A Serving of Crow(eater)

2003-06-25T19:31:00.000Z

Service Interrupted

Sorry, due to real-life work pressures I haven't had any decent time to blog in the last few days. I intend to be back with more missives late this week or this weekend including (a) another take on the Iraq situation - courtesy of my brother in Australia; (b) the continuing comparisons between Brett Lee and Glenn McGrath, and (c) whatever else catches my eye.

Cheers, and have a good one.

2003-05-11T21:14:00.000Z

Aarrgh. No posting for multiple weeks. Basically, RL has reared its sorry head and kept me busy (although not at work, thankfully) during weeks and weekends. Normal posting will resume at some point, but don't hold your breath. Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

2003-04-20T21:30:00.000Z

On an Easter Weekend when too much sport is barely enough...

The Crows defeated West Coast by 33 points at Football Park.

Australia (partly thanks to a magnificent 160 from Darren 'Boof' Lehmann) racked up a destructive 576 against the West Indies.

Liverpool held their nerve to see off Everton at Goodison Park.

So, basically, I've been having a good Easter weekend.

2003-04-20T21:20:00.000Z

Shooting the guys shooting the fish in the barrel

The National Review editorial criticising opposition to the Bush tax cut currently being fought over in the US has been derided as ludicrous by none other than CalPundit, at his bright shiny new blogspot-free location. (Props also to Unlearned Hand for the referral to CalPundit).

Now, there are some serious problems with the National Review article. However, simply trying to deride the article by deliberately missing the authors' point is not going to cut it. The point is simple and obvious - if you want to set a target for the budget, then deviating from it by $1 in tax cuts is equivalent to deviating from it by $1 in extra spending. Saying that there's $2 of new spending for every $1 in tax cuts is not a request for equivalence, but rather a request for a shuffle of the benefits, so that the money goes into the hands of the rich saps who currently dodge^H^H^H^H^H pay more than their fair share of the tax burden, rather than those Lucky Duckies who don't earn enough to pay much to Uncle Sam in tax.

That's not to say that the NR team make a convincing argument. Their other supporting argument for the tax cuts are that they only go partway to stemming the predicted rise in the average tax rate paid. Now, if that was the main concern, then wouldn't these tax cuts be aimed to mainly benefit the middle-class? Wouldn't they involve increases in the middle tax brackets? The NR's argument sounds reasonable for some tax cuts, but trotting them out to support the elimination of personal income tax on dividends and the lowering of capital gains on stock sales just doesn't cut it. At least try to make it look like the arguments are connected - otherwise it won't just be the intelligent centre-left that sees through them.

Speaking of intelligent centre-left: Come on guys, if the NR is that easy a target, at least aim with a real gun - looks like you took to them with a Nerf bat.

(I also hope that the National Review hacks have actually read some Jonathan Swift, and understand exactly what A Modest Proposal is about - or maybe that's actually their plan for increasing incomes for those in the lower tax brackets.)

2003-04-13T21:44:00.000Z

The best joke about the Iraqi Information Minister

Is here, on the 9th of April. Click on the calendar, the site doesn't appear to have got the hang of available static links yet.

2003-04-13T21:19:00.000Z

Why my father and I should both be prevented from betting on cricket

Short answer: We are lousy pessimists who would throw away good money betting against Australia for no reason. Fortunately, neither of us actually have the stupidity to put our money where our mouths are. On the phone with him earlier today he commented 'well, Australia's lost the First Test' and I concurred. Of course, what actually happened was a magnificent 9-wicket win courtesy of a pair of strong second-dig partnerships from Langer and Hayden and then Langer and Ponting. In hindsight, the result was never in doubt and Australia never wavered - Hayden's wicket led to a slow-down in the run rate for a few overs, as you would expect, but nothing much more serious than that.

The reason for the pessimism in my family dates back to quite a few summers ago now. Australia has, in the past 11 years, thrown away all ten wickets chasing small targets (under 200) to lose by small margins on no less than four occasions. These were:

The 1992/93 Adelaide test against the West Indies, which we lost by 1 lousy run. Craig McDermott was given out off his freakin *helmet* to give the Windies that one.

The 1993/94 Sydney test against South Africa, which we lost by a mere 5 runs. Fast Fanie de Villiers (remember him anyone) did the damage on the final day.

The 1997 Oval Ashes test which we lost by 19 runs, dismissed for a mere 104. Caddick and Tufnell provided to be the destroyers (bet you don't hear that that often) in a Test with bowlers picking up big hauls - no less than 3 members of the 7 scalps in an innings club.

The 1998/99 Melbourne test against England, which we lost by 12 runs, out for 162, with Headley taking six.

Now take a look at the circumstances in most of those Tests. In 1997 the Aussies had already won the series, so we lost the typical dead rubber. In 1998/99 we had already retained the Ashes, being up 2-0, so it was arguably a dead rubber as well. So we haven't lost a series-affecting match in this way since South Africa pulled it off in 1993/94. That's almost 10 seasons ago. If you look at the team we sent in to that match there are only 3 still up for Test Cricket - Martyn, Warne and McGrath. (Steve Waugh missed the match). Saying this team should suffer from the same problem is ludicrous.

So, for all those Australians who get worried when we end up chasing small targets, please just get over it. We don't do that anymore.

(Yes, I will go into hiding if we proceed to lose a Test in this series in that manner).

2003-04-11T20:57:00.000Z

Wisden's Ripoff Monthly

Cricinfo did a nice job of passing me on to the team at Wisden, who it said were offering live streamed video of the Test Series between Australia and the West Indies.

You know what Wisden are charging for the privilege - US$90. That's right - for something that you can watch included in a Sky package with Sports, $90. It gives you a crappy screen size (although the test clip at least looked to be good quality) and middling quality audio, all of which would pale in comparison with a nice big widescreen TV coverage.

I don't have Sky Sports currently - our house currently doesn't get cable. Still, there is no way I'm letting someone rip me off that much for a broadband service I would only be using a couple of nights per week anyway.

So, here's my suggestion. If you are even beginning to contemplate getting a package like this, DON'T. Not even if you happen to live in Upper Slobovia where wearing all white clothing is punishable by death.

2003-04-11T20:45:00.000Z

Irregularly Scheduled Broadcast - including regular AFL tip

A big welcome to all the Brunchers who have started to come over this way. Yes, this is the weird Warner Brother you've been warned about, and no, I'm not going to tell the Waitrose story again in this particular medium (although if you ask Aussia really nicely I'm sure she'll do it). Reason: This isn't supposed to be an excessively introspective personal blog - it's designed to be a vaguely political, vaguely sporting ex-pat Oz-blog.

Anyway, welcome and hope you find the atmosphere inviting.

In other news, congratulations to Adam on his financially lucrative tips and making me look like a pillock. Anyway, the Swannies are going down - Crows by 4 goals.

2003-04-04T22:25:00.000Z

This'll get complaints (From Victorians)

After last week's tip (10 points out, not a bad start to the season), here comes the next one:
Crows over St Kilda by 6 goals. Partly because that's the only way I can see Adam not making his bet.
Hopefully real posts will follow tomorrow - too tired now, sorry.

2003-03-29T22:34:00.000Z

I play football without a helmet

Tip for tomorrow at Football Park (AAMI Stadium my arse): Crows by 11 goals. For pete's sake, it's Freo and we're at home!

2003-03-29T22:30:00.000Z

"We Shouldn't Be Here in the First Place"

Open letter to Robin Cook:

Robin, give me a break. Wanting to avoid a war before it starts is one thing. Calling, within the first two weeks, for the cessation of hostilities is consistent with your original anti-war views but completely ignores the changed circumstances in the region. The amount of extra anti-American and anti-British sentiment in Arab countries from the war so far is far greater than any extra sentiment from continuing it. The only way to reduce that ill-feeling is to finish the original objectives and then to ensure that the Iraqi people have benefited from the regime's end. True democracy in Iraq (regardless of whether or not it means an independent Kurdistan) coming out of the invasion is the only way we are going to see tensions calmed from here on. Leaving now will leave behind both angry civilians and an angry regime.

Responding to 'where do we go from here' with 'we shouldn't be here in the first place' is an argument you can make, but it can never be a helpful argument.

