Quotulatiousness

October 1, 2013

No mistakes were made, no problems uncovered, but 19 firefighters died

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Environment, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:57

The official report on the Yarnell Hill fire which claimed the lives of 19 firefighters has managed to find no issues whatsoever with the incident. Apparently no mistakes were made by any of the firefighters or their leadership, and there are no lessons to be learned from this tragedy.

Nothing went wrong in the Yarnell Hill Fire, which killed 19 wildland firefighters in June.

This according to the “Serious Accident Investigation Report” into the fire, released this weekend by federal, state, and local firefighting officials in Prescott.

“The Team found no indication of negligence, reckless actions, or violations of policy or protocol,” the report states.

It certainly seems that something must have gone wrong when 19 men, most of them young men, are dead.

In fact, certain fire officials who now say everything went according to protocol had been among those assessing blame and pointing out mistakes leading up to the deaths of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.

Arizona Deputy State Forester Jerry Payne previously said it looked like Eric Marsh, superintendent of the hotshot crew, had violated basic wildfire-safety rules, although Payne added that many decisions made by those leading wildfire-fighting crews are calculated risks, rather than strictly rule-book decisions.

Prescott Wildland Division Chief Darrell Willis suggested in an interview with ABC News that the crew “could have made it” had the U.S. Forest Service delivered all the air-tankers that were requested for the Yarnell Hill Fire.

Neither of these findings was included in the report, despite Payne and Willis’ prescence among fire officials presenting investigators’ conclusions at Prescott High School on Saturday.

Not everyone is convinced, however:

Here is my analysis of what is going on with this report: Substantial mistakes were made by both the fire team and by their leaders. Their leaders wrote the report, and certainly were not going to incriminate themselves, particularly given that they likely face years of litigation. They could have perhaps outlined the mistakes the team made, but the families and supporters of the dead men would have raised a howl if the dead firefighters were blamed for mistakes while the leadership let themselves off the hook, and surely would have pushed back on the culpability of the firefighting effort’s management.

So this report represents an implicit deal being offered to the families — we will let your dead rest in peace by not highlighting the mistakes they made if you will lay off of us and the mistakes we made. We will just blame it on God (I kid you not, see Prescott chief’s statements here). Most Arizonans I know seem willing to have these folks die as heroes who succumbed to the inherent risks of the profession, rather than stupid errors, so we may never have an honest assessment of what happened. And yet again the opportunity to do a major housecleaning of wildland firefighting is missed.

September 30, 2013

Re-evaluating Neville Chamberlain

Filed under: Britain, Germany, History, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:17

BBC News Magazine on the reputation of British PM Neville Chamberlain:

…this derogatory reference reflects the continuing potency of a well-established conventional wisdom assiduously propagated by Chamberlain’s detractors after his fall from the premiership in May 1940. As Churchill is once supposed to have quipped, “Poor Neville will come badly out of history. I know, I will write that history”.

In his influential account The Gathering Storm, published in 1948, Churchill characterised Chamberlain as “an upright, competent, well meaning man” fatally handicapped by a deluded self-confidence which compounded an already debilitating lack of both vision and diplomatic experience. For many years, this seductive version of events remained unchallenged and unchallengeable.

[…]

The Munich agreement, which later came to symbolise the evils of appeasement, was signed 75 years ago, in the early hours of 30 September. At Munich, Britain and France acquiesced in the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and the transfer of its Sudeten region to Germany in face of Hitler’s increasingly bellicose threats of military action. Chamberlain’s hopes that this humiliating sacrifice would satisfy Hitler’s last major territorial demand and thus avert another catastrophic war were dashed within four months.

After this monumental failure of policy Chamberlain’s name became an abusive synonym for vacillation, weakness, immoral great-power diplomacy and, above all, the craven appeasement of bullies — whatever the price in national honour. Despite his many achievements in domestic policy, therefore, ultimately Chamberlain’s reputation remains indelibly stained by Munich and the failure of his very personal brand of diplomacy.

As he confessed in the Commons at the outbreak of war, “Everything I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins.”

September 27, 2013

QotD: Canadian leaders

Filed under: Cancon, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

[Canadians] dislike leaders who look to be show-offs. This is why Brian Mulroney was so comprehensively loathed. Despite a fairly strong record of governance the man is still more hated than PET, whose sixteen years at the top nearly wrecked the country. But Mulroney came off as a nouveau riche poseur and Pierre Le Grande projected the image of a bohemian aristocrat. The former tried too hard and the latter didn’t seem to have to try.

