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| More!? More!? |
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| Shields down to 20% | |
Western peace-mongers who
went to Iraq to risk their
lives for the name of peace in the coming war have had a change of heart,
and 80% are on their way home. The 200 Human shields in Iraq were summoned to a meeting on Saturday. The
head of the Friendship, Peace and Solidarity organization, which is hosting the
Human Shields instructed them to choose between nine "strategic sites" by
Sunday or leave Iraq. Obviously these people expected that free choice played a
greater role in Iraqi life. Apparently they had expected to be able to shield
'humanitarian' sites like hospitals - ie the kind of sites that they know the
highly accurate US smart bombs will not target. Of course the peace-mongers claim that millions of innocent Iraqi babies
will die in a US attack - ie that the bombs will drop everywhere. If that were
the case, then hospitals wouldn't be any safer than oil refineries, power plants andx
water-purification sites But now, when instructed to shield strategic sites only, the
peace-mongers are fleeing for their lives. In fairness, there are other reasons why some of them may have decided to
return home. Many of them are apparently out of money (it seems that the dole
checks stop when you become a human shield), and expecting to do something
complex like counting their money before they go is unrealistic. The other reason that many Human Shields may have lost heart is the Iraqis
themselves. Even the most strident war opponent would agree there are some
Iraqis who want the war - who think they can gain from the regime change and
the lifting of sanctions. The booming Baghdad
property prices themselves are strong evidence of this. These people have
no love for the West,
or Westerners - especially the whining peace protesters who are slowing the war
momentum. It would be no surprise to see an overzealous Iraqi taking matters into his
own hands to re-lubricate the war machine, by slotting one of the Western human
shields. So for the peace-mongers, it's back to their safe Western nations - to
collect their pensions and their dole checks; back to their
guaranteed democratic rights, civil liberties and
police protection, so they can ready themselves for the next protest to
criticize the very system which provides them those protections. What better way to show contempt for dogs of war than biting the hand that
feeds them?
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| Masters of Diplomacy | |
China has criticized
suggestions of Australian
investment in the US Star-Wars-II style missile defense shield. Such a defense
shield is still just experimental, but is being carefully considered by the US government, and there are
suggestions that Australia could get a slice of the action - for a
price. Chinese officials said that such a move was unnecessary, provocative,
destabilizing, and would result in a regional arms race. Before thinking that only the inscrutable Chinese would label the installation
of bars on their neighbor's windows as 'provocative', it's worth studying the
big picture here. Star-Wars-I, rightly or wrongly, is frequently attributed with the collapse
of the Soviet Union. It
was the last big dollar item in the Cold War arms race which the Soviet military couldn't match,
before the collapse of the entire socialist empire. While the Chinese empire is a little more robust, it still suffers the
occasional tremor in the outlying regions. The more nations climb aboard the
missile defense shield, the more money will be spent on it, and
the higher its chances of succeeding. And if it works, Taiwan will get it. The Chinese hate Taiwan because it is a clear demonstration of the economic, ethical and military failure of their own
corrupt regime. A
missile-shielded Taiwan would also be more inclined to claim independence from
China - the mere suggestion of which sends Chinese officials into an indignant
rage. And even if the missile defense technology doesn't work, such projects tend
to have other technological spin-offs
which the Chinese will be locked out of, and realistically can't afford. China, with its huge population and fast growing economy, hopes to take over
from the US as having the world's largest economy (and by implication the
largest military) in two or three decades. Hardly surprising that they don't
want any 'destabilizing' technologies thrown into the soup. There are two make-or-break technologies which may shape the future of
warfare within two decades. One is the missile defense (shooting a bullet with
a bullet is a tricky thing to do), the other is software which can
intelligently handle UCAVs
(un-manned fighter jets). UCAVs can do 15G rolls and such-like because
they don't have to worry about squashing the human occupant who is likely to
pass out at around 8Gs. Hence they could in principle out-perform all current
fighter aircraft, and achieve air supremacy. A nation with a monopoly on these
technologies could rule the world in two decades, and the Chinese know it. However this is still all science fiction, and there may be a more useful
short-term strategy - getting the Chinese to squash North Korea. A quiet word
to the Chinese that North Korean aggression will make South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Australia all join the
missile defense program might concern China enough to denounce North Korea's
current belligerence. When the guns go silent in Iraq, that may be enough to cower
the attention-seeking Kim Jong Il. Then a cooler reactor core in Pyong Yang could cool tempers all around.