2003-03-29T22:11:00.000Z

Delays, Delays

Anyone who at least occasionally comes here (thanks Adam) will be wondering where the hell I've got to. Simple answer is that work has taken too much priority for the last couple of weeks. From a warblogging point of view, this definitely sucks. The defining moment for a large number of popular bloggers is going to be how they respond to the now 10-day old war.

As I may already have told you, I'm a management consultant. This means I'm typically putting in 55-65 hours a week (any doctors, investment bankers out there blogging who want to tell me to 'suck it up' are welcome to do so - I enjoy my job but I have other hobbies besides blogging). I'm also on the road a lot - currently I'm out of town between Monday and Thursday most weeks, which doesn't make for a blog you can visit weekly.

So, here's the deal. I'll try to keep writing a couple of interesting articles (or getting my brother to write them) each weekend. If you keep coming back week after week and nothing is happening, send me a nasty flaming email - I could use the additional impetus. The last thing I want is to turn into a kind of blogging-Piro when it comes to punctuality.

2003-03-16T18:56:00.000Z

Viewpoint From Home

As promised, this particular episode comes from my younger brother Toby. Give him a hand, folks.

'Yesterday, Howard raised the stakes for the missile defence shield. It
should be looked at, he said, because of the threat of a possible
missile attack from North Korea. And he attacked Labor as being
hypocritical.

"The Labor Party has been jumping up and down and saying 'Do something
about North Korea' . . . and the Defence Minister says 'Well, we are
willing to talk to the United States about the possibility of this' and
the Labor Party says 'No, don't do that'," Howard said.

He is trying to portray the Labor Party as wishy-washy on defence in the
same way'
http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2003/02/27/1046064163481.htm

Great. I'm just waiting for John Howard to disband the entire Union
movement, then attack Simon Crean for "not being seriously committed to
the defence of this country" when he complains. It's a nice catch-all.
Considering the missile defence system currently requires a beacon to be
placed on the missile it's trying to shoot down, I don't think it's
particularly serious about the defence of its country.

Though to John Howard's credit, he's only continuing the longstanding
Australian tradition of spending the major part of the defence budget on
projects that either fall apart or don't exist. Some background for
those people unused to the Australian military's fiscal ineptitude:
When the Australian Air Force wanted a bomber, there were two choices:
A perfectly working bomber from Britain, or the F111 - at that time only
on the drawing board, and using a technology (swing-wing) that hadn't
been tried yet. Guess which one the Australian Air Force bought, then
pumped millions of dollars over the years rebuilding and trying to fix
the numerous defects.

Last year, the Australian Air Force was up for another major upgrade of
planes. There were a number of choices for the new fighter/bomber that
was going to be the centre of our air force, including planes such as
the Saab Gripen that are relatively cheap, new, effective, and already
in wide use in Air Forces the world over. Or there was the Joint Strike
Fighter concept (repeat, CONCEPT) that was still only in the prototype
stage, and would require Australian money for R&D even before we started
actually spending money on the planes. Again, god forbid Australia have
a fighter/bomber that's already working.

And who can forget the Collins Class Submarine. The Australian Navy
wishes they could. Australia needs submarines. We could buy a German
design that's already been built overseas, is proven to work, and
Australia could assemble with the same kind of difficulty as a Tamiya
model kit. Or, alternatively, we can try BUILDING OUR OWN SUBMARINE.
And lets be clear on this. Australia has never built a submarine
before. It's not exactly one of our core competencies. And from the 1
or 2 mechanical engineering subjects I took at University, I can guess
that building a submarine is really, really hard. And it's not like
something you can just screw up the first time and refine, either.

But what does Australia do? It tries to BUILD ITS OWN DAMN SUBMARINE.
A country with the population of New York tries to build a damn
submarine. It was a limited success - in that it doesn't leak, and
actually comes back up again - but in all other respects is, generally,
crap. We're still pouring millions of dollars into refitting the
things in the vain hope that some day they'll actually be good for
something. Radio presenters Merrick and Rosso had the best vision for
what could be done with the Collins class submarine when they
suggested:"Australia's first submarine... then Australia's first Rocket."

Now I don't want to criticise our armed forces on the whole. The
operation in East Timor showed how effective our men and women can be in
the field. In a fight between five armed Taliban members and an
Australian SAS member with a broken beer bottle, I'd bet on the SAS
member. And since I'm a Computer Engineer living in the City which is
the hub of Australia's military R&D, I don't want to denigrate other,
laudable, up-and-coming Australian defence expenditure, like Project Pay
For Toby Richer's New Convertible, or Project Pay To Put Toby Richer's
Children Through University. But I don't see why Australia can't, just
once, wait until a project actually shows some signs of not sinking,
exploding in mid-air, or having bits fall off it until we ante up the
cash.

2003-03-15T22:11:00.000Z

Revenge is a dish served with pinto beans and muffins

Well, it was the Aussie Rules pre-season competition, not the real deal. It was arguably a game that neither side really needed to win. Still, it was a match no-one expected the Adelaide Crows to win. The Colli-wobbles came through to set up the pre-season final as a replay of one of last year's proper competition semis, only to fall flat on their face, 73 to 104.

Andrew McLeod adds the Michael Tuck medal for a typical best-on-ground performance to his two Norm Smith medals in the real Grand Finals.

Does this suggest another good quality season for the Crows? Or does it merely indicate that the South Aussie teams have become the pre-season specialists (the 2001 and 2002 trophies having gone to the Evil Teal Bastards).

For those of you in the blogosphere who have no idea how the game works or what I'm talking about, don't worry. You're in the great majority. I randomly bumped into another Australian in London last night (not hard, I know) after a few drinks with some work colleagues (he also works for my company, but we've not met before), and within 30 minutes he was admitting to me that he grew up as a Fitzroy fan. Poor guy (for you Americans, this is like being a Cleveland Browns fan before the franchise was re-created). Anyway, the Poms we were talking across from made a very strong point of not knowing the first thing about the game - so feel free to consider it your public duty to feign ignorance whenver an Aussie mentions it.

Oh: Competition - Name the TV show (mid-'90s) from which the title of this piece is quoted. We're working on the Honour System here (please don't Google for it - you'll take all the fun out of it). The winner gets (a) blogrolled, if they have one, (b) free kudos, and (c) a gratuitous mention in a future posting.

2003-03-15T21:50:00.000Z

Eating My Words - The Brett Lee Post with a twist of bile

Yes, it was against Kenya.

But it was a hat-trick. Not involving the tail. As part of an 8 over spell which only conceded 14 runs. Brett Lee, take a bow. Even if you did get upstaged for MotM by one of the Kenyans who produced an even better analysis than yours.

You have now earned yourself a place in the Aussie ODI Hat-trick Pantheon, beside Bruce "he's split in half!" Reid and Anthony "I moved to Canberra to increase my exposure to top level cricket" Stuart. Let's hope, for the sake of the Aussie side, that your career will continue somewhat more successfully than theirs.

2003-03-01T23:53:00.000Z

Keep Crowing

OK. It's still only the pre-season "Wizard Home Loans Cup" (geez, even back when the old airline sponsor was around it sounded better). Still, the signs are looking good for the boys in the red, yellow and blue. Adelaide knocked off West Coast on Friday night, through to the quarter-finals to play the Kangaroos in the first of the semi-finals. Starting the season with a win over the true enemies, Port Adelaide, was great, but continuing on to win the whole thing would be better.

Especially if it involves beating the Colli-wobbles in the Final. It's about time we got revenge for the 2002 preliminary final loss - and I would pay to see the look on Tim's face should it happen.

2003-03-01T23:34:00.000Z

Sorry mate, not seeing much progress

And now the next instalment in the police conflict of words that is the discussion between myself and Kenan Malik. Kenan, as you will no doubt recall, is the guy who is concerned about the anti-democratic impact of morally-driven external interventions in a country. The key point of evidence supporting his theorem was Bosnia, I countered by examining the situation in East Timor. Kenan's latest piece is up, so it is clearly time for my latest rebuttal. To cut to the chase, I think Kenan has made the point successfully that internal democracy achieves more appropriate human rights than external intervention. However, this does not do anything to prove his claim that all external intervention from a rights point of view is bad.

