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| Politics, PR and hack philosophy from A Guy Called Donald. But definitely no blogging. Probably. | |
27.7.05HiatusThere will be a short pause here. I'll be in rural north Wales for 10 days: no, not white-water rafting, but it does look like a canoe and waders might be more useful than the sun-cream I've just packed. In the meantime, I suggest you nip over to The Sharpener for regular group goodness. Right now check out: Andrew on (re)solving terrorism, John B on Van Gogh, Katie on North Carolina, and Yusuf on stoopid Standard errors.To all the new readers who've stopped by since the July 7th attacks: I hope you have found my random thoughts and theories informative (and, usually, right). To all: thanks for reading. I'll be back soon. 26.7.05London bombings: nutters come out to playI've been exchanging emails with a correspondent calling herself Marlene Dietrich, who (unsolicited) pointed me to this nutty conspiracy theory about the London bombings of 7th July, 2005. Curiously, I had also been sent to the same place by this excitable X-Files fan during a discussion over at Chicken Yoghurt. When I suggested that the nut in question had, in addition to a very tenuous grasp of the basic facts of the case, almost zero knowledge of London's transport network, Marlene got a little miffed:...Bill was born in London nearly 60 years ago, and is very So, just for you Marlene, some questions for your oh-so-knowledgeable friend: 1. Why does he think that the train the bombers boarded just after 7.40 on the morning of 7th July was a "Thamesmead" train? Thamesmead is a distant suburb of south-east London. In fact, it was the Thameslink service, as anyone "very familiar" with London transport would know. 2. Why does he think the CCTV footage of the four bombers was taken from the "Kings Cross [sic] Main Hall", when in fact it's from the Thameslink station on Pentonville Road? 3. Why does he think it strange that two of the bombers made it from King's Cross to Liverpool Street and "Edgeware [sic] Road" within 20 minutes? That's comfortably do-able. 4. Why doesn't he know that the Thameslink station is connected by an underground walkway to the Circle and Piccadilly line stations, making a trip to the mainline station unnecessary? 5. Why doesn't he know that cellphones work on parts of the (shallow, sub-surface) Circle Line? 6. Why does he think that bus route 30 at rush hour is "notoriously irregular" when in fact it comes every 5-8 minutes? And so on. I'm afraid, Marlene, that "Bill" knows fuck all about the London transport system, and so doesn't have even the basic qualifications to construct a conspiracy theory. Of course, readers should be alerted straight away when the finale to his conspiracy is (wait for it...): "it woz Mossad wot done it". So, not just a nutter, but an especially unoriginal example of the species. All of which is a roundabout way of offering advice to would-be cod-theorists (ahem, guilty as charged) on the London attacks: get your advice from a Londoner, not someone holed up in a Bacofoil-wrapped bunker in Nevada. 25.7.05London: Mass Hysteria at Vauxhall?Nosemonkey seems to be retracting his earlier opinion that basically nothing happened at Vauxhall last week. A couple of eyewitnesses claim to know otherwise:Keith: "Was in that carriage on the victoria line, the smoke and smell was getting overwhelming" Nosemonkey thinks this shows the limits of his investigative journalistic abilities. I'm not sure. It sounds more like a breakout of Mass Psychogenic Illness (or Mass Hysteria). From the New England Journal of Medicine: In November 1998, a teacher noticed a "gasoline-like" smell in her classroom, and soon thereafter she had a headache, nausea, shortness of breath, and dizziness. The school was evacuated, and 80 students and 19 staff members went to the emergency room at the local hospital; 38 persons were hospitalized overnight. Five days later, after the school had reopened, another 71 persons went to the emergency room. An extensive investigation was performed by several government agencies. Collective delusion has a long medical history: From the 13th-century European "dancing plague" (or choreomania) and the phantom hatpin stabber of fin de siecle Paris, to the 1944 Mad Gasser of Mattoon, Illinois and several well-documented phantom toxic poisoning incidents. With a population stoked by irresponsible headlines and on the edge of panic, in a close social environment like the Tube, and a credible threat to powerless commuters, the elements required for a breakout are all there. 23.7.05London, reprised: July 21st, 2005I've been a bit slack this week, mostly because my new niece Isla was born on Thursday, just before chaos hit London again. On which:1. Friday's moronic headlines, stoked by the press conference the previous evening, claimed we had a narrow escape from a second carnage. 