Twittering

I’m usually one for using new technologies, but here’s one I simply cannot see the point of, or even like, it is twitter. It’s just too shor

What Right?

Here is the background to the story in news-article form. Alternatively:

If you don’t want to read the link, what happened is that back in November, someone leaked a list of personal details of members of the British National Party (BNP). The fallout from this action was a little more muted than some expected, at the time there was great concern about vigilante action against people who were perceived as being racist.

The actual consequences of this leak have been far more subtle, but no less worrying. The primary cause for concern is the growing acceptance of the concept of companies and organizations to ’screen’ their workforces of particular political views and allegiances. For years the Civil Service has barred BNP members from working within its ranks, (and by implication, barring its employees from joining said party). Similarly, the police have had similar blocks in place for a long time also, as can be seen from the story above.

The issue I wish to take up here is not the moral standing of the British National Party. In fact, the presence of the BNP in this debate is almost an obscuring one, since my point is independent of any individual politicla parties, but focusses on a wider concept:
Is it Legal or Right for a person’s political views to render them a target for discriminatory treatment?

I would be the first to admit that there are some circumstances under which it is sensible to ensure the operational neutrality of an employee, a fine example would be the returning officer at general and local elections, who is usually a high ranking local civil servant. Another examples of necessary operational neutrality can be found in the top ranks of the civil service (such as Cabinet Secretary) and throughout the military.

Operational neutrality however, need not necessarily mean that the person in question is not permitted to hold views, or even to express them in his or her private life. It simply means that these views must not be allowed to interfere with their day to day duties in which neutrality is assumed. I have yet to meet a person who is truly ‘view neutral’ rather than ‘operationally neutral’, and I am unconvinced that it could even be possible for a person to be entirely neutral in their personal views.

So why the obsession with preventing a particular viewpoint from being represented in our institutions and employment market? Would the civil service ban socialists on the grounds that they might try and ‘redistribute’ some wealth? Should the police ban those with morally conservative views in case they arrest people for being out too late? It is my feeling (and hope) that any such attempt would provoke utter outrage on the part of the general population.
It is instead assumed that people who hold such views are capable of reigning them in and keeping them in check when the moment to do so arises.
By implication then, the measures to bar some views but not others have an unstated, underlying assumption: that those who hold such views are not capable of such restraint, and that the contamination and of the impartiality of their work is therefore inevitable.

This is a very slippery slope, dangerous for the same reason that blaming society for an individual’s actions and crimes is dangerous: it removes a portion of the attributes of humanity from the subject in question.
Stating that a member of a party, however undesirable that party’s views may be, is incapable of putting those views aside for the sake of integrity is just as demeaning as the removal of personal responsibility implicit when pundits say of a criminal “society made him that way, it’s the system’s fault.” In each case, the individual is still in command, and still charged with the responsibility to make the right decision at each given moment as opposed to the wrong one.

The next fundamental reason to be concerned by this attitude of permitting political screening is that it sets a terrible precident.
If one day, one party is considered ‘ban-worthy’, it does beg the question of who is next? whilst I personally disagree on almost every level with the BNP, I am also aware that many people view the conservatives as “evil”, which would render a large portion of the population targets for vitriol and discrimination.

One principle in which I fundamentally believe in is the notion that I can, may and often will disagree vehemently with what someone else believes, but will defend to the hilt their right to believe it. Tragically I fear that this is greatly out of step with our current political times, where a small army of PC think-tank & pressure groups, along with a socialistic media believe in the doctrine of silencing opposing views rather than defending the very liberty of the right to hold a view. It is with great irony that, as much as I disagree with this ideology, I am willing to defend its right to exist.

One thing is for certain here: as long as opponents of each side continue to use emotive arguments and counter arguments in such settings, a true debate will not emerge. It is very difficult to establish which side is ‘right’, when all that can be heard across the battlefield is an ad-hominem bedlam, where each side is unwilling to counter the argument of the other with anything more convincing than”Racist!” or “Bigot!”.

Snapshot: US Presidential Elections 2008

Just to grab a snapshot of what people think about the race in its closing days… I feel that two questions are in order.

Who do you want to win?
Who do you think will win?

Answers in the comment section please. Another post will be added soon discussing the results.

Black Times on the Black Sea

As the conflict crisis between Russia and Georgia nears what could potentially be a form of (at least temporary) conclusion, There is a large question that has yet to be answered: What was this actually all about?
What was each side hoping to gain from a conflict of this nature?

It would seemingly be folly, and common sense revolts the idea, that the Georgian government is single handedly the aggressor as Russia is attempting to portray. For any nation of Georgia’s size to fight the Russian armed forces in a conventional war is at best inadvisable, at worst, suicide. Georgia knows this. A brief comparison of the relative sizes and state of advancement of the forces in question demonstrates this point. Georgia has 37,000 Full time service personnel plus 100,000 reservists. Russia, by comparison has 1,037,000. In terms of technology, the differences in armour and air power speak for themselves. Georgia’s tank force is entirely composed of T-72’s, a relatively outdated soviet tank. By contrast, Russia has more than ten times the number of tanks than are available to Georgia, and the tanks are much more modern, largely T-90’s. Prior to the conflict, the Georgian air force had seventeen Sukhoi Su-25 Aircraft. Capable fighters, but ageing airframes which were originally designed for a CAS [close air support] role. By contrast Russia has very large numbers (In excess of 1,000) of much more advanced fighter-bombers available, notably the Sukhoi Su-37, Mig-29 and others. (The Su-47 has yet to be developed from the demonstrator stage into widespread deployment).

