Politics – Page 116 – a sibilant intake of breath

Canada and Joint Strike Fighters

Responding to criticism about Canada’s decision to purchase 65 Lockheed-Martin Joint Strike Fighters (F-35), through a sole source contract for a total cost of about $16 billion, the government has twice highlighted interceptions of Russian bombers as justifications for the purchase.

Does this analysis make any sense?

Partly, it comes down to what the Russians are trying to do. If they just wanted to obliterate Canada, they would do so using ground- and submarine-based ballistic missiles, and perhaps cruise missiles. There would be no reason to send vulnerable bombers into Canadian airspace. On the other hand, just as NATO regularly tests Russian air defence systems, the Russians could be flying into Canadian territory to provoke us into pointing RADAR in their direction, so they can try to suss out what capabilities we have. Finally, the flights could be an attempt to assert sovereignty or de facto control over the Arctic.

In the foreseeable future, the only plausible path to a war with Russia would be an invasion of a central European country prompting an armed response from NATO. In such a circumstance, Canadian Joint Strike Fighters could conceivably be useful. They could also potentially be useful in conflicts like Afghanistan, where air superiority and close air support are clear advantages for Canada and its allies. Also, purchasing Joint Strike Fighters could help keep Canada in the good graces of the United States, especially given how politically savvy the big defence companies are, and how strategic they are about spreading big weapon contract jobs across the country.

Does that justify a price tag of around $500 per Canadian? Does it justify whatever ‘collateral damage’ will result from the purchase of the jets?

How much can one person steal?

Perhaps one of the reasons why intellectual property law is in such a strange state now is because of how much the sheer value a single person can steal has increased.

The most a human being has ever lifted (briefly) during Olympic weightlifting was 263.5 kg, lifted by Hossein Rezazadeh at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Right now, the price of gold is about US$1,300 an ounce for Canadian Gold Maple Leaf coins. That means the world weight lifting record (or just under 8500 Troy ounces) comprised about C$12 million worth of gold.

Compare that with the losses potentially associated with a book or DVD getting pirated early, or a pharmaceutical manufacturing process getting released to a generic drug manufacturer, and it seems clear that the value in goods that a person can now steal is substantially higher. I remember one memorable illustration of this in fiction, from Jurassic Park. In it, corporate spy Dennis Nedry tries to steal 15 dinosaur embryos, developed as the result of painstaking genetic reconstruction undertaken by his employers. He is offered something like $1.5 million for these (I don’t remember exactly how much), but they were surely worth more to both his employer and to whoever was trying to acquire them.

Lots of other pieces of fiction focus on the fate of valuable intangible commodities. For instance, in William Gibson’s Neuromancer, the principal thing being stolen (at considerable difficulty and loss of life) was three musical notes, which in turn served as a control on a computer system.

When people are stealing gold, or diamonds, or cattle, or DVD players there is a fairly set limit to how much they can actually make off with. Furthermore, after such thieves are caught, there is a good chance that much or all of their loot can be restored to its rightful owners. Compare that to some savvy teenager who comes across a valuable bit of information and publishes it online: the value is potentially enormous, and the scope for ‘setting things right’ pretty much non-existent. Of course, locking up grandmothers whose computers have been used to download a Lady Gaga song or two isn’t a sensible thing to do, regardless.

Torpedoes, Pearl Harbor, and the atomic bomb

One of the most interesting things about Richard Rhodes’ detailed history of the making of the atomic bomb is the way it gives the reader a better sense of context. This is especially true when it comes to things happening in very different places and spheres of life. It would take an unusual facility with dates, for instance, to realize how the timeline of research into the abstract physical questions about the nature of atoms lined up with political, economic, and military developments.

One grim but interesting example comes from the end of Chapter 12. In November 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had just committed the United States to the serious pursuit of an atomic bomb based upon enriched uranium (U235) and three methods for producing the substance were to be attempted: gaseous diffusion, electromagnetic separation, and centrifuges (the approach Iran is using now). On December 7th of that year, the Japanese Navy attacked the American base at Pearl Harbor.

Rhodes describes how Japanese research into atomic weapons began with the personal research of the director of the Aviation Technology Research Institute of the Imperial Japanese Army – Takeo Yasuda – in 1938, and expanded into a full report on the possible consequences of nuclear fission in April 1940. Rhodes also describes a somewhat grim coincidence involving Japan, the United States, and atomic weapons. He describes how ordinary torpedoes would not have worked for the Pearl Harbor attack, because the water was insufficiently deep. As such, the torpedoes used had to be modified with a stabilizer fin and produced in sufficient quantity for the pre-emptive strike to be successful:

Only thirty of the modified weapons could be promised by October 15, another fifty by the end of the month and the last hundred on November 30, after the task force was scheduled to sail.