'Sources' and senior policemen stressed the second wave of bombers' intention was to slaughter. To anyone who knows London, this is plain wrong. (And, considering how unthinking, scared people will react to the headlines, dangerously so.) Even if bombs identical to those that killed on 7/7/05 had gone off, loss of life would have been minimal in comparison. The bombs were placed and/or detonated in almost empty carriages, at quiet stations and at the quietest time of day: a westbound Hammersmith and City line train, close to the western terminus; a northbound Northern Line train way south of the river, outside the congestion zone even; a central, northbound Victoria Line train, but in the front carriage; the back seat, by the window, of a bus heading through Shoreditch and out of town to Hackney Wick (again) at lunchtime. The photograph of the failed device on the 26 bus clearly shows a rucksack much smaller than used in the previous attacks. 2. This week's attacks look like a 'technological strike' (or a 'systems attack') not any attempt at mass murder. The tube lines chosen include two unaffected by the 7/7/05 attacks (Victoria and Northern Lines). Even the exact placement of the bus bomb, at the junction of Kingsland Road, Old Street, Shoreditch High Street and Hackney Road, looks to be aimed at maximising traffic chaos at a busy interchange and the north-eastern gateway to the City, not at killing large numbers of people. This switch from a maximal to a minimal loss-of-life strategy is more an IRA-style infrastructure attack than something from the 'al-Qaeda' playbook. This needs explaining, or at least questioning, but hasn't been so far. It's unprecedented for a supposedly 'radical Islamist' terror incident (compare yesterday's Egyptian massacre). 3. The common King's Cross link (claimed in Friday's Evening Standard – all affected tube lines again pass through there) is a red herring. The Victoria and Northern Line trains were heading towards King's Cross, not away from it. The 26 bus route doesn't go anywhere near the area. 4. These bombers must be Londoners, not outsiders. Their knowledge of the tube network is more detailed. They had different network boarding points. They knew how and where to minimise loss of life with the placement of the bombs. 5. The incident yesterday at Stockwell is curious. The various angles have been done already here and here. I'd add a couple of questions: why did police think the man was a suicide bomber? It's not enough to say he was wearing an unseasonally warm coat. Around 10 a.m. yesterday, I was on the 141 bus passing through Bank. It was chilly for a summer morning and lots of people were wearing coats I'd describe as 'unseasonal'. In any case, the 'unseasonally warm coat' is being repeated in all media outlets, but I haven't seen an attributed eyewitness quote that contains the phrase. The officers had the guy pinned to the floor – was that wise if they thought he had a rucksack (or belt) packed with acetone peroxide? Was filling him with lead from close range wise, under those circumstances? I'm fundamentally disinterested in a potential suicide bomber's civil liberties, but these questions need to be asked, and so far haven't via traditional media outlets. The breaking news that he may have been a Brazilian electrician, and therefore an unlucky victim, makes no material difference to the questions. But hand-wringing over the error will leave these questions – a much bigger why than understandable human error – unasked. 6. The pathetic nature of this week's attacks gives us reason to be optimistic. The bombers were unwilling to die: this suggests a political or nihilistic rather than religious justification for the attack. If acetone peroxide was used again, it confirms they are poorly resourced and poorly connected to sources of professional explosives. If detonation did, in fact, fail (I'm sceptical about this), they are poorly trained – self-taught rather than Afghan jihadi training camp graduates. These attacks were also badly planned: empty trains and stations give a much lower chance of getting away scot-free than busy stations. Identification by CCTV was inevitable – yet they were still unwilling to die, or even kill on a large scale. Why? British suicide bombers, for all the ritualistic bombast, are thin on the ground. 21.7.05London: here we go again?Robin's got it covered. Nosemonkey too. Three tube trains and a bus to Hackney... all too familiar, but this looks like pranksters. Initial reports from Warren Street suggest one guy carrying a rucksack that exploded. Just hope the injuries aren't too trivial.Me? I'm off to King's Cross then Brighton. New niece born today. Not going to let a few knobheads divert me from uncle duty. 20.7.05SloganeeringVote Libertarian: for a marginally better life than you'd get under a Caliph.Vote Libertarian: for the freedom to say what you like as long as you agree with me. Vote Libertarian: we'll ban radicals, which will self-evidently make them go away. Do as you're told: vote 19.7.05The shorter Mark SteynForeigner, known ancient boundary-obsessive who can't spell Hizb-ut-Tahrir, bemoans loss of old county of Yorkshire, inevitably leading to suicide terrorism by aggrieved inhabitants. Offers stark warning to Avon and Clwyd. Blames Cherie Booth for existence of head-chopping Thai Islamists.Me, once removedA little something on Islam and liberalism from me at my other home: a double-headed dialogue of disagreement with Blimpish. I