ApolloHoax.net
Off Topic => General Discussion => Topic started by: Peter B on September 05, 2013, 10:32:29 AM
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First a bit of background...
It's federal election time again in Australia, and we go to the polls this Saturday.
Things are a little interesting, because for the second election in a row the incumbent Prime Minister has only been in the job a few weeks. On this occasion, Kevin Rudd replaced Julia Gillard, reversing roles from last time. What has added a little spice to things is that there are a couple of new minor parties on the scene and there's at least some chance that they'll win seats.
But the funniest thing I've seen so far is an advertisement by the Australian Sex Party (yes, that's the party's name). The party has actually been around for quite a few years, and they came close to winning a seat in the last election.
Lest you think that they're just a joke party, have a look at their website to see the things they stand for.
Ah, heck, don't worry about doing that - just watch the ad, as it says it all anyway.
Finally, before I give you the link, a last warning: a certain four letter word is used quite frequently although it's bleeped out: it's a confronting way of making their point, but I think they do it effectively.
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They've got my bleeeepin vote.
How is the WikiLeaks Party doing?
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How is the WikiLeaks Party doing?
A surprisingly tricky question to answer...
As far as I know they were only running candidates in the Senate, and then only in New South Wales, Victoria and Western Australia.
According to this Electoral Commission page: http://vtr.aec.gov.au/SenateStateProvisionalQuota-17496.htm they're way short of getting a quota (1 quota of votes = 1 guaranteed seat in the Senate). But parties with much smaller proportions of the vote apparently are likely to get Senate seats.
Because of the complicated voting system it may be a couple of weeks before the results are officially announced.
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For those nerdy enough to be interested, here's how it works...
In the Senate, each of Australia's six states elects 12 Senators and the two territories elect 2 Senators each (76 seats altogether). At each normal election (including this one) half of each state's Senate seats are up for election, along with both Senate seats in the two territories.
To get elected, a Senate candidate has to get a quota, which is equal to the state's voting population divided by the number of Senate seats plus 1 (that is, divide by 7 for the states and by 3 for the territories).
For us ordinary voters, the problem used to be that you had to number every candidate in order - if you didn't number all the squares, or if you missed a number, your ballot was wasted. This got bad in the 1970s as the number of candidates in the states got larger. So in the 1980s "Above The Line" voting was introduced: you simply put a number "1" in the square of your preferred party, and you voted in accordance with voting preferences nominated beforehand by that party. These days I understand that over two-thirds of voters vote above the line.
The thing is that these party-arranged voting preferences have effects far greater than you might imagine: carefully arranged voting preference deals, known as vote harvesting, mean that a canny candidate can be elected with a tiny fraction of a quota of primary votes, by harvesting preferences from other parties.
The reason this is important is because of how the final Senate seats in each state are allocated. If you look again at the link I provided above, and run down the column for a state, say New South Wales in the first column, you'll see that only two parties achieved full quotas - the Australian Labor Party and the Liberal/National grouping each got two quotas, meaning four of the six Senate seats are allocated. What about the other two seats? In that case the party with the smallest primary vote is eliminated from counting, and their votes are given to the second preference parties on their ballot papers. As the small vote parties are eliminated, the quotas of the remaining parties gradually creep up. (And if a second preference on a ballot paper is allocated to an already eliminated party, go to the third preference, and so on.) Careful vote harvesting means that a micro-party with a tiny primary vote may sweep up such a large number of second preferences from other previously eliminated micro-parties that it achieves a quota as a result.
Hence the Australian Sports Party, running only in Western Australia, with only 0.0155 quotas, is apparently likely to have a candidate elected. Why the Wikileaks Party has apparently failed with much larger quotas suggests they had less luck in getting good preference options from other micro-parties.
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Sure is a lot more complex than how voting works in the USA, but given the stranglehold that the two major parties (Democratic and Republican) have long had here, and their surprising indistinguishability on many important issues, I would be in favor of more complexity.
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I'm not sure I would, but I certainly wouldn't like that system.
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Given how much trouble we got into when one county in Florida used a butterfly format on the ballot, I hesitate to think of the possibilities for problems associated with that kind of system. Yes it avoids run off elections, but try explaining it to the elderly and alienated first time voters in away that they will feel their vote counts. Yikes.
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Given how much trouble we got into when one county in Florida used a butterfly format on the ballot, I hesitate to think of the possibilities for problems associated with that kind of system. Yes it avoids run off elections, but try explaining it to the elderly and alienated first time voters in away that they will feel their vote counts. Yikes.
You could have Amazon.com run your elections.
People who voted for this candidate, also voted for . . .
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Given that Amazon recently suggest that, because I like Darkwing Duck, I might be interested in True Blood, I'm not sure that's a good idea.
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Given that Amazon recently suggest that, because I like Darkwing Duck, I might be interested in True Blood, I'm not sure that's a good idea.
Darkwing Duck=Terror that flaps in the night=bats=vampire bats=vampires=True Blood.
Makes perfect sense. ;D
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Yes it avoids run off elections, but try explaining it to the elderly and alienated first time voters in away that they will feel their vote counts. Yikes.
The idea of prioritizing your choices seems so natural and obvious to me that I can't imagine the benefits being outweighed by whatever minor confusion it might cause.
During nearly every US election season everybody, and I mean everybody, complains of being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. The one time in recent history when we didn't complain (the 2008 Presidential election), it turns out that we should have.
