Category: Politics

The DoD just published its annual report on the state of China’s military (PDF). It’s fascinating reading. The issue of Taiwanese independence continues to be of paramount importance to China and drives much of their military effort. This, in combination with their concern over a remilitarized Japan (which is very understandable), throws interesting light on the Korean Peninsula semi-crisis. It’s clearly important to take China into account when considering Japan’s response to North Korean saber-rattling.

There’s also the question of how quickly China would move on Taiwan if the US was ever unable to defend Taiwan. Answer: very quickly. Getting caught up in a war on the Korean Peninsula could be very damaging to Taiwanese sovereignty.

Overall, China’s military is fairly backwards, although large. However, they seem to have a fairly solid idea of where the problems are and are very interested in fixing those problems. Read at least the executive summary.

Adam Tinworth brought me up to date on the David Kelly story, and rather than just rephrase his words I thought I’d simply quote his comment:

You might want to note that Dr Kelly has turned out to be much more senior than the Government tried to make out. You might also want to note that one of journalists Kelly spoke with has a tape of the conversation. The story moves on, and it’s swinging back in the BBC’s favour.

The indications are that David Kelly was in fact somewhat of a guru on the subject of WMD, and that the BBC is going to be able to back up its claims. In related news, more Britons trust the BBC than trust the government. The Guardian also informs us that Geoff Hoon (the Defence Secretary) has been caught lying about whether he’d ever met David Kelly.

Edit: Tinworth, not Tinsworth. Ten lashs with a wet noodle for me.

Various and sundry commentators have been making alarmed noises about the new DARPA-organized political stock market.

There are a few rational objections. Someone over at CalPundit noted that the system may be very gamable by people who want to conceal the possibility of their own terrorist activity. Kevin Drum notes that there’s the possibility of pissing off allies who would prefer that we not enable a market for futures based on negative events occurring in their country.

On the other hand, I’ve got to look askance at the people who are complaining about the immorality of betting on tragedy. You may not have noticed, but the New York Stock Exchange trades stock in real companies. Those companies employ real people. Every time someone sells a stock short, they’re betting that something bad will happen to those people — something that may cause salary reductions or layoffs.

“Oh, but that’s not a matter of life or death.”

No. Not usually. But sometimes it is. And any way you cut it, it’s still bad things happening to good people.

The Texas Democrats took off again (via Perverse Access Memory). This time it’s the Senate Democrats, but the effect should be more or less the same.

As mentioned earlier, it is not illegal for Texas legislators to hide out for the purposes of breaking quorum. Indeed, it may be illegal to hunt them.

Some reports say that North Korea may carry out a nuclear test on September 9, the anniversary of the country’s founding, if there’s not more progress in the current standoff by then. I’m torn between believing that North Korea is willing to push the boundaries of reasonable behavior and remembering that the North Korean government is not always grounded in reality.

In any case, the Washington Post reports that “Bush may give in on non-aggression.” Bush keeps denying that anything like that is on the table. We’ll see.

I’m just hoping Bush isn’t using John Wayne as his model in this one. When a cowboy doesn’t draw fast enough, or faces down the wrong black hat, the cowboy is the only one who suffers. You don’t see so many movies where the cowboy gingerly talks down a guy with a bomb that can blow up the whole town.

I’m not a Democrat; nor am I a Republican. I fall somewhere more or less on the left side of the spectrum, if you insist on a single axis. I prefer a minimalistic government, but I believe that enlightened self-interest calls for more voluntary intervention than your average libertarian advocates. I’m a capitalist. I think the optimal size of self-governed political units is fairly small.

So how do you get my vote in 2004? Easy. Come out in favor of approval voting.

The current majority vote system tends to reinforce the two major parties. In some ways, voting for a third party reduces the chances that a candidate you can stand will get elected. (That doesn’t make it the wrong thing to do; it just describes the practical effects of voting for a third party.) This disenfranchises those who could tolerate, say, a Democrat in office but who would prefer a Green President.

It’s pretty easy to see the problem here. Flip the situation around; say that we’d always had the Green Party and the Republican Party as our main political parties. You’re a liberal who vehemently disagrees with eliminating nuclear power plants or withdrawing from the WTO — but if you don’t vote Green, you’re helping the Republicans win. You aren’t well-represented, even though the Green platform is closer to your beliefs than the Republicans.

