Author Archives: Alex Harrowell

About Alex Harrowell

Alex Harrowell is a research analyst for a really large consulting firm on AI and semiconductors. His age is immaterial, especially as he can't be bothered to update this bio regularly. He's from Yorkshire, now an economic migrant in London. His specialist subjects are military history, Germany, the telecommunications industry, and networks of all kinds. He would like to point out that it's nothing personal. Writes the Yorkshire Ranter.

Illiberal Direct Democracy

Posted on by

Over at the German-speaking version of ScienceBlogs, they’re talking about a referendum (and nobody’s going to sing a song with that as the refrain), or rather a whole package of them. Switzerland famously has a lot of referendums, but this one is interesting because it points up the fundamental tension between democracy and the republic.

So part of Switzerland voted, in a referendum, to deny naturalisation of anyone from a state formerly part of Yugoslavia. Later, the courts struck down the ban on the grounds that this decision breached the constitutional prohibition on arbitrary rule (Willkurverbot, something I can well agree with). Although it was democratic, it was illegitimate. Now, people who are cool with arbitrary rule in so far as it effects teh immigrants are trying to restore the ban by means of a federal referendum.

I’ve never liked direct democracy very much – especially not the version that’s centred on referendums rather than deliberation. And as I happened to be in Switzerland last week, I took the opportunity to confirm my prejudices. The Neue Zurcher Zeitung for this Friday carried an interesting item, which tends to deny the idea that referendums are a means of clearer, more faithful, more independent political representation. Their Parolenspiegel – “slogan mirror” would be an insufficient translation – sets out a table with three columns, one for each referendum, and 12 rows, one for each of 12 political parties. Each cell in the table contains either the word JA or NEIN, depending on that party’s view of that particular proposal. Below this, there is a further table with the same information for 22 different interest groups. Now there’s independent for you.

In footnotes to this, 24 cases are listed where the youth, women’s, or local branches of this or that party has a different position. Clearly, the citizen is offered an unparalleled choice of ways to avoid thinking about their vote, although what happens in the event of conflict is an interesting question – perhaps you put all the data in tables and use the Analytic Hierarchy Process?

Eurabia Fans: Not just stupider than you think…

Posted on by

Stupider than you can imagine. Evidence, the map over at this fine post from Sadly, No!. Read the whole thing, but as well as introducing the best title for a blog post ever, they’ve caught “Gates Of Vienna” pretending that in the future, Europe will be divided into Islamic states (with incredibly silly names), Russian protectorates, and the Russian empire, due to teh demographic menace.

Yes, that’s right – they think Russia doesn’t have a demographics problem. They also think that although Iceland will become an Islamic state, Switzerland and, for some bizarre reason, the Czech Republic will remain “neutral”. And Germany will re-divide, with the old Federal Republic sliding into Islamic rule and the old DDR being a Russian protectorate.

Either that, or they’re using a map that’s still got East Germany on it. It feels a bit like mocking cripples to take the piss out of people who are obviously so ill-equipped to take part in any kind of debate, but, what the hell! Read the whole thing and don’t forget to bring your fisker.

But among the routine partisan knockabout, there’s a gem – this UPI article on demographics, which finally offers Randy McDonald some relief in his role as the NATO-standard debunker. Martin Walker notes the French demographic turn-around, but the especially interesting bit is that he actually has some numbers on the rate at which immigrant groups’ TFRs converge with the norm.

The birthrates of Muslim women in Europe have been falling significantly for some time. In the Netherlands, for example, the TFR among Dutch-born women rose between 1990 and 2005 from 1.6 to 1.7. In the same period for Moroccan-born women in Holland it fell from 4.9 to 2.9, and for Turkish-born women in Holland from 3.2 to 1.9.

In Austria, the TFR of Muslim women fell from 3.1 to 2.3 from 1981 to 2001. In 1970 Turkish-born women in Germany had on average two children more than German-born women. By 1996 the difference had fallen to one child and has now dropped to 0.5. These sharp falls reflect important cultural shifts, which include the impact of universal female education, rising living standards, the effect of local cultural norms and availability of contraception.

There is, as they say, no crisis. However, this doesn’t overturn something else we occasionally point out on AFOE, which is that whatever happens in Europe, the demographic transition is worldwide. Unlike my dear colleague, I personally think this is a damn good thing in the light of energy, environmental, and international security issues. I’d much rather be K-selected than r-selected.

The global trend is down, very sharply down. In all, 80 countries around the world, comprising almost half the Earth’s population, are now experiencing a birthrate that is below replacement….With a few exceptions like Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, Haiti and Guatemala, the countries still experiencing strong population growth are all in sub-Saharan Africa. Depending on its birthrate, the current 750 million are likely to become between 1.5 billion and 3 billion by the end of this century. And if European, Latin American and Arab birthrates continue to decline, then Islam as well as Christianity will be a predominantly African religion, with some outposts in Europe.