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| Testing the reaction | |
Celebrity dictator Saddam (no-anthrax-on-me) Hussein seems to have made a
tactical blunder in the lead up to the coming Iraq war. He has been asked (or 'demanded' depending on which media outlet you listen
to) to destroy his arsenal of al-Samoud missiles, because they have a range
greater than the 150Km he is allowed under previous UN resolutions. His
reply has been a petulant 'NO'. Maybe he has been emboldened by millions of unshaven feminists marching around
the world also using the 'N' word. If so he has misread the West. Most of the Western peace-mongers may think that death is better than war, but they aren't fond of guns,
bombs, missiles or especially weapons of mass destruction. If there were peace
protesters waving banners saying 'Saddam has a right to offensive weapons',
they weren't obvious. They see the way forward as a benevolent collection of dictatorships (in the
form of the UN) voting to disarm the whole world 'peace by peace'. Let's face
it - what better way to achieve world socialism since socialism
failed militarily? Refusing to destroy offensive weapons like al-Samoud missiles really goes
against the grain, and reminds the peace-mongers that Saddam isn't really a sensitive new age guy. It
undermines his support in the West, and creates more people who say 'what
the heck - Let's Roll!' So keeping the al-Samouds may be strictly within the 150Km limit (if you
only half fill the fuel tank), but it is militarily pointless, and
also a tactical error. They won't win him the war with the US et al, and he is
compromising his political
game. If he thinks that arguing technicalities with the UN will win he is
mistaken - that battle is based on pseudo-morality. Saddam, there's a good fellow. Be a nice guy, and destroy all your weapons
before we attack you. It'll save a lot of trouble all around.
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| Not happy, Geoff | |
Geoff (ATSIC Chairman)
Clark is in the news again facing charges of assaulting police. He was arrested last
year in his home town of Warrnambool during a pub brawl at the Criterion
Hotel. Nothing unusual about that - he has a long history of 'involvement' with
the police, and his permanent sneer (the unfortunate result of a fight many
years ago) is testimony to the fact that he doesn't shy away from resorting to
his fists if gentler forms of persuasion (like threats and stand-overs) don't
work. But the controversy this time is over who is to pay his legal costs. He
obtained approval 'in principle' from the ATSIC board to pay his legal bills
(expected to be about $45,000). More correctly, he obtained approval at the
tail end of the last meeting of the previous board for the money - after most
people were sent out of the room, and the rest wanted to get out so they could
catch their planes home. In principle, of course the Aboriginal Legal Service has been paying the legal
bills for Aborigines charged with crimes since its inception - that's its
function. But $45,000 seems rather a lot for just an assault
charge - particularly when the defendant is paid a $255,000 pa salary from the
tax-payer already, and could clearly afford to pay for his own defense. But, says Geoff (I-hired-silk-for-this) Clark, this is a matter of
principle - the changes are a fit-up, and the whole event took place because of
(you guessed it) racism. The
story is a bit vague, but it seems that a group of Aborigines were asked to
leave the pub and Clark encouraged them to insist 'we'll leave when the white
people do'. Exactly why a publican would want to expel a group of thirsty and
well-behaved Aborigines from his pub is a bit of a mystery, but the whole thing
is a bit confused. But with ATSIC looking more and more threatened by audits and effectiveness
inquiries, with Minister Phil Ruddock demanding greater control, and with Geoff
Clarke having his share of enemies even within the ATSIC structure (the rape accusations didn't help
much), the board may reverse their decision. Geoff may have to pay his own
legal costs. Taxpayers can revel at the thought of ATSIC spending that $45,000 on
something so much more useful. Well, naive taxpayers can anyway.