Many Americans would like to vote for third party candidates but are afraid they'll simply help the worst candidate win. It's not for nothing that US third party candidates are always referred to as "spoilers" for the closer main party candidate. The popular vote counts are often so close that many elections really have been swung by the presence of a third party candidate.
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Yes it avoids run off elections, but try explaining it to the elderly and alienated first time voters in away that they will feel their vote counts. Yikes.
The idea of prioritizing your choices seems so natural and obvious to me that I can't imagine the benefits being outweighed by whatever minor confusion it might cause.
During nearly every US election season everybody, and I mean everybody, complains of being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. The one time in recent history when we didn't complain (the 2008 Presidential election), it turns out that we should have.
Many Americans would like to vote for third party candidates but are afraid they'll simply help the worst candidate win. It's not for nothing that US third party candidates are always referred to as "spoilers" for the closer main party candidate. The popular vote counts are often so close that many elections really have been swung by the presence of a third party candidate.
With electronic voting machines, prioritizing could be a relatively straight forward process, I suppose. Any lack of complaint about the 2008 election was simply because the McCain/Palin ticket was so bad that it made the Big O look like a prince.
We really need one state to implement prioritized voting and prove the concept. But the cost of doing so would be relatively high because it will (likely) require new voting machines and a significant investment in voter education on polling day.
While it could be beneficial in many ways, I don't see the politics leading toward this because there is little public call for a change in the election process. In the interim, I just hold my nose and vote for third party candidates where I feel they are a better choice. It is not like outcome of most legislative elections isn't gerrymandered into the system anyway.
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If third parties really want to start having an impact in US elections, they shouldn't start at the national level. It's a waste of their money to run a Presidential campaign (especially when it's mathematically impossible to be a successful one) instead of, say, a potentially successful mayoral election in a mid-sized city. Maybe a state office or two. I have no interest in third parties; most of them strike me as being worse than the major party for which I vote most of the time anyway. But they're doing it wrong, and until they do it right, I see no way that they'll ever start having real influence on the system.
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Sure is a lot more complex than how voting works in the USA, but given the stranglehold that the two major parties (Democratic and Republican) have long had here, and their surprising indistinguishability on many important issues, I would be in favor of more complexity.
It's not as complex as my explanation makes it sound. Essentially it's a proprtional representation system with a chunky number of candidates (that is, not many candidates). Parties generally end up with a number of seats in each state in proportion to the size of their vote counts. It's just that it's tricky when there are only six seats up for grabs in each state.
Up to the 1970s the Liberals/Nationals and the Australian Labor Party would often split each state's Senate seats evenly, meaning party numbers in the Senate were often very close. This changed in the 1970s with the rise of the Australian Democrats as a centrist minor party alternative. It would often then be a competition between the Democrats and one of the major parties for the sixth seat in each state.
These days the Democrats are no more, but their place has been taken by the Greens, who are out to the left of the Labor Party.
The rise of minor parties means that it's been rare for whichever party is in power to also control the Senate. This means some level of negotiating is necessary in order to get controversial legislation through Parliament.
It seems likely that some sort of voting reform is likely to happen in this Parliament: a few Liberal politicians have been making noises in that direction, and it's likely the Labor Party would support them out of self-interest. The simplest method would be to get voters to number all boxes above the line. That way voters, rather than party negotiators, determine how their preferences get allocated.
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If third parties really want to start having an impact in US elections, they shouldn't start at the national level. It's a waste of their money to run a Presidential campaign (especially when it's mathematically impossible to be a successful one) instead of, say, a potentially successful mayoral election in a mid-sized city. Maybe a state office or two. I have no interest in third parties; most of them strike me as being worse than the major party for which I vote most of the time anyway. But they're doing it wrong, and until they do it right, I see no way that they'll ever start having real influence on the system.
We have a few parties that run candidates at local levels. The Libertarians are very active and the Greens are quite active in Texas. But it really comes down to the cost of media exposure. Local TV coverage sometimes includes third parties but is so segmented that one station can have very little effect. If you are trying to establish credibility, it is very important to have national news coverage which is cheaper on an eyeball basis and more effective than local media because one can pay more to get a better commercial produced when using national media.
The other way national candidacy works is the credibility of getting a place in the national presidential debates. Thus the major party debate format is set to exclude third parties except under the rarest of circumstances of very well funded groups who can buy the attention they need.
One real problem for third parties is that insurgent movements lose steam when they have to compromise with the ruling parties in order to get their agenda on the table. Libertarians are a prime example of maintaining a party by not doing this and thus remaining a group that nominates based on ideological purity rather than electability and effectiveness. Politics is about compromise, getting the best deal you can in order to stay in the game and fight another day.
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I explained the "politics as compromise" thing to a bunch of hardcore Nader voters in 2000, and they told me it was one of the things they liked about Ralph Nader--he wouldn't compromise. I told them that, even if he did get elected (which he wouldn't), by not compromising, he was just ensuring that he wouldn't get anything accomplished.
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And had Nader not run in 2000, it is almost certain that Albert Gore, not George W. Bush, would have been president on 11 September 2001.
How different things might have been. Kinda like if Henry VIII had had a centrifuge.
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With electronic voting machines, prioritizing could be a relatively straight forward process, I suppose.
Electronic voting is extremely controversial in the United States, and with good reason. The election commissions that certify these machines were, for a long time, technically clueless and deaf to the security concerns voiced by many computer people. The market is dominated by one player, Diebold, who takes a very proprietary attitude toward their products. They expect everyone to just trust them because they also make ATMs. They've made it especially hard to get the counterintuitive message across that security through obscurity is a very dangerous practice.
