The War Nerd and I are in agreement. The claimed number of Mumbai attackers has more to do with how many the Indian’s can account for now than it does about how many who accurately attacked.
He reckons 23 attackers is a better number than 10.
The Washington Post has a good look at new and exciting opportunities for fraud coming out of the housing debacle in the US.
I particularly liked the enterprising fellows breaking into derelict houses, re-keying them, and then renting them out.
The most curious thing about the All Mumbai, All The Time media circus is just how little is known.
We can hear interviews with victims, complete with background explosions. But at the end of the day the victims have less idea what is going on than do the newsroom anchors interviewing them. We’re just listening for the frisson of fear and a dirty hope someone might die while we’re listening.
The New York Times has some detail on how the attack was launched. Even then it asks more questions than it answers.
Who did this? What exactly was it that they did? What did they hope to achieve?
The organisation was so very good for such small time objectives. And these guys know how to shoot straight, so they’ve done more fighting than the average terror training camp provides.
Pakistani regular forces trying to provoke a broader conflict is the only thing that makes any sort of sense.
UPDATED: Now here’s something interesting in the Washington Post:
Three days before the Mumbai atrocities, Zardari disbanded the political wing of the military’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence agency”
The attack would have been planned long in advance. But a Pakistani PM who had to be brought down makes more sense than anything else here.
In 1989 Michael Lewis wrote an excellent guide to what was wrong with the financial sector in the book “Liar’s Poker”.
I’ve been quiet lately, struggling to think of something perspicacious to add to the slaughter in world finance.
Fortunately Lewis has written a lengthy essay in Conde Nast’s Portfolio.com making the point better than I could have.
But what it comes down to is too much wishful thinking that the power of the market can be inherently beneficial.
A hammer is powerful world changing tool, just like financial markets. But it can stave in your head as easily (perhaps more easily) as it can drive in a nail.
The particular problem in the markets at the moment is that bad mortgages were made and then treated like traditional mortgages (the ones where a grumpy bank manager denies finance to all but the most deserving).
The reason for that is the Clinton administration thought that with just a little tweaking the mortgage markets could solve social issues around home ownership.
Yes, then the markets were utterly culpable in not sandboxing these dodgy loans and treating them as the dangerous things they were. The failure of imagination which never asked what would happen to ballooning real estate prices when all the newly eligible, and unable to repay, had bought their ludicrous houses was particularly egregious. I was asking this question 10 years ago and I don’t get paid millions to ponder it.
Here in Australia with the collapse of ABC Learning we’re seeing a related issue. Fast Eddie Groves house of cards fell down when the easy money dried up.
But before that the Government hoped the marketplace could solve the childcare issue without any need for real responsibility to be taken. It was lead into this view by a minister who found employment with ABC Learning the moment the electorate tired of him, and a preponderance of child care operators in the ranks of the Liberal Party might well have had something to do with this wishful thinking.
Setting up child care operators as tax-farmers was always as flawed a proposition as hoping mortgage providers could solve housing issues without consequence.
So where else have hopeful politicians forced the public into market solutions without any clear understanding of how the magic actually works?
Superannuation.
With the Labor Party effectively (via the industry funds which all but share office space with their headquarters and have connecting doors down on Sussex Street) running nearly half the nation’s superannuation it’s going to get particularly ugly when this one goes titsup.
Any others dear reader?
Now here’s an interesting announcement on video chat now available in gmail.
Goodbye Skype you resource pig!
There’s a plethora of news on Government money pouring in to try and shore up motor vehicle production in Australia.
The argument for it is that as long as we can make cars we can make other things should we be cut off from the world by conflict.
For many years successive governments have worked hard to make sure other key industries are retained on shore. Pharmaceutical precursor chemicals being first to mind amongst these.
The trouble is this list would have made sense in, oh say 1940. But it’s missing a few things today.
What sort of cars and drugs are we going to make without semi-conductors (computer chips)?
There was an effort to get a semi-conductor industry going a few years ago. But the first stage, the charcoal factory needed before we could start silicon smelting died at the hand of Mogo activists on the NSW South Coast.
But as an exercise for you, dear readers, are there other precursor industries a 21st century government should be maintaining in the interest of self-sufficiency?
The Onion has a wonderful piece on what it’s taken for America to finally elect a progressive black politician to the presidency:
“”To elect a black man, in this country, and at this time—these last eight years must have really broken you.”
…
“Obama had the foresight to run for president at a time when being an African-American was not as important to Americans as, say, the ability to clothe and feed their children,” Pung continued. “An election like this only comes once, maybe twice, in a lifetime.”
As we enter a new era of equality for all people, the election of Barack Obama will decidedly be a milestone in U.S. history, undeniable proof that Americans, when pushed to the very brink, are willing to look past outward appearances and judge a person by the quality of his character and strength of his record. So as long as that person is not a woman.
If not for the implosion of the banking system it could well have gone the other way.
Well today (probably) we find out who’s new leader of the free world.