If there were no other way to run an election, maybe it’d be OK to grin and bear it. But there are other ways. I don’t particularly expect either the Democrats or Republicans to adopt them, because the net effect is to create an opening for other parties; however, that’s what it would take.

Approval voting is pretty simple. You vote for each candidate who you wouldn’t mind seeing elected. The candidate with the most votes wins. If you’d be OK with Perot or McCain, you vote yes for both of ‘em. There’s no need to let strategic voting obscure your preferences, and you can send a clearer message.

There are some quirky results possible with this system. If 60% of the voters prefer candidate A to any other candidate, but 70% of the voters find candidate B acceptable and only 65% of the voters find candidate A acceptable, then candidate B will win. It would be reasonable to feel that candidate A was getting a raw deal. However, candidate B is still clearly acceptable — so the maximum number of voters are happy.

Condorcet voting fixes that problem, but it’s a fair bit more difficult to describe, and being a realist I’m willing to take things one step at a time. Some improvement is better than no improvement.

Somehow, I expect that neither of the major party candidates will show any real interest in making it possible for third parties to accurately register the degree of their support. Funny, that.

The BBC is having a Jayson Blair moment of sorts. It’s an interesting, complex story, which may wind up getting Tony Blair out of the tight spot he’s in.

On May 29th, Andrew Gilligan said that a British official told him that the government spiced up a dossier which made the case for war. He did not name the official, because he wanted to keep his sources confidential. That’s reasonable journalism.

On June 19th, Gilligan told the Foreign Affairs select committee that his source was one of the senior officials who assembled the dossier. The British government promptly accused Gilligan of lying. The BBC Board of Governors backed Gilligan up.

In mid-July, speculation that David Kelly was the source arose. He was questioned by the Foreign Affairs committee on July 15th. Kelly denied being the main BBC source at that time.

Kelly appears to have committed suicide on July 18th. On Sunday, the 20th, the BBC admitted Kelly was the sole source for Gilligan’s story. Kelly was not a senior official in charge of preparing the dossier, so there’s a bit of a mismatch between what Gilligan told the Foreign Affairs committee and the facts.

The BBC says that they never included those words in a report, which is true enough, but I think there still has to be some concern about Gilligan’s testimony. Certainly that testimony helped create and define the news story.

The furor about what the BBC did, in any case, obscures the issue of whether or not the British government intentionally exaggerated Saddam’s WMD capacity — which is why Tony Blair may slip out of that problem without as much damage as seemed likely last week.

The words chilling effect come to mind, somehow. (Via regis.) This is an isolated incident — perhaps. It’s a story told by a liberal — certainly. I don’t care. This shouldn’t happen. If I call the FBI and report that someone was reading something suspicious, that’s not an incident. That’s someone reading.

A few months ago, I got one of those scam emails from someone pretending to be Paypal. I called the Boston FBI office to report it. I literally couldn’t get someone to take my report. “Did you lose over $5,000?” “Well, no.” “Sorry, we don’t deal with cases in which nobody lost $5,000.”

But apparently they deal with cases where someone was reading a suspicious, liberal-slanting printout. Nice to see where the priorities are.

The good people over at the Volohk Conspiracy have written extensively on the Patriot Act. The general thrust of their argument is that the Patriot Act does not give the government rights it would not otherwise have. I submit that while this may be literally true, there are other factors at work.

If law enforcement officials perceive the Patriot Act as permitting certain types of actions, they are more likely to carry out those actions whether or not it actually permits them. It’s a question of perceived permission. While injustices thus created will (hopefully) get ironed out eventually, that is not entirely a comfort to those caught in such injustices. Chilling effect.

And now people are calling the FBI on bearded guys reading liberal editorials in public. Good thing I don’t have a beard.

Sixteen words:

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Eight words:

“I did not have sex with that woman.”

Supporters of the Texas redistricting effort were eager to claim that the Texas Democrats were acting illegally. Proof? Well, the Texas House rules allowed the Texas Department of Safety to hunt missing legislators down, and that must mean that the legislators were breaking the law. The difference between police acting as a favor to the legislature and police acting to enforce actual laws was apparently beyond some.

Not, however, beyond a Texas judge. Judge Charles Campbell pointed out that Texas law “limits the role of D.P.S. to enforcing the laws protecting the public safety and providing for the prevention and detection of crime.”

Charles Kuffner has the good coverage of this whole issue; hit his Killer D’s category for in-depth information.