The commissions began to pay attention only after numerous third-party technical invesigations showed how many of these machines could be subverted, at least in theory. There is little if any meaningful auditing, so even though there's been no hard evidence of cheating in any real election it has also been impossible to rule out. It's just very hard to design electronic voting machines with very high security and almost impossible to design them that everyone can see as such.
In California, the preferred voting system is a large computer-readable marked paper ballot that can be audited by hand. Purely electronic machines are available for the disabled but they do not seem to be used much.
Any lack of complaint about the 2008 election was simply because the McCain/Palin ticket was so bad that it made the Big O look like a prince.
That's certainly true but I was actually referring to the two-faced nature of the Obama/Biden ticket. A lot of people got thoroughly taken in 2008, including yours truly, into thinking that we finally had a viable choice that was a net positive, not just the lesser of two evils.
To think that I actually donated money to a political campaign for the first time in my life in 2008....needless to say, in 2012 I reverted to voting for the lesser of two evils while making it clear to the many fundraising callers that they were wasting their time.
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And had Nader not run in 2000, it is almost certain that Albert Gore, not George W. Bush, would have been president on 11 September 2001.
How different things might have been. Kinda like if Henry VIII had had a centrifuge.
It's a controversial opinion, but I believe that, had he won (which I also attribute largely to Nader, particularly in Florida), 11 September 2001 would have been just another day. I mean, we know that the Clinton administration left a lot of advice to the incoming administration on Bin Laden and what they believed should be done about him. A lot of it was things that the Bush the Younger administration ended up doing afterward but couldn't be bothered with before. It is possible that an attack during the theoretical Gore administration would have been successful, but I believe a Gore administration would have been prepared in a way the Bush administration was not. Gore wouldn't have demanded that his advisors focus on Saddam Hussein starting in March 2001, either.
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This is why I think we should do away with political parties all together.
This petty squabbling and us vs. them decisiveness just distracts from real issues.
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Unfortunately, the way governments and elections work there is a very strong incentive to join a political party. That is, you won't get very far unless you are a member of a party.
Washington may have been right, but he didn't offer a practical alternative.
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It's a controversial opinion, but I believe that, had he won [...] 11 September 2001 would have been just another day.
That's fascinating to think about, but of course we have no way to ever know. We don't have a parallel earth on which we can test that theory -- or live the years 2001 through 2008 ourselves without George W. Bush as president.
The presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia was one of bin Laden's stated reasons for attacking the US. It's possible that had Gore withdrawn them soon after taking office bin Laden might have aborted his plot, but given his other grievances it seems more likely that he'd have continued his "planes project".
But I agree that the response would have been very different. Gore already had experience with al Qaeda as Clinton's VP, and it's quite likely he would have given them a much higher priority in the months leading up to 11 September. And had he failed, and the attack happened under Gore as it actually happened under Bush, I think his response would have been totally different. We would still have attacked Afghanistan in retaliation, but we would have caught bin Laden fairly quickly. And Gore certainly wouldn't fabricate claims about Iraqi WMD to attack that country. We wouldn't now have a US ex-president who is an unindicted war criminal.
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I agree with most of that, but how would a change in sitting president change how fast bin Ladin was captured? Some of the resources spent toward Iraq could have been pointed toward getting the guy, but other than that . . .? ???
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A different president would have conducted the search for bin Laden very differently. He wouldn't have given up right after trapping bin Laden in Bora Bora and turned his sights on Iraq to resolve his lingering daddy issues.
Also, don't forget the degree to which George W. Bush thoroughly alienated everyone who might have helped us find bin Laden. Do you recall that right after 9/11 there were candelight vigils in Tehran, of all places? Bush sure squandered that good will in a hurry.
Large, well-endowed military or paramilitary security organizations often seem to think they can do it all themselves without civilian help. But consider some of the larger manhunts in recent US history. The DC Beltway snipers were found by an alert truck driver at a rest stop. And despite a heavy-handed house-to-house search by heavily armed policemen, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wasn't found until an alert citizen noticed something wrong with his boat in his backyard. You alienate the population that can help you at your own risk.
Hmm, maybe this explains the effectiveness of the Underground in Nazi-occupied Europe despite the extraordinary brutality of the occupation tactics. The Germans certainly didn't have the enthusiastic support of the local population.
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That makes some sense, though how much better Al would have done is up for eternal debate.
One can only wander.
I agree that you certainly need the support of the local population, as an invading army is always outnumbered. Even if they don't engage directly, civilians can harbour local combatants, spy, sabotage, etcetera.
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This is why I think we should do away with political parties all together.
This petty squabbling and us vs. them decisiveness just distracts from real issues.
As ka9q said, that would be effectively impossible.
How, precisely, could you unscramble that omelette?
To be fair, it's worth noting that in Australian federal elections the proportion of votes given to minor party candidates has steadily grown since the 1970s, and is now over 20%. But the nature of both the electoral system and the Parliamentary system suggest that a Parliament of independents just won't occur: choosing a member for the next three years means you have to compromise on the extent to which your political views agree with those of the various candidates; and a Parliament full of politicians with differing views is going to mean constant realignments as issues arise. The idea of long-term planning, which is vital for a country's national interest, would be next to impossible.
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Also, don't forget the degree to which George W. Bush thoroughly alienated everyone who might have helped us find bin Laden. Do you recall that right after 9/11 there were candelight vigils in Tehran, of all places? Bush sure squandered that good will in a hurry.
