Month: May 2008

Dude, We’re In a Hurry, Taze that Octogenarian on the Gurney

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It appears that a man in hospital in Kamloops, B.C., one Frank Lasser, age 82, was disoriented while being treated for pneumonia and and pulled a pocket knife from his pocket. The Mounties were summoned, and they promptly tazed him three times.

“I was laying on the bed by then and the corporal came in, or the sergeant, I forget which it was, and said to the guys, ‘OK, get him because we got more important work to do on the street tonight,'” Lasser said.

They tazed him because they had a crowded schedule.

Un-dirtyword-believable.

Tazers are being abused, and they need to be explicitly classified as lethal weapons under the law.

SEC to Require Additional Bank Disclosure

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The SEC is proposing regulations that would requireinvestment banks to make more detailed disclosures about their liquidity and capital positions.

The head of the SEC, Christopher Cox, is also calling for legislation to create a specific authority to supervise investment banks. (the current disclosure program is voluntary).

Hopefully, this is the harbinger of more, and more aggressive, regulation of the financial services industry.

Why House Prices Still Have a Long Way to Fall

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Rolfe Winkler of Option ARMageddon makes a very simple point, that housing affordability is based on monthly payments, not on house price, and since house prices are falling with historically low mortgage rates, we can reasonably expect further price drops as mortgage rates return to their historical numbers.

With real inflation nearing double digits, and there being an eventual limit to just how long foreigners are willing to supply us cheap money, mortgages have to return to something nearer to their historic rates of around 9%, possibly with some overshoot.

BTW, here is how interest at a given rate influences house price:

By my maths, it looks like we might see an inflation adjusted drop of around 50% from peak, which means that people who bought a house at peak might be under water for more than 10 years barring significant inflation.

Russian Sierra II SSN Back on Patrol

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The Sierra II is arguably the best SSN the Russians have, with all the features of the Akula class, along with a titanium hull and relocated torpedo tubes (they are amidships, as is the manner with US subs to allow for a large sonar array in the nose as may later model Akulas).

They were dropped by the Soviets in favor of the Akulas because they were too damn expensive.

Truth be told, I’m not sure of the military value now, though one might use it to escort a Russian boomer, and there is always the intelligence value of parking one of these just off the coast of an area of interest and either listening to signals, or inserting operatives.

Orwellian Freedom of Religion in the Secular Turkish State

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There is an interesting court case in Turkey.

The background is as follows, in 1980, following a military coup, the Turkish Junta created mandatory religion classes in the schools as a way increasing government control of religious activities.

Additionally, the government either created or gave new powers to (not clear from the article) the directorate of religious affairs in Ankara, a government agency which which appoints imams, pays their wages, and reviews the sermons they give.

You see the Orwellian bit here. The government is micro-managing religion in order to maintain the secular character of the Turkish state.

It turns out that there is a problem though, Turkey is not completely Sunni Moslem, court cases have been filed, including this one by a member of the Alevi religious minority:

A court victory by Alevi mother Hatice Kose has prompted public questions over the government’s commitment to minority religious rights.

In 2004 Kose sparked a long legal battle when she tried to exempt her son from mandatory religious classes in elementary school: these include lessons on praying in a mosque as well fasting during the holy month of Ramadan and the obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca.

“We have our own beliefs and our own culture which is not what is being taught in schools,” said Kose, who says she was ridiculed as a pupil in her religion class as a child because she didn’t know how to pray.

“I can’t accept them trying to impose a foreign religion on us.”

In February Kose won her case in the Turkish Court of Appeals, which would have forced the ministry of education to change the content of the curriculum in religious education classes earlier this month.

But the government has appealed the decision in the Kose case, as it has other cases, saying it does not have the power to alter mandatory religion classes.

“Because religion classes are protected in the constitution there is nothing that can be done right now, it is beyond our authority,” said Mustafa Oymak, a spokesman for the ministry.

There are any number of reasons to support the plaintiffs, both in terms of civil rights, and the basic fact that a wall between the state and religion is a good thing.

What is notable in this case is that the plaintiffs also appear to be admirable in their own right, which is often not the case in civil rights litigation, “Alevism stresses tolerance and respect for all and equality between the sexes.:

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Hire Retired Generals

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Lockheed-Martin, the manufacturer of the “troubled” Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM) has recieved authoriziation from the DoD to proceed on development and production.

