Quotulatiousness

July 28, 2010

USMC learns from LEGO

Filed under: Military, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:57

Not the actual toy, but the interlocking and standard size ideas applied to real world training grounds:

Over the last five years, the U.S. Marine Corps has built the world’s largest urban warfare training area at their 29 Palms base out in the Mohave Desert of California. There are currently some 400 structures, from private homes, to large government building complexes, operational in the training area. When development of the center is complete, there will be over 1,200 structures to train in.

[. . .]

Many of the buildings are really shipping containers, equipped with doors, windows, some paint and contents, are being used to represent the buildings. Like Legos, the containers can be joined together, or stacked, to make larger buildings. More importantly, the entire “town” can be rearranged to represent a different kind of environment. The training towns now being built represent what the marines are currently encountering in Afghanistan. But in a few years, the marines may be fighting somewhere else, and they want their training town to reflect that, quickly, when the need arises.

What is a “fusion center”?

Filed under: Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:50

Wendy McElroy thinks you should know how much domestic surveillance has increased in recent years:

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported on July 25 that “there are 72 fusion centers around the nation, analyzing and disseminating data and information of all kinds. That is one for every state and others for large urban cities.”

What is a fusion center?

The answer depends on your perspective. If you work for the Department of Homeland Security, it is a federal, state, local, or regional data-coordination units, designed to improve the sharing of anti-terrorism and anti-crime data in order to make America safer. If you are privacy or civil-rights advocate, it is part of a powerful new domestic surveillance infrastructure that combines data from both the public and private sectors to track innocent people and so makes Americans less safe from their own government. In that respect, the fusion center is reminiscent of the East German stasi, which used tens of thousands of state police and hundreds of thousands of informers to monitor an estimated one-third of the population.

The history of fusion centers provides insight into which answer is correct.

July 26, 2010

The American class system

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Education, Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:01

Unlike the British class system, which notoriously has three classes, the American system has only two:

. . . the United States today is divided into (a) a ruling class, which dominates the government at every level, the schools and universities, the mainstream media, Hollywood, and a great deal else, and (b) all of the rest of us, a heterogeneous agglomeration that Codevilla dubs the country class. The ruling class holds the lion’s share of the institutional power, but the country class encompasses perhaps two-thirds of the people.

Members of the two classes do not like one another. In particular, the ruling class views the rest of the population as composed of ignoramuses who are vicious, violent, racist, religious, irrational, unscientific, backward, generally ill-behaved, and incapable of living well without constant, detailed direction by our betters; and it views itself as perfectly qualified and entitled to pound us into better shape by the generous application of laws, taxes, subsidies, regulations, and unceasing declarations of its dedication to bringing the country — and indeed the entire world — out of its present darkness and into the light of the Brave New World it is busily engineering.

This class divide has little to do with rich versus poor or Democrat versus Republican. At its core, it has to do with the division between, on the one hand, those whose attitudes are attuned to the views endorsed by the ruling class (especially “political correctness”) and whose fortunes are linked directly or indirectly with government programs and, on the other hand, those whose outlooks and interests derive from and focus on private affairs, especially the traditional family, religion, and genuine private enterprise. Above all, as Codevilla makes plain, “for our ruling class, identity always trumps.” These people know they are superior in every way, and they are not shy about letting us know that they are. Arrogance might as well be their middle name.

July 20, 2010

Cooling the (Navy’s) jets

Filed under: Military, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:57

The carrier variant of the F-35 fighter and the V-22 tilt-rotor helicopter both present an unexpected problem to carrier crews: the risk of melting the deck. The heat of the exhaust on both of these aircraft can cause damage to the carrier’s deck if they are left running for more than a short period of time. Strategy Page reports:

The navy sought a solution that would not require extensive modification of current carrier decks. This includes a lot of decks, both the eleven large carriers, and the ten smaller LHAs and LHDs. This began looking like another multi-billion dollar “oops” moment, as the melting deck problem was never brought up during the long development of either aircraft. Previously, the Harrier was the only aircraft to put serious amounts of heat on the carrier deck, but not enough to do damage. But when you compare the Harrier engine with those on the V-22 and F-35B, you can easily see that there is a lot more heat coming out of the two more recent aircraft. Someone should have done the math before it became a real problem.

The solution to the V-22 heat issue is pretty straightforward: put heat-resistant pads under the exhausts, but the F-35 requires a (hopefully minor) redesign of the exhaust nozzles to diffuse the heat.