This is a point worth repeating. Islam is not a monolithic force, and a nuanced understanding of the differences within that religion would have paid huge dividends in the aftermath of 9/11. I understand, for example, that Iran has taken in tens of thousands of refugees from Afghanistan (in fact it could be hundreds of thousands), and that the Iranian government had no love for the Taliban.
And consider the Syrian Civil War right now: Al Qaeda fighters are on one side, and Hezbollah are on the opposing side. The fact that they both dislike the USA and Israel is largely irrelevant - their religious views are quite different.
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The presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia was one of bin Laden's stated reasons for attacking the US. It's possible that had Gore withdrawn them soon after taking office bin Laden might have aborted his plot, but given his other grievances it seems more likely that he'd have continued his "planes project".
Certainly true. But I think Gore would have started doing something before we were attacked, because I think he would have listened to his intelligence agencies--and, again, the information the Clinton administration passed on.
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We wouldn't now have a US ex-president who is an unindicted war criminal.
I'm not sure the author of the statement "Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action" would have suddenly developed a scrupulous conscience. The idea that it's only terrorism when other people do it enjoys widespread bipartisan support among American politicians, and the American people. From a paper by William Odom,
Because the United States itself has a long record of supporting terrorists and using terrorist tactics, the slogans of today’s war on terrorism merely make the United States look hypocritical to the rest of the world.
Lest one think that this statement must have been authored by some drug-smoking hippie wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, William Odom was a US army three star general, and was appointed the director of the NSA by Ronald Reagan.
When was the last time the US had a president who was not an unindicted war criminal?
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I'm not sure the author of the statement "Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action" would have suddenly developed a scrupulous conscience.
The invasion of Iraq could hardly have been a covert action. Anyway, Gore seems to have gotten a lot more conscientious after leaving office. I guess losing power does that to you.
Lest one think that this statement must have been authored by some drug-smoking hippie wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt, William Odom was a US army three star general, and was appointed the director of the NSA by Ronald Reagan.
Yes, I was very surprised and impressed that someone in his position and with his presumed politics could write such a well-reasoned and enlightened argument against W's war in Iraq. Maybe I underestimate those people with the stars sometimes.
When was the last time the US had a president who was not an unindicted war criminal?
It's a matter of degree. As I understand it, it's legal to fight a war of choice if you first get UN Security Council approval, as Bush Sr did for the first Iraq war. But it's illegal to fight anything but a purely defensive war (e.g., repelling an attack) without Security Council approval, yet Bush Jr. invaded Iraq on his own schedule even after he'd been turned down by the Security Council. And he almost certainly falsified evidence to get the US Congress and public to reluctantly go along. Despite the many brush fires we've gotten ourselves into it's hard to find a better example of a purely aggressive, criminal war action by a US president than that one.
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This is why I think we should do away with political parties all together.
This petty squabbling and us vs. them decisiveness just distracts from real issues.
As ka9q said, that would be effectively impossible.
How, precisely, could you unscramble that omelette?
No parties whatsoever. As a Canadian, I see far too many benchsitters who just vote with the party line. I sadly see no way of bringing this to past in an existing country, too many vested interests.
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The invasion of Iraq could hardly have been a covert action.
If it were so covert that even the Iraqis didn't notice, then it probably wouldn't have changed much. But he was referring to what is sometimes known as "extraordinary rendition", and also sometimes known as "kidnapping". This practice has persisted under administrations of both political parties for quite a long time now.
Anyway, Gore seems to have gotten a lot more conscientious after leaving office. I guess losing power does that to you.
Conscience is free in that case. While in power, it is expensive.
Yes, I was very surprised and impressed that someone in his position and with his presumed politics could write such a well-reasoned and enlightened argument against W's war in Iraq. Maybe I underestimate those people with the stars sometimes.
It was among the documents which I brought with me to the US embassy when I gave up my citizenship, in case the "interview" became an interrogation by a member of the America über alles crowd. Apparently that used to happen with some frequency, but now they are so overwhelmed by the stampede of people trying to escape, that they don't have time to hassle people exercising one of the rights in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (to which the US is a signatory).
It's a matter of degree. As I understand it, it's legal to fight a war of choice if you first get UN Security Council approval, as Bush Sr did for the first Iraq war. But it's illegal to fight anything but a purely defensive war (e.g., repelling an attack) without Security Council approval, yet Bush Jr. invaded Iraq on his own schedule even after he'd been turned down by the Security Council. And he almost certainly falsified evidence to get the US Congress and public to reluctantly go along. Despite the many brush fires we've gotten ourselves into it's hard to find a better example of a purely aggressive, criminal war action by a US president than that one.
You may get another such example soon, we'll see. But, it does seem unlikely that the second US-Iraqi war would have happened if Bush W had lost the election. And it is also possible that some of the things that have happened, such as drone wars or secret prisons in Europe, also would not have happened. But assassinations, bombings, CIA-sponsored coups, outsourcing of torture - these didn't start with W. Maybe Gore wouldn't have done any of these things, but I don't see that he has much incentive to give an honest answer if we were to ask him the question.
