Category: Europe

Not a Surprise

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Speaking of things that are now “Inoperative”, it appears that the it is no longer the policy of Her Majesty’s Secret Service to not spy on members of Parliament:

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the UK body that hears complaints about intelligence agencies, has ruled that the communications of MPs and peers are not protected by the Wilson Doctrine, which was thought to exempt them from surveillance by GCHQ and other intelligence agencies. Back in July, the UK government had already admitted that the Wilson Doctrine “cannot work sensibly” when mass surveillance is taking place, but today’s decision goes further by explicitly rejecting the idea of any formal immunity from spying.

As The Guardian explains: “The [Wilson] convention is named after former prime minister Harold Wilson, who pledged in 1966 that MPs’ and peers’ phones would not be tapped. In December 1997, the then prime minister Tony Blair said the doctrine extended to electronic communication, including emails.” In its judgment, the IPT wrote: “We are satisfied that the Wilson Doctrine is not enforceable in English law by the Claimants or other MPs or peers by way of legitimate expectation.” The IPT agreed it was “a political statement in a political context, encompassing the ambiguity that is sometimes to be found in political statements.”

 ………

 One of the two Green party politicians who had brought the complaint to the IPT, MP Caroline Lucas, said after the ruling: “This judgement is a body blow for parliamentary democracy. My constituents have a right to know that their communications with me aren’t subject to blanket surveillance—yet this ruling suggests that they have no such protection. Parliamentarians must be a trusted source for whistleblowers and those wishing to challenge the actions of the Government.” She went on to call for new legislation providing protection to MPs, peers, Members of the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly Members, and MEPs from extra-judicial spying.

Live in obedient fear, citizen.

I Can Understand How a Nobel Prize for Corruption Might Appear to Contradict the Organization’s Goals

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OK, it’s isn’t technically a Nobel for Corruption, it’s the Nobel Prize for Economics, and I agree with Bo Rothstein, who has concluded that the “Nobel Prize for Economics” is completely at odds with the vision of Alfred Nobel:

Bo Rothstein, an important member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, has today in Sweden’s most widely read newspaper called for an immediate declaration of a moratorium on the awarding of Sveriges Riksbank Prize for Economics in the name of Nobel and the Nobel Foundation.

 Rothstein’s article argues that today with increasing success, economics as commonly taught in universities and endorsed by most winners of the economics prize promotes corruption in societies around the world. Therefore he concludes that the Nobel Foundation’s awarding the economics prize is “in direct conflict with what Alfred Nobel decreed in his will.”

 “I will,” writes Rothstein, “therefore now take the initiative in this matter.”

It’s actually more than that.

There is evidence that the study economics are actually results in corrupt behavior, and that this applies to politicians who have left academe as well.

It’s not surprising: Whatever you think of the study of law, it clearly buys into a system of morality which is presented as being independent of personal benefit.

Modern “Free Market Mousketeer” economics, by contrast sees personal interest as the alpha and omega of morality. Their world view is mirrored by the William Edward Hickman quote, “What is good for me is right.”

It may not be fair to say this, but it behooves us to note that Mr. Hickman, who was described by Ayn Rand as having, “The best and strongest expression of a real man’s psychology I have heard,,” was a psychopath who kidnapped and dismembered a 12 year old girl.

The cult of the market, and shareholder value, is by definition sociopathic, and as such, it is a corrupting field as study.

Of course, my view does not apply to all economists, just generally to what one would call Neoclassical Economics*

Basically, they favor gross oversimplification of the human condition so as to allow for the creation elegant economic models made, and these simplifications give us a worldview that is both inaccurate and amoral.

At most universities, Econ 101, even as it notes that the models are over-simplified, provides no alternative means beyond neoclassical models.

It’s a petri dish for corruption.

*Krugman uses the term “Freshwater Economics” because the schools that most lionize the idea of the rational and fully informed actor in the market place come from schools located inland, particularly in Chicago.

Quote of the Day

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I didn’t get into Parliament to be a bit of f%$#ing arm candy’

—An unnamed Tory woman Member of Parliament, who was upset at being required to walk next to Prime Minister Cameron at the Conservative Party conference

Here’s the deal.

If you join a party of Neanderthals, you will be dealing with Neanderthals with Neanderthal attitudes.

I would think that this should be self-evident:

Some female Tory MPs are apparently outraged at being lined up as ‘arm candy’ to walk alongside Prime Minister David Cameron at this year’s party conference.

According to The Spectator, there are a number of new female MPs who have been told to stand and walk alongside the Prime Minister as he makes his way between events at this year’s Tory conference in Manchester.

Some of the women are said to be unhappy with the arrangement, which is said to have become apparent when the special rota on who will accompany Mr Cameron on his visits was published among the team.

According to the publication, one source even claimed: ‘I didn’t get into Parliament to be a bit of f***ing arm candy’.