The manufacturer did better. Realizing the weapons were vital to a secret program of unprecedented importance, manager Yukiro Fukuda bent company rules, drove his lathe and assembly crews overtime and delivered the last of the 180 specially modified torpedoes by November 17. Mitsubishi Munitions contributed decisively to the success of the first massive surprise blow of the Pacific War by the patriotic effort of its torpedo factory in Kyushu, the southernmost Japanese island, three miles up the Urakami River from the bay in the old port city of Nagasaki. (p.393 paperback)

That attack – launched partly in response to the American embargo of aviation fuel, steel, and iron going into Japan – sank, capsized, or damaged eight battleships, three light cruisers, three destroyers, and four other ships. The two waves also destroyed or damaged 292 aircraft, and killed 2,403 Americans, while wounding another 1,178. More than 1,000 people were killed just in the sinking of the U.S.S Arizona.

CO2 is plant food

One of the many things that falls into the category of ‘things that climate change deniers say that are true, but deeply misleading’ is the claim that carbon dioxide (C02) is ‘plant food’ and thus beneficial to the planet.

This video does a nice job of smashing that argument.

Ironically, in the very long term, life on Earth actually is imperiled by the possibility of insufficient CO2, though not on a timescale that human beings need to worry about now. A billion years from now, it could be a problem.

Three hung Parliaments

I had a busy weekend, so I don’t have posts prepared.

Here’s a question for readers, though. After the recent Australian election, there are now three Westminster style democracies that lack majority governments. Two went from longstanding left-wing administrations to lacklustre leaders (Paul Martin and Gordon Brown), while the other briefly went from Liberal to Labour before entering the current predicament.

Is there any reason why this happened in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom at overlapping times? Is there some demographic or ideological cause? Have party loyalties weakened, creating a muddle? Or has politics become more polarized, reducing the extent to which parties seek the middle ground?

[Correction] The post above originally claimed that Australia had a Tory government. In fact, the centre-right Liberal party was in power from 1996 to 2007.

[Aside] My A570 IS point and shoot digicam certainly is easier to carry around than the 5D Mk II, but look how much noise there is at 400 ISO!

Backpacking destinations

Over at Slate, there is a discussion up about a recent New York Times article on twenty-somethings.

Several times, the panelists mention ‘trips to Asia’ as an example of what young people might do, as an alternative to working or getting married and having kids. It’s interesting that Asia now occupies that role, rather than Europe. Europe used to be an exotic destination, and going there was both a test of independence and an opportunity to broaden one’s perspective. Now, Europe has much less claim to being exotic – communication back and forth is trivially easy, border arrangements are simpler than ever, and practically everyone (or at least everyone under 30 or so) can speak some English.

The extent to which Europe has ceased to be exotic because it has become more like North America, compared with the extent to which it is less exotic because people now have a more cosmopolitan knowledge about the world, is an interesting question. Another is: if growth in places like China, South Korea, and Vietnam continues at present, will Asia eventually become as non-threatening and comprehensible as Europe seems to be now?

Climate change ‘winners’

Today’s Globe and Mail makes a good point about the ongoing Russian heatwave and wildfires, namely that they are a partial counter to the argument that northern countries like Russia and Canada would benefit from a warmer climate:

Russia’s summer heat wave has dimmed prospects that northern countries will “win” from climate change thanks to factors such as longer crop-growing seasons or fewer deaths from winter cold, experts say.

Canada, Nordic countries and Russia have been portrayed as among a lucky few chilly nations where moderate climate change will mean net benefits such as lower winter heating bills, more forest and crop growth and perhaps more summer tourism.

…

“It’s not a matter of a benign shift to a longer growing season” for northern nations, said [Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado]. Russia’s heat wave doubled death rates in Moscow, wrecked a quarter of Russia’s grain crop and may cut $14-billion from gross domestic product.

It is certainly odd to see climate change deniers who – in the course of the same speech or article – will claim that climate change isn’t happening at all, that it is pefectly natural, that it is actually going to be beneficial, and that it is all China’s fault for building too many coal plants.

The fact is, all of our infrastructure was designed for the kind of climatic conditions human civilization emerged in. While it is certainly likely that a few people will benefit from climate change, for the most part it will mean that roads, buildings, agricultural systems, and so on are increasingly poorly suited to the area where they are situated.

I wrote before about climate change and Australian brushfires.

The ‘Ground Zero Mosque’

Blaming Islam for the September 11th attacks strikes me as both intellectually incorrect and tactically unintelligent. As such, interfering in the construction of an Islamic cultural centre near the former World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan seems unjustified and inappropriate. That being said, it does seem that there are general characteristics of religion that played a role in the attacks: specifically, belief in a god with an interest in human affairs and belief in an afterlife. Both quite plausibly motivate people to do things to their fellow human beings that they would not, if they were convinced that ethics are entirely a matter of human thought and behaviour and that this one life on Earth is all we get to experience. People who believe that there is no god out there to please or offend – and who believe that death is the end for them – would probably be a lot less likely to kill their fellow human beings on the basis of religious motivations, and more hesitant to risk dying themselves in the process (though people have committed suicide attacks for non-religious reasons).

