The Bewilderness

To the barricades

I just Nigel Farage request Gordon Brown apologise for his errors. He smiled. What an arrogant fucking tosser. But he smiles and I wonder why does Brown smirk, immunised to the world.

They will declare an emergency. It is fairly clear...what is the trigger?.

You have the responsibility to pay tax....in law

Jack Straw has made a recent statement, given to the press in advance of the House, on his new green paper: "Rights and Responsibilities: developing our constitutional framework". The thinking behind this statement is a detremination to redress the rights discourse that have disfigured our courts system and brought Justice into disrepute. Repeal may be a start, but as the government could not face an admission of error, they will build upon the mistake by a Bill of Rights. Behind the obfuscatory mixture of the declaratory and justiciable, Jack Straw wishes to introduce a new raft of duties that cititoys would be required to obey in addition to the demands and sanctions laid down by law:

Some responsibilities are obvious, such as obeying the law, paying taxes and undertaking jury service. Others are less obviously recalled at the moment they should be exercised, such as a responsibility towards future generations to live within environmental limits, the duty we have to protect the well-being of children in our care, a civic duty to vote, responsibilities towards our neighbours, respect for those public sector workers who care for us and a responsibility towards the taxpayer—for example, not claiming benefits if one is able to work.

This mixture of the anodyne and the horrific would be used to enshrine their mess at the heart of our law. Imagine ill-defined responsibilities that could be used to harass and jail those who disagree with this settlement. We have already noted, with the anti-terrorist acts, that our rights are diluted against the wishes and demands of the warfare state. ("You are free to hold ID cards"). What would the government and the courts do with the 'responsibility' towards future generations, which could extend all of the way up to inaugurating maximal equality by fiat. Abolition of inheritance, for example.

The Tory response was dismissive and noted that the paper would never be law, due to the electoral timetable. If this were just Labour's cock, I would not be so complacent. I suspect that this tinkering starts deep within the Ministry of Justice as the constitutional tinkerers makematters worse. Moreover, Grieve did not reject the concept of responsibilities as a potential counterweight.

Hat-tip: Conservativehome

First, shoot the diplomats...

One agreement that did work was the Montreal Protocol, phasing out chlorofluorocarbons as refrigerants, and commencing the long-term repair of the ozone layers. One recent study has modelled a world without Montreal, just the protocol, though some may trade the city for sunburn.

The year is 2065. Nearly two-thirds of Earth's ozone is gone - not just over the poles, but everywhere. The infamous ozone hole over Antarctica, first discovered in the 1980s, is a year-round fixture, with a twin over the North Pole.

The ultraviolet (UV) radiation falling on mid-latitude cities like Washington, D.C., is strong enough to cause sunburn in just five minutes.

DNA-mutating UV radiation is up 650 percent, with likely harmful effects on plants, animals and human skin cancer rates.

Such models are difficult to pin down with accuracy, but this is a useful reminder that limited joint action is useful if the objectives are well-defined, the science is understood and the outcomes are clearly beneficial. Phasing out CFCs was a clear and straightforward task.

This model has been misapplied ever since, especially in relation to anthropogenic global warming. The models for this phenomenon are contested, the objectives are not even defined and the science is not just obscure but severely politicised. If you wished to write a case-study of mismanagement in diplomacy, Kyoto is a key example for your dissertation.

A timely reminder that international co-operation between nation states, and under limited conditions, works. A success that is becoming rarer by the day; the more diplomats there are, the less likely we will achieve anything. First shoot the diplomats, then kill the lawyers

Jacqui Smith hides the wheat with her chaff

There is a contest to preserve what few freedoms we have left; and that contest is undermined by Contest 2, the latest counter-terrorist effort of the government. Jacqui Smith was indulging in the rhetoric of fear and liberty that is used for what as justification in government circles. First the threat of nuclear or radiological attack:

The report says the risk of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack has been heightened by the pace of technological change and the spread of specialised information and knowledge via the internet.

And then the removal of liberties in their own defence, known as the 'Cheshire Cat' strategem:

Ms Smith, who said the strategy was the "most comprehensive and wide ranging in the world," also spoke of the need to "strengthen mainstream voices of those that share our values" and to challenge those, such as the recent protesters against troops returning from Afghanistan.