win, obviously.18.7.05London bombings: Scott Burgess v Dilpazier AslamIn a sentence for those at the back: "sassy" right-wing blogger digs dirt on Graun trainee Dilpazier Aslam. Aslam is a member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a worldwide Islamist-supremacist organization that calls for the unity of the Ummah and the return of the Caliph. Hizb justifies suicide bombings in Israel. Anyone paying attention will have noted that Hizb were also at the centre of things in Andijon in May.Anyway, the full story here and here. Some thoughts: 1. Aslam's brand of apologism is something I've already dealt with here. I won't mention moral agency again; it's in danger of becoming my catchphrase. I have no truck with his views, nor those of Hizb. 2. Hizb, in the UK at least, is a legal, legitimate political organization. Like the BNP, I defend their right to exist. Just as Nick Griffin appeared on the Today programme last week, members of Hizb are within their rights to write for national newspapers. There's no reason their affiliation ought to be declared beforehand. Are all trainee journalists to have their backgrounds checked before being offered jobs? Screening for sanitised opinion isn't a route anyone involved in blogging ought to want to go down. 3. Had Hasib Hussain been a member of Hizb, we wouldn't now be scrubbing blood from the front of the BMA building. Hizb do not sanction violence outside of the Middle East. They may maintain that a Clash of Civilisations is "inevitable", but then so does Samuel Huntington. And, as noted here, justifying the use of violence in Israel is hardly a radical position in UK media circles. 4. Is calling for the return of the Caliph any more dangerous, say, than sending Pervez Musharraf shiny new F-16s? Is an apologist that blames Blair and Iraq any more offensive than one that blames terrorist mass-murder on multiculturalism? 5. Scott's reporting is to be praised, but his call for Aslam to be fired (echoing calls from the usual maniacs) is unwarranted. The Graun are right, not just legally, to stand by him. This is a vindictive witch-hunt, no more. 16.7.05London bombers: would torture have helped?Robin isn't angry. No, he's very angry:Purely for political advantage during the US election, the Bush administration needlessly blew the cover of an al-Qaeda mole who was leading intelligence services to a terrorist network in the UK. As a result, they then had to make rushed arrests before they were ready. Some got away. At least one of those was one of the suicide bombers last Thursday. If true, then he's right to be angry. It's worse than mere negligence by Tom Ridge, former Homeland Security chief; corporate mass-manslaughter would be closer. In fact, according to his job description, it wouldn't be negligence at all: the Homeland wasn't harmed. But the case against Ridge, and via him Bush, rests on a crucial link. Was Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, our blown al-Qaeda mole, connected in any way with the Edgware Road bomber, Mohamed Sidique Khan? The only available answer right now is maybe. But it started a chain of thought. What if, with the judicious use of torture applied on the eight Pakistani-origin men arrested with Noor Khan last year, we could have stopped the bombings. Should we have? If you're a utilitarian (or a sadist), the answer's easy: of course we should. Assuming every life is of roughly equal worth, destroying one or two to save seventy is a no brainer. But for anyone who believes in intrinsic rights, anyone who's a liberal, the answer has to be no. The right not to be tortured is essential for any society. So, even if we knew with 100% accuracy that a couple of days on the rack would be sure to save seventy lives next year, we still have to reject it as an option. Saving seventy would damage us all. It's what puts the civil in civilisation. Such is the unpleasant calculus of the "War on Terror". And intrinsic rights neatly avoid some of the weird places that utilitarianism roams. In a utilitarian world, if one of last week's victims would have grown up to be Harold Shipman, the terrorists would have done society a favour. They'd be utilitarian heroes. 15.7.05London bombings: wot, no anger?One afternoon, one week on, two acts of remembrance. First was the silence. I walked up to my high street in the heart of Londonistan and stopped opposite the Kurdish centre. There was a 76 at the bus stop and a short guy in a skullcap standing next to me. It was the silent bus, engine turned off, that I found most moving. And, on the news, a picture of a banner outside a Nottingham mosque: Not In My Name.Second, the Trafalgar Square gathering. Some fine, watery words, but where was the anger? Isn't anyone feeling it? The Right are feeling it. As usual, the vile and stupid half of them are blaming the wrong people: the Muslims, the rag-heads, the BBC, the Left. Their anger is righteous, but misdirected. Worse than that, their vicious words mask a concession of defeat. Turning tolerance into hate grants the killers what they wanted. They're weak: waving the white flag already. They are cowards. The Left, meanwhile, are too scared to feel real anger. We don't