End of an Era for Stupidity

And Boris Is... Going

So say the news. 

It truly is some kind of an end of era. First it was Trump not winning in 2020, followed by the January 6 Capitol mess. Arguably, it took a while but Australia corrected itself at the electorate and removed the mendacious Scott Morrison and his government of corrupt miscreants. Not importantly it marked the end of Australia's time that started with the election of Tony Abbott, the most incompetent PM in Australia's short history. Finally, we're seeing Boris Johnson being tuned out by his own party who can no longer abide his zero-governance style of government. 

What they all have in common is that they are all governments pushed upon us by the Murdoch press and TV. Any rational mind could see Tony Abbott had no idea - no fucking idea - about how to run a country, let alone a chook raffle, but somehow Australia ended up with him just so the hard right nut job brigade could run a solid defence against actually doing anything about Global Warming. Compared to the decade of travesty that followed, perhaps Boris Johnson is not as bad. But then a pile of steaming poo is not as bad as a lake of diarrhoea. As for Trump and his entourage of corrupt minions and family, hoo boy. 

Jeez y'know, it makes you wonder about all kinds of things like the efficacy of all that private school education and bullshit if it yields leaders like these. It's hard to tell where all that money went. It also makes you realise that you can deny reality only for so long. You can pray and make a song and dance out of your religiosity like Scomo but ultimately Black Summer Fires and a bunch of once-in-a-hundred-year flooding events will put you squarely in the context of not knowing what you're talking about. Equally, if 40 of your own side ministers quit on you, maybe you don't know just what the fuck you're doing as Prime Minister of UK. It begs all kinds of questions about a society that gives rise to a process that allows this kind of thing to happen. If it were only America or only Australia or only the UK, you're be forgiven for saying it's a cultural quirk. But for these 3 Anglophone countries to all be beset by this kind of anti-intellectual incompetent troglodyte governments does make you search of answers. 

And really, it's staring in your face if you're a news junky. It's the collective effort of the Murdoch press that delivers these terrifyingly stupid outcomes for so long. Perhaps it is the sign that demographics are shifting - the greying nut-job Murdoch-press-consuming dickheads are dying out, and this is creating just enough of an edge for sanity to prevail. I guess we'll see. 

The Other Stupid Keeps Hanging On

Goodness. What the fucking fuck are we going to do about Russia and Poo-tin? The unhelpful answer is that we should somehow come up with a way to talk him off the ledge of history. 

The West is “blindly” marching towards World War 3, one expert says, and warns one act could trigger a “disastrous” global war. 

Henri Guaino, a French politician and senior advisor to the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, says an “all-out” war could be triggered by treating Putin like Adolf Hitler – an act which would make Russia “the most dangerous country in the world”. 

"The moment we compare Russia to Nazi Germany and Putin to Hitler – we must be prepared for an all-out war,” Mr Guaino told Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. 

“It is impossible to stop the war against Hitler. If we are facing someone like Hitler – we have to go all the way, at any price, and we will be walking into a disaster. Alternately – we must find ways out. This is the responsibility of politics.”

Look, I know it scares people to sobriety that Poo-tin might just go for the nuclear launch codes. It needs to be said that it's also true that whoever goes for the launch codes first invites the other to do whatever the hell they like, up to and including Mutually Assured Destruction. 

So the Russians bleating about how they have nukes and if they keep on getting mistreated by the world, they might just go for them, is just show. They keep talking about nuking London, but the moment they let off that sucker, it invites NATO to surge across the border and head for Moscow in a conventional war. And given how depleted the Russians are, the West can win that one without nukes. Therefore, the Russians can't just let off one as a warning or do proportionate damage if they go first. The only option once they decide to go nuclear is in fact Mutually Assured Destruction. Now, the Mutually Assured Destruction scenario is where everybody loses, but that everybody includes Russia at the front of the queue. Any World War III of the nuclear kind would guarantee Russia loses. The rest of it leading up to World War III is a pantomime to see if Poo-tin can be made to wear the responsibility all by himself. 

Poo-tin is not as stupid as say, Boris Johnson or Scott Morrison. He understands this calculation. This is probably why he is getting other mouthpieces that are not him to put these ideas out and about. Yet it still has to be said, the dumbest guy in 2022 isn't Boris Johnson or Scott Morrison - it's the guy who ordered his army to invade Ukraine. What an idiot. 

Out of Afghanistan

End Of A Terrible Era 

Everything about the war in Afghanistan sucks. It went on for so long people kind of got inured to this phenomenon out there in the middle of Eurasia whereby USA and its allies stationed their troops, flew combat missions, trained a largely low-motivation Afghan military and for years seemed to feed the Hollywood fodder of a seemingly endless, pointless, witless Forever War. It got so bad it made a defective POTUS like Donald Trump look vaguely statesmanlike when he announced he was completely pulling out the American troops.Yes, the same president who thought sitting down with Kim Jong-Un was a good move. 

The cost of the war is staggering; the human carnage and damage is staggering; the very pointlessness of it is mind warping; and we have to wonder if any of it accomplished anything. We did learn a lot about the nature of war in the contemporary world. We can't go to war without legitimacy and this desire for legitimacy prohibits us from doing drastic terrible things. We can get all the air superiority win the world, but we cannot carpet bomb them all - we're not willing to do that any more. We say we want to win over hearts and minds, but the kinds of troopers we send over like the SAS seem to be high functioning psychopaths, out on a safari to shoot locals. There's no wining of any hearts and minds with all that. 

I've mentioned it elsewhere that the USA is not willing to pay for health and education in rebuilding Afghanistan because they don't even spend that money back home in places like Alabama and Louisiana. Why would they? So that shows to us that America probably shouldn't go marching into places it doesn't want to turning the 51st state of the USA.   

There's a weird irony that then day Kabul fell to the Taliban is also VJ day. Wars rarely end with any dignity or decorum. This one ends with the powers leaving behind a vacuum that will get filled by the flotsam and jetsam of world politics. The fearless prediction we can make is that the Taliban will rise to being a threat again. The Americans will go back again. There will be no plan next time either. 

How Do We Feel About This?

I started this blog way back when around the time they first sent troops to Afghanistan. Blogging was sort of new then, and it seemed like a fun thing to pass commentary upon. I was not a soldier, I was in do danger at all in this 'war on terror', so I had all the luxury in the world to snark away at the conduct of the conservative governments in USA and Australia as well as bitch about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's ethically challenged Labour Government in the UK. Did the war affect me? It did in strange ways. I won't go into them all but basically I watched liberal democracy dismantle itself in the face of the boogeyman it created for itself. The arts and humanities got defunded over that time, and everybody seemed to lose interest in culture-as-national-project. In turn we've allowed neo-nazis and extremely rightists to gain access to the mainstream, and everybody seems to have forgotten about Marx and Engels. 

I have to admit, the going got so stupid around the early part of the last decade that I gave up commenting on politics. There's a certain kind of idiocy with leaders who choose ideological positioning over proper policy considerations, and such idiocies are too demeaning to analyse. If it can be said that you cannot polish a turd but you can roll fit in glitter; well, there's only so much rolling around the turd can take without losing shape. That's kind of how much our politics and polity devolved in the course of the Afghan War - it turned into a formless bit of turd.

In a way I am glad the USA is out of Afghanistan. It's no place to be, and no place to be dropping money. It is a thankless task to keep the peace in a country surrounded by countries that want to destabilise it or turn it into a puppet or colony. And truth be told it's hard to say for certain the Afghanis really liked having Americans there to keep the peace. The very fact that the Afghan government collapsed like a house of cards as the Allies headed for the door suggests the Afghanis themselves were far less serious about the value of the Peace being kept by the American presence. Now is the awful time of reckoning, The Taliban will come back and run their medieval government. There will be refugees headed for Europe and America and Australia. There will be leaky boats once more. We've lined ourselves up for another bout of history repeating. 

So What Now?

America will probably do a bit of soul searching about the twin follies waged by the George W Bush Administration. They really should. The failure is very real, although somewhat vague. As with Iraq, it was easy enough to dislodge the shitty government. What was hard was to set up a viable government in its wake. Worse still, they left the military there for a long time in a bid to shore up whatever democratic civil government they could. The fact that they did for nearly 2 decades may not actually be a straight up failure.

The Chinese government had talks with the Taliban. Presumably they want to back the Taliban government in the hopes of seeing stability. They might find the Taliban are a lot worse than having the Americans on their backdoor. After all, you're talking about a government founded on the idea that if you're not Islam, you're little people. Godless-Communists-As-Your-Friends might be a bit of a hard sell with these people. Your enemy of your enemy might be your friend, but something tells me the enemies of enemies like these might just be just another enemy. 

If there's one thing I'm willing to prognosticate upon, I think the Taliban will be just as dreadful this time through as they were in 1996-2001. It was a long time ago and people have short memories but, the Taliban were simply terrible. There will be pain.  

Last Thought On This Matter

You know what's amazing? There are still prisoners in Guantanamo Bay that date back to the early days of this war. 

Quick Shots - 07/Feb/2017

More On the Liberal Party Split Thing

As it turns out, there's more about Cory Bernardi that's worth knowing. We could have guessed it, but it bears pointing out:

Bernardi first sensed a problem in 2009, when during a heated and divisive partyroom debate on whether the Coalition should support Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme, one of his colleagues, the now deceased West Australian MP Don Randall, rose to his feet and said: "I don't give a stuff about the national interest, I want to get re-elected and this needs to go away." 

Bernardi went back to his Senate office and wrote down the quote. He never forgot it. It was the beginning of the end.