Given my reliance on the existence of a 'sensible minimum standard of human rights', Kenan's first question is interestingly not to determine whether such a standard exists, but rather to question the validity of traditional bases for moral values and human rights per se. This involves demolishing the classical use of God and then Nature as sources of moral values - I will let him have that. He then claims that the evolution of human rights doctrine has provided a substitute base for the definition of 'acceptable' human behaviour in the absence of general belief in rights defined by a Creator. Again, fine. I also don't doubt his claim that there is a tendency to alienate human rights from the political discourse, by making them sacrosanct (even though in some cases they come into conflict with one another).

However, even granted all these premises, this does not imply that humanitarian interventions are necessarily destructive of local democracy. The reason: without at least certain minimum human rights being respected (whether or not they are enshrined in ordinary statute or in special human-rights legislation) no democracy exists. If the authorities are permitted to use torture on suspects under arrest, if the courts are willing to enforce statutes which prosecute people on the basis of political or other association, if the electoral laws make it easy for the ruling party to rig future elections, then there is no democracy to be squandered by the human rights restrictions.

Kenan denounces those who intervene because they "take upon themselves the mantle of the external authority whose pronoucements are unimpeachable". He's right, from the point of view of the country being intervened in. However, if they haven't got democracy to start with, what they're going to have forced on them is actually going to improve democratic conditions (hey, they might get a vote!) Putting an American in charge in Iraq isn't very democratic - agreed. But why does an external intervention actually have to do this? Just because the US wants to do it now doesn't mean that this has to be the plan for all intervention (after all, East Timor went from 'little country being invaded by Indonesian militia' to 'new democracy with an elected Parliament' in less than 2 years!)

Kenan's last paragraph is a very good explanation of the benefits of democracy as opposed to external intervention:

One can see why America might be wary of democracy in Iraq. The democratic process is unpredictable, can create instability and often leads to unpalatable results. In the long run, though, values that emerge through a democratic process are likely to be both more humane and more robust than those imposed from without. Democracy allows us to get away from the idea of values as eternally fixed, and yet to see them as potentially universal. It also allows us to dispense with the necessity for an external authority in which to invest our hopes and desires.

All very well, but this only works when you can start with a democracy. If you don't have one to start, having somebody intervene, enforce the rights of the populace to security and freedom from arbitrary arrest / execution, and then structure an initial set of elections looks like an improvement to me. For example, we should be intervening in Zimbabwe right now, not wringing our hands while the cricket continues and Mugabe is feted in Paris. The 'policy' of starving opposition supporters has effectively been endorsed by a member of his Cabinet - these guys would be willing to let 5 million of their countrymen die if they would stay in power - and you say that because internal democracy would place fewer restrictions on the political process than external intervention you would leave them alone?

Frankly, Kenan, I think you've dodged the key question. When democracy is in place, I will not argue with you that it should be left in place. However, I still haven't seen any convincing arguments from you that the people in a dictatorship are better off when we leave them alone to find their way to democracy than when we intervene and enforce the start of the construction of a democratic state. Tell me why the US and UK were wrong to rebuild Japan and Germany and enforce new and different democratic structures. Tell me why all the non-military support in Afghanistan should be withdrawn.

In summary,

You can't have enough of a democracy to have genuinely broad political rights without the regime in place recognising and protecting certain human rights which are part and parcel of the democratic process.

When starting with a non-democratic country, waiting for internal change can (a) take decades, and (b) cost millions of lives and impair the rights of millions of others when compared with intervention.

Just because the Americans want to put one of their own placemen into the leadership position in Iraq does not mean that the whole concept of intervention can be thrown away - you still haven't told me what particular reduction in East Timorese political freedoms resulted from the UN coming in and stopping the Indonesians slaughtering them.

2003-02-27T23:18:00.000Z

Who is the best fast bowler in the Australian World Cup team?

Well, it sure isn't this joker. You don't bowl a 158 km/h wide-ish outswinger at a batsman from a non-Test playing country and expect them to have any chance of reaching it. As my father said about the delivery, "Sachin Tendulkar might just have been able to get out to that one". Brett, go back and learn some bowling-craft - otherwise it won't just be Namibia who can hit you for 26 runs off 6 overs. You and Australia will be much the better for it.

It could potentially be the Croweater here. 30 overs in the competition so far, despite having a rest today, and averaging under 3.3 runs per over while snaffling 8 handy wickets. However, after today's performance there really can be only one winner.

Step forward, Pigeon. It may have been against Namibia, but there have been easybeats in every World Cup competition (and this is the eighth) - but only one man has previously managed 7 scalps in a single innings before, and that cost him 51 hard-earned Aussie runs. Glenn McGrath's 7 for 15 is the World Cup record and he deserves all the plaudits he gets for it. So far, with 37 overs, 12 maidens (12! in the one-day game!) and the Shep-staggering figures of 11/111, he is the Aussie bowler of the tournament.

Oh, and please keep it up Glenn - you're still in my BBC Fantasy Cricket team. And Supermercado's.

2003-02-27T22:46:00.000Z

If we laugh at your system, it's because we don't understand it

Best of the Web today carries a piece entitled "Parliament Isn't Revolting", dismissing the Reuters, CNN and British press reaction to what is the biggest single instance of 'crossing the floor' in over 100 years. The Best of the Web method for ignoring this particular issue is two-fold. Firstly, Blair won both the votes, so the opposition is irrelevant. Secondly, the percentage of MPs who voted in favour of the resolutions compares roughly with the percentage of members of Congress who voted in favour of the resolutions supporting war on Iraq, so Blair has comparable support to Bush.

I will admit now that I don't have a clear logical response to the first argument. This is because it comes down to a question of axioms. If you believe that the level of opposition doesn't matter, as long as you can garner a 50.1% or better majority, then you can dismiss this revolt as irrelevant. However, if you believe that there's a material difference between having 50.1% support and much greater support, then a revolt that fails to succeed is still an issue, especially if it is a large one. The next largest case of a 'backbench revolt' in British history in terms of votes against is Gladstone's first Home Rule bill in 1885, when a mere 93 members of his ruling Liberal party voted against him. In the 1960s one Labour rebellion saw 49 votes against and almost 150 further abstentions - I don't know the abstention count from last night so I can't immediately tell you whether the impact was bigger then or now.

The full details of these revolts are covered by The Guardian's reporting.

On the second issue, however, the arguments are clearer. A comparison on percentage terms between Congress and the UK Parliament just won't stack up. To put things into perspective, suppose that Republicans and Democrats occupied the respective shares of the 435 seats in Congress that Labour and non-Labour (lumping together all opposition parties) MPs have in the 659-seat House of Commons in the UK. Under that split (rounded to the nearest integer), there would be 273 Republicans and only 162 Democrats. The current split in the US House of Representatives is 229-205 with 1 independent.

In the Iraq debate, 121 Labour MPs voted against the government run by their party on the motion that the case for war was not yet proven. The Congressional equivalent (in percentage terms) would have been either 67 (on constant percentage of the number of seats held by the ruling party) or 80 (on constant percentage of the size of the House) Republicans voting against the motion. Did we see that? Did we hell. 67 Republicans voting against Bush on war would have been considered Earth-shattering.

What actually happened in the Congress votes on the Iraq resolution? The House of Reps went 296-133, majority of Democrats against. At the time of the resolution the House of Reps was split 223-208 with 1 independent. The Republicans voted for the resolution in the House 215-6 with 2 abstentions. That's right, 6 Republicans voted against authorisation. In the Senate only 1 of the 50 Republicans voted against the authorisation.

Blair gets proportionately 10 to 13 times as much opposition from his own party as Bush and the BotW guys call it "a strong vote of support". Ummm, yeah.

What Best of the Web didn't mention was that the most solid support for the war in the UK Parliament came from the Conservative party, the main opposition. Not really surprising, when you consider that Labour is the left-wing party and the Conservatives the right-wing party (at least by traditional standards, YMMV, etc.)