Which raises the question, what kind of Islam will that be? The rise of African Christianity has been a force for conservatism and fundamentalism in the Anglican Communion and the Roman Catholic Church; but the rise of African Islam looks likely to be a phenomenon of the city, what the Lounsbury calls the “Pious Middle” class. In this context it’s interesting to note that several African countries already have political parties that have adopted the language of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party; it’s not impossible that this Islamic Christian Democracy might find its niche in African cities.

From Ushant to Scilly is 34 leagues

Posted on by

For me, the interesting bit in this Jean Quatremer story about the race to be the first EU president is right at the end.

On sait simplement qu’il y a des « négociations secrètes » sur le sujet avec Londres : elles porteraient sur la création d’une force aéronavale commune et la surveillance de l’espace européen par les aviations des États membres.

Secret negotiations with the UK regarding the creation of a common naval aviation? Well, the UK and France are cooperating uneasily on their aircraft carrier programmes; the UK is trying to build two 50,000 tonne carriers, and France would like to build another ship. The partnership goes so far as to use the same design, prepared by Thales (UK)’s naval architects in Bristol; but that’s about as far.

After all, the original Thales/DCN bid to build the British carriers foresaw using their design and splitting the workshare among British and French shipyards. However, BAE Systems successfully lobbied its way back in, even though any conceivable workshare plan would have seen its yards on the Clyde getting quite a lot of business; the result is a horrible compromise under which BAE is joint-prime contractor with Thales (as if the idea wasn’t a contradiction in terms), but has to use the Thales drawings and split the work among the UK shipyards (but no French ones. no, sir).

And the British government has spent a lot of time blowing hot and cold about the project; however, it has recently begun buying stuff for the ships, and the key industrial partner, Babcocks, have completed altering the huge drydock in Rosyth where the ships will be assembled from the superblocks the various yards will deliver. Surprisingly, though, these orders haven’t been coordinated with France in any way – part of the point was saving on things like steel purchases and expensive things like marine engines by pooled buying. So far, we’re up to the following shopping list:

* Eight diesel engines and electricity generators – four for each ship – at a cost of about £18.5 million. The contract for the diesel generators had been awarded to Wartsila Defence SAS, based in Nantes, France, with the engines to be manufactured in Trieste, Italy. The alternators, which transform the diesel’s power into electricity, are to be built at Converteam, in Rugby, Warwickshire.
* A contract worth in excess of £1 million for the detailed design of an integrated navigation and bridge system had been awarded to Northrop Grumman Sperry Marine, with the work to be carried out at New Malden in Surrey.
* A contract for the Flying Control Rooms (Flyco) for the carriers had been awarded to Tex Special projects of Ipswich, Suffolk at a cost of circa £1 million; and
* A contract for visual landing aids to guide fighters and helicopters on to the deck had been awarded to Aeronautical and General Instruments Ltd of Poole, Dorset at a cost of about £7.5 million.
* The supply of over 80,000 tonnes of steel from Corus for manufacture of the two ships to an estimated value of £65 million;
* The supply of Blown Fibre Optic Cable Plant (BFOCP) technology from Brand-Rex Limited for the installation of optical cables for data transfer within the ships at a cost in excess of £3 million;
* Reverse osmosis equipment from Salt Separation Services for production of fresh water onboard the ships at an initial contract value in excess of £1 million; and
* Aviation fuel systems equipment from Fluid Transfer International to allow the fuelling and de-fuelling of embarked aircraft at a contract value of approximately £4 million.

I honestly can’t see why it’s a dealbreaker to do the shipbuilding in the UK when doing the marine engineering in Italy is A-OK; but there you go. However, there are the feelings too; my heart melts at the thought of those alternators from Rugby and mirror sights from Poole. I can’t help it; as a lefty northern techie, I’m a confirmed manufacturing fetishist.

But you’ll notice that the UK does seem to be edging towards actually building the ships, without any noticeable joint procurement with France. So what is it that’s being secretly discussed? I reckon it’s that the French don’t want to go through with the PA-2 (their new carrier), but they are also conscious of the problems that having one aircraft carrier brings you. Whenever the Charles de Gaulle is in dock, her aviators soon cease to be current; so, the Aeronavale sends them for a trip with the Americans in order to maintain carrier qualification (currently, they are practising on the Theodore Roosevelt). I can well imagine the French would rather do this themselves, but anyway would prefer to do it in Europe. Also, a deal with Britain might provide a claim on the British carriers during French downtime; the question has to be, what’s in it for the UK? Are they considering making a contribution?

