answer) the question "Are they lying, stupid or blind?"

Altemeyer answers that question definitively. The answer is Yes. They are often guilty on all charges. Because their Ends Justify their Means, they will rarely have any compunction about Lying. The Authoritarian followers and many of the Leaders really are often every bit as plain stupid as they look and they are all "blind" to the reasonably trivial reasoning processes most Autonomists picked up by puberty.

Unlike my "prejudiced" opinion, however, Altemeyer has carried out 40 years of thoroughly respectable and well documented research to back up his conclusions. And frankly the result is deeply disturbing.

In my essay on Militant Islamists, I make the point that, the most extreme elements - the Takfirists - are so distant from all avenues of reasonable negotiation that

...we are in a fight which will only end if either they (the Takfir type who insist on violence as a means of conversion) or we (the rest of the human race - including most Muslims) are permanently erased.

Takfirists are typical Authoritarians. Not even particularly extreme. Especially if you measure the kill ratio. The Takfirists have yet to kill even 1% as many as the Authoritarians they're fighting.

And if we can't reason with the Takfirists, how can we ever hope to reason with the other bigger, deadlier Authoritarians who control most of the rest of the planet?

As of now, I would argue that every major problem humanity currently faces can be rephrased in the form: "What can we do, or what should we do, about the Authoritarians?" They and their attitude ARE the root cause of nearly every major problem we face. Most problematic is their deliberate subversion of "reason" and their pride in remaining impervious to logic.

In the case of the Takfirists, I have accepted the need for a War, albeit somewhat more intelligently fought than the one we're in. But there is no way we can consider war against the global Authoritarian movement.

they represent 25% of our species so we'd be talking the most massive bloodletting in human history
they OWN most of the weaponry! and
they're much better at killing and happier to do it, than we are.

So what CAN we do?

The only major advantage we've got is that we're a lot smarter than they are. The weapons we must deploy must make maximum use of that asset. What those weapons will be I cannot answer definitively, but I am doing my best to describe and develop at least one of them.

That - or something like it - will help us "manage" the problem.

In the long term, however, I suspect the only solution is to "outlive" them. If we make it to and through the Singularity, these concerns will seem trivial and transient. And, with luck and a following wind, that event may not be too distant.

We don't get Authoritarian Transhumanists. Think about that...

Why Admit a War Crime on Prime Time?

2009-01-08T22:46:00.002Z

This happened on December 16 right?

I cheered!

I assumed that, by Christmas day the bastard would be safely locked up. After all, Bernie Madoff is under House Arrest and he's only 'fessed up to stealing money.

Yet, despite the reasonably wide coverage and commentary on the significance of this confession, NOTHING has happened to Cheney. Why not?

Here's my favourite coverage, so far. It's from Rachel Maddows.

Part 2 can be found here.

I can only speculate that the reason that nobody's done anything is that they're all stunned, like rabbits in the headlights. It's all so blatant and in your face that everybody's thinking

"er... did he just say what I thought he said? Out Loud? On TV? If he did, then perhaps it can't be as illegal as we thought it was, or else, he wouldn't have dared to say it. Surely?"

Cheney is obviously cleverer, or at least more cunning than the apathetic masses watching his confession. Consider what happens if you continue to sit on your hands. Yes You, the silent passive population of the Police State of America will have given the green light to all future torturers. After all, if this one gets away with it, without criminal prosecution, then clearly it's approved by You the American People.

And if he is now prosecuted, his lawyers will no doubt argue that it's impossible for him to obtain a fair trial anywhere in the US because every potential juror has already seen his confession!

If that isn't a watertight case for either a lynch mob or Assassination Politics, I can't imagine what is...

Global Self-Hypnosis

2008-12-18T12:57:00.003Z

"Sounds all really scary - how should this happen, these dead people? Do we have to be so pessimistic?"

Thus spake one of my Stumbling friends* after a recent comment I made regarding the prospects for the imminent collapse of Capitalism.

Many of us might welcome such a collapse. Larken Rose, for example, makes an entirely reasonable case for "ignoring the debt out of existence". We The People (he argues) should simply refuse to accept the "National Debt" burden being placed on us to in order to keep the global financial system from disintegrating. Ethically, I can't argue with him.

Pragmatically, however, I have to point out that the economic catastrophe which would follow our success in rejecting the bailout would trigger an even more catastrophic population crash and, along the way, the total collapse of what passes for our civilisation. Bill Deagle may yet be vindicated.

How so? Well consider what will happen if/when the Dollar falls.

Not only would the American economy instantly implode (probably triggering a Civil War but that would be almost trivial in the global context) but it will drag down every major creditor economy with it. Overnight, the Balance sheets of China, Russia, Japan and the Oil Nations who are funding the US Debt and economy would evaporate.

Without the Dollar as a Reserve Currency, the world would first attempt to find another currency - like the Euro - to fill the breach, but although the Euro region is almost self sufficient (notably in all major areas except Energy), it does not have the asset balance or sheer volume of currency required to replace the Dollar, largely because no one does - or could. The values now weighed in Dollars are entirely mythical. They bear almost no relation to the "facts on the ground".

In the absence of a global "Reserve Currency", the world would be forced to fall back on the Gold Standard (or something similarly valuable and immutable) and, in a nutshell, in exactly the same way as there aren't enough Euros, there isn't a fraction of the Gold (above ground at least) necessary to replace the Dollar debts that now exist. Hence, the whole World would default on its debts, rendering all credit (and debt) meaningless; and without credit and exchangeable assets, most of the world will be reduced to barter; which will cope with about 10% of the key items we need to trade. For the rest, we'll be generally unable to buy anything from anyone.

In that situation, food distribution will be one of the first things to collapse.

Without a global means of exchange, trade will plummet. And trade keeps most of the human race alive; on an almost literal basis by filling our supermarkets with the food most of us eat but on an equally serious level, it maintains the entire infrastructure of our civilisation.

Yet consider how badly we already cope with food distribution in the world today - with an "efficient" (or at least functional) Capitalist system. You and I and about 2/3 of the human population live in relative security and comfort. A billion or so live on the breadline and over 900 MILLION people are more or less constantly at Starvation level. Think how many more will fall to that level if and when the global economy collapses. We'll be very fortunate if it is less than 50% of the population.

Those who are lucky and live near reasonably self sufficient organic farms or have the ability to start new ones - and can defend them - might survive. The rest of us will have to become scavengers over the ensuing 6-36 months and take pot luck. If that happens, then whichever way you play it, we're inevitably talking about a massive "die-off" of the human species.

Even within the dim recesses of their Authoritarian minds, the current rulers of this planet clearly recognise this threat; not, to be sure, that they'd be too concerned about losing half the population through starvation (some of them would, no doubt, see that as a positive outcome) but they are certainly concerned about the even more probable loss of their own wealth and their grip on power.

THAT is why, in recent weeks, we have seen utterly unprecedented financial "miracles" performed. Consider how, for the past 50 years we've been unable to find couple of billion dollars a year it would take to eliminate malnutrition; or the $5 Billion it would take to stop 1 million poor people a year dying from Malaria; or the $20 Billion it would take to treat Africa's AIDS' victims and so on.

Yet suddenly, out of nowhere, when their own necks are on the line, they've managed to lay their hands on $6 TRILLION dollars in a matter of a few weeks.

I really don't think people quite appreciate the scale of what they've already done and what is still in the pipeline. And I don't think they will realise until the historians put it in context in a couple of decades.

Essentially the money they've "magicked" into global being is all they can do to prevent the bubble bursting. That money literally doesn't exist. Although clearly fraudulent, it is not fraud in the sense of the recently unearthed affairs of the aptly named Mr Madoff (whom we can reasonably expect to be the first - on this scale - of many). Rather the $6 Trillion is an exercise in global self-hypnosis.

The various governments who need the dosh have effectively said to the rest of the world - to whom they already owe more than they can afford to pay back - "lend us the same again and we'll all get out of this mess together". They haven't said - because they don't need to - "or else we all go down the plughole together".

But the creditors don't actually have that much money to lend. Again. Nobody does. So - and here's where the self-hypnosis kicks in - what you will see over the coming months is the Fed (and some of the other collaborating central banks) printing new money (and issuing new "bonds") to give to the existing creditors in exchange for large amounts of the so called "Toxic Debt" those creditors also hold.

The creditors will pretend that they believe the new monopoly money has real value. And the central banks will pretend that the toxic debts also have real value. This actually constitutes a reasonably fair deal. The value of the toy money really is about the same as the toxic debts they'll be exchanged for.

The result will be that vast amounts of new money is made available for the banks to start lending to ordinary businesses and punters like you and me. As a result of which we'll continue buying and selling things and the whole magic roundabout will keep turning.

The key is that every player of the game must pretend that they believe in the rules of the game. They must continue to treat the toy money as though it has real value.

In "Peter Pan" we learn that whenever anyone says "I don't believe in fairies" one of them dies! (when performed in Pantos, this is used as a device to get the kids to "Clap if you believe in fairies" in order to bring Tinkerbell back to life)

That is precisely the state the global economy is in today. If too many people decide "I don't believe in the Dollar" and point out the utter lack of foundations beneath it, the bubble of belief will burst and - like a cartoon character suddenly realising he's stepped off the cliff...

***

The reason, however, that I'm not as pessimistic as the above picture looks is because I believe their strategy might actually work. None of the major players can afford to let the ball hit the ground. So they probably wont. At the same time they are as fully aware of the situation as the commentariat. This is forcing them - however reluctantly - to adopt policies which may allow us to survive.

My fear is not that their self hypnosis won't work - in a sense it's been working like this for the past 50 years so we're only talking about more of the same. It's what this situation will provoke in other areas which frightens me. Deagle thinks that the collapse is what will trigger the next wave of Totalitarianism. I fear that the measures taken to avoid the collapse could produce similar, though not quite so cataclysmic results.

We've already seen a major ramping up of the Police States across the world since 9-11. I fear the next few years will see at least as much again.

One major feature of global politics which has long worked in our favour is the inability of the various elites in different countries to co-operate. The internet, for example, only remains as (relatively) free as it still is because the various nannies, censors and totalitarians cannot agree on a common control agenda and mechanism. The current financial crisis has, however, forced them to co-operate on an unprecedented scale. They may develop a taste for it and begin to get their act together in all sorts of other much more sinister ways.

This will not be good news for We The People, though We The Sheep'll no doubt be delighted.

The Authoritarians are on the march...

*Carina

Time for a Global Debt & Tax Holiday

2008-10-18T22:26:00.002+01:00

assuming, that is, we want a "soft landing" and speedy recovery...

It is profoundly revealing that $2 Trillion of public monies has been found, so quickly, to rescue the rich when, for the past 50 years it has proved so difficult to find much smaller sums to rescue the poor. Perhaps it's time for a partial rebalancing of that equation.

One can't help noticing that this huge safety net has been prepared for the exclusive benefit of the money men who steered us into this mess. Their principal victims - homeowners and other individual debtors - are being left to pick up their own pieces. Seems to me that this is a fundamental injustice. What's good for the geese ought to be good for the ganders. With that in mind, I propose a two year debt and tax holiday so that we ALL get some of the benefits.

Anyone who cannot afford repayments on current debts should be offered the option of a debt holiday. Not for free of course. If we did that then everyone with a debt would suddenly decide they could no longer afford the repayments.

The creditor can add reasonable interest to the loan so that, in effect, if you take a two year holiday, at a reasonable rate of interest, then once you resumed payments, it would take you perhaps an extra two and a half years to pay off the delayed payments. Something like that.

No doubt there'll be some haggling but now we've accepted we're all in this together (and we have accepted that - haven't we?) then I'm sure that the vast majority of reasonable human beings (both creditors and debtors) can approach this proposition with good will.

A reasonable constraint on the debtors, should they choose to take a debt holiday - with ANY of their creditors - would be an undertaking (on penalty of cancellation of their holiday) not to incur any further debt with any other creditor until they've either cleared their debts or at least resumed normal service of those debts. (There could be exceptions to that, where both creditors and debtors agree the viability of new loans)

This measure would have the immediate effect of sharing the benefits of the global $2 Trillion bailout of the credit industry with the homeowners and other overstretched debtors at the bottom of the financial food chain who would otherwise lose their homes, businesses etc while the fat cats struggle by on a reduced ration of cream.

More practically, stretching the credit this way (essentially a massive rescheduling of private debt) would dramatically reduce the default rate and help to maintain the integrity and viability of the credit market (largely by preventing the Credit Default Swap scam - which we discussed a couple of weeks ago - from being exposed as an insurance bubble)

However, in addition to relieving the pain of debt, and sparing the blushes of the derivative traders, it will also help - a little - to revive the marketplace - which urgently needs to maintain the trading cycle (or, in some cases, to restart it) albeit on a more sustainable basis. The funds that would have been going to loan repayments will now be available to buy at least the essential goods and services that people need to maintain their normal standards.

To go beyond that and stimulate a genuine revival of the marketplace, or at the very least significantly mitigate the otherwise very painful recession, I propose a two year VAT/Sales Tax holiday.

This is the most effective and easily implemented tax cut that we could dream of. Unlike any other tax cut, the taxpayer can't "cheat" by saving instead of spending (the reason for which, economists argue, other tax cuts don't necessarily promote economic growth). You only get the benefit of this tax cut by spending! It just means you get more bang for your buck. It would immediately slash high street prices by significant amounts (on average about 15% across Europe)

It would be relatively trivial for businesses to implement - they simply tell their Point of Sale and Accounting software that the Standard rate of Tax is now zero %.

Governments will still want to collect the data of course, but that's no biggie. I don't know a businessman who wouldn't happily send in the quarterly Tax return if he no longer had to send a cheque with it!

From that data, the government can calculate exactly what their Tax receipts would have been and issue bonds to the money market to finance the shortfall. Yes, that does mean an increase in government borrowing, but that - as governments around the world are acknowledging - is the sensible option in the circumstances. as it would prevent drastic public spending cuts which would otherwise fuel the downward spiral.

While I was drafting this over the weekend, the UK political parties were coming up with their own diluted versions of these proposals. The Tories were punting a VAT delay of six months and the Government were pleading with lenders to scale back on re-possessions.

Both these feeble approaches are like throwing a cup of water into the flames when we need a couple of dozen fire-hoses. Delaying VAT payments for 6 months will cause more problems than it helps. If small businesses are in the kind of trouble in which this kind of cash flow assistance is necessary, then, obviously, they'll spend the money - and won't have it on hand to repay at the end of the 6 months - leading to a wave of additional defaults then.

But, in addition, merely delaying VAT payments won't have ANY effect on the market - because prices would have to stay right where they are (because the Tories want the tax collected eventually). So as well as storing up a bigger debt problem in six months, we'll have done nothing to stimulate the market. FAIL!

Simply pressurizing lenders to reduce their pressure on borrowers is, first and foremost, inequitable. If the big players are being recapitalised at public expense, and having their debt rescheduled, renegotiated and/or forgiven, why is it even possible for those same lenders to penalise their borrowers? The conditions for this rescue package should have included stipulations for similar treatment to be passed down the line.

And, again, merely reducing pressure doesn't free up the funds. And, as the government trumpets its rediscovery of Keynes , when the market is about to take a dive, we need to sustain spending, not reduce it. The debt holiday will release funds for that spending.

Still, it's encouraging that they're at least thinking in the right direction. We might be pushing at an open door. Nevertheless, putting their sticking plasters onto the compound fractures of the global economy isn't going to help. We need to allow time for the system to heal.

Two years of the FULL debt and tax relief treatment and we will be on the other side of this black hole we seem to have dived into. It could be the difference between a mild recession and a severe depression. Which for millions of people around the world might also mean the difference between Life and Death.

Is Wolf Crying Wolf?

2008-10-14T11:34:00.004+01:00

I rather hope so. If not, then Bill Deagle's predictions from last week are going to materialise a lot sooner than he realised.

Naomi's call to arms frightens me and I don't even live there!

I hope - but I'm not entirely confident - that she's gone off half cocked. Of course, I have the benefit of having watched 2 full weeks of history unfold since her call and that 2 weeks has been packed with some fascinating history!

It's just one week after Bill Deagle's predicted trigger date and, much as I'd like to gloat that the world didn't go up in flames, he never actually predicted that it would (at least not last Tuesday) and I certainly cannot argue that events since have falsified his hypothesis. I think he could reasonably argue that the global events and the reactions they have provoked have been sufficiently large scale to qualify as his trigger.

I'm not even inclined to quibble too much about his not hitting the date smack on the nose. The biggest event on his predicted date (Tuesday 7 October) was the collapse of Iceland. Significant, I'll concede, but not on the cataclysmic scale. But the parallel collapse of global markets, subsequent nationalisation of a large percentage of Western Banks and resurrection of the markets: those events really are on the right sort of scale.

Nevertheless, I'm groping for a few straws to clutch at. I think Wolf's analysis is flawed. For a start, she places considerable weight (as one of her 10 Steps to Fascism) on the hyping up of an internal or external threat to provoke panic. She - along with some opponents of the initial American Bailout plan - argues that, right now, the financial crisis is that hyped up threat. I can't accept that. I really don't think it's hyped up at all. I don't think she's fully grasping the sheer scale of what's going on in the Financial world.

This is a double edged sword however. She might well be connecting the right dots but for the wrong reason. She seems to think those positioning for a totalitarian takeover (and I don't dispute the positioning) are manipulating the crisis in order to make a case for that takeover. In contrast, I think it's more likely that the "leaders of the free world" have a pretty clear idea of what will happen if and when the world and his dog wakes up and realises that the entire global monetary system is the biggest confidence trick ever invented and there is no more reason to believe in it than to believe in fairies. And we all know what happens when we stop believing in fairies.

In this "optimistic" scenario, the American Totalitarian option, for which they are obviously preparing, is a genuine contingency plan for what happens if the bubble really does burst.

Bill Deagle's visions are fully compatible with what Wolf is describing and these bleak scenarios are definitely a possible result of the inevitable crisis which would follow such a collapse. Nevertheless, in arguing that the situation is being hyped up, Wolf is taking one step beyond where I'm currently prepared to follow.

Given the social and economic collapse which would follow the collapse of the money bubble, you could certainly argue that the Police State measures, the homeland security budget allocations to State PDs, the unprecedented and unconstitutional deployment of National rather than State militia are all "prudent" preparations for the Martial Law which will be necessary when the population realises that the infrastructure of modern society is about to disintegrate and up to half the human race is likely to die as a result. How else can the ultra wealthy protect their property from the ravenous hordes other than with overt military force?

And such an outcome is still a very real possibility. If the Insurance market really is trading at the $516 Trillion dollar level, (as opposed to the "modest" $62 Trillion I spoke of last week) this implies truly astronomical levels of fraud and corruption in the system which will be exposed as soon as any major claimant is refused the compensation they think they have paid for. That's when the shit will really hit the fan.

But I'm beginning to perceive one or two small rays of hope.

First and foremost, none of the players can afford for the system to collapse - even if it means they themselves have to take the hit. Consider the biggest Creditors, like China, for example. What would happen if they pushed America over the edge? Not only would they force America to default, they would, in the process, lose 99% of the value of their credit, lose their most valuable market, create the conditions for a fascist America which would still retain the worlds largest nuclear arsenal and would now be very pissed off with China.

The irony, incidentally - of Red China being one of America's main creditors and not being able to afford to let the Capitalist State collapse - is orgasmic.

But that logic, to a greater or lesser extent, is true of almost every player in the Global Financial market, whether or not America owes them any money. Because the Dollar is the world's Reserve Currency (link added 23/10/2008) and there are no immediate viable alternatives, NOBODY can afford to let the system fail. So it's quite likely, in my view, that nobody will dare to push the button that makes it fail.

Secondly, just looking at the $516 Trillion. Given the value of the global economy is a mere tenth of that ludicrous figure, it is arithmetically obvious that at least 90% of the "money" or nominal value which comprises that gargantuan sum CANNOT be real. So - with luck, what might happen if the bubble bursts - apart from a bunch of ferrets fighting in a sack over who gets to keep the 2 or 3% of real value - is that no REAL damage will hit the REAL economy. Perhaps the worst that will really happen is that a few of the very rich will get slightly richer and a lot of the very rich will get somewhat poorer.

Yeah, I know that looks wildly optimistic, but remember the general guide: Follow the Money. I genuinely can't see how ANYONE - with the possible exception of the Voluntary Human Extinction movement - could possibly benefit from the total collapse of the system, so I don't believe anyone will provoke it. And, as we're seeing, the capitalist governments are actually taking measures which are beginning to look credible in the eyes of the market - who, fortunately, seem to be blissfully unaware of the risk of the bigger Insurance bubble bursting and are only concerned with the credit crunch and lowering the inter bank rate.

Now, of course, I may be wrong, the bubble will burst, in a worst case rather than best case scenario, and the entire global trading and capital system will go up in flames, taking half the human race with it. And this may be exactly the scenario the Police State is preparing for. If we really want to milk the possibilities, we could speculate that they will await the outcome of the US election before they press the button. If McCain gets it, the button is handed over to the trusted puppet to press if and when he's instructed to do so. This has the advantage of continuing the illusion of "democracy".

But if Obama wins, and the decision to go Total has already been made, then perhaps we can expect a suitable chain of events to be engineered (probably including the assassination of the President Elect) in order to justify the imposition of Martial Law for "as long as the incumbent President sees fit". A new election will be scheduled for the following November, but it will always be nudged a little further into the future...

The question is, what if the money bubble doesn't burst? It will not then be in the interests of the money men to let their puppets press the wealth destroying button. In which case, Obama will come to power, spend the next four years pretending to run the country like a normal president and everything will carry on as before. Nobody would ever know how close we came to "the end days".

We have to hope that Wolf IS crying Wolf, or else all bets are off.

Who the hell is Bill Deagle?

2008-10-07T00:00:00.006+01:00

He's a modern "prophet". One of only a few million now available from your nearest online connection.

Apparently, following the "blood sacrifice" represented by the $700 Billion Bailout, he's predicting a major financial event for Today - Tuesday 7 October 2008. An event whose consequences are going to begin a sequence of falling dominoes (mainly collapsing banks and other financial institutions) and leading - first - to the collapse of the global economy. Along the way we can expect a false flag nuclear attack on Los Angeles, followed by Martial Law in the US and a "pestilence" within 1 or 2 years.

Somewhere parallel to this timeline he foresees the blockade of the Middle East by the US, leading to an invasion of the Middle East by "Communist" China, leading, ultimately, to global destruction and the collapse of civilisation. Just in the next 12 months we can expect a hundred million people to starve to death. And somewhere in the mix we'll get human clones and "super-soldiers" though whether that's in the next couple of years or a few decades down the line isn't entirely clear.
(Download the mp3* - not for the faint hearted!)

Nothing too serious then; just the standard set of modern nightmares. What's new? Not a lot, though the timing is interesting.

Deagle has form. He's already recognised as one of the "wild men" of the 9-11 Truth Movement (where he shines in the face of considerable competition) so the most rational response to his latest "visions" would normally be to roll over and go back to sleep. The problem is that events are conspiring to support him and his ilk. Earth shattering financial events are now happening on an almost daily basis. It is actually LESS likely that we'll hear nothing today than we'll hear something which could appear to validate his dark visions. So if almost ANY serious financial event takes place today it is likely to give the Deagle story legs.

He and his supporters, however, even have a reasonable amount of wriggle room. Because today's event is only billed as the first domino, we might not spot it happening. Months down the line, they might be able to argue that it was Ben Bernanke's 10 minute delay in getting his first coffee of the day which will eventually be seen as that domino. Which butterfly would we blame for the hurricane?

If it is that trivial, almost no-one will take any notice. But if anything really significant does happen today, you can expect the Deagle prophesy to go viral. You have been warned.

Of course, as is appropriate in the circs, I have to hedge my bets against the small probability that a truly staggering financial event will indeed take place today. So momentous that it would be churlish to deny the apparent validity of Deagle's prescience. Can we set the bar at a reasonable height? What might qualify as a "hit" for Mr Deagle?

Well, if it's going to be that undeniable it's going to have to be even bigger than what we've already experienced in the last few weeks, (or else we could reasonably argue that the bigger event was the first domino). So it's got to be bigger than the nationalisation of Freddy and Fanny, bigger than the rush of European banks to guarantee bank deposits, bigger than Monday's stock market drop and bigger even than the unprecedented $700 billion bailout. Can we imagine what such an event might be?

Well yes we can. For me the most disturbing single incident in recent weeks has been the nationalisation of AIG - the biggest insurer on the planet. How on earth did that happen? Aren't the insurance industry the safest of all the gamblers because they're the bookmakers, the scientific risk assessors? The bookmakers ALWAYS win. Don't they? Not any more, if Daniel R. Amerman is to be believed.

If I understand his description correctly (and I wouldn't bet on that), AIG, and the insurance industry generally, has been taking on truly astronomical bets without the resources to pay out if they fail. By way of analogy imagine they've insured every ship against sinking. Statistically, there is - say - a 1% chance of any ship sinking in any given year. So if they charge an annual premium of 2%, they collect enough money to pay out on the few ships that do sink and still make a handsome profit.

What they haven't budgeted for is the possibility that 20% of the ships might sink in the same year. Not only does that produce a situation in which the shipowners are not compensated, but the insurers themselves are forced into bankruptcy because they can't afford to lose on that many bets.

This is the very real prospect now facing the global insurance industry which carries the risk for all those lenders who have been doling out the dosh to all those punters and businesses who either could never realistically have afforded to repay (and really shouldn't have been lent the money in the first place) or, less predictably, but just as seriously, those otherwise well run businesses or prudent punters who, through no fault of their own, now find themselves unable to pay because the accelerating global recession has reduced the values of their assets and/or income.

The sheer scale of the Insurers' credit swapping trade (ie. bets which now look very risky and are not even "mainly" covered by assets) is mind boggling. It dwarfs the Bailout. It is what the mathematicians call two magnitudes higher, i.e. not ten times as big but nearly 100 times as big. It's nominal value is actually greater than the nominal value of the entire global economy. We are talking about $62 TRILLION US Dollars (against the global economy value of "only" $54 Trillion). How people can "owe" or "own" a total value in excess of the global worth of the economy is beyond me and probably constitutes an important clue to why this bubble may well be about to burst. And your guess is as good as mine in regard to what proportion of that enormous sum is actually "at risk" but the impression I'm getting is that the vast majority of it is "exposed".

But what Amerman explains - albeit a bit too sotto voce for my taste - is exactly how the insane risk taking was allowed to happen. This isn't a case of "bad luck". It is a clear case of systemic corruption.

The short version is that brokers get commission for selling a policy. They get that commission up front, the day the policy is signed. AND THEY DON'T HAVE TO REPAY IT IF THE BET GOES BAD. (They also get annual bonuses based on short term profits rather than long term performance.) What this means is that the brokers themselves take no risks but nevertheless have the authority - and incentives - to sign deals which mean their employers are taking ludicrous risks.

The major bunch of insane risks that began to unravel last year were the subprime loans; mortgages assigned to people who had a far higher risk of failure than normal. Usually even that might not have mattered. If a bank recognises a credit risk, it can factor that into the loan in a few ways. It can, for example, raise the interest rate to ensure that, across the piece, even though more borrowers will default, it will still make a profit on a "basket" of such loans. It can choose to lend only a fraction of the asset value for which the loan is issued. It can take on the risk and then insure against it.

If it does any of these things, and the borrower defaults, the bank continues to receive premium rates from the rest of the basket, gets the house and/or makes a claim on the insurance to cover what ought to be trivial losses. Yes, we'll see the collapse of the house owner and their family, but no danger to the sacred money market.

It seems that the market has deliberately conspired to circumvent all such means of protection. First, instead of lending at a premium rate which would deter most subprime candidates, they routinely sucked them in with very low rates which only climbed to the premium level after a year or two. Second, instead of lending only a fraction of the asset value, banks lent not just the full value, but in many cases MORE than the full value. And third, recognising, to some extent, the additional risks they were taking, they took out insurance, but the insurance turns out to be worth less than the paper it's written on. And THAT is - in my view - the real scandal which has yet to be fully aired.

According to Amerman, the inherent corruption created by upfront non refundable commissions and bonuses have produced a "free market" in which brokers outbid the competition by deliberately understating the risks (often with the help of 3rd party "expert" Risk Assessment agencies) thus enabling them to get the business by demanding smaller premiums.

Hence, for example, whereas a real subprime mortgage is about - say - 20% likely to default, the insurance premiums were actually based on a notional 1% risk. Meaning that the insurers collected only 5% of what was necessary to cover the real risk and that the vast majority of subprime defaults are, therefore, effectively uninsured; meaning, in turn, that the lenders are going to have take the money out of their own reserves. And their reserves aint that big. So they haven't got money to loan to new borrowers and when they approach other banks, who would normally have lent them "wholesale" money, they find that their former lenders no longer trust even the banks to be able to repay their loans. That's what triggered the first wave of the ongoing epidemic.

But the effects of the corruption don't stop there. In order to hide the weakness of their risk protection, the various agencies have conspired to invent a wide array of "instruments" designed to make risky debts look like routine reasonably safe ones. They bundled high risk debts with medium and low risk debts into "Credit Default Swaps", "Structured Investment Vehicles" and other such jargon camouflaged snake oil "derivatives" and sold each other packages of scented ordure. Somehow (and this will need to be thoroughly investigated as well) these high risk packages were given so called "Triple A" credit ratings (meaning "as safe as the Bank of England" or thereabouts), which meant that all the major institutions were happy to buy and sell them, falsely believing that the credit rating meant that there was no significant risk.

And at each "swap" the brokers picked up more of their non refundable commissions.

The corruption appears to be almost global. However, although no countries have made such fraudulent risk trading impossible, some, most notably France, are at least insulated from the effects on personal banking and credit. There, even a standard credit card doesn't offer you actual credit. It's more accurately described as a debit card. If you don't already have funds on the card, you can't spend the money. And you can't get a mortgage of more than 80% of the asset value. The French been criticised, in the past, for their conservatism, but it looks like they may well have the last laugh, although even they will not escape the fallout if the global insurance industry falls over, effectively nullifying all the protection we think we've prudently provided for.

I have no idea what consequences might follow if the $62 Trillion dollar global insurance industry were to collapse and no idea what might push it over the edge, or how close we may already be to such an event. It has to be significant that the Americans leapt so quickly into the breach, with an $85 billion nationalisation with almost no debate and no significant protest. They obviously realise how serious such a collapse would be.

But given the panic that has so far already ensued over less than one Trillion dollars worth of debts, it doesn't take too much imagination to see that a $62 Trillion dollar collapse might well justify even Deagle's most disturbing predictions.

You have been warned.

*thanks to Alana13, one of my Stumbling friends for sending me the mp3.