I don't know how else to put it but that right there is the mocking gun that these Liberal Party politicians are nothing but hacks sucking on the pubic teat. As if Bronwyn Bishop and Sussan Ley weren't enough proof, here in the segment above is the distilled essence of how these bastards think. 

The late WA MP Don Randall said he doesn't give a stuff about the national interest, he just wants to get re-elected. It begs the question why the hell we need to re-elect such a person; as it turned out, he died shortly before the recent election and truth be told, judging from the quote, it was probably a good thing too, because he certainly had no intention of serving the national interest. It's easily arguable that the most he served the national interest was when he died, thus depriving himself of more opportunities to suck at the public teat. 

That Cory Bernardi thought the quip was worth writing down as quote to which he is going to make his political credo, tells us well enough that he too doesn't think much about the national interest - he too is all about getting re-elected. It's strange that he thinks he has a better chance not as the Liberal Party's No. 2 on the SouthAustralian Senate ticket but as an independent. Maybe there's more money in being a leader of a party of one. It's hard to figure how the dollars an cents work out, but it would be remiss of the media if it didn't investigate this strictly pecuniary angle. After all, the man's motto amounts to, stuff the national interest, he's only in it for himself.

If I may offer a bit of gratuitous advice to Corgi BurntNazi, it is that the ALP have found "Disunity Is Death". Leaving a major party that would put you in as a senator is likely the dumbest move he's made in politics. 

Grexit Again?

If there's one thing that really puts the fear in the markets the world all over, it's the notion that Greece will default on its debts. That being said, the narrative to date has been, the Euro Zone won't let that happen, and the Greeks have to eat a lot of humiliation not to be allowed to default or leave the Euro. This has resulted in the ECB cycling through a lot of money that pays off the debt for Greece in exchange for Greece making immense cuts to its expenditure - some of which might have been reasonable but others that have resulted in terrible cuts to services. There doesn't even seem to be any coherent link between the cuts demanded by the Euro Troika and how the money is spent seeing that most of the money goes to paying off the bonds. And as the Greek economy shrinks and shrivels, it loses any chance paying off the debt.

With that in mind, here's something from Yanis Varoufakis, the ex-finance minister of Greece.

“This two-pronged preparation is the only way to prevent another excruciating retreat by the prime minister in the short term and [German Finance Minister Wolfgang] Schaeuble’s plan in the long term,” Varoufakis wrote. 

In his article, Varoufakis suggested that Schaeuble’s strategy is to lead Greeks to the point of exhaustion so they ask to leave the euro themselves. 

Noting that the “parallel payment system was already designed in 2014”, Varoufakis stresses that Tsipras had “two delusions” that led the government to the current impasse:

• a. that on the night of the referendum, the dilemma was between Schaeuble’s Grexit Plan and the 3. bailout
• b. that the obedience to the 3.bailout could be political manageable through a parallel, society-friendly program.

Both of these “working assumptions” were based only on autosuggestion, the ex finance minister stresses adding that he tried to explained this to the Prime Minister on the night of the referendum 

“In reality there was never a basis for hope that the toxic 3 bailout would be gradually rationalized, in terms that the European Commission would support Athens so that the austerity and anti-social IMF measures would relax, the IMF would force Berlin to accept debt restructuring and lower primary surpluses, the ECB would include Greece in the bond purchase program (QE),” Varoufakis wrote 

He accused leading European negotiators of lying. 

“That Moscovici [EU Monetary Affairs Commissioner], Coerer [ECB] and Sapen [French finance minister] might have given such promises was not an excuse.
Since May 2015 we were fully aware that these gentlemen know how to lie and fail to deliver on their promises when they do not lie.”

Greece remains the thin end of the wedge. If Greece goes, then, the dominoes are in play for the rest of the PIIGS, and will lead to the destruction of the Euro. While it stays in the Euro Zone, the world can live with the fiction that everything is okay, except there is the glaring issue of Brexit, whereby cozy assumptions about the health of the Euro Zone can't be ignored. If the UK can leave, then it offers a practical blueprint for Greece to leave.

The weird thing is that the UK need not ought to have voted to leave, while Greece needs to leave if it wants any semblance of control over its finances. The horror show of bluff and intimidation made by the Troika to keep Greece in the fold and to keep taking the austerity medicine in a sense informed the UK public as to the failings of not having control. Even more ironic may be the case that the UK already had kept its pound sterling as opposed to adopting the Euro, so in a sense it was the state with the least problems of losing control to the Euro Zone. thus if the UK still seems it fit to leave the Euro Zone, then it follows that perhaps Greece needs to reconsider its desire to stay.

If all things are equal, the next time the Grexit show hits the road and world markets panic over the possibility of Greece leaving the Euro Zone, it might be better to put your money on the likelihood that it does leave, and that it's a good thing.

View From The Couch - 25/Jan/2017

The Hollowing Out Of Cities

This is something generational and likely going to freak some people out, but the ageing population situation in Tokyo is creating holes in the urban landscape. As old people pass away, they leave behind apartments in which they dwelled, and because of the age of the buildings, have little resale value. This is creating a problem because the buildings start accelerating in their decrepitude as more people die and fewer people are there to support the body corporate sinking funds.

The thing about this is that a lifetime is spent paying off loans for a box in space and then the box loses value. That's the first problem. The second problem is that there is no real way to redevelop these buildings without public monies. It's beginning to turn into a spiral in Tokyo. This is instructive about what happens when a property bubble keeps out a generation of people from buying in and having kids. In a sense, the collapse of a younger population in Tokyo is a direct reflection of the property Bubble of the 1980s.

Not to say this is whites going happen to Australia's major cities. For one, our cities are not built to such densities, and for another, majority of the high density apartments are relatively new and so will not be spiralling down so soon. It takes a good 50 years for that to take place and that would be four decades away. The more problematic area might be that the ageing population will mean a higher burden on the fewer working generation who will be working from outside the major city centres while the inner city becomes predominantly grey.

It's weird but you can see it already in Sydney, where the people buying into the higher density closer to the city aren't first time buyers because they can't afford it. it's older couples downsizing or investing, and Sydney's urban metropolitan heart is already looking kind of grey.

Sydney's Housing Un-Affordability

Anyway... just how bad is Sydney?

The Harbour City's eye-watering house prices were trumped by only Hong Kong in the Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey, which examined more than 400 cities in nine countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. 

After being sworn in as New South Wales Premier yesterday, Gladys Berejiklian used her first press conference to put the spotlight on housing affordability. 

The report ranked middle-income housing affordability using a "median multiple" score, which is calculated by dividing the average house price by the average household income. 

Anything with a score of 5.1 and over is dubbed "severely unaffordable", so let's break it down:

Rank: Least affordable City - Median multiple

1. Hong Kong ..................18.1
2. Sydney, NSW ..............12.2
3. Vancouver, Canada ......11.8
4. Santa Cruz, USA .........11.6
5. Santa Barbara, USA.....11.3
6. Auckland, NZ ..............10
7. Wingcaribbee, NSW .....9.8
8. Tweed Heads, NSW .....9.7
9. San Jose, USA ..............9.6
10. Melbourne, VIC ...........9.5

Hmmm. That looks far more insane than any chart I've seen up to this point. We know Hong Kong is nuts because it's essentially an island and a point and lots of land reclamation going on in the attempt to make more Hong Kong than God intended (so to speak). But Sydney to be leading the second pack of cities with multiples at roughly12 is pretty gaudy when London, New York, Tokyo, Paris, Rome and Berlin are entirely missing in the top 10. That's some list. The fact that Wingcaribbee and Tweed Heads makes the list tells you that something stupid is going on. 

Our banks are lending money to people who want to have these multiples, just to live in these places. It has no bearing to the reality of any other real estate market on the planet except maybe Hong Kong,and so you have to say that Australian property owners and investors are collectively bidding up the numbers with no concern of the downside to the market, - which of course is a sign of a bubble.

Of course, Mark Latham has a radical plan to deal with this issue. He says, cut immigration.

“[Housing affordability] is all about supply and demand. It’s not rocket science. The problem with extra supply in Sydney is the urban sprawl, the lack of infrastructure, the wretched traffic jams a million miles from the city centre, people struggling to get anywhere near for their schools, shops their employment. So, supply has the problem of sprawl”. 

“[But] you’ve got to do something about demand. And whether we like it or not – and the two parties have got consensus about a Big Australia – the driver of housing demand in Sydney is immigration. The 200,000 a year plus immigration program – add to that the refugee program – that’s the driver of demand. And unless you address that, you can have all of the housing bonds, press conferences and forums that you like – and sort of puffy stuff in the media – and you won’t get a solution. So, break the consensus about Big Australia, slash the immigration program, drive down demand, and finally you will have a sensible solution to housing affordability”. 

“You won’t have to spend as much on infrastructure funding because the place is not sprawling as much. And the other benefit you get is environmental sustainability. It’s something The Greens used to talk about, but now they talk about 50,000 to 100,000 refugees – they are Big Australia as well”. 

“So, there is real room here for a sensible solution based on cuts to immigration”.

That sounds like an oversimplification, but it's certainly one different view to add to the mix.
Anyway, I just thought all that was interesting in light of yesterday's Berejiklian notion that supply would fix housing affordability. It most likely won't, and the longer they leave it, the worse the problem is going to be down the track.


To Un-Fuck The Goat Brexit

Things are getting a little convoluted with this Brexit thing. The Supreme court in the UK has just told the UK Government that Article 50 definitely can't be started by the government alone, it has to be put to the vote both houses.