This establishes that no Georgian commander or president in any state of sanity would order a direct first-strike attack on Russian forces. So why the conflict?
Between money, sex and power, there are few greater motivators for conflict. Some perhaps suggest that at root-cause, these are the only real motivators. I suggest that the latest Georgian conflict is an example of the latter.

It is no secret that NATO is expanding eastwards, country by country, border by border. The alliance can no longer be truly termed the ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’ but more of a fan club of what was the original NATO. It is even less of a secret that Russia is none too keen on this expansion. Georgia has for some time being sounding out the possiblity of joining NATO. It would appear that the latest Russian offensive is not designed to protect Russian citizens in South Ossetia. These people were given free Russian passports to provide Russia with that reason if it ever needed to fall back on it. The reason for this intervention is not to punish Georgia for attempting to leave Russia’s sphere of influence. As the Ukranian gas crisis demonstrated, Russia’s primary sanctions with regard to punishment is economic. The reasoning behind this latest activity is that it will act as a barrier, an obstacle, for possibly over a decade to come. It will block Georgia’s entry to NATO, instead of merely discouraging it. By completely destabilising the region, Russia has ensured that the regional troubles are not merely a matter of conern for NATO, but would require NATO to militarily take Georgia’s side. Russia knows that NATO is not willing to go to war against it, and so will not allow Georgia into the club.

The latest conflict is not about protection of citizens, or about a province. Russia could not care less about these. Russia’s intentions are clear: To set up a long term prevention to Georgia entering NATO, and to maintain its crubling sphere of influence in the world. It is the final lashing out of a humiliated nation, as it tries to regain its lost status as a world superpower.

World War II: Victors, Losers and Reasons

Those who know me will tell that I am very much an academic dabbler, I rarely stay within one subject. A consequence of this is that I frequently find myself having rather abstract and or unexpceted converstaions. In one of these recently, I was asked by my interlocutor about my views on the reasons for the Allied victory in World War II.

The only logical conclusion I could sensibly arrive at was that the outcome of the war was indeed a joint effort. However, not in the common sense of the phrase.
Permit me to explain: The most commonly held view is that the victory was earned by large-scale cooperation between allied powers. My conclusion was that, in the European theatre at least, the outcome was the result of an unwitting and unforseen joint effort between The Allies and Axis forces.

It is very true to say that the Alliances (on both sides) of WWII produced international cooperation the likes of which had never been known. The relationship that Britain and America forged during those four years of US involvement paved the way for what is probably still the strongest international friendship on earth. Many people have argued, with varying degrees of success, that the war would have been lost without US involvement. I don’t believe that, after winning the “Battle of Britain” struggle for channel air superiority, and breaking the German Naval Enigma cipher, Britain was in a very good position to be able to ‘hold out’ almost indefinitely against a Nazi Europe. What Britain could not do was liberate occupied Europe from Nazi control. Thus I can conclude that American intervention was a necessary component in actively winning the war, as opposed to simply not losing it.
Having decided that US intervention was a necessary condition for Allied victory in Europe, the question remains as to whether it was a sufficient condition, that is to say, is the situation such that if this condition and only this condition is met, is that outcome then assured?
That call is much harder to make. I do not believe it would do justice to the men who planned and fought the campaign against Hitler and Nazi Germany to say that their efforts were insufficient to win the conflict in question. With the Enigma broken and all Axis movements known, the intelligence edge would have been enough to secure victory by allied effort… eventually.
However, the twin factor at work in ending the war by 1945 was not Allied effort, but Axis mistakes. In other words, it wasn’t just that the Allies won the war, but also that Hitler lost it. The first major blunder of Hitler’s military campaign was a strategic one. Late autumn is not a good time to order an army to Moscow. Lack of appropriate equipment to deal with the extreme cold and the catastrophic stalling of Germany’s blitzkrieg tactics into attrition warfare at Stalingrad resulted in the elimination of nearly half of Germany’s standing army before the Allied invasion of occupied Europe even began.
Another elementary mistake made by Nazi Germany was the over-confident use and treatment of the Enigma Machine. The German High Command was so confident that the code could not be broken that they introduced measures designed to make life easier for operators, that, cryptographically speaking, are nothing short of sloppy practice. Measures like ‘double-tapping’ the day’s setting entry… thus creating code duplication. Each of these giveaways on their own are not much, but when combined they rendered the Enigma vulnerable to decryption. (Similar mistakes and arrogance also allowed the breaking of the more complex Lorenz cipher used for internal High Command communication.) It is estimated that the decryption work done by the Allies shaved two years off the runtime of the war, but this work could not have been completed without substantial German mistakes.
One final Wehrmacht blunder worth mentioning is the continued use of blitzkrieg tactics beyond the opening battles of the war. As the number of vehicles available to an army for use as transports decreases, so does the effective range of any blitzkrieg operation. This is because the primary limit on blitzkrieg is the risk that assaulting forces may outrun and outreach their supply lines, thus stranding themselves on the front line with no fuel, food, water or ammunition… not a good way to fight. After the Allied invasion, supply lines were significantly shortened by a lack of vehicles and broken pipelines. This was not taken into account when planning blitzkrieg counter-attacks, and a result of this was that panzer divisions simply went too far too fast, and ran out of the four essentials listed above.