Welcome back to the draft era

Filed under: Government, Law, Liberty, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:11

. . . at least, if Representative Charles Rangel gets this piece of dreck through the legislative process:

HR 5741 IH

111th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 5741

To require all persons in the United States between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform national service, either as a member of the uniformed services or in civilian service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland security, to authorize the induction of persons in the uniformed services during wartime to meet end-strength requirements of the uniformed services, and for other purposes.

If this passes, I’ll be happy to welcome the next generation of draft dodgers into Canada. In spite of their sometimes loopy politics, we managed to absorb the last bunch reasonably well.

July 19, 2010

Canada well known to Afghan would-be refugees

Filed under: Asia, Cancon, Economics, Military, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:01

Strategy Page updates the story about the 17 Afghan military trainees who disappeared from their assigned quarters in Texas while on a language training course:

Now the air force has carefully checked their records and found that at least 46 foreign troops had walked away from their training courses in the last five years. All but two (one from Iraq, another from Djibouti) were Afghan.

These men had disappeared from a U.S. Air Force language school, where they learned enough English so they could attend U.S. military training courses. The media coverage implied that some of these guys could be terrorists, who joined the Afghan military, qualified for training in the United States, and then disappeared once you got there, so they could carry out attacks. But it appears the reason behind the disappearances was economic, rather than ideological or religious.

That does make a lot of sense, from their point of view: going from one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the richest, the temptation to stay must be considerable. Of interest to Canadians:

After the first 17 missing Afghans was revealed, American immigration officials went looking for them. They soon reported that they had tracked down at least eleven of the missing Afghans, using just Facebook. These men had gone to Canada, using the military ID the U.S. provided them while in the United States. It’s easier to claim asylum in Canada, a fact widely known in Afghanistan (and often exploited by those leaving the country for a better life in the West.) U.S. officials believed they had located all but two or three of the missing seventeen Afghans, and expected to track down the rest soon.

In spite of the fears of pacifists in Canada, apparently our “warmongering” hasn’t seriously damaged our pre-existing reputation as a soft-touch for refugee claimants.

July 15, 2010

Reasons not to get angsty over China’s growth

Filed under: China, Economics, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:02

The ever-sensible and highly entertaining Monty points out that Americans fretting over the growth of the Chinese economy are bothered over (comparatively) minor issues:

The angst over China’s economic ascent continues to smell rather strongly of the same panic the US felt over Japan in the 1980’s. I respond to this panic in two ways: 1) I am happy for the average Chinese citizen, who is finally seeing some benefit from their labor after 400 years of failure and ineptitude — they deserve any success that comes their way; and 2) America is in the enviable position of being able to worry about unlikely hypotheticals because we are the world’s largest economy and will continue to be so for much of the 21st century and perhaps beyond. We face severe problems — public spending being #1 among them — but our competitors also have problems, in many cases more dire than our own. We as a people have a habit of overestimating our own problems and underestimating those of our adversaries. Don’t begrudge the Chinese people some measure of success; just hope that they can cast off their Communist government and move towards being a freer people. There may come a time when the US and China square off as enemies rather than just competitors, but that outcome is not inevitable.

Fitch agrees with me about taking the whole “China is taking over the world” thing with a grain of salt. The Chinese are hiding an enormous amount of bad debt. If China hopes to succeed beyond their export-driven economy, their finances are going to have to become more transparent. And when/if this happens . . . look out below. That crash is going to make our little economic vacation of the past couple of years look mild in comparison.

I know that it may appear that I’m anti-Chinese based on some of my past economic postings, but that’s not true. I’m actually quite positive about China in the long term — once they manage to get rid of the last trappings of authoritarian government and overcome the huge dead hand of army-controlled crony capitalism. Most Chinese markets are not yet free, but they’re in most cases far more free than they were a decade ago. That’s wonderful, both for ordinary Chinese people and for the rest of the world. China has immense untapped resources of skills, talents, and ideas that can’t be accessed in a controlled economy. If-and-when their economy becomes as free as typical western markets, sit back and watch all that human ingenuity go to work.

On the down side, while China is becoming a bit more free, many western countries are becoming less so: piling on regulations and creating additional barriers to economic growth (Canada, for the most part, has not been doing this . . . it’s a significant factor in Canada’s escape from recession). If these trends continue, perhaps the worriers-about-China will see the Chinese economy vault into first place as the American government tries to control everything.

