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Barack Obama uses BP as excuse to invade Iran

Could Barack Obama be using the Deepwater Horizon accident as an excuse to invade Iran?

I always had my suspicions about him, but to be fair I’d suspect anyone wily enough to convince the Americans to elect them president. Just look at who they’ve voted for in the past. Incidentally a lot of the British voted for Blair/Brown so it’s not a purely an American issue.

Democratic politics is all about image, not substance, and saying the right things in public is everything if you want to get votes. Many of my thinking American friends wanted “anyone but Bush” and would have probably voted for Kermit the Frog if the Democrats selected him as their candidate. And even that would have been the least-worst choice. But Obama rose to the top.

The last few days have seen Obama and the American news media jumping up and down about “British Petroleum” and how foreigners are responsible for polluting their Gulf of Mexico. I see little concern for the American oil workers killed in the explosion – just a rush to blame whatever foreigners are available at the time. Same old story. Time for a reality check:

  1. BP (not “British Petroleum”) is an international company, a large part of which is owned and based in American.
  2. The Deepwater Horizon rig (the one that blew up) was owned and operated by another international company (Transocean) – originally American and the division operating it was was based in Houston, Texas, USA.
  3. The engineering company responsible for lining the well (which I believe was the cause of the accident) was Halliburton – based in… Houston, Texas, USA.
  4. The crew of the rig were American.
  5. The regulator responsible for the safe operation of the rig was the American Government.

So why is Obama jumping up and down blaming a “foreign” company he’s decided to call “British Petroleum” for this, and demanding they pay for everything? He’s either pig-ignorant or he’s lying through his teeth for political reasons. Given that he’s a politician, it’s almost certainly the latter.

As he’s inherited a wrecked economy, getting a large amount of money from an international company is going to be a good thing as far as his short-term political career is concerned. It’s also important to deflect attention from the fact that his government licensed, regulated and derived a huge amount of income from this operation – even if it was set up before his time in office.

I’m no fan of oil companies, but why should BP foot the bill? This is an accident, with BP being one link in a chain of responsibility running from Halliburton to the US Government. The only commercial reason to blame BP is that it’s the link with the most money. Why are companies operating in America paying the government all this money? For sound regulation and the provision of services. It’s probably a fact that only BP has the knowledge needed to deal with this disaster anyway, but the US government is just as complicit as anyone else. They take the money and the oil, but have a big problem when it comes to taking responsibility. Nothing new there. America is, of course, the biggest consumer of oil in the world.

But what’s really worrying is that this new-age reforming “black” liberal politician is using the American people’s xenophobia for political ends – plain and simple. Anyone But Bush?

To recap: We have another American President playing to the gallery and blaming all the USA’s problems on foreigners to distract attention from his administration’s shortcomings. The Americans seem to be lapping this up, and the rest of the world is back to looking at American rhetoric in disbelief and bewilderment.

So where’s this going to lead? Is Obama looking for an excuse to invade St James’s Square (the location of BP’s rather small global HQ)? I think that’s taking it a bit far.

But wait – BP used to be called the “Anglo-Iranian Oil Company”. The Iranians still remember this, even if most of us have forgotten. It was associated with previous Iranian regimes, some of which are somewhat unpopular. From this point you’re free to make up your own conspiracy theories.

Personally I’ll stick to Occam’s Razer  – the simple answer is that Obama is just another stain on the office of US President, albeit nothing like as scary as the alternatives. So far.

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I was wrong about the airlines

At the weekend I said it’d be two weeks before they decided that the risk from the volcano wasn’t that substantial when weighed against profits, and that political pressure would lift the flight ban before the cloud had lifted in about two weeks. It’s actually taken them less than one.

Engines stop and show signs of wear from time to time, but this time it’s going to be reported and a load of concerned hacks who know nothing about aviation will get very excited.

So queue the flying scares – engines stopping, or nearly stopping and one almighty row.

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Safety is paramount

So the Icelandic volcano makes it impossible to fly in UK airspace. Hmm. The idea is that the volcanic ash, containing silica, turns to glass in jet engines and causes them to stop spinning.

Well I wonder how this one’s going to play out? Let’s see…

I’m sceptical that the ash is that much of a threat – jet engines do fly through dusty and sandy air. This dust seems to be fairly well dispersed (i.e. you can’t see it and radar, apparently, can’t see it). But even it does increase the risk, the “safety is paramount” argument just doesn’t hold water. If it really was the primary concern they’d stay on the ground instead of flying. Flying is more of a risk than staying on the ground, whatever the weather. They’re taking a risk by taking off.