Its All A Conspiracy

2008-03-12T00:20:00.002Z

I'm gathering Conspiracy material by the ton in preparation for a chapter on Conspiracy Theories and how only Social Trust in the political process can begin to reduce the widespread paranoia such theories reveal. Trust and, of course, the abolition of political and economic Conspiracies.

This is an interesting example of the genre. The respectable Lou Dobbs is interviewed by the manic Alex Jones. During the interview we move - in a series of small jumps - from the fascinating question of why the Americans are allowing the Dollar to slide right through to the menace of the New World Order.

We'll stick with the dollar for now. The American passivity does look weird. Like watching mythical lemmings rushing towards their mythical cliff edge. How can it not end in financial collapse and consequent economic ruin? And it's not as though Lou Dobbs is the only one voicing such thoughts. It's as mainstream as you can get. This (mp3 4 mb) was broadcast on Radio 4's Today program this morning (yesterday morning by the time I post this), the day after I listened to Dobbs. And this is on the BBC News site as we speak. The consensus is clearly that we're about to come down with a hard bump. The unprecedented injection - by a consortium of central banks - of 280 Billion dollars into the Lending market also speaks of desparate measures to avoid a crash landing.

Yet given the apparent inertia of the American Establishment, we must assume that either they've got a hidden parachute which will open in the nick of time and permit a relatively soft landing; or they really haven't got a 'king clue what is going on and they're completely unaware that they're about to crash and burn.

...their analytical record to date gives a strong clue as to which is the most likely scenario...

...but that doesn't make for good Conspiracy. For the dedicated conspiracist, incompetence is far too simple and unlikely an explanation for such behaviour. The government cannot possibly be as stupid as it looks. Therefore, if the dollar is going down, then they must want it to go down for a reason. This argument falls at the first hurdle.

Governments really are and always have been every bit as stupid as they look. Human History does not provide a record of sensible or effective management. Almost every major step we have made in social, political and economic organisation has been the necessary attempt to fix the mess made by our predecessors. The fact that there are still some readers who will be surprised by such a description is a measure of how effective their education systems have been to date.

That should tell you where I'm coming from. I favour cockup over conspiracy nearly every time. But that "nearly" is there for a reason.

Meanwhile back at the Plummeting Dollar (good name for a Pub?), the conspiracists' favourite reason for inaction, at the moment, is "to kill off the dollar so it can be replaced by the Amero" which is a reference to the conviction, held by some conspiracists, that the elites of Mexico, the USA and Canada have secretly conspired to create a supernation incorporating all 3.

European readers will be feeling a certain anti-climax at that point. "yeah... and?"

...whereas yer average American Libertarian will be howling at the moon. To us, in the reasonably civilised "supernation" of Europe, apart from above average levels of bureaucracy which we could live without, being in a supernation works pretty well for nearly all of us. Just for example, I have the right to ply my trade or set up home, or access medical and other services in anyone of 25 European countries, even if their government doesn't like me. That's not a bad start for benefits. And I can't think of any significant costs that are unique to membership of EEC.

I'm not going to get into a bare knuckle fight over the issue. Is it perfect? Of course not. But is it a reasonable working model of liberal capitalism? Much more so than the US of A.

We could argue about that, of course, but we'd be arguing on the margins, percentage points here or there separating the two models. What I simply cannot bring myself to understand is the sheer horror with with the idea of an American supernation on the European model is seen by its opponents. Their reaction is very similar the Religious Fundamentalist reaction to things like homosexuality. It is a deeply frightened, bigoted, overemotional - amygdalic - reaction which has almost no basis in objective analysis of the facts.

Ask the average American living in Europe which system they prefer and the answer comes down heavily in favour of Europe, though you could argue that such a sample is self selecting. But objectively, on every significant social, health, economic and political measure, Europe easily matches or outranks the USA. What on earth is it that they think we're suffering under our dreadful system which fills them with such fear for a similar outcome?

Be that as it may, at least their hypothesis is testable. Essentially, if they are right, then in 10 years time, the new superstate of North America will be catching up on Europe. We shall see. Don't hold your breath.

I do not wish to leave you, however, with the notion that I've become an "anti-conspiracist" who now dismisses all conspiracy theories as the work of paranoid delusions. That's why the "nearly" was necessary. There are herds of very real conspiracies. History is riddled with them and there are probably a dozen or so globally significant conspiracies going on right now.

This site gives an entertaining intro to some of the real conspiracies that are matters of historical record. I also like his style, for example:

"Unfortunately for him, Hitler wasn't nearly as forgiving as his fiery public speeches and penchant for genocide would lead you to believe"

The important thing is that the stories are all true and well documented conspiracies. And they're only a small fraction of those we know about. Conspiracy is common place. Unfortunately (hmmm... or perhaps fortunately) actual Conspiracies are nowhere near as commonplace as the vastly more numerous Conspiracy Theories. (to which this randomly selected page gives an intro)

Now, whether or not they are intended as such, the vast majority of Conspiracy Theories serve no other purpose than to act exactly as disinfo is intended to act; as camouflage for the real conspiracies. So when a bunch of conspiracists argue that this is precisely the point of many of the stories - just to cloud the water - it is difficult to argue that they are deranged.

The difference between the real ones and the others is the degree to which we can find satisfactory unequivocal evidence. Not speculation. Not anecdotal reportage. Not a million web sites repeating the same allegations. But cold hard empirically verifiable forensic evidence that we could, if we had to, place before a Jury of our Peers.

That standard of evidence - which we need before we start believing in Ghosts, Aliens, Homeopathy, the election of a President or whatever - narrows the field considerably. But it doesn't kill them all off - any more than all the valid explanations of UFO sightings successfully explains away all the sightings.

Some of the shit sticks.

Provocateurs...

2008-02-18T01:36:00.000Z

...are classic literal Corrupt Insiders.

Thanks to rumple for pointing me at this one. 'king excellent example of trusted surveillance. Now imagine what it will be like when we routinely turn our mobile phones against them (and record the output direct to web so the footage is safe).

And, of course, it constitutes yet more justification for imposing trusted surveillance on those who, up till now, have held authority over us. Yet more justification for reminding ourselves who is supposed to have the authority in what are supposed to be democracies.

Incidentally, it is also a classic example of what we might have to regard as "terrorism lite" in much the same way we're supposed to regard Waterboarding as "Torture Light" (and could you have imagined 10 years ago that we'd be reading stories like that about an American Government?). My own definition of Terrorism specifies: The lethal targeting of non combatants to promote fear throughout the enemy population. as one of two key defining characteristics of Terrorism.

Provocateurs may not actually kill non combatants, but they clearly have no concern for those who may be killed by the police in the subsequent riot control operation the provos have triggered.

That'll be criminal enough for the average jury when we get around to giving them perfectly fair trials before we hang the bastards.

But the most significant factor in this story? That this is Canada - Not the US of A. Yes, I'm afraid so. Good old civilised liberal Canada. We all thought they were supposed to be one of the good guys. If you weren't shivering before, that should do the trick...

Police State UK Coming Up To Speed

2008-02-09T23:51:00.000Z

The Telegraph's revelations about the routine bugging of Lawyers conversations has genuinely shocked the chattering classes. "Is nothing sacred?" They're learning...

One of the Comments on the story reads

"Why not bug prisoners? We might learn something to help prevent yet another crime being commited."

The touching naivete of readers like that (who seems to represent a little under 25% of the responses - but, I suspect, a higher proportion of the wider population) is typical of those who grasp neither the basic concepts of Liberty, Justice and Accountability nor the basic concepts of security.

With regard to the latter, any chance we may have had of gathering intelligence in such circumstances is now completely blown. Not only will no one on government-run premises be stupid enough to continue to act as though they are unmonitored, drying up the sources of information instantly, but, from now on, all lawyers can reasonably insist either on being allowed to "sweep" for bugs, to interview their clients on their own territory, or to take in masking devices to ensure their privacy.

There is one legitimate scenario and one only, in which such breach of privacy while awaiting trial can be justified. It is certainly not with regard to gathering evidence on a crime which has already been committed. That essentially constitutes a breach of the globally recognised human right not to be forced to incriminate ourselves.

Only when a future - and, crucially, lethal - attack is genuinely anticipated can we reasonably argue that the inmate's rights are outweighed by the Social interest in preventing deaths.

However, the real question does not revolve around what is really a "common sense" assessment of whether or not we should keep an eye on poisonous snakes we believe are about to strike, but whether it is reasonable in the circumstances to suspect a particular snake of being that poisonous or being that likely to strike. It is the oversight of that assessment where we have got it badly wrong.

In case it has escaped anyone's attention, the scales have fallen from our eyes. We no longer live in the Edwardian era when it was still unthinkable that Politicians or Policemen could be anything but paragons of virtue. For a raft of entirely legitimate reasons, it is now completely rational NOT to trust politicians, police or even Judges with the kind of authority we need to oversee something as dangerous as spying on our own citizens.

Spying on your own citizens is a major step - probably THE major step - on the road to Totalitarianism. There is only one way to allow such behaviour on the very rare occasions where it may be justified, whilst ensuring that we do not pave the way to such a hell with good intentions.

We must insist that no such serious measures are ever taken without the permission of a Jury of citizens, duly vetted and sworn to secrecy - though entitled to breach that secrecy if they witness abuse of power by the executive or its employees.

We like to believe that we live in a Democracy. We're wrong to believe it, but that's a different issue. One way, however, we can begin to make it true, is to establish Democratic control over our Justice and Security system. Juries of our fellow citizens are the only people we can or should trust with such dangerous authority.

This is the fundamental constitutional basis which lies at the heart of the "Trusted Surveillance" I keep bleating on about. I seem to be a lone voice. You should know the chorus by now, so please feel free to join in...

Banning Juries & Bugging MPs

2008-02-03T23:39:00.000Z

We need a new word.

What I want to be able to say would be true under a Democratic regime but is not true under the existing constitution. The word needs to mean "legal only in the narrow sense that it has been passed into law by a constitutional authority - but entirely without democratic or moral legitimacy".

"Bad Law" just doesn't cut it. "Evil" get's closer but has too many religious connotations for my taste. Hmmm... how about "Levil" - implying "legal but evil". Yeh, we'll go with that for the time being...

In a Democracy, any attempt to bypass Juries will be a criminal offence and will result in the long term imprisonment of the persons responsible. Unfortunately such meddling, whilst "Levil" is not illegal under an Elective Dictatorship. Elected Dictators are able give themselves the authority to make the rules and any rules they make are, therefore "legal". Which, of course, is why we have to end Elective Dictatorship.

If you're wondering, by the way, what has rattled my cage and caused me to start spouting off, again, about Juries, then read this or listen to this (mp3 10 mb). It's the relevant item on Radio 4's "World This Weekend" earlier today. It describes the proposal, buried within a counter-terrorism bill, to give government the authority to appoint their own Coroners and to exclude Juries in certain "exceptional" cases where the evidence would expose something the government would rather not have exposed.

In a Democracy, there will be some ground rules. One will be that "We The People" remain, at all times, the supreme authority. Occasionally, we will delegate that authority to a Jury who will act on our behalf as a fair sample of The People. There will be occasions when we will trust individuals we pay from the public purse to carry out duties on our behalf. But there will be NO circumstances where such duties include the setting of public policy or the establishment of principles. These are the exclusive domain of the Democratic process.

The idea that there are some matters which cannot be entrusted to The People or our representatives in the form of a Jury is the most offensive political concept it is possible to hold in modern society. It betrays true contempt for We The People. Unfortunately it is a concept and a contempt widely held, mainly by the elites who currently hold power over us - the true "enemy within".

This latest attack, as you will hear in that audio snippet, arises from the government's refusal to reveal, to the family of Azelle Rodney, the background explaining why a policeman murdered him in an attack frighteningly reminiscent of the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes. I use the term murder advisedly. Any execution by the State should be assumed to be murder until or unless they can prove otherwise. Innocent until proven guilty cannot and should not apply to those we licence to kill on our behalf. They must be made to account for every such fatality.

And we must be grown up about such killings. Even when they are tragically wrong, like the Menezes example, it is still possible to argue that the police conduct in the case was reasonable in the circumstances (as I did argue in that case). It is also entirely plausible that intelligence gathered in the case may be of such a sensitive nature that we cannot reasonably expect it to be made available to the public at large or to the family of the victim/s (who are more likely than most to leak it to the wider public in their understandable urge to seek retribution)

What is utterly unacceptable is the notion that such evidence cannot even be placed before a Jury duly sworn to secrecy. What this amounts to is a bunch of jumped up politicians arguing that they cannot trust the people who gave them their jobs. This is completely arse-about-face. It is clearly politicians who cannot and should not be trusted to continue to exercise and abuse their power in the way we have allowed them to do for, well, thousands of years.

Politicians not only have no right or ethical basis for demanding greater trust than the poor suckers who elect them but, by any intelligent analysis should, by virtue of the various priveleges they have awarded themselves, be regarded with considerably less trust than normal citizens.

And in this regard, by strange coincidence, the same news program headlined another fascinating story about the bugging, by Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist gang, of MP Sadiq Khan when talking to his constituent Babar Ahmad in the confines of Woodhill Prison, where Ahmad is being held pending extradition to the PSA

Let us first deal with the serious matter. This case is, I fear, the evidence I've been dreading that the UK is now closing in on becoming a Police State in its own right. I have just written to the authors of the Free Babar Ahmad website seeking clarification of certain points, such as when, if ever, Babar Ahmad's alleged web based fund raising activities on behalf of the Taleban took place.

If, as I suspect, it was in the period prior to the invasion of Afghanistan, there are no conceivable grounds for calling such activity a crime. The Taleban were then the "legitimate" government of a foreign state with whom we were not at war and supporting them was no different to raising funds for the Ethiopian or Indian governments. You might argue that it was unwise, but you cannot argue that it was criminal. Only if his support continued after the invasion could there be any grounds for prosecution (because it could then be "legitimately" argued that he was giving "aid and comfort to the enemy") And it looks extremely unlikely that there are such grounds because we already know that the British Government have made it clear that they have no grounds for prosecuting him.

In any case, even if it turned out that his support did continue after the invasion (which would raise the question of why the British Government isn't prosecuting him) that would present no excuse for his brutal American Police style treatment at the hands of the British Police. And, of course, his detention under the "Levil" Extradition Act of 2003 is a cause for deep national shame for which political heads (not just of ministers but of all the MPs who allowed this Bill to get onto the Statutes) should roll, preferably sooner rather than later.

Be all that as it may, the fuss today is not about the much more serious injustice being perpetrated against Babar Ahmad but about the rather trivial issue of his conversation with his MP being bugged(mp3 6.5mb). It seems that the ganders are not at all keen to suffer the sauce being so regularly dished out to the geese.

It's apparently OK for MPs to vote in powers which subvert Habeas Corpus and allow detention without trial for 28 days (and seeking - in the same counter terrorism bill - to extend it to 42); it's OK for them to let the police bug us in our homes or workplaces or on our phones. OK to demand our encryption keys or web surfing history for the past two years or to track us anywhere we go in our cars and it's OK to watch every citizen in the country about 100 times a day with the largest set of CCTV cameras anywhere in the world.

But heaven help us if somebody bugs an MP! Oh No! They must be Off Limits! Jack Straw has actually said:

"It is completely unacceptable for an interview to be conducted by a MP on a constituent matter or in any other issue to be recorded."

Well Bollocks to that. While I'm entirely in favour of the constituents' privacy, under any kind of civilised system, it is those who place themselves at the top of the tree who must expect to be watched most of all. And whether they are watched should, like the rest of us, be decided not by Police, Politicians or Judges but by Juries of our fellow citizens.

Certainly anyone who wants to allow the kind of massive uncontrolled and untrusted surveillance of ordinary citizens that these incompetent charlatans have permitted in recent years had better get used to the idea that the era of Elected Dictators is coming to an end. We're coming to get you. And we're going to start the process by watching you much more closely than you've ever dreamed.

Would you ask a Paedophile to babysit your children?

2008-01-20T00:25:00.000Z

Obviously not. So why would you trust a government to look after your private data? Historically and currently they are easily the worst abusers and losers we know about.

Globally, until the recent Datastrophe, the UK government was regarded as one of the best in this field, yet look what they've managed to achieve in just the past few weeks:

Today's embarrassment is this story (Ministry of Defence - our Professional Security Force - loses data on 600,000 potential recruits). But in recent weeks we've had this one (names and addresses of 160,000 children in the "care" of the Hackney Primary Care Trust go missing), not to mention this one (ex DWP employee "forgot" to return data on thousands of claimants, then mislaid it) and this one (hundreds of personal details found on a roundabout in Devon) and this one (Stockport PCT loses details on 4,000 patients) and this one (Oldham PCT loses a mere 100) and this one (Inland Revenue loses details on 6,500 building society members) and this one (DVLA Northern Ireland loses data on 6,000 drivers "in the post") and this one (25,000 Standard Life customers' data lost in the post by HMRC)

I could go on but those are just the REPORTED data breaches, all as you can see, by agencies of the UK government in the last 10 weeks or so. Oh - and all these "one offs" followed hot on the heels of the biggest of them all: a world record in its class. The subject of my previous blog.

Are we spotting a pattern yet? I'm quite sure you, dear reader, get the picture, even if the wankers responsible for this incompetent series of of data disasters haven't quite managed to join the dots. Trusting these imbeciles to protect our private data is itself an act of gross imbecility or even negligence on our part; every bit as stupid as asking a paedophile to babysit our children...

Datastrophe!

2007-11-21T01:55:00.000Z

The sheer scale of this Data Disaster is beyond precedent. I don't think anywhere in the world has there been such a major breach of personal data protection. Britain is now, officially, the most incompetent protector of sensitive personal data on the planet.

Well, it's always good to be number one at something.

The good news of course, is that this has completely skuppered their naive and dangerous plans for massive centralised databases filled with even more sensitive and valuable personal data than that which they have owned up to losing today - their "National Identity Database".

The polls will, no doubt, reflect that immediately. Asked the question: "Do you trust the government to protect the masses of personal data they wish to store about you?" I would now bet that the "Yes" vote would be somewhat less than 10%. And they'll be made up largely of those who don't yet know about the Datastrophe.

Jane Kennedy had the miserable duty of appearing before the Jeremy to defend the indefensible on behalf of the Government. Obviously the mistress of understatement, she accepted that "we need to demonstrate that we can be trusted".

The very first thing they will have to do in order to have even a 1% chance of rebuilding trust is to listen to the 'king experts who have been warning them for YEARS that this kind of disaster is inevitable once you hold massive centralised databases filled with sensitive and valuable personal data to which thousands of people require regular access.

This, as I've said elsewhere, is what (probably) the world's best known expert in this field - Bruce Schneier - tells us about how we can protect massive centralised databases filled with sensitive and valuable personal data to which thousands of people require regular access.

As they obviously didn't hear me last time, you'll pardon me if I shout:

"AS COMPUTER SCIENTISTS, WE DO NOT KNOW HOW TO KEEP A DATABASE OF THIS MAGNITUDE SECURE, WHETHER FROM OUTSIDE HACKERS OR THE THOUSANDS OF INSIDERS AUTHORIZED TO ACCESS IT" (EMPHASIS ADDED - sorry - emphasis added)

Got that? WE DO NOT KNOW

We might think about starting to trust you ever again when you stop pretending you are capable of doing something that the world's leading experts tell us can not be done. It makes you sound as ridiculous as Thabo Mbeki telling his South African AIDS riddled citizens that their illness has nothing to do with HIV

And let me make this plain. The consensus on this issue, amongst those experts who qualify and are taken seriously by the global Crypto and Security community, is much greater than the alleged consensus on Global Warming. It's even greater than the consensus on the link between HIV and AIDS. It is a true consensus. There is zero dissent.

Only those with political or commercial interests claim that such protection is possible.

Got that? Only those with political or commercial interests claim that such protection is possible.

So, if you're genuinely not heading down the American Police State path, and you REALLY want to begin to rebuild our trust, you will have to begin by apologising for your previous intransigence and publicly accepting what the recognised independent experts have been consistently telling us for a very long time. Meanwhile...

You are not Tesco's.

Yes, they can tell us our shopping habits and put them together with our name and address (if we're a card holder, or pay regularly by credit card) and even that relatively trivial level of detail can provide a lot of personal information people probably wouldn't be at all comfortable with if they understood it. For example - Ladies - you do realise that they know when most of you are having your period? You might not care, but if they were inclined, and if they were allowed to, which fortunately, to date, they are not, they could sell that information to the highest bidder. A Tampon manufacturer is likely to win. If and when you start getting relevant monthly SPAM, you might wanna start thinking about that.

Fortunately, though even Tesco's limited dataset is valuable to someone somewhere, it is not, yet at least, so valuable that it is likely to become a magnet to those who know how to exploit data for commercial purposes and are prepared to exercise "unconventional" means to get at it. Do you know what a single "clean" set of bank account details was fetching on the black market yesterday? (Before this disclosure) £400 quid.

Boy are they going to be pissed at you. You assholes have just flooded the market with about £10 BILLION POUNDS WORTH of virginal bank details - which is bound to depress the market price considerably. It might already - given the fuss and high profile - have reduced in value to only a Billion or two. And you really don't think it's going to get into the wrong hands??

If you are thinking like that you still don't get it. There are no right hands for such data to be sitting in. You've just proved - if anyone still doubted it - that this most certainly includes you.

Let me ram the point firmly home. You're stuffed mate. There is no conceivable "happy ending" to this for you. This is your CJD moment. All you can hope for now is that the long term effects are minimal. Even if the disks are found tomorrow morning, and even if they are apparently in a safe place, still on government "controlled" premises, you will still be stuffed, because, like the rest of the world, you cannot prove a negative. You cannot prove that - in the 3 weeks they've already been missing - the disks have not been removed by a skilled attacker, copied, and returned as though innocently mislaid. Your security chappies do this kind of thing all the time. They're not alone.

So even if Darling can rush into the House tomorrow afternoon clutching the disks in his sweaty hands (which would be a bloody stupid thing to do - but within the range of political grandstanding tradition) we will not know for years whether or not this data has been released into the wild. Partly this is because the clever attackers will not try the smash and grab that everybody seems to expect.

Nobody's going to find hundreds or thousands of pounds has gone missing from their accounts. Too obvious. Too traceable. Too easily spotted. Even by the banks. No. They'll set up small random withdrawals from their millions of hijacked accounts to hundreds or thousands of different recipient accounts. These withdrawals will be typical of the account (to whose records they have gained access for computerised analysis). How many victims are ever going to notice £3.72 this month, £2.18 next month and so on? How many are going to do anything about it? (In fact the only evidence we might ever get to see is that fall in the black market price.)

Tesco's data - and even the 25 Million sets of personal data you've just lost - is not a patch on what you bumbling amateurs are storing elsewhere. Tesco's can't connect their information with any other of our personal data because they don't have access to it. This limits, significantly, the risk we run by letting Tesco hold a small amount of our personal data - but it's still non zero as hinted above.

You, on other hand, CAN connect THEIR data to all the other data sets you have access to, because you've recently given yourself the authority to do that kind of thing without, as I recall, the permission of the British People; but then, as the law stands, you don't actually need our permission, do you. So that's alright then.

So if the limited details...

"children's names, addresses, dates of birth, NI numbers and where relevant bank and building society account details"

are worth a few hundred quid per set, what's the market value of a set including tax details, medical history, criminal record, credit records, child benefit records, telephone records, known associations, club memberships, mobile phone records and internet surfing history, to mention but a few? £1,000? £10,000? Pick a number. Now multiply it by the 60 Million sets you retards are talking about storing and you'll realise we're talking figures in excess of American Defence Spending.

Do you understand what that means? It means that it's worth someone spending something close to what the Americans spend on their super inflated military budget in order to get access to data of that quantity and quality. The Americans, of course, will probably be your first customer. And - if you hadn't guessed - we don't trust you to resist the sale.

We may not need to match the attackers budget in full, because, like we do with military defence, we share some of the costs with our allies, but think of it like this: If America ever became our sworn enemy, how much would we have to spend to defend ourselves against them?

Quite.

Neither can we afford what it would cost - in either economic terms or those of civil liberties and privacy - to defend your proposed massive centralised databases filled with sensitive and valuable personal data to which thousands of people will require regular access. It's a non starter. Learn that lesson, and there is a small chance that your citizens might stop laughing in disbelief at your ludicrous posturing.

And, if you still want an ID card after that, you're going to have to adopt one WITHOUT A MASSIVE CENTRALISED DATABASE FILLED WITH SENSITIVE AND VALUABLE PERSONAL DATA TO WHICH THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE REQUIRE REGULAR ACCESS.

Such as the one I've been trying to tell you about, since 2002, here.

Is that clear?

Good. Now don't do it again!

Happy Anniversary!

2007-09-11T23:35:00.000+01:00

This is a remarkable - and genuinely hopeful - development in the 3rd World War. Maajid Nawaz was - until sometime very recently - a leading figure in Hizb-ut-Tahrir, one of the few radical Islamic movements who explicitly call for the Caliphate and even make it clear that they're after a Global Caliphate. In other words they don't just want Islamic Countries to unite under a common Caliph, they want to bring the rest of us into their Islamic fold as well.

Thanks, but no thanks.

Majiid, it seems, has had time to think. He's been in an Egyptian jail for the past few years and, in that time, got to read some of the more traditional Islamic texts instead of the selective radical sources he's been exposed to since the age of 16. He woke up.

He realised that, for the past 12 years he's been brainwashed and guilty of brainwashing others. And he's come out, pretty damn publicly, to tell the world about it. (if that link dies use my backup of the Newsnight interview - wmv 30mb 17 mins)

This really is amazingly good news. Like, oh I don't know, Congress deciding to hold a real 9-11 inquiry and impeach the President or Duane Gish and Michael Behe telling us that they can suddenly see the point of evolution after all!

Happy Anniversary!

Children's Fight Club

2007-07-31T00:31:00.005+01:00

As moral panics go, this week's isn't yet a patch on last week's (Cannabis increases risk of Psychosis by 41%) but I've dealt with that one here and here.

You've got a week to watch Panorama's latest rant on the BBC site.
If you miss that opportunity, I've uploaded a copy to mediafire which you can download (57Mb wmv file) here.

The rant is - as the patronising title suggests - about the latest "wicked" wheeze being practiced by our younger primates; i.e. the mobile phone footage of violent attacks by teenagers against other teenagers, sometimes staged purely for the purpose of the capturing such footage in order to try to win a ratings battle on Youtube.

As is usual with adolescent primates, the kind of playacting they did as infants has lost its charm and become genuinely aggressive and violent as they vie for status within and between their gangs and cliques. The older primates are troubled and looking for ways to control their offspring.

Back in the days when status came automatically with age or wage, it was enough for an elder primate merely to scold or cuff a junior and the deviant behaviour would be nipped in the bud. But this generation of young primates is too well educated and too intelligent to be bamboozled into believing that any of the elder primates has any moral authority over them in today's world.

After all, they've watched Presidents and Prime Ministers start illegal wars, killing hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of their own people, and get away with it. After that, what credible objections can we make about a bit of brutal happy slapping where hardly anyone dies? Yeah, it's bullying and nasty and humiliating and gruesome and gross and childish and chimplike. But then, quite a lot of real life is like that. And always has been. We just haven't previously acknowledged it or allowed it to be seen.

The question now arises as to what, if anything we should do about this accelerating phenomenon. What the nanny state - on this occasion represented by one of its senior and more respected publicity agents, the BBC - wants is good old fashioned 20th century censorship. As we know, censorship has an excellent track record of success in modifying a wide variety of social behaviour so it makes eminent good sense to apply it in this situation.

The lawyer in the Panorama piece wants to criminalise the practise of recording such violent acts. This man must have an IQ higher than his shoe size. Has it not occurred to this LAWYER that these videos constitute evidence which can be used against the perpetrator?

Yes, I know that SOME of the violence only happens because it is now possible to share the videos. But if you think that this video game represents even a significant minority of routine teenage violence, you are living on a different planet. In fact the real problem with the videos is that generally, they're of abysmal quality.

This works to the advantage of the victim because most of them can't be recognised from the videos and, thus, the subsequent humiliation is a little reduced. Not much, though, because their peers will still know what happened and, as any adolescent primate will confirm, what your peers know and think is vastly more important than anything else.

However, it also works to the advantage of the perp, in that we can't identify the bastards well enough to sustain a conviction. So we desperately need much better resolution.

We also have the problem that we don't know - to the level of satisfaction required for a criminal conviction - whether the footage has been tampered with. To solve that problem, we need to store a fingerprint of the videos created at the time and recorded to an immutable audit trail.

Providing we can trust the time details recorded in the footage or find witnesses to confirm the time of the recorded events, and we can trust the timestamp of the fingerprint, then we can reliably determine the earliest and latest possible times for creation of the video data. If that "window" is narrow enough, it eliminates the possibility of tampering. Now, unless the apparent victim comes forward, without duress, and convinces us that it wasn't really a crime (it was only a gory scene staged for the camera) we will have good grounds to prosecute and a high probability of conviction.

Used like this, the technology is an example of Trusted Surveillance. But how do we separate footage deliberately taken with a view to sustaining prosecution from that taken "for a bit of a laff". Simple, we build the timestamping and web storage into the phones so that the footage doesn't have to be uploaded to Youtube as a separate operation. Uploading starts, to your own secure webspace, from the moment you start recording. And it costs you nothing.

Unless, that is, you ever want to access the data for purposes other than supporting a criminal prosecution (like posting it as entertainment up onto Youtube). Then it costs whatever the market will sustain. Your video fingerprint and record of ownership, however, can be made available to the authorities if the community votes that your footage represents an offence which should be prosecuted. It may well be that a jury would regard your failure to use the evidence as a crime of ommission on your part. That's a risk you will have to take.

Of course, this means that Youtube and others like it, need to fine tune their "flagging" systems. We need to be able to flag a video specifically as a "Potential Criminal Offence - Poster's details should be passed to the authorities for prosecution". Of course, we can't expect or require Youtube, or anyone else, to react to just one person raising such a flag. There must be genuine democratic support for the condemnation.

Once such a flag is raised, it should, in fact, become impossible for the Poster to remove it. After all, that might constitute "interfering with the course of justice". Instead, a notice should go up alongside the video inviting people to watch it and judge for themselves. Nobody should be allowed to vote unless they've watched it. That is a simple matter of cookie management. Once certain thresholds are passed, the site owners should consider themselves instructed, by the community, to act against the Poster/s of the video.

The thresholds cannot be too low. A persuasive cult or corporate could organise a few thousand drones at the drop of a hat to vote almost anything they disapproved of into purgatory. So your voting authority would have to be linked to your site activity. Another task for cookie management. It would mean that those who spend hundreds of hours on Youtube would have more voting power than someone like me, who spends, perhaps, an hour or two a week on those kind of sites. It would mean that regular community users couldn't be outvoted by voters bussed in for the gig.