When these military misjudgements are combined with Germany’s erroneous decision to channel funding and resources into research and development of far-from-completion experimental projects such as rocket powered fighters, the result is a wehrmacht that is fighting an Allied invasion with one hand tied behind its back. A conflict on the scale of WWII requires more than a winning side to resolve, it also requires a losing one, and Nazi Germany fulfilled that role very well indeed.

The argument above is applicable to the European theatre, However the Pacific theatre was a very different story. It is much harder to argue the case for catastrophic individual mistakes in the Pacific. The closest one can come is to argue that Admiral Yamamoto’s wrong decision about aircraft payloads and landing priorities at the battle of midway was responsible for the loss of Japan’s carrier fleet, which was a key turning point in the campaign. However I don’t believe that his decisions were flawed in the same way Nazi Germany’s decisions were, Nazi Germany should have known better. Admiral Yamamoto could not, he took a gamble and lost, plain and simple.

<Comments and Questions Welcome>

On Conspiracy

I find it remarkable that so many people believe some rather crazy theories regarding almost every aspect of history, ranging from modern events such as the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001 and the moon landings, to more antiquated history such as the now countless conspiracies surrounding the Knights Templar, and going back further, the early church. Much of what I feel on this issue can be summed up beautifully by this XKCD cartoon… The sense of frustration is almost overwhelming. It is not within the scope of this entry to analyse the factual accuracy of any specific theories, but to try to understand why the population at large is so fascinated by them and facilitates their perpetuation and proliferation.

One must ask why it is that people find it easier to believe some form of hideous conspiracy than to face a fact? I believe that the best route to the answer is to ask the auxiliary question: “What do most conspiracy theories have in common?”
The answer, I believe, is that the majority of them involve a small, secretive collective of individuals lying to the public at large about events that have happened in order to gain a significant financial advantage.
This, as it happens, strikes me as being the very profession of a conspiracy theorist. The reason they all consist of the same basic underlying idea is because that’s the life the theorist author in question lives.
That, however, only covers the conception of a theory… the virus-speed spreading of it is very different. Quite simply the answer is ‘gossip’.

“Gossip” may be defined as “hearing something we like about someone we don’t!” [Quote: J John, Just 10 series Gateshead]. Most conspiracy theories gain popularity because they are inherently anti-establishment. They implicate royal families, Governments, Churches, any form of long-standing institution or anyone with authority. The motive any individual author may have in targeting a conspiracy at any particular organisation can only be assessed case by case, person by person. We do not know what axes people have to grind until they tell us, but hatred is popular. It is easier to hate and insult someone than to act as a voice of reason or to utter a kind and encouraging word. it is far more comfortable and less risky to act as a conduit for a destructive rumour, where the honourable thing would be to either steer well clear of such gossip, or research the facts and set the record straight. Giving the benefit of the doubt does not make one weak, it shows reasoned thinking. Gossip can destroy reputations and leave innocent people and organisations in ruins, our tongues are fiercely powerful weapons, [See James 3:3-7] perhaps the greatest joy that people glean from conspiracy theories is that they use these weapons to not just ’stick it to the man’, but to seriously damage the image of ‘the man’. My only request to the conveyors of conspiracy theories is this: feel free to spread whatever false story you wish, but just think: what if it were you being implicated?

Is Anti-Americanism Racism?

I was browsing a facebook group I oversee today, to find that a new member had been posting along the lines of ‘Anti-Americanism is not racism, and it is valid’. This user then proceeded to list some reasons they felt were justification for the validity of such an -ism.

After a deep, calming breath, the response began… after a couple of hours my geekery for the day had been discharged, and all was normal.

The response is posted here, do let me know what you think.

why-is-anit-americanism-racism-too

First Entry has landed!

Well, I guess this actually is the first entry. This blog will be mostly issue-orientated, items discussed here are not hard and fast rules, but opinions, open to debate and subject to scrutiny. If you find yourself agreeing or disagreeing with any measure of conviction with what is written, please leave a comment, they are more than welcome regardless of viewpoints, as agreeable/affirming viewpoints provide great encouragement, and disagreeing/critical viewpoints often provide the opportunity for response, reasoned debate, and above all, can act as a sounding board for ideas or views I had neglected to consider.
By the same measure, please don’t feel offended if a comment you leave goes unresponded to, I will do my best to reply, but it is inevitable that some will feel short-changed at some point.

I hope you enjoy reading, contributing and exploring with me the finer points of life!

Dave