Meanwhile, Turkey is the latest contributor to Europe’s emerging amphibious fleet, wanting to buy a big LPH/light carrier. That makes 29.

Shifting Tectonic Plates

Posted on by

The American continent is about to get its first high-speed train. Where?

Argentina.

Argentina on Tuesday signed a contract with a consortium led by Alstom of France to build the first high-speed train in the Americas, linking Buenos Aires with the cities of Rosario and Córdoba in three hours, nearly a fifth of the current journey time.

Patrick Kron, Alstom’s chairman and chief executive, said construction would start before the end of the year and last for four years. Alstom, which designed and built France’s TGV, Spain’s AVE and South Korea’s KTX, is providing the rolling stock, signalling and maintenance to the Veloxia consortium, which also includes Iecsa and Emepa of Argentina and Spain’s Isolux Corsan.

The total project, financed by French bank Natixis, will cost some $3.7bn and Argentina will issue 30-year debt. Alstom’s share of the project is worth around $1.7bn. The project is five to eight times cheaper than similar ones in France or Spain, Alstom says.

How long before Sarko shows up to offer them a nuclear power station? Alstom and Areva: two great French quasi-state industries that taste great together. And Argentine railway bonds – now there’s Edwardian for you…

Oh Dear Oh Dear

Posted on by

The Georgians may have lost two more UAVs in the escalating crisis between them, Abkhazia, and Russia (in so far as the latter two are distinct). At least, the Abkhaz side is claiming that their “anti-aircraft forces” shot down two drones, presumably Georgian ones; the Georgians deny it, which is interesting because they were keen to publicise the last such incident. Back on the 20th of April, the Georgians lost another UAV to a MiG-29 fighter – subtext, to the Russians, as no-one seriously believes Abkhazia operates an independent air force and certainly not one equipped with modern fighters. (They claim to have some Czech-made L39 fighter/trainers.) You can see the video here, complete with MiG-29 and missile.

Shootings-down of aircraft are always overclaimed, so it’s possible that everyone is wrong. The Russians suggested that the video actually shows a “NATO MiG-29” (which isn’t actually impossible – Germany has some left over from the DDR), but no-one is convinced. If today’s statement is true, one has to wonder what the Georgians are up to as well – the drones in question are rather expensive Israeli Elbit Hermes-450s, and Georgia has only a couple of dozen. If they are deliberately testing the other side or seeking a provocation, they must really mean it.

Zeitgeist

Posted on by

Jason Burke of the Observer reports that the next few days are expected to bring the indictment of people involved in Ergenekon. Ergenekon? Well, if you read AFOE you’ll already know that Ergenekon is a secret extreme-right network of influence within the Turkish elite, suspected of being behind a succession of acts of violence, which came to light after the chance discovery of a stash of weapons. The prosecution alleges that the aim of the organisation was to bring about a military coup through a campaign of assassinations and terrorism intended to destabilise the Erdogan government to the point where the army could plausibly intervene.

Or not. According to one of the suspects’ lawyers:

‘There is not a shred of truth in them,’ he said. ‘This is 100 per cent political. It has all been cooked up by the government and by the imperialist powers, the CIA, Mossad and the Jewish lobby and the European Union to eliminate Turkish nationalism. There is no such thing as Ergenekon.’ His imprisoned client, Kemal Kerincsiz, told The Observer in an interview prior to his arrest he was a ‘patriot fighting the disintegration of the nation’.

The government, the imperialists, the CIA, Mossad, the Jews, and the EU all at once? Wow, it’s like one of our Macedonia threads but with real people. Read the whole thing; perhaps the most worrying suggestion is that the respectable nationalist party wants to invade Syria and share it out with Iraq. Right. But then, who can say what is sane?

Here’s Martin Jacques in the Guardian, regarding Italy. Now I usually have next to no time for Jacques, a character whose usual spiel is to write thousands of words about how Asian supermen are our rightful masters, and this is entirely unconnected with his current sinecure at a university in any given authoritarian state in Asia. But I think he has a point. Specifically:

This was demonstrated by the manner in which the supporters of Gianni Alemanno, the new mayor of Rome, a man steeled [s/b “steeped”?] in the fascist tradition, celebrated his victory in the Campidoglio with fascist salutes and cries of “Duce, Duce!”, just as Mussolini was once acclaimed by his adherents. Or the way in which Berlusconi felt able to declare, in response to the victory, that “we are the new Falange” – the name given to the fascist party in Spain in the 1930s. Or the fact that Umberto Bossi, at the first session of parliament, threatened violence if the centre-left did not acquiesce in its plans for federalism. “I don’t know what the left wants [but] we are ready,” he told reporters. “If they want conflicts, I have 300,000 men always on hand.” Or the fashion in which Gianfranco Fini, during a public walkabout with his followers in support of Alemanno, demanded to see immigrants’ residence permits, while Alemanno threatens to expel 20,000 immigrants from the capital, who he claims have broken the law, and shut illegal Roma encampments; with Bossi is no less vitriolic in his attitude towards immigrants..