So, with that "activity based weighting" in place, we'd then need a minimum of - say - 10,000 votes to be cast for any vote to matter; and a minimum 90% majority must approve of criminal prosecution before the instruction is valid.

Don't even think about trying to justify a simple majority. If 49% of the community approve of a video that is more than enough to justify it's continued presence. But if 90% disapprove, that's a reasonably powerful argument for removing it and - if appropriate - passing on relevant details to the forces of internal repression. (If the 10% desperately want to continue sharing such material, they'll have to go off and create their own site)

This arrangement gives the community democratic "teeth" which we can use to control the more outrageous examples of video nasties. It also defends the service provider. They can honestly say that the site ethics are controlled - as they should be in a democracy - by the site community. Censorship might well be justified, on occasions, but such judgements should never be made other than by We The People. We're the only ones that ought to matter.

As for weaning junior primates off this behaviour, I can think of nothing more effective than revealing, publicly, how similar their behaviour is to chimpanzees. With that in mind I propose that someone with appropriate time, energy and editing skills put together a video compilation interspersing choice examples of chimpanzee violence with teenage gang violence. Volunteers and suggested sources are hereby invited.

Once humans with reasonable intelligence begin to realise how chimplike and unintelligent their behaviour really is, then instead of their self image being boosted by peer approval, they'll all begin to realise what a bunch of pratts they really are. And it's never been cool to be a pratt...

[update 11 Aug 2007 - speaking of using Youtube postings as evidence... (irritatingly, I can't find the actual video)]

Open Letter To The Westboro Baptist Church

2007-07-26T00:56:00.001+01:00

First, I loved your open letter to the UK. (if that link doesn't work try this backup [pdf]) Any letter which starts "Dear British Bastards & U.K. Insurgents" gets my vote. Brilliant.

I watched both the Louis Theroux program (which you mentioned in your missive) and "Keith Allen will burn in hell". Frankly, you came out of both much more impressively than I anticipated. You won hands down on the Keith Allen encounter. He broke before you did and you maintained your dignity and poise extremely impressively when he struck his deliberate and unjustifiable blow below the belt. And you came out even, in my opinion, in your bout with Louie. You didn't master the subtlety of his approach, but you did much better than most of his other victims. I still think you're a bunch of harmless religious obsessives but I have to respect your determination and sheer commitment as well as your articulate defence of your position.

You, of course, will see me as a tool or disciple of Satan because I'm responsible for stuff like this:

Nevertheless, I'd like to put a hypothetical question to you. You might wish to answer individually or collectively.

You've very kindly warned us that

"Very shortly Christ is going to come through the clouds, in power and glory, with his holy angels, taking vengeance on them who knew not God and obeyed not the gospel"

It's the "very shortly" that grabbed my attention.

Clearly if it doesn't happen by this time tomorrow, it wouldn't prove you wrong. Even this time next year doesn't discredit your prediction. But suppose your descendants are still making this prediction, to our descendants, in, say, a hundred years time, does that still fit with "very shortly"? I suppose, in historical terms, one could make the case that a century isn't that long. But suppose he still hasn't arrived in another thousand years, or a million? We'd have to start talking about stretches of time which, though still geologically brief, are way beyond what your own paradigm believes to have been possible so far and thus cannot be what you meant by "very shortly".

So I'd like you to define or put a limit on what constitutes "very shortly". I'd suggest, for example, that a reasonable limit would be the next fifty years or so. I'm not going to quibble if you say twice as long, but more than that and it gets a bit too woolly. And one thing no one can accuse you of is being woolly!

Whatever that limit is, what I then want to know is what your contingency plans are for a no-show.

I've always been fascinated by doom-mongers. The rabid batch we had in the run up to the Millennium were absolutely fascinating. What really irked me, however, was that while the media spent months showing us all the weird beliefs, predictions and preparations these people made to meet the end of the world in their own special ways, the bastards didn't follow any of the stories up after the non-event! I want to know what happened to that guy who booked himself into a bed and breakfast in Brighton on New Years Eve 1999 expecting not to wake up in 2000. Did he? What did he have to say about it? I want to know how all those end of the world mountain-top vigils reconciled themselves to their continued existence.

So, with you guys, I want to know how you're going to deal with it IF you turn out to be wrong. I can answer that question for myself. If I turned out to be wrong and there was a God and he or it was even remotely like you imagine him to be, I know exactly what I would think, do and say (if he gave me the chance). I have actually considered the possibility of my paradigm being wrong. I consider it a very low probability, so it doesn't keep me awake at nights, but I have at least considered it.

Yet unlike many prominent religious leaders who have admitted various levels of doubt, I don't get the impression that any of you have ever allowed yourselves to peer into the abyss of uncertainty. I recommend it. It's the most liberating and enlightening thing you can do for your mind.

Regards

Harry Stottle

A Serial Multiverse?

2007-07-18T00:00:00.000+01:00

That's what appears to be on offer from Physicists Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok and is beautifully described for the layman right here.

I'm particularly intrigued by this passage:

"One can further show that, as the cycles proceed, the relaxation slows more and more as the cosmological constant gets smaller, so exponentially more time is spent in cycles with a small cosmological constant. In this picture, it is natural to expect the tiny value for the constant we observe today."

Surely this implies that - within the context of their conjecture - we could work out how many cycles we must have gone through already, in order for the cosmological constant to have reached its present minute value. And doesn't that imply a true "beginning" - albeit gazillions of times further back than we thought? A beginning at which the cosmo constant was the current predicted value 10^100 times what it is today. Or not?

It would be interesting to know just how many hundreds of trillions of years or cycles that implies.

It's also important to note that the cyclic nature proposed by this conjecture does not in any sense imply "repetition". If we don't survive the collapse of this Universe, we don't return in the next. The universe which arises in any given cycle will, inevitably, have a slightly different set of physical laws to its predecessor and thus be dramatically different in its history and appearance.

As a consequence, this model also provides an alternative to the "multiverse" as a solution to the anthropic problem. In fact, this conjecture is about a different sort of multiverse. It's a serial multiverse, as opposed to the more widely known parallel multiverse.

I think this idea might have legs...

Collegebine

2007-04-17T20:48:00.000+01:00

If I told you there was a way to stop - or at least reduce the damage caused by - events like those we've just witnessed at Virginia Tech, would you book me a place at the funny farm?

To the 95% who've just said "Yes" to that, thankyou for coming, don't let me detain you any further. Have a safe trip home.

Now we're alone, I've got a couple of things to talk about. First we'll outline how Trusted Surveillance would NOT have prevented the first killings, but would probably have prevented the second and larger batch. Second, the event has finally crystallized my thoughts on gun ownership.

Essentially, though the TS system would not have known who was involved, it would - first - have detected that two people had been killed. No big deal, you might say, plenty of people must have heard the shots and the killings were certainly phoned in to the campus police at 7.15. The added trick which TS brings to the party is logging who was present when lifesigns terminated and actively - but still anonymously - logging the survivors' movements thereafter.

As an optional extra - which I would expect would be the default in places like a college campus - the lifesign signal could also trigger cctv and alert manual monitors to take notice. As a result, the system would not have made the mistake apparently made by the police - that the perpetrator had left the campus. The system would have known that one of the parties present at the first killings was not only still on campus but - either because he's now being tracked on cctv or because he is still conveniently carrying his own mobile phone - that he was also en route to the scene of the second slaughter. At the very least the police would have been on his tail well within the two hours.

The other trick could have been done yesterday - the system would text a warning to every one of the mobile phones belonging to every student or staff member on - or on their way to - the campus. Presumably they're now going to close that stable door and implement such an alarm system in time for the next time. (I haven't yet found any mention of that obvious use of the mobile network to broadcast alarms - let me know if you find it first)

Of course, even if they had already set up a text based alarm system, they wouldn't have actually used it yesterday because they had already made the mistake of believing that the killer had left the campus. So by avoiding that mistake, TS would have ensured that the alarm was sent out and that too would probably have reduced casualties.

I'll expand on all this some other time but you get the gist. By both raising a warning and tracking parties present at the first killing, Trusted Surveillance would have given the campus police far better real time intelligence and, hence, a far better chance of interdicting the second wave of killings.

Moving on...

The issue of Gun ownership/Gun control is one of the most awkward issues for a non American anarchist to address. I’m a hypocrite. I would be delighted to own a gun myself. I went to a military school and had 6 years firearms training. I’m a qualified marksman. I love guns. My natural inclination is to support the liberty to own guns yet I feel considerably safer by virtue of living in a society where we don’t have that liberty and, as a result, suffer significantly less harm than America.

No doubt someone will do a documentary, in the fullness of time, with a tacky title like I've created for this blog and which will, once again put American Gun Laws under the microscope like Michael Moore did, pretty effectively, with “Bowling for Columbine”. I wonder if they will dare to pursue that line of inquiry as far as it ought to lead.

For me, the most important result to emerge from Moore’s film was the stark contrast between the gun owning countries of Canada, Switzerland and the United States. What that comparison made clear is that the frequently repeated Statement of the Bleedin Obvious made by the US pro-gun lobby is absolutely correct: “Guns don’t kill people; People kill people”.

What we ought to be asking is why American people with guns kill so many more people than Canadian or Swiss people with guns.

The experience in those other gun owning countries makes it obvious that mere gun ownership is not the problem. The problem with American gun ownership is that it is amplifying a much more serious underlying problem – which is that, in America, there is clearly a level of aggression and lack of inhibition against violence which is dramatically different to the norm in all other western countries. Indeed, around the world, only South Africa and modern Russia have levels of social violence on a par with the United States.

The high prevalence of Gun related deaths are obviously a symptom of that underlying disease. Guns themselves are not the cause of that disease, even though they obviously exacerbate it. In the same way, alcohol isn't the cause of alcoholism (the cause is, primarily, overconsumption) though the free and legal availability of alcohol obviously exacerbates the problem. But as we learned the hard way: you can’t solve alcoholism by banning alcohol – the Americans taught us that lesson.

Which - as an aside - raises the obvious question: Why didn’t they apply the lesson they had already so painfully learned when it came to prohibiting other recreational drugs which are – mostly – much less harmful than alcohol? If you're in the mood to follow that line of inquiry, it's time you read my War On Drugs chapter.

Actually that chapter does include a discussion which is directly relevant to the argument over tighter controls which the anti-gun lobby are now frothing at the mouth to make.

People outside the United States "just don't get it" when - once again - it becomes obvious that despite this latest tragedy, apart from the ongoing campaign from the pressure groups, there will, once again, be no groundswell of support for further tightening of the gun laws.

Yet it is no more nor less rational than their - or our - continued support for motor transport. Traffic still kills about twice as many Americans as those who die by the gun. If we're all so keen to ban the gun, why on earth are we not seriously considering banning the car?

The answer is obvious. As I say in that chapter - (which is subtitled "Why don't we ban the car?") :

For the simple and same reason that we allow those legally damaging activities in the first place. Because we value freedom so highly that we are prepared to die for it, or to allow others to die for it on our behalf.

and the freedom and other benefits we obtain from car ownership clearly outweigh - in the average mind - the annual harm which results from our exercise of that freedom.

All we now have to understand is that a large number of Americans feel that they obtain an equally important set of benefits from gun ownership. You may disagree with them but their opinions on the matter are certainly no more obviously irrational than continued global support for the carnage-inducing motor transport industry.

As it happens, I don't disagree with them. The original case for gun ownership - the case spelt out in the arguments for the second amendment - has, in my view, become increasingly valid in recent years. I speak of the reasons for having a "militia":

The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people. The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them. (source)

Who can doubt that we now in a period of ambitious and unprincipled rulers, who have already subverted the government, and routinely trample upon the rights of the people through the exercise of arbitrary power.

The gun lobby bases most of its case on arguments like the suggestion that Virginia Tech wouldn't have happened if everybody had been armed. This is another SBO. It ignores the fact that - given the aforementioned underlying disease of excess naked aggression - though you'd probably have less multiple homicides, you'd almost certainly have even more singles. I don't offer that in opposition to their argument, just as a dose of reality.

The plain fact is that the most obvious reason today that Americans need their guns in private hands is not to defend themselves against the occasional random psychotics. They are, of course, as tragic and even (fortunately) more newsworthy (because they happen less often) than a multiple pileup on the freeway. They are an inevitable price the Americans will have to continue to pay for letting 300 million very angry people have the freedom to own guns.

The real reason they need those guns is because, sooner - I suspect - rather than later, they're going to have to start defending themselves against their Police State.

The Democratic Cannibals

2007-03-30T18:24:00.001+01:00

In a hospital emergency room, five critically ill patients desperately need organ transplants. A healthy man walks in. Should the doctors remove his organs to save the sick five? Most people will respond in milliseconds with a resounding "No way". Now imagine an out-of-control train about to run down five workers standing on the track. There's a fork ahead, and throwing a switch could divert the train to another line on which there is only one worker. It's the same question - should we sacrifice the one to spare the other five? - yet most of us would say "yes" just as quickly. How do we make these lightning moral judgements?

If you can spot the fundamental flaw in that paragraph, chances are you're already a democratic anarchist like myself. Otherwise you're probably asking how can you be a democrat and an anarchist.

Marc Hauser whose interview with New Scientist that piece introduced (cached), went on from that flawed beginning to expand on his entirely spurious and unnecessary conviction that we all have some kind of moral sense biologically built into us like the homing instinct of a pigeon:

What I call the moral faculty has that same aspect: we unconsciously deliver a response to right and wrong - and I use "unconsciously" in the same sense the linguist Noam Chomsky does in his work about language. In other words, there's something about the biology of our brains that has orchestrated a set of tools to build a moral system.

Frankly it was so fatuous and wrongheaded that my initial response was to ignore it. Nobody else would take it seriously. Why should I? It was a letter (see below) about the interview, a couple of weeks later, which changed my mind and made me realise that most people cannot see the flaw and that exposing it might help reconcile the division between the libertarians of right and left. As the libertarians tend to represent the intelligent component of the political spectrum, this exposure might have far reaching consequences.

[Edit August 2007: Rereading this months later I realise it comes across as though I'm deeply hostile to the concept of an inbuilt moral sense. This is not what I meant to imply. I don't buy into his idea, but I'm not hostile to the possibility of a genetic algorithm. I'm agnostic. My hostility is aimed only at the argument that you could reach such a conclusion (that morality is biologically built in) based on Hauser's examples of ethical dilemmas. They fail to support such a model because, as I hope I've described below, it is easy to analyze the dilemmas without recourse to Hauser's biological explanation.]

Confusion caused by an unspecified condition

The flaw in his argument is simple and obvious once it has been pointed out. It is contained in:

It's the same question - should we sacrifice the one to spare the other five?

It is NOT the "same question" at all.

In the "railway game" there is an unspecified but absolutely vital condition. Neither of the potential targets (solo worker or group of 5) are aware of the impending disaster. ONLY the "signalman" has a) the facts and b) the means to act. ONLY the signalman is in a position to make a decision and in those circumstances it is not even a difficult decision. Clearly to do nothing and allow maximum casualties would actually render him ethically liable for the additional deaths he could have prevented.

You wanna make that a difficult decision? Replace the anonymous solo worker with the signalman's eldest child. Now it's still easy for us observers to make the objective judgement that the signalman's daughter must die. But how many of you - in the signalman's shoes - would make that choice? And how many would condemn him if he didn't? But that's by the by. Not part of Hauser's game.

In the "hospital game", there is no implicit equivalent restriction of information. ALL parties who could be affected by the decision are aware of the relevant data.

To make the two games and questions truly equivalent, you'd have to create a highly artificial condition in the railway game. Like having all parties chained to the track but, conveniently, all having accessible mobile phones so they can be informed of the problem and discuss potential solutions.

It is the absence - in the hospital game - of that unspecified condition from the railway game, which makes the questions dramatically different. The real question in the railway game is "what choice should the SIGNALMAN make?"

The real question in the hospital game is "what choice should SOCIETY make?" (where the sick people, the healthy potential donor and all the relevant medical staff constitute a reasonable analog for "society")

Hauser's mistake is to assume that the ethical issues are limited to the resolution of the problem itself. Should we sacrifice the one to spare the other five? But as soon as more than one person is party to the decision making process, a whole new set of ethical issues come into play. Most obviously, the one who might be sacrificed in the railway game has no idea of his impending doom; cannot (within the implied rules of the game) be made aware and, therefore, cannot be part of the decision making process.

In stark contrast, the one who might be sacrificed in the hospital game is fully aware of the situation and is thus entitled not only to participate in the decision but, as most people recognise, also to veto any decision which requires his demise.

Like I said, once it's pointed out, it's obvious. And it doesn't require a mythical genetic algorithm to explain our recognition of its obviousness.

Who takes part in the decision making process?

In general terms it ought also to be obvious that:

in the event of a problem or opportunity which requires a social (shared) choice to be made; anyone who is
a) aware of the existence and nature of the problem or opportunity - or can be made so if necessary
b) believes they have a reasonable probability of being affected by the decision or its outcome and
c) gives a shit
should be entitled to share in the decision making process.

It should also be (but rarely is) bleedin obvious that our share in the decision making process is NOT necessarily EQUAL. That share is determined by where on the spectrum your interests in the decision/outcome lie between involvement and commitment.

The difference? As a friend of mine occasionally reminds me, "When you're having ham and eggs for breakfast, the chicken is involved, the pig is committed"

If you're involved, you get a vote. If you're committed, you need both a vote and a veto.

Why we need the veto as well as the vote

In the hospital game - the medical staff are involved; the patients and potential suicide donor are committed. Even if they all (presumably except the donor) vote in favour of his sacrifice, his veto trumps them all. Similarly, even if the medics were to recommend a somewhat more rational option - that one of the already terminal patients be sacrificed for the benefit of the others - that patient's veto would block any amount of votes in favour. A vote never beats a veto, so even the 5 terminal patients' votes cannot outweigh the donor's veto. Why not? (other than the trivial observation that this is what "veto" means)

Let's not try to avoid or evade the question. Of course we know that - in real life - no 5 terminal patients in such a situation would be selfish enough (despite the jaundiced views of some economists) to demand the sacrifice of the donor. But this is a game we're playing. And the rules of this game include the stipulation that they ARE that selfish.

Why are there some situations in which a veto MUST trump any number of votes?

According to the author of the letter I mentioned above (cached), the reason the decision would have to be in favour of the donor's veto is that there is an implicit contract between all members of the community (regardless of their health status) and all hospitals such that it is understood that we only cross the threshold of the hospital premises on the strict condition that we will NOT be made involuntary donors under any circumstances whatsoever. Breach of that contract, even on a single occasion, would simply ensure that no one would voluntarily visit a hospital ever again. This is the "contractarian" view of ethics which, he argues, is superior to the utilitarian approach

Since contractarian theories predict the correct result, but utilitarian theories do not, this is really an argument against utilitarian theories, not a puzzle about right and wrong.

His "contractarianism" does, on this occasion, indeed predict the correct result, but it still doesn't get close to the heart of the issue. Merely predicting people's expectations does not constitute an ethical argument. But he is also right to point out that mere "majoritarianism" (greatest good for the greatest number) doesn't cut the mustard either. The relevant question is why shouldn't the random healthy visitor expect to be plundered for his spare parts? Why are they entitled to veto their own dismemberment?

Reciprocity - the borderline between Democracy and Anarchism

The ethical answer is one of the simplest, longest established and most widely recognised of all ethical principles. Reciprocity. Do as you would be done by. The Golden Rule.

Would you accept being made an involuntary donor if you were the healthy one in the hospital game? No? Then - even if you swap places and become one of the terminal patients - you can't justify doing it to anyone else. Period.

What we are looking at here are the "buffers" at the end of the decision making process. This the point at which social decisions cannot be allowed to override personal autonomy.

The edge is well defined. The terminal patients, or their representatives, can go so far as to petition the donor, but no further. The donor's decision is final. The donor's autonomy is absolute.

This is the borderline between social decision making - collectivism, democracy - and autonomy or anarchism; the zone in which only the personal writ runs. There is no conflict between democracy and anarchism, provided no-one crosses that border in either direction.

In a real world situation, you might well find that the donor's actual decision was a compromise. S/he may be able and willing to make some contribution short of suicide which helps at least one of the patients. Perhaps s/he can spare some blood; maybe some bone marrow; perhaps even as much as a kidney, all without fatal consequences.

But nobody can "insist" that the donor offers even so much as a toenail clipping, because we would not accept such an imposition on ourselves. It really is that simple. It doesn't require sophisticated rationalisation.

There is a common cliche of which I have been unable to trace the source. It's one of those which people treat as a pearl of wisdom but is, in fact, ethical and tactical bollocks.

"Your right to throw a punch (or "swing a fist") ends " - the cliche begins - after which you can find a variety of formulations which basically boil down to a choice of two. Take your pick:

"where my nose begins" or
"one inch from my nose"

Both are, of course, wrong and tell us that the source led a sheltered life and was never exposed to any level of combat training (or forgot all about it).

I am entitled to take evasive measures from the moment it becomes clear that you have begun to throw the punch. Some would argue that the moment your intent to strike becomes clear is the point from which I can reasonably begin my self-defence - but given that your intent might be to hit me at the end of next month that is clearly too vague. In any event, I certainly do not have to wait until the blow is about to land. Such a ludicrous proposition would imply, for example, that Britain would not have been entitled to go to War against Hitler until the first bombers crossed the territorial boundary of the United Kingdom.

In fact, as that case adequately demonstrates, I may even feel free to react to you throwing a punch at a friend of mine which never threatens me directly at all. Do I have the "right" to step in to help my friends? I don't give a damn, I'm going to do it anyway. You'd better factor that into your calculations before you attack my friends.

The Rules of the Democratic Game

Now, when it comes to making decisions which concern us all, I'm only prepared to play that game if it is accepted by ALL the other players that this boundary exists; beyond which the group cannot tread into my personal domain. The game cannot include a rule which demands my compliance with a decision which directly threatens my interests or wellbeing. No rule, if you like, can oblige me to accept the punch on the nose and forbid me to evade it, to defend myself or to retaliate. If you don't agree to those rules, I'm not going to take part in the game.

This is the essential consensus which must be present BEFORE we can begin any kind of democratic debate. Once we understand that, it becomes reasonably obvious how and why Democracy doesn't actually exist in the modern world. When were you ever given the opportunity to provide informed consent for or even to consider the "rules of the game" before being asked to consider the substantive issue? Come to that, when were you last given the opportunity - regardless of the rules - to decide ANY substantive issue?

Anyway, once we've reached consensus on the rules, we can hold the debate. How would this work in practice?

There are ten of us left in the lifeboat, and we've been adrift for 37 days. To make this game more interesting, we're OK for water but we're out of food and unable to catch any, the problem is obvious: If we don't eat something, we're all going to starve to death.

A proposal is made: If we were to begin eating each other, there is a chance that one or more of us will still be alive when and if salvation is finally at hand. It is proposed, therefore, that we decide, democratically, two issues:

1 In the circumstances, Cannibalism is a necessary and acceptable step to improve the chances that one or more of us will survive this ordeal.

2 If there is a consensus in favour of that proposition, the only fair way to select who is going to be sacrificed is by drawing random lots.

That first question is vital. It establishes the necessary consensus (or not) without which the drawing of lots cannot proceed. If even one person rejects the first proposition - that cannibalism is necessary and acceptable - then we cannot proceed to the second step. At least - we cannot proceed democratically.

But what if nine voted in favour of cannibalism and only one objected. Couldn't the nine over-rule or overpower the tenth? Probably, but the simple fact of their majority wouldn't justify their actions. Their murder of the dissenter wouldn't in any sense be ethical. And, if he was capable of defending himself against such odds, then anything he did in such self-defence WOULD be entirely justified.

Having said that, it does not mean that the dissenter's veto prevents all further action. For example, one thing the nine could still do, while remaining consistent with the golden rule, would be to conduct a further debate amongst themselves as to whether - given that the dissenter has refused to accept the basic premise (the current necessity of cannibalism) - they can or should proceed to select a sacrifice from among the nine who have accepted that premise.

If there is a new consensus in favour of that revised proposition, then not only can they now proceed to the method of selection and make the sacrifice, but they would also be entitled - again, purely on the basis of reciprocity - to withhold the "benefits" from the dissenter (not that s/he's likely to be inclined to accept a slice of the action in this case anyway)

In all the "survival at sea" or similar stories I've come across, I've never read of that initial question being put. They always seem to take that question for granted (that such ends do justify even those means). Or perhaps they have always reached an informal consensus where everybody clearly accepts the necessity and acceptability of cannibalism. It is, of course, difficult to predict your own reaction in such circumstances unless you've been in a similar situation.

Personally, if I ever find myself in that situation, I hope that I would be a dissenter. I would not wish to spend the rest of my life aware that I was only still here because I helped kill and eat a fellow traveller. And I certainly wouldn't permit the other nine to elect or select me. I might, of course, be unable to avoid compliance because I am outnumbered. But I would at least go down fighting.

On a "good" day, I might, perhaps, be inclined, to volunteer for the pot myself (however, given my innate physical cowardice, it would probably be because I misunderstood what sort of pot they were talking about) In fact, I'd have a hard time accepting even a volunteer. At least not one who publicly made such an offer. I could not condone their suicide any more than their murder, for my benefit.

If, on the other hand, we woke up on the 38th morning and found one true altruist had committed suicide overnight and left a note begging us to eat him or her, I would be utterly appalled but almost conscience driven to try to digest a piece of the corpse if only to try to provide some meaning for their noble self sacrifice.

Others may draw their personal line at different points. That's the point of personal autonomy. I can't judge what you will tolerate or where your boundary lies. You have to make that decision for yourself. Similarly I won't let you tell me where my boundary must be.

There is nothing ethically wrong with ANY method of arriving at a decision providing ALL parties give their free and informed consent to the decision making process and ALL indicate similar free and informed consent to be bound by the outcome.

In case I didn't make it clear enough, the key word in that paragraph is ALL. The dissenter cannot be bound by rules s/he did not accept in the first place. The fact that a majority has accepted a) the rules and b) the decision - doesn't provide them with any ethical justification for imposing their decision on the dissenter who didn't agree the rules.

Coercion and Compliance

The only advantage that arises from having a majority in this scenario is a military one. The majority outnumbers the dissenter. They can choose to force the dissenter to comply. But in that case, there is no ethical barrier to the dissenter taking whatever steps s/he can to defend themselves against majority attack. Of course, in practice, the balance of forces might be enough to persuade the dissenter to comply, but that constitutes only a pragmatic reason for compliance, not an ethical one.

Which is not to deny that there will be situations where the majority will, nevertheless, need to exercise that military advantage and force compliance. For example, let's imagine that the dissenter's primary reason for dissent is that he holds private property in the form of a significant hoard of food he has managed to stash away and is refusing to share. In the circumstances, of course, his refusal to share is grossly unethical. More importantly he is breaking the golden rule, or at least exercising it in a way the others are unlikely to accept.

It is unlikely that even the most ardent defenders of "private property" (among the nine who voted for cannibalism) would prefer to starve or to kill and eat a fellow cannibal rather than deprive the dissenter of any part of his stash without his consent. Of course, they would prefer he shared it willingly and they might even agree that, after rescue, they would compensate him for his losses at a fair market rate.

But if he stubbornly refuses to share life giving resources despite all attempts at persuasion and negotiation, then the only rational conclusion the other nine can come to is that the dissenter is now an obstacle to their continued survival. At which point the military option becomes the obvious choice and the dissenter, and his stash, will all be sacrificed to the common good. The wise dissenter will concede well before matters reach that ugly stage, albeit for pragmatic rather than ethical reasons.

Conclusions

So what conclusions can we draw from all this?

That the veto is at least as important as the vote and is required to prevent "Tyranny of the Majority".

That "greatest good for the greatest number" - simple "majoritarianism" might be a good general guide but cannot be universally applicable. It only works where the issue being decided doesn't cross anyone's personal boundary. It isn't ethically valid in any situation where a potential dissenter feels strongly enough to exercise a veto. It implies that a majority can justify harming a minority if such deliberate harm is perpetrated for their own (majority) benefit.

We all implicitly reject such a social decision making structure (if we're awake) because we all recognise that on some issues we may each, one day, be part of the minority rather than the majority and we want to ensure that if we're ever in that position, we too will be treated fairly and reasonably, so we agree to do as we would be done by.

This is how simple reciprocity scales up to the level of democratic society. It establishes the borderline of majority rule. Democracy, as a decision making process, has to begin from the position of universal consensus that it is the way to decide the particular issue under discussion.

Where it achieves that prior consensus, it is probably the best way to make the decision because it will ensure minimum dissent regarding the outcome. Where, however, we cannot achieve the prior consensus that a given issue is appropriate for decision by the democratic process, the imposition of that process and its outcome is no better, no more ethical, than any other form of tyranny.

What also becomes obvious is that when an issue arises, resolution is never a matter of a single question. With the democratic cannibals, there were at least two questions; was the cannibalism necessary and how should we select the victims. We also saw that further questions could arise if one or more of the stranded group exercised veto over the cannibalism.

In more generic terms the process can be outlined in the following questions:

1 Do we agree there's a problem or opportunity?

2 Do we agree on a potential solution (or exploit)?

3 Does the potential solution/exploit cross anyone's personal boundary and, if so, does that person wish to exercise veto?

4 If veto is exercised, can a limited version of the solution/exploit be implemented which achieves the ambitions of those who support it but doesn't breach the boundaries of the veto wielders?

5 If the answer to (4) is "No", and there is a substantial majority in favour of the solution, is there consensus among that majority that the issue is so serious that they need to persuade or even coerce the veto wielders into compliance - and if so how?

6 In the light of a "Yes" answer to (5), does the veto wielder still wish to maintain their veto. Will they compromise or resist? Is the matter negotiable or do we have to go to war?

Those questions summarise almost any potential democratic debate. The first 3 should always be asked. The last 3 only become necessary once vetos are exercised. Whenever we need to address question 5, then what we need to try to find is a "pareto efficient" solution - which is one in which no one loses and at least one party gains. That's a whole new topic which can wait for another day.

Meanwhile, what the anti-democratic Libertarian Right have to acknowledge is that it is equally bleedin obvious that some decisions MUST be collective and require total compliance. (Obvious example: Which side of the public highway should we drive on?) What the Libertarian Left have to acknowledge is existence of the boundary condition which must be protected by the veto, without which Democracy could indeed become tyranny.

So now we've sorted that out, can we please get together and set about removing the real tyrants?

(made front page of K5 same day. See that page for some of the discussion which has already taken place)

Now the BBC's Part of The Conspiracy!!!

2007-03-06T00:48:00.000Z

or, at least, they've already managed to persuade a few tens of thousands of web junkies that they are; by virtue of their utterly incompetent response to this story and their ongoing reaction or lack of reaction looks like bringing more to the fold by the hour. It's such fun to watch!