So just how much risk is acceptable? Well when balanced against airline profits I’d say quite a lot. The volcano, by all accounts, shows no sign of slowing down and the weather system we have at this time of year aren’t likely to disperse the ash any time soon. Anyone who knows anything about weather isn’t going to put money on it, I assure you.

I’d give it two weeks – I doubt the cloud will disperse but by then the airlines will have put so much political pressure on NATS and the government (before an election) that they’ll decide that safety really isn’t paramount and start flying again regardless.

There’ll also probably be a big row.

There’ll also probably be a big scare as soon as someone finds a jet engine with glass in it, followed by an even bigger row.

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Council surveys immigrants for BNP

Your local council is collecting the names and addresses of all non-English residents and passing them on to the British National Party. What a great idea!

That isn’t the intended plan, as far as I know, but most PC councils are doing it in the name of “diversity monitoring” or some such nonsense. Whether this is a justifiable use of taxpayers’ resources is one matter, but the fact remains that the databases they’re compiling will be making it in to the hands of every anti-immigrant group both now in the future. The government can’t keep a database like this secret for long – it requires the cooperation of every single council employee and councillor with access to the data, including the BNP councillors.

I was asked to fill in one such form today, when attending a council Easter-holiday event for kids. My usual response is to refuse to fill in this information on principle and explain, at length, why they shouldn’t be asking. I’ve never had any argument with this approach. Today, when I pointed out that this would tell the BNP where all the Muslims in the area lived, who was in the house and where their kids went to school, one of the ladies with the forms went quite pale.

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Digital Economy Bill stitch-up

With any luck, this is the last piece of duff legislation in a long line of duff legislation passed by this partially inept government. It has been rushed through, with more haste than normal. To their eternal discredit the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal parties are complicit in allowing it through.

The only good news is that the tax on landlines has been dropped. This was to “pay for the next generation of Internet provision”, but with no explanation as to why taxpayers were supposed to pay for the infrastructure needed to make the larger ISPs still richer. If there’s a demand for it, the infrastructure will appear anyway because there’s money to be made.

The bad news is that the remainder of the bill is also a joke. It’s to do with protecting the rights of copyright holders (i.e. the music and media companies) by forcing ISPs to police what they’re downloading.

There’s some justice in this, on a theoretical level. ISPs are quite happy to make money from the ‘killer app’ that is media piracy, so they deserve the hassle of trying to clean it up. The problem is, as I need hardly tell you, that it’s unworkable.

The daft idea is to track pirates by their IP addresses. As anyone with an interest in cybercrime will tell you, this just doesn’t work. The criminals obscure their IP addresses, usually by hijacking the IP address belonging to an innocent third party. Under the Digital Economy Bill, it’s the innocent third party that’ll suffer.

There’s also the problem of identifying pirated content. Take it from me, this can’t be done, and the heuristics currently used to detect activity likely to be related to piracy (e.g. P2P protocols) can be rendered obsolete at any time.

Even if you could detect illicit traffic, you can’t possibly pin it down to an individual. Take one trivial example – “mobile broadband”. You can get this by walking into the mobile ‘phone shop of your choice, slapping some cash on the counter and walking out with a cellular modem with an Internet connection that’s completely untraceable. It even gets a different IP address from the service provider each time you turn it on. Are these to be banned? I don’t see it happening.

Pirates could also use one of the many free wireless hotspots found on any high street or hotel. Are these going to be closed down because pirates use them?

So, we have a bill that won’t solve the problem it sets out to tackle but will, instead, result in hassle for the law-abiding innocent computer users who have their IP addresses, and providers of publicly accessible Wifi networks.

You don’t have to be in favour of piracy to regard this latest piece of government nonsense as a very bad thing indeed.

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Ted Relf – local hero

Ted Relf from Shadoxhurst (near Ashford, Kent) has got himself into a spot of bother with the local plod. His crime? Well he put up a sign warning people about potholes in the road outside his house.

Potholes are lethal. They’re bad enough in a motor vehicle, but for someone on a bike they’re murderous. If you can see them you swerve to avoid them and hope following traffic reacts accordingly. If they’re filled with water or it’s dark you’ll probably be thrown off, and you have to hope that following traffic will stop.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/8594682.stm

Mr Relf’s sign was a public service, but according to Kent police, someone complained. Why is it that police and council officials feel the need to act when someone complains? If anything, this guy deserves a commendation protecting the public. Face with a complaint about the warning sign, the police should have told the complainant where to go in stead of wasting time and putting the public in danger by taking action against Mr Relf.

The police claim they’re under-funded; this proves the opposite – they’ve just lost their way.

I wonder if they were acting on orders from the local council, who may not have wanted attention drawn to the quality of the roads.