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| Hard to Kill | |
Members of the AIDS
industry would have been sighing with relief today as the AIDS vaccine trial by
the much heralded Vaxgen showed mixed results - none
of them entirely successful. Infection rates with the vaccinated subjects were
not significantly different from those given a placebo. The obvious way to test an AIDS vaccine is to give it to people, and then
expose them to AIDS. But getting volunteers for such a trial is a little hard.
Further, with no current war serious enough to impose a draft, there is no pool
of conscientious objectors to force into the volunteer programs. So instead they got several thousand brave volunteers in high-risk categories
to be injected with either vaccine or a placebo (no, they don't get to choose
which, and don't even know), and get tested a year later for AIDS. Giving many subjects a placebo in these cases is a good idea, and also
standard practice for scientific experiments. Not
telling people whether they got the placebo or the vaccine is critical to avoid
people changing their behavior, or reporting phantom symptoms with the
vaccine. In this case preventing behavior change may have been a very good
idea, because the subjects were all in a high-risk area already, and subjects
may have been inclined to take more risks if they thought they were
invulnerable. However it's not clear that this didn't happen. Subjects may not be told whether
they have the vaccine or the placebo, but in many cases people can tell anyway.
Drugs and vaccines nearly always have side effects, and giving people
'placebos' with side effects is normally regarded as unethical by medical
ethics committees (even if it saves lives). So maybe the vaccine was partially effective, but the subject's increased
risk-taking behavior skewed the results? Unlikely, but still the kind of
complication which the honest researcher has to consider, and the dishonest
researcher has to carefully ignore. The other interesting blip on the statistics package is that the Mongoloid
and Negroid (that's Asians and African Americans for the politically
correct types who object to the scientific terms) fared better than the
rest. The vaccine lowered their contraction rates significantly. Unfortunately
for the researchers though, the numbers of those subjects in the trail was very
low. Of course with 20 million AIDS sufferers in Africa they could do another
test quite cheaply. On the other hand, with African leaders claiming that HIV
and AIDS are unrelated, there might be some political complications. The AIDS industry gravy train looked like coming to a shuddering stop, but it's
not threatened by a solution to the problem just yet. Quite the opposite in
fact - with a solution seeming so tantalizingly close, money will become more
available, not less. But with many, many other vaccines in the pipeline, an effective AIDS
vaccine is probably only a few years away, and it will be a significant
political event. Will the breakthrough come from a government funded university, or from a privately funded
company anticipating a return on their massive investments? Doubtless both sides of the political spectrum will try to claim some kind
victory regardless of the outcome.
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| ..Bitchin' | |
After the arguments, backbiting, political maneuvering and Euro-tantrums, NATO has caved
over its earlier refusal to pre-deploy defensive hardware to Turkey in case of
retaliation by Iraq. It now
says it will do so if it is understood that the move is purely defensive, and
not supportive of an attack on Iraq. The position of NATO was actually quite justified - an agreement with your
mates that you'll look after each other doesn't really count if one of them
deliberately picks a fight that you counsel him against. But this makes NATO's
cave-in even more significant, and the CoW (Coalition of the Willing) are
taking this as a sign that the UN security council is also going to cave - or
at least give a 'gray resolution'. A 'gray resolution' would be designed to
allow the US to interpret it as
a green light, while still letting others deny that they actually gave
permission for a war. A gray resolution is the only one which will allow the UN to save face at this
point. Either a refusal (which would be ignored by the US), or agreement (which
would be a major back-down) will make them look weak, spineless and
irrelevant. The middle ground is the only way to go. The only issues then are
'what shade of gray' and 'what about the French'? The French, locked out of the latest NATO decision because of a 1966 choice
to bow out of some NATO committees has been by-passed in the NATO move. The
petulant Franco-ego may not have healed by the time the UN security council
votes and they may use their veto power against even a gray resolution as
pay-back. Meanwhile reports are that Saddam is arming his citizens 'in
preparation for war'. Like
Johnny (only-I-have-guns) Howard, he has always followed the
disarminge strategy, to reduce the temptations for popular
uprisings. Arming his citizens is a move which is likely to make both his
government, and any post-war Iraqi government, less secure. He wants to ensure
that even after he is gone that things don't run smoothly. Now that's payback even the French can envy.