Duce. Falange. Boasts of a party army. Recreational police harassment. There is something ugly in here, no? Having been responsible for suggesting that Berlusconi might just refuse to leave office last time round, I think I can claim dibs on this; there is something distinctly disturbing in the air.

You think? Here’s a British Conservative getting his fash on:

“This is like the March on Rome in 1922,” one shadow minister said as Johnson inched towards victory. Johnson will not march into London’s City Hall surrounded by blackshirts in the manner of Benito Mussolini’s supporters when they staged their coup d’état in 1920s Italy. But the lighthearted reference to 1922 gave a taste of the high Tory spirits.

I bet it did. I have a pet theory, which is that the crazier your housing market went after 2001, the weirder your politics did – the US, Australia, Spain, the UK, Italy. Compare the other northern European economies – far less crazy crazy finance, and much less weirdness more generally.

And, as if you needed confirmation of the strange times, Prachanda says it’s a triumph for global communism. Well, it’s a bit like being a Keighley fan; every win feels like the cup final.

Update: You think this isn’t serious? Heads get twisted.

Alexander von Humboldt Ate My Hamster

Posted on by

This post reminded me a lot of Vienna University in 2001-2002; I was there as a SOCRATES student, still actually a member of the Labour Party, while the strange times we live in began. I also first encountered the word “blog” around about then, and indeed visited the Blogger front page, but for some reason I didn’t take the jump to actually get blogging; I therefore bear some responsibility for Instapundit’s undeserved fame.

What do I remember, of the pre-Bologna German university? Well, one thing was the teaching staff, or rather their absence; you could go literally weeks without seeing your professor outside the huge lectures, but why would you want to? Their pompous titles were only matched by their pomposity in general. This didn’t go so much for the postgraduate assistants, but then, there’s only so often you actually want a row about Trotsky…

Another thing was the distinctive Austrian combination of bureaucracy and chaos. It took literally months to complete the process of registration, but it wasn’t as if anyone cared – I often wondered how many of my fellow students bothered to register at all, and how many weren’t even planning to graduate. This Gormenghast atmosphere was only reinforced by the fact I had lectures in the main university building on Dr. Karl Lueger Ring; within the 1870s Italianate monster was a world of high ceilings and flaking plaster, lectures where so many people were packed in the hall that I recall sitting behind a projection booth with my back to the lecturer.

In the entrance hall, there is a huge stone first world war memorial which is kept concealed by noticeboards because it’s ideologically significant to the Burschenschafter on one hand, and the political science crowd on the other. There was a weekly confrontation between the two groups next to it; what with the FPO and Co, we spent a lot of time demonstrating in one way or other. Above all, there was a sense of an academic life left behind, after the ideas and the people had moved on; the plaque commemorating Moritz Schlick, the philosopher murdered during a lecture by a Nazi student, just dramatised this.

Now, partly this was all sui generis. I would guess things were very different down the road at the TU with the engineers. But I do think it represents something like an extreme version of the German system, or rather its (powerful) humanities-plus-Staatsexamen wing. And I wouldn’t feel too nostalgic for it.

But I will, however, remember very well the excellent course which shadowed the European Convention process, protesting on the Ring, telling Robert Menasse he was an idiot…

Against indefinite imprisonment

Posted on by

One of Nicolas Sarkozy’s worse ideas is the retention de securite, a change to the law that would allow for prisoners who complete their sentences to not be released if the government thought they were of “particular dangerousness” – this being an executive decision and hence very likely to be taken for reasons of low politics. There is a campaign about it that’s made a film, part of which is below:

More film is here. And there’s a petition to sign here.

Zimbabwe: beware of cheap imitations

Posted on by

The Zimbabwean opposition is claiming victory on a monster turnout in the elections there, although this may be part of a strategy to pre-empt government rigging by claiming early and often. It would be nice if this was it, but I’m sceptical, of course.

Especially, the presence of ex-finance minister Simba Makoni as a candidate worries me; it would be too easy to stage a Russian-style virtual politics candidacy that sucks up opposition voters and then vanishes, leaving Robert Mugabe the last man standing. You can track the world’s most depressing Google Maps mashup here.