It should have been canceled long ago. Not only are there other systems that do much the same thing, MBDA Storm Shadow or Taurus KEPD 350 come to mind, but the missile has escalated in cost beyond reason while showing real reliability problems.

We have yet another case of a defense contractor failing upward.

India Budgets $2.5 Billion for Manned Space Program

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It appears that India is making a major push into manned space flight. (Paid subscription required)


Conceptual space capsule

They are looking at a first flight in the 2015 time frame with some significant collaboration with the Russians.

This to my mind is the least sensible way to spend money of space flight. They are already spending significant amounts on reconnaissance and imaging satellites, which meet actual needs, as opposed to perceived status in the world.

Howard Dean for Vice President

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What the Other Matt (Yglesias) said about people who supported the war, or more accurately about the idea that supporting the war somehow creates some foreign policy “street cred”:

This reflects, I believe, an incredibly damaging mindset that’s been crippling the Democratic Party for years and the prospect of excising this mindset is the single most appealing thing about the prospect of Obama being the nominee. Clinton’s ‘street cred’ on national security consists, of course, of being massively wrong on the most important national security issue of her career. Paradoxically, a lot of folks find her massive wrongness on this hugely important issue reassuring because they and their friends were also wrong and they view having made the right call to be a suspicious quality. After all, the Iraq War may have led to thousands of U.S. deaths, tens of thousands of U.S. casualties, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths, and millions of Iraqi refugees all at a cost of over $1 trillion and in ways that’s damaged the strategic position of the United States, but war opponents were all a bunch of hippies.

I say good riddance to that. I got the war wrong, and I think that gives me less ‘cred’ than I would have had had I gotten the war right and I think that, politically speaking, it makes sense to put people forward who aren’t tainted by the war. But most of all we need to ditch the mindset that says ‘cred’ on national security is composed of being hawkish even when that means being wrong.

To me, this means one thing: Howard Dean as Obama’s running mate.

Your Government at Work

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Yes, the US Department of Agriculture is taking cattle ranchers to court to prevent them from doing Mad Cow tests on beef intended for export.

A number of foreign customers, particularly the Japanese, are demanding this, but the Ag Department wants to prevent testing, because it might “confuse” consumers.

The real reason is that they are in big beef’s pocket, and they are fairly sure that if testing were done, they would get some native home grown positives.

Iraq Plans to Go “Apocalypse Now” Out in Sadr City

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They are ordering civilians to leave, and they are preparing tent cities in soccer stadiums. I think that they intend to go Fallujah on Sadr City, where somewhere around half the buildings were destroyed.

The problem is that neither the US military nor the Iraqi government can take care of the thousands of people who will be displaced by this.

Nouri al-Maliki must be desperate to get rid of the Sadrists before the provincial elections.

Guantanamo Duty Puts Kibosh on Pakistan Posting for General

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The Pentagon assigned Major General Jay W. Hood as the senior military officer in Pakistan, where he would be crucial to fighting al Queida.

The problem was that because of his role as commandant at the Guantanamo gulag, the Pakistanis did not want him there.

When Bush leaves office, I think that there will be a slew of senior officers who will be told to retire because of their involvement in torture. They are simply too toxic to remain militarily useful.

Hood is just the tip of the iceberg.

Economics Update

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We have another sign of recession, imports falling sharply in March, which indicates a decrease in consumer demand.

It also appears that the decisions by the Bank of England and ECB to target inflation may be putting an end to the brief dollar rally.

In energy, we have Oil settings new record, $126.20/bbl, and gas hitting a new record, $3.671/gal.

It should be noted that much of our trade deficit is oil, but the number dropped even with increasing oil prices. Things are slowing down a lot.

I would note that there are signs that the credit crunch is no spreading to insurance, with AIG posting a 1st quarter loss of $7.8 billion, and making plans to issue more stock to raise needed capital.

If the insurance industry goes balls up in any significant way, it’s going to be effecting a lot more people.

Finally, we have housing inventories continuing to rise, 3.5% in April, and 6% year over year.

Myanmar Seizes Aid Supplies from the UN

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This is my first post on the subject, because I have very little to say. I am not a student of the region, and what can you say about a tragedy like the cyclone and its associates storm surge.

This story, where authorities in Myanmar seized aid supplies from the UN, puzzles me.

I am aware of the paranoia and xenophobia of the military dictatorship there, but I’m not clear why they would not allow in aid workers in a time like this.