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| Taking a New Direction | |
Londoners are wondering what's going to happen tomorrow morning when the
fees for driving into the center of London get set to five pounds ($AU14) per
car per day. While leftists,
rednecks, libertarians and
merchant bankers alike may be about to join forces and take up arms against
such an blatant unreasonable excuse for the government to dip into
people's pockets, perhaps a little thought is appropriate. Cities are generally
congested. The centers of cities are horribly congested. Usual government
mismanagement of the problem makes it worse in two ways - not only is there a
tragedy of the commons - it is a subsidized tragedy of the
commons. The tragedy of the commons plays a big hand. The roads are a scarce
resource, which the government insist belong to 'everyone' - so everyone can
use them without consideration of the externalities of their actions - slowing
other traffic. Hence much of the surplus from road use is taken up with people
waiting in traffic jams - much like people lining up for hours to buy a loaf at
government fixed prices in communist Russia, where poverty belonged to everyone. Making people pay for the use of the roads reduces the use of the roads - and
therefore reduces transport times for those who do choose to pay for their use. Most governments not only fail to see this, but actually subsidize the
congestion - normally through subsidizing public transport. Taxpayers (most of whom don't even
go to the city centers) are forced to pay taxes to subsidize
dirty, overcrowded, dangerous trains, trams and buses so that people can all
commute to the oldest, most overcrowded, poorly planned and dirtiest part of
the city - the city center. In the era of high-speed freeway systems and record motor vehicle ownership,
governments insist on subsidizing people to do business at one of the
few places where overcrowding makes these things unachievable. So tomorrow morning Londoners, many of them not known for their enthusiasm
for free markets, are about to get a quick lesson in the power of the market
(or at least a government-simulated market). Doubtless it will be chaos in
the teething stage, but it will ultimately lead to better use of the resource. And of course the best way to use this new revenue would be give it back to the
population in the form of tax-cuts, but no-one seriously expects this to happen. It's hard to know what has inspired this flash of clarity in the UK Labour
Party. Perhaps it was the realization that they were already on the Laffer peak, and that
efficient taxes were needed to raise the funds for the coming war. All over the world, better understanding of the free market is allowing governments to more
efficiently fleece their citizens of their hard-earned income. On the other hand maybe Tony Blair thought that five pounds was enough to
deter fundamentalist religious
psychopaths from letting of bombs in central London.
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| Doing Allah's Bidding | |
Many Muslims across the
world, including officials in Indonesia have labeled any
future US-led attack on Iraq as an attack on all
Muslims. A politically
powerful statement, and a powerful threat, but perhaps a little impolitic in
the light of their other positions. While the leaders of the Coalition of the Willing (Bush, Blair and Howard),
have been quick to distance the actions of a few fundamentalist Muslims from
the body of Islam, it seems that many Muslim leaders have been a little more
reluctant to do so. While stating that they shouldn't be judged on the actions of a few
terrorists, they are quick to be seen as standing as one - as one of their
psychotic brethren is threatened with force in Iraq. While the Bush Blair and Howard team are anxious to avoid this to become a
war of ideologies (between Western freedom and Islamic repression), many
Islamic nations are keen to see it become just that. Apparently
- any attack by a Muslim is an isolated incident; but
- any attack on a Muslim is an attack on all of Islam.
Thank heavens for cultural
relativism. How else could we ignore apparent contradictions such as these?
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| Lost Property | |
In the modern age the question of 'what it means to be Australian' is often
raised, but is usually just answered with politically
correct slogans about the wonders of digeridoos, bunyips and
multiculturalism. The more serious question of 'what is Australia?' is hardly
ever asked. But consider the following definitions
- Regional: The big island south of Asia (and some of the islands near it).
- Constitutional: The Australian Constitution.
- Membership: The set of people with Australian
citizenship.
- Proprietary: The assets owned by people with Australian
citizenship, and the Australian government
(regardless of where they are).
- Or various combinations of these.