Regarding the 9/11 attacks, whether a different administration would have prevented them is conveniently untestable. The previous administration did not stop the first world trade centre bombing, the oklahoma city bombing, the riyadh bombing, the dhahran bombing, the african embassy bombings, or the cole bombing. Maybe they stopped some we don't know about. Maybe a different administration would have stopped the 9/11 attacks; I don't see any way to remove that from the realm of wild speculation. If they had, would that be an end of it? There would surely have been other attacks, some of which would have been successful. Maybe it wouldn't have been as successful as the 9/11 attacks. The underlying reasons for the attacks are still there - I suspect even the people who believe the US is attacked because "they hate freedom!", not because the US commits more terrorism than al-Qaeda can dream of, would agree with that.
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No parties whatsoever.
Easy to say it, but how would you enforce it? The more power on offer, the more likely that people will form groups to take that power for themselves.
As a Canadian, I see far too many benchsitters who just vote with the party line.
I don't know how strong party discipline is in Canada, but Australia probably takes the cake: politicians representing the Australian Labor Party must vote in line with party directions or be expelled from the party. Other parties probably won't expel you but you can expect a tongue-lashing from the Party Whip and the Party's Leader (and likely no future opportunity of getting a ministry). Politicians crossing the floor to vote with the opposing party is such a rare event that it gets reported in the news. This is even if the politician's actions are purely symbolic and not going to affect the result of the vote in question.
I sadly see no way of bringing this to past in an existing country, too many vested interests.
I agree. But I also don't see how you could prevent it from happening in a new Parliament/Congress/Duma/whatever.
Someone somewhere did a study which demonstrated (I think using statistical maths) that Parliaments with single-member electorates would lead to the rise of a two-party system, while Parliaments with multi-member electorates or pure proportional representation would lead to permanent multi-party coalitions. Apart from very small/weak political units, political parties are inevitable. Hence, to tie it back to my original post, my interest in voting for an interesting political party like the Australian Sex Party.
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Conscience is free in that case. While in power, it is expensive.
Yeah. What really drove that home for me lately was the appearance of what at first seemed like the inexplicable re-drawing of lines regarding Snowden's revelations about the NSA. It wasn't Democrats vs Republicans, or Liberals vs Conservatives; you had the very odd sight of liberal Democrats joining forces with Tea-party Republicans to oppose what the NSA is doing.
And then it hit me: what determined a politician's position regarding the NSA wasn't their point on the political spectrum but their status in the current power structure. Senior members of congress, especially committee heads like Dianne Feinstein or Peter King, strongly defended the NSA; those with little or no power, regardless of party, were much more critical.
That rule even applied to Obama himself, who as a senator was one of the strongest critics of illegal wiretapping. And even Al Gore -- who had supported the Clipper Chip during his term as VP -- was heard not long ago to speak out against the NSA in very strong terms.
It's all about whose ox gets gored, so to speak.
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You may get another such example soon, we'll see. But, it does seem unlikely that the second US-Iraqi war would have happened if Bush W had lost the election.
Yes, but that alone would have been a damn big difference.
And it is also possible that some of the things that have happened, such as drone wars or secret prisons in Europe, also would not have happened. But assassinations, bombings, CIA-sponsored coups, outsourcing of torture - these didn't start with W.
Also true, but they arguably didn't become standard, everyday practice until W.
Regarding the 9/11 attacks, whether a different administration would have prevented them is conveniently untestable. The previous administration did not stop the first world trade centre bombing, the oklahoma city bombing, the riyadh bombing, the dhahran bombing, the african embassy bombings, or the cole bombing.
This is all very true. But as Clinton said in an interview during W's term, "at least I tried" to go after bin Laden.
The underlying reasons for the attacks are still there - I suspect even the people who believe the US is attacked because "they hate freedom!", not because the US commits more terrorism than al-Qaeda can dream of, would agree with that.
I agree this is the fundamental problem. But no one wants to even listen to the other side; they seem to think that "understand the enemy" necessarily means "agree with". Or maybe deep down they know the other side just might have some valid grievances even if their methods are reprehensible.
W pulled US troops out of Saudi Arabia in 2003. Some people actually opposed this pullout because this had been one of al Qaeda's demands and we shouldn't "reward" them. Never mind that there was absolutely no reason to remain there after the end of the first Gulf War in 1991.
But it certainly illustrates how counterproductive violence really is in changing the policies of a powerful country. Since that's the usual definition of terrorism, I think al Qaeda's real purpose is not to change our policies but to cause us to destroy ourselves with our own overreaction.
Basically they're bees trying to get us to die from anaphylactic shock -- and so far they're doing a good job.
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W pulled US troops out of Saudi Arabia in 2003. Some people actually opposed this pullout because this had been one of al Qaeda's demands and we shouldn't "reward" them. Never mind that there was absolutely no reason to remain there after the end of the first Gulf War in 1991.
One of my personal favourites was the "patriotic rally" - some argued that if the stock market fell, al-Qaeda would win, so all Americans should rush out and buy stocks. I'm not sure how purchasing stocks for more than they're worth constitutes a defeat for al-Qaeda.
But it certainly illustrates how counterproductive violence really is in changing the policies of a powerful country. Since that's the usual definition of terrorism, I think al Qaeda's real purpose is not to change our policies but to cause us to destroy ourselves with our own overreaction.
Basically they're bees trying to get us to die from anaphylactic shock -- and so far they're doing a good job.
You'll get no argument from me on that. One of al-Qaeda's leaders stated that that is exactly their objective, quite explicitly, a few days ago.
But, I am not part of the "us" any more - the punishment the US delivers to its citizens who commit the crime of living outside the US was too much for me, so I quit. I'm just a dirty foreigner now.