"We the Government and others will say that we think that that's wrong," she said. "Not that they've broken the law. One of the things we're defending in this country is the right to free speech, but that isn't free speech that will go unhindered or unchallenged."

The government's lack of modesty on counter-terrorism increases doubt. New Labour do not have a good record on using intelligence evidence impartially and their dogwhistles on extremism deny the facts. If you are a radical Muslim, you get airtime on the BBC. If you oppose them in public, you have a good chance of being arrested for a hate crime.

The success of a counter-terrorist strategy is measurable by attacks, and the work on the ground is working. There may even be some merit in training civilians for disasters, though why this is limited to terrorist attacks shows the unimaginative and separated structure of the government.

The problem is that they have cried "wolf" too often and are no longer trusted. Anecdotal evidence abounds that defence by shopkeepers opens them up to ridicule and that they are no longer trusted. Whatever the reality of these risks, they are tainted by association with Jacqui Smith, and serious concern is replaced by accusations of playing political cards.

The politicisation of our counter-terrorist strategy is a grave concern and may potentially undermine our defence by reducing the support of civil society. The use of threats and fear to cow the population will rebound on this weak government.

The threats, the base, the target

The amount of control that Al-Qaeda is able to project beyond its base is very uncertain. The Quilliam Foundation asserts that recruitment at street level is undertaken for projects directed by the base, and that it relies upon a hierarchical structure, rather than the 'franchise' model and internet agitprop that is considered the norm. Such a view is attacked as the conclusion is that Al-Qaeda has had a permanent and interchangeable presence here since the last century.

The major threat for the United States, and especially for the United Kingdom, is the training of radicals in South Asia who will then take up terrorism on behalf of their cause. British born Pakistanis are now identified by the United States as a serious threat and this has resulted in surveillance of the old country. Whilst there is a dossier received from Pakistan intelligence, that 'rogue state', giving the names of twenty terrorists who are now in the UK, we can be sure that hundreds more have actually fought in their homeland. Listen to the triggers:

Eleven of the Britons claimed they were studying in Pakistan while seven said they were visiting relatives....

One said he was working for a charity with links to Britain and others said they were on holiday....

Another Pakistani source said: "We know the number of British Pakistanis engaged in what we would call suspicious activities is much higher - probably in the hundreds - but, to be frank, this isn't a Pakistani priority.

"The intelligence services here have much bigger things to worry about and these guys haven't committed any crime on Pakistani soil."

This remains a potential and growing threat that will not be resolved by throwing money at an uncooperative and failing state. We know who our friends are...  

Will Olivier Besancenot replace Sarkozy as premier citoyen?

The next Presidential election in France is 2012. The effects of this recession will be lingering; the scars of the downturn plentiful - will Olivier Besancenot and his New Anti-Capitalist Party thrive on the disillusionment or will they prove a temporary fist of protest and disruption. Rolling general strikes and fights on the 'street' suggest that their revolutionary agenda may not wait...

Bankrupt britain: even hoch will be unaffordable

We have had a recent lull in the series of bad news and doom-laden forecasts in the run-up to the G20 summit. Economists have been distracted by the various plans of mice and mice on the new international architecture and other cloud castles. It seems that we can not go one week without hearing of a public funded bank paying bonuses, annoying the public, and some other enormous luxury that only MPs or civil servants could hope to rival. This continual round of reform and announcement, linked into the permanent revolution of PR, gives the illusion of control. Hence the slight rise in Labour's poll rating.

In the real world, Labour has few options. It can try to tap the markets and issue gilts for further stimulus but their credibility with their new paymasters has run out. They will not even be able to afford hoch. The forecasts that they made are now attacked as implausible and as optimistic:

"The Bank's forecast is that there will be a strong recovery and that this will pick up later this year, but there are strong arguments about why that won't happen," he said. "The problem is that in forecasts [economists] tend to be over optimistic. Likewise, the probability is that unemployment of 3m is an underestimate."

Danny Blanchflower, leaving the Monetary Policy Committee, is now stating that the upper range for unemployment is four million. The figure for economically inactive will be truly horrendous.