Lord Neuberger said the judgment was not about the referendum result or a comment on the merits of leaving or staying in the EU. 

"The referendum is of great political significance, but the Act of Parliament authorising it did not say what would happen afterwards," Lord Neuberger said, meaning any action taken now must be in keeping with the UK’s constitution.
The Independent reported today that ministers are likely to be ready to publish the Bill that MPs will vote on by the end of the week. 

After the judgement, Attorney General Jeremy Wright said the Government was "disappointed" by the final decision in its historic battle over who has the right to authorise the start of Brexit. 

He added: "The Government will comply with the judgement of the court and do all that is necessary to implement it." 

It is unclear what would happen legally if MPs vote against such a bill, as much of the constitutional law related to Brexit remains as yet untested, although Jeremy Corbyn has "asked" his MPs to vote not to obstruct it. 

The judges' ruling is a victory for Gina Miller, a philanthropist and banker, who brought the case against the Government. She was also backed by a crowd-funded group called The Peoples' Challenge, who described themselves as a group of "concerned EU citizens". 

Although the Government lost the challenge, the justices unanimously ruled that there was need to consult with the devolved powers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
In a statement released immediately after the ruling, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said his party would not "frustrate the process for invoking Article 50" but would seek to amend the Government.

Well that's a surprise and a half. Last we knew, 70% of MPs didn't want a Brexit, so this actually offers them a second bite at the cherry. Now, Jeremy Corbyn says he won't frustrate the government over invoking Article 50, but what if enough MPs banded together block it in the House of Commons? Or even if it passes there, what happens if the House of Lords shoots it down?

After the referendum, it sure didn't look like there was an opening for overturning the result, but suddenly there's a puncher's chance of Brexit getting de-railed in Parliament. And if it did, well, would that really be a bad thing after all the sloppy lies that got it over the line?

It would be rather interesting should things come to pass that Brexit couldn't get up because Article 50 couldn't be triggered? They'll laugh in Europe; they'll probably even swear. David Cameron sure would. Of course, the MPs may well rubber stamp the thing to just let it through and out of their hair. after all who would want the furore that would follow a scuttled Brexit?

News That's Fit To Punt - 05/Aug/2016

BOE Set Interest Rates At Lowest Rates Ever

We live in interesting times. If you see things that are once in a generation, then live long enough you might see it twice. There are people who presumably experienced the Great Depression firsthand, and are now experiencing the GFC audits aftermath. Yet, even they would never have witnessed the Bank of England settler interest rates this low.  That would be because it's the lowest 322 years.

The central bank's Monetary Policy Committee voted unanimously to lower its benchmark interest rate to 0.25 per cent, the lowest level in the bank's 322 years. The rate had been at 0.5 per cent since March 2009.

further this year, but he ruled out the possibility of negative interest rates. The committee's next meeting is set for November.

The bank also said that it would introduce a series of additional measures to support the economy, predicting that there would be little growth in the second half of this year and that economic growth would decline sharply next year compared with its earlier forecast for 2017.

What we're seeing, is the Bank of England moving to the point where it no longer has any means of adding stimulus to a moribund economy.  

The Bank of Japan has been doing this for over 20years. There's a whole generation of people in Japan who grew up under low interest rates and low inflation that they cannot imagine a world with 6%-8% interest rates and 5-9% inflation. You wouldn't be saying it too loud, but it appears the British economy has entered a similar twilight zone where no amount of interest rate cutting and stimulus spending can reflate the economy. 

It's a strange state of affairs, when you think about it. The central banks are virtually giving money away to banks so they can lend into capital investment. The place where most of the money ends up is in fixed assets, namely housing, and businesses just hoard cash instead. The consumer expects prices to drop in the future so they too hold on to cash; and together they form an environment where demand is low. The rest of the heartache and sorrow, about which you know, so I won't go into it today. I just thought it was worth noting that if you see an institution doing something it hasn't in 322years, you're seeing something very extraordinary; something they'll be talking about in a thousand years' time.

The question I want answered is how do we get to the other side of this malaise without wars and revolutions and killing each other? Because that's what usually happened in the past. 

About Those Jobs In America That Were Lost To Free Trade

I caught this during the week and it's an interesting little article because it shows we might be overstating the extent to which globalisation is eating up manufacturing jobs. If you go through to the Op Ed it is citing, you get this:

The number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has indeed been in a long decline since the late 1970s, but that disguises the true story of American manufacturing. Nostalgia for a bygone era blinds politicians and voters alike to the reality of a revitalized sector of the American economy that is thriving in a global market.

American factories and American workers are making a greater volume of stuff than ever — high-tech, high-value products that are competitive in markets around the world. In the last 20 years, which include enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, real, inflation-adjusted U.S. manufacturing output has increased by almost 40%. Annual value added by U.S. factories has reached a record $2.4 trillion.

What has changed in recent decades is what our factories produce. Americans today make fewer shirts, shoes, toys and tables than we did 30 years ago. Instead, America’s 21stcentury manufacturing sector is dominated by petroleum refining, pharmaceuticals, plastics, fabricated metals, machinery, computers and other electronics, motor vehicles and other transportation equipment, and aircraft and aerospace equipment. 

We produce more manufacturing value with fewer employees than in years past because today’s workers are so much more productive. They are better educated, equipped with more sophisticated capital machinery and turn out more valuable products than their parents’ generation. And as a result they are better paid, with total manufacturing payrolls rising during the last decade even as the number of workers declined.

The article in a nutshell says it's technological progress that has eaten the jobs, not trade. I'd imagine that this is true in Australia as well. There are good trade deals and bad ones (like theTPP they keep trying to pass), but in most part the economy has had rational players when it comes to manufacturing goods. 

I've had a number of discussions with people about this very phenomenon. It has been argued by empirical economists in the past that technological development does not kill jobs, it more than creates more jobs. That when the car came about, the horse-drawn buggy makers went out of business but lots of people found employment making cars; and so when the Australian automotive industry closes, those people will inevitably find employment in areas of higher technology. It makes sense that this has happened, but it seems unlikely that re-training auto-manufacturing workers into high tech workers of unspecified industries is the same as retraining buggy makers into auto-manufacturing workers. 

Similarly, the past performance is no predictor of future performance, and so we cannot simply subscribe to the view that it will happen again because it happened before. The implication being derived out of the empirical numbers, seem to be technological progress is happening in such as way as to cut the rate at which future jobs are created. We're now on the incline where each new development will likely destroy more job than they create, which is a new phenomenon.

The Rudd Revenge Is Just Beginning

Here we go!

"What I don't respect is, having pursued this campaign for United Nations secretary-general for such a long period of time in abso­lute good faith, to then see that good faith dishonoured and trust broken,"Mr Rudd told The Australian.

Arguing he had no interest in pursuing a "quixotic venture", Mr Rudd claimed his continued campaign to be the next secretary-general was based on assurances and underlying assumptions of support from both the Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop.

For his part, Mr Turnbull has again insisted that he told his predecessor that it was a decision for cabinet and warned him in May that the chances of his nomination going ahead were not good.

Oh, I dunno what to say. This Parliament hasn't even sat yet and they've managed to make a problem out of a trifle.

Weapons Of Mass Distraction

Tony Blair The War Criminal Suspect

It seems so long go, yet the ghastly wound the whole Iraq War inflicted not just on Iraq and the Middle East but to our own polity is still suppurating. It's so long ago that it dates back to even before the original entries of this blog. In many ways this blog began amid the rancour in the post-invasion days - what the hell were we doing there'd just how justified was this bit of military adventurism worth? The eventual hanging of Saddam Hussein in 2005 left a bitter after-taste that basically destroyed any pretence that the invasion was anything but the Bush family vendetta against Saddam and his family.

The Chilcot Report has landed and the world is awash with the notion that basically Tony Blair ignored expert advice and took the UK to war with Iraq. The ramification being, he is a war criminal. Certainly the Chilcot Report places him squarely as a suspect, if only the Hague could work up the gumption to sign an arrest warrant that Interpol can then put into action. Of course, Tony Blair is 'defiant'. One imagines that if an arrest warrant is issued by Interpol, the British establishment will tighten the huddle, standing should to shoulder claiming that Heads of States can't be brought to the Hague for War Crimes trials. It sure didn't stop Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic respectively ending up at the Hague so we'll sure see about that one.

Paul McGeough has a pretty good rundown over at the shake-my-head:

The former British Prime Minister earns a rare place in history's crosshairs as one of just two on the planet who might have stopped crazy man Bush – the other being Bush's hapless Secretary of State, Colin Powell. By not restraining the US president, each was an enabler in Washington's worst-ever foreign policy blunder. 

And the Australian PM? Howard's was a bit part, but it was important – as the patsy from Down Under, his eagerness to sign on made it possible for Bush to dress up his miscalculated need to go after Saddam Hussein in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, as an imposing "Coalition of the Willing".

Now the arrogance – Donald Trump would call it stupidity – of this trio, in unleashing their mind-boggling incompetence on the world, is revealed in a damning critique by the Chilcot Report, which was released in London on Wednesday. 

Chilcot can write as he does, because of the exhaustive, forensic nature of his seven years' work – and I can concur because for much of the last 15 years I have seen, first-hand, the brutal impact of their ignorance and indifference, in particular, on the people of Iraq and Afghanistan; and consequentially, on populations great and small, from the Mediterranean all the way to the Hindu Kush.