trust our fellow Britons to keep a lid on the vengeance. So, we flap about, apologizing for murder, blaming Iraq, blaming Blair. This is inadequate. We're showing the context but (deliberately?) obscuring moral agency and the role of a twisted Qutbist ideology that sanctifies mass murder as legitimate political expression. It's a long way from frustration about neo-imperialism in a country you've never seen to blowing the shit out of commuters going about their business. If the Left fail to grasp that, we're lost. 14.7.05London bombers: not just sad and twisted, but amateursNewsnight are reporting the explosive used last week wasn't military, as previously and unconvincingly leaked, but acetone peroxide. What does this mean? First, that's darn lucky. Semtex in an enclosed space would have turned carnage into a massacre. Second, these men didn't have access to the full command structure of al-Qaeda, should one even exist. Proper bad guys would have been able to get hold of better stuff. They're DIY as well as home-grown, which may be worse.The discovery also shows the trail of (perfectly reasonable) police disinformation, in which the media has been complicit. First, we're told there's so much explosive at the address in Burley, the terrorists may have been planning a follow-up truck bomb. Then, the suicide bombers carried ID with them to ensure they'd be identified and get their martyrdom credit. Both can't be true. Nosemonkey called it right: wankerish amateurs. And thank god for that. 13.7.05London bombs: were Muslims targeted?Matt T has spotted a developing liberal-left meme about the locations of last week's bombs: the bombers were targeting Muslim areas. First mentioned by Johann Hari, repeated several times in mainstream media since, and now Harry's Place orthodoxy. David T:Their salafi-jihadist politics in my view explains why they targeted muslim areas. Salafi jihadists think pretty much all muslims — apart from them — are heretics. It's a neat argument, but wrong: 1. Tavistock Square and the Piccadilly Line bombs: both happened in or under Bloomsbury, more known for Virginia Woolf than a non-existent Islamic community. The nearest mosque is Regent's Park. In fact, the bus wouldn't have hit significant numbers of Muslims until it reached the Turks of Dalston Junction. The Picc would have hit sooner: Arab shoppers in Knightsbridge. Neither bomber waited. 2. Liverpool Street/Aldgate: describing this part of town as 'Muslim' stretches a point. The explosion occurred under the City of London, the financial district, home to 403 Muslims according to the 2001 Census. And it wasn't a Hammersmith and City Line train heading to Aldgate East, which is at the edge of Whitechapel. No, it was the Circle Line to Aldgate: one word, big difference. 3. Edgware Road: the most plausible of the four. Edgware Road is a thriving Arabic expat community. But the demographic on the tube at that time of the morning isn't 'Muslim', but 'office worker'. If Muslims were the target, the bomber would have got off the underground, taken a bus south towards Marble Arch, and detonated a hundred yards down the road. In fact, far more plausible is that the locations of the bombs were completely random. Synchronized attack at 8.50 a.m. was chosen, they each took a route from King's Cross, and the efficiency of each line that morning chose the spot (which leaves just the bus to explain). That they were unfamiliar with the tube network is obvious: why else choose to detonate two suicide bombs on the shallow, sub-surface Circle Line? Far more damage would have been done on a deeper, smaller-bore line. It wouldn't surprise me if they were entirely unaware of the Muslim communities of Edgware Road and Whitechapel. At least two were only kids. There's no need to construct a theory that makes Muslims victims 'just as much as the rest of London'. Look at the names of the missing: Gamze Gunoral, Shahara Islam, Behnaz Mozakka. A Turkish name, a Bangladeshi name, a Mahgrebian name. That this was a random act of destruction needs no further elaboration. The killers didn't care. 12.7.05London bus bombing: incorrect speculationIt's the logical next step: someone has noted today's arrests in Leeds, checked where the Leeds train arrives and written yet another cod-theory over the bombings that focuses on King's Cross:It has also been suggested that the bombers could have met at King's Cross station as all three Tube trains which were hit had passed through there on the morning of the blasts. But it hadn't. I explained in the immediate aftermath that the bus had to be travelling north, from Marble Arch to Hackney, not in the other direction. It hadn't reached King's Cross yet. I suggest that the anonymous author of this piece reads his own paper. From a haunting reconstruction of the last minutes of the Number 30, in today's print edition of the Evening Standard (no link): The Number 30 left its terminus on the Eastway at Hackney Wick early that morning and had covered its usual route to Marble Arch, turned around and was heading back through Euston... Now, I think it highly likely that, if the (seemingly suicide) bombers were from Leeds, they boarded underground trains at King's