Studies I’ve seen have Obama winning today 19 times out of 20. Which leaves McCain still in the race.
That he’s managed to stay in there at all after what his party has done to his country must surely be regarded as a miracle.
I’d be sad to see either candidate lose, but I think I’ll be slightly sadder for America if Obama loses.
The real tragedy is that McCain didn’t get to be president in 2000.
He’s too old and while he’s probably right, that the corruption of congress is the greatest threat to America, tackling that is going to only come from a president with a commanding majority in the house and senate.
Fascinating theatre as always though.
In the possible hope of being condemned from the campaign trail Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls has dedicated her latest pop-laden piece of delightful malice to the now iconic Sarah Palin.
Apparently Ben Folds has produced the upcoming album “Who killed Amanda Palmer”. On the basis of this track the collaboration has really paid off with the up-beat Folds touch meshing well with the deep inner darkness of the Dresden Dolls.
The War Nerd has a recent story on the clever techniques Iraqi insurgents are using to lob explosives in the general direction of American soldiers. While the video (hit the story link email readers) is made about as poorly as it’s possible to make video it’s still eerily fascinating.
Particularly the way the rocketeers look like normal suburban dads arseing around on a Saturday afternoon. Even more terrifying is the odds that they’ll end up blowing up their countrymen rather than any of their enemy but they don’t appear to have any concern about it at all.
Video and article highly recommended but I suggest taking the war nerd with a grain of salt more generally. He’s very Russo-centric.
Some observations on the rugby league world cup opening ceremony:
2. Why was the rugby league world cup used as an advertising vehicle for Baz Luhrmann’s Australia? Do they really think that many people outside of Australia are going to be watching, and that those people would be interested in an “epic romance of our ages”, or whatever nonsense tagline they’re using to promote it?
3. I’m all for promoting indigenous culture, but the Redfern Aboriginal dancers seemed out of place — a little shoehorned into the format — and whatever story they were depicting was incomprehensible. And they were also being used to promote Luhrmann’s film.
4. Natalie Bassingthwaite in a flowing white dress. To quote my grandmother who was also watching, “A woman who looks like that has no place on a rugby field.” And the song she performed is the world cup’s anthem? I think a football anthem should be rousing and uplifting, not insipid, whiny and waffling on about heroes.
5. Somehow, amazingly, they managed to make Advance Australia Fair sound better than God Defend New Zealand! This appears to have been managed by having a man with stupid hair and a not-very-big voice (well, apart from the last note when he finally broke into full throat) sing the New Zealand anthem accompanied by something that sounded like a Casio keyboard. The Australian anthem, on the other hand, was performed by a full-voiced young lady (who, coincidentally, stars in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia) accompanied by a full orchestra. Also it had a proper introduction, not that silly fanfare the rugby union mob use.
6. The people holding the big Australian and New Zealand flags got tired and sat down, leaving the flags lying on the ground!
The game began, I went to bed.
Last year without much fanfare but with full public disclosure for those who watch these things, the banking regulators in this country carefully put in place mechanisms to let our banks offload their bad mortgage debts onto the taxpayer.
Careful and without fanfare doesn’t make the Leader look commanding in a crisis though so in the last week we’ve been served up a number of half baked proposals that would have sounded great at 11pm over pizza in the Ministerial Wing.
Like all rushed proposals thought out by non-specialists for maximum media advantage they had some unintended consequences.
Amongst those are going to massive job losses in the non-bank financial sector and the destruction of large portions of retirement savings, especially by those held by retirees with limited further earning potential.
Retirees are particularly dangerous because with their other investments crushed they’re going to have to liquidate their houses for pin money which will further screw the bloody mortgages that started all this.
Don’t believe me how badly this has been handled? Have a read of The Australian’s or the SMH’s take on this.
A hell of a lot of ordinary lives are about to be sacrificed on the altar of Kevin Rudd’s ego. But I doubt they’ll be the first.
At the end of it all an even smaller group of banks will have even more power, and they’ll have financed it with our money.
Ben Pobjie in the New Matilda is becoming one of my favourite reads. Today he examines the soon to be doomed education revolution:
This is why, as you may remember, Kevin Rudd promised an education revolution at last year’s election. “I will start an education revolution!” Rudd would shriek furiously at press conferences, and the nation would swoon at his strength and decisiveness and the vague hint of violence in his eyes.
But how would he do it? How would he address the problem of our abysmal schools, where the only thing more blatant than the teachers’ efforts to transmit leftist propaganda is the students’ slack-jawed indifference? We waited with bated breath.
Ars Technica has a despairing look at the coming compulsory net filtering for all of us under Kevin Rudd’s grand plan to make us all into better people.
Someone in Government is going to have to determine what content can be seen by whom.
It should make the big end of town very happy.
The Register brings word of the Sarah Palin erotic spoof (for want of words which won’t trip your content filters) being made by Larry Flynt’s Hustler empire.
Tapping into some deep under currents there, the outrage will be wonderful to behold.
And this is what they’re thinking about the bank bailouts in the financial sector where this image is circulating!