Chilcot's unambiguous findings include:

• There was no imminent threat from Saddam Hussein
• A strategy of containment was preferable to military intervention
• There was no justified certainty to London's judgments on the severity of any threat imposed by Iraq's WMD
• Blair was warned explicitly, but chose to underestimate the consequences of the 2003 invasion
• Planning for managing post-Saddam Iraq was inadequate

In all of Chilcot's 12 volumes that comprise 2.6 million words, just a few hundred words in Blair's "I will be with you, whatever…" letter to Bush are as self-incriminating as they are revealing. 

And there it is, the cat is out of the bag at long last. The world's worst kept secret that was the outrageous conglomeration of pseudo-facts and blurry pictures and underwhelming presentations to the UN that Saddam Hussein was this massive threat with 'weapons of mass destruction'. He didn't exactly have nukes or Fuel-Air Bombs like the Americans, Europeans and Russians did, but he had mustard gas! ("Run for the hills!")

Yes, the Iraqis had mustard gas that they bought from the CIA who organised the German recipe  from World War I so Iraq could use against Iran in chelate 1980s. Of course after the Gulf War, UNSCOM went in to chase him around for them and he kept playing hide-the-sausage with his chemical weapons but ultimately they were found and blown up by Bill Clinton's Operation Desert Fox. Queue the irony because Operation Desert Fox only came about because Bill Clinton was neck deep in the breaking scandal of his affair with Monica Lewinsky. It's oddly ironic that all these years later the Democratic candidate for the POTUS elections this years Hillary Rodham Clinton. The more things change, the more they stay the same. You've been warned, America!

By the time George W. Bush and Tony Blair were pimping this notion that Saddam had really dangerous WMDs, Saddam Hussein's capability to actually use them were too far degraded to be any serious threat. And let's all be honest here; if there was one thing that was proven by the Gulf War, it was how far war technology had come, and if Saddam Hussein wasting to unleash his World War I tech of mustard gas, it sure as heck wasn't going to change the tide of the war. In short, the case of Saddam having WMDs worth calling WMDs were slight at best.
Yet in they went and the rest is history.

When Tony Blair denies culpability, the punchline that springs timing is "he who denied it supplied it." It's a shame the Iraq War is a much, much bigger tragedy than mis-told schoolyard fart jokes.

George W. Bush "Hasn't Read The Report"

Some things never change. George W. Bush has led off his defence with the fact that he hasn't read the Chilcot Report. As if his not reading it somehow invalidates its contents. It's curious how the mind of George W. Bush works to come up with that, but that's what we've got.

In a statement, Bush spokesman Freddy Ford explained that the former president hasn't had the chance to read the Chilcot report and that "despite the intelligence failures and other mistakes he has acknowledged previously, President Bush continues to believe the whole world is better off without Saddam Hussein in power". 

"He is deeply grateful for the service and sacrifice of American and coalition forces in the war on terror. And there was no stronger ally than the United Kingdom under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair," Ford said.

Somehow principle of the law escapes George W. Bush as well as the obvious fact that just because he hasn't read it doesn't mean it's not right. Where do you start explaining this to a functional idiot - even if he was once POTUS?

The years have not been kind to his administration. There is no revisionism that makes his administration look any good. Even Donald Trump is running on the platform that the Iraq War was a bad idea This merely adds the frosting on the cake that was  his terrible two terms as POTUS, an early harbinger for the kind of politics that results in Donald Trump being the GOP nominee. Oh, and Hillary Clinton being the Democratic nominee. We're a morass of stupidity and mendacity, thanks to the slipstream of stupid that GWB created, that is still curdling politics around the world.

John Howard Defends The Indefensible

And this little guy is doing the same, sticking to form, for if there's one thing John Howard is known for is his ability to defend the indefensible, like Pauline Hanson the first time around. So here he is, John Howard defending his decision to go to war.

At the time, Mr Blair said intelligence showed that dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but after the invasion none were found.
Critics of the war have said that amounted to lies, but Mr Howard today disagreed with that assertion. 

"There was no lie. There were errors in intelligence, but there was no lie," he said.
Mr Howard said one of the most relevant findings to come out of the report was that there was no evidence to support claims that intelligence used to justify the war on Iraq had been doctored by Western governments. 

"The joint intelligence committee, which is the broad equivalent in the United Kingdom of the Office of National Assessments in Australia, accepted ownership of the dossier and agreed its content," he said.

The indelicate hair-splitting going on there is John Howard to a tee. The first claim that there was lie and there were errors in intelligence flies utterly in the face of the Chilcot Report. Just blindly insisting that his recollection is different doesn't make the findings exactly ... go away.

It's lovely how he states thing that just fly in the face of the Chilcot Report's salient points.  The Intelligence was there; Andrew Wilkie could tell you all about it.

Mr Wilkie, who quit as a government intelligence analyst in 2003 because of concerns about the invasion, said it had been "the biggest security and foreign policy blunder in our country's history".

He claimed neither the Lindt Cafe siege nor the 2005 Bali bombings would have happened if not for the 2003 Iraq invasion because it had "created the circumstances for the rise of the Islamic State". 

He accused then Mr Howard and former foreign minister Alexander Downer of taking the country "to war on a lie". He added there was a "pretty compelling case" that Mr Howard along with then US president George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair had committed war crimes and should face an international court. 

Mr Wilkie called for a full Australian inquiry and vowed to raise the issue with whoever became Australia's next prime minister when election counting has concluded.

Where intelligence wasn't was between the ears of these guys.

Also, here's Paul Keating on John Howard and his denials of culpability:

On Thursday evening, Mr Keating gave a scathing assessment of Mr Howard's justification, saying it was a "stubborn and unctuous denial" that should be "held in contempt by every thinking Australian". 

"Could you imagine the woebetidings of Howard and the Liberal Party, had it been [Bob] Hawke or I who had committed Australia to such an un-mandated assault on another country?" Mr Keating said in a statement. 

"We would never have heard the end of it. The Liberals would have been wringing their hands for decades. 

"The incompetent management of Iraq following the invasion, fractured that country and with it, Syria and the region around it, casting millions adrift from their lives and homes. A sea of refugees. Yet Howard has no shame of it. And no responsibility.
"Howard has visited on Australia the whole spectre of terrorism, through his craven and ill-judged support of the United States and its invasion." 

Mr Keating said Australia was "perhaps the most successful multicultural society in the world", with the settlement of a large Muslim population, but "John Howard put the torch to that". 

"Now we live perpetually with the spectre of terrorism and racial strife, visited upon us by his prejudices and lack of judgment," he said.
"In the face of the Chilcot Report, John Howard should atone for his actions and those of his government. He should, at least, hang his head in shame."

And that would be the least of it. 

'Here, Hold The Leash Lynndie'

For my musical mates and I, if there ever was a moment that politics fractured in the Western World, it would have been under George W. Bush's watch as POTUS. You don't expect the massive political edifice that is the US Government, the UK Government and even the Australian government to jointly descend into a Punch-and-Judy farce to pitch a war to the world. Frankly, we were horrified and appalled.

Which drove us to creative overdrive. The mid-2000s were fruitful with songs. One of which was our take on just how badly the farce went down. The Chilcot Report essentially underlines what were real concerns at the time of the invasion.
So, here's the song by Coelacanth to commemorate that horrible moment history:

That's right. If you look hard enough at the photos, you can almost imagine it. 

Quick Shots - 02/Jul/2016

It's Freakin' Election Day

For a long campaign, it sure creeps up on you when you're doing your best to ignore it.
The pollsters are calling it 50-50 which usually means they don't know what they're talking about and there's about to be a massive swing. Or maybe they're right. Short theALP winning, it would actually be kind of fun to see if we get a hung parliament. Yes, that re-run would be fun too, and well deserved. See if Malcolm Turnbull can stick to his guns and say he won't form an extended coalition with the cross bench seats.

With 27% of those polled saying they haven't decided but they're likely to vote for  minor party, this is anybody's guess as to which way it will swing, let alone prognosticate by how much. Truly, there is no justice when it comes to elections so I'm just going to sit back and watch the carnage unfold. 2013 sucked so much I'm sort of possessed by schadenfreude. Secretly, I wish they all suffer - but they can't because somebody has to win.

Grunwald

I am researching the battle of Grunwald. It's the second last major engagement in the Crusades, and has the dubious distinction of pitting the Teutonic Knights against a coalition of Polish knights, Lithuanian light cavalry and some Tartars. The Poles were presumably Catholic at this point in time, and the Lithuanians were recent converts as well so, it was a kind of all-Catholic slugfest. As Crusade battles go, it is one of the less edifying moments. There is no Saladin or Richard the Lion Heart. Instead the leading characters are decidedly petty and perhaps a little personality disordered.  This is not a grand moment in the history of Crusades; it's more a lingering footnote, a cul de sac in history given that the Teutonic order, Lithuania and Poland all edged back from being big players after this battle.

The Teutonic Knights aren't exactly great protagonists. If anything they have the air of a psychotic cult, hellbent on conquering lands. A sort of an early version of the SS to come. Perhaps the SS even modelled themselves after the naked fanaticism and over-the-top brutality. If Crusade stories are told from the 'christian' side with the blessings of the Pope, then these would be your protagonists. It's kind of strange because the northern reaches of Central Europe don't exactly lend themselves to the Crusade project of taking and obtaining Jerusalem. But I guess heathens are everywhere if you look hard enough. The through the lens of religious fanaticism.

If of course you look at this battle from the point of view of the Poles and Lithuanians, this is the great defence of their motherland from the psycho cult Teutonic Knights. The reason I'm looking into this at all is because the battle of Grunwald represents the high watermark of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Lithuanians see this as their moment in history. They may be right.