As you will see, their BBC World "Head of News" Richard Porter has just dowsed himself with the fuel of conspiracy and jumped, apparently of his own free will, into the flames of public ridicule.

His Excuse Number 4 is beyond belief from every conceivable angle.

4. We no longer have the original tapes of our 9/11 coverage (for reasons of cock-up, not conspiracy). So if someone has got a recording of our output, I'd love to get hold of it. We do have the tapes for our sister channel News 24, but they don't help clear up the issue one way or another.

I couldn't believe what I was reading. I checked that I was on the right page. I checked that it wasn't a spoof, that I hadn't slipped into someone's sarcastic comments. But no, this went out in the name of Richard Porter the BBC World's Head of News.

As this professional archivist from CNN told prisonplanet,

I'm an archivist with the CNN News Library in Atlanta, and I can tell you with absolute certainty, the mere idea that news agencies such as ours would "misplace" any airchecks from 9/11 is preposterous. CNN has these tapes locked away from all the others. People like myself, who normally would have access to any tapes in our library, must ask special permission in order to view airchecks from that day. Multiple tapes would have been recording their broadcast that day, and there are also private agencies that record all broadcasts from all channels - constantly - in the event that a news agency missed something or needs something. They don't just have one copy... they have several. It's standard procedure, and as soon as the second plane hit, they would start recording several copies on other tapes machines all day long.

That's how a professional news gathering organisation typically behaves. Is Porter seriously expecting even his own grandmother to believe him when he tells us that the BBC is less competent? Even if it were true, what on earth would make a "Head of News" admit such gross incompetence so publicly? And why couldn't he/they see the obvious stupidity of publishing such a claim? It is literally and utterly incredible.

Excuse 5 isn't quite as dumb but it gets close:

5. If we reported the building had collapsed before it had done so, it would have been an error - no more than that.

They're getting a right pasting for it on their own website messageboard

I particularly like:

If i went to the police and reported a crime before it happened i dont think they would take "oops it was a mistake" as an excuse. Not from me anyway. Maybe from you.

and

To report that a building had collapsed before it had done so would be an odd sort of error, wouldn't it ? A bit like reporting that the Lord Mayor's trousers had fallen down before they did so.

there are some a little more forgiving but still with a nasty sting:

I doubt there are any serious 9/11 investigators that think the BBC is actually part of the 9/11 conspiracy. The only thing you're guilty of is reporting the rubbish that's fed to you by the authorities and not doing any real investigative journalism.

and, as a fitting tribute to last week's "9/11 Conspiracy files" we got:

(given that no steel frame buildings prior to that day had ever collapsed due to fire alone)...its absolutelely inconceivable that anyone could have predicted that WTC7 was going to collapse that day...unless they already knew it was going to collapse. And nobody could have known it was going to collapse unless the building was rigged to collapse. And nobody can argue against the fact that the collapse of WTC7 looks EXACTLY like a controlled demolition. So this footage is strong evidence that someone knew that WTC7 was about to collapse by a controlled demolition. Your pathetic and highly misleading 9/11 conspiracy documentary said "Case Closed". I don't think so, and this footage proves it.

but the real meat of the story is captured by

BBC being "part of the conspiracy" is clearly a red herring and avoids the real question that this gaffe brings up: WHERE DID THE BBC GET THE INFORMATION THAT 1) BUILDING 7 HAD COLLAPSED, 2) THAT THE PROBABLE CAUSE WAS FIRES AND 3) THAT THERE WERE NO CAUSALTIES. This is highly specific information which renders your explanation dubious to say the least.

And, I don't believe, despite all the hysteria, that the BBC IS part of this particular conspiracy. (I can't speak for any others, I haven't studied them in so much detail).

The only thing of real significance about this story is that we now have conclusive evidence that the BBC told the world that WTC7 had collapsed some 26 minutes before it actually did.

What we have to decide is what does that mean? The very fact that that it hadn't happened, for me, confirms that the BBC was NOT part of any conspiracy because, had they been, their information would have been better. They would not have made the "error". The error and the unequivocal delivery of the premature message also reveals that they had considerable trust in the source of the information. This wasn't some punter calling in on their cell phone.

So the interesting question is just that: who or what was the source? I can even imagine an innocent explanation for that. What they got may have been a chinese whisper regarding the much reported (since) "imminent collapse" being discussed with Larry Silverstein and either they or their source overinterpreted it. No biggie, it's what conspiracy theorists do all the time. Why should we expect the BBC to be any more balanced?

What will be interesting to see is whether the BBC - having put itself so stupidly into the middle of its own Conspiracy vortex - will learn any lessons about Conspiracy Theories in general. As I've previously indicated, I am now firmly against the Controlled Demolition hypothesis in respect of the Twin Towers, but I still have to acknowledge that WTC7 is completely underexplained.

BBC's "Conspiracy Files" trivial and partial treatment of the issue merely added further fuel to the flames and must have helped to start people talking seriously about the BBC's possible role as a conspirator or disinfo channel. (Which is a great shame, because I actually share most of the other conclusions they reached)

But what was missing from the BBC's analysis is that even if you can dismiss most of the Conspiracy charges as poorly argued overhyped junk, it's like UFO research. There is a small but significant kernel that will not melt away. In the case of 9/11, WTC7 is the biggest remaining lump of obstinate Kernel. We simply cannot explain how assymetric damage could possibly produce an almost perfectly symetric collapse. Never mind molten metal. Never mind "pulling the building". Never mind 26 minutes advance knowledge. How can a building heavily damaged on one side only, collapse without favouring that weakened side. How on earth did it implode into its own footprint more neatly than the vast majority of professional demolitions of comparable size.

That question MUST be credibly answered if the Political Establishment wishes to retain even the minimal credibility it now has.

There are loads of other fascinating questions, but none are as pertinent as that one. The multiple orgasm that Alex Jones is clearly enjoying revealing all this "new footage" is typical of the overinterpretation by the Conspiracy lobby. Had Porter not attempted to patronise his audience, the premature message would merely have been interesting. But Porter's glib nonsense has actually persuaded a large number of former sceptics who were frightened off by the messianic tones of Jones into believing that the evangelist might actually have a point.

This is British Democracy

2007-02-18T14:51:00.000Z

Governments have suffered embarrassing defeats in the past but rarely as comprehensive as the quashing order won by Greenpeace. (here is a copy of Real Video BBC coverage of same) The scale of their victory stunned even them.

I'm not going to address the issue (Nuclear Power Generation) at the centre of the court ruling. Obviously it's important. But everybody else will be talking about that. I want to focus on the implications for the charade that passes for British Democracy. And, if you're not British, ask yourself the question, is my country's "democracy" any better?

The relevant background is short and sweet. In 2003 the present Government told the world that Nuclear Power was an "unattractive option" but didn't rule it out. They did, however, say that if things changed, their policy wouldn't change without full consultation with the British people. Last April they told us that things had indeed changed and, because they'd promised it, they duly launched a so called consultation exercise to debate the idea of building new nuclear power stations. They allowed just 12 weeks and boasted that 5000 people had taken the opportunity to participate.

Greenpeace took them to court because the Government had not provided the relevant information prior to or during the process which would have enabled people to debate the issue properly. Specifically they had not revealed the economics of their proposed Nuclear build nor their plans to deal with Nuclear waste. This, Greenpeace argued, rendered the entire consultation process meaningless. The judge agreed.

These are direct quotations from his judgement:

"something has gone clearly and radically wrong"

information given on waste had been "not merely inadequate but also misleading"

"There could be no proper consultation, let alone the fullest consultation, if the substance of these two issues was not consulted on before a decision was made,"

the information given to consultees had been "wholly insufficient for them to make an intelligent response"

He concluded:

"There was therefore procedural unfairness and a breach of Greenpeace's legitimate expectation that there would be the fullest consultation before a decision was taken."

The Government had the choice to appeal the decision, but they also had the sense not to. Rather than tough it out and make themselves look even more foolish than they already do, they wisely chose damage limitation and made it instantly clear that they were accepting this slap on the wrist and would hold a brand new "consultation exercise". After all, apart from a few months delay, it wouldn't actually affect anything - least of all the decision.

As Prime Minister Blair put it later that day: (see the video link above)

"This won't affect the Policy at all. I mean it will affect the process of consultation but it won't affect the Policy."

Which couldn't have been clearer and could have been designed to confirm exactly what Richard Littlejohn said on BBC's Question Time even later the same day. In answer to the question "Why did it need a legal challenge?" (to get the government to acknowledge it had failed properly to consult) he said:(mp3)

I think it needs a legal challenge because we think we live in a representative democracy but what we actually live in is what Lord Hailsham called an elective dictatorship. When the Government says we are going to consult you, it says we're going to consult you until you agree with us and if you don't agree with us, we're going to do it anyway. We've seen that with the road pricing petition this week. A million people signed up and said we don't want it, yet Douglas Alexander, the Secretary of State for Transport says "well we're going to ignore them anyway"

(actually it was a little over 1.4 million at the time and when I clicked on the road pricing link just now, it was up to 1.57 million - you've got till the 20th of Feb to add your own "signature")

Littlejohn's comments on democracy are, as you may have spotted elsewhere, fully in line with my own rantings.

Have you any idea what it feels like to admit to agreeing with someone like Richard Littlejohn? For American readers I can only suggest that it's like having to admit agreeing with something that Bill O'Reilly has to say (although Littlejohn is somewhat brighter). Now that's OK if it's on a trivial issue like the weather, but on something as important as "Democracy" it comes a bit of a shock I can tell you.

Be that as it may, what he said accurately describes the sorry state of our so called democracy. Unfortunately, from there on Question Time was all downhill. We had two senior politicians, one from the "rabid right" and then one from the "loony left" BOTH DEFENDING the Government's right to make decisions regardless of public opinion - whether gathered through consultations or any other means.

First Norman "on your bike" Tebbit, legendary right wing attack dog who was pulled from the rubble of the Grand Hotel when the IRA tried to blow up Thatcher in Brighton in 1984. Yes, he's still alive. Takes more than a collapsed Hotel to kill a creature of the night like Norm. This was his contribution:

"I have to say, there are times in Government when you do have to just get on and do things, because you cannot get an agreement right the way across the spectrum. If you try to get an agreement, at the moment, on what we should do on energy policy, by going out to consultation on single proposals, whether we should be nuclear, whether we should do this, whether we should do that, you probably wouldn't get anywhere and sooner or later the lights would be going out."

This is "management's right to manage" writ large. There is not the smallest attempt to suggest that Politics is - or should be - a democratic process. Indeed it categorically opposes the democratic notion that policy should at least command majority support. Tebbit doesn't object to agreement. He just doesn't require it. If it can't be agreed, then whoever has sufficient power and authority to make a decision in the absence of agreement is entitled, nay, obliged to make such a decision and implement the resulting policy.

While we're on the subject, "management's right to manage" is almost defensible within the standard capitalist paradigm. If I own the company and I offer you a job on certain conditions, you are free to agree to the conditions and accept the job or piss off to some other employer. If you accept the job and one of the initial conditions was that I had the right to make decisions and manage my business, then, basically, you haven't got a leg to stand on if I proceed to do just that. Anal Randian's argue that this is an equal and fair contractual relationship because you the employee have a "free choice" as to whether or not to accept my conditions for your employment.

It might indeed be a fair and equal relationship if, and only if, the employer's need for labour was roughly equal to labour's somewhat more urgent need for the basic necessities of life. This can never be true of course because a) although they treat it as such, the need to make profit can never equate to the need to eat and b) there are inevitably fewer entrepeneurs than employees. So the entrepeneurs always have greater choice than the employees which, in turn, means they can always set the conditions in their favour rather than the employees. Rarely in history has this advantage of the owning class ever been overturned.

The "Black Death" in 14th century Britain created one of the exceptions. All of a sudden there weren't enough peasants to run the landowners' farms and demand for their labour exceeded supply. For the first time they were able to demand higher rewards or up sticks and find a new "master" who was prepared to pay the new "rate for the job". The aristocracy were so appalled at this effect of market forces that they passed new laws making it illegal for the peasants to behave this way.

Today the few exceptions are less dramatic. Skilled workers with rare skills can much more easily negotiate terms significantly superior to those conceded to unskilled workers. But even skilled workers make profits for their employers (or they don't keep the job for long), so it's always the employers who come out on top - with one proviso, of course, which is that the business must be successful. Failed businesses can cost their owners considerably more than the cost to ex-employees. They rarely do, of course, because skilled businessmen often know how to protect themselves even from failure.

But back to the origin of "Authority". From exactly where do modern western politicians derive their "right to manage"? On what basis can they argue that they have the right to make business decisions which affect an entire nation as though they owned it?

Historically, of course, their predecessors did own it. Or at least, they "legitimised" their ownership under the terms of the laws they themselves drew up - after the event - to justify the centuries of theft, conquest, intermarriage and other forms of acquisition, fair or foul, which resulted in their sovereign authority over a sizeable territory.

But that era was supposed to have ended when we downgraded Monarchs from absolute to constitutional (or got rid of them altogether) and handed the reins over to "representatives of the people". How is it that today's government still exercises almost the same level of authority over its citizens as it used to do when it was an agent of absolute monarchy. How has "representative government" managed to retain the authority of a dictatorship?

How has the concept of policy being arrived at on the basis of - at least - majority support (the minimum requirement for Democratic "People Power") been so comprehensively excluded from a political process which persists in calling itself democratic??

You might have thought we'd hear answers to such questions together with some stirring opposition to such authoritarian nonsense from a "leftie".

Roy Hattersley was once considered to be on the centre right of the Labour party, but the party having moved so far into Thatcher's territory, he is now seen as left of centre and one of the "Old Labour" diehards. Roy's Spitting Image literally spat. You'll hear why when you listen to him speak. But don't that distract you. Remember that, politically, Hattersley and Tebbit can be said to represent the full spread of the (electable) political spectrum of the British ruling elite. In other words, someone like Hattersley is now about as far to the left as you can vote for with any hope of electoral success, while the Tebbit tendency is about as far right as electable Tories go. They are - in the general naive public view - political opposites. This was Hattersley's take:

"Apart from what Norman said about the Poll Tax, which was clearly nonsense, I agree with him entirely and we agree in this area because we both believe in ideological politics. We believe in politicians who believe things and do them and then say we're going to do it because it's right and if you don't like it, kick us out at the next election.

Dimbleby: So you think the consultation process is flawed? We shouldn't do it?

Hattersley: I think much of the idea of Consultation is Public Relations. I don't believe its genuine. I don't think it can be. Again I think Norman is right to say there is no alternative to having a degree of Nuclear Power in this country. Every sensible minister, every sensible spokesman for the opposition knows that has to happen and to go for the consultation process seems to me to be a mistake of how policy should be run. The politician should say "this is what we think is right. You elected us to do what we think is right. If you disagree with us, defeat us at the next election. It's the only way you can run a democracy like ours."

Incroyable.

You could not ask for a finer illustration of the problem. Hattersley is completely correct. The consultation exercises are pure PR and, as the Prime Minister has so unambiguously confirmed, consultation has no effect on Policy. Politicians are, as Littlejohn reminds us, merely elected dictators and the only sanction we have, as Hattersley says, is to swap dictators at the next election.

Hattersley even clarifies, clearly without a trace of irony, just how futile and limited that sanction is. On the particular issue at the focus of this current consultation charade, he is, again, quite rightly, pointing out that both sides of the two (and a half) party system are determined to impose Nuclear power on the UK, regardless of what the people think. So how, exactly, does an opponent of both sides' policy cast their vote at the next election?

It would be nice to imagine that the Liberal party could benefit - but not realistic. All that will happen, is that participation in the election of our next dictatorship will drop even further than the miserable 59-61% we've managed on the last two occasions. What, after all, is the point of casting one vote every 5 years, if all it does is change the dictatorship and has no serious effect on policy?

As Hattersley says "It's the only way you can run a democracy like ours."

Which is why it's about time we replaced "our democracy" with a real one, where citizens nominate and debate the issues, and then vote on the policy proposals so that We The People make collective decisions and agree on the way forward. Not a difficult concept. The Athenians managed it two and a half thousand years ago and they didn't have the obvious benefit of the web.

Though it's been made completely clear that the new consultation is pointless in terms of policy, I nurture the vague hope that this episode, added to the 1.5 million opponents who signed up against the Road Pricing proposal and the 1 to 2 million who marched against the Iraq war, together with several dozen less high profile examples, will go some way to making the average British citizen start to think about the issue of basic democracy and what it ought to mean. Perhaps some of them will even find material like this on the web and start realising how badly misled they have been and are being. If enough of them start thinking like that, we might actually be able to do something about it.

If that is the outcome of the Greenpeace victory, we'll have to thank the FSM that, with all its flaws, British Justice is, at least, in somewhat better shape than British Democracy.

*****
Update 23 Feb. Yesterday Blair was subjected to 35 minutes of fairly hostile questioning by John Humphrys. I only got round to listening to it in detail today and most of it is predictable drivel such as his standard denial of the link between our presence in Iraq and the unprecedented wave of home grown MIFT But just over half way through he actually said something which woke me up. It could have been designed to support the argument I've made in this Blog. You can download all 33 seconds of it here. But this is how it went:

BLAIR: I believe, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, across the whole of the region, that what we need is a policy based on democracy, on freedom and on justice

HUMPHRYS: Our idea of democracy...

BLAIR: I don't know that there is another idea of democracy.

HUMPHRYS: Well, if I may say so, that's naive (in the view of many people)

BLAIR: Well surely the only thing about democracy is that you're able to elect your government or not. You may have different forms of democracy. You can have proportional representation. You can have federal systems or not federal systems, but the one basic fact about democracy, surely, is that you can get rid of your government if you don't like them.

The prosecution rests

Freedom To Fascism

2006-12-08T20:20:00.000Z

This is an amazing story. And I have (another) confession to make.

I've known about Irwin Schiff's lone battle against the IRS for years. I've even mentioned it in my Police State page - but in the context of attempts to deny his freedom of speech. It's real significance had sailed straight over my head.

I'm sorry, but when I read sentences like:

The Murphy Court stated (quoting from other appellate decisions), that since Federal courts are courts of “limited jurisdiction” jurisdiction can only be acquired by “a specific grant …authorized by Congress” and since “Federal courts may hear only those cases specifically authorized by Congress and because the statute does not specifically state that a Federal district court may hear a claim under TCPA, the 4th Circuit concluded that the language of the statute showed that…Congress…without mentioning Federal courts did not intend to grant jurisdiction over TCPA claims to Federal district courts.”

I tend to fall over backwards frothing at the mouth and snoring gently.

As a result, I've always had a vague impression that Schiff was a Quixotic figure, tilting at the IRS windmill and challenging their legitimacy in much the same way as I challenge the legitimacy of the drug prohibition laws. It's a dirty job but someone has to do it.

I didn't actually understand the full basis of his challenge. This documentary (Freedom To Fascism) has put me right.

It's now available from their website as a dvd. If you know anyone who gives a shit about what is going on in the world, buy it for them as a Christmas present.

If you can't afford to do that then at least get them to watch the full 109 minute documentary, for free, on google video. It's right here. If you haven't already seen it, go and watch it now. I'll wait...

...

...

Well? Waddya think?

In 1982, a former partner and I watched "The Wall" - Pink Floyds dark look inside Roger Water's head - 3 times in 7 days just after it was released. We were that impressed. She described its effect on the viewer perfectly, although, as a review, it is unlikely to make anyone who hasn't yet seen it rush out to buy a copy She said: "Every time that film ends, I leave the cinema feeling like I've been kicked in the stomach."

Despite the utter validity of her description I strongly urge you get hold of a copy (of "The Wall") by fair means or foul; get mildly stoned (to optimal music appreciation level) and crank up the volume.

No film since then has had a similar effect on me.

Nor did this one. It hit a completely different set of buttons. But it hit them just as hard.

Sadly, if you haven't seen it, before getting this far down the page, then I fear that what I'm about to say may deter you in the same way that the prospect of being kicked in the stomach might make you less inclined to sample The Wall. If, on the other hand you've already seen it for yourself, you'll know exactly what I mean.

This film is not remotely entertaining.

In the same way that watching the collapse of the Twin Towers was not remotely entertaining. Nor was there any way in the world you could tear your eyes away from that spectacle once you saw what was happening.

Russo has over indulged himself a bit. He could have edited at least 20 minutes out of the work, without losing any of the message or impact. He could have been a bit more creative with his full screen captions. I had to watch it over 2 sessions because it was sending me to sleep in a couple of spots (although, to be fair, it was at the end of a long hard day). So I'm not going to pretend that the documentary is visually compelling. It aint. But it is intellectually compelling and is pretty comprehensively supported not just by the evidence but also by the informed analysis. (for example the "Wizards of Money" stuff I discussed here, and the Carroll Quigley references I mentioned here)

Only the snippets about RFIDs are significantly overhyped but that's a quibble.

The high point (for me - and for the director, judging from the fireworks he inserted at that point!) came with the story of The Government v Whitey Harrell (May 2000), in which Juror Marcella (Marcie) Brooks tells the tale of how the message finally sunk in for one of her fellow Jurors, who sat back, rolled his eyes and said: "you mean... we don't HAVE to pay taxes???!!!"

The case has been mentioned as an example of Jury Nullification.

(Jeez. That is an amazingly ugly name. Can't we think of something more fitting for the glorious act of democracy that it represents?)

But that isn't quite true if we follow the plot carefully. Jury nullification happens when a Jury recognises that the defendant has indeed committed an act forbidden by the law (such as smoking the dreaded ganga I recommended above) but decides the law itself is invalid and finds them "Not Guilty" regardless of the law. That forces tyrannical governments to abandon or change the Law (or abolish Juries of course).

However, what happened in this case is simpler than that. This was not the Jury disagreeing with any law, but instead reaching the decision, which an honest judiciary would have reached well before it came before a Jury, that there was no law for the defendant to be guilty of breaching. The fact that the obvious consequence of this revelation is that millions of Americans are illegally being extorted by their own government is almost incidental. This was We The People pointing out, loud and clear, to all observers that the Emperor had no clothes.

So, though it was not really nullification, it was an excellent demonstration of the power of the Jury, which I ranted about here.

(how's about "Jury Restitution"?)

Are we spotting a pattern yet? Almost every major issue I've blogged about in the past year or so comes up one way or another in this movie!

It even contains two classic examples of "Trusted Surveillance" (see the Quigley link above to see where I first mentioned that). The first is a grainy home video taken by Harrell when the IRS agent came to his house and argued that the only authority he needed, to force Harrell to yield his tythe to the IRS, was his IRS badge. He didn't need any written authority or to refer to any particular statute. He had a badge and that was enough to licence his siezure of Harrell's assets. The second example comes later in the movie, after he's moved on from the IRS, and tells us about the brutal and gratuitous police taser attack on a woman driver whose licence had been revoked. (For more in that vein, which I coincidentally bumped into the same day, see this alternet piece) Both videos have helped fight the oppression of government - the joint primary goal of Trusted Surveillance. (the other being to help protect us from the other bullies, from terrorists to rapists)

And, after he's soaked us in the hot bath of IRS constitutional deviance, and explained how the Federal Reserve has made America its bitch, he moves on many of the issues I've covered on my Police State page.

After all of which, one of the main actions he wants you (Americans) all to do is simply refuse to accept the new National ID card which comes into force under the provisions of the "Real ID" Act in 2008. And it is here, after he's provided all this brilliant support for our shared causes that I have to enter my caveat.

You should indeed refuse to accept the proposed National ID card in the States and, if you're a UK citizen, you should refuse to accept the one they're trying to foist on us over here. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The whole point of Trusted Surveillance is that it is not just a weapon against Terrorism, it is also a weapon against Tyranny. In fact, I hope to persuade you that it is the most effective weapon we will ever have the chance to develop against Tyranny. And ID Cards - done the right way (specifically NOT by governments and NOT featuring storage of sensitive data on National or Global databases) are a key component of Trusted Surveillance.

Even tagging technology (intelligent anonymised versions of "Verichip" and RFID) will have their part to play in the War On Tyranny. So, take to heart, by all means, everything you saw in that film. Heed the call to action and please, please spread the word and get as many people as you can to watch it. But hold open a small portion of your credulity and let me try to persuade you that - given the joint threats we face, from Terror and Tyranny - there is an absolutely vital role for technology to provide the shield against both. Here, for example, is the version of ID Card I've been punting to the Home Office since 2002.

The problem is that although I have the skill and imagination to describe it, I don't have all the skills needed to build it. What we desperately need and, hopefully, what we're about to see, is a new generation of mythical heroes. Only this time, they'll be Geeks, not Greeks.

Still too soon to let the Democrats back in...

2006-11-07T00:30:00.000Z

I wanted Bush to win in 2004.

I explained why in this K5 comment. In short, I wanted it to become unequivocally obvious - to every American with an IQ "above room temperature" - exactly who is responsible for the utter failure and chaos resulting from the Neocons' full frontal attempt to implement their wet dream - the Project for a New American Century.

Only the complete collapse of their strategy will sufficiently discredit this naive ideology to the extent necessary to extinguish the meme as thoroughly as, for example, Fascism.

It would be nice to pretend that the lesson has been learned and that it's time to let America off the hook; let it rejoin the human race. But it would only be make-believe.

I agree with almost every word written in this powerful piece by Robert Parry. I even agree with his conclusion. He regards anything less than Democrat takeover of both houses as endorsement of the Bush dictatorship,

He describes the Stakes of the elections in these terms:

If one combines the language of the Military Commissions Act with deputy attorney general McNulty’s vision of “preventive prosecution” – and then add in the growing possibility of another Republican victory on Nov. 7 – the United States is on the verge of being transformed into an Orwellian nightmare.

That is the only point on which we disagree. I think the stakes are much higher than that. For a start, we can't risk a marginal Democrat victory. And the lesson certainly hasn't sunk in deep enough yet. Parry provides the evidence for that with the example of the New York Times op ed (penned by Ted Koppel). He complains:

To say that “respected” figures like Koppel don’t get the magnitude of the situation would be an understatement.

And that's precisely my point. If even the NYT doesn't yet "get it", there's no chance at all that the average American voter is anywhere near getting it.

Unless the Democrats were to win on an unprecedented scale (taking, say 300 plus seats in Congress and 25 plus of the available Senate seats) they would effectively provide the Bush regime and the Neocons with an Exit Strategy.

If the Dems achieve even marginal control of just Congress, it will give them the clout they need to impede the President. So what will he do? He will up the ante (for example by proposing to double the forces in Iraq - bringing back conscription to get the numbers up) and challenge the Democrats to block it. Which they no doubt will.

As a result, Iraq will continue its descent into Civil War, a couple of thousand more Americans will be killed trying to keep the lid on and the eventual ignominious retreat can all be blamed on the Democrats for not allowing the President to put enough boots on the ground.

You get the drift. We can't be sure exactly which pretext will be presented but that's the broad game plan if the Democrats get even one hand on one of the levers of power. And the problem is not so much that such an attack would sink the Democrats. It wouldn't. What it would do, though, is prevent the demolition of the Neocons. And that is what must happen if we really want to destroy the Totalitarian tendency.

If even the Land of the Free can't resist dictatorship, what hope for the rest of the planet?

Bin Laden's strategy seems to be working very well. So well, you might be forgiven for jumping to the conclusion that it was created in a Washington think-tank rather than Tora Bora.

They must be allowed to burn themselves out beyond hope of recovery. America - and the World - simply can't afford Neocons, any more than we can afford Nazis.

Do We Care About Yesteryear?

2006-10-18T00:02:00.000+01:00

I didn't.

One of the few complaints I would make about my school is that they tried to ram history down my throat and did so in such an appallingly inept fashon that for the first 40 years of my life I had the same aversion to history that my mother managed to give me towards boiled cabbage. (I've still got that one)

Apparently it's "History Matters" day (in the UK at least) and they're trying to encourage us all to take part in a glorious blog. I've posted a short contribution to that but I'd prefer to expand it on my own territory.

Simon Schama and people like him began to undo my pavlovian aversion in the mid 90s and, although it's still not my favourite area of study, in more recent years I have exposed myself to a fair dose. To the extent that not only can I now understand what they were trying to teach me in school but I can also see how badly they taught it and how biassed and narrow they were in their approach. No wonder I couldn't stand it.

I've mentioned on previous blogs that I've been wading through Carroll Quigley's masterwork "Tragedy And Hope". I've finished it since and it is by far the most impressive scholarly work I've ever read and has greatly broadened my understanding of the century from around 1860-1960. For the first time, for example, I feel I have a clear understanding of the causes of the First World War and it's not nearly as incomprehensible as everyone keeps saying it is! Don't worry, I'm not going to bore you with the detail.

Quigley is not the only history I've read since discovering that it can be more interesting than the filleted dry version you get in school, but it is by far the most influential and relevant to today's state of permanent conflict.

I will give two examples, and they don't make for comfortable reading.

Quigley explains how a major step change took place - in the late nineteenth and early part of the twentieth century - in the relationship between governments and "We The People". It's all to do with weapons.

Up to and including the American Civil War, the most important military weapon was the rifle and nearly every able bodied man had one. Put criminally briefly, if a government, in such circumstances, wanted to oppress its people, it faced the obstacle of opposition with potentially as much firepower as itself. That's how the Americans won their independence from the Crown in the first place and why their Civil War was so prolonged, evenly matched and bloody.

Since then, however, weapons have evolved much more rapidly than our decision making process. In quick succession we've seen Machine Guns, grenades, tanks, poison gas, zeppelins, biplanes, jet fighters, heavy bombers and nuclear bombs. All (bar, perhaps, the machine guns and grenades) out of the reach of the normal citizen. Only governments could afford them and governments were not slow to recognise the additional power this gave them over their own people.

The Second Amendment to America's constitution ("A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.") reflects the far sighted vision of its authors in this context. As I quote here

"What, sir, is the use of a militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing army, the bane of liberty" (Con Gerry: The Congressional Register, 17 August 1789 - one of many similar contributions to the debate at the time)

The overbearing arrogance of the modern State, based on their vastly superior firepower, particularly as reflected in what I am now comfortable to call the Police State of America could hardly be more illustrative of that warning.

But this raises some incredibly awkward questions. If the imbalance of power, between State and citizenry has allowed the growth of the Police State, then the last thing we should be talking about (in the American context) is gun control. That widespread availability of lethal weapons might be the last bastion against true totalitarianism. Yet, simultaneously, that same availability is undoubtedly killing vastly more Americans every year than Terrorists could ever manage.

Similarly, it implies that if we're going to regain some semblance of democratic control in other nations we may need to insist on re-arming the citizens to close the power gap.

Time and again, Quigley points out how governments with monopoly military control can and do ignore their people. In this he is echoing Mao Zedong ("Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun") and perhaps making no more than a statement of the bleeding obvious. But what are we going to do about it?