Stephen Harper had a clear idea of why he wanted to become Prime Minister. It’s just that the idea shrank in size over the years. From quasi-libertarian vision to modestly conservative manager of the welfare and regulatory state. His personality is that of an aloof wonk. The badly coiffed one, however, was shrewd enough to mask his intelligence and lack of empathy in a style so bland it could be used to make cubicles.

Richard Anderson, “The Power and the Glory”, The Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2013-09-26

September 10, 2013

QotD: Law-making

Filed under: Britain, Government, History, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

One might have expected that whether they observed the implication of these domestic failures, or whether they contemplated in every newspaper the indications of a social life too vast, too varied, too involved to be even vaguely pictured in thought, men would have entered on the business of law-making with the greatest hesitation. yet in this more than anything else do they show a confident readiness. Nowhere is there so astounding a contrast between the difficulty of the task and the unpreparedness of those who undertake it. Unquestionably among monstrous beliefs one of the most monstrous is that while for a simple handicraft, such as shoe-making, a long apprenticeship is needful, the sole thing which needs no apprenticeship is making a nation’s laws.

Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State, 1884.

September 6, 2013

QotD: Risk-taking

Filed under: History, Military, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

This necessity for taking risks had previously been stressed by a passage in a letter written by James Wolfe when a colonel on the staff in 1757, a passage that has become justly famous:

    Experience shows me that … pushing on smartly is the road to success; that nothing is to be reckoned an obstacle to your undertaking which is not found really so upon trial; that in war something must be allowed to chance and fortune, seeing it is in its nature hazardous and on option of difficulties; that the greatness of an object should come under consideration as opposed to the impediments that lie in the way; that the honour of one’s country is to have some weight; and that in particular circumstances and times the loss of a thousand men is rather an advantage to a nation than otherwise, seeing that gallant attempts raise its reputation and make it respected; whereas the contrary appearance sink the credit of a country, ruin the troops, and create infinite uneasiness and discontent at home.

General Robert E. Lee puts it in fewer words:

    There is always hazard in military movements, but we must decide between the possible loss from inaction and the risk of action.

Napoleon laconically brings out the same basic idea:

    Shuffling half-measures lose everything in war.

Lt. Colonel Alfred H. Burne, “The Strands of War”, The Art of War on Land, 1966.

August 30, 2013

Economic Darwinism – you’re soaking in it

Filed under: Economics, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:19

Charles Hugh Smith on the next big financial crisis and the way we’ve carefully put the worst people in place to cope with it:

Brenton Smith (no relation) recently identified a key driver of the next financial crisis: Economic Darwinism. Just as natural selection selects for traits that improve the odds of success/survival in the natural world, Economic Darwinism advances people and policies that boost profits and power within the dominant environment.

As Brenton explains in his essay The One Phrase That Explains the Great Recession, “The Federal Reserve’s 20-year policy of easy money created an environment virtually assured to select bankers, bureaucrats, educators, and elected officials who least understood the consequences of a credit crisis.”

In other words, a hyper-financialized environment of near-zero interest and abundant credit rewarded those people and policies that succeed in that environment. Once the environment changes from “risk-on” to “risk-off,” the people and policies in charge are the worst possible choices for leadership, as the traits that enable successful management of credit crises have been selected out of the leadership pool.

This has political as well as financial consequences. As Brenton noted in an email exchange, Economic Darwinism creates an “incestuous relationship between Wall Street and Washington D.C., where success on Wall Street leads to a career in D.C.” This is a self-reinforcing process, as all those who are unwilling to keep dancing during the risk-on speculative orgy are weeded out of both the financial and political sectors, while those who dance the hardest gain political power, which they use to keep the music playing regardless of the increasing risks or consequences to the nation.

August 19, 2013

QotD: “The Genius of the Carpathians”

Filed under: Europe, History, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:01

Romanian Communism in its last years sat uneasily athwart the intersection of brutality and parody. Portraits of the Party leader and his wife were everywhere; his praise was sung in dithyrambic terms that might have embarrassed even Stalin himself (though not perhaps North Korea’s Kim Il Sung, with whom the Romanian leader was sometimes compared). A short list of the epithets officially-approved by Ceauşescu for use in accounts of his achievements would include: The Architect; The Creed-shaper; The Wise Helmsman; The Tallest Mast; The Nimbus of Victory; The Visionary; The Titan; The Son of the Sun; A Danube of Thought; and The Genius of the Carpathians.

Tony Judt, “The End of the Old Order”, Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, 2005.