The battle of Grunwald took place in 1410. The nuts and bolts of it aside, basically the Poles lured the Teutonic Knights into a battlefield of their choosing. The Lithuanians attacked first with their light cavalry and they were beaten back badly. They eventually regrouped to re-join the fray. By that point the Polish Knights had beaten the Teutonic Knights back to their lines. The Teutonic Knights eventually lost their leader and were routed.

The way the Lithuanians see it, they carried the day with their daring strategy of leaving the battlefield and then coming back. Something they allegedly learned in an earlier war. The way the Poles see it, the Lithuanians turned and fled, only to come back at the end so as not to be complete losers. As you can see , it's hard to draw a completely positive picture of the Lithuanian contribution to the battle. As for the Teutonic Knights, they never really recovered after this loss.

After the battle of Grunwald, there was the battle of Varna in 1444, followed by the fall of Constantinople in 1453. After the fall of Constantinople, the crusaders lost a vital way point on the way tot he Levant. Instead of sending more troops to the Levant, Europe then spent a good deal of time fending off the advancing Turks.
I won't go into the historic irony of the Turks now wanting to join the EU.

Speaking of which...

The Brexit Call We Don't See

I was chatting online with Somebody who voted for 'leave'. He's an educated guy; not necessarily a conservative; and not like some rabid xenophobe. His position was that the Euro project itself was in most part faulty, and therefore doomed to fail. Not only was Brussels faulty as a political organ, the entire Euro project had too many contradictions even before the GFC. Since the GFC, the Euro Zone has been - according to him - patching over the glaring problems, the most problematic of which is Greece and its debt problem. On a plain ledger, if Germany runs a surplus and Greece runs a deficit, Greece has to pay back Germany even though Greece really hasn't the means to do so. If Germany runs a surplus, it effectively constricts growth not just in Germany but also right across the Euro Zone. Yet there is no recourse for Greece or for that matter any other country.

According to him, Germany makes a lot of money exporting stuff it makes at a cheaper price that if they were doing it with Deutsche Marks. Gemran exports are competitive because the Euro currency depresses the price of Germany's exports - This depression of price happens because the entire Euro averages out all the productivity of its member states. Thus Germany clearly benefits from Greece being much less productive. Yet Germany is extra reluctant to share its spoils from this interaction. Why should Greece stick around to be punished by Germany at both ends of the ledger? And if that's the case, what other states are losing out?

He figures the UK is similarly losing out to France and Germany; which is a claim I don't quite get. He argues the Euro project is a house on fire and Brexit is merely the UK getting out of the burning building first. The Scots are crazy for wanting to run back into the burning building. It makes some kind of internal sense. It's not like the handling of Greece made the EU look good or accepting compromise.

View From The Couch - 28/Jun/2016

Election 2016 Goes On

And just like that we're into the final week before we go to vote. After all the weeks of misrepresentative argumentation and assigning prior blame to people that can't be held accountable, after mischaracterising the policies of governments past and the contexts in which they were formed, we're going to head to the polls next Saturday none the wiser and less informed than we need to be. This must be the most confused, stupid, irrational election in a very long time; I can't recall one as irrational and idiotic in my lifetime of voting. We are reaching peak stupid when it comes to the political discourse in this nation.

As such, one would think the incumbents are going to win. Which is a real tragedy that will have a deep impact on our polity for years to come.

Part of the problem is that you really can't trust these people at all. Especially after the 2013 election where by Tony Abbott spectacularly promised not to make cuts to specific things like health and education and then promptly went back on all his promises the moment he got into power. The Liberal Party has not really explained itself why they had to so flagrantly break their election promises, nor have they acquitted themselves particularly well For having done so. Worse still they haven't changed course from Tony Abbott's disastrous direction-setting as Malcolm Turnbull has steadfastly stuck to the same stupid policies.  

The ALP aren't exactly mounting a great challenge.  It's competent - but it's going to need to be a bit more than competent to get that 4.5% uniform swing. The fear is that Bill Shorten is trying to get close but not necessarily to win, and ask the party for another shot after a narrow loss. It's a wonder that they just don't go for the jugular with facts given just how incompetent and awful the incumbents have been.

When you look at the Brexit vote and the rise of Trump in the USA, it appears that the victory of slogan-over-substance delivered by Tony Abbott was in fact an early salvo in the rancorous kinds of elections where radical rhetoric muscles into the middle of the political discourse. The self-defeating protest vote that installed Tony Abbott over the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd ALP government is the very same kind of self-defeating protest vote that delivered Donald Trump as the nominee of the Republicans as well as voted the UK right out of the EU.

The best news about this election is that at the very least we're not about to do something drastic because we've already done that in 2013 and hopefully have the hindsight to know that was crap. But you never know. These candidates are ordinary enough to fuck up even that sad silver lining.

How Bad Is It Really?

Skarp sent me a link from The Economist today, probably to alert me to the fact that Brexit really is alarming - not merely disquieting of disturbing, or perhaps eyebrow-raising. It is the full skid, brown an stinky.

People are trying to put a smiley face on the utterly untenable Brexit situation. By people I mean journalists and politicians and spokespeople for the finance sector. The reality is that the ructions caused by the Brexit vote re already besting the kinds of records set in August 2008 when the US congress decided not to hand over the TARP payments to bail out the banks at the height of the liquidity crisis. For all this talk about scaremongering, one would like to ask just exactly were people expecting when they advocated Brexit?

Here's a quick look at what the British leadership looks like right now:

Sixty hours have gone by since a puffy-eyed David Cameron appeared outside 10 Downing Street and announced his resignation. The pound has tumbled. Investment decisions have been suspended; already firms talk of moving operations overseas. Britain’s EU commissioner has resigned. Sensitive political acts—the Chilcot report’s publication, decisions on a new London airport runway and the renewal of Britain’s nuclear deterrent—are looming. European leaders are shuttling about the continent meeting and discussing what to do next. Those more sympathetic to Britain are looking for signs from London of how they can usefully influence discussions. At home mounting evidence suggests a spike in racist and xenophobic attacks on immigrants. Scotland is heading for another independence referendum. Northern Ireland’s peace settlement may hang by a thread. 

But at the top of British politics, a vacuum yawns wide. The phones are ringing, but no one is picking up. 

Mr Cameron has said nothing since Friday morning. George Osborne, the chancellor of the exchequer, has been silent. (This afternoon I texted several of his advisers to ask whether he would make a statement before the markets open tomorrow. As I write this I have received no replies.) The prime minister’s loyalist allies in Westminster and in the media are largely mute. 

Apart from ashen-faced, mumbled statements from the Vote Leave headquarters on Friday, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove have also ducked the limelight; Mr Johnson is meeting friends and allies today, June 26th, at his house near Oxford in what are believed to be talks about his impending leadership bid. Neither seems to have the foggiest as to what should happen next. Today Mr Gove’s wife committed to Facebook the hope that “clever people” might offer to “lend their advice and expertise.” And Mr Johnson’s sister, Rachel, tweeted: “Everyone keeps saying ‘we are where we are’ but nobody seems to have the slightest clue where that is.”

I thought that alone would fill you with joy. If that's not whacky-disheartening enough, there's a report that a British nuclear sub has made port at Gibraltar to exert pressure on the Spanish not to attack. Like, hullo! Brexit surely doesn't mean the UK goes on war footing with the EU. Who the hell is running the show?

This whole process of Brexit clearly wasn't thought through let alone war-gamed or tested. You know I've been talking to reasonable people explaining to me why they thought the UK should leave the EU and why they voted that way, but truth be known they probably thought about the whole thing a whole lot more than the idiotic advocates Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. It's rapidly becoming clear these idiots have no plan (never even saw the point of one), and as such Britain is more rudderless and adrift rather than proudly sailing forth out of the EU.

The people who have been explaining to me the rationale for voting Brexit are actually rationalising a bad decision with great skill and imagination. It's crap. It's the full load of shit that's hit the biggest fan in the world and the shit is flying all over the planet as we speak.
As politics goes, this is a well-thrusted custard.
Bravo Stupid.

The Dinosaurs Scream At The Incoming Asteroid...

Michael Moore had an interview with Owen Jones in the lead up to the Brexit vote in which he likened the British desire to leave the Eu as being like a Premier League football club wanting to leave the Premier League, relegating itself out. In the same interview he likened the people voting for a Brexit to the sorts of people voting for Donald Trump and said that most of the time the demagogues represented the dying wails of the reign of the straight white man. That it was like dinosaurs screaming at the Incoming asteroid, "build a wall!"

The fact is that the demographic change is happening and with it will come a new generation of thinkers, writers, and most importantly voters. They will think and enact things that this current set of status quo politicians cannot imagine let alone enact. And if you fear the future, you just might put your foot down and scream with Michael Moore's dinosaurs, "build a wall!"

That got me to thinking about the demographic divide on many issues which, in usual discussion starts off with the difference on things like gay marriage, but more importantly cover things like education and health. The segment of people voting for the likes of Bernie Sanders are young. The segment of population in Australia that supports gay marriage is young.

These issues might be contested heavily in the future if they were divided along ideological lines but It turns out they are not. That means these issues will inevitably go the way the young people want it in the future. The urge to leave the EU because one is a Euro-sceptic and make  as the urge to vote for Trump who promises to make "America Great Again" (which has been lampooned as "make America White Again"), and even to the extent that Australians can be persuaded that locking up asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru is a good idea. In the not too distant future when there are more of the young than the old again, it will flip.