Also interesting to hear that according to the Best of the Web team, CNN qualifies as a 'left-wing' media outlet who would spin this story to over-exaggerate its impact. I guess that would make the left wing a broad coalition. Still, let's see what the broad spectrum of the British media (unless, of course, BotW believe that all British newspapers are left-wing) had to say about this particular backbench revolt (starting from right and moving left according to my personal judgement, and all emphasis mine):

First, the broadsheets

Daily Telegraph: "Tony Blair is mounting a renewed diplomatic push to win backing for a fresh UN resolution on Iraq after being hit by the biggest backbench revolt of modern times".

Financial Times (not related to the Times): "Tony Blair suffered the most serious revolt by Labour backbenchers since he won power six years ago when 121 of his own MPs backed a rebel motion on Iraq."

The Times: "Labour mutiny leaves Blair out on a limb - Amid dramatic scenes in the Commons, 121 Labour rebels joined 13 Conservatives and 52 Liberal Democrats to vote for an amendment declaring that the case for military action had not yet been made".

The Independent: "Tony Blair suffered his biggest backbench rebellion last night when 121 Labour MPs voted against immediate war in Iraq."

The Guardian: "121 Labour members vote against war · Biggest ever revolt against a government · Tory support helps save PM"

The Sun: "Tony Blair shrugged off his biggest ever Commons rebellion last night."

Evening Standard: "Tony Blair has suffered the biggest backbench revolt of his premiership as 121 Labour MPs voted against military action to strip Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction..."

Daily Mirror: "ANTI-WAR MPs SHAME BLAIR IN BIGGEST REVOLT:
Prime Minister humiliated by a Commons rebellion over plans to bomb Iraq. War plans opposed by 199 MPs - 121 of them Labour..."

Well, guess they're all left-wing. No wonder opinion polls indicate that the vast majority are against war without UN approval, and that the question of war with UN approval is still finely balanced. Still, you have to wonder why left-wing papers would blow up the problems of a leader of a left-wing political party - or maybe I'm just not seeing things in as clear shades of black and white as the BotW team.

2003-02-25T23:02:00.000Z

The Best Game-Theoretic Option?

According to the Guardian's summary of the current stances of the Security Council members, Syria isn't going to support a second resolution "in any circumstance".

Well, that makes Saddam's next piece of geopolitical instability clear - invade Syria! The government has just said it won't say boo to you doing anything, so why not take the country over? It's not like he'll get the same complaints as he did with Kuwait - after all Syria has just gone on record in front of over 100 nations at the Non-Aligned Movement conference backing him to the hilt!

Besides, if he invades Syria any action to remove him from Syrian soil will run into the same international dispute that the first Gulf War did, and the tanks will be pulled back after they've chased the Iraqi army about 100 miles into Iraq proper.

In the meantime, he gets himself a bit of extra pan-Arabist prestige (the Syrians having been part of the last multi-country Arab union to exist) and, depending on the way these things are determined, control of their Security Council seat so that he can vote against war on himself!

P.S. Anyone who is still taking this seriously, go get your head examined.

2003-02-23T21:39:00.000Z

In Defence of PR

Interesting opinion piece from David Beresford, writing in the Observer today: "The False Promise of Democracy". Please go read it - you'll find something to at least vaguely start thinking about. If it wasn't for the fact that I've heard similar expressions of disdain for anything other than single-member first-past-the-post electoral systems from plenty of people before, it wouldn't have taken me long to spot that it was a piss-take.

At least, I hope it's a pisstake. Right, David?

Oh, dear readers - don't get me started on electoral systems. It will be long, and it may not be pretty. Masochists should consider emailing me to get me started.

2003-02-23T21:21:00.000Z

Accuracy in Reporting

Observer's Headline: "Saddam told: disarm in three weeks or it's war"

Observer Article: "there would be a definite vote on the second resolution within three weeks. "

I don't see anything in the whole article about the second resolution having a timetable (yes, yes, I'll stop harping on about that clearly non-realpolitikal requirement to put actual dates in the resolution). So why get all gung-ho in the title?

2003-02-22T22:51:00.000Z

When 11 goals and 9 points beats 11 goals and 11 points

I love it. They introduce a random new rule in the pre-season competition for the world's best code of football, and the first obvious beneficiaries are my own team.

Even better, it was in the local derby. Go Crows!

2003-02-21T23:15:00.000Z

Friday Night Is Fight Night! (Oi, Steven!)

Just saw the world's most productive blogger's latest piece. One particular sentence in his piece on the European Union (and the French involvement in it) got me to thinking:

And pay no attention to that highly-successful populist democracy on the other side of the Atlantic.

Now, I don't want to be the one to defend French intellectuals, especially if their main problem is with their own countrymen. However, the idea that the US is a more populist democracy than what exists on the eastern side of The Pond seemed somewhat incongruous to me. I checked the stats - a big thank you both to the US Federal Election Commission and to Electionworld.org for having these statistics so readily available - and found out that the numbers indicate that the European democracies are currently more populist. Let's have a look at the figures, shall we (sorted by order of turnout, most recent Parliamentary elections for Europe - I don't have the 2002 Congressionals so I'm using past Presidentials for the US as these have historically been 10% or more higher than the Congressionals).

Belgium - 90.6% for Lower House, 90.5% for Upper House (let's ignore this - voting's compulsory there just like in Australia so the 10% are really informal ballots / no-shows)
Denmark - 89.3%
Luxembourg - 86.5%
Austria - 84.3% for last Parliament elections, 74.4% for last Presidential elections
Italy - 81.3% Lower House, 82.3% Upper House
Sweden - 80.1%
Netherlands - 79.9% Lower House (Upper House indirectly elected based on regional elections)
Germany - 79.1%
Greece - 75.0%
France - 71.6% first round Parliamentary, 79.7% second round Parliamentary
Spain - 70.6%
Finland - 65.3%
Ireland - 63.0%
Portugal - 62.3% Parliament, 50.9% Presidential (the only result lower than the US Presidential Elections 2000)
United Kingdom - 59.4%
United States - 51.3% Presidential (2000), 36.4% Congressional (1998) - I can't find 2002 figures on the Web.

Other interesting figures from past US elections:

The most involved state during the 2000 Presidential election was Minnesota, with a 68.8% turnout. If Minnesota was in the EU, this would place it 12th out of 16.

The most involved state during the 1998 Congressional elections was again Minnesota, with a 60% turnout. That would have placed it 15th out of 16 for turnout.

The most involved state in the 1996 Presidential election was Maine, with a 71.9% turnout. That would put it 10th out of the EU 16 if it joined. In the last 4 election cycles, not even 1 US state has been able to reach the median voter turnout attained in the EU in the most recent cycle of national elections.

The last time a US-wide election produced better turnout than the most recent set of national elections in any of the 15 countries of the EU (and remember, in the most apathetic countries for turnout, such as the UK, the recent figures represented the worst turnout since WWII) was in 1968.

Pay no attention to that non-populist democracy on the other side of the Atlantic.

UPDATE: Actually linked to SdB this time.
UPDATE (2): Fixed the calculation of Maine's position

2003-02-21T22:09:00.000Z

50% off Long Distance Sin This Week!

The Pope has hit out against our sarcastic culture (thanks to both Ted and Matthew for this magnificent opportunity). Fine, the martyrs condemned by Nebuchadnezzar were righteous types and praised and glorified God. Good for them and good for us that they existed. Fine. However, given the prevalent nature of sarcasm in everyday conversation, doesn't anyone see the potential hypocrisy in the advertisement placed on the news article in question? "Switch to Telstra and be sinningly sarcastic over the phone at up to 50% off for long distance calls?"

I guess the Catholic Church in Australia doesn't have to use sarcasm to get its point across.

2003-02-21T21:48:00.000Z

Hilarious Random Occurrence of The Week

Being one of those excessively common dual UK-Australian citizens, I dodge the third-degree at Heathrow despite managing to sound vaguely like a cross between the Bush Tucker Man (bless you Major Hiddins) and the Crocodile Hunter. That's probably why I don't get to engage in these lovely erduite conversations (look for This Stuff Shouldn't Happen and go to the comments) with British customs agents:

A friend of mine was traveling from Yerevan back to New York via London's Heathrow Airport. At Heathrow, he was detained, and questioned regarding his stay in Armenia.

"I'm an Iranist" he answered.

"But Armenia is not in Iran," replied the British customs agent.

"No, but you see, I study Iranian religions."