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Kay Gilderdale prosecution was right

This is a very sad case. Kay Gilderdale’s 31-year-old daughter Lynn was seriously ill and wanted to end her own life. Her mother supported this decision and provided the means (morphine). When this was apparently not working, she herself injected air with the intention of killing her. Lynn actually died of the morphine overdose, but her mother’s intention was to kill her with the air.

I wasn’t there, and couldn’t begin to judge the rights and wrongs of whether a mother should be helping her daughter to die but I’m sure she had good reasons. These were clearly exceptional circumstances, before and after the jury decided to acquit her.

However, the judge, Mr Justice Bean, questioned the decision to prosecute her for attempted murder in the first place and now the newspapers and politicians are jumping on the band wagon.

I think we need a reality check here.

When someone deliberately kills someone else, or tries to, that’s murder. It’s not for newspapers or politicians to decide. When a murder is committed we have a long-established system where a jury (not judge) decides what should be done about it. On the face of it, the jury has come to a sensible decision; the system works and we shouldn’t be messing with it. All murders should be prosecuted and only a jury should decide if there’s any mitigating justification – not politicians, newspapers or journalists.

Yes, it’s been tough on Mrs Gilderdale and I have every sympathy for her. Perhaps the trial could have been hurried up, to reduce her ordeal. But this doesn’t mean we should be messing with trial-by-jury when someone’s been killed as only a jury should be deciding where to draw the line.

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Dangerous killer still behind wheel

Yesterday Tracy Johnson walked free from a court after driving into two cyclists at a roundabout and killing one of them; mother-of-three Sharon Corless.

Newspaper reports make much of the fact she was driving a particularly expensive Chelsea Tractor and had just come off a mobile phone. You get the picture – totally irresponsible on all levels. However, her defence claimed that she might have fainted, and the prosecution couldn’t prove she hadn’t – although their medical examination had been unable to recreate the conditions.

David Porter described the events for the prosecution:

“For reasons that defy any reasonable explanation, the defendant’s vehicle began to accelerate towards the roundabout. The vehicle began to drift from the carriageway and then collided with the verge and drove along the vergeway(sic) with the near side wheels on the verge.

“It travelled along the vergeway for approximately 50 metres. Having collided with the verge the vehicle then collided with Mrs Corless who was dragged underneath the wheels of the Range Rover. She suffered fatal injuries and died later in hospital.

“Moments later there was a second collision with Peter Corless, who was thrown clear of the vehicle but nevertheless sustained serious injuries.

“The vehicle then carried on to the roundabout where it collided with a further vehicle – a Peugeot which was being driven by a young lady with her daughter.

“Fortunately they suffered no injuries. The vehicle then collided and came to a stop with a lamp post on the roundabout itself.

“Witnesses behind the vehicle said at no stage did they see brake lights come one; rather it appeared to accelerate.

“The defendant emerged from the vehicle in a shocked and dazed condition saying something along the lines of ‘what’s happened.’ Moments later she was asking for her mobile telephone, which she later said was to call her partner.”

Now, from what I’ve been able to read about the court case, it is certainly possible she fainted. However the family whose mother was killed have thus been denied a proper trial to prove this, and anyone wealthy enough to employ a good lawyer can just keep driving for a bit after killing someone and then claim they’d fainted in the knowledge that it won’t even go to court.

Either she’s lying, or she isn’t, and we won’t ever get to find out. However, one thing is telling – she was not banned for driving. This woman claims she’s prone to randomly losing conscious, and by all accounts, is still behind a wheel. Holders of a driving license have a duty to report various medical conditions to the DVLA, including anything that causes loss of consciousness, so that their license can be revoked.

Chelsea Tractor of type used (stock photo)

So anyone in Mrs Johnson’s home town of Warrington spotting her behind the wheel would do well to call the police – she’s driving with a medical condition that makes her unsafe. She said so herself in court.

It may be that Mrs Johnson has surrendered her driving license; this wouldn’t make everything aright but would stop her looking guilty. I’d be pleased to hear from anyone who knows this to be the case.

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Gary McKinnon who has Asperger’s syndrome

The Home Secretary (Alan Johnson) has just answered an emergency question in the commons as to why he’s declined to block the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the USA for ‘hacking’ (whatever that means). He said that the medical evidence didn’t amount to enough, he’d admitted he was guilty, and besides, he hasn’t got any discretionary powers in the matter.

In some ways, I agree with him. McKinnon may very well have done what he’s been accused of; and as far as Asperger’s Syndrome goes – do me a favour!

Gary McKinnon
Gary McKinnon
He was diagnosed with this condition last year by Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen from Cambridge University. It’s a psychological illness, right? Well actually there are many who’d doubt that. He certainly seems to be the authority on the subject, based on the number of papers published and TV appearances – acceptable to academia and pop culture. He’s the country’s foremost expert on the condition. But is it an illness?