In the mean time the current regime of dinosaurs will try and stack things in their favour as much as possible, trying to build barricades - heck, build walls. These are all rearguard actions of an older mindset. There are still enough dinosaurs fighting the rearguard action, staving off the future in, say, the DNC as there are in-reconstructed racists and crackpots on the right who pushed Trump into the limelight. Equally they are in the Tories in the UK and LNP here in Australia. The LNP are so anti-progressive they are determined to be absolutely regressive - but they just can't get the youth vote doing that.

To that extent I am more optimistic than pessimistic About the future. It's a real shame Bernie Sanders won't get up this year as the Democratic Nominee, for instance - but something is going to come from the enormous movement he has built. Something like climate change denial is a sport for the intellectually dishonest, but the phenomenon itself is advancing inexorably. At some point in the future, the young voters of today will have the numbers to get their politicians in who will not only institute proper policies but maybe even find the means to reverse decades of carbon emissions.

I have to admit, I am secretly hoping this is the election where it changes over and the Australian dinosaurs are consigned to history.

Speaking Of The Great Wall Of Trump...

I had the funny insight given to me this month:
The Chinese built their Great Wall to keep the barbarians out. But they sure didn't try to charge the cost of building that wall onto the barbarians.

Even More Reflections On Brexit

Day 3 After Brexit

It's certainly strange that I have so much to write about the Brexit referendum vote even three days after the event. Part of the difficulty in getting my head around it has been just how unexpected the outcome was, given the advantages EU membership conferred upon the UK.

Extraordinary also is the immense buyer's remorse being expressed by those who voted 'Leave' as a protest vote, only to find out they won. This dovetails with the strange report where Google searches for the EU went up after the vote closed, as people sought to find out what they have left. In other news related, Cornwall has sought confirmation that indeed the money they used to get from the EU would be replaced by the British government. This would be a fair cop if you had voted to stay and then against your wish been made to leave. What's particularly rich about this one is that Cornwall overwhelmingly voted to leave.

Northern Ireland is one of those issues that could turn into a disaster. The Good Friday Agreement that brought an end to long hostilities was underpinned by the EU laws and agreements whereby one side got just enough to be Ireland and the other side got be just enough to still be the UK, but there would have to be no border because they were all in the EU. That's now gone. It could very well slip-slide back into the chaos that was the Troubles with checkpoints guns and the lot (would you like some fries with your bombs?).  The horrors long thought to have been left behind in history just might come back - all thanks to this vote.

Nicola Sturgeon has already signalled a second referendum to keep Scotland in the EU which means secession from the UK. It's funny how the last Scotish referendum was argued as a session from the UK, and defeated because of the possibility of being kicked out of the EU. The Flow of ironies never cease.  This may all go to show how referenda in general are  more destructive to the polity than previously thought.

And so the news trickles in.
There was an observation made that Boris Johnson and Michael Gove didn't exactly look too excited by the outcome - more surprised and perhaps like deer in the headlights as history comes charging towards them. After all the unbelievable scuttlebutt is that Johnson might be the successor to Cameron. And Johnson being Johnson he would be aware of how difficult and mountainous the tags would be to actually managed the messy divorce with the EU, and that he would be charged with all the social costs. He would be stepping in to captain the Titanic having steered it in to the iceberg, having assured everybody on board that the iceberg represented no threat, and that the Titanic was unsinkable.
Maybe.

I'm not there; I'm not a citizen; and I sure don't have the vote in the matter, but had I been asked I would have offered remain was a better option. I've been searching my own feelings on this as it has been so unexpected that the Leave vote would win. The more I turn over the morsels of information I can find, the more I'm inclined to think the case for leaving was not made, and perhaps overstated its alleged advantages. Some people might even describe it as being built on outright lies. Let's face it, Nigel Farage was quick to rescind the £350m he was supposedly going to hand the NHS.

Farage might think he is steering the country into his vision of the future, but it's really a nostalgia trip. That being the case, the ultimate bit of the nostalgia trip might object to losing a chunk of her wealth and her realm...

Her Majesty's Role To Play

One thing I had not thought about is what the hell Her Majesty thinks of all this. Yes, as a constitutional monarch, she doesn't get a say in it, but let's face it - she is the Queen. Will she sit idly by and rubber stamp the referendum result into law? It's hypothetical but what if Her Majesty simply does not approve of the measures and refuses to sign off?  This is actually a curious question from a historic point of view.

The Brexit vote has the likely outcome of splitting apart the United Kingdom. And as per speculation during the Scotland referendum last time, Her Majesty would remain constitutional monarch to these countries, some of which will want to stay in the EU, and England which has opted out. The question then is does Her Majesty want to be the Monarch who presided over the breaking up of the United Kingdom? And if not, just how far would she be willing to go to stop it?

Writing as an Australian, I am reflecting on the rather vast 'reserve powers' of the Crown that removed Gough Whitlam as Prime Minister - and while nobody can quite claim Her Majesty had an active role in it (we know she was a sounding board as was Prince Charles), her crown certainly had the authority to make that political action stick. So what happens if the next Prime Minister puts through the bill to ratify the referendum and turns up at Buckingham Palace to have it signed off and the Queen refuses to sign? Or she actively vetoes the bill using her reserve powers? It would be utterly in-democratic, but it would preserve the status quo.

It might be inconceivable but again, from an Australian point of view, this is not a stretch. She likely has the power and authority to (pardon the pun) scotch this whole deal. If she null-and-voids the referendum result, thus keeping the UK in the EU, it would take the sharp edge off Scotland's desire to leave and solve the problem of Northern Ireland and the eventual break up of the realm. It would be a move that would hark back to Charles I or King John with its unilateral authoritarianism, but if Queen Elizabeth II wants to preserve the realm, the she might just have to bring out the bazooka. It may even start a civil war - after all, that was what happened with King John and Charles I - but the Queen as an institution is not the Queen for nothing.

It's hard to say if there is such resolve in a 90year old monarch in the Twentyfirst Century. Her reign has been successful exactly because her thoughts on politics are opaque. We simply do not know what she makes of all this business. I'm not much of a Royal-Watcher. I don't really care about the Royal family at all except as a curious historic artefact, but I do wonder what their household has been like in the last 72hours. I'm sure they would be cussing the name of David Cameron that brought about these terrible circumstances, and then turning to advice on just how much power they still have to stop this thing. Just remember, if her authority can dislodge a Prime Minister in the Commonwealth, it sure can whack some bill that emerges from popular referendum.

Let's just say, if I were a Conservative MP that didn't want Brexit to happen, you may well think that I would be talking to the Palace about such options, "but I couldn't possibly say". The ultimate 1%-er is Her Majesty the Queen, Elizabeth II. In turn, if Boris Johnson is indeed the next Prime Minister, and he really wants this Brexit as advertised, he might well need to have the resolve of Oliver Cromwell rather than the nationalist Ra-Ra of Winston Churchill. We'll certainly see.

More Thoughts On The Brexit Vote

David Cameron Opened The Door For The Far Right

It's been a couple of days since Brexit happened and I'm still trying to digest it's meaning. Some people are blaming ignorance and fear but I don't believe that covers the surge of votes that took it to the majority. Issues like the NHS have been raised but by the same token UKIP leader Nigel Farage was quick to backpedal from his £350m pledge towards shoring up the NHS.

The Tories really can't claim the vote a victory because it cost them their leader and Prime Minister. Indeed, in the tussle between rightists, the culturally inclined rightists seem to have beat out the economically minded rightists. David Cameron should go down as the worst Prime Minister in British history since Neville Chamberlain when he came home waving a piece of paper with Adolf Hitler's name on it.

And there it is, the rather uncomfortable reminder of the time the far right got centre stage in politics. Adolf Hitler of course snuck into the Weimar Republic government by dressing up his politics as a kind of conservatism - just enough to get Hindemburg to make him a partner in government. I know some of you will jump up and down and say "Ah! Godwin's Law. You brought up Nazis so this blog entry is without merit!" - but that is the very problem: The Far Right have clenched a legitimacy they need out to have been given, and they got it through David Cameron essentially kicking an own goal.

Is Farage Hitler? No. Maybe I should say No, not yet. Yet the stench of fascism and intolerance reeks in the outcome of the referendum, so much so you have to pinch your nose and pretend it is not there just to talk about the outcome in economic terms. My own view is, if it smells like shit, it probably is shit - no need to go tasting it. David Cameron is going to go down as the Prime Minister who let the Far Right into the middle of government, out of his own sheer desperation to stay in power. It's not a good thing.

Everybody Struggles For Relevance, Some More Than Others

The British Labour Party are obviously feeling like the referendum was a loss.   The worse aspect of this might be just how irrelevant they've become in Thatcherite England. Consider for a moment just how much of a sell-out Tony Blair's government was for a leftist concern. Add in the years of Thatcher herself and John Major, as well as David Cameron's stint, and you get the picture of the UK essentially living out the Neo-liberal economic programme for over a generation - 37 years if you count back to Thatcher's first win.

It's been a long time since the Labour Party sounded like the Labour Party.  Of course it doesn't hide the fact that they are very short on experience. The left utterly failed to shore up its base because the truth is that Blair-ite Labour sold those people down the river in order to win a government resembling the Tories. There's a credibility gap in going back to the very same demographic and asking them to support even more of the globalisation and free trade that has decimated those communities.