"I was under the impression that Armenians were monophysite Christians and that the Iranians belonged to the Shi'ite sect of Islam."

"Well, I also study Iranian languages."

"Armenian pertains to the Thraco-Phrygian branch of the Indo-European language family, not the Indo-Iranian branch. Sir, would you care to explain what an Iranist, as you describe yourself, would be doing in Armenia?"

"Armenian has borrowed quite a lot of vocabulary from Middle Iranian, which can shed light on pre-Islamic religion."

"You're speaking of the Zoroastrian community?

"Yes, I study the Zoroastrians."

"Very well, sir, that is all. Enjoy your stay in the United Kingdom."

Charles, I want to shake your hand - if this is real you are a saint, if you are fake then inventing this makes you a legend. Cheers.

2003-02-21T21:28:00.000Z

Oi! Glenny Boy!

I couldn't help but chase down the link provided by Prof. Reynolds about the new-fangled method for counting the size of protest marches. It looks like a much better way to make estimates of overall crowd size than the method used in San Francisco. After all, as the article states, in San Francisco

both police and rally organizer figures are based on estimates of previous crowd sizes and on eye-level approximations

As a result, we can hardly be surprised if an aerial estimation provides a figure with better overall accuracy. Fine, if you're only focused on San Francisco.

Last time I checked, most bloggers weren't. Now as a London-based blogger (at least for now given my random walk across the globe) I'm naturally focused on the way things were counted for the ludicrously large march that happened in London. I wasn't a part of it, but given that my flat lies less than 10 minutes walk from Hyde Park (note: I need an extra flatmate - please email me) it affected me enough that I didn't venture across London last Saturday. However, as the SFGate article mentions,

In London, Metropolitan Police in helicopters counted protesters in the streets based on the density of an average 10-by-10-yard square.

So the "more than 750,000" protestors estimated by the police were actually estimated by the same basic methodology as was used by the Air Flight Service in San Francisco. The 750,000 only starts to look more believable as a lower bound after this article.

Glenn says there will be "much dispute over this" - it looks like there could be even more dispute once people start reading the article.

2003-02-19T21:46:00.000Z

Doing the numbers - the two million man march can't exist.

Now for a different take on the various assessments of the anti-war marches, including comparison between other attendance figures and demonstration size.

So, how big is a big march? Or, to be measurable, how big could a march feasibly become, and what are the justifications for this limit?

Firstly, let's assume that it is a march rather than a static rally. Secondly, don't worry about where people congregate at the end of the march, and assume that people past the counting point don't ever get stuck in a way that propagates back to the counting point. Now all we need are figures for (a) the rate at which people pass the counting point, and (b) the time during which the rally is crossing the counting point.

To answer (a), let's think about how dense and how wide the march is. If I was in a protest march, I would expect to typically be about 60 centimetres behind the person in front (not a 60 centimetre gap, but 60 centimetres from my back heel to their back heel). This allows enough space that I'm not constantly treading on their heels, while not being so far back that there's room to sneak another person in between. I would expect the sideways spacing to be about 50 centimetres - 40 centimetres is equivalent to two people fitting into a standard door width - doable, but not comfortable for long periods. So the density of the march would be about 3 1/3 people per square metre.

The marching width can't sensibly be wider than 8 lanes of traffic - firstly, in London there just aren't that many 8 lane roads in the marching area, and secondly even in cities which do have many roads of that size, the march can stop traffic but can't be expected to completely block foot traffic as well. A typical road lane would be somewhere around the 1.8 metre mark (I'm guessing here - please correct me if you think I'm wrong), so to be on the generous side let's say the march is 15 metres wide. This means that 50 people on average pass the counting point every time the march advances by 1 metre.

Now comes the assumption I'm least comfortable with - the speed of a protest march. A typical definition has 'average walking pace' between 3.2 and 4.8 kilometres per hour, and 'brisk walking pace' at between 4.8 and 6.4. I don't ever seem to recall 'brisk' demonstrations, so let's go with the extremities of 'average walking pace' as the typical figures. This gives us a range of between 160,000 and 240,000 people per hour as our answer to (a).

On the question of (b), given that the objective (in theory) of a march is to end up assembling somewhere and listening to various political speeches, it can't really be reasonable for the march to continue for more than about 3 hours - it both puts too much of a strain on the people involved, and means that there's either a lot of hanging around at the end waiting for the speeches to start, or a lot of people missing out on the speeches because they were later in the marching order. However, to compensate for this, you could start the march at 2 points at once (as they did in London). I don't know whether it would be sensible to extend this to 3, 4 or more start points - it would significantly worsen the logistics for the rest of society in that city for one thing. I'll therefore assume 2 start points and 3 hours for the marching period - if anyone can provide me with examples where either or both of these have been succeeded, again please let me know.

So, we get an upper bound on the maximum size of a march using this method of 240,000 * 3 * 2 = 1.44 million people. Given the police estimate of 'over 750,000' and the organisers estimate of 2 million, I don't think there's a lot of room between the London march and the maximum achievable march size in a city. So, to those who denigrate it as 'only 1 million', I would ask you how you could expect them to make it any bigger.

2003-02-18T23:22:00.000Z

Checking da email... checking da email...

Kenan Malik responded to my post on the 'slippery slope' - a big thanks to Matthew Yglesias for telling a lot more people about it than I can contact by myself. Kenan encouraged me to look at his viewpoint on humanitarian intervention, so I headed on over.

Kenan's argument looks to be quite sensible on first inspection. The nature of existing humanitarian interventions (most notably Bosnia) has been such that the international community has severely restricted any political discourse on the part of the local inhabitants. This has not occurred through forcible restrictions on political speech, but rather by setting up the post-intervention institutions in a way that the scope for deviation from the initial human-rights inspired restrictions is minimal. I can see that this has happened in Bosnia, and this excessive restriction of political rights is a problem.

Part of the problem is that we have an international community involved in Bosnia with, as far as I can tell, no clearly spelled-out plan for its withdrawal. If we honestly believe in people's ability to govern themselves, then there must be a point at which we can pull the existing mediators, administrators, and eventually the 'High Representative' out and leave behind a stable and functioning Bosnia. However, what we don't have is (a) a clear process for ensuring that there are stable institutions in place to replace the international community, and (b) a timetable for the handover of full power to the Bosnians themselves, and hence we have an unclear period ahead during which Bosnian political rights are restricted.

What I don't agree with is that the humanitarian intervention must, by its very nature, place excessive restrictions on the political rights of the people who are subject to intervention. I think in the main this is because I disagree with your statement that

If we define beforehand what policies are morally acceptable, we undermine the essence of democracy.

However, this may be based on trying to interpret your statement too broadly. I would object to the claim that it is inappropriate to define any moral boundaries on policy in advance. While the UN Declaration on Human Rights (the most well-known example of an internationally-agreed standard set of rights) may or may not be an appropriate minimum standard, I believe that some sensible minimal standard must exist and that any conflict between this standard and political claims must be resolved in favour of the human rights. It is for this reason that the original intervention in Bosnia is justifiable, but the argument does not justify the long drawn-out process of managing the Bosnians' affairs. A 'perfectly justified' ongoing process would be one which maximised the political rights available to the Bosnians without breaching the minimum standard of internationally agreed human rights. In practice a clear, short-term plan to reach this maximum (and get the UN out of the country) while maintaining sensible human rights standards would be justifiable.

Kenan also mentions East Timor as an example where the result has been

the abandonment of any attachment to real democracy

Now, as far as I can tell, the UN force has done an effective job of handing over the government of the country to the people of East Timor. The last legislative act of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor was proclaimed on the 23rd of April 2002, one of only 4 regulations to be put in place by the UN authorities in their final year of control.

To say that what is currently in existence in East Timor is a vibrant and functioning democracy and a stable and growing state is obviously an overestimate. December saw riots as a protest from students was mis-handled. However, the UN is not looking for an excuse to go back in, the UN staff have left the island, and East Timor is a state in a position to manage its own affairs without needing to worry about incursions from their neighbour Indonesia. All in all this looks like a case where the humanitarian intervention put the people in a position where they have far greater political freedoms than they had originally.