August 16, 2013

“What is true for Walmart is true for al Qaeda”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Middle East — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

In Foreign Affairs, Jacob Shapiro looks at the management side of the terror “business”:

But the deeper part of the answer is that the managers of terrorist organizations face the same basic challenges as the managers of any large organization. What is true for Walmart is true for al Qaeda: Managers need to keep tabs on what their people are doing and devote resources to motivate their underlings to pursue the organization’s aims. In fact, terrorist managers face a much tougher challenge. Whereas most businesses have the blunt goal of maximizing profits, terrorists’ aims are more precisely calibrated: An attack that is too violent can be just as damaging to the cause as an attack that is not violent enough. Al Qaeda in Iraq learned this lesson in Anbar Province in 2006, when the local population turned against them, partly in response to the group’s violence against civilians who disagreed with it.

Terrorist leaders also face a stubborn human resources problem: Their talent pool is inherently unstable. Terrorists are obliged to seek out recruits who are predisposed to violence — that is to say, young men with a chip on their shoulder. Unsurprisingly, these recruits are not usually disposed to following orders or recognizing authority figures. Terrorist managers can craft meticulous long-term strategies, but those are of little use if the people tasked with carrying them out want to make a name for themselves right now.

Terrorist managers are also obliged to place a premium on bureaucratic control, because they lack other channels to discipline the ranks. When Walmart managers want to deal with an unruly employee or a supplier who is defaulting on a contract, they can turn to formal legal procedures. Terrorists have no such option. David Ervine, a deceased Irish Unionist politician and onetime bomb maker for the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), neatly described this dilemma to me in 2006. “We had some very heinous and counterproductive activities being carried out that the leadership didn’t punish because they had to maintain the hearts and minds within the organization,” he said, referring to a period in the late 1980s when he and the other leaders had made a strategic calculation that the Unionist cause was best served by focusing on nonviolent political competition. In Ervine’s (admittedly self-interested) telling, the UVF’s senior leaders would have ceased violence much earlier than the eventual 1994 cease-fire, but they could not do so because the rank and file would have turned on them. For terrorist managers, the only way to combat those “counterproductive activities” is to keep a tight rein on the organization. Recruiting only the most zealous will not do the trick, because, as the alleged chief of the Palestinian group Black September wrote in his memoir, “diehard extremists are either imbeciles or traitors.”

August 13, 2013

Apple – dead fruit walking, says Larry Ellison

Filed under: Business, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:27

At The Register, Jasper Hamill reports on the latest oracular pronunciamento from Larry Ellison:

Oracle supremo Larry Ellison has told Apple that it doesn’t stand a chance of success without Steve Jobs at the helm.

In an interview with CBS, the multibillionaire performed a bizarre dance routine meant to illustrate what chance Apple has in the post-Jobs era. Just like the oracles of old, Ellison’s predictions take a bit of interpretation.

The Oracle was asked what he thought of Jobs, to which he replied: “He was brilliant, he was our Edison, he was our Picasso. He was an incredible inventor.”

But then came a question about how the fruity firm is likely to fare without their godhead on the throne.

“Well, we already know,” Ellison said, before embarking upon a simple piece of interpretive dance to illustrate his thoughts.

August 12, 2013

Schneier to internet company executives – it’s time to fight back

Filed under: Business, Government, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:02

In The Atlantic, Bruce Schneier has some advice for the executives of major internet companies:

It turns out that the NSA’s domestic and world-wide surveillance apparatus is even more extensive than we thought. Bluntly: The government has commandeered the Internet. Most of the largest Internet companies provide information to the NSA, betraying their users. Some, as we’ve learned, fight and lose. Others cooperate, either out of patriotism or because they believe it’s easier that way.

I have one message to the executives of those companies: fight.

Do you remember those old spy movies, when the higher ups in government decide that the mission is more important than the spy’s life? It’s going to be the same way with you. You might think that your friendly relationship with the government means that they’re going to protect you, but they won’t. The NSA doesn’t care about you or your customers, and will burn you the moment it’s convenient to do so.

We’re already starting to see that. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and others are pleading with the government to allow them to explain details of what information they provided in response to National Security Letters and other government demands. They’ve lost the trust of their customers, and explaining what they do — and don’t do — is how to get it back. The government has refused; they don’t care.

It will be the same with you. There are lots more high-tech companies who have cooperated with the government. Most of those company names are somewhere in the thousands of documents that Edward Snowden took with him, and sooner or later they’ll be released to the public. The NSA probably told you that your cooperation would forever remain secret, but they’re sloppy. They’ll put your company name on presentations delivered to thousands of people: government employees, contractors, probably even foreign nationals. If Snowden doesn’t have a copy, the next whistleblower will.