Arguably, there's a lesson right there for the left in Australia. The Rudd-Ian move to the social right carried within it the seeds of future disconnect with the ALP base.  There's a limit to what kind of political solutions can be achieved if you meet the Tories half way. Especially if the Tories insist on going far out to the right. This problem is also present in the current US elections where the Clinotnian compromises of the 1990s are not sufficient for the Democrat base because they amounted to selling out the base. The base is angry enough it would like to vote Sanders, but is willing to withdraw its support for Clinton, even in the face of Donald Trump. It is a pattern repeating around the world, whether it be the rise of both Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece, or Podemos in Spain.

It's unclear whether the ALP under Bill Shorten can reconnect with its base. Certainly the Rudd-Gillard ALP government made a hash of it, and justifiably earned the scorned it received. The lesson in all of this is that the left struggles for relevance the more it has sold out its base in the last 40years. The credibility gap is simply too big.

What's Wrong With The Euro Zone?

In all of this I decided I'd have a quick think for myself what bothers me about the Euro Zone as it is constructed. The obvious problem is how the GFC revealed the structural problem of how the Euro currency itself is set up, and particularly how it pertains to Greece. Greece is in dire straits because it has large debts, but also because it cannot devalue its currency to balance out its relative weakness of its economy in comparison to the economy of Germany and France.

While this problem was not a problem for the UK who insisted on keeping the pound in the 90s, the fact that the Euro Zone as a whole is pushing globalisation in a way that would beggar the poorer economies is a problem. It's interesting to see if Scotland really think their welfare state would fare any better under Germany's auspices than George Osbourne. Judging from the way Greece has been handled, the last thing you might want to have is Germans in charge of your welfare state.

In general, the Euro Zone has demonstrated that some states are more equal than others. Young Greeks would do well to abandon Greece and head for Paris, Berlin and London for opportunities. Yet this reveals a structure whereby the UK contributes to the Euro but cannot directly assist Greece, all the while having to take on board economic migrants that are created largely out of the austerity that Germany insists upon. And while Germany's insistence on Greek austerity has varying degrees of legitimacy attached to it, one would think such claims would not be accepted in many parts of England suffering under the Cameron-Osbourne austerity policies of its own.

If you add in the fact that Eastern European nations have entered the Euro  exporting massive deflationary forces with their cheap labour, and with Turkey under Erdogan wanting to join, it's very much a good question as to whether it is a club within which the UK would want to stay. If that seems 'xenophobic' to some, it ought to be asked who benefits more from 'xenophilia' and blind acceptance of this cheap labour that is destroying labour value in the UK. Why should the working class continue to cop to the waves of globalisation that seemingly does not care about regional UK? It's simply not as clear cut as saying the rejection of the European Union is ergo xenophobia.

Imagine if you will, that there was a Pacific equivalent of the EU, but without the US. It might look like Australia, NZ, Canada, with the North Eastern Asian countries Japan, Taiwan South Korea. Add in the ASEAN nations, and you would have a pretty big trade bloc. The problem is labour prices across this region would be depressed because labour is very inexpensive in ASEAN. If there is free movement of people in this bloc, it's hard not to imagine there would be a flood of people heading for Sydney, Tokyo, Taipei, Vancouver, Auckland.  And if that cheap labour was depressing the wages of people in Australia, Japan, Taiwan, Canada and New Zealand, it wouldn't be very difficult to imagine a movement built upon getting out of such an arrangement.

The fact that there isn't such a bloc tells you a lot already, but it would have to be extremely obtuse to pretend the European Union which mainly featured France, Germany, Holland Denmark Spain and Italy at its start, is a very different proposition today when it also includes much of the old Eastern bloc, Greece and soon Turkey.

The Future The Young Did Not Want

Something like 70% and more of the younger voters voted to remain. It is the kind of number that reminds us of the support for Bernie Sanders among the younger voters. And just as Sanders didn't get their candidate, the younger voters of the U.K. Got the outcome they didn't want but have to live with, for much longer than older voters.

It is a stark demographic picture where Gen-X and Gen-Y combined could not beat the Baby Boomers and older generations. It's hard to tell what the fallout from this aspect of the referendum will be. One thing I can say is that we're not shooting each other in the streets in some civil war, because that's where the Spanish ended up in the years during the Great Depression. With any luck we won't be glomming into a World War.

Whatever else that can be said about it, on a demographic level, the Brexit vote is not a step towards the future, it's a blind shuffle back towards an imagined past that is not there. It's doubtful it existed and it's doubtful it will come to be as Nigel Farage seems to think. Now that David Cameron has had to resign, there will likely be an election in the UK by the end of the year. One wonders how the next vote will work out for the Tories. I can't imagine this is going to be good.

The World Of The Elite Consensus Is Ending

It's been pointed out elsewhere that the 1% who have all the money and power see borders very differently to ordinary people. The 1% move freely across borders with their capital. Compared to that, people who hang their hats on the sad identity politic of nationalism seem very quaint. This might be because in the past the 1% had their wars where they sent the people to fight and bleed for them on the basis that borders were important. It strikes me that it is somewhat silly of the elites to then be confronted by a popular vote - a revolt even - where they vote is ostensibly in favour of borders.

The promises of Free Trade are quite enticing. The problem however is that in many parts of the developed world, it means that in exchange for cheaper products, you lose your jobs to people in poorer countries. And the Elites, the 1%, the Tories and the big end of town dress up this exchange as a matter of productivity and competitiveness, but in reality it is an exchange the Elites have made, to sell down the future of their own people back home.

If the problem of the idiotic, uneducated, atavistic identity politics of such movements headlined by Farage and Boris Johnson and Donald Trump (and we should add Pauline Hanson to this pile) seems pernicious, it may very well be because the 1% have overly downplayed the importance of borders and identity, having sold it to the very same people as something of inherent value. What the Brexit vote shows is that the people won't be railroaded forever. If the benefits of "hands-across-the-waters" friendship is that everybody's living standards go down to a lower level, a lower common denominator, then you can't fault the people who say "bugger that, I'm keeping what's mine."
It's not quite as idiotic as it looks.

More tellingly, the Brexit vote reveals the middle is broken in British politics. If enough of the people in the middle are willing to throw their lot in with the likes of Farage, if enough of the working people who would have traditionally been Labour Party supporters vote with Boris Johnson, then whatever consensus that might have been in place may as well be pronounced dead. Of course in Australia, we've seen the broken middle consensus with the election of Tony Abbott in 2013, so it's not as if we don't know what this looks like. It's going to be a Carnivale of bad political judgment until such time the public gets another vote. Fortunately for us, Australia goes to the polls next weekend. Let us hope we can restore a sense of consensus by voting out this truly moronic Coalition Government.

Holy Smokes It's A Brexit

More Surprising Than The GFC Itself

What do you make of this result? If a month ago the notion of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union seemed like a non-issue, it all of a sudden heated up today as the polls closed an lo and behold the UK had voted to exit the EU. It's a staggering result that flies in the face oft only the rhetoric or accepted wisdom or common sense. Nigel Farage went from being a joke and a potential footnote in history to being the face of the man who rallied petty nationalism and jingoism to reverse the historic decision for the UK to join the EC in the first place.

Pollsters are looking really bad out of all this. Not only did they screw up the last election, they totally misread the public mood for this referendum. Also looking bad is David Cameron who called on the referendum and pitched for the 'remain' camp. In fact the majority of the British Parliament would support remaining in the EU so it will be curious to see how that respond to the outcome.

The vote result has caused chaos across global markets including the ASX where $50billion was wiped off the bourse today. That's like a regular day during the GFC for losses but still, you get the feeling that people are taking money out of markets just to feel like they're doing something. Also in the news today was the collapse of the Pound Sterling which has sunk to levels not seen since 1985.

All that being said, I did get a more nuanced whiff of just what was ailing the common voter in England, who were keen to tell me on Facebook just how much the rule of Brussels rankled with them, as well as just how much of a strain Europeans were putting on the NHS. If the British were going to protect the NHS, they had to - they argued - quit on the EU. There were other issues as well, such as just who these people in Brussels were to be making such sweeping laws ("un-eleced filth!") that supersede national sovereign laws of a land, and how such laws were handing over fishing right in waters around the UK to landlocked countries like Hungary.

Really, it wasn't really to do with the xenophobic impulses as claimed by the campaigners to remain. It had a lot more to do with the fact that Westminster had been relegated to rubber-stamping laws created in Brussels, and that those laws were not working at all in the British context. Europe will rightly be smarting from this result. The ramifications are multiple and here are a few that I can think of just off the top of my head:

• Scotland will want to have a do-over of their secession referendum. Scotland wants to remain in the EU. 
• Presumably Norther Ireland wants to stay in the EU. Otherwise it has to organise borders with Ireland. If Scotland and Northern Ireland split, the Brexit would have brought about the end of the Unite Kingdom. Not sure how the Queen deals with this as she's still Queen unto the Scots but it brings those old hoary questions back into the limelight. 
• Can the City of London stay the financial hub of Europe when it no longer is in Europe and will presumably have trade barriers with Europe? Will the British economy recede from its current model of being built around finance, insurance and real estate banking? 
• Grexit is firmly back on the agenda. If the UK can exit the EU, then Greece will see that they can force the issue to get out. This would be sensible except... here come another round of Grexit-Fear market gyrations
• What trade deals now and how? When the UK is out, what kind of barriers to trade will there be with Europe? One imagines these will be high, just to punish the UK for leaving. In fact Brexit means the UK has opted to go with less leverage when it needs to negotiate more.
• David Cameron must be done as Prime Minister. I can't imagine he survives the week now that he's spent his political capital and it all went up in flames. Could the next PM be *gasp* Boris Johnson? What kind of world are we living in when ugly populists like the Johnsons and Farages of the world win and ... heck why not mention it, Donald Trump is a nominee to be a presidential candidate for the Republicans?