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But, I am not part of the "us" any more - the punishment the US delivers to its citizens who commit the crime of living outside the US was too much for me, so I quit. I'm just a dirty foreigner now.
The overreaching of US law to criminalize actions committed outside of the border is quite bizarre. It is mostly about revenue, but also extends to a other acts things that are legal and unobjectionable in countries where people reside. It has a get-even feel for people that don't follow "the rules" and see themselves as more than a source of revenue for the government. I value my US citizenship and am sad that others find it to be oppressing rather than liberating to be American.
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I value my US citizenship
I appreciate the sentiment, Echnaton, I was there for decades. But I've had it beaten out of me. Since Possession of Unregistered Money is now a felony, and you can forfeit your life's savings with two years of violation (even if no taxes are due), it's gotten bad. Because of the US, I have trouble even opening a simple bank account in my country of residence, and have had zero success in my country of citizenship. Well, I could have done it, if I lied to the bank - is lying to a foreign bank a crime under US law? I suspect it is. The banks in both places are perfectly willing to open accounts for citizens of any country in the world, except one. Would anyone like to guess which country that is?
This also applies to business accounts, which means any job which requires me to write cheques on behalf of the business is essentially off limits. Isn't it great when your country bullies employers into discriminating against you? The foreign tax problem will solve itself if Americans offshore are unable to hold jobs or investments - they won't have any income to tax.
I just couldn't take it anymore. If I wanted to have the same rights my neighbours take for granted, I either had to become an habitual liar (which might have had serious consequences if I ever got caught), or I had to stop being American. I chose the latter.
There's a senator from Texas who was born in Canada, and recently said he would give up his Canadian citizenship. I'm inclined to write him and ask if this means he's a traitor, and should be prohibited from ever setting foot in Canada again, the way Shumer would have it in the US.
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Your story, QT, is what I have been hearing about for a while. It is infuriating that the US strong arms other countries into assuming that every American is a criminal unless proven not to be. But it seems to be the way Obama way.
I had missed the flap over Ted Cruz and dual citizenship. I am sure the Canadians here don't feel a great deal of loss over the affair. But it would have been interesting to have a Canadian as President.
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I'm disappointed that no one picked up on my cryptic remark about Henry VIII, centrifuges and the course of history.
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I'm disappointed that no one picked up on my cryptic remark about Henry VIII, centrifuges and the course of history.
I noticed it, but I am afraid it is too cryptic for me :(
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If Henry VIII had a centrifuge, I'm pretty sure he would have been able to separate X sperm from Y sperm and impregnate a wife using only the latter.
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If Henry VIII had a centrifuge, I'm pretty sure he would have been able to separate X sperm from Y sperm and impregnate a wife using only the latter.
I see!
He did have a son, with his third wife, but not a very durable one.
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If he'd had a centrifuge, he might have had a son who lived more than a few weeks with Katherine of Aragon (she had more children than Mary, but they were all either stillborn or died at longest seven weeks after birth). That would have changed the face of Europe completely--the face of the world, if you factor in the expansionism shown in the New World under Elizabeth.
I went to a discussion on alternate history at Norwescon a couple of years ago, and someone was arguing that it wasn't possible for a single person to change the course of history. I believe her opinion was changed when I asked what she thought would have happened if Elizabeth--or her older half-sister--had been a boy instead. Or if Eleanor of Aquitaine had had sons with Louis VII of France and therefore not gotten her annulment and been able to marry Henry II of England.
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"Individuals can't change the course of history" is a backlash to Great Man (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Man_theory) thinking some historians used to suffer from.
As usual with that sort of thing reality is far more complicated.
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Yes. No one in the room at the time subscribed to a pure Great Man theory of history. We agreed that someone would have, say, sparked the Reformation if Martin Luther had never been born. (We were supposed to be focusing on medieval history, largely to avoid Yet Another Alternate World War II History Discussion, I think.) It would not have been quite the same, but it would have happened eventually. But if England had a strong king in 1215, would we still have had a Magna Carta? If either Elizabeth I or Mary Stuart been a boy, would their parents have arranged a marriage between them? (There was talk of arranging a marriage between Mary and Edward, but it didn't happen, and she went to France--where she married their sickly prince who died young!) We agreed that, mostly, these are the children of kings who shape history that way. But what if a different guard had been on duty at the Watergate Hotel, one who hadn't already noticed that a door was being held from closing all the way with tape?
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The real question is "can an individual change the course of events?" The answer to that seem to me to be "yes, within a limited scope." If John Kerry had not inadvertently opened the possibility of a hand over of Syrian chemical weapons, would the US have made a military strike? It certainly looked like we were heading that way before Kerry's statement. Of course one never knows for sure, so it is always speculative. But there is some rational for the notion that an individual can change or at least affect the course of events.
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The gold medal goes to gillianren, who understood exactly what I meant by that line.
I was surprised to learn this a few years ago while talking to a friend who had become very knowledgeable about IVF. I knew you could influence the gender of your baby so I asked how and she explained the centrifuge to me. I had no idea it was so simple; I had visions of lab technicians in white coats sitting at a microscope, sorting sperm one by one by hand. If it was even possible to tell them apart.
I came up with the Henry VIII connection myself, because I thought his quest for a son was one of those "focal points in history", to use a Star Trek reference. Major world events have often swung on seemingly tiny random outcomes, like whether one of Henry's X or Y sperms happened to get to an egg first, or whether a few chads were completely punched out in Florida. Obviously there's no way to run a controlled experiment to know for sure how things would have turned out, unless we find some way to confirm and apply the "many worlds" hypothesis in quantum theory, but it takes no great leap to say that the consequences of some of these events could have been very different. And the election of George W. Bush over Albert Gore in 2000 was certainly one of those things.