Cross. But something a little more sophisticated and precise is required to explain the bomb on the No. 30. UPDATE 13/7: I'm still checking this, but it seems the Northern Line Bank branch was suspended at 8.30 last Thursday morning. This might reveal the intended destination of the fourth bomber, consistent with the MO of the other three. It still doesn't completely explain why it took a whole hour for the bus bomb to explode, but it is just possible that he'd never been to London before and got lost in the panic and road closures at King's Cross. Unfamiliarity with the capital would also explain why suicide bombers chose the sub-surface Circle Line, where damage was always going to be lighter. Oh, and the BBC have the bus's direction right, for the first time. (H/T: Matt.) BNP scumFrom the Beeb:The British National Party has used a photograph of the bombed London bus for an election leaflet. Shoulder-to-shoulder a.k.a. "Run away! Run away!"And there was me worrying that Americans might not come over here on holiday: their military aren't even allowed inside the M25:Personnel, most of them from US Air Force units at RAF Mildenhall and RAF Lakenheath, in Suffolk, have been told not to go within the M25 motorway. Really glad I don't have shares in Rules. PR, developing countries and female representationA little reminder from Zambia of the fringe benefits of proportional representation, especially in countries developing from patriarchy towards an economy that can utilise all its human resources. Zambia has something missing:Looking at [proportions of female] members of Parliament of all the member states of the United Nations, Zambia is placed at number 72 with only 12 per cent of female members of Parliament. Politics and politicians should take the lead: PR can help. Surviving a terrorist bombIf you've not already got this bookmarked (it updates a couple of times a day), then you should.From this: I was on a crowded train to work. It was 8.40am when I boarded the rammed Piccadilly line train at Finsbury Park. To, a few days later, this: Right. Time to go back to work. On the tube. Just one more person riding the Victoria Line this morning. 11.7.05And now for something completely differentCunts Corner (via and in the style of). For the topical...Terrorists: And again... Terrorists: And the positively decomposed... Mother Teresa: Adam Smith's jokeNo, actually, it's quite funny, as the Adam Smith Institute goes. At the bottom, this:[supplied by Mike Cunningham] Now, I'm wondering: Where have I seen that name before? Could it be in the comments over at Tim Worstall's place on the afternoon of mass murder in London? A Mike Cunningham wrote: The dead cry out for vengeance, and we should heed their call! ...whether it be rag-head or other, move to exterminate the whole foul bunch! Our response should be simple; "Do to others as was done to us!" I have no idea if it's the same guy or not. I hope not. But remember: slaughter on the underground revealed some truths, not least about the slime of all political stripes inhabiting the blogoverse. Never forget. And never again give credulity where it isn't due. On responsibility for murderRead this sentence in Gary Younge's Graun column this morning:...he [Blair] should take responsibility for his part in this [the London bombings] It got me thinking about moral agency. In response to similar (though more distastefully timed) comments by Chris Bambery, editor of Socialist Worker, Chris at S&M wrote: On the one hand, [the SWP] thinks our rulers can be responsible not only for their own actions, but also for others’ actions that are (very arguably) the consequence of those actions. But on the other hand, workers have so little moral agency that they do nothing to escape poverty and exploitation. Is such a differential view of our free wills really remotely plausible? Bambery's comments smell like apologism, but let's be charitable and call it determinism. On which: 1. Those same voices (Younge, Bambery) are among the loudest condemning the bloody assault on Falluja last November. US military interest in the city was heightened with the killing of four 'civilian contractors' there the previous March. The escalation in the city would never have happened without this 'lynching'. Are the murderers of those four mercenaries to blame for anything that happened during the US-led assault in 2004? How about for the execution of unarmed or wounded Iraqi prisoners? Are they even partly responsible? Of course not. A-ha, you might say: if the US hadn't been in Iraq in the first place, those first murders would never have happened. Which leads me on to... 2. If you rent a moped in Cambodia you will find the insurance premium very expensive. Why? If there is an accident involving your vehicle, no matter who is to blame, even if it is parked and someone drunk rams it, your insurance company has to pay out. The reasoning is simple: if you hadn't been in the country in the first place, the accident would never have happened. Which is an absurd way of illustrating the absurdity of deterministic theories of responsibility. They neglect morality altogether. Far simpler to do away with apologism and excuse-making: Those responsible for mass murder on London's transport system last week are the individuals who planted the bombs, those who harboured and supported them, those nihilists who encouraged and egged them on. London: what and why?From Spiked, some good sense in the let's have no-chin stroking tradition:...attacks such as these are not 'about' anything in real terms. Despite the grandiose Islamicised rhetoric of their spokesmen, today's terrorists have no political aims or programme worthy of the name. One of bin Laden's own central demands, for example, is a fantasy about reconquering al-Andalus, the Islamic kingdom in Spain that was ended by the defeat of the Moors more than 500 years ago. 9.7.05Super Furry Animals: apologistsWords spoken by Gruff Rhys, Super Furry Animals frontman at a concert in Somerset House, central London, less than 36 hours after at least fifty Londoners were murdered by terrorists:This [gig] nearly didn't happen tonight... But I guess if you make war not peace... The words hung. The crowd cheered. Then the next song began. I was there and wrote these words down in biro on a copy of the Evening Standard plastered with the faces of the missing. I ride the No. 30 a lot, and can categorically say I've never seen anyone making war on it. No further editorial required. 8.7.05Sign the pledge"I will at the earliest opportunity, assemble in London in a public demonstration of respect to the victims of the July 7 atrocity, in defiance of the murderers who carried it out and solidarity with the people of London but only if 2,500 other people will too."We want more than 100. More than 1,000. More than 10,000. Join us. Bus bomb: the press has it wrongWrong here. Wrong at Wikipedia here. Wrong here. And everywhere else.That bus wasn't going Hackney to Marble Arch. It was the 30 coming in the other direction. As I've explained in the comments here that could be an important factor: Wikipedia are still saying it was a southbound bus. That's almost certainly wrong, if not impossible. The bus was clearly heading south down Upper Woburn Place when it exploded. Therefore, assuming King's Cross was closed by then (it was), there's no way it can have been a southbound bus. A Marble Arch-bound bus diverted round KX would have been going north past the BMA building. The relevance of all this? Well, it seems to be the case that King's Cross was the hub at the centre of the bombings. All three affected tube lines went through there, and have only that station in common. But: the bomber didn't get on the 30 at King's Cross. It hadn't reached there yet, and anyway was unable to because the Euston Road was closed. Analysis is so much easier than emotion today. UPDATE: Unbelievably also wrong here, with a little bus route map that's wrong, too. If the bus had already passed King's Cross (doubtful given the chaos), it would have had no need to divert left into Tavistock Square. They have the direction of the Liverpool Street train wrong, too, I believe. ANOTHER UPDATE: To newspaper editors: if you must cod-theorize about the attacks, at least make sure your basic facts are right: One theory is the bombers knew traumatised Tube passengers would scramble onto buses to escape and get to work and planted a bomb in the packed King's Cross to Hackney double-decker bus. The morning afterJohann Hari:The streets of the East End are silent, except for the whining chorus of car alarms and sirens. Refugees from Aldgate station – one of the mini-Ground Zeroes bleeding across London – are wandering past me, caked in dust and soot and blood. This was supposed to be a day for the causes of peace. It was supposed to be a day for Africa and global warming and the ultimate symbol of peaceful competition, the Olympic Games. Al Quaida has, it seems, decided to turn it into a day for death. 7.7.05A quick definitionintelligence failure n. a malady, sth. experienced by journalists and meeja when they ask figures of authority whether the London 7/7 bombings were caused by a "failure of intelligence" London bombings: a word from the wise and far too many from the foolishThe evil people who planned and carried out these series of explosions in London this morning want to demoralise us as a nation and divide us as a people. All of us must unite in helping the Police to capture these murderers. Yesterday we celebrated as Londoners, euphoric that our great city had secured the Olympic Games. Today we stand aghast as we witness a series of brutal attacks upon our capital city. We were together in our celebration; we must remain together in our time of crisis.Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain London is a centre of peace, the most multiracial city in Europe and a global centre of opposition to the war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. A majority of those killed and wounded will have opposed the war in Iraq; some will have joined the huge marches for peace. ... The British government cannot avoid its responsibility for these terrible attacks, which are a consequence of its support for war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The best way to ensure that there are no more such terrible attacks is for British troops to be withdrawn from there immediately. As a mark of respect for the dead we have cancelled the opening day of our Marxism 2005 event. Chris Bambery, editor Socialist Worker Martin Smith, National Organiser, Socialist Workers Party You Brits need to wise up. Of course this is the work of a few "extremist" muslims, and the majority are "peaceful" and will "condemn" the attacks, but that is all smoke and mirrors - DECEPTION. They all send money and support, they will take over your country and make your dhimmitude formal. Set an example and hang some Dune Coons from the tower gates! Mike from NY at Europhobia's liveblog We argued, as did the security services in this country, that the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq would increase the threat of terrorist attack in Britain. Tragically Londoners have now paid the price of the Government ignoring such warnings. George Galloway, MP ...better to give them a tactical nuke – in Mecca or Medina. Kim Du Toit, Samizdata comments I wish to speak through you directly, to those who came to London to claim lives, nothing you do, how many of us you kill will stop that flight to our cities where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another; whatever you do, how many you kill, you will fail. Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London This is not a question of group blame. It's a question of individual responsibility. Rudy Giuliani, BBC, 8.20 p.m. Getting to what's really importantIn case anyone was wondering (and one caller to BBC Radio London was), the congestion charge has been suspended today. Though no decision yet on whether you'll get a refund if you've paid already.UPDATE: A little message for you Mr Terrorist. I've been out pushing my daughter on the swings. Go fuck yourselves. UPDATE: The bus was a number 30. My bus. Hackney Wick to the West End. I never sit on top at the back. Doubt I'll revise that strategy now. UPDATE: Just took a walk through the Islamic Republic of Dalston. Guess what? No cheering crowds outside the mosque. No drooling Islamofascists chanting anti-Zionist slogans. What a surprise, eh. There was an Asian guy drinking Strongbow Super, though. 6.7.05Where's the Evening Standard when you need it?Not sure if the value of my house in Hackney has just shot up, or I'm about to be screwed for council tax to pay for a 2012 corporate bonanza. Or both.G8: The price of protestA little topical something from me over at The Sharpener. Hurry along now.5.7.05The kind of charity you can spend at Louis VuittonOK, I'm not allowed to be cynical. Chris Martin said so. But can I just ask two questions about the stars' noble act before a global audience of 3 billion on Saturday?1. Why, when you clicked through for lineup information from the Live8 website, were some of the artists harvesting email addresses for their mailing list? So they can send us updates on the latest cotton figures from the Ghanaian Ministry of Finance? 2. What exactly are they going to do with all that extra selfless money they've made on the back of Saturday's LIVE 8 STARS' ALBUMS BOOST That's a lot of vaccines, folks, with some landmine clearance thrown in. Or a lot of liposuction. I look forward to an email update. 4.7.05'Free-market liberal' watchNext time someone on the right chides your statism and trumpets their 'free-market liberalism', as David Davis does tangentially today in the Indy, ask them one question:Do you believe we should control immigration? If they answer "yes..", or even "sometimes..." or "slightly...", then they aren't free-marketeers at all. Owen explains: Note that if trade liberalisation is restricted to some factors of production - eg capital - but not others - eg labour - then the theoretical arguments for the unambiguous benefits of free trade no longer hold. If an economist thinks that free movement of people is undesirable or impossible, then she may well believe that the second best solution is not free trade in goods, services and capital. Big Brother: one small economics labAt Stumbling and Mumbling, Chris explains why he loves Big Brother, and reminds us that Thatcherism would never have happened under a system of pure PR:It raises interesting issues in public choice. In particular, it shows that collective decisions are sensitive to the voting rules chosen. I'd add some reasons why Big Brother ought to make us suspicious of crude economics: 1. The Idiocy Principle: even when it became clear that the house was splitting along racial lines, (white) Maxwell and Saskia still conspired to evict (white) Roberto. People don't always do or know what's best for them, so we should be suspicious of economic libertarianism, especially without a safety net in the form of a Citizen's Basic income. 2. Bounded rationality: once Maxwell and Saskia were nominated, it was rational for both Anthony and Craig to build bridges with the brothaz and sistaz, or at the very least attempt to co-opt the new (white) housemates into their group to re-balance numbers. That they didn't illustrates sunk costs causing market failure. Incentives, then, don't always work. 3. Asymmetric information: when voting towards the end (but not last), it's possible to cast a nomination for others that ensures you have no chance of avoiding the public vote. In other words, in situations of imperfect information (i.e. the real world), people in competitive markets make wrong decisions that could be corrected with paternalism. 