The American gun ownership model doesn't offer much hope. Yet, strangely, the Swiss model does. Michael Moore's best film to date ("Bowling for Columbine") asked - but never answered - the question: Why does the high level of gun ownership in America produce a disaster area with amongst the highest levels of homicide and the highest level of imprisonment in the world; whilst comparable levels of gun ownership in Switzerland co-exist with one of the most peaceful and law abiding countries in the world?

The key could well be the level of Democratic participation built in to the Swiss system - which is by far the world's most advanced form of national popular control and, alone in the world, almost merits the description "true democracy".

I'll expand on that some other time.

Meanwhile the other important lesson I've learned from Quigley et al, is that the incompetence we see in modern political leadership is nothing new. If I were to sum up my objection to how my school presented History it would be that it tried to portray it as a succession of achievements and progress resulting from the efforts of a few great men. In fact the truth is almost exactly the opposite.

True History is the tale of the struggle of humanity to survive the crass stupidity, arrogance and despicable authoritarianism of an almost unbroken chain of bumbling imbeciles. Today's leaders are almost enlightened by comparison. Yes there are great men and women dotted amongst them, but they have had far less effect on the overall course of events than their barbaric self-seeking peers.

Human Progress has most often arisen not as the result of a sequence of carefully thought out plans for social and economic development but almost always in the form of measures required to correct the awful and often lethal mistakes made by predecessors.

This is why History Matters so much to us today.

You need Science, not History, to explain the state of things as they are and what may be done to repair the damage. Nor do we need History to explain that the current crop of dictators - elected and unelected - who continue to make decisions on our behalf are (still) mostly incompetent self-serving fools.

What we need History for is to explain how on earth we got into such a mess, how the incompetent fools came to hold their authority and why it is vitally important that we stop pretending to trust them and imperative that We The People wrest that authority from them and begin to take control of our own world.

********************************
Footnote: I sent a very very short version of this to the BBC's "You And Yours" Radio 4 phone in show earlier today (17 Oct not 18th as it says on the blog banner). It was a feature about the importance of History. You can hear what they broadcast here (30 second mp3). Note how they introduce it and the snide comment it invokes.

This, however, is what I actually sent. You will note that they completely omitted the rather important 3rd paragraph and thus, deliberately, reversed my meaning:

"You need Science, not History, to explain the state of things as they are and what may be done to repair the damage.

Nor do we need History to explain that the people who make decisions on our behalf are incompetent self-serving fools.

What we need History for is to explain how on earth we got into such a mess, how the incompetent fools came to hold their authority and why it is vitally important that We The People wrest that authority from them and begin to take control of our own lives."

A Very British Coup

2006-10-13T00:47:00.000+01:00

Dam Bursts over Denial

In an historic development just before 10 pm last night (Thursday 12 Oct 2006) the head of the British Army, (and Chief of the General Staff) Sir Richard Dannatt publicly announced that the British Army's presence in Iraq is making matters worse; and not just in Iraq, but around the world. It is about as blatant a challenge to official Government policy as it is possible for him to make without actually parking his tanks in Downing Street.

This could be, and should be, politically seismic.

To begin with, the politicians cannot dismiss or reject the strategic judgement of their most senior military advisor.

The fact that he has gone public tells us a number of things:

1 - He is voicing the consensus of the British Military establishment. He will not have taken this position without the active support of his peers.

2 - He has been making their position known to the politicians for some time and they have consistently refused to budge. In particular they have refused to concede a final or even conditional departure date for Iraq (their policy is to stay as long as the Americans - fig leaf to the end.)

3 - A tactical decision has been taken by the General staff to bring the matter to a head - by taking their objections to the people, over the heads of the politicians.

They are relying on the previously supine media to lead the campaign of public pressure to force the government to change direction. This has not happened to a British government, at least not so publicly, since, at least, Wellington. I suspect they will succeed.

Their message is quite simple:

"We don't do military coups in a civilised country but it is my duty as the head of the British Armed Forces to inform the people that, in our professional judgement your politicians have got it wrong and, as a result, we are wasting young British lives for no good purpose. It's not our role to change the minds or personnel in governments. That's your job."

This is A VERY British Coup.

The government is now boxed into an interesting corner.

They cannot dismiss or replace Dannatt. If they do, they'll probably face the resignation of the General Staff - which would sink any government without trace.

If they simply concede, they will be so discredited that they will probably have to resign and call a general election anyway.

They cannot pretend that this is their own revised government policy and that they were merely allowing Dannatt to announce it first.

There is no way they can spin this to make it look like the General's opinions and analysis are anything but diametrically opposed to the extraordinary denial of the bleedin' obvious which they've been indulging in since March 2003; peaking, of course, since the London bombings.

Nor is there any way these men and women - none of whom have spent a single minute of their lives under hostile fire - can justify continuing to instruct "our boys" to die in support of a mission that even their military leaders clearly no longer (if ever they did) support.

There is, in fact, only one way for the government to buy themselves a breathing space.

Now is the time for all Prime Ministers to come to the aid of the Party. Pick up your orange jump suit on the way out, Tony.

(If it's any consolation, it won't work. Your party will lose the next election anyway, once the tabloids start falling over each other to profit from the sheer depth of the utter incompetence revealed by this strategic disaster. So at least you'll all go down together. More or less.)

Better still. It may not end with the departure of Blair and the subsequent fall of the Labour Government.

I would be rather surprised if the British Military analysis is not entirely in accord with American Military analysis. And if they "come out" singing the same song on the other side of the pond, not only would Bush and the Neocons be swept from power, but the Police State might actually be forced to slow down a smidge.

All in all, a good news day. It might just turn out that Sir Richard Dannatt has, at last, nudged the world one step in the right direction.

Rumsfeld-Cheney Cabal? Not Guilty.

2006-09-30T23:58:00.000+01:00

They had absolutely nothing to do with the Columbine High School massacre.

And, after much digging, reading, viewing, listening, debating and thinking, I also believe that the balance of probabilities is against them being guilty of causing the freefall collapse of the twin towers. Specifically I am now 99.9% certain that there were no controlled demolitions in WTC 1 or 2.

I was prompted to this confession by one of my readers drawing attention to this posting I'd made back in July (it was about Fox News' handling of an interview with one of the "911-Scholars" - Dr Jim Fetzer). He wanted permission to repost it and whereas I don't normally think twice about granting such, (just attribute and backlink and it's all yours folks) on this occasion I had to pause to consider whether that post still represented my views on the issue. Fortunately it did.

The questions it raises remain legitimate and the only way to deal with them satisfactorily is to set up an investigation headed by trusted scientists, engineers and forensic specialists, with unlimited powers to peer into all the dark corners the State (and others) would prefer not to expose to the light of day.

What I now suspect, however, is that such an investigation would honestly conclude that there genuinely is no evidence to support the Controlled Demolition (CD) hypothesis. Nor, indeed, is there any need for such an explanation in respect of the most glaring oddity in respect of the attack, viz the near freefall collapse of the twin towers. I am, in other words, (almost) convinced that there is likely to be an "innocent" explanation.

For me, one of the most persuasive factors in reaching this conclusion has been this interview snippet with Leslie Robertson, the "man who built the world trade centre". I first saw it in 2002 and it has stuck with me ever since. As I've said (in the description) when I uploaded that snippet to youtube:

If anyone can be said to understand the structure of the World Trade Centre, this man is at the top of the list.

If anyone has a vested interest in finding an alternative explanation (other than his design "flaws") for the rapid and catastrophic collapse of the Towers, this man is at the top of the list.

If he thought, for one moment, that it was impossible for the towers to collapse as they did, without the aid of a controlled demolition, then surely he'd have been shouting it from the rooftops. If he thought the CD hypothesis was a remotely plausible alternative he would surely have given some indication of sympathy towards it. His failure to jump on the CD bandwagon - or indeed to look for anything which might reduce his own burden of responsibility for the deaths he failed to prevent - is, in my view, particularly compelling. (Incidentally - in case it's not obvious - I don't agree with his own apparent self assessment. No architect or builder should blame themselves because their structure failed to survive a literally (previously) "unthinkable" attack. He, more than most, is "not guilty")

Be that as it may, there are other major flaws with the CD hypothesis, not least the clear absence of typical CD explosions. Check out any of the CD samples around the web (this one of the Landmark Tower demolition is a typical example) and you will not find ANY (with reasonable soundtracks) where you do not hear very distinct "transients" - sharp sounds typical of and consistent with the string of explosions which are required to conduct a CD. Yet despite dozens of video and audio recordings of the collapse of the towers, and despite the fact that we can clearly hear other loud noises created by the collapse itself, there is literally not a single transient peak consistent with a demolition charge.

This description of the collapse (mp3 - 1.5mb) from the inside, by the Ladder 6 crew - who miraculously survived the collapse because it bypassed their corner of Stairwell B in the North Tower - is particularly relevant. Their graphic account very clearly talks about the "boom boom boom" of the floors hitting one another and mentions no explosive noises at all. It is frankly inconceivable that experienced firefighters would have failed to hear or mention the explosions consistent with the CD hypothesis.

The counter to that argument is to postulate the use of thermate which isn't an explosive but is, instead, a fast burner which doesn't make noises we could reasonably expect to have heard. This explanation is also held to account for the streams of molten metal seen dripping from the tower and for the molten metal still being found in the ruins some weeks later. However, although thermate provides a plausible answer for molten metal, it is not a plausible answer for a tightly co-ordinated CD which results in a free-fall collapse. In short you won't find a single engineer to support the idea that you could trigger a cascade necessary to explain what we saw using thermate. Its burn rate is nothing like as predictable as explosives and to achieve the collapses with explosives would have required millisecond accuracy well beyond the "performance envelope" of thermate.

Yet the towers obviously did collapse in near freefall. So I'm guessing that we're going to find, whenever the real investigation is allowed to begin, that there is a flaw in the Chinese researchers' model (the one that suggests the "Progressive Pancake" hypothesis is viable but that the collapses should have taken 10 times longer than they actually did) and I'm even prepared to hazard a guess as to what that flaw may be.

I think we'll find that their calculations are based on the resistance offered by the floors at both connecting points - i.e. to the core and to the external walls. I suspect, however, that the manner of the collapse should be thought of more like peeling a banana, with the walls being pushed away from the floors not by the collapse reaching the floor, but by the collapse reaching the previous floor. The debris preceding the main collapse being enough to push the walls
out and away, breaking the links with the floors before the main mass hit them.

The result of which was that the external walls (through their connection with the floors) offered literally zero resistance to the major descending mass and the "only" thing the collapsing tower had to do as it came down was to slice off the connections to the core. Whilst this may have offered significant resistance at the top of the building, the increasing mass during the descent would have rendered it less and less significant. Whether that would be enough
to account for the near freefall collapse I don't know, but my gut says that something like that is going to be the answer.

As a result of these considerations and others I won't bore you with, I am now pretty well convinced that there was no CD. This line of reasoning does not, however, deal with the anomaly of WTC 7 which collapsed symmetrically, despite asymmetric damage and without the aid of an aircraft impact. I have been unable to find - or even invent - any half decent explanation for that collapse but, given my current thinking in regard to the absence of a CD in respect of towers 1 and 2, I am forced to conclude that it is extremely unlikely that building 7 was brought down by a CD either.

Indeed, that logic works the other way. If we ever prove that WTC 7 was brought down by a CD, then that makes foul play in the other two towers much more likely - which is what drew me in to considering the CD Conspiracy Theory in the first place. (I was never particularly convinced about 1 & 2, but I've always been much more convinced by 7 and it remains a genuine unexplained mystery)

Nor does any of this mean that I now consider the Rumsfeld-Cheney cabal innocent of all charges in relation to 9-11.

It is still possible and plausible that they knew, ahead of time, that the attacks were going to take place; that they deliberately failed to raise any alarm; that they conspired to provide optimum conditions for the attack (standing down the defences with dummy exercises etc); and even (possibly if not quite plausibly) that they authorised the placement of automatic guidance hardware and or software on the planes in order to ensure that they hit their targets with a level of accuracy which is otherwise difficult to explain (particularly in the case of the Pentagon - where, for me, the real question remains: "why did the attackers, who had a completely unobstructed approach towards the vip section of the Pentagon, in which Rumsfeld and dozens of other legitimate military and political targets were present at the time, choose instead to fly over that juicy target and perform a very difficult and precise diving turn finishing on a cluttered approach to the most heavily fortified and least populated section of the building?" A strangely "considerate" choice of target wouldn't you say?)

My guess, however, is that, on this occasion at least, we will not find conclusive evidence that they conspired to assist the mass murder of the thousands of their fellow citizens.

Their real exploitation of the events of 9-11 is likely to be "limited" to the imposition of the Police State of America, the illegal invasion of Iraq and to taking the opportunity afforded by a miraculously convenient "New Pearl Harbour" to begin the implementation of their Project For The New American Century; all of which activities contain more than enough war crimes to justify the death penalty if and when they are ever brought to justice.

We don't need Controlled Demolition to bring the bastards down.

When they assassinate the Pope...

2006-09-22T10:15:00.000+01:00

...which I'm sure they will at least attempt during his trip to Turkey in November...

...will they show the same denial of cause and effect as they're still doing in regard to the connection between Iraq and the wave of UK home grown MIFT?

...will they show the same incomprehension I've just been watching on the part of ex CIA documentarist Robert Baer, as he tries to get his mind around the - to him - huge mystery of how a well paid young lawyer can walk into a fast food joint, buy, sit and eat a chicken burger, then stand up, walk to the most crowded part of the restaurant and blow herself to pieces, taking 21 complete strangers with her to an early death.

Do I need to tell you what country this happened in? Clue? It begins with "I". And it isn't Iraq. (I don't think they've had any female suicide bombers there yet - let me know if I'm wrong) If I mention "Jenin", does that help?

If you still have any problem understanding why Hanadi Jaradat killed herself and 21 Israelis (after reading that explanation), then I'm afraid you too are part of the problem. I'm not asking whether you could or would have done the same thing in her place. I know I couldn't have - for one main reason. I don't have that sheer physical courage. I also know I wouldn't have done it, even if I'd had the balls, for another major reason. I could never accept randomly selected apparent civilian strangers as "the enemy". I'd even be queasy about targeting the soldiers - unless they have volunteered to fight in a democratically mandated conflict (although, for the actual soldiers who executed her brother, I think I could make an exception).

But even though they (the Israeli government) obviously lied about the circumstances - as you'd expect for normal propaganda reasons - the cold hard truth is that their attack on known enemies was a straightforward standard military operation which we could not criticise on a moral basis any more than we can criticise the execution of Jean Charles De Menezes (which I discussed here) . The grounds for condemnation, if the description of events is accurate, is, as Hanadi herself said, that the men could have been arrested as easily as they were executed. But although that clearly plays into Hanadi's justifiable desire for revenge, it is a different issue.

If both men killed had been genuine enemy soldiers and had attempted to resist, I can not see how the attack could have been condemned any more or less than any other military attack. Even the fact that Fadi was (probably) not an enemy soldier isn't enough to "criminalise" the attack - provided the IDF genuinely believed that both were legitimate targets. As with the London example, the moral question hinges on what they knew - and sometimes they get it wrong. Unlike the London example, however, it does not appear that the attackers had to make any split second decisions in the fear that the targets were about to detonate themselves. The execution appears to have been premeditated and thus constitutes a potential war crime.

Even though that does not appear to be the case in the London example, how do you think the De Menezes family feel? What is the "appropriate response" when the State accidentally kills a member of your family? Aren't they entitled to some pretty serious retribution? And I mean retribution, not compensation. Shouldn't someone fall on their sword for the errors which produced this tragedy?

I'm not about to change my tune. Objectively, the answer is still "No", providing that the evidence and audit trail continue to support the conclusion that they were acting "in good faith". Any other answer leaves us defenceless. No policemen or soldier can be expected to defend us to the hilt if there is a serious probability that they will be prosecuted for an honest mistake.

But where does that leave the family? I can't argue that they have no right to retribution but realistically the best we can really do, in a civilised society is to make a formal, high level apology (I think it should come from at least Cabinet level) and pay, without quibble, VERY generous compensation. I'd personally vote for £50 million. That's a high enough figure to help the family realise that we recognise how serious our mistake has been. It is also high enough for the Treasury to want to make it very clear, if the political fallout hasn't already done so, that we REALLY can't afford too many cockups like this. On the other hand, it is not so large that it will bankrupt the nation when a few more of these inevitable tragedies take place.

None of which will make the De Menezes family any happier, but they might at least accept that we are genuinely sorry about what we did to their son and sibling. Given that we don't have a record of murdering Brazilians on the London Underground, it should be enough to calm the troubled waters.

Now compare that situation and possible outcome with the one Hanadi found herself in. Living in the midst of hundreds of such "honest mistakes" on a routine - almost daily - basis. How do think Hanadi must have felt, having had her fiancee killed some years previously (we don't know whether he was another "mistake" or a legitimate target, but it is unlikely Hanadi would have recognised the distinction) to be followed, in April 2002 by the "Jenin massacre" in which even the United Nations has admitted the Israelis deliberately "put civilians in harms way". Finally, of course, the "accidental" and clearly unwarranted cold blooded execution of her brother before her very eyes reasonably qualifies as a "final straw".

Well?

Can you put yourself in her position?

Really?

How would you feel if they did that to your lover and sibling? And dozens ofyour friends and neighbours...

Can you at least begin to feel the blind rage that is burning up the "Holy Land"?

As I've said elsewhere, I'm with Ghandi on the "eye for an eye" ethical proposition , but at least it embodies the notion of even handed, proportionate responses.

As a priveleged westernised jewish atheist - I am sufficientlly appalled and outraged by the grossly improportionate slaughter routinely committed by the Zionist State - licensed as they are by the generous precedents set by their American Christian and Neocon patrons - to be able to say, without hyperbole, that were I to hear that a Palestinian attack had killed the top echelon of Israeli political leaders, I would feel some small measure of satisfaction that a tiny proportion of the Israeli crimes had been appropriately punished.

And, y'know what, I feel the same way about Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney. Wolfovitz and Rove might make the shortlist too. And in case you believe I'm unusual in holding such "extreme" views, let me assure you that I'm not even unusual in admitting it. There are people positively fantasizing about it out there. AMERICAN people! Not to mention the forthcoming More4 documentary they're all talking about.

And, no I don't feel the same way about Blair. He started out with sound motives, believing he could steer the tiger by the tail. He has failed. He can atone quite simply, eventually, by admitting that failure. The Bush administration has moved way way beyond that level of guilt. Perhaps they're not yet quite on a par with the Nuremberg defendants, but they're catching up fast and one day we will need another Nuremberg just for them.

In case you're wondering; I don't even hate those "folks". I wouldn't kill them even if I had the chance and thought I could get away with it. I don't even particularly want them dead, although I can't pretend I'd shed a tear should they happen to fall victim to something or other. I just think they've got it coming to them.

The only thing I still don't understand is why people like Baer are either still having, or pretending to have, such a problem in understanding their enemy.

What part of "If our nation cannot realize its dream and the goals of the victims, and live in freedom and dignity, then let the whole world be erased." do they have any difficulty with?

Baer's entire approach was oddly blinkered. I say this because I know he is not an apologist for the Bush regime and holds a clear vision of the scale of the problem and, like me, he believes things are going to get a lot worse before there is any chance of improvement.

I found it strange, therefore, that despite his apparent professional investigative thoroughness (he spent 18 months on the ground in Palestine researching the issues) and despite the fact that the whole program centred on the question of why Hanadi killed herself, he failed to find (or at least failed to mention) that answer. In contrast, I had never even heard her name before and I only vaguely remembered hearing about the attack (October 4 2003). Yet it only took me 5 minutes, in the comfort of my own home, to find out why she committed murder against her Israeli neighbours.

He illustrates the state of denial which even honest commentators seem to be stuck in. He clearly came to the issue with some kind of prejudice that women couldn't possibly have been exercising their free and informed consent when participating in such attacks. It was inconceivable to him that they might possibly have been just as motivated, just as brave as their male compatriots. They must have been "manipulated" in some way to make them behave like that.

In each of the cases he examines, he tries to belittle their reasons. His starting point seems to be the received wisdom that suicide bombers are all religious fanatics and then he tries to persuade us that this does not provide the motivation in at least some of the cases he's managed to examine. This should not have come as a revelation.

Blowing yourself to pieces, either with a suicide belt or by flying a fuel and passenger laden plane into a tall building are not religious acts, they are political acts. We do not expect, if we've got our eyes and minds firmly open, to find religious motivation, only, occasionally, religious endorsement - exactly as we see on the other side of the battle lines (both in Israel and America).

Embarrassingly, he tries to persuade us that the motivation of one of the (failed) women bombers was a simple desire for her share of the "martyrdom" limelight while one of the others was simply doing what she could to assuage the shame and dishonour of having been a prostitute. Talk about missing the 'king point!

Yes, many teenagers have fantasies about dying as heroes, or victims. Many prostitutes are shamed into suicide, or beaten to death, by their fundamentalist families. But how many of those teenagers fantasize about killing a couple of dozen complete strangers during their own suicide? And how many of them actually try to do it? And how many of those are from Palestine?

And how many share their fantasy with their father?

Haradat's father, Taisir, who is said to have had a special emotional bond with his eldest daughter, told Al-Jazeera television: "My daughter's action reflected the anger that every Palestinian feels at the occupation. The occupation did not have mercy on my son Fadi, her brother. They killed him even though he was not a wanted person, they murdered him in cold blood before Hanadi's eyes."

Taisir Jaradat said he was proud of what his daughter had done, and he asked those who wanted to pay condolence calls not to bother: "I will accept only congratulations for what she did," he told his interviewers. "This was a gift she gave me, the homeland and the Palestinian people. Therefore, I am not crying for her. Even though the most precious thing has been taken from me."

For someone who claims he's been trying to understand the psychology of suicide bombers for 20 years, you would have thought that a skilled professional ex spook investigator might have spotted one or two of the clues in this story. Disappointing.

Anyway, back to my initial point. When the Pope is assassinated in November (or some other time in the not too distant future), it will be because he made a trivial academic speech in a German university on Sept 12. Specifically it will be because he carelessly (or as Tariq Ali implies, deliberately) failed to balance his comments.

He was trying to argue that there was still a place for Theology to be taught in University because Religion sits alongside "positivist" science as another legitimate source of Reason. Or at least, he argues, it should do. He acknowledges that some branches of religion have been fighting back against the "Age of Reason" almost since it began in the late middle ages (a reactionary movement which - as he pointedly doesn't choose to remind us - produced the Puritan and fundamentalist mindset which underpins the Christian Right in America) and that the most serious consequence of that backlash results in Violence being pursued in the name of Religion.

The ONLY example of which (that he offers in his speech) being the Prophet's support for spreading Islam through the sword.

His argument is intellectually flawed (he demonstrates a naive understanding of the philosophy of science) but academically uncontroversial. It was also politically incompetent and diplomatically disastrous. His Church has been furiously backpedalling ever since.

To mention Islam's inherent support for religious violence, without even a passing glance at the millions of deaths caused or condoned by his own church was truly unforgiveable. Truly stupid. Truly a wasted opportunity.

He draws attention to Qu'ranic support for the warlike tendencies of a minority within Islam, the results of which are painfully self-evident. However, in addition to the examples offered in that last link, he could usefully have mentioned that Christianity has been touched by the same evil, beginning with the Crusades, moving forward through the Inquisition, on to the genocide of Latin America and, more latterly, active assistance to the fascists in the second world war. He could also legitimately have mentioned today's Christian fundamentalist support for the illegal war in Iraq, even though they're not part of his flock. He could then have pointed out that his Church has apologised for many of those crimes and perhaps taken the opportunity to repeat or expand those apologies here and now.

That might have won him some respect from Muslims and allowed them to view his comments as balanced criticism from a fellow sinner. All bar the certifiable might have "turned the other cheek" and he might have initiated an interfaith dialogue with some reasonable prospect of addressing the poisonous issue of the long term religious pursuit of and support for violence.

Instead, he'll be very lucky if he doesn't become one of its victims.

Meanwhile MIFT can hardly believe their luck. If you want to stir up Armageddon, the Pope's almost as good a place to start as the American Precedent.

Turning the Ethnic Profiling Lemon into Lemonade...

2006-09-03T03:07:00.000+01:00

As I was saying...

...thanks to the involuntary sacrifice of a Brazilian electrician, we’re all just a little bit safer from the threat of arbitrary execution by the forces of “Laura Norder” in the UK than we might otherwise have been. The police have been somewhat more restrained and circumspect than they would have been if the Stockwell execution had been a “good call”. They are still inclined to occasional hyperbole (given the deaths we’ve witnessed in the past century, speaking of "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" betrays a very limited memory and severely constrained imagination), but they have also been pointedly reserved about their claims and scrupulously concerned with proper forensic and legal procedures.

All of which is a good thing.

Better still, after a year of such public debacles, albeit on a lesser scale, the vast majority of those prepared to comment have now clearly indicated that they no longer trust the information we’re being fed. I believe that, too, has its merits. The more people who understand how incompetent our constitutional rulers really are (and have nearly always been), the better and safer we will all be. Eventually.

There is, however, in the short term, the minor matter that, in this particular instance, it looks likely that the authorities’ cry of “Wolf” has actually been in response to a small but potentially lethal pack of them. We should be content to let nature take its course and see what the court cases reveal, but, in line with the formal prediction in my previous blog, I’m not going to be surprised if convincing evidence emerges which endorses most of the claims made by the authorities to date. I expect to have my views confirmed that this was indeed a real attempt at an attack and the authorities have done a damn good job interdicting it.

The problem that this produces is that it undermines the turning of the worm I welcomed in my previous. If even respectable sceptics are proved conclusively wrong, it will leave them in the position of crying wolf which, in turn, will lead to them being lumped in with the rabid Conspiracy Theorists who howl “Wolf” from the rooftops about once every 3 minutes. This will weaken the opposition we will need to mount to their inevitable push for increased State powers and further impositions on our Liberty and Privacy.

For what it’s worth, therefore, I urge - at least - extreme caution in those who want to convert the current plot, prematurely, to yet another “intelligence failure”.

I have to admit that such restraint is going to be difficult; especially when you can read extremely interesting analyses like this one from Nafeez Ahmed writing for RINF.

His first charge is that the alleged plot is going to be used to support another attack on the 90 days. This Guardian story, appearing within 4 days of the plot revelations, would seem to support that charge (and my own "formal prediction" if the approach is sustained)

His second charge is that, despite an apparent level of urgency such that the airports could not be given any warning, not to mention the reports, on the day, that the attack was imminent, it became clear after a few days, that it was anything but imminent. This is supported by a number of American sources, such as this MSNBC story and this one which "Frontieruk" mentioned in his comment on "Faith Hate and Charity".

If those stories are true then he is right to point out:

“If British security officials knew that an attack was not imminent, the decision to raise the alert level to critical, indicating an imminent threat, was unjustified by the available intelligence — this was, in other words, a political decision.”

We also learn that a key source of intelligence, the alleged mastermind behind the plot, a British born muslim called Rashid Rauf, provided the alleged evidence under Pakistani police torture. We've been here before. Remember the Ricin Plot where the key evidence was extracted under torture by the Algerian police? It took two years to expose the lies involved in that case and Colin Powell even referred to it as part of his presentation to the UN justifying the forthcoming invasion of Iraq.

One key feature of that case should ring alarm bells. Because the source clearly had no idea about how Ricin could be "weaponised", under torture he just invented details to mollify his torturers. This was exposed in court, when the defence experts ridiculed suggestions that smearing ricin on car door handles and the like would make it a serious terrorist weapon.

My own first reaction on hearing that the current case involved so called "binary liquid" explosives was puzzled scepticism. I don't claim to be an expert on such matters though I have more than a passing familiarity. I was obsessed with making things go bang from about the age of 12 till my mid 20s. One of my former lives was as an assistant research analyst in a Chemical Test Laboratory. In addition, I was allowed to build miniature rockets in school (imagine that being allowed today!), with a respectable range (18 miles) and built many small bombs and "improvised explosive devices" in my youth, with a variety of explosives, just for the sheer fun of it. I have, for example, nearly blown my own head off with one of those combinations which could come under the category of binary liquid explosives. If you mix liquid iodine with liquid ammonia, the resulting brown sludge is the delightfully unstable nitrogen tri-iodide - which begins to "pop" as soon as it begins to dry out. A fly landing on it is enough to detonate it and a couple of ounces of the stuff could certainly blow a hole in the skin of a passenger plane.

However, to get any reasonable "yield", you need concentrated ammonia and, preferably crystalline iodine rather than liquid. Working with concentrated ammonia outside a fume cupboard is lethal, not to mention extremely easy to detect, so it's not a realistic contender for aircraft sabotage. I couldn't think of any other binary liquid mix which would be easier to work with and more easily camouflaged. But my ignorance doesn't constitute evidence. Fortunately more expert practitioners have considered the problem and their comments suggest that the "sports drink" reports are on a credibility par with the "smearing ricin on car door handles" plot also extracted under torture. In other words, it looks like, once again, a torture victim has given the torturers whatever story is necessary to persuade them to stop torturing him. (Imagine our surprise)

We've already let the bastards - who condone if not actively encourage these illegal and immoral interrogation techniques - take us into a war based on similar false confessions and invented or inflated evidence like this. The signs are that the public is slowly "wiseing up" and won't be so easily misled next time round. We have to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, though, because there is another lesson from the ricin case. And this is why I disagree with Nafeez Ahmed. Although the ricin case torture evidence was useless and misleading, there is no doubt that the plotters were plotting with lethal intent. It was merely our good fortune that they were incompetent bumbling amateurs.

Similarly even if the binary liquid plot is as incredible as it appears, I suspect we will learn that the same applies to this gang. They really were plotting to bring down several loaded passenger planes even if they were deluded about their ability to deliver.

None of which should work in their favour. The mere fact that they probably wouldn't have succeeded shouldn't reduce their eventual custody by a single minute. Guy Fawkes' plot was similarly flawed (his gunpowder was damp and "decayed". It probably wouldn't have exploded, or exploded with reduced force) but that didn't result in a more lenient sentence either.

What it does do, however, is cast severe doubt on the legitimacy of the continuing ban on liquids in aircraft cabins. If no credible explosives could be created this way, then why continue with the ban?

Even Ahmed's fourth charge - that this may be a "P20G" "counter-terror" plot orchestrated by the CIA and its allies in order to "flush out" potential terrorists by provoking them into situations like this where they could be entrapped - doesn't let the conspirators off the hook. What it does do, however, is raise the obvious question - how many of these alleged plots which our Intelligence services claim to be intercepting on our behalf are the real deal and how many are cooked up by the Pentagon and its poodles?