We can't say 9/11 wouldn't have happened, along with most of our (mostly unfortunate) reactions to it, but I think it fairly certain that Gore would not have invaded Iraq. And a lot of things would be different.
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When it comes to technology, if it's something in or close to my field and I've studied and become knowledgeable about it, my predictions are usually right. I was in college when the Intel 8080 microprocessor appeared. Right away I saw that it and its successors would be big. Same with the Internet (I got involved around 1985) and digital mobile telephony (1991). But when it comes to predicting human behavior, especially political behavior, I'm almost always dead wrong.
A few months into the Iraq War, when it was starting to look like there were no WMD after all, I began to think it inevitable that Bush would be impeached and removed from office. We got rid of Richard Nixon for far less, and a strong case could be made that Bush had committed the very same crime of aggressive war for which we've prosecuted and sometimes executed (losing) leaders of other countries. I felt that maybe getting rid of both Saddam and W. Bush wouldn't be such a terrible outcome after all. So It was to my surprise (and horror) that not only didn't this happen, he was actually re-elected in 2004.
And then when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke shortly after W was re-elected, followed by revelations of officially approved torture, another crime which we have prosecuted and even executed others for doing, I thought the dam had finally burst. W (and Cheney, Rumsfeld and others) would finally get their due. Dictators in third-world banana republics may torture but we, the United States, call them on it at least some of the time. We certainly didn't do that sort of thing ourselves, the people simply wouldn't stand for it.
Boy, was I wrong.
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But there is some rational[e] for the notion that an individual can change or at least affect the course of events.
Certainly when the individual is already a political or industrial leader. A more interesting question is what a more "ordinary" individual can do. Many people with no political power or family connections and very little money have nonetheless had a major effect on world affairs, good or bad. Often they have some particular talent, especially writing and public speaking, but not always. But they all know what they want and confidence that they can get it.
Such people often become politicians but I distinguish between those seeking general political power for its own sake and those strongly motivated by some specific issue, like the US civil rights leaders of the 1950s and 1960s. Some do become politicians (e.g., Jesse Jackson), but not all do well (e.g., Jesse Jackson). An example close to home is our (former, thankfully) mayor here in San Diego, Bob Filner. Aside from his voting record, I was impressed that he had been a Freedom Rider in 1961-2. That took a lot of personal courage, but it seems that his character also includes some less desirable traits.
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As I said before, the best example in living memory of a person who wasn't already a leader who changed the course of history is the security guard at the Watergate Hotel. Had it been two different guards spotting that tape. Had he only spotted it once. Had he spotted it twice and assumed it was, I don't know, housekeeping or a guest with a habit of losing keys. Any one of these would have changed history--to the point that, yes, it's a plot point on an episode of Quantum Leap.
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I agree, that's an excellent example of a "focal point in time" by someone who didn't even intend to be one.
On the other hand, one could argue that if Frank Wills (who died in 2000, btw) hadn't noticed the taped lock, another guard just might have -- if not that time, then at another. This was the second break-in at the DNC; the bugs they installed the first time weren't working. (So another "focal point" was the incompetence of whoever designed, made or installed the bugs). And had they not been caught on the second break-in, they might have been caught doing something else.
"Always in motion, the future is!" - Yoda
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The sheer randomness of history is something the conspiracy fans often overlook. I'm fond of pointing out to JFK conspiracists that Dallas was hardly JFK's first motorcade. He was practically addicted to public adulation (c'mon, be honest, who wouldn't be?) and despite the known risk (he mused about a sniper the morning of his assassination) he had passed many thousands of unscreened windows before Dallas. His luck just ran out.
But tell that to a JFK conspiracy fan who keeps chanting about the "many so-called coincidences" that brought JFK past Lee Harvey Oswald's window that day. Even when you prove through simple causality that event 'a' (LHO's employment at the TSBD) could not possibly have been caused by event 'b' (the decision to route the motorcade past the TSBD) because 'a' happened first, they just repeat their mantra.
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The sheer randomness of history is something the conspiracy fans often overlook....
I recently saw a really interesting programme about the killing of Oswald by Jack Ruby. It effectively debunked any chance of that being a conspiracy as well, through the simple occurrence of pure chance. At the moment Ruby shot Oswald, he had only just arrived in the basement of the Police building, but Oswald was late because he was cold and had asked one of the Policemen to go back for a jersey. That delayed his emergence into the basement by over three minutes. Had Oswald not asked for the jersey, he would already have been in the car and it would have been driven away (Oswald inside) before Jack Ruby arrived.
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I agree, that's an excellent example of a "focal point in time" by someone who didn't even intend to be one.
On the other hand, one could argue that if Frank Wills (who died in 2000, btw) hadn't noticed the taped lock, another guard just might have -- if not that time, then at another. This was the second break-in at the DNC; the bugs they installed the first time weren't working. (So another "focal point" was the incompetence of whoever designed, made or installed the bugs). And had they not been caught on the second break-in, they might have been caught doing something else.
Yes, we don't observe what would have happened had some event occurred differently, we can only speculate.
We can write a detailed alternative history of what would have happened had some security guard not noticed some minor anomaly, provided we assume that such small, random history-changing events cease to occur from that point on.