July 13, 2010

Lacrosse team caught in international issue over passports

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:24

This is a confusing situation, as Aboriginal tribes/nations are sometimes considered separate political entities from the country within which they live and other times are not. The Iroquois nation apparently has been issuing their own passports, but now the British and US governments don’t want to honour them as they have in the recent past:

The Iroquois team, known as the Nationals, represents the six Indian nations that comprise the Iroquois Confederacy, which the Federation of International Lacrosse considers to be a full member nation, just like the United States or Canada. The Nationals enter this year’s tournament ranked fourth in the world.

The Nationals’ 50-person delegation had planned to travel to Manchester, England, on Sunday on their own tribal passports, as they have done for previous international competitions, team officials said.

But on Friday, the British consulate informed the team that it would only issue visas to the team upon receiving written assurance from the United States government that the Iroquois had been granted clearance to travel on their own documents and would be allowed back into the United States. Neither the State Department nor the Department of Homeland Security would offer any such promise.

If the US government has allowed the use of Iroquois travel documents before, why are they now pretending they’ve never encountered them before? Is it a formal change in policy or just a bureaucrat flexing his or her ability to cause inconvenience and delay on a whim?

Update, 14 July: The New York Times reports that the team has been allowed to travel on their Iroquois passports:

The State Department’s blessing ends a five-day standoff between the Iroquois team and the federal government over whether the players could travel on their own documents instead of United States passports, as they have done in past international competitions.

Representative Louise M. Slaughter, Democrat of New York, said in a statement that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton personally intervened in the case on Wednesday morning and that the team would be able to depart on Wednesday afternoon.

“I am extremely grateful to Secretary of State Clinton, who responded to this glitch promptly and efficiently,” Ms. Slaughter said. “Going forward, we must find a way to balance homeland security concerns with some common sense and a border policy that does not create unintended consequences.”

Part of the reason appears to have been technical: “The Iroquois passports are partly hand-written and do not include any of the security features that make United States passports resistant to counterfeiting.”

July 12, 2010

Kill the “Internet Kill Switch” idea

Filed under: Government, Liberty, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:15

I mentioned that the awful notion of handing the President a “kill switch” for the internet has once again been put forward by American legislators. Bruce Schneier explains why this is such a stupid, stupid idea:

Security is always a trade-off: costs versus benefits. So the first question to ask is: What are the benefits? There is only one possible use of this sort of capability, and that is in the face of a warfare-caliber enemy attack. It’s the primary reason lawmakers are considering giving the president a kill switch. They know that shutting off the Internet, or even isolating the U.S. from the rest of the world, would cause damage, but they envision a scenario where not doing so would cause even more.

[. . .]

The Internet is the largest communications system mankind has ever created, and it works because it is distributed. There is no central authority. No nation is in charge. Plugging all the holes isn’t possible.

[. . .]

The second flawed assumption is that we can predict the effects of such a shutdown. The Internet is the most complex machine mankind has ever built, and shutting down portions of it would have all sorts of unforeseen ancillary effects.

Would ATMs work? What about the stock exchanges? Which emergency services would fail? Would trucks and trains be able to route their cargo? Would airlines be able to route their passengers? How much of the military’s logistical system would fail?

That’s to say nothing of the variety of corporations that rely on the Internet to function, let alone the millions of Americans who would need to use it to communicate with their loved ones in a time of crisis.

Even the US Army can’t escape the past

Filed under: Books, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:28

StrategyPage looks at recent updates to the US Army’s training doctrine, and their need to re-learn from the past:

Over the last few years, the army has been revamping its training and operating manuals to reflect what was learned (or, often, relearned). The army has dozens of manuals, pamphlets and other documents detailing how the troops should be trained, and how they should fight. All these are being brought up to date with what has been learned in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most of what is being lost is speculative stuff added in the 1990s, after the Cold War ended, and the army foresaw a future in which technology would change everything. Tech did bring many changes, but not always as anticipated. Combat and a live (not imaginary) enemy imposes a reality that often cannot be predicted.