A few years back Prof. Baron-Cohen devised the A.Q. test, a series of 50 self-assessment questions for those wondering if they have the condition. Apparently the general population scores 28%. I score 76%. Do I have a mental illness? I don’t think so; in fact it’s often said that half the scientists in the world would score highly on the assessment too. Us nerds might be different, but so are gay people. Try telling them they’re ill! If you want to know more, just Google the subject.

Gary McKinnon is also, apparently, upset and depressed. Who wouldn’t be in his circumstances?

It might be worth reminding ourselves what he’s actually done (according to Alan Johnson):

He accessed US government computers looking for UFO evidence while smoking dope (as one does), and in the processes has damaged their operation. According to the Americans (and Mr Johnson) he knocked out all the military computers in Washington for 24-hours.

Apparently this was done by using perl to look for blank passwords, a technique a find entirely credible. That’s right – McKinnon is a script kiddie. He claims he was caught when using Windows Remote Desktop while the real user was still on the machine, which also fits.

Now for this he deserves to be prosecuted, the same as the morons who were prosecuted for criminal damage while attempting to thieve hereabouts. The difference is that Harrow magistrates decided just to give them a good ticking off after they’d made up some sob story about turning their life around. McKinnon’s treatment is on the other extreme.

Unfortunately for him, there’s an obvious political element. The American military has lost (more) credibility and they want someone, preferably foreign, to divert attention. They can’t catch Bin Laden, so he’ll have to do. Anyone in the data security game knows that any serious cyber-criminals will be able to cover their tracks, so IF serious deliberate damage was done and IF they traced it back to this script kiddie then the one thing you can be pretty sure of is that he wasn’t behind it. Either that, or all the computers in Washington were in such a fragile state that they’d fall over if you sneezed.

In spite of the Home Secretary’s assurances about the extradition arrangements between here and the USA being reciprocal, many will suspect that this case results from the special Labour-Bush relationship – the one where Bush asked and Blair gave.

If Alan Johnson is right, and he really does have no discretion to stop this charade, the real question David Burrowes (McKinnon’s MP) should have followed his answer with was “Why not?”

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George Osborne – be very afraid

This Tuesday George Osborne gave speech at Imperial College London  explaining how the Conservatives are going to spearhead the green revolution with a recycling reward scheme. It’s complete madness, although Telegraph columnists seem to like it – or more likely aren’t clued up enough to see the problem.

Apparently he’ll cut carbon emissions by 10% within a year. Great! But how? He doesn’t say, but I’m sure we’ll all be interested to learn in good time. However, the incredible recycling plans that followed don’t exactly encourage me to believe he’s got any good ideas.

“Carrots work better than sticks. Instead of punishing people, as Labour do with bin taxes, the Conservatives want to encourage families by paying them to recycle.

This isn’t an idle promise – we’re actually making it happen on the ground in Conservative areas. Now we want to make it happen everywhere.”

Apparently they’re going to reward recycling households with vouchers to spend at, wait for it, Tesco and Marks and Spencer! One of the best ways I can think of to cut down non-recyclable domestic refuse is to close down M+S, who were easily the worst offenders when it came to stupid packaging (see blogs passim).

But it gets worse. Apparently they’re going to make this work with some new miraculous technology. Dustcarts will be fitted with a gizmo that scans the contents of the recycling bin, works out the address the items came from and allocates “recycling points” to your account in a special database. Methinks he’s been watching too much Star Trek. Why don’t politicians ever bother talking to engineers before opening their mouths and spouting such fantastic nonsense?

Incidentally, if you’re not an engineer, fair enough – but take it from me that this will never work as described.

However, whether it works or not, they’re spectacularly missing the point. Recycling isn’t the answer. They should be looking at ways for reducing waste in the first place, and there’s precious little evidence of that. In fact this encourages even more waste by rewarding people to manage to fill their recycling bin with £130. It’s potty! Anyone taking the incentive seriously might, for example, switch to disposable plates and cutlery just to ensure their bin is always topped up.

So who’s responsible for this nonsense? Well apparently the Conservatives now have Tesco, BT and B+Q (part of Kingfisher) on board as advisers on environmental issues. Need I say more?

Meanwhile Labour Health Secretary Andy Burnham launched a report saying we should cut down on livestock rearing and meat consumption to save greenhouse gasses and improve people’s health. Now Labour has the skids under them they’re talking sense, although I doubt they’d be so candid if they thought they’d actually ever have to sell the idea to the farming industry or those hooked on eating cheap meat.