4. Uncooperative behaviour: housemates' complete inability to cooperate on simple tasks to meet shared ends perfectly illustrates a Hobbesian state of nature. So, we should be suspicious of Marxian models that require socialist production. Further, housemates never did better than when the task required the exploitation of Maxwell and his performing alienating labour from which others extracted surplus value. Maybe capitalism is best, after all. 3.7.05Live 8: Gig reviewDefinitely worth the ticket price:The Killers The Kaiser Chiefs (in Philly, though almost nobody in America has heard of them) Begrudgingly worth it: Razorlight, but only because they have two good songs, and they played them all. Sort of worth it: Pink Floyd, purely for the reminder that mournful guitar solos were, indeed, once all the rage. But then so were lava lamps. The rest: Shite. Plus a whole new genus for Fearne Cotton. Don't worry folks, normal politics service will be resumed tomorrow. 1.7.05Misproportionalist unrepresentationismSeriously, people, don't read this rubbish from Pravda. If you're of a pro-PR bent, it'll just make your blood boil (it's worse than Jack). If you're a contra, you will just feel all embarassed about your fellow travellers.In fact, it's a complete mystery how anyone could think this guy was worth giving a column inch to discuss PR. Okay, it's not such a mystery — he's a well connected dude, Atlas Foundation, Mises Institute, and the like. To boil the ethos down: screw the politics, open those markets. He starts off like everyone else, with the usual fallacies: PR obviously equals national, closed-list, Israeli-style PR, with all its blindingly obvious drawbacks; oh, and PR removes all local representation links. If that was all, I wouldn't even have bothered typing this. But he continues: Note, however, that the successful East Asian democracies (and India) do not use proportional representation, although some have a mixed system with 10 to 20 percent of their legislatures elected with PR... Chile is one of the very few Latin American nations not to use the system. This doesn't take long to check, but it seems our well-connected author didn't have the time: Indonesia, one of those East Asian democracies, elects its parliament using a multi-member system of PR. Taiwan, as detailed here last week, has just renovated its multi-member PR system, but has retained PR to elect over a third of its parliamentarians. Chile, contrary to what he says, does use proportional representation to elect its parliament. Hmm. But we haven't hit the best yet: a bit of (what else?) Cato-sponsored European-bashing. Ruth Richardson (that would be Ruth Richardson, discarded NZ National parliamentarian who currently represents a fervent pro-business party, ACT, that wouldn't even exist if it weren't for proportionality): She argued that many nations "afflicted with proportional representation" had a low quality of public policy and great difficulty at legislating meaningful reforms. She cited much of Western Europe as an example. Except for England, it has been unable to reform its paralyzing labor laws and anti-entrepreneurial regulations. Who could she be thinking of? Not Finland, surely, because the mega-right-wing Fraser Institute rates business regulation in Finland as even lighter touch than Singapore, 'despite' a particularly pure form of PR. Not Denmark, that enforces almost perfect proportionality, yet is rated more economically free than the United States by the Heritage Foundation. Not Ireland, that the Heritage again rates freer than New Zealand and uses the Single Transferable Vote to elect the Dail. Oh, that's right: she must mean France. Restrictive labour laws, interfering bureaucracy, restraints on trade everywhere you look. But, errr, unfortunately for Ruth, France doesn't use PR. They elect their 577-seat National Assembly in single-seat constituencies with a two-round majoritarian run-off system. It produces even more disproportionality than her beloved FPTP. Pass the bread sauce, RobinIn today's Indy, some advice from Robin Cook on how to persuade New Labour turkeys to vote for Christmas:There is, of course, one other obvious argument that has to be addressed if I want to carry the majority of Labour MPs with me [and support proportional representation]. That is, how do we achieve an outcome in which they do not suffer from job insecurity? I have thought about this for a number of years, particularly during the period when I was Leader of the House of Commons, and I think I have the solution. I think we should offer a package of democratic reforms in which electoral reform is introduced alongside a democratically-elected second chamber in place of the House of Lords. Then there would be plenty of jobs for those who were displaced as Labour MPs from the House of Commons – and a 100 per cent gain in democracy in both Houses of Parliament. |
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