For example, five years ago, the army completed a revision of its counterinsurgency (COIN) manual, for the first time in twenty years. The army has a long history of success fighting guerillas. Even Vietnam, which conventional wisdom counts as a defeat, wasn’t. The conventional wisdom, as is often the case, is wrong. By the time the last U.S. combat units pulled out of South Vietnam in 1972, the local guerilla movement, the Viet Cong, was destroyed. North Vietnam came south three years later with a conventional invasion, sending tank and infantry divisions charging across the border and conquering their neighbor the old fashioned way.

[. . .]

The main problem with COIN is that the American armed forces takes it for granted. U.S. troops have been defeating guerilla movements for centuries. Through all that time, COIN has been the most frequent form of warfare American troops have been involved with. But COIN has always been viewed as a minor, secondary, military role. It never got any respect. Even the U.S. Marine Corps, after half a century of COIN operations, were glad to put that behind them in the late 1930s. All that remained of that experience was a classic book, “The Small Wars Manual,” written by some marine officers on the eve of World War II. That book, which is still in print, contained timeless wisdom and techniques on how to deal with COIN operations, and “small wars” in general. Much of the work the army has done in the last five years, to revise their manuals, could have been done just by consulting the Small Wars Manual. In some cases, that’s exactly what was done.

The basic truth is that COIN tactics and techniques have not changed for thousands of years. What has also not changed is the professional soldiers disdain for COIN operations. This sort of thing has never been considered “real soldiering.” But the U.S. Army and Marines have finally come to accept that COIN is a major job, something that U.S. troops have always been good at, and something that you have to pay attention to. So when you see more news stories about the COIN manual, keep in mind the history of that kind of warfare, and how long, and successfully, Americans have been doing it.

July 9, 2010

Brewing up a real stimulus package

Filed under: Law, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 20:35

I find it hard to believe that such luminaries as Senator Kerry and Senator Snowe are the moving forces behind this tax reduction scheme:

Can microbreweries revive the economy? That’s the hope of Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) and a bipartisan group of senators who are pushing a plan to cut taxes on the nation’s legion of small brewers in hopes of stimulating hiring among craft brewers.

The plan, which was introduced by Sen. Kerry, would lower the per-barrel excise taxes on small breweries’ first two million barrels of beer per year (that’s 62 million gallons) and would triple the size of what the government classifies as a small brewer — to breweries that produce six million barrels a year from two million currently. Some co-sponsors include Sens. Olympia Snowe (R., Maine) and Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), whose states, not surprisingly, rank high on the list of states with the most breweries per capita.

So-called craft brewers are one of the few industries to thrive through the recession. The segment grew from 7.2% by volume last year and 5.9% in 2008. The segment has even become a haven for budding entrepreneurs that have been let go from corporate jobs. “There’s not that many success stories in American manufacturing today and craft beer is one of them,” says Jim Koch, founder of The Boston Beer Co. which makes the various Samuel Adams beers. Mr. Koch — whose company is in Mr. Kerry’s home state — has been leading the charge for a lowering of the excise tax on small brewers.

Admittedly I’m in favour of most tax reductions, but this one in particular seems to be a good idea.

July 7, 2010

Delineating the “bounds of the central government’s Constitutional authority”

Filed under: Books, Government, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:18

Art Carden reviews a new book by Thomas E. Woods:

In Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century, Professor Woods offers a thorough-but-compact discussion of the doctrine of nullification. As he writes, “(n)ullification begins with the axiomatic point that a federal law that violates the Constitution is no law at all” (p. 3). It is, according to the framework established by the Founders, an essential part of the system of checks and balances that defined the federal union. Even though they established federal-level checks and balances, the founders were troubled by the notion that the Federal government should be its own judge.

Nullification was formalized in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, and it essentially says that the states are not bound to enforce federal laws that step outside the bounds of the central government’s Constitutional authority. That raises two obvious questions. First, what are “the bounds of the central government’s Constitutional authority”? Second, what is the Constitutional relationship between the states and the central government? Woods discusses the three provisions that have been used to justify expansion of federal power — the “general welfare” clause, the commerce clause, and the “necessary and proper” clause — and argues convincingly that these were largely clauses of convenience that empowered the government to do the things necessary to fulfill their constitutional mandate. In Woods’s interpretation, this meant that the government had the constitutional authority to do mundane tasks in pursuit of their constitutional goals. They could buy lumber to build “needful buildings” and paper on which to print government documents without explicit permission, for example (p. 29). As Woods interprets it, the interstate commerce clause establishes the United States as a free trade zone. It does not give the government carte blanche to do as it pleases as long as it can cook up an “interstate commerce” rationale. Citing James Madison, Woods asks an important question: if the general welfare clause is sufficient to justify pretty much anything the Federal government wants to do, why bother with enumerated powers? Indeed, why even bother with a constitution?