Replacing Tim Hudak

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:21

Richard Anderson looks at the racing form to try to determine just who the Ontario Progressive Conservatives might look to as a replacement for current leader Tim Hudak. The pickings appear to be rather slim:

Christine Elliot — A sometime leadership candidate and long-time wife of Jim Flaherty, the federal minister of finance. Considered too moderate by the red meaters and too old by everyone else. About as close to an establishment candidate as you’ll get in any potential leadership race.

Randy Hillier — The party’s designated “crazy libertarian.” It would be nice to have a premier who uses the word “freedom” without it getting stuck in his throat. It ain’t happening. At 55 he’s getting into the “old range” in the political world. His record of activism would also be an issue. Leftists can have all sorts of activist skeletons in their closet. Right wingers can’t. Even if that activism was merely to defend their own property.

Frank Klees — While certainly the most plausible leadership candidate, having the required polish and gravitas, his 62 years and record as an ex-Harris cabinet minister are huge liabilities. His previous leadership bids, and odd attempt to become speaker in 2011, have likely generated a fair amount of bad blood in the Tory fold.

Lisa Macleod — Young, feisty and reasonably photogenic. Not too well known outside political circles, she could probably hold her own in a debate with Andrea Horwath. She might also be able to hold the slippery Kathleen Wynne to account. Downside: She sometimes comes across as shrill and is, how to put this delicately, a tad overweight. I know that’s a stupid thing to say, but unfortunately larger women are considered slovenly in our culture. There is also, of course, a double standard. An equally well insulated man would probably curry somewhat less disfavour. Visuals matter in politics, even when their stupid.

Jim Wilson — A Mike Harris-era retread, it’s likely that the unions recall his efforts as Health Minister in the mid-1990s. It’s also likely that they recall those efforts in an extremely negative light. The last of the relatively senior ex-Harris ministers in the legislature, now that Elizabeth Witmer is comfortable ensconced over at WSIB, Wilson would likely be dismissed as a relic..

While Hillier would be a fascinating choice as replacement leader, I doubt he has much support in caucus. Elliot is my local MPP, but I don’t know how her chances stack up either. The others are pretty much unknown to me. Anyone whose political career includes any kind of association with former Premier Mike Harris is automatically a media pet-hate. The Toronto Star and other media outlets have spent a lot of time and energy painting the Harris years as our local experience of brutal dictatorship, famine, plagues of locusts, and all the horrors of Revelations.

July 9, 2013

Narcissistic Policy Disorder on parade

Filed under: Middle East, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:29

Greg Weiner looks at the full-blown Narcissistic Policy Disorder of Senator John McCain:

The recently published fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual contains no diagnosis for Narcissistic Polity Disorder — the book’s scope being confined to the personality disorder of a similar name — but should the editors ever wish to expand into political science, they will find an excellent case study in the interview Senator John McCain gave on CBS’ Face the Nation last Sunday. It turns out the Egyptian coup, which gave all signs of being a conflict among Egyptians about Egypt, was in fact about — well, us.

[. . .]

Sectarian violence in the Middle East, an ancient and evidently incurable phenomenon, an American failure? That’s one powerful reflection staring back from the water. It is also a powerful fantasy, with roots in the same place — and the metaphor is separated from reality by only the narrowest of margins — as narcissistic personality disorder, one of whose hallmarks is the proclivity to interpret foreign events in terms of oneself. Any event, anywhere, anytime becomes a test of American leadership: He who does what America wished he had not done had no autonomous motives; he meant to stick a thumb in the American eye.

Thus McCain’s understanding of leadership and its breathtaking condescension — in, ironically, the name of the neoconservative project of spreading freedom. Note that within that model — someone is going to lead and it is therefore best for it to be a, make that the, righteous nation — little room is left for the very thing McCain claims he wants to promote: nations actually making choices about their own futures from within. In the present case, Egyptians are fighting about Egypt; the real issue, according to McCain, must be what the United States had to say, or failed to say, about it. The generals could not possibly have been motivated by (a) different aspirations for Egypt, (b) venality, (c) power or (d) some combination of the above: We must understand their motives for the coup in terms of whether they complied with our request that they “not do that.”