Of course, it would be politically impossible in the United States for a public figure hoping to get re-elected to say that religion in general could be a problem, and that it would be equally inappropriate (or appropriate) to build a mosque, synagogue, or other place of worship in this part of New York. As such, the minimum that can be done in the interests of equal treatment is not to block the building of the cultural centre, and in so doing blame an entire faith for the actions of a few fanatics, while at the same time targeting problematic beliefs within one faith that are also present in others which have not been singled out for criticism.

There are certainly forms of religion that do not generally incite or justify violence, but they tend to involve a fair bit of doubt: doubt that a single set of rules must be followed by everyone, doubt that a particular religious authority is always right, and a refusal to unconditionally accept religious teachings when they clash with reasoning or evidence.

Rights: inherent or chartered?

Reading one of the lengthy historical discussions of anti-Semitism in Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb, I came across a section on how Jews made an agreement with Louis the Pious, the son of Charlemagne, to be granted legal protections in exchange for becoming the ruler’s property. Rhodes says that: “Their rights were thus no longer inherent but chartered.” (p.177 paperback)

This made me think about the distinction between how constitutional rights are described in Canada and in the United States.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms “guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” It also describes such things as freedom of conscience and religion as “fundamental freedoms,” though it does not directly describe where ‘fundamental’ freedoms come from. Arguably, the preamble to the Charter, which says that Canada is “founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law” provides a clue about where the drafters think rights could come from, though it is ambiguous and unclear.

By contrast, the American Declaration of Independence states that it is a self-evident truth “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It seems clear what the drafters of this document thought about the origin of rights, though this raises the question of what their status and origin are taken to be within a secular state.

I have written before about how I don’t think there is anything inherent to human rights. They are not built into the structure of the universe, and they do not make themselves evident, whole and fully formed, when sensible people think about how human societies should be structured. Furthermore, they are often in conflict with one another, and a simple rights-based philosophy doesn’t provide much guidance on how to deal with situations where different rights-based claims are in competition.

Is it better, then, to have inherent rights or chartered ones? With chartered rights, there is a clear sense of what they are and where they came from. Potentially, there can also be explanation for why they are granted. We could, for instance, explain that freedom of speech exists in our society because we recognize the benefits it creates, and the harms associated with denying it. Inherent rights may, in a certain sense, be more robust. If we pretend that certain human rights really are part of the structure of the universe – or unambiguously derived from thought and logic – then we have a certain defence against the suppression of minority rights by the majority.

Of course, if we are worried about the masses being insufficiently cautious about the rights of minorities, we can express those concerns in a chartered framework. We can underline the value of protecting minority rights, and explain how only granting effective protections against majority bullying can those benefits be maintained.

Google and net neutrality

At Google headquarters recently about 100 people showed up to protest Google’s apparently eroding support for ‘net neutrality.’ Net neutrality is the idea that the internet should not restrict the modes of communication that can be used across it, nor the sorts of devices that can be connected to it.

Lots of companies oppose net neutrality because it means they should not discriminate between traffic from different sources. Data traversing the internet – broken up into pieces called packets – includes everything from pirated DVDs being passed around using peer-to-peer filesharing systems to corporate phone calls being routed though voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephone systems to songs being downloaded for money from the iTunes store. Lots of companies would like to slow down or block file sharing, restrict services like VoIP, and allow people to pay more for faster paid downloads.

One big reason why this is worrisome is that it could prevent the emergence of new technologies. VoIP seems like a good example. Routing telephone calls through the internet challenges the monopoly of fixed-line telephone companies. Low cost VoIP calls have been a source of competition for them, and have probably produced improved services at lower prices for consumers. A future version of the web where companies can slow down or block traffic of undesirable types could be a version where new such technologies get strangled at birth.

That said, abandoning net neutrality could have some advantages, by improving network performance for those who use relatively low-bandwidth services like email and text websites. It could also facilitate the emergence of interesting new technologies, which are not viable on the internet as it exists now. For instance, the sometimes slow and clunky load times were one of the reasons why Google Wave proved to be a failure.

Given their enormous influence on the content and structure of the internet, the position of Google on net neutrality is of considerable public importance. The full details of their deal with Verizon – which is rumoured to allow special treatment of certain sorts of traffic – have not yet been publicly announced. When they are, there will surely be a lot of scrutiny and interest from the geekier components of the general public, as well as those with a particular interest on how technology policies affect societal change.

In Canada, Bell is probably the most vocal opponent of net neutrality, while Michael Geist may be the most prominent defender. I wrote a bit about net neutrality earlier, as well as about the related technology of deep packet inspection.