Unfortunately, sympathy for nullification and states’ rights has been smeared by the association of these ideas with slavery. This is most unfortunate because it conflates a question of unambiguous moral evil (slavery) with a legitimate and difficult constitutional question.

July 6, 2010

NASA’s new mission statement

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Space, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:06

“To boldly re-assure where none have re-assured before.”

When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — [President Obama] charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science . . . and math and engineering.

Good to see that the US federal government knows how to prioritize, isn’t it?

June 30, 2010

Coming to the small screen soon: “Modern Spies”

Filed under: Military, Politics, Russia, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 12:59

It’s a perfect media pitch: modern spies in America! It’s bound to be a mid-season replacement on Fox in 2011!

Charles Stross wonders why this is a surprise:

The only thing I’m startled at is that anyone would find this surprising. Pre-Glasnost, the KGB was heavily into the economic and corporate espionage business — not simply trying to suborn politicians and penetrate rival intelligence and counter-intelligence agencies, but actively trying to gain competitive advantage for the Soviet Union’s big industrial enterprises. From the early 1980s on, it was a huge priority for them — and indeed, Vladimir Putin was allegedly employed by the KGB directorate concerned with economic espionage. And human intelligence operations, even long-term infiltration ones, are comparatively cheap to engage in — given that agents need to work to maintain a cover identity, it takes relatively little money to maintain them in the field and to maintain a management structure at HQ: the cost of a single spy satellite would cover a hundred spies and their controllers for a multi-decade mission.

Looking at this, it’s hard to disagree with Jim Geraghty “I hope some creative casting director is signing Jewel Staite to play the alleged Russian spy Anne Chapman.”

June 28, 2010

Monty’s salute to President Obama at the G20 talks

Filed under: Economics, Government, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

Monty, in his daily “Financial Briefing” post, has his own G20 protest:

The meeting of the G-20 is the big news, but “big news” in this case means no news, really. The whole point of the conference appears to provide world leaders with an opportunity to frown and look concerned. What other purpose it serves I don’t know. The peaceful hippies seem to be enjoying themselves, though. Toronto cops arrested about 500 yammering idiots, but failed to heed Mayor Daley’s advice to lump them up a little bit before letting them go. (That would be Richard J. Daley, who viewed beating up hippies as vigorous and healthy outdoor exercise, not his pissant kid Richard M. Daley.)

But hey, on the bright side: everyone agreed to “cut debt”! Yay! It’s just that easy, apparently! Monty, a financial-industry gadfly and obscure vulgarian from some trailer park in Jesusland, heckled the gathered august personages by shouting “You incompetent, moronic, cheating, lying, prevaricating, thieving, low-down, whiffle-headed, asshole spendthrift fucksticks!”. He was forcibly removed by security. When reached later for comment from his jail-cell, Monty said that his remarks “[W]ere delivered in the heat of the moment, but do accurately reflect my beliefs.” He also invited President Barack Obama to come to his cell and kiss his ass. President Obama could not be reached for comment.

The arrest count reportedly went over 900, but the most frequent allegations of police brutality were from some of the media people who were arrested. Jesse Rosenfeld, a Guardian reporter, was observed being punched by police while they were handcuffing him. The National Post had two of their photographers arrested, while all the newspapers seemed to have encountered police discouragement to them filming or photographing events after the violence broke out.

The Toronto Star notes that search warrants are for pussies, not real police officers:

John Booth said the officers, who entered through an unlocked door, sidestepped repeated requests to show him a warrant. He said they alternately promised to produce it later, claimed to have showed it to someone else, or simply said no.

“At first I actually said, ‘This isn’t a joke, right?’ Because I honestly couldn’t even understand where this was coming from,” he said. “They understood, as the interaction went on, that it was looking less and less likely that I had anything to do with what they were talking about. They were inadvertently discovering — ‘Oh, okay, thanks for telling us that there’s two apartments,’ like that was so enlightening. Yeah, well, you should’ve known that before you came into my house.”

The Booths say they will not sue. But they have filed a complaint to the province’s police review office in an attempt to hold the planners of the raid accountable; John Booth said he does not blame the junior officers who conducted it.

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