Apart from the bit where David Cameron loses his job, a lot of that is actually quite difficult to digest. In any case, it's an historic day indeed.

It's kind of funny to reflect back on the moment the UK joined the EEC way back in 1972. France made it conditional that the UK ditch its favourable trade arrangements with her former colonies, and so Australia and New Zealand were - for a better word - 'dumped' by the Mother Country. Australia's modern identity really emerges from that historic moment when the Mother Country jumped into a bed with the French and the Germans and abandoned her children to make their own way in the world. The massive shift towards Australia's engagement with Asia which started in the mid-70s directly follows on from that rather uneasy historic moment. For the most part Australia has done okay out of that change. It forced the country to grow up quite a bit, become more cosmopolitan and less parochial, and maybe even a little more sophisticated in its dealings with the old dart.

That being said, should the UK start renegotiating all its trade deals and come knocking in Australia, and should there be an ALP government around, the UK would best be reminded of this history, and perhaps even be asked whether they would like to revisit 'Terra Nullius' in their Parliament - perhaps even offer an apology to the indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand. There's a lot of unfinished business to be discussed.

UPDATE: "And he's gone! David Cameron, gone for a duck...as he trudges away from the crease. Took a big swiping shot and skied the ball. Not a very good captain's knock..."

'Eye In The Sky'

Ethical Guilt

My good friend GS from my AFTRS days got tickets to see a screening of 'Eye in the Sky'. It came via the Ethics Centre, which is an interesting body that advises the ADF and their personnel ("except the Special Forces", they said cheerily). Naturally it's a movie that covers the ground of the ethics of drone strikes.

Yes, I know, it's a contentious topic and my own views are probably totally counter to those people who want ethics front and centre of military operations. Still, it is an interesting area for the sake of arguing things and pointing at the culpable like it is a game going out of fashion, so the film does intrigue us greatly.

Here is the obligatory spoiler alert.



What's Good About It

It's a pretty simply film and the style doesn't stretch to anything we might call artistic. Stylistically, it is a very meat-and-potatoes sort of film making. It's a little bit like directing by numbers - and believe me, that's not necessarily the good bit, but the unadorned style allowed the story to be told simply. That is good because the topic has layers of complexity that needs explaining and the film does a fairly good job of going through those angles.

The performances are a bit cheesy, but in most part it sort of looks like an ensemble cast. In reality none of the big names have a chance to interact in the same space, so there is an even more disjointed quality to the scenes being cut together. The best that could be said about it is that it sort of hangs together.

What's Bad About It

It's a very hamfisted sort of script. The third or fourth time a minister or a department secretary seeks a higher authority to okay a drone strike, you find yourself losing patience with the due process and due diligence in striking with a drone. It's not exactly a thriller as the film is billed. It's more like an ethics workshop for military and government people.

Also, the headline cast are a bit unbelievable. Helen Mirren - as good as she is - is way too old to be playing a colonel. Alan Rickman sort of resorts to his schtick at several points, and Aaron Paul reprises his teary-eyed acting we're so familiar from 'Breaking Bad'. Because we're overly familiar with these actors, it's hard to see the characters for the actors playing them. It happens with a lot of films anyway, but it's worse in this film because these actors are confined to their spaces for most of the film. It really becomes noticeable that you're watching a very stagey sort of thing instead a work of cinema.

It comes in second best to Season 4 of 'Homeland' which tackles exactly this kind of problem, but they have more time to go into the ins and outs of why they might try a drone strike, and how it is contextualised into the rest of the war on terror. This film really only wants to talk about drone strikes, in the absence of anything else or any other options or parameters for prosecuting a war.

What's Interesting About It

The drone strike issue has been percolating for some time. The most vociferous argument against it is that the collateral damage these strikes creates andengenders the next wave of terror that needs to be fought, so it is uneconomical as well as unethical. The film posits the classical "what about the little girl" argument front and centre to the story so there is no mistaking the filmmakers were champion at the bit to argue something about the ethics of drone strikes. At the end of the film, you're not sure if they've really made a case in favour of them or not. Maybe it's very British, it's quite noncommittal about its subject matter even though the drone strike does happen.

The film would have us believe there are a lot of procedural things they go through to authorise a strike and so many boxes need to be ticked before they can launch a drone strike. It spends a good deal of time going back and forth between different levels of the bureaucracy as well as the elected officials and military hierarchy. In the case presented by the film, it boils down to a fairly utilitarian argument of if it is ever okay to kill a little girl in order to save a hypothetical 80 or 100 other people.

A good deal of hyperventilating argumentation is made about the nature of the utility of striking the target as part of the strategy against terrorism as well as the simply numerical comparison of potential victims. What the film understates is that by the time you have to decide on whether a drone strike is appropriate, you've had to discard all other options to get to that point of consternation.

Consider this chain of possibilities. If you could simply arrest a British citizen, you'd send the police. If they were leaving, you can use customs to stop them. If they are holed up with guns, you'd still send a SWAT team rather than a drone strike. If they were in a foreign country, you might lean on that country to do the arresting. And if they have access to guns to shoot back, you might have to send in the local military. It's really when the high value targets are in one place that is inaccessible to friendly ground forces that a drone strike becomes a necessity.

Avoiding Collateral Damage

Collateral Damage is a recent term. They didn't exactly worry about collateral damage too much in the Vietnam War and not a whole lot of wars were fought by Americans in the 80s except an expedition to Granada and Panama. It was during the Gulf War that the term came into public consciousness as people started to worry about the effects of carpet bombing whole cities.

Yes, carpet bombing was a big feature of American military operations during the Twentieth Century. By 1990, public opinion had shifted greatly towards the innocent civilians who were killed or injured in war, that levelling cities with carpet bombing became less desirable. And so it is on this extension line where the Americans began championing and exhibiting the accuracy of smart bombs. As technology developed, they devised unmanned aviation with smart bombs, controlled remotely, and this is your basic recipe for a drone strike.

The cutting edge of military technology exercised by the greatest state on the planet (at least for military strikes) is capable of dropping a bomb on any part of the planet through remote means. This is an extraordinary capacity. It totally leaves behind the kind of indiscriminate tactic of carpet bombings. It reduces the collateral damage and casualty of bystanders from the order of hundreds thousands to ten or twenty. Yet the film is somehow really worried about the casualty of one.

It's alarming, actually, that the political office holders in the film prevaricate the most. They claim it would hand a propaganda victory to the terrorists if the little girl is killed. One after the other they exhibit a lack of resolve and failure to understand just how they got to where they are. The hypocrisy on display is quite unnerving. One would think that people who climb to high offie would understand that things that come into their purview would be military operations, and military operations would involve death and destruction and collateral damage.

The issue shouldn't be do we not proceed because there is an innocent bystander, but should we really be exercising war machines that make responsibility more vague than what is on a battlefield. It appears, the higher up the chain of command one goes, the lower the intellectual courage to tangle with the meaning of military options becomes. In this film's context, the bravest people are not the ones giving orders but those who carry out the orders entrusting the system to protect them from liability. It's a little like a game of bureaucratic chicken more than a thriller.

The Commitment To Hypocrisy

This then might be the worst aspect of western governments that the film captures. The constant need to be seen to be doing the right thing in the right way outweighs the objectives as defined by the same people. The moral and ethical dilemma presented in the film isn't a product of a difficult choice foisted upon the leadership by the enemy. It is all a result of their own choosing.

When people say asymmetric warfare, they often talk about the terrorists working in dastardly terrorist ways as opposed to proper state militaries that are bound by things like the Geneva Convention and protocols like rules of engagement. What it overlooks is that the people most bound by the Geneva Convention and protocols for rules of engagement are those states with the greatest capacity for military destruction.

It's a bit like the terrorists are marathon runners in a race, front running the race. The Western governments enter the race, but they want to do it in a Formula One car. The self-imposed condition is that they have to start last at the end of the running group, and have to pass all the runners without running anybody over or breaking the speed limit. If you are the front runner, the Formula One car coming up from behind you is a joke. Even with the self-imposed rules that limit it to certain actions and a gross under-utilisation of its true capacity, the competition is asymmetric in the extreme. There is nothing admirable about the self-imposed conditions of the West to the other runners. They're strictly there to make it look a little more like a fair race when it is eminently not. Yet this is the kind of conditional hypocrisy we enjoy so much in the West. And that's where the central drama of this film lies.

The logical, and utilitarian argument for processes is built into the drone strike option. That is to say, the Mr. Spock credo of "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is built into the entire edifice that allows the drones to operate. We have military organisations and military treaties and coalitions to ensure collective security of most citizens; we have a trained force that can apply state sanctioned violence to this end; we have weapons that an do great damage, but opt to build weapons systems with ever greater accuracy to ensure ever smaller collateral damage; we have unmanned vehicles to limit the damage to our personnel; we have intelligence systems to pinpoint targets as accurately as possible. All along the way, the utilitarian argument has been made and put into use to build the steps that leads to a drone in the sky with a guided missile ready to hit its target. We simply don't get there without a long chain of utilitarian decisions.

To then argue that perhaps utilitarianism isn't the right way to go about things is not only infuriating to watch on screen, it strains credulity. Is it that the writers and directors and producers of this film are somehow ignorant and stupid, or is it an accurate reflection of our political classes, in which case we must ask if we are governed by ignorant idiots? It's vexing and perplexing. Nonetheless it is made worse by the continuous commitment to hypocrisy as the highest calling in western politics.
It's really not thrilling. It's excruciatingly tedious.