That last is the real value of Ahmed's contribution. What he cogently illustrates is that we have no earthly reason to believe a damn thing we're being told by those we pay to protect us. And that is a very dangerous situation to be in. We'll come back to that later.

I asked the question, in my previous post: “What if the police had killed a real bomber last July?”. If we consider that as one end of the conjectural spectrum (try saying that when you’re drunk or stoned!) then Niall Fergusson, writing for the Daily Telegraph has addressed the question at the other end. What if the bombs had exploded and the plot had succeeded? Check out his nightmare vision of the consequences for Britain had this attack – or another with similar ambitions – succeeded.

He envisages civil war with UK's Muslim population on one side and the rest of us on the other. Frankly I think it would be more accurate to talk of ethnic cleansing than civil war because it would hardly be the kind of reasonably balanced struggle that is inherent in the notion of “civil war”. I think the pogroms of the middle ages are more appropriate precedents but that’s hardly cause for comfort.

He is, though, a trifle hyperbolic himself. In support of his argument, he points out, for example, that 81% of British Muslims feel that their Islamic identity takes precedence over their British Identity and he describes how the percentage of non Muslim UK subjects who feel "threatened by Islam" has risen from 32% pre 9-11 to 53% now.

Both of these points are presented as evidence to support not just the perception of threat, but its reality. However, if I was a practising Christian or Jew, I would be ashamed of myself if I didn’t give precisely the same answer. I would expect any sincere Christian – for example Tony Blair – to put God and his religious convictions well ahead of human considerations like nationality. And on behalf of atheists the world over I’m sure the vast majority of us would consider our membership of the human species vastly more significant than our arbitrary citizenship.

As to the increase in threat perception, first, I’m astonished that 47% still don’t feel "threatened by Islam"! It is not, of course, the bunch of antiquated religious ideas which constitute Islamic ideology that frightens us. They’re no more frightening than most of the other religious nonsense. Nor is it most of the people who widely share a belief in Islam that we’re afraid of.

The problem is that the large pool of peaceful believers are hiding – mostly unwittingly – the few believers who are a very real threat to both us and that pool of peaceful believers.

During the IRA "troubles", close to 100% of the threat came from male Irish visitors or residents in the age range 17-50 (I seem to remember one or two stories of local non Irish sympathisers - although none actually committed acts of violence - but can't find any statistical sources. I also seem to remember one or two bombs were alleged to have been planted by women rather than men). Given that the British population at that time included about 3% of ethnic Irish origin, that about a quarter were in that age range and roughly half of those were male, then, statistically, any randomly chosen Irish 17-50 year old male was about 240 times more likely to represent a threat than non Irish or female citizens.

Doing the same calculations in the context of the threat from MIFT, it is obvious that the potential threat from a randomly selected "non white" male is similarly elevated.

How many white suicide bombers have their ever been in England? Zero. How many non white? 8, 4 of whom succeeded.

Extrapolating data from the 2001 Census UK's 15+ population is a little over 50 million, of whom non-whites form 7.9% or roughly 4 million. The attacks have been launched, to date, exclusively by males in the age range 18-35. There are roughly half a million non white males in this range. Thus, without doing any further analysis, it is obvious that if you are sat next to an 18-35 year old non-white male, the probability of that person being a potential suicide bomber is immediately 100 times greater than if they are not in that group.

Press reports tell us that the Intelligence services are warning that:

Britain faces a full- blown Islamist insurgency, sustained by thousands of young Muslim men with military training now resident in this country.

with at least 10,000 prepared to support those who are prepared to be suicide bombers; and MI5 have been telling us since March 2005 that there are now approximately 200 muslims prepared or preparing to take part in those kind of attacks. In fact, BBC Newsnight, in its coverage - 14 Aug 2006 - of the Ethnic Profiling issue, quotes MI5 (mp3) as being:

involved in the active surveillance of between1,200 and 1,600 suspected terrorists

but I suspect that includes "support staff", so I'll stick with the estimate of 200 actual potential bombers.

Let us take a leap of faith and assume that, on this occasion, despite the public intelligence failures of the last few years, these estimates are reasonably close to the truth. Then from what we know about those arrested or dead so far, it seems that about 50% of the perpetrators are of Pakistani origin, most of the rest are of North African extraction and a a handful are converts (including at least one white) In the August 10th arrests, we also know that 2 women were included. Let's apply these proportions to the problem.

It would imply that of that 200 potential attackers MI5 are warning us about, 190 are likely to be from the "non white" community and 10 might be converts, of whom perhaps 2 or 3 might be white. They are likely to be overwhelmingly male, but we ought to allow for the possibility of up to, say, 5 being female. They all appear to be in the 18-35 age range.

Some of the 'non whites" can be reasonably excluded. As far as I know, for example, no oriental or native american (north or south) or inuit muslim suicide bomber has yet been identified and these ethnic groups are all reasonably easy to identify visually. Which takes the half million pool down to about 350,000.

Thus, the probability of any random 18-35 year old non white male sitting on the bus with you and planning to be your nemesis, is about 190 in 350,000 or roughly 540 in a million. However, the actual risk is massively reduced by the encouraging fact that a successful suicide bomber only ever succeeds once! Thus only one public journey, among the hundreds he or she might make during that age range make will ever be a lethal one for fellow passengers. It is impossible to decide a sensible figure for the number of journeys so I’ll take 1000 as an arbitrary starting figure. If that is broadly correct, then, for any given journey, the actual risk is reduced a thousandfold to.0.54 in a million or roughly 1 in 2 million.

None of which means anything until you start to compare it to other risks. As it happens, in the UK, the risk (of death resulting from an accident) every time you get in a car is roughly 1 in ten million (you have to knit the statistics from these sources to get to that 1, & 2) . So now that non white male sitting next to you on the bus represents about the same combined risk as 5 average UK car journeys. If you find that particularly alarming, you need to get out more.

For visiting Americans - whose per capita road deaths are approximately 3 times as high as ours, that non white male is only about as risky as 1.7 of your car journeys.

In fact that risk on the bus can probably be reduced still further, even in the UK, to way below the risk of a car journey. We don’t know for certain, but everything we’ve so far seen suggests that MIFT are not particularly interested in blowing themselves up on the 9.38 from Yate to Chipping Sodbury. In fact, despite the politicians mantra that “we’re all under threat”, it is not strictly true. The targets of choice are the juiciest ones. Big cities, particularly our capital, are clearly far more attractive than smaller fry.

So if you live outside the M25, and, perhaps, Birmingham and Manchester, I think we can safely divide the risk by another 10, leaving our non white male stranger equivalent, in risk, to half a UK car journey. So stop worrying.

Unless, of course, you do live inside the M25, in which case, the opposite has to apply and the non white stranger sat next to you is actually the same risk as 50 UK car journeys. Still nothing to panic about – I don’t see many people having anxiety attacks at the prospect of a month’s motoring – but no longer insignificant. But there are circumstances where the risks escalate considerably and, right now, the main circumstance is when boarding a plane; particularly if it is run by a British or American company and even more so if it is flying between Britain and the United States.

As of now, we know that airplanes are – or were until very recently - a major target of choice. It seems reasonable to allow that any British or American airline carries at least 10 times the risk of a ground based target inside the M25. And a flight between here and the US must be - say - 5 times as risky as that.

So if you're flying to Malaga on British Airways, the devout looking Somali across the aisle in your 777 represents a risk equivalent to 500 car journeys, or about the risk of a an average year of British motoring. Still not huge, but difficult to ignore. And if you're destination is New York then the risk is equivalent to 5 years of motoring. These are clear and substantial risks which it is utterly futile to ignore, particularly just because it appears to be politically incorrect to mention the Elephant in the room.

It is frankly insane to waste our limited resources rifling through the handbag of a 65 year old grandmother from either Dorset or Delhi when we know that 99% of the threat comes from a clearly delineated target group.

The obvious common sense strategy is to focus chiefly on that group and reduce checking of passengers outside that group to the "normal" random sampling rate. That means, in a typical plane load of 300 passengers, about 5% of whom are non white males in the 18-35 age range, we might perform a "standard" security check on 90% of the rest, with a random 10% subject to intense scrutiny, whereas 50-75% of the target group can expect the intense version. So about a dozen non white males and a couple of dozen of the other passengers will be subject to the serious inspection.

Clearly, if you're an innocent non white male in the target group, being 5-7 times more likely to be closely examined is an unfair burden. What can we do about that?

Answer: Accept that the inevitable increased security is a genuine burden and a necessary infringment of civil liberties. And compensate those who have to suffer the consequences.

How much and where does the money come from? Well, how much would you be prepared to pay to improve the security and your own confidence on your next flight? Do I hear £15 per flight? No? £14? £13? £12? Alright £10 and that's my final offer!

If 300 passengers all pay £10 into the kitty for each flight, then the 3 dozen or so who get the heavy treatment can each be compensated to the tune of £83. (I would personally prefer a nice round and reasonably attractive £100 compensation if I'm going to be grilled; that and my kitty contribution back. The minimum to make that self financing with 300 passengers and 36 being compensated for intense scrutiny is £13.14 per head.) The money will be refunded to their credit card there and then (provided, of course, they don’t turn out to be the terrorists we’re actually looking for).

Now, although it's still a pain in the arse to be thoroughly vetted (hopefully not literally - I'd demand at least £1000 for a "routine" cavity search!) the vast majority of us, white or non white, will be a lot less hostile to the - reasonable - intrusion if we're paid a hundred quid for our co-operation. Indeed, if we were stupid enough to allow it, with that kind of compensation, you’d even have people volunteering to be searched.

The intensive searching must, however, be properly randomised but based on current intelligence, so, today, the profile of those subject to thorough vetting would be similar to my illustration above.

I suspect that even if 100% of the non white male target group were routinely searched you wouldn’t hear too many complaints at 100 quid per inspection.

Indeed you might even hear racist complaints in the other direction – “why should the pakis fly cheaper than we do?” Answer: – because, for reasons beyond their control (if they're innocent) you and I cannot trust them as readily as we trust other passengers. So we have to put them through more serious security checks to reassure ourselves. But the vast majority of them are as innocent as you and I, so we are obliged to pay them to compensate them for the consequences of our fear.

Basically it's a simple, imaginative example of how the financial carrot can go a long way towards turning the justifiably increased security lemon into lemonade. The intelligence and recent historical evidence compel us to regard the 18-35 year old non white male as statistically more likely to be a threat than all other identifiable groups. It is common sense, therefore, to focus more of our security effort on them than on other ethnic groups.

One day, this situation might change and middle aged white male computer programmers might become the obvious threat, in which case I will look forward to my own flights being a hundred quid cheaper, but in the meantime that benefit would rightly goes to those who must bear the brunt of the new regime today.

In short, this proposal provides an equitable, self financing solution to the thorny issue of ethnic profiling, increases the effectiveness of our security counter-measures by focussing (not exclusively, but largely) on the credible target population and reduces the instinctual and partly rational fear most of us admit to feeling in those high risk situations. Not a bad result for one blog!

But all that has done nothing to solve the problem which led us here in the first place - the spreading collapse of confidence and trust felt by We The People for our Rulers.

Growing numbers of us realise that we no longer have good reason to believe a word they say and, as I said earlier, that is a very dangerous situation to be in. For my next trick, I'll be trying to outline the solution to that even bigger problem. Goodnight.

The Collapse of Public Confidence...

2006-09-01T00:44:00.000+01:00

...revealed by The London Bomb Plot

I disagreed with Michelle (my wife).

Her first reaction to the breaking news of the London Bomb Plot was "yeah, right!" or words to that effect. Regular readers will know how sceptical I am with regard to the "War on Terror". Nevertheless, this particular plot has had the smell of authenticity to me from day one. I am confident that a genuinely ambitious plot has been interdicted and that British Intelligence (probably with considerable assistance from the NSA and other arms of the Global Intelligence community) has scored a significant victory which will do much - as the details emerge - to restore their public image, and perhaps a slightly battered self confidence - after the debacles of the previous 12 months. I believe we will learn that, had the attack been successful, up to 3,000 more lives would have been added to the MIFT score card. Our lives, of course, count for anything up to 30 lesser (Arab, Muslim etc) lives each so it would have been quite a significant victory for them. Not quite “unimaginable” but pretty nasty all the same.

More significant, though, is that, on this occasion, my confidence that this has been a real threat puts me in the minority – at least among those who have ventured to comment, if not the wider, less involved, public.

The country has been told by its Rulers that we are under direct and imminent military threat – with a potential death toll, from a single co-ordinated attack, greater than the British civilian body count resulting from Germany’s supersonic V2 rockets at the tail end of the second world war.(2754 civilian deaths caused by 1115 V2 rockets in case you were curious)

This is not the first time we’ve been under real threat.

It is, however, the first time in history that specific detailed warnings of such threat have been so publicly and widely greeted by a chorus of raspberries from a sceptical and cynical public.

The polls don’t yet reveal that this is a majority reaction, but nevertheless, I regard it as a cause for limited celebration! As most revolutionary movements know, where the few activists lead, the passive majority will usually follow. This may be the moment that future historians will look back on as the clear signal that “the worm was about to turn”; the moment when the majority of subjects began to realise that they couldn’t and shouldn’t trust their rulers. ANY rulers. Ever

It’s only a pity that the worm appears to have picked this particular case on which to turn and a shame that the turning didn’t take place a couple of years ago, when it really would have been useful – but better late than never.

I think I actually shocked a few people last year with my private reaction the weekend after the death of Jean Charles De Menezes while the country was, understandably, obsessing over the disaster. I said we would come to be grateful for his timely sacrifice. It would, I said, ensure that our Police did not get too gung ho.

Consider what our worldview would be today if the man they shot on 22 July last year had in fact turned out to have been a suicide bomber with jacket primed to explode. Imagine how you and the rest of the country/world would have felt if it had become crystal clear and indisputable that the lives of 40 or so passengers had been saved by the heroic actions of the (so far) un-named police sergeant who blew his brains out on our behalf. (I’m willing to wager that we’d all know his name if it hadn’t been the wrong man – think on that)

In the period since then, they (our Rulers and their police) would have taken - and we would have let them - liberties with our Liberty. You can, for example, be damn sure they would have got their draconian 90 days detention. The PR disaster of Forest Gate would have been seen as a mild hiccup instead of the second calamity and, at the airports, we’d all no doubt be docilely queuing up and rolling over to let them search our cavities.

So, come August 10^th 2006, “so what” if there had been a little “collateral damage” during the raids? Rather than asking pointed and pertinent questions, we’d all be praising the bravery of the British Bobby blazing away against the dark forces of national and international terrorism. In short, I fear, not without basis, that our authorities would, in the absence of such an unmitigated disaster as the execution of the wrong man, be behaving much more like their American cousins have always done with their “shoot first ask questions later” strategy.

No hypothesis is worth a dime unless it can make useful predictions about events which have not yet been observed. This hypothesis is eminently testable.

My formal prediction is that as the evidence emerges it will become clear that this threat was not far removed from what we’ve heard so far. As a result, the government will argue that all their counter-terror policies have been vindicated and they must be given even more powers to fight the war on terror.

If they are prepared to be that brazen on the back of one PR success, after a string of PR failures, that will, I maintain, validate my hypothesis. If it hadn’t been for the killing of Jean Charles De Menezes, the Police State of the United Kingdom would be even more closely coupled to the Police State of America.

Given this prognosis, our task is to ensure that they don’t get away with their attempt to drag us further into the Orwellian Nightmare. The signs are ominous. Only today, we’ve been listening to President Blair telling us that the State should be seriously considering intervention in the anti-social behaviour of infants BEFORE THEY’RE EVEN BORN! He has moved beyond satire: Not content with the “Nanny” State, he’s now itching to impose what? The Midwife State?

Faith, Hate and Charity

2006-07-31T00:09:00.000+01:00

is the title of tonight's Panorama program. It tells the story of how Hamas gets some of its funding through Charities ostensibly collecting for humanitarian needs amongst the Palestinians. It showed us disturbing scenes of young girls singing about how it is now the duty of all good muslims to want to be suicide bombers and other inspirational stuff like that. Catchy song.

I think we were supposed to be morally outraged. I think the BBC have lost the plot. Judge for yourself. You can see it online here.

I sent them this response on their feedback page. You might want do something similar and, hey, its still a free country, so live a little!

I'll be pleasantly astonished if they select mine for publication (I suspect its a bit "in your face" for the Beeb. They prefer "moderate" responses that don't raise the blood pressure). So if I don't publish it here, nobody else will get to read it. Here it is:

*************************************************

The word that kept coming into my mind as I watched this attempt to invoke moral outrage in a British audience, was NORAID.

I mean Really...

What on earth do you expect? These people are being ground into the dirt and they turn out to have the courage and stupidity to dare to fight back. It is hardly surprising that they now support a psychotic ideology.

The longer this war goes on, the more valid their arguments now seem, the more Said Qutb becomes mainstream. And more and more of their psychotic answers, particularly about the attitude of the Western World, are validated within days by the American Empire or its proxies.

I can't go as far as wishing them "good luck" because although I recognise that from their point of view there is no longer any other choice, I can also see that the only reason they hold their point of view is because they share a religious psychosis with their enemies.

They (Militant Islam), the Israelis, certainly the American establishment and possibly a small slice of our own are now behaving in ways which can only be described as clinically insane.

We might occasionally be shocked by some of their activities, but, if you are awake and aware of what is really going on in the Middle East, there is no reason to be surprised.

Prosecuting Scotland Yard, following the public execution of Jean Charles De Menezes, using UK Health and Safety Law...

2006-07-19T10:19:00.000+01:00

...is rather like prosecuting the Crew of the Enola Gay for a breach of Japanese fire regulations.

Have you heard of Anthony Diotaiuto? (before now) No I thought not.

You won't have heard his name elsewhere - unless you're a resident of Sunset, Florida, or a keen follower of the drug war. Which is what particularly disturbed me about his story as I was rejigging my Police State of America page.

More precisely, it crystallised an obvious truth about the vast majority of the stories on that page.. Just scroll up or down and see how many mainstream sources there are. Believe me their scarcity is not because I avoid mainstream sources. It is, after all, something of an evangelising page trying, vainly, to get the average American to wake up and smell the coffee. I'm sure I'll convince more people by appealing to sources they recognise and trust as authorities (whether or not I do) than by trying to be politically correct and sticking with only the sources of which I approve. I cannot afford to be that selective.

In general, the source I've used is simply the best I could find at the time - provided their version of events appeared to supported by more than their own reportage; and the plain fact is that the mainstream have largely ignored most of those stories.

But Anthony's story, in particular, surely should have been mainstream. It seems to me FAR more horrendous than the tale of Jean Charles De Menezes, whose death we are about to commemorate as I write these words.

Police told reporters the day of the shooting they knew Diotaiuto has a license to possess a weapon, so they sent in the SWAT team to lessen the possibility of violence. They did not explain why they thought a surprise attack [by masked armed men] on the home of an unsuspecting but presumably armed man would produce a nonviolent result -- and it didn't.[emphasis added]

...next-door neighbor Rudy Strauss told the Sun-Sentinel he and his wife were awake when the raid occurred and heard the crash of Diotauito's door being smashed in, but heard no yelling announcing the presence of police. There were no words spoken outside, he said, adding that he and his wife watched the raid unfold from their window. "I heard this loud bang, and I saw a flash," Strauss said Tuesday. "I never heard them say 'Police.' If somebody were pounding on the door, I would definitely hear that, or if they yelled, 'Police, police!'"

In Menezes' case, as in the case of Anthony Dotaiuto, the cops really screwed things up. But - apart from some folk on the outer fringes of the CT circles - no-one doubts that, in the context, it is highly likely that the London executioner sincerely believed he was preventing a suicide bomber making his kill. He had reasonable cause to believe that his own life and the lives of other nearby civilians was at immediate risk. He was wrong. He - and his support infrastructure blew it big time. He's going to have to live with that guilt for the rest of his life. In contrast, the Florida SWAT team created the conditions which were likely to produce a violent outcome.

Here in the UK, we're still not happy with the police account of that incident and the media and the victim's family are still kicking lumps out of the State for their failure. The story has been on and off the front pages ever since it happened a year ago. Do a google for "Jean Charles De Menezes" (or click on the link to save your tired fingers) and you'll get half a million pages in response.

Now do the same again for Anthony Diotaiuto.

It varies, but you'll probably get between 1,100 and 2,000 pages. Actually, the first time I did that, a couple of weeks ago, I got just 172 pages, so the word seems to be spreading as we speak. It might have changed a bit more by the time you click on it, but the point should stand.

What explains that dramatic difference in coverage? Is the American Media,together with the world of Conspiracy Theorists and the world of random Blogging, suffering a collective case of Attention Deficit Disorder?

The execution of Anthony D was far less defensible than the killing of the unfortunate Brazilian.

What did the police in each case believe?

Well, for the CTs feeding on the carcase of Menezes, nothing will dissuade them from their pet conspiracies such as this one painted by infowars. Read it through and then ask yourself a couple of questions.

If the police knew - as the CT suggests - that Menezes was not a suicide bomber, and knew what we now know about this innocent victim and his complete lack of connections with anything the police would be remotely interested in, then just why did they kill him specifically? Was he selected by some random lottery for the privelege? Had he smiled for too long at one of the cops' sisters? And why the obviously botched chase, in which they nearly missed their target? Surely if they'd predetermined his fate, they would have managed to plan to have the personnel in place at the right time. And why weren't the media in on the act? They usually are if you follow any of the standard CTs. Yet, on this occasion, they have been happy to attack the head of the Metropolitan Police quite openly for his apparent failures.

Although not specifically mentioned by the infowars article, the CT "consensus" seems to be that the murder of Menezes was carried out to frighten the citizens. So why do the CTs think that Londoner's either could be or needed to be "frightened" by this execution? After surviving the WWII Blitz and 30 years of IRA terrorism, London is about the most prepared city on the planet for dealing with these incidents without over-dramatisation. It would take a lot more than a single staged execution to frighten Londoners into submission. And so on.

The CT's around the London Bombings and Menezes' execution are even more divorced from reality than the 9-11 fairy stories (and, yes, I'm still a member of Scholars for 911 Truth - that's why I get to see the fairy stories).

Well, OK, perhaps not quite that gaga.

You do have to go a long way to beat the blue screen hologram nonsense, (personally, I prefer this version) but they are in the same league. And their proponents, like so many CTs, are not worth arguing with. They don't have the first grasp of how to construct an empirical hypothesis, so their ignorance forms an impenetrable shield - every bit as solid as the shield of a religious fundamentalist - behind which their logic appears to be self consistent and, to them, its the rest of us who "just don't get it".

In the real, as opposed to virtual, London, the Police knew absolutely nothing at all about Menezes. They believed they were tracking an Ethiopian named Osman Hussain. The handling of the perceived threat exposed major resource gaps in their coverage. As a result, they were severely overstretched in their attempt to prevent further anticipated attacks across London and only had surveillance operatives (as opposed to an armed response team) keeping an eye on Menezes/Hussain.

As a consequence, when "the suspect" emerged from his house, there were no authorised armed officers available to intercept him before he got on the bus and began the last journey of his life. It took so long for armed officers to arrive, that when they caught up with him on the train they didn't have time for a proper briefing by the surveillance team - who, by then appear to have concluded that Menezes probably wasn't a suicide bomber. They arrived pumped full of adrenalin, and believing they had no time to make a detailed assessment of the target. They clearly had to make a judgement call and we all know the tragic results.

All of which raises one last objection to the CT. If the purpose of the "assassination"was to intimidate the population into accepting more US style Police State measures, one obvious first measure would be the routine American style arming of all Police officers. So why (if it was a conspiracy) hasn't there been any significant clamour for such a change? After all, that would have solved the very real resource problem at the time - yet no one (who matters) has been promoting such a policy.

I wouldn't want to be either a member of Menezes' family or the officer who pumped 7 bullets into the Brazilian's head. But, assuming that is a fair summary of the event, what we see is a logistics problem escalating to a major disaster. We do not see malice or wilfull negligence. Shit happens.

In contrast to the London Police ignorance regarding Menezes, in Sunset, Florida, this is what they knew about their target:

He had no history of violence. His only criminal record was for marijuana possession 7 years previously as a 16 year old. He had a licence for a firearm. He worked two part time jobs to make ends meet while attending community college and he'd just sold his car to raise funds for a deposit on a modest house for his mother. They knew that he'd just got back from one of his jobs at 5 oclock in the morning and was likely to be exhausted - the reason they chose 6.15 am for the raid.

On the basis of that profile and, presumably, evidence of illegal activities which have yet to be made public, they believed - we are supposed to believe - that this man was an armed and violent drug dealer. We are also supposed to believe that when confronted, and commanded to "freeze" he fled to his bedroom and armed himself, presumably with the intent of resisting arrest.

Diotaiuto's body was found in his bedroom closet where he had either chosen to "make his last stand" or run and hide from the masked armed raiders. He had no less than 10 bullet wounds. His own gun was not found near the body and had not been discharged. (And some reports suggest it was only a "BB gun" anyway).

How many violent drug dealers bother to get a Licence for their firearm? Close, I suspect, to zero. Your average violent drug dealer doesn't take too kindly to the paperwork that goes with a Florida "conceal-carry permit"; the fingerprinting, criminal background check, the fee, and enrollment in a firearms safety class; they just don't go with the image.

How many violent drug dealers have two part time jobs and sell their cars to raise money for deposits on modest houses? How many violent drug dealers have no previous history of violence?

They apparently believed they were arresting a Cannabis dealer in his own home. Yes he might have been armed, but he had no history of violent conduct and marijuana dealing aint that kind of a scene. Certainly not at his level anyway. There was no danger whatsoever to other innocent civilians - except from the SWAT team themselves who would, no doubt, have shot anyone in their way. They obviously didn't even have good cause to believe he was a dealer: He had neither the profile nor the lifestyle to sustain such a suspicion. (And they found less than two ounces of cannabis on the premises)

Yet far from hauling the police over the coals for this gross improportionality and forcing them to adopt accountable procedures, the media hasn't even bothered to tell the story. Even most Americans have never heard of Anthony
Diotaiuto (update)

And far from seriously considering whether there was a legal case for manslaughter...

...which, in my view ought be an automatic charge whenever the police shoot a civilian. But more of that in a minute. At least, in the UK, that was a serious option...

And far from desperately trying to appease an outraged public reasonably well informed by an outraged media...

... but, on the up side, also far from the embarrassment of having to resort to "Health and Safety" Legislation to offer that appeasement. Jeez. As implied by the title of this rant, that's like trying to appease the citizens of Hiroshima by agreeing to prosecute the crew of the Enola Gay for a breach of Japanese fire regulations.

And I thought it was the Americans who didn't understand irony!!

In contrast to all the fuss over here by what looks like a tragic but comprehensible misjudgement, the American media lies prostrate while watching the Police routinely murder American citizens and the American Supreme Courts voting (in 2004) to Make it Tougher to Sue Police in such cases, arguing:

In a wrongful arrest and a questionable shooting, [they] say officers should be given the benefit of the doubt.

Talk about putting the cart before the horse! EVERY police shooting in a civil society should be regarded as highly questionable and, by default, the killer should expect prosecution. This does NOT require a reversal of the principle "innocent until proven guilty". It merely amounts to a recognition that the killing of our own citizens is the gravest action ANY other citizen - military, police or civilian can perform and they should ALWAYS be required to account, publicly, for their actions. The obvious and most formal place to make that account is to a Court. If the evidence presented to that court is adjudged by a jury to vindicate the killer's actions, then all charges can be dropped and, if appropriate, the killer can even be rewarded with the gratitude of the community.

In the self-same civilised society, this would be a very rare and shocking event (like it is in most of the Western World in fact). It should be almost unheard of for a Police officer ever to kill a citizen. It should always be an event worthy of blanket media coverage and public outrage.

In a country, however, where the Police routinely kill thousands of citizens every year, like some 3rd World countries and the United States, it is apparently no more newsworthy than the average fatal car crash.

We shouldn't be squeamish about the conduct of this War, whether we choose to call it the "War on Terror" or "World War Three/Four". There will be tragic mistakes from time to time, like the Menezes case. Even the Trusted Surveillance solution I advocate will not eliminate such errors - although it would dramatically reduce them. I've argued the case elsewhere for democratic decisions on whether we should even be in the war, but now, like it or not, we're in it and the lynchpin for maintaining civil control of our conduct of the war, is that all such mistakes should be routinely vetted by We The People and not by a committee of apparachiks with a vested interest in protecting incompetence or conspiracy.

We The People, acting in the form of a suitably selected Jury, should be the ones who decide whether or not in any given instance, the killing was a proportionate and justified response to the circumstances or whether the killer has committed a crime. It is, of course, already this way for any civilian who kills another civilian. They must convince a Jury that they had no other reasonable choices. Why on earth should a professionally trained killer, employed by the State to protect its citizens, not have to answer the same questions in open court - or even a closed court if the Jury accepts the need for secrecy?

You cannot get much further away from that model of social control than for a "Supreme Court" to award judicial carte blanche to the State Militia. Such a ruling is consistent only with the behaviour of dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. It is the classic imprimatur of the Police State. The Police in America are now - by "legal" definition - always on the right side of the Law.

The senile Justices are obviously too degenerate and the American media too arrogant to experience the deep shame they have brought upon their country. For pity's sake when are we going to see the American people rising up, in Vietnam War style protest against their military regime?

And for our own sake, let's just hope the rest of the West isn't going to follow them down the plughole.

Defending the Indefensible

2006-02-22T00:41:00.000Z

I'm posting this to the Scholars for 911 forum tonight, so I thought I might as well publish it here as well. It's a free country, after all. For the time being...

BBC's Newsnight has just aired a devastating exclusive preview of a Human Rights First report being published at 11.00 am EST tomorrow (22 Feb)

I know, of course, that this is not obviously 9-11 Research related but I believe it matters to us for this reason:

Conceivably the most difficult aspect of our task (once we've agreed whatever that is) is convincing those who do not share our obsession that what we are revealing is remotely credible. Despite the almost universal low esteem in which politicians are held, only a tiny minority of the population is prepared to think the unthinkable - that any Americans might have been directly implicated in either the planning or exploitation of the events of 9-11. That high level members of the Government may be directly involved is on a credibility par with holocaust denial in most peoples' minds.

What items like this one do is begin to chip away at that credibility barrier. Once people can see that Donald Rumsfeld can be (even remotely) involved in mandating the torture of prisoners, it's just a little less of a stretch to imagine that he might have given the plausibly deniable nod to the controlled demolition of the towers.