And these definitions raise an interesting question: If Australian sovereignty is just the collection of people - regardless of the
region they are in, then sovereignty is really just a big protection coalition.
Nothing wrong with that it itself - but it's a little counter-intuitive. It's even less intuitive when applied to the U.S. of A., and its national
anthem's - land of the free, home of the brave. Did you say
land, and home? The US government clearly feels it has the right (and perhaps the obligation) to protect US
citizens who voluntarily leave the US, and enter into other sovereign
territories which have their own rules. Some would describe this as pragmatic,
others would describe it as arrogant. It's one thing to assert your rules in
your own house - it's quite another to apply them in someone else's. Forcing
people to apply your rules in their nation is good old fashioned imperialism. This is of course, a different issue to taking preemptive defense of the
realm. Attacking people outside your region if they are likely to attack you
in your region in the future is totally justified. And some would say using force to prevent abuses of fundamental human rights
is justified, wherever they occur. Unfortunately though there is no agreement
on what fundamental human rights are - first world leftists seem to think that
refusing to buy someone a color
television is a fundamental human rights abuse. But attacking Iraq because
Iraqi WMDs
may be used to attack American interests outside America in the future? Maybe
not. There are good arguments for a war with Iraq - but this is not
one of them. And attacking Iraq to avoid another Bali massacre? Not our business. If we
don't like the fact that Indonesia has an oversupply
of murderous Islamic psychopaths, well .. we
can take our holidays at home. And maybe go and smoke some dope up at Byron Bay and hang
out with those naked
feminists instead. Hmm .. on the other hand, maybe intelligent and well
informed people who are willing to take responsibility for
their own decisions may decide, on balance, that Bali is still worth the risk.
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| Saddam's Unwanted Helper | |
Osama bin (hiding-for-a-while-now) Laden has made a celebrity appearance on
Al Jazeera. Strictly speaking it was a hearing - just a recording of his
voice. Or at least someone who sounds like him, and says the kinds of things
which people thing that Osama might say if it were him. Choosing to use tapes
instead of may be because he doesn't want people seeing how sick he is. On the
other hand, maybe he doesn't want people to realize he's shaved off his beard,
and living it up in the South of France, or Las Vegas. Or maybe he doesn't want
people to see that he is dead. Regardless, he calls on Muslims everywhere to join celebrity dictator
Saddam Hussein in a holy Jihad against the crusading US infidels. This doesn't
seem to be based on affection for Saddam so much as hatred of the US - he even
distances himself from Saddam on the tape. True to form, Al Qaeda is driven not
by friendship, but by hatred - My enemy's enemy is my friend as the
Middle Eastern saying goes. Hardly surprisingly, the broadcast has been leaped on by the coalition of
the willing - Bush, Blair and Howard - as evidence of a connection between
Saddam and Al Qaeda. If mutual hatred of the US can be considered a connection,
then this is quite logical, but it isn't strong evidence of cooperation between
them. It does however indicate that Osama would be willing to cooperate with
Saddam for the destruction of the US - like, say, buying some WMDs if the price
were right. What it does not demonstrate is Saddam's willingness to supply them. But the coalition of the willing may have been given another way to demonstrate
Saddam's belligerence. UN weapons inspectors seem to have had
their first real win with the claimed discovery of long range missiles - a
violation of the UN rulings. But nothing is clear cut in the Middle East -
while George and Tony are screaming 'smoking gun, smoking gun', UN veto-powers
France, Russia and China are saying there's not enough smoke to prove there's a
fire. Indeed Gerhardt Schroeder has said that even if Iraq is in material breach,
then war is still not justified. Things have heated up for the US, Germany and France though - they
have been sniping at each other for the last few days. Perhaps the US, France,
Russia and China couldn't come to an agreement on administration of
post-Hussein Iraqi oil. And there's no cooling off period - the heavyweights are going into the
ring tomorrow at the UN at the next weapons report, and it's a little hard to
see how they could find a compromise in which everyone can claim victory. But
then - that's what war is about.
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>> Please Sir, I want some more
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| Feedback/Forum |
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- ANON -- Anonymous Coward 2011-12-02
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