It will be far worse for Germany. The economy has fallen off a cliff and could contract by 7% as a worst case scenario. Truly horrendous! But what pales beside this catastrophe is the myopic response of the European Bank. They have not yet learned that unprecedented means likely, although they put rescue packages in place for situations that will never occur:

Luxembourg's premier Jean-Claude Juncker, head of the Eurogroup of finance ministers, said the EU had plans to rescue any eurozone state in serious trouble "within hours" but insisted that no such need would ever arise.

Like the rightly named Poos and his well-timed serve, "The hour of Europe is at hand", we can rest assured that the Juncker class of politico will be usefully shafted by this crisis. Good to have a silver lining!

Long life expectancy, the closest continuer and the memory problem

I attended the Transhumanist meeting over the weekend where Dr Richard Faragher gave an enlightening talk on the possibilities of gerontology over the next five years. This is the only timescale that Faragher would entertain as realistic, rejecting some of the wilder claims of SENS. One can see why there may be some antipathy on the part of the laboratory scientist to the self-styled visionary, though this may also be the standard divide between experimentalist and theorist.

My concern  with Faragher's vision was long-lived individuals acting as a vessel with tenants. The neural structure cannot store enough memories to retain a linear psychology down the centuries. Therefore, we need to resolve by storing memories in an artificial substrate and allowing ourselves to tap them as experiences. Overcoming the problem of qualia is one difficulty here. Only then could we say that the tenant in the vessel is the closest continuer of the previous incarnation.


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The coming collapse of Pakistan?

David Kilcullen has an interview, published in the Washington Post, where he warns about the collapse of Pakistan. This is what they call a biggie and we can be sure that our own government has not modelled the potential disaster. (Hat tip: Spectator)

Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn't control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state. We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems. . . . The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today. 

One interesting amateur does spell out some of the potential scenarios for the collapse of Pakistan. One is civil war and the dismemberment of the federal state with successor polities in Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan. More likely is war and rump. However, the article smacks of diplomacy with historical change by boundaries, and a cohesion that may not exist in practice. After all, some parts of Pakistan already resemble Somalia or Yugoslavia. Take your pick.

As a Pakistani elite faces a rising jihadist community and an emergent middle class, it is squeezed on more than one side: the time for corruption and oscillation between feudal overlord and military dictator is over. Can the Punjabi-Mohajir elite cohere in a country whose strategic depth is now unbalanced by the frontier insurgency?

War between Pakistan and India is even more fraught than before. Where the Pakistani army could crawl back into the desert, that bolthole is now denied them. If animosity becomes hot, they could shift to nuclear far more quickly, since the chances of defeat are higher than they were.

Events conspire against Pakistan and leave us more open to its coming collapse.

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Left serve, overtaken by debt

The liberal left is waking up to the alternative that is Cameron and the destruction of the political system that they hoped to embed as the progressive century. Denied dominance by the unwillingness of Blair to share power and distorted by the limited vision of the Chancellor. Their reliance on immigration and public sector employment to create a client bank is foundering under the maelstrom of depression and debt.

The Observer and the Independent woke up to this today and began to offer 'advice'. John Rentoul, in a partisan piece, accused Cameron of evasion, Labour of defeatism, and then, in a piece de incoherence, decided the Tories were unstoppable anyway.

Cameron resists definition. He talks about tough choices without ever really making any. He will, therefore, easily defeat Gordon Brown, a known quantity. The grabber in the Blackpool arcade cannot get a grip on him. His core beliefs are ungraspable. In other words, as an electoral force he is unstoppable.

Rentoul's rendition of a rabbit in headlights was accompanied by the Observer's attempt to frame the paradigm. Their editorial was a dirge on whether the Tories could offer more then austerity as a feelgood story. Next door was Andrew Rawnsley, cross eyed, piecing together the obvious, that public sector expenditure will be squeezed, whoever is in power, and that we are in a terrible mess.

The rise of dawn fiscal has seeped into the awareness of the Left, and as the current crop of articles shows, started a mad scrambling to control the narrative. The triumphalism of the social democrats at the toppling of the banks lasted less than six months before the grand guignol of red ink and the response of a bureaucracy bereft of experience put paid to a new opportunity for state action. Now, they face the reality: lower public spending, higher taxes and repayment of debt.

The crunch is beginning to hit home for the Left.