2003-02-18T22:32:00.000Z

Thanks again to The Conspiracy (no, honest, I read other blogs too) for the ChicagoBoyz analysis of recent polling data. The interpretation given there is that the peace majority is "in the end, imaginary". That's certainly a sensible interpretation, what with 44% believing Saddam's behaviour justifies UN invasion (only 26% against) and 73% willing to go to war in the event that the UN gives the green light. However, the war majority is equally imaginary when you look at these figures - the key thing to take home is that on average, the British public are sitting on the fence.

The trade-off, no matter what both sides might say, between war and inaction is a tough moral choice to be made. The British response is to agree that Saddam is extremely likely to be building or stockpiling WMD (at least 44% of the population), but to nonetheless insist that lots of other countries (especially France) agree before we do anything about it (at least 55% of the population, probably* heavily overlapping the previous 44%). It's starting to look like a criminal trial - Iraq is being tried by a jury of its peers (although a majority verdict of 9 or more is all that is needed if no vetoes are used), and the sentence to be passed is the death of the regime.

The analysis Sylvain Galineau makes for the Chicago Boyz has an important gap - it omits the get-out clause built into the questions (a get out clause that ICM and/or YouGov would do well to chase down in their next poll if they really want to judge public opinion). The question currently not being asked, but which should be asked, is:

Do you believe that the UN will approve a further resolution, justifying use of force in Iraq?

Until that question is answered separately, people can leave their moral dilemmas safely concealed by the desire to get international consensus.

Britain's public has seen the large number of diplomatic gestures, about-turns, roadblocks, threats and counter-threats ahead of it, and decided to remain relatively noncommittal until the international community has made up its mind. Until that happens, expect to see more apparent trends over time in the opinion polls, but don't expect them to matter. The impact of a sudden shock such as a new UN resolution or a French veto will redraw the boundary lines - and anyone wanting to judge how the British public will react to war will need to wait until then for the real answer.

[*] Yes, probably is a weasel word - but given that the first 44% is against 26% who believe he's not a threat, and the 55% is against 25% who don't want to go to war even with a mandate, it's fair to say that the overlap will be well above zero.

2003-02-17T23:09:00.000Z

Jacob at The Conspiracy has the news on Professor Aghajari - but it's not clear that he's safe from the death sentence yet.

The BBC has more details - and it looks like there's not necessarily anything to stop the death sentence being passed again. However, the 'procedural' reasoning does provide a get-out for the conservatives, allowing them to avoid what would be another huge student backlash if they had to carry the sentence out. Let's hope somebody sees sense here - the last thing the world needs is another martyr.

2003-02-17T22:25:00.000Z

OK. N.Z. may well have already summarised the pro-war viewpoint, but I said I was going to answer those questions as well, and so I'm going to do it anyway. To make this a fair comparison, I have not read any of the pro-war answers, so if I'm repeating something someone else has already said, feel free to ignore the rant.

PW 1. (Pre-emptive vs aggressive)

Yes, pre-emption and aggression can be distinguished. However, what you may think of as the 'hard and fast rules' may not actually work. If I had to give a definition of a pre-emptive action right now, it would need to have the following characteristics:

There must be a clear and credible threat to the security of the region in which the action takes place (or to the invader or their allies) which the pre-emptive action will remove.
The invading parties would have to provide a clear plan detailing their method and timetable for withdrawal from the invaded territories.
The invading parties must provide a clear transition to stable, democratic, self-government for the invaded territories and/or the country of which they are part.

The first part here is meant to justify the invasion as 'pre-emptive', the last two are to prove that it is not about gaining direct power. You'll note that there are plenty of weasel words in there (and that with my atrocious German and non-existent French) - a lot of the definition really comes down to a judgement of intent.

Part of the problem with coming up with a clear, testable definition here is that as soon as the rules are set in stone, it becomes possible for an aggressor to get around the definition. It's aggression because the land taken is being subsumed into the country of the aggressor? Rename it a 'protectorate' and install a pliant local governor. It's aggression because the local populace are against the action? Use the usual military threats and ensure there are enough 'celebratory' demonstrations to make it clear that the people really support you. Provide a plan for withdrawal and transition to democracy, then stir up just enough internal unrest to justify extensions and delays ad infinitum and you stay within the letter of the definition. I'm sorry I have to trot out the cliche, but it is like the well-known obscenity definition - you know it when you see it.

PW 2. (Prospects for successful stable Iraq and democratic Iraq)

Frankly, I think both have reasonable prospects, but the prospects of achieving both at once are poor. A successful, stable Iraq is perfectly believable - the country is not an economic basket case and has good intrinsic prospects for growth in the future. A democratic Iraq could also be achieved, with the best recent example of democracy coming out of intervention being Serbia (hey, they've already reached Western levels of voter apathy!)

However, if you truly have a democratic Iraq, I think you'll see a secessionist movement from the Kurds (and/or the Turkmen) in the north succeed, and Iraq would get a lot smaller. To maintain Iraq with its current borders would require the government in Baghdad to ride roughshod over the wishes of the northern third of their country - and I'm not sure how much of a democracy Iraq would be if that were the case.

PW 3. (Success of military and 'regime change' efforts in Afghanistan)

I'm rating the effort so far at 50% on the military and 'regime change' metrics combined. The military campaigns goals were relatively simple - chase al-Qaeda out of Afghanistan, knock the Taliban out of power, and cut off the head of the al-Qaeda monster. The first looks pretty successful, and the third can be rated a moderate success (even though OBL may still be alive, he's in a much weaker position now and is having to resort both to bluster and to calling for support for 'socialists' he opposes). The second worked within Kabul, but the extent of its success outside the capital is definitely open to debate.

This brings me to the 'regime change' question. There has been a regime change in Kabul. There most definitely has not in Herat (where the local warlord just switched sides and continues to run his fiefdom in the same way as he did prior to the US invasion). Outside the capital little has changed, and the signs are not that great that the capital is safe from reverting to more extremist rule. Hamid Karzai is in a very precarious position, and has no influence outside Kabul - to say there is an effective new regime in place is a joke.

There's also a third issue I would want to raise - that of the stated objective of liberating the women of Afghanistan. This was often quoted as an additional objective (although interestingly it has been omitted from this question). The lack of change in everyday behaviour outside of Kabul is an indication that either the 'objective' was a piece of 'feelgood' propaganda, or that there is a lot more work still to be done by various military (US, Canadian, German, etc.) inside Afghanistan.

PW 4. (War with other nations acting similarly to Iraq)

I think my answers to the questions posed to anti-war bloggers indicate that I'm in favour of invading Iraq in particular circumstances. If these apply to any other nation, they should also be invaded - I don't see why Iraq deserves to be a special case.

PW 5. (Most credible allegations from the US)

As both Colin Powell and Hans Blix mentioned, there is a significant stockpile of chemical and biological agents that Iraq is known to have possessed in the past, which they are claiming to be no longer in possession of. Nowhere has Iraq explained how these agents were destroyed, and at no point in these recent rounds of inspections have the inspectors been shown any evidence of what was done with these stockpiles. Given this, the US Administration's claims that Saddam is still holding WMD are extremely credible. However, I don't recall any report indicating that Iraq's dossier was required to include full details of how it got rid of its old WMD (it was always described as an inventory, not a sales and purchases ledger) - obviously if it was then please correct me. So, until there's proof of the stuff still hiding somewhere, it doesn't actually count as a material breach.

2003-02-16T22:38:00.000Z

Back to the serious political discourse, brought to you courtesy of the fine folks at N.Z. Bear. Continuation of the answers posed to anti-war bloggers follows. It would have followed earlier, but the post was Ellen Feissed. In the meantime, Matthew Yglesias came up with a much pithier way to say one of the points I was going to make, about the 'slippery slope' of deciding to invade illegitimate regimes.

4. (Are inspections and sanctions sufficient?)

Short answer: The existing system is not sufficient as a long-term solution, but long-term viable methods do exist.

Sanctions, on their own, will not prevent access to WMD, given the ease of evading the sanctions. With a robust sanction enforcement mechanism, they could work as a long-term solution (see my answer to question 2 for an extreme method of achieving decent enforcement).