You can see the Newsnight "exclusive" preview on the website (look for the "Latest programme available for 24 hours after broadcast" link on the right hand side) but only until 22.30 GMT tomorrow. However, I have taped it and will make it available as an mpg on request or upload it to one of the freestorage sites in the next day or so. It is a "must see". (It's the first 20 minutes or so of tonight's programme) (Update: sorry. Screwed up. mpg not available)

I will comment on what I consider the main issues raised in a later posting. My priority now is to bring it to your attention in time for you to visit the Newsnight webcast before they take it down tomorrow night.

The gist is that a very well researched case, mostly based on official documents now in the public domain, shows that at least 98 deaths have taken place amongst the prisoners held by the US since 2001. Deaths which are directly attributable to their treatment in custody by their jailers. Of these, at least 34 appear to be homicide and at least 12 were tortured to death. A handful of the cases have resulted in disciplinary or criminal charges. The most serious penalty to date being a 5 month prison sentence. The evidence appears to show that the regime wasn't merely tolerated but encouraged as a matter of policy formulated at the highest level.

I believe this has the weight to become a major scandal. But, as you will see for yourself, we can already see the attack dogs line of defence. In an amazing interview with David Rivkin (former White House legal advisor) we get to see the tactics they've already planned for this stage of the Big Lie. His defence is to accuse critics of "terrible historical amnesia" in forgetting how bad previous wars have been. We've only tortured 10 or 12 out of 100,000. Peanuts. There's always some bad apples etc (Not direct quotes, just the flavour). He pointedly avoids the issue that the bad apples aren't, in this case, at the bottom of the barrel.

Anyway, go watch. Form your own conclusions.

The Shortcut to Democracy

2006-02-12T16:52:00.000Z

I particularly want some feedback on this one. Gimme your critiques and suggestions then I'll polish it up and submit it as a K5 story. It'll get a lot more attention there than among my handful of loyal readers!

I mentioned the basic topic in my last but one blog. But only in the form of a throwaway line as one of the defining points of a democracy.

The beauty of the revolutionary step I am about to outline is that it will be relatively simple to implement. It doesn't require any major change to the political or economic infrastructure. Yet it will take us about 50% of the way towards a truly democratic system in a single step.

It doesn't even need a new political party. And, while it would be nice - and much easier - if we could win the support of the existing political parties, their opposition need not prevent us implementing the change. Some of the existing parties will support us from the start and we can harness their expertise and organisation to roll the movement forward.

Best of all, it doesn't require any particular political point of view other than support for the concept of democracy. So a wide range of voters and activists will like the idea, even if their leaders don't.

The big idea?

Put final control of the Law formally into the hands of "We The People", through constitutional enhancement of the Jury's function and status.

In short, why waste our time and resources trying to change or prevent the illegitimate laws being passed by authoritarian governments around the world? Let them pass whatever laws they like. Just make sure that the Jury has the final word on whether or not any given law is applied in court (and, if so, how).

This requires three changes to the judicial system and/or constitution.

1. Take the power in the courtroom out of the hands of judges and put the Jury in charge.

2. Give defendant's the right to request that a Jury dismiss their case because the law is wrong in principle or at least inappropriate in their case.

3. In the event that a defendant succeeds in such a challenge, allow a referendum to decide whether to retain or reject the relevant law.

How, you ask, is this the shortcut to democracy?

The detailed version will be in "Reasons To Be Cheerful - Part 3" of Chapter 10. But here's the outline:

What does it mean to put the Jury in charge?

The first objective is to emphasise what the political class, around the world, has clearly either forgotten or ignored. The State, in so far as it is necessary at all, is supposed to be the Servant of the People, not its Master.

For which reason, the first obvious sign of change, will be of immense symbolic significance. The court will no longer rise whenever the presiding judge enters or leaves the courtroom. That honour and respect will transfer to the Jury. So that everyone is reminded that the court represents We The People, NOT the State.

Judges will retain their presiding role and continue to act as referee between the opposing sides. They will still even be entitled to make judicial rulings. However, the second result of the new rules would be that either side could challenge a Judge's ruling on any point by direct appeal to the Jury.

The Jury would first decide whether to hear the appeal and, if so, would allow all three parties (Defence, Prosecution and Judge) to defend their position before deciding whether or not to grant the appeal. It could request expert witnesses if it felt the need and instruct advocates to speak on its behalf.

The Jury could also make rulings to deter time wasting. Thus if a defendant or his legal representative appears to be making frivolous challenges the Jury can threaten - for instance - to refuse any number of future challenges (in that case) even if well founded.

So most cases will proceed in much the same way as they do today. The differences will only show up where either the law doesn't already command consensus or the law is clearly being abused. In such cases, the effect will be dramatic.

Consider, for example, the prosecution of a Librarian under the Patriot Act. Her crime: revealing, to a borrower, that the FBI had requested his reading list. Most Americans would probably think such a prosecution barbaric and unacceptable. Nevertheless, the way the judicial system works today, assuming that she did in fact spill the beans and can be shown, beyond reasonable doubt, to have done so, the Jury will be required to find her guilty as charged because she has undoubtedly broken the "law of the land".

This scenario is only plausible because the court system is under control of the State and not The People.

Ironically, even today's Jury could, in fact, throw out such a case without any change in the rules. The chief reason that we need to change to rules anyway is to overcome the reasons why hardly any jurors are aware of their democratic "power of veto".

The power I refer to is technically known by the ugly mouthful: Jury Nullification. I've written about it elsewhere as a strategy for ending the civil war popularly known as the war on drugs.

No one has ever opposed that suggestion but they have pointed out that, though I'm technically correct, the State reserves such enormous powers to itself that it can effectively block Jury Nullification in three ways.

1 It suppresses discussion. It ensures that no mention of the power is part of any school curriculum or courses on the American Constitution. Through indirect means, it also ensures that our friends in the media don't spread the word.

2 They have forbidden any mention of it in court. If a defendant tries to inform the Jury of its powers, the Judge can dismiss the Jury and even declare a mistrial.

3 Judges have given themselves the authority to reject or dismiss any Juror who (stupidly) indicates that they are aware of Jury Nullification OR owns up to disagreeing with the relevant law under which a particular case is being prosecuted. For example, in order to convict Edward Rosenthal in 2002, they had to go through 80 potential jurors before they could find 12 who did not admit that they would refuse to convict because they disapproved of the ban on medical marijuana which had recently been made legal under Rosenthal's State Law by a democratic majority of 78%. (The judge also prohibited any mention of Rosenthal's arguments for breaking the law - viz the requirement for medication. Even the 12 tame jurors, when they learned, after they convicted him, that he had been a medical user, were appalled by the revelation and half apologised publicly for their conviction - "the conscience of the community had been stifled".)

These techniques have ensured that despite over 300 years of Jury Nullification, only a tiny percentage of citizens are even aware of its existence. The State has, to date, made a damn good job of ensuring that all the real power remains in its hands.

This proposal will eliminate that democratic deficit in a single blow.

"The role of our jurors is to protect private citizens from dangerous government laws and actions. Many existing laws erode and deny the rights of the people. Jurors protect against tyranny by refusing to convict harmless people."

That is a quote from the Fully Informed Jury Association Home Page. Check it out. In doing so, you'll be taking the first essential step. You'll be making yourself a fully informed potential Juror.

Step Two requires us to pass new laws. In the USA, that probably means you'll need a new amendment to your Constitution. The 28th Amendment - "Legal Supremacy of the Jury"

That is going to be much harder than making yourself an informed Juror. We've got to persuade the majority of voters to back us. But, given that this is a non partisan proposal, we should be able to attract the true democrats from across the political spectrum. Usefully, we will also expose those who, for one reason or another, don't believe democracy is such a good idea.

Step Three is really the result of the success of step two and might logically form part of the same legal changes. It is the requirement to set up the procedure for referenda following successful appeals to the Jury.

Any successful appeal would result in acquittal for the defendant in the particular case, but over and above that, the Jury would have three very simple powers in this context.

1 It could decide that although the law was generally valid, it should not have been used in this case. The case would be dismissed without any consequences for the statute itself.

2 The Jury's intermediate option would be to decide that the case exposed a fundamental weakness or injustice in either the letter of the law, or the manner in which it was implemented. They could require revisions either to content of the law, or the guidelines on implementation, to eliminate the exposed problem.

3 The Jury's nuclear option would be a declaration that the law is wholly without merit and should be scrapped.

In the first case, the decision of the Jury is final and the matter ends with that decision. (Subject to the usual rights of appeal - which implies a case for a higher level jury but that can wait for the second stage in the "revolution"!)

The second and third cases have considerable implications politically, financially and, perhaps, even strategically.

Hence the next step requires the Jury to justify its own recommendation to at least three other Arbitrating Juries assembled for the purpose. The Judge who presided at the original case would have the right to make the case for the status quo, or not as he chooses. The challenging Jury would have the assistance of expert advocates of their choice and the arbitrating Juries could request any witnesses they thought fit and to appoint advocates to put their questions. This would include powers to sub poena relevant politicians to explain their intentions in regard to the law.

The arbitrating juries do not mix with each other and must reach their own decisions independently. A majority of each jury must agree, however, before the original Jury's recommendation becomes a formal instruction.

In the case of instruction to revise, the existing legislature is required to revise the law or its implementation in accordance with the Jury's verdict. They can take as long as they like about it because from that same moment, the prosecuting authorities are forbidden to prosecute any further case under similar conditions to those in the case which has just been dismissed.

For example, if the Jury has just decided that the Librarian's case should be dismissed because no Law should be that repressive, it may, nevertheless not wish to challenge the whole Patriot Act, a) because only a tiny aspect of it is relevant to this case and b) they might even approve of other parts of the act. So the instruction could be limited specifically to removing the authoritarian block on telling citizens that the FBI is spying on them.

It is possible that the Senate, Congress and President never manage to agree the necessary revision. It doesn't matter because the Jury's decision has the authority of legal precedent and prevents the prosecution of similar cases.

Similarly, in the case of instruction to revoke a law, with immediate effect, no further prosecutions are permitted under that law, until or unless the revocation referendum has been held and the people have voted to RETAIN the relevant law. So, again, it is in the interests of those who think the law is popular and necessary to organise a referendum at the earliest opportunity. (Oh, and, in the event of a dispute about the wording of the referendum, the arbitration juries have the final word)

That'll do for now.

Stew on that. Consider how quickly we could end the routine abuse of authority by any government which had to operate under these new rules. And we wouldn't even have to elect a different government!

Obviously it wouldn't cure everything. It wouldn't, for example, be enough to prevent Presidents or Prime Ministers going to war. But it would be enough, for example, to prevent governments suppressing dissent and opposition by prosecuting opponents for breaches of illegitimate laws designed to prevent such opposition.

The Big Lie Continues

2006-02-12T03:29:00.000Z

DavidT ticked me off for my inconsistent blogging a while ago and gave me permission:

"If you've got things to say, say them! Even if you have to be brief and the content of an entry primarily consists of a quote from something you've read and a small comment upon it. "

on which basis, this is going to be my shortest blog to date.

First; if you haven't already, it's time you read this.

When I first heard this ludicrous story (if you're too lazy to check out the link, I'm talking about the alleged thwarted plot to fly another plane into the Library Tower in LA), and that it was supposed to have happened - sorry, supposed to have been prevented by excellent use of intelligence - in October 2002, all sorts of obvious questions popped into my head, but, as usual, no one in the media seemed to dare to ask them.

The most obvious is why - if they knew all about this failed attack - did they not choose to mention it in the propaganda push for the invasion of Iraq a mere 17 months later?

And, it turns out, even the Mayor of LA hadn't been made aware of this allegedly thwarted plot! Do they really think that we'll think that's remotely credible ferchrissake?!?!?!

And wasn't it such a useful coincidence that the alleged target was handily demolished in the movie "Independence Day" so that the collaborating media had access to some wonderfully realistic and dramatic footage showing just what destroying the Library Tower might look like.

The linked story says it more calmly than I can.

The most significant thing about this story is that it reveals exactly how stupid the puppetmasters believe the American public to be.

The question is, are they right?

Is There Ever a Case For War?

2006-02-07T11:13:00.000Z

This piece was inspired by one of my own discussion board members who wrote:

I recently had a discussion with a few of my friends who happen to be very anti-war. They are stubborn, so the best I could do was to refer them to this chapter, specifically the part about the "bullies" and the "bullied."

The question I proposed to them was "Was it necessary for the U.S. to become involved in World War II, specifically the war in Europe?"

I believe it was absolutely necessary. Hitler's Nazi war machine was far to dangerous to be left unchecked.

I propose the same question to you and your readers, but on a broader scale.

Is it ever necessary for a country considered a world super power to become involved in the affairs of smaller countries, or countries of the same size, in order to protect the people's way of life in its own country?

To which I replied:

You wrote:
I recently had a discussion with a few of my friends who happen to be very anti-war. They are stubborn, so the best I could do was to refer them to this chapter, specifically the part about the "bullies" and the "bullied."

The way that reads, people who haven't read that chapter will be thinking it is (and therefore I am) "pro war". So I'd better start by putting that straight. I am VERY anti war. I am also, however, VERY anti Cancer. But shit happens. In other words, just being opposed to something doesn't mean you can prevent it and it doesn't mean you're not going to take an active part in it. Most people, for example, don't like being wage slaves - particularly if they do menial jobs for pathetic wages. But most of us still are wage slaves regardless.

I object to War but recognise that there are some circumstances when the alternative to fighting is dying and I am not sufficiently altruistic to accept that alternative without some extremely compelling argument. I am entirely normal in this respect. For obvious Darwinian reasons, humans with a saintly tendency to allow themselves to be killed rather than fight have a major handicap - they tend to be selected out of the gene pool. Hence not many perfect pacifist altruists are still around to persuade us. It may be that your friends are a very rare example.

We can test for the condition with a couple of sample questions.

Select the answers below each question which best reflects your own response:

1 You are about to be raped and cannot escape. Do you try to defend yourself?
a) No. I lie back and think of England (or whatever)
b) Only if I think I can win
c) Unless I was certain I would lose and be seriously damaged in the process
d) To the death

2 You walk in to find your 12 year old daughter is being raped. You have the weapon of your choice at your disposal and no physical iimitations. Do you:
a) Call the police and, while waiting for them to arrive, try, verbally, to persuade the attacker to desist
b) Exert just enough force to end the attack and arrest the attacker
c) Kill the bastard

OK, we should have weeded out the true pacifists by now. Anyone who answered a and a really ought to add a bit of red meat to the diet. The vast majority of people will answer b or c in both scenarios. Those with surplus testosterone will go for d and c. (which, I'm told, is very uncomfortable. Especially if you're male)

And, unless you did answer - and mean it - a and a, then you are not even qualified to argue that that there is no case for War. Period.

Really, that's no more than an SBO (Statement of the Bleedin Obvious - for the sake of new readers). If we didn't have the biological programming to defend ourselves or our loved ones from attack, we wouldn't have survived as long as we have.

Equally obviously, however, if we can't control our warlike tendencies, we won't survive too much longer - for all the reasons I spell out in the second part of Chapter 10.

Which is why I argue, in the first part, that the main innovation we should bring to modern warfare is the introduction of democratic control.

The normal reaction to that suggestion is a puzzled frown.

"We've already got democratic control and look where that's got us"

or

"I'm perfectly happy with the democratic control we've already got"

Here are some simple tests for the existence of Democracy in the country you regard as your own:

1 Does your country/grouping hold elections?
a) No - ours is a Monarchy or other form of unnaccountable dictatorship.
b) Yes - For a head of State with executive authority and for a chamber of representatives with executive authority
c) For an executive chamber(s) whose members are subject to recall.
d) For Delegates to a Debate and Drafting Chamber with conditional executive powers only and who are subject to recall.

2 Does your country make laws by referenda?
a) never
b) rarely
c) whenever the political establishment think its a good idea
d) whenever the people think its a good idea

3 Does your Army elect its officers?
a) Of course not.
b) Of course.

4 In your judicial system, who has the final word on any legal matter?
a) A Government Department or Official
b) An Unelected Supreme Court
c) An Elected Supreme court
d) The Jury

Anyone who answered d,d,b,d is living in a true democracy. I would guess it must be the Democratic Federation of Cloudcuckooland. The rest of us, however, don't. Live in a democracy that is. The best most of us can do - in the West - is b,b,a,b

Half of my book to date is attempting to explain what democracy really is and why we really need it. I don't intend to try to repeat that here. Suffice to say that the defining function of democracy is that ALL important decisions are made BY the people not FOR or on behalf of the people. (And "We The People" decide what IS important) Switzerland is the only country that gets close to this ideal by virtue of its people's ability to call for a referendum on virtually any issue at virtually any time. None of the rest of us come within light years of true democracy.

My support for any war is conditional on that decision being made under true democratic conditions. Furthermore, were I living in a true democracy, my first argument, in regard to any prospective war, would be that the decision to fight should only be implemented if it can attract the support of at least 90-95% of the citizens. This is not a position I take on the question of war alone. I am opposed to the "simple majority" concept of democracy. Clearly, if a decision is genuinely made by 50% plus one of all those entitled to vote, that does indeed constitute a true democratic decision. But it is clearly also - on the right issue - a recipe for disaster up to and including Civil War. No important decision can afford to have nearly half the citizens opposed to it.

I would prefer 95 to 100% support for any serious decision but I accept that giving a veto to less than 1 in 20 of the population is likely, at this stage in human development, to cause sufficient resentment to make even "near consensus" neither achievable nor acceptable. My hope and ambition is that I can persuade people who aren't even used to the "simple majority" form of democracy to leapfrog over it and go straight to the "near consensus" form I prefer.

To proceed with any serious policy, particularly on such a contentious and dangerous undertaking as a war, with significantly less than unanimous approval is a recipe for - at best - a domestic "fifth column" of "traitors" "spies" and home grown terrorists who are sympathetic to the enemy or, at least, hostile to the state; and, as I've already mentioned, at worst, a full blown Civil War.

So, in my world, no war without massive support amounting to near consensus. That would have been enough to prevent the illegitimate war in Vietnam for example, which never attracted even significant majority support from the American public, let alone near consensus. And, more topically and recently, it would have also prevented the disastrous invasion of Iraq.

But I do accept that even that high democratic hurdle will be crossed on some occasions. Following 9-11, the invasion of Afghanistan, with the support of most of the International community, for instance, probably did achieve the high level of support I would argue for.

You wrote:
Is it ever necessary for a country considered a world super power to become involved in the affairs of smaller countries, or countries of the same size, in order to protect the people's way of life in its own country?

Except for the 0.1% of pacifists who answered a and a above, we've already accepted that there are legitimate reasons to go to war.

Thucydies was an Athenian aristo who was active two and half thousand years ago, in the period the city state was developing its near perfect model of democracy. His claim to fame includes the definition of the causes of War. Fear (for our collective security) in the face of a potential enemy is number one. Prestige or self image is his second choice and the third motivation is material gain (theft or greed).

Many argue that his definitions hold true today but, frankly, I can't see "Prestige" playing too well on the 21st century public stage. Nor, of course, does material gain, but whereas I doubt that Prestige has even been a motivation since the 19th century, I think we can be quite confident that greed has been a primary motivator even in this century. But it is not a motivation they can own up to. (Ironically, it looks like they won't even make the gains they were hoping for but that's another story.) The point is that the only reason for going to War, which is acceptable in the modern world is "Fear" justified by evidence of malice or malicious and imminent intent. "Clear and Present Danger" wraps it up nicely.

It is not seriously contested that Hitler's Fascist Imperial ambitions, combined with Japanese Militarism constituted sufficient Clear and Present Danger to justify World War II. Yet it is also not seriously contested that America manipulated Japan into launching the attack on Pearl Harbour so that America would have the legitimate excuse it needed to join the War. Nor is it seriously contested that the economic conditions which led inexorably to Hitler's demand for "Lebensraum" were primarily the consequence of appalling political and economic mismanagement of the waning British Empire.

It always takes two to tango, of course, but a fair portion of the "blame" for that war can be squarely laid on both American and Britain for producing the conditions which led to it, but, nevertheless, having produced the mess, they had no choice but to clean it up - much as we are seeing in Iraq today.

The interesting question is whether we would or should have gone to War against Hitler had he not invaded Poland but still continued with his plans to eliminate the Jews. That directly touches on the final part of your own question. I have argued that we should have, but I doubt that we would have. At that time in history the notion of invading a country on behalf of its oppressed minorities had never even been seriously contemplated. They needed the more concrete excuse which invasion of a third party "ally" provided. American needed the excuse of a direct attack.

Things have moved on considerably since then, to the extent that the international community is deeply ashamed of its failure to intervene in Rwanda in the mid 90s and realised that it had intervened too late to prevent massive suffering in the first Balkan war. It was thus able to tolerate, if not quite support, the demolition of the repressive Serbian regime in Kosovo and put an end to Milosevic's petty tyrrany before it got too big to deal with. These campaigns, together with the residual good will left over from 9-11 led the Americans to believe they could invade Iraq under the umbrella of pretending to be a liberation force. The leading neocons actually convinced themselves that their forces would be welcomed with open arms on the streets of Baghdad.

The upside of that is that the Americans have got a bloody nose in the process and learned a very very expensive lesson ($300 Billion and rising) which makes it much less likely that they'll indulge in further military empire building for a very long time.

The downside is that there still are regimes we probably ought to depose (North Korea and Zimbabwe for instance) for the real benefit of their people and with the world's remaining superpower licking its wounds, that is now even less likely to happen than it would have been 60 years ago.

Having said that, perhaps it opens the door to the strategy I have always favoured in preference to War - viz selective assassination. I've been saying it for years and said it again here just a few weeks before they invaded Iraq. Our real quarrel was with the leadership, which numbered about 1,000. Those were the only ones we had any kind of dispute with and, rather than kill another couple of hundred thousand innocent civilians or military conscripts, we could have used our superior technology to pick off those targets.

I can't say I'm a fan of "Assassination Politics" because I don't believe there is any dispute which cannot be resolved by intelligent negotiation. But given that there often isn't much intelligence at the negotiating table, and physical violence will, therefore, often be inevitable, it seems to me infinitely preferable to kill just the leaders who are unable to resolve their disputes, rather than their citizens who have no real voice or interest in those disputes.

Naturally, Assassination is not a popular policy with the elected and unelected dictators who lead us - from well behind the front line - into battle; not even when it is the obvious way to dispose of their sworn enemies. It seems that they're just about intelligent enough to recognise that what's sauce for the goose might become sauce for the gander...

Compare and Contrast

2006-01-29T01:19:00.000Z

Guess Who.

Guessed Which? Or do you think they're both the same man?

Here's a clue:

The ratio of the distance from tip-of-nose to ear lobe is 1.1 for suspect D and 1.7 for suspect E The ratio of nose-length to nose width is even more distinctive for the two individuals, 2.5 for suspect D but only 1.3 for suspect E.

OK, now - no cheating - which one is the real Bin Laden?

Anyone pick "E"?

I'm sorry. For you Tommy, the war is over. Please collect your orange jump suit on your way out...

Final question, for tonights grand prize:

Which of those "Bin Ladens" starred in the December 2001 " home movie" conveniently left behind by the antichrist in an abandoned apartment in Jelalabad and found by US forces just in time to release it to a gasping gullible media the same day that the 5 Israeli Mossad agents who had danced as the Towers collapsed, were being quietly deported?

This is just one of the strands of evidence being aired in a draft article you can find on the brand new web site representing the views of "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" of which I am pleased to be an associate member. You will find the answer - and the whole of that story - buried on page 23 of that 26 page Word doc.

Frankly, I think it should be the lead. I haven't come across anyone who gets the answers wrong. The truth being so "self evident", the conclusion does not require a huge leap of the imagination.

Yes, Google Is Wrong About China, But...

2006-01-25T23:46:00.000Z

I'm not impressed with the kneejerk responses I've seen to the announcement that Google has caved in to Chinese demands to impose a political filter on their search engine. Most people are treating it as though its on a par with the unforgiveable treachery of Yahoo

But, for a start, (as far as I can gather) it does not involve offering up personal details of any users to the dictatorship. And - from what their CEO said on the radio this morning - the way the filters will work will be similar to what already happens in Germany and France. Yes Germany - that bastion of liberal western values - already has a filter agreement with Google to prevent access to sites such as those which preach "Holocaust Denial". And the French forbid anything which might stir up racial hatred.

What I believe happens is that when a site is blocked for reasons decided by the German or French governments, a notice is displayed to that effect. So all interested citizens are at least able to see that their government has censored a site. This, of course, is just as evil in Germany or France as it is in China, so the first question is "Why all this fuss about China? Why didn't we see the same outpouring of angst on the occasion of the European precedents?"

But secondly, although it is a repressive measure on the part of whichever government imposes such a regime, at least the "censorship notice" alerts citizens to the repressive nature of their government. Neither Microsoft nor Yahoo, incidentally, who signed up to be China's bitches many moons back, bother to inform their users that they are being censored. Google is at least promising to do that much.

I've already heard it argued that this is "fair enough" in Germany/France because they are "democracies" and their citizens can "influence" the government to change its policy, if enough of them give a damn.

I can't let that go without pointing out that democracy is nothing to do with "influencing" government. It's supposed to be about "implementing" government. But you'll get plenty of that another time. The point is that although the German and French elective dictatorships are considerably more liberal and easier to replace than the Chinese one, the difference is one of degree, not principle.

Meanwhile, although I would prefer to see all Western businesses refusing to do business with any regimes which aren't at least as liberal as our own, I can concede that there may be some merit in reminding the Chinese surfer, whenever s/he goes looking for "freedom" that their government won't let them see such sites.

That reminder alone could be a nicely subversive message.

Wizards of Money

2006-01-24T23:21:00.000Z

This is one of the most important things I've so far encountered on the web.

Not the site you understand. Not that I have anything against it. It might be a brilliant site for all I know, but I've only visited that page for one specific reason. It is a mirror site for an amazing series of lectures on exactly the topic I mentioned in a recent blog - How Money Works.

This is a very deep and detailed examination, not for the short of attention span. Fortunately, if you're already a fan of some of my stuff, you probably have a taste for this kind of thing. There are no less than 22 audio episodes all with transcripts - except 10 and 12 which seem to be missing, at least from that particular mirror. Each episode lasts between about 45 and 55 minutes and she is not a professional reader. Nevertheless - if you are half as interested as I am in the subject matter, you'll be riveted.

In a very real sense, "Smithy" (a pseudonym required to protect her professional identity and role) carries on where Quigley left off. Although she covers the roots of Money she also deals with its much more modern manifestations. In Part 8 which I've nearly finished listening to, for example, she has finally explained to my satisfaction what really happened with Enron and the significance of what that collapse exposed to the public gaze.

After Part 7 I feel I now understand how the Money Cycle broke the Water Cycle causing widespread death and devastation in so many third world countries.

I particularly like the way - even better, in my opinion, than Quigley's effort - she has explained how all money is created from loans, (i.e. debt creates money - or, as Quigley puts it, Money is Debt) and the vast bulk of these loans are invested in real estate of one form or another, whether it be the mortgage for your house, or the budget for the Channel Tunnel.

And I'm fascinated by how flimsy she makes the whole system appear. It is a collossal smoke and mirrors confidence trick where the vital ingredient is "confidence". Money only works, according to Smithy, because people believe in it; which makes it sound like religion or homeopathy!

I'm particularly looking forward to what she has to say in Part 20 “The Battle of the Dragons - Oil vs Insurance” but I'm not going to cheat. I'll go through them in sequence - at least the first time. So far she has built upon previous episodes, so I might miss something important if I leap straight to the gunfight at the OK Corrall...

...Like who supplied the guns, and why...

Peace be upon you

Eventually.

Hands up if you knew about this story

2006-01-05T22:48:00.000Z

Be honest. Were you aware that over 200 people had died under mudslides in Java in the last 48 hours? Well, being the kind of weirdos that read blogs like mine you probably were. But can someone please explain to me the contrast - outside the US where it is after all a local story - between the coverage of the Java tragedy and the Virginia mine disaster which everyone's heard about?

Are 12 American miners really that much more important to non-Americans than 200 Indonesians? Why?

Sorry. Like this sodding cough I picked up in Morocco, just another irritant I had to get off my chest.

The Science Blacklist

2006-01-03T20:06:00.000Z

has just been broadcast by the beeb. If you missed it, it's being repeated on Sunday (17.00 GMT). If it disappears all together after that, I've got a copy (mp3 - ask)

It covers one major element of the ground I cover here. Viz - the political abuse of science. The beeb gives both sides a fair hearing and it's up to you to make up your minds. It points out, for example, how the Carter presidency rejected a particular report he'd requested on the need to fund research for new energy sources. It came back with the conclusion that there was no case to be made because there was an abundant supply of natural gas. The White House tried to pressure the authors but they wouldn't bend from the scientific conclusions. So Carter sacked the head of the US Geological survey and the report was removed from all official repositories.

We are also reminded that Nixon similarly rejected at least 2 major reports and disbanded his own Presidential Scientific Advisory Committee when he found that their expert advice conflicted with his prejudice on the issues of the Nuclear Test Ban and government involvment in the building of an American Concorde. The beeb doesn't even mention my favourite - his rejection of The Report of the National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse which he had packed with reliable drug warriors to ensure he got the answer he had already decided upon. (Both sins - political packing and rejection of expert advice in one shot. That's efficient government for you)

So we know predecessors on both sides have been capable of this behaviour. The real point is that whereas that Carter story is the only such incident that was reported under his reign and even tricky dicky restrained himself to 3 known cases, the UCS site maintains this growing list of (currently) no less than 22 documented cases of significant political maladministration through the abuse or wilful disregard of professional scientific advice by the current administration.

It's not difficult to analyse their psychology when you hear the "defence" using arguments like this:

"the fact is that what you have is liberals complaining about the fact that the (panels?) aren't made up of liberals. How terrible - that you would actually have diversity"

Like many examples I've used elsewhere, its almost as though these people don't realise they're talking out loud. Exactly what has political diversity got to do with the appointment of scientific advisors? They don't even deny the charges - they react as though they sincerely believe (as I discuss in the above link) that behaving this way is "right and proper". Of course its alright to place my political buddies in these technical roles. You don't expect me to let a bunch of commies advise the White House do ya?

Again you'll find evidence of politicially placed advisors with many previous presidents. They're probably all guilty of one or two similar misdemeanours. But at least with them, they knew it was devious - with this gang its policy!

Strangely the consistency of this behaviour is beginning to make me cautiously optimistic.

We've only recently seen the same attitude again over the revelation that

President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 authorizing the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in the United States, despite previous legal prohibitions against such domestic spying

which would have been enough to end the political careers of any previous president. Not this one. They don't deny it. They can't, it's already public - so they do the next best thing and bluster that it was merely the president doing his job and looking after the security of "The American People" and that the crime, if any, was committed by those who had the gall to leak this totalitarian measure to the media. Gotta hand to them. They've got balls that would shame a stallion.