July 1, 2013

The rise and fall of economic powers

Filed under: China, Economics, History, Japan — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:30

Charles Hugh Smith has a guest post at Zero Hedge, talking about the theme of economic decline of great powers:

Our collective interest in the rise and fall of empires is not academic. The meteoric rise of China and the financialization rotting out global capitalism are just two developments that suggest we are entering an era where some great powers will collapse, others will remake themselves and others will gain ascendancy.

[. . .]

In 1987, pundits were predicting that Japan’s “5th generation” computing would soon dominate what was left of America’s technological edge. They were spectacularly wrong, as the 5th generation fizzled and Japan became an also-ran in web technology, a position it still holds despite its many global electronic corporations and vast university research system.

Japan’s modern economy was set up in the late 1940s and early 1950s to exploit the world of that time. Sixty years later, Japan is still a wealthy nation, but its relative wealth and power have declined for 20 years, as its political-financial power structure clings to a model that worked splendidly for 40 years but has not worked effectively for 20 years.

The decline is not just the result of debt and political sclerosis; Japan’s vaunted electronics industry has been superseded by rivals in the U.S. and Korea. It is astonishing that there are virtually no Japanese brand smart phones with global sales, and only marginal Japanese-brand sales in the PC/notebook/tablet markets.

The key dynamic here is once the low-hanging fruit have all been plucked, it becomes much more difficult to achieve high growth rates. That cycle is speeding up, it seems; western nations took 100 years to rapidly industrialize and then slip into failed models of stagnation; Japan took only 40 years to cycle through to stagnation, and now China has picked the low-hanging fruit and reverted to financialization, diminishing returns and rapidly rising debt after a mere 30 years of rapid growth.

There is certainly evidence that China’s leadership knows deep reform is necessary but the incentives to take that risk are low. Perhaps that is a key dynamic in this cycle of rapid growth leading to stagnation: the leadership, like everyone else, cannot quite believe the model no longer works. There are huge risks to reform, while staying the course seems to offer the hope of a renewal of past growth rates. But alas, the low hanging fruit have all been picked long ago, and as a result the leadership pursues the apparently lower-risk strategy that I call “doing more of what has failed spectacularly.”

Though none of the historians listed above mention it, there is another dangerous dynamic in any systemic reform: the very attempt to reform an unstable, diminishing-return system often precipitates its collapse. The leadership recognizes the need for systemic reform, but changing anything causes the house of cards to collapse in a heap. This seems to describe the endgame in the USSR, where Gorbachev’s relatively modest reforms unraveled the entire empire.

June 27, 2013

Calgary’s mayor Naheed Nenshi gets praise from unexpected source

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:23

The Calgary Sun gets all gushy and enthusiastic over the mayor they usually like to beat up:

No one goes after the mayor of this city harder than we do.

We don’t apologize for that. It’s our job and we like to think we do it louder than most.

But it’s never personal.

So, with that as background, we would like to take this space today to commend Mayor Naheed Nenshi for his amazing leadership under the most trying of circumstances.

He has been a beacon of strength, support and optimism as Calgary battles the affects of the single-biggest disaster to hit our city.

The mayor, as always, has been a great communicator.

Through social media, traditional media and constant briefings, Nenshi has made it his personal undertaking to deliver the most up-to-date information to all Calgarians through all mediums.

June 26, 2013

Australian PM deposed in party coup

Filed under: Australia, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:22

It may seem fitting that Julia Gillard was ousted from the premiership in the same way she achieved the position – an internal party coup:

Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Wednesday pulled off one of the most sensational political comebacks in Australian history, ousting in a party vote Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the woman who replaced him as leader of the Labor Party in a 2010 party coup.

The victory by Mr. Rudd in a closed-door vote late Wednesday paves the way for an end to the rocky tenure of Ms. Gillard, who had called the surprise vote in an effort to head off a challenge from Mr. Rudd’s backers. Much of the momentum to reinstate Mr. Rudd came from a steady drumbeat of polls showing that the party under Ms. Gillard was almost certain to face a catastrophic loss in elections to be held in September.

Ms. Gillard became Australia’s first female prime minister in a 2010 party coup that ousted Mr. Rudd, who was derided during his tenure for an authoritarian leadership style. But she has seen her poll ratings plummet since announcing in January, unusually early, that federal elections would be held in September.

[. . .]

Despite Mr. Rudd’s victory within his own party, he is not automatically assured of becoming the new prime minister. It remained immediately unclear whether he had enough support from the independent lawmakers whose backing allowed Ms. Gillard to form a government after Labor’s disappointing showing in the last elections. The process starts when Ms. Gillard now formally asks the country’s governor general to make Mr. Rudd prime minister.

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