Inspections are only a sensible short-term solution - we keep them going, with the threat of military action to ensure they happen, until such time as we are confident there are no WMDs left in Iraq (obviously this only reaches a conclusion if there aren't any - otherwise we'll have to invade). As a long-term solution they're a non-starter, due to the need to maintain a large military presence in the area to back up the inspectors' demands.

An inspections / sanctions etc. regime would be superior to invasion on both civilian impact and geopolitical outcome grounds. Firstly, not only would invasion have a significantly larger civilian casualty figure, it would also lead to a huge number of Iraqi refugees (as was seen in the original Gulf War) - of the order of 500,000 or more according to recent estimates. If we can avoid displacing this many people then we are in a much better position in terms of overall impact. Secondly, the consensus in most Western countries is that invasion is likely to increase the threat of terrorism. If we can achieve the key goals of disarming Saddam and reducing tension in the Middle East without increasing the threat of terrorism, surely that would be the preferred option. After all, last time I checked there was a war on terrorism going as well.

5. (On the nature of sovereignty)

I support the view that the consent of the governed is what gives a state legitimacy. It has to be noted that this grossly simplifies the issue - how many people have to withdraw consent for the state to lose legitimacy? Can an individual withdraw their consent and found their own state? If not, why not?

I do, therefore, agree that Saddam has no legitimacy. However, this does not automatically give us the right to invade and turf him out. It should mean that US foreign policy includes the objective of removing Saddam, but if his legitimacy was the only question then the method for implementing that policy should only be economic and diplomatic, not military.

I am against intervention partly because of the slippery slope argument (at what point do you define a country to be sufficiently unfree to be invasion-worthy?), but mainly because it provides a very convenient cover for any local belligerent. After all, Kuwait was unfree in 1990 - its National Assembly was disbanded in 1986, and the elections being held in 1990 were boycotted by the opposition, claiming them to be for a new Assembly lacking real power. I know that Iraq invading Kuwait can hardly be positioned as a 'war of liberation', even by Saddam, but when things are less clear-cut the doctrine of intervention against illegitimate rulers could be a very dangerous thing.

Maybe it is a good thing for you, dear reader, that the previous attempt at this screed was consigned to the bit-bucket. You have a lot less to get through now!

2003-02-16T15:59:00.000Z

We interrupt this serious political discourse to bring you an entry in the "Brett Lee Publicity Machine" contest.

Look at the title for this Observer review of the Australia-India match. That's right, Lee breaks Indian bats. That's right, Brett Lee who took 3/36 off 9 overs, including Ganguly, Sehwag and Mongia as his scalps. Apparently the efforts of Jason Gillespie, who took 3/13 off 10 overs, including Tendulkar (the top scorer with 36), Dravid and Kaif were not noteworthy.

Watch out Supermercado, it looks like it's not just the Australian press that are lionising the excessively expensive New South Welshman.

2003-02-15T23:43:00.000Z

Now for a more thought-provoking and interesting post.

I have been trying to work out whether or not I qualify as 'pro-war' for the last couple of weeks. It is not the most obvious decision to be made, despite what many people on both sides of the blogiverse would have you believe. Every time I think that the pro-war arguments have demonstrated clear superiority, something like the famous UK plagiarised dossier turns up. That only makes me wonder how weak the underlying case must be that the UK can make. On the other hand, if I think that the anti-war arguments are superior, I only need to look at such jokes as Tony Benn's fawning trip to Baghdad (and similar crazy escapades and statements by others on the left) to be disabused of that notion.

So, in an attempt to deal with my own internal debate, I will be answering both sets of 5 questions posed by N.Z. Bear, the pro-war and the anti-war. I will start with the questions to be answered by anti-war bloggers.

1. (Alternative policy for the POTUS)
In answering this question, I would first state that I'm assuming the most important reason for dealing with Iraq is to ensure that Saddam Hussein does not have access to any WMDs or any capability to acquire them. Given that assumption, I'd do the following:

Firstly, negotiate in the UN Security Council for a continuation of inspections with a set of conditions that are actually testable and down in black and white. (Material breach my arse - let's put down on paper exactly what does and does not constitute a set of inspectors findings sufficient to justify war.) The key part of this is actually setting a date. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but 1441 doesn't actually have any deadline dates in there, does it? Let's set a reasonable period for an amount of hide-and-Blix, say 2 months from the date of the resolution. The new resolution would set down the conditions by which Iraq could avoid an automatic war.

These conditions would list exactly what minimum Iraqi compliance was required (how many Iraqi scientists have to be available for interview outside Iraq and without any minders present, with no opportunity for the scientist themselves to refuse to appear, how many sites have to be available for inspection, how many overflights must be permitted and what kind of aircraft must be allowed to do the overflying). The conditions would also contain a long list of triggers, any of which automatically constitute a breach by Iraq (e.g. we find any WMD, any programme to build WMD, or any components of WMD which are not credible as non-WMD components). The resolution would then state that any breach by Iraq, including failure to achieve the minimum compliance standards within the 2 month period, would automatically legitimize a war - no ifs, no buts, no French blocking.

Of course, the number one potential problem with this is the French blocking the resolution. If they object to the use of a fixed deadline at all, or to actually putting clear language in the proposal, then they are clearly not capable of negotiating on this one in good faith. If they are willing to negotiate (e.g. Chirac wants 4 months instead of 2) then do what it takes to get the resolution through, and then there are no more definitional questions or ambiguities left to fall back on.

If the French don't negotiate in good faith (or for that matter, any other permanent UNSC member does likewise), then the US should put the full text of the draft resolution out in the open - making it clear that the blockers have no intention of ever agreeing to a war trigger in the resolutions. Such a move by any of the permanent members would pretty much prove that there's no point trying to get UNSC backing - so it's go it alone or give up all rights to go to war. At that point the US issues the ultimatum to Iraq as if it was the UNSC, continuing to rely on the inspectors efforts and checking Iraq's performance against the same set of conditions as it has published.

So, let's move on to what happens if we assume the resolution gets passed.

Case A: Iraq complies in full (and hence the inspectors find nothing). Get Blix to give an exact deadline as to when he can be certain that Iraq is holding nothing. Repeat the resolution process every x months (for some small value of x, say 3 - 6) until that deadline expires. If Iraq is ever in breach go to case B, otherwise at the end of the period we are satisfied Iraq hasn't got anything, nor any attempts to get anything - go to case C.

Case B: Iraq found to be in explicit breach of the resolution. We publicise it if no-one else has yet (try to get the inspectors to do it for us), then we announce we are going to war and promptly steam in. However, if the inspectors are still there, we give them enough notice to ensure they can all get out safely (but if they are taken and used as human shields we have to go ahead with the conflict regardless).

Case C: Nothing is found for ages and the inspectors have looked everywhere. At that point, we offer Saddam the following deal: The existing sanctions will be removed on everything except for components usable in WMD. However, the tradeoff is that US, UK and Australian military forces become the Iraqi Customs Service, and any breach of the sanctions that is detected is an immediate jump to Case B.

2. Circumstances justifying force without a UNSC resolution

If the US or any of its allies are attacked by a state or a terrorist group sponsored by a state, that state can and should be attacked by the US regardless of any UNSC intervention (the self-defence doctrine, albeit at a somewhat collective level).
If a state or group is committing genocide, we are justified in attacking them in order to save the lives of the attacked group (the Rwanda / Kosovo doctrine).
If any state is harbouring terrorists, refuses to sever ties to the terrorist group and refuses to put the terrorists on trial or hand them over to an international tribunal (e.g. the new ICC), then we are justified in attacking them until they sever the link with terrorism. (You could call this a 'post-9/11' doctrine).
If a state is proven to be pursuing a chemical or biological weapons programme in violation of the relevant international conventions, and refuses to both dismantle the programmes and have independent unfettered third-party verification of such a dismantling, then we are justified in attacking them unilaterally provided that such weapons threaten either us or our allies (through the state itself or through any sponsored terrorist groups).

Note in the above that I do not believe al-Qaeda qualifies as being 'sponsored' by Iraq - if that were the case the last OBL tape would not have had him condemn the regime in the way he did. (Of course, there may be other terrorist groups I don't know about that Hussein supports.) The only ally under threat currently is Turkey, and I can't see Saddam's ambition of being a pan-Arab leader working if he decides to attack Turkey unilaterally.