Then there is this excellent summary of the situation to date by "5th Estate" which includes this conclusion regarding another part of what the growing Untrusted Surveillance is really all about - this time we're talking about the open abuse of commercial data for political purposes

Pollsters and consultants are building "profiles" of you from consumer databases to determine what they think you want to read, to hear, to see, and to believe. It doesn't matter how broad-stroke and grossly exaggerated these profiles can be...to these nimrods, this data is like gold.

The goal is to build a society that combines the worst aspects of fascism and capitalism--a culture too scared to dissent, to rebel, to fight back, lulled into constant mindless consumerism that's targeted at you specifically from vast aggregate profiles the data sellers develop. The money that could be spent to secure our ports, our train stations, our military bases, our airfields, and our research labs is instead being used to sell us soap and monitor our credit uses.

You are no safer than you were on 9/11. In fact, you're in more danger now than you've ever been, and that danger isn't from some bearded psychopath and his army of Jihadists. It's from your own government. They're spending the money that should be going to infrastructure improvement and security hardening and using it to execute warrantless searches of Muslims, gay rights groups, and anyone else who doesn't fit into their paradigm.

It is clear that these people have successfully sold the Big Lie even to themselves. So that they genuinely no longer comprehend that they're consistently untruthful. They've bought into the propaganda model that "the truth is what you make it".

Well my friends - and others - that may work for the small beer, like spying on the American people, but I'm almost beginning to look forward to how they present their case as it becomes increasingly clear that WTC7 really is the smoking gun.

I'm becoming increasingly confident (and genuinely alarmed) that during this year it will become unequivocally obvious that WTC7 could not have collapsed in any other way than as the result of a controlled demolition, which would have taken weeks or months to plan and several days or weeks to implement. That mental hurdle having been crossed, it becomes much easier to accept the likelihood that WTCs 1 & 2 were "finished off" with similar pre-planned controlled demolitions. It is inconceivable that foreign terrorists had several weeks unrestricted access to those buildings in order to position the charges and similarly inconceivable that they controlled the demolitions from a control centre within WTC7.

Which leaves the devastating possibility (morphing rapidly into a probability) that it wasn't foreign terrorists but domestic ones, paid for by the American taxpayer.

Even as recently as last year I would not have dared give credence to such a scenario in private, let alone this publicly. And I haven't yet reached the stage of "beyond reasonable doubt" but I've certainly reached the stage of accepting that they have a very serious case to answer.

And every single one of these issues - from the relatively trivial refusal to follow the scientific advice on making "plan b" (the "morning after" pill) available over the counter - to the potential collaboration in possibly the world's greatest criminal murder conspiracy are stunning examples of exactly why we need the Trusted Surveillance I mentioned in my previous post.

The plain fact is that whether or not the Cheyney/Rumsfeld cabal, or their remote puppets took control of the attack on 9-11 in order to maximise rather than avoid casualties; there is enough credible documented evidence and analysis for those making such charges not to feel "extreme" or embarrassed when making them.

And when the charges are as serious as complicity in the murder of 3000 of your own citizens, we can neither tolerate a government which IS guilty as charged or merely LOOKS guilty as charged. It is clearly in their interests just as much as the wider social interest that no such doubt is possible.

That's just one of the aims of Trusted Surveillance.

Sweet dreams.

The world is in a collossal mess. Is there a rational way out of the maze?

2006-01-01T11:26:00.000Z

First, thanks to Matt who posted this comment against the Pinter post.

It touches on one of my new year resolutions for 2006 so I thought I could do worse than outlining the answer to his question:

"I was wondering if you had any strategies which might lead to the victory of liberatory forces."

As I said in my brief reply, he has, of course, asked the $64,000 question.

The answer is yes and most of them will form the 3rd part of my Chapter on War, which is in the mixing bowl as we speak. That chapter has become something of a monster. I believe the last time I checked, Parts 1 and 2 had crept up to over 100 pages (in pdf form) and my guess is that part 3 will be about as much again. It would seem sensible to turn the chapter into a book in its own right and I might well do that.

The first priority, though, is to write the damn thing. I can tell you its subtitle. Following on from Part 2 which was "Reasons To Be Fearful", I particularly wanted to use the title "Reasons To Be Cheerful - Part 3".

Partly this is a mildly humorous homage to one of my favourite singers - the late Ian Dury - who wrote a song with that exact title; and partly it is to indicate that after all the "doom and gloom" of Parts 1 & 2, there are, in fact, some very good reasons to be optimistic that we CAN (but not necessarily WILL) get through this crisis and live happily ever after.

I can also give an outline of "the plot".

It has been clear, for centuries, to most rational thinkers who don't have a vested interest in the status quo that the vast majority of our problems are directly or indirectly caused by governments. Most previous attempts at tackling such problems have been based on tweaking the existing forms of government in order to try to make them more efficient.

What I think has happened since 9-11 is that we've probably reached a critical mass within the western population in respect of recognising the illegitimacy of ALL existing forms of government.

I notice, for example, from Matt's own blog, that he wants:

"my friends and family to rise up with me and bring down authority in all its forms – police, prisons, militaries, intelligence agencies, organized crime, corporate administration, mass media. First those authorities which surround and oppress us, and once we’re done kicking ass locally, I want to take on every ruling institution in the world."

By "critical mass" I mean that Matt - and I - may still be in a minority, but it's no longer a tiny minority. Our rulers have nearly always been deceitful, incompetent and authoritarian but only recently are more and more of us having the scales lifted from our eyes and seeing the them for what they really are.

I am currently reading Carroll Quigley's "Tragedy And Hope", for instance, which covers the period 1895-1950 and spells out, in excruciating and fascinating detail, just how dumb the people "in control" at that time really were. But what he revealed was new to the world. He broke the secrecy and exposed the emperors' collective nudity.

The history of the book itself is pretty interesting. If you do a google for "Carroll Quigley" "Tragedy And Hope" you'll find mainly references to it being the "Bible" for right wing conspiracy theorists who are opposed to the "New World Order". Essentially Quigley was a respected insider who was given access to private correspondence, restricted records etc which revealed how Britain, primarily, and later Britain and America exercised their joint global domination and how, in particular, their governments (and all others) were, in turn, controlled by the Banks. For example on page 324 of his 1300 page tome, he casually reveals:

"The substantive financial powers of the world were in the hands of these investment bankers... who remained largely behind the scenes in their own unincorporated private banks. These formed a system of international co-operation and national dominance which was more private, more powerful and more secret than that of their agents in the central banks... In addition to these pragmatic goals, the powers of financial capitalism had another for-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."

and goes on to provide comprehensive details of the agreements, what underpinned them, how they succeeded or failed and so on.

This kind of detail was not supposed to be in the public domain. The best explanation for its existence is that, coming from such a respected and trusted source, it never occurred to the "powers that be" that his book would need vetting. Even for a couple of years after it was published in 1966, no-one in authority noticed its contents and 8,800 copies were sold. Then the conspiracy theorists started using it - much to Quigley's annoyance - as ammunition.

What followed is difficult to pin down, but certainly Quigley himself believed that, once his revelations became controversial, efforts were made to suppress the book. Macmillan - the publishers - destroyed the plates for the first half of the book, making republishing impossible. Elsewhere I have read unsubstantiated allegations that efforts were also made to locate and destroy existing copies. Certainly it became increasingly difficult to obtain copies - until new publishers CSG Associates acquired the rights and republished it in 1981. Today you can buy it on Amazon. I strongly recommend that you do. It is a life changer. It's almost as good as taking the Red Pill. You will understand vastly more, after reading it, about how governments work, how international relations work and most important of all - how Money works.

Quigley is often presented - because his information is used by the conspiracy theorists - as a conspiracy theorist himself. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Although he occasionally disagreed with the policies he was describing, his purpose in revealing them was not to expose a conspiracy of any kind. He was generally sympathetic to this section of the ruling class and believed that their influence was so profound that it deserved to be publicly acknowledged. It didn't occur to him that what he was revealing would be used to attack the very system he was so painstakingly documenting.

What fascinates me about the book, though, and why it is so relevant to what is going on today, is not the revelations of secret agreements and behind the scenes deals. Anyone who has taken an interest in politics over the last 50 years takes those kind of shenanigans for granted. The interesting angle for me was his superb clarification of exactly how and why the rulers' policies so often failed. In a nutshell they deceived themselves in precisely the same way we see today and they were crassly incompetent in precisely the same way we see today.

I won't bore you with too much detail, but he spells out how and why the financial mismanagement of the first World War and its aftermath became a major cause of the second World War. Essentially the bankers refused to recognise that the economic conditions which existed at the end of the first war were so radically different from before the war, that all their rule books for sound economic management needed rewriting. In particular they insisted on trying to force the world economy back on to the "Gold Standard" as it had been in 1913:

"Instead of seeking a financial system adapted to the new economic and commercial world which had emerged from the war, the experts tried to ignore this world and established a financial system which looked, superficially, as much like the prewar system as possible. This system, however, was not the prewar system. Neither was it adapted to the new economic conditions. When the experts began to have vague glimmerings of this last fact, they did not begin to modify their goals, but insisted on the same goals, and voiced incantations and exhortations against the existing conditions which made the attainment of their goals impossible."

If you've read any of my War chapter, you will be aware that we can document massive similar self deception and incompetence particularly in the American establishment's handling of the so called War on Terror.

What we learn from the likes of Quigley is that this behaviour is not new. It is more or less the way all government has operated since the dawn of government several thousand years ago. The major difference today, is that, despite enormous security and censorship resources, it is actually becoming increasingly difficult for the authorities to hide or excuse their failures. This in turn is beginning to make people ask the question "why do we let them get away with this?"

There have, of course, been protests about government and the decision making process since the beginning of government and there have been many revolutionary theories and developments along the way. Most prominently, rulers have had to partially concede the right to govern. In place of unelected absolute monarchs who ruled by "divine right", we have evolved to the stage of electing our dictators. Once elected they still retain most of the powers of the absolute monarch, but, because they must face periodic re-election, their dictatorial tendency is somewhat constrained.

They have made this concession as a result of centuries of demands for genuine democracy. So potent has the democratic ideal become that all Western governments now describe themselves as democracies. Such is the distortion of that concept in the public mind, that many of the elected dictators AND many of their voters actually believe that they do live in democracies.

The first part of my own solution is simply to try to destroy that illusion. The main thrust of my book is to provide the philosophical basis for democracy, without repeating the mistakes of "moral philosophy" (the assumption that there are or can be absolute moral guidelines to sustain concepts like "good and evil") . In the process, of course, I have to provide a comprehensive description of what democracy really is and once people understand that then, of course, they can quite easily see how no existing governments are truly democratic.

I am not particularly happy with the way I've done that to date and, as a result, I am currently involved in a fairly major rewrite of "Survival" my seventh chapter, which tries to deal with what democracy is and isn't and why it is the only ethically legitimate way to arrive at social decisions. My new version will begin by describing the nearest we've ever got to a truly democratic system - the Athenian model which gave us the name "democracy" over 2,500 years ago. It will describe how we can, today, implement an improved version of the Athenian model (for instance, excluding slaves and women wouldn't go down too well today, and greater use of secret ballotting would ensure that intimidation could not distort results) and thus, finally get back to the original design.

I will then argue that we actually need to go one step beyond the Athenian model because it was content with simple "Majority Rule". In my view that is inherently dangerous as it permits laws to be made which can oppress or antagonise very large minorities and is thus - depending on the issue - a recipe for civil war. In order to avoid such negative consequences, the ideal solution is to seek consensus (the absence of dissent) where every citizen agrees on the course of action. This, however, is unrealistic. Put 20 people in a room together and they won't even reach agreement on the weather. So the best we can pragmatically aim for is massive majorities. (Starting at 95% and working downward only if everybody agrees that a decision must be taken)

None of this requires me to invent any new systems. Only to advocate their use. The systems have already been invented. Check out "Direct Democracy" at Wikipedia or "Voting Systems" and you'll get a good feel for what we're talking about.

The second part of my solution is the provision of a framework which can be used to analyse the ethical implications of any given democratic proposal. I need to do a lot more work on that too, but the most comprehensive description to date is in my essay/chapter on how Survival Based Ethics (SBE) deals with such issues - concluding with an analysis of the biblical "Ten Commandments"

Those two - democracy and SBE - deal purely with the social decision making process. They do not prescribe or proscribe any particular policies. They do not even, for example, guarantee human rights, freedom of expression or any of the other liberal values which, obviously, I personally support. Why not? Because such matters are themselves democratic issues. If We The People want to guarantee human rights, we will do so. It is not for the decision making process to pre-empt the decisions being made. As I say in the very first chapter - my aim is not to tell the People how to run society but "how to decide" how to run society.

I recognise and expect that, in the early days after we have implemented a true democracy, we will see "We The People" making some deeply illiberal decisions. They will make straightforward mistakes every bit as stupid as those we are used to from all previous forms of government.

I do not attempt to make the case that democracy will instantly produce "better" government. (Although I do believe that truly democratic decision procedures will be able to identify and correct errors more quickly than any other system and that society will learn the lessons of such mistakes much more thoroughly in a democracy than in a system where vested interests distort and hide the evidence revealing the mistakes)

There is an honest case to be made against the "Tyranny of the Masses" (this is essentially why I plead for "near consensus" rather than mere "majority rule") I do insist, however, that those wish to argue against real democracy, in favour of one or other of the existing forms of government, make the case for their alternative ("representative democracy", meritocracy or whatever) honestly - i.e. not by pretending that what they are offering is real democracy.

Similarly I insist that before "We The People" vote to implement real democracy that they understand what they are letting themselves in for. From that moment on, they won't be able to blame politicians for anything that goes wrong - it will all be our own fault!

Finally, however, we come back to the last part of the War Chapter. In this I will propose some truly radical and innovative technical measures aimed at achieving a massive increase in Security while improving both Liberty and Privacy. Traditionally, enhanced Security is seen to be the enemy of either Liberty or Privacy. I shall show, instead, that we cannot achieve the levels of Security we need unless we first ensure much greater protection of Privacy and that, in turn, these measures will foster much greater Liberty. The most far reaching of these proposals is a system which, for want of a better name, I am calling "Trusted Surveillance".

My wife warns me that such a name will provoke instant distrust. I believe she is correct. Nevertheless, I prefer to start from the position of having you treat my proposals with as much skepticism as you can muster and thus force me to win your trust by showing how and why the system really can be trusted.

The best soundbite I've so far come up with, to begin to explain the system is this:

Untrusted surveillance is what we are increasingly living under today. It consists largely of people watching other people. Trusted Surveillance is based on the notion that we watch ourselves.

In short I propose that we use and develop technology to monitor absolutely every aspect of our own lives and record this data as securely as is technically possible so that only the individual being monitored can ever access the data - although, having accessed it, they can choose to share it, if they wish, with third parties. There will be NO circumstances under which, for example, government agencies or other hostile attackers, could gain direct access to the data -and they won't even be able to see the data you choose to access without your free and informed consent.

Other aspects of the system will ensure that the data being collected can only have come from you and that the events being recorded took place in specific locations and at specific times captured and verified, anonymously, by external trusted systems.

The result will be an audit trail of your activities which cannot be amended or spoofed without detection. One of the consequences is that any individual will be able to use their audit trail to prove either the positive (I did attend that meeting) or the negative (I was not at the scene of the crime). Another consequence is that they will be able to prove these things anonymously.

In brief, the sort of thing this will allow us to do is - if suspected of a crime - to prove our innocence, for example by proving that we could not have been at the scene. And we'll be able to do that without revealing where we were. Hence our data remains private and, in most cases, anonymous. Of course, if we are guilty, we can't use the system to prove that we weren't at the scene because we were there and cannot forge even our own data.

But it also means that, if a politician is suspected of - say - manipulating or distorting intelligence in order to persuade the country to go to war - that they will be able to use their private audit trail to prove that they did no such thing. Unless, of course, they did. In which case, no doubt, they will choose to remain silent, but those who were being manipulated will be able, if they choose, to reveal their version of events.

It also means that where we still continue to use untrusted surveillance, and those with access to that data are suspected of abusing it, they too will be able to prove their innocence. Unless, of course, they're not. And so on.

The primary aim of Trusted Surveillance is to "watch the watchers" and to make it impossible for those in authority to abuse that authority without detection. The secondary aim is to make the detection of crimes against the person almost certain, together with the identity of the attacker/s.

If these aims are achieved, political and economic corruption will be virtually eliminated as will identity fraud. Routine crime against the person will be reduced by 50-75%. These improvements, as well as being laudable in their own right, will also free up 50% or more of existing policing resources which can then be targeted against remaining crime and terrorism.

Ending the War on Drugs is the next major plank in my proposals. My chapter on the same spells out the objections to prohibition and this K5 comment describes how it will benefit both the fight against crime and the War on Terror.

In short, the solutions to the mess we're in lie in:

1) Implementing true (direct) democracy and eliminating the power of vested interests to make the rules we live under
2) Using SBE to provide an objective ethical analysis of democratic proposals, in order to inform and, hopefully, influence the democratic debate
3) Implementing a Trusted Surveillance System to protect us from Politicians and Criminals (and anyone else who seeks to cause us harm)
4) Ending the War on Drugs (and any other consensual crimes where no 3rd parties are harmed without their consent)
5) Allocating the resources saved by the above to the most intractable forms of crime and terrorism.

Clearly there also needs to be major policy changes with respect to the way we deal with the rest of the world, but although I can describe them, we can only hope to implement them if we take the first of the steps above and implement true democracy.

One of my new year's resolutions is to finish the detailed description that will, I hope, make sense of all the above, and publish it on my website this year.

Wish me luck!

About as unequivocal as it gets...

2005-12-20T23:30:00.000Z

U.S. District Judge John Jones has earned his 15 minutes. Could well be 15 decades.

"The breathtaking inanity of the board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."

Still wondering what I'm talking about?

Try This.

or this.

The most important immediate and medium term consequence is the setback for Goal 6 of the Wedge Strategy. This was one of their 5 year goals.

6. Ten states begin to rectify ideological imbalance in their science curricula & include design theory

Given that the Wedge Strategy seems to have been written in 1998 and was first reported in the wild in March 1999, they were already running a bit late. This ruling will set them back at least a decade while they regroup and try to construct an alternative approach. Unless Bush can engineer the selection of half a dozen southern baptists to the Supreme Court, there is clearly no danger of the courts blindly letting this kind of nonsense get through to distort the science education of America.

For which we should all be duly grateful and congratulate ourselves on a well deserved and well-timed, if somewhat ironic, Christmas present. It will be welcomed by rational humans everywhere.

Seasonal Greetings to both my readers everywhere.

Pinter Kicks Lumps Out of USA, Bush & Blair

2005-12-08T09:43:00.000Z

Harold Pinter was, yesterday, awarded the Nobel Peace prize for literature.

He took the opportunity to address the world about why both Bush and Blair should be arraigned for war crimes. He enjoyed himself!

Too ill to travel to Stockholm, the new UK TV channel "More4" recorded his acceptance lecture last Sunday, played it to the Nobel audience yesterday afternoon and broadcast it in the UK yesterday evening. I strongly recommend that you check it out, whether you're pro or anti the COW establishment. Here's the link to the Nobel site where you can view the lecture online with high or low bandwidth options. I was unable to view it but I don't yet know if that's because they haven't got enough bandwidth to meet demand or my browser's knackered.

The transcript hasn't appeared yet but is promised on his official web site.

Here is a 100 second sampler (mp3 706k) of what you can expect:

"I put to you that without doubt, that the United States is, without doubt, the greatest show on the road.

Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless, it may be. But it's also very
clever. As a salesman, it is out on its own.
And its most saleable commodity is self love. Its a winner.
Listen to all American Presidents on Television say the words:
The American People
As in the Sentence:
"I say, to the American People, it is time to pray and to defend
the rights of the American People and I ask the American People to trust their President in the action he is about to take, on behalf of the American People"
It's a scintillating stratagem.
Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay.
The words American People provide a truly voluptous cushion of reassurance.
You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion.
The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties.
But it's very comfortable.
This does not apply, of course, to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons which extends across the United States."

If you want to hear more and can't find it anywhere, I've recorded the whole thing in audio only (you don't miss much other than the visual cues which tellyou he hasn't finished!) so email me and I'll send you a copy.

New Scientist Takes a Poke At Morality - Not very well!

2005-12-02T12:49:00.000Z

If you can, check out this article in New Scientist (26 Nov 2005)

I was not impressed, so I wrote them this letter (which I doubt they'll print so I might as well expose it to the public gaze here):
**************

Most attempts at seeking moral absolutes are confused and I'm afraid Dan Jones effort (26 November) was no better than most.

Consider, for example, his opening scenario. The trolley train is coming and "all you've got is a hefty guy standing in front of you. If you push him onto the line, his bulk will be enough to stop the runaway train". First, even within its own terms that is an incorrectly posed option. If "I" am present and capable of pushing the hefty guy onto the line, there is obviously another option and one which is far more "moral". I can sacrifice myself.

The basis for all philosophical errors concerning morality is - as Bertrand Russell pointed out in his "History of Western Philosophy" - that ALL attempts at defining "the good" are based on the flawed assumption that life itself is "good". It is, however, just as credible that "Life" is more correctly defined as an unwanted organic pollutant with no more ethical value than the mould on your bathroom ceiling.

That living things exhibit the tendency and apparent desire to continue living is a necessary biological program without which dna would fail. But we have no basis for concluding that dna is "right" to program us this way.

Later he poses the non (moral) problem of incest. First, the revulsion is not innate. This is obvious if the brother and sister were separated at birth and have never met. They are as likely to be sexually attracted to each other as any other random pair. The "revulsion" is entirely psycho-cultural but, nevertheless, based on a sound genetic judgement not just an abstract notion of right and wrong.

Elsewhere we have references to things like "the wisdom of repugnance" - which is, of course, the basis of racism, homophobia and various other extremely UNwise moral positions.

Finally we have the obligatory meaningless questionnaires. Any half competent philosopher - however idealistic - has to "completely disagree" with every question in the Idealism section because they are poorly worded. Take just the first question for instance: "It is NEVER necessary to sacrifice the welfare of others" (emphasis added). Only a fool or someone who routinely takes questions at surface value only could agree. Anyone who did agree would, logically, have to stop eating for a start (the welfare of everything you eat is somewhat impaired by the process). Obviously the author means "other people" rather than just "others" but that itself is a huge moral leap. And equally obviously he probably didn't mean to include the word "never" which renders the question absolute and leaves no room for negotiation.

Similarly, on the "Relativism" questionnaire, the first question ("What is ethical varies...") is presumably (as the Title suggests) designed to separate out those who consider ethics to be absolute from those who consider it to be relative. But anyone who considers ethics to be absolute has to "completely disagree" with all questions. There can be no grey areas for such people - so the question is binary (yes or no) rather than continuous (1-9). In any case, even a relativist will have some difficulty with the question because, again, it is posed in precisely the kind of absolute terms a relativist should reject. A relativist would want to see the word "considered" inserted thus: "What is considered ethical varies...". But even so, it is not any kind of moral question itself. It is a purely empirical observation along the lines of an opinion poll. Perception of ethics DOES vary from one society to another.

This leads to my final point which is that the only philosophically consistent basis for a value free ethical code is the observation that all living things behave as though they want to go on living. We do not need to define this as "good" we can simply acknowledge it as empirical data. Moving on from there, however, we can (not, please note, "should") choose to make this the basis of our social decision making. In other words we can collectively decide that the course most likely to provide the greatest degree of survival is the course we will endorse and collaborate to achieve.

However, what constitutes "the greatest degree of survival" is partly objective (effect on life expectancy etc) and partly subjective ("quality of life" etc). The subjective element means that the only way we can measure the likely outcome on survival is by measuring the feelings and opinions (which brings together the rational analysis and emotions) of all those who believe they will be affected by the decision. This is the most fundamental basis for democracy. I have begun to explore the shape of such an ethical code in my essay on how Survival Based Ethics deals with "The Ten Commandments".

It Just Got Harder To Ignore The Conspiracy Theories

2005-11-16T10:00:00.000Z

When prominent scientists - with a reputation to lose - publish things like this.

It is particularly worth following the links from his piece (although the links to the videos at 911research.com appear to be broken)

I have to say I am now convinced - finally - that the "official" version which has the buildings falling as a result of intense fires is dramatically less credible than the controlled explosion hypothesis. It always was remarkable how neatly the towers collapsed almost within their own footprint but I wanted to believe the official versions. At least initially.

Why did I want to believe?

Because it was bad enough having to come to terms with the implications that the world now contains a bunch of Terrorists so "committed" that they are prepared to kill themselves in order to kill thousands of innocent civilians. Having to add to that the implications that they were aided and abetted by the people who we thought were supposed to be protecting us raises the stakes beyond anything in previous human experience.

As you may have read in the previous post, my chief reason for rejecting the main 9-11 conspiracy theories is that, if true, they indicate a level of intelligence, foresight and planning which has been so markedly absent ever since that it is impossible to imagine that the people who planned 9-11 (if we are to accept the conspiracy theories) are the same people who have conducted the war on terror and the ongoing imposition of the Police State of America.

I still have that problem. I am now 95% convinced that explosives were preplanted in all three WTC buildings. This clearly implies at least detailed foreknowledge of the attacks and, at most, the planning and implementation of the attacks. Furthermore, the range of people who would have undisturbed access to all three buildings to the extent of being able to plant several tons of high explosive is extremely narrow. It is inconceivable that foreign terrorists are on that short list.

A tentative picture is forming. The fundamental plan was indeed down to MIFT. However, Mossad got to know about it and informed the US Government. Between them they decided to exploit the opportunity such an attack would present. This involved Mossad being granted access to plant the explosives (leaving plausible deniability for the US Government) and Cheney to organise the essential distracting drills which took place while the attacks were going on and allowed Cheney to pull the defensive fighters away from the attacking planes.

If that outline is remotely close to the truth, then not only have we witnessed one of the most outrageous criminal mass murders in human history but we have to face the fact that we live in a much more dangerous world than even I have, up to now, imagined.

Conflict Of Interests? They haven't got a clue!

2005-11-03T12:48:00.000Z

The British Media can be proud of themselves this week. Another scalp has fallen to their probing and incisive journalism. We have rooted out the corrupt David Blunkett from the Government and ensured that no one, not even a cabinet minister can get away with breaking school rules.

Pathetic!

I'm no great supporter of Blunkett. I've been fighting his ID card proposals for the past four years. But really! Is this the best they can do?

They talk glibly of Blunkett's "conflict of interests" in such a way that they clearly do not understand what the phrase means. If you really want to understand what it means, take a look at the way in which the Bush administration populated the "Kean Commission" which "investigated" the intelligence and government background to 9-11. This is organised crime at its very best.

In regard to 9-11 (and most other issues but they're small beer in this context) I STILL refuse to accept any of the conspiracy theories. My objection to virtually all of them is the same. They imply a level of foresight, planning and intelligence which has so obviously been absent ever since 9-11, that it is impossible to conclude that the people responsible for the disastrous management of events since then were also responsible for the attack itself.

However, it is getting difficult to resist the tide.

Just read this page and try to find any convincing answer to the questions it raises or any convincing refutation of its implications. They are as prominently absent as the aforementioned intelligence and I have to admit, I'm wavering.

I just wish I could get more into this blogging lark

2005-10-14T00:06:00.000+01:00

I keep forgetting it's here. I need to become obsessive about it!

There is so much I wish I had time to comment on or put on the public record.

For example, it's just 3 days before the Iraqi referendum and I should have recorded, well before now, my failed attempts to spread the idea outlined in my previous posting (August 8).

In various forms I posted that suggestion to about 20 different newsgroups, emailed a dozen MPs who I thought might leap at the suggestion, wrote dozens of letters to the papers in UK and USA, sent half a dozen messages to the BBC, one of which did actually make it on air and sent copies to about 50 people in my address book and asked them to assist - if they approved - with a bit of viral marketing. As this is probably the first time you've heard anything at all about the idea, it's pretty obvious that I failed. What more could Ihave done?

It's that sort of thing that makes me wish I was famous.

If David Beckham or Brad Pitt had come out with that idea it would have been front page news. Never mind that he's just a bleedin' footballer/actor. He's famous. If he'd said it, we'd all be debating it. Fame certainly has its upside.

The selectivity of public discourse explains the general poverty of public debate, which is, of course, a major reason were in the mess we're in.

My own ideas may be utter drivel of course. Obviously I don't think so, but I accept the possibility that they are. But I can't even get anyone to explain - if they are utter drivel - just why they are. Do that (convincingly) and I'll shut up.

Meanwhile, I'm getting ready to post my Terrorism chapter/essay up to K5. I think it may be the longest post that's ever been submitted (over 15,000 words) and I'm sure they'll rip it to shreds in the normal fashion - some of them just because it's too long! But, in amongst the flames, trolls and the plain stupid, there are always nuggets of reason and I'll use those to sharpen up my arguments or even, if they manage to puncture them, abandon those arguments altogether. K5 is a damn good test bed for stuff like that. Mind you, I submitted the Referendum question idea to K5 and it sank without trace there too, so I don't really know
what to expect.

I'll try to remember to let you know.

Iraqi Exit Strategy

2005-08-08T00:58:00.000+01:00

Al Qaeda in Iraq issued a statement Saturday warning Sunni Arabs that voting in the referendum on the constitution would be equivalent to rejecting Islam

So why don't we just add another question to the referendum - "Do you want the Americans and British to leave the country?"

That gives all the opponents to the occupation a vested interest in the referendum.

If they refuse to campaign for it, they will very clearly seen by the world at large but most importantly, by the Iraqi community, as wanting to keep the Americans there for the purpose of continuing the fight. They will be put in the position of rejecting democracy even when it offers a peaceful solution to the conflict. Very difficult to sell in the Arab Street.

If they campaign and lose, that won't stop them fighting, but it will dramatically reduce local support for them and give the western powers a legitimate mandate to stay until the job is done properly and Iraq is genuinely capable of conducting its own affairs without breakdown into Civil War.

If they campaign and win, the western powers can leave without dishonour in accordance with the democratic wishes of the Iraqi people.

The perfect exit strategy.

In fact, you'd have to ask the question:

Why - if this idea is put to them - would they NOT want to include it in the referendum?

Chirac could win if he was capable of self sacrifice

2005-05-28T13:27:00.000+01:00

Chirac has told his people that a "Yes" is vital for France and Europe.

He is aware that many people are voting Non because they don't like him. If his real priority is the interests of France, he could offer a conditional resignation:

"If your vote Yes, I will resign on Tuesday morning."

This would almost certainly be enough to swing enough No votes into the Yes camp to win the vote. (Unless, of course, there are a significant number of Chirac supporters so horrified at the prospect of his departure that they would decide to vote No. Somehow I doubt that!)

But what are the chances of any politician being prepared to make that kind of self sacrifice?