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Yes, we don't observe what would have happened had some event occurred differently, we can only speculate.
We can't know for sure what would have happened, but we don't have to speculate in the dark either. Given that we now know many of the other illegal things CREEP and the Plumbers did, we can combine the detection probability of each to get an overall probability of Nixon being forced out of office. I.e., his people were involved in so many dirty tricks that Nixon would have tried to cover up that he would have gotten in trouble over something.
We can write a detailed alternative history of what would have happened had some security guard not noticed some minor anomaly, provided we assume that such small, random history-changing events cease to occur from that point on.
But that's just the point, you can't assume that small random events would just stop.
Some events, such as an unprovoked attack on Iraq, certainly seem extremely unlikely had W not been president. The thought that Saddam might have been involved in 9/11 did occur to me shortly after the event, and I would have expected that to lead to a US attack no matter who was president. But I never dreamed we'd invade on wholly fabricated evidence until right before it happened.
You can even apply this to everyone's favorite what-if alternate history: what if someone had killed Hitler before seizing power? Germany was so screwed up in the 1920s that had Hitler not been around, someone like him might well have taken his place. Was he that unique, or did he just come along at the right (or wrong) time? He certainly didn't invent German antisemitism or German militarism, and the punitive WW1 reparations paved the way for someone like him to appear.
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Once the Treaty of Versailles was ratified, World War II was pretty well inevitable, in my opinion.
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But that's just the point, you can't assume that small random events would just stop.
It's certainly my point!
We might frame the hypothesis under consideration as "seemingly small random innocuous things can profoundly alter the course of history".
If you reject the hypothesis, then the answer to "what would have happened if this particular guy didn't stop to blow his nose at that precise moment" would be, "something quite similar to what did actually happen".
If you accept the hypothesis, then there isn't really much point to painting a detailed picture of what the world would look like if some small random event had come out differently, apart from maybe entertainment purposes. You could claim that the world would be dramatically different, no problem there. If you try to assert that some very specific alternative scenario would have occurred, then you're accepting the chaotic nature of history at the time of the event in question, and then rejecting it thereafter. I suppose one could believe that history is highly chaotic up to the time of a specific event, and then suddenly stops being chaotic after that, but that strikes me as a very strange belief system.
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Once the Treaty of Versailles was ratified, World War II was pretty well inevitable, in my opinion.
I agree. It carried lessons for the future that I don't think have been well understood.
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But that's just the point, you can't assume that small random events would just stop.
It's certainly my point!
We might frame the hypothesis under consideration as "seemingly small random innocuous things can profoundly alter the course of history".
If you reject the hypothesis, then the answer to "what would have happened if this particular guy didn't stop to blow his nose at that precise moment" would be, "something quite similar to what did actually happen".
If you accept the hypothesis, then there isn't really much point to painting a detailed picture of what the world would look like if some small random event had come out differently, apart from maybe entertainment purposes. You could claim that the world would be dramatically different, no problem there. If you try to assert that some very specific alternative scenario would have occurred, then you're accepting the chaotic nature of history at the time of the event in question, and then rejecting it thereafter. I suppose one could believe that history is highly chaotic up to the time of a specific event, and then suddenly stops being chaotic after that, but that strikes me as a very strange belief system.
I'm pretty sure that Skeptic Michael Shermer proposes a concept of contingent history - something along the lines that trends drive history, but less influential players have the ability to affect the course of history with a steadily decreasing probability in proportion to their influence; in other words, the less influential you are, the less likely you are to be able to affect events, but that probability is not zero.
One example I can think of is a fellow called Cleitus the Black. He saved the life of Alexander the Great at the Battle of the Granicus River, which occurred at the start of the Macedonian invasion of Persia. Had Alexander died at that battle the invasion would never have happened and Macedonia would have quickly reverted to its feudal squabbling: no spread of Greek culture influence in India; no Library of Alexandria (no Alexandria!); the major conflict a century later would probably have been Rome versus Persia (the Romans acquired a lot of their eastern provinces from minor kingdoms which were formerly part of Persia, and only really ran into trouble when they reached Parthia); potentially no fanatical Maccabean Judaism and consequent zealotry...
Archaeologists talk about how if Earth's history was replayed it would be very unlikely to follow the same path. While major trends like the warming of the Sun and the movement of continents play the big roles in driving evolution, minor random events have also occasionally had big effects. The classic example is the meteor which struck Chicxulub 65 million years ago. Yes, big meteors hit the Earth at intervals, but if the dinosaurs had survived we might still be small and easily-scared tree-dwellers.
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Shades of Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity...
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I think the single biggest event in human times (the past several hundred thousand years) was the eruption of the Toba supervolcano in Indonesia about 75,000 years ago. According to the Toba catastrophe theory (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory)) as few as 1,000-10,000 breeding pairs were left and we could easily have gone extinct. The outcome depended strongly on the timing of the eruption and the wind patterns at the time.
We're all descended from Toba survivors. They created a genetic "bottleneck" that explains why humans have so little genetic variation for a species of our age.
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Once the Treaty of Versailles was ratified, World War II was pretty well inevitable, in my opinion.
I agree. It carried lessons for the future that I don't think have been well understood.
Alas, you're quite right. I believe it is in Busman's Honeymoon that Dorothy L. Sayers mentions the Allies' being able to whistle for their reparations, because Germany didn't have the money. And she was writing in the '30s--in the book before, a character was actually able to say unironically that "what this country needs is a 'Itler."