3. (On the No-fly zones)
I agree, the no-fly zones have been beneficial. What they have done is helped to protect a minority group that the country's leader was intent on persecuting, through methods up to and including mass murder. However, if providing the Kurds with cover was the real goal of the operation, surely it would have been more effective to demand a Kurdish right to self-determination within the Iraqi borders, and organise some kind of referendum to legitimise the creation of a separate Kurdistan, carved out of Iraqi territory?

What this question appears to be asking is whether the plight of the Iraqi people is, in and of itself, sufficient justification for the removal of Saddam from authority, given that the removal of Saddam from effective authority in the north of the country has improved the situation for the Kurdish people there. This is a tough call, and I don't know whether it's sufficient justification, partly because I don't know the numbers.

I don't know how many Iraqis have been imprisoned, tortured, executed for the 'crimes' of opposition to Saddam. I also don't know how many soldiers, both Iraqi and US/allied are likely to be killed in a future conflict. I don't know whether those numbers are even strictly comparable. The current economic situation in Iraq is dreadful, but a war would lead to a large refugee movement as was seen during the Gulf War (Gulf War I ?) I don't know how to compare those yardsticks, either.

Yes, getting rid of a tyrant is laudable - but everyone knows it isn't free. There is a point where the cost is low enough that it should be done because of the positive impact it will have on people's lives. There is also a point where the cost is too high to be justified. Until I have clearer (and thoroughly backed-up) numbers, how can I possibly say whether toppling Saddam is justified from the humanitarian dimension alone?

More questions to follow later.

2003-02-15T22:16:00.000Z

OK. Last time I was able to update this was before I got sent to work in Holland for four months (I'm a consultant, it's entirely my own fault). Now I'm back, don't expect anything much in the way of more frequent posts - even though absolutely no-one actually ever reads this blog.

2002-09-16T19:45:00.000Z

Your Handy-Dandy Comparative Guide

Believed to be developing WMD: North Korea, Iraq

Squashes internal dissent: North Korea, Iraq

Has weapons that can reach significant US allies: North Korea (Japan, South Korea), Iraq (Israel)

US has fought previous conflict without causing regime change: North Korea, Iraq

Part of the "Axis of Evil": North Korea, Iraq

US Foreign Policy regarding North Korea: Sit back and condemn, while not doing anything to support or obstruct South Korean and Japanese attempts to improve ties.

US Foreign Policy regarding Iraq: Well, I think you know.

So, if it isn't oil that's causing it to be Iraq and not North Korea, just what is it?

2002-09-16T18:40:00.000Z

Fiscanancial Insanity

Live at the WTC has reported on President Bush's request to the Senate for "fiscal sanity", including actually passing some appropriation bills so that he can sign them. A noble action, after all no-one likes trying to spend government money that hasn't been authorised.

However, wouldn't this have been a whole lot less of an issue without the tax cuts he phased in last year? Don't blame the Senate for not agreeing a budget under these conditions, Mr. President. Have a look at the overall picture for a change.

2002-09-16T18:35:00.000Z

Extremely Curious George

No, not the president of the United States. This twit, who seems to have been going on about Saddam as a bulwark of anti-Imperialism. Last time I checked, the Gulf War (soon, presumably, to be renamed the First Gulf War) was a response to Saddam's imperial decision that he needed Kuwait as an additional province.

George claims to have been amongst the first to point out Saddam's human-rights violations back in the 1970s. As Saddam turned from American client to thorn in America's side George's opinions have apparently gone the other way. Not that he seems to actually be in favour of Saddam remaining in power, though, according to the interview.

So, if you want to see Saddam's "regime replaced by a democratically elected government", George, why on Earth are you going over there and acting all buddy-buddy?

2002-09-15T20:35:00.000Z

Skeptical

Get this book. Now.

Be careful with the message though. Bjorn is very careful to point out that the fact that by most indicators we're getting better doesn't mean we can rest on our laurels. After all, resting on our laurels is not what got us there in the first place. But, as he has said, there is no "gun against our heads", so we should reflect, and make rational decisions to determine the best and most efficient way to improve our environment.

2002-07-29T20:55:00.000Z

Rand-om Numbers

I read another extreme libertarian viewpoint on slashdot about the supremacy of the free market the other day. I believe that the free market is usually the right way to decide things - I would rather this than the dead hand of government subsidies and/or national tariffs in quite a large number of industries. However, in this case the free market argument was the typical 'there is no value in anti-trust law - the free market creates the optimal result and anti-trust law just allows the government to crack down on big businesses to the detriment of the rest of society'.

Now, there's a very good reason for 'anti-trust', 'restraint of trade', call it whatever you will. That reason (there may well be others, please
let me know if you come up with any others) is natural monopolies.

WARNING: Introductory economics lesson follows. If you (a) fear economics, (b) hate economics, or (c) hate economists, feel free to leave the discussion now. I won't be offended (unless it's because you fall into group (c), being an economist of sorts myself.)

A classic natural monopoly exists where there are huge costs to setting up the operation, but extremely minute (or possibly even zero) costs to provide an extra unit of whatever it is you are producing within some reasonable bound. Take, for example, the telephone network in your area. There is some theoretical capacity constraint to the number of calls it can handle, but, once the huge amount spent on keeping the overall network running is spent, the cost to the phone company of providing one extra call is as close to zero as it gets.

This creates a conundrum. Market price in classic economics is achieved at the point where the amount a consumer is willing to pay equals the cost of additional production ('cost' here being an economist's weasel word which includes all opportunity costs, up to and including getting a reasonable return on the money people have invested in this effort). If this was in place for this natural monopoly, however, it would lose money, because the large upfront investment would never be recouped. So, there are a couple of options available to ensure that the natural monopoly remains in place:

A subsidy is provided to enable pricing at this 'marginal cost' to continue without the monopoly losing money. Or at least the government attempts to find this level of subsidy - as there is a strong incentive for the managers of the monopoly to fiddle their stated costs in a way which maximises the money they get.
The natural monopoly raises its prices. People buy fewer units, but do so at a higher price which enables the natural monopoly to break even or make a monopoly profit.

That's fine, and fair enough. However, the trick with a natural monopoly that is established is that no one can compete with it. Do I see anyone setting up a duplicate power grid? Water supply? Complete telephone network including local loop? No - it's too much additional expense given that the incumbent has already spent it.
Now, take that natural monopoly, and leave it in the marketplace with no constraints blocking it from extending into other markets. As the anti-trust types would say, eliminate the rules against vertical integration. What could you see happening?

Well, what if the electricity company bought one electrical goods manufacturer, and then cut off the power to anyone who wasn't using that brand of goods? Crazy, you say. It couldn't happen, you say. And you're right - provided that we have anti-trust restrictions in place. After all, without those restrictions, what would stop it from happening?

OK, that's the extreme version, but it illustrates the point that you can't live without anti-trust legislation in a world where natural monopolies exist. If any of you anti-anti-trust libertarians out there have a problem with this, or a counter-argument you'd just love to launch, drop me a line.

2002-04-12T21:06:00.000Z

OK. I've finally squeezed in some more time to deal with the blog. Hopefully now the template looks much more reasonable - and has room for some of my favourite links along the side. I'll probably take some time to get to that, so in the meantime, don't forget to visit your daily dose of webcomics:

Megatokyo
Kevin and Kell
Sluggy Freelance
Sinfest
Penny Arcade
UserFriendly
Doctor Fun
PVP Online

Good night, and have a good weekend.

2002-04-12T20:43:00.000Z

Well, back to reality (or at least away from work). A moderately difficult week this week - midnight finish on Monday followed by relatively early final whistles for the rest of the time.

2002-04-07T14:05:00.000Z

Sunday, 7th April 2002

Hi. Is this thing on?

OK. This is an attempt to get on the bandwagon far too late and start getting my own personal thoughts out via yet another vanity weblog. If you're reading this you're obviously too bored already - maybe you should go see a quality weblog.

Allow me to introduce myself before this gets too weird too quickly. My name is Duncan Richer, I'm 25, Australian and currently living in London. I've been maintaining web pages since June 1994 (hence the title of this log), but really don't have the time anymore to maintain stuff on a hard-coded HTML basis, hence this decision to start using blogger.