Heh.

Good News

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Of course, if Europeans on the the TTIP trade deal, then the privacy ruling of the European High Court would go away:

Europe’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), has struck down the 15-year-old Safe Harbour agreement that allowed the free flow of information between the US and EU. The most significant repercussion of this ruling is that American companies, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter, may not be allowed to send user data from Europe back to the US.

It’s important to note that the CJEU’s ruling (PDF) will not immediately prevent US companies from sending data back to the motherland. Rather, the courts in each EU member state can now rule that the Safe Harbour agreement is illegal in their country. It is is very unlikely, however, that a national court would countermand the CJEU’s ruling in this case.

The case was originally sent to the CJEU by the High Court of Ireland, after the Irish data protection authority rejected a complaint from Maximillian Schrems, an Austrian citizen. He had argued that in light of Snowden’s revelations about the NSA, the data he provided to Facebook that was transferred from the company’s Irish subsidiary to the US under the Safe Harbour scheme was not, in fact, safely harboured. Advocate General Yves Bot of the CJEU agreed with Schrems that the EU-US Safe Harbour system did not meet the requirements of the Data Protection Directive, because of NSA access to EU personal data.

According to an earlier CJEU statement (PDF), “the access enjoyed by the United States intelligence services to the transferred data constitutes an interference with the right to respect for private life and the right to protection of personal data, which are guaranteed by the [Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU].” Another issue, according to the Advocate General, was “the inability of citizens of the EU to be heard on the question of the surveillance and interception of their data in the United States,” which therefore amounts to “an interference with the right of EU citizens to an effective remedy, protected by the Charter.”

Because the CJEU was ruling on an issue in Ireland, the Irish court is expected to make its own judgement shortly. It is likely that the Irish court will side with the CJEU. When that happens, one of two things will need to happen: Facebook, and many other US companies with Irish subsidiaries, will need to keep European data within the EU; or the US will need to provide real privacy protection for EU data when it flows back to the US. As the latter is unlikely due to pressure from the NSA and other intelligence agencies, we suspect most US companies will opt for the former.

If the TTIP, the trans-Atlantic version of the TPP, is adopted, all of these protections go away, because profits trump people under these deals.

Elections is Weird

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Somehow, after completely failing to deliver on its promises, and folding like a bunch of overcooked broccoli, Syriza still managed to emerge from the latest Greek elections the conclusive winner:

Alexis Tsipras will be sworn in as Greece’s prime minister later on Monday and his new government formally announced on Tuesday, Greek media said, after the leftist Syriza leader romped to an unexpectedly convincing election victory.

The result on Sunday was a personal triumph for the 41-year-old, who gambled on the snap poll last month to see off a revolt by party radicals over his U-turn on accepting more tough austerity measures in exchange for Greece’s third international bailout.

The premier-elect will now make renegotiating the terms of Greece’s debt mountain a top priority. He will attempt to build a broad consensus among the parties he defeated so as to strengthen his hand in talks with the country’s eurozone creditors, a senior Syriza source told Reuters.

………

Following a campaign that for weeks looked too close to call, Syriza won 35.5% of the vote – a fraction less than its previous total – against 28.1% for the centre-right opposition, New Democracy, giving the leftist party 145 seats in the 300-seat parliament.

………

Tsipras said he would renew his coalition with the small nationalist Independent Greeks party to give him the 151-seat majority he needs in parliament. The new government’s programme will be dictated by the punishing terms of Greece’s latest €86bn rescue package, which demands a radical overhaul of the country’s ailing economy and far-reaching changes to tax, welfare and pension systems. The cash-for-reforms deal is subject to quarterly reviews, with the first due next month.

I am thoroughly flummoxed by these results.

My guess as to the meaning of all this is that, “The whippings will continue until morale improves.”

Hunter S. Thompson was a Prophet

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In The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time, Hunter S. Thompson relates the following tale:

This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas. The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumor campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his own barnyard sows.

“Christ, we can’t get a way calling him a pig-f%$#er,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitch deny it.”

Well, right now, the UK is transfixed by the tale of PM David Cameron and Piggate:

Late last night, the Daily Mail published an astounding excerpt of an unauthorized biography of UK Prime Minister David Cameron, alleging that he placed a “private part” of his body into the mouth of a dead pig’s head while at Oxford University.
He put his nob in a pig’s mouth. Popped his todger into the poor swine’s gob.
It’s crucial when dealing with such an important and weighty story to have all the facts, so please let this Brit guide you through the revolting tale of prime ministerial pig porkery.

It is claimed that there are pictures, but this could be a, “Make the sonofabitch deny it,” moment.

In either case, this is a profoundly weird moment in politics.

In Addition to Scoring a Remarkable Electoral Triumph, It Appears That Jeremy Corbyn Has the Power of Prophecy

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In 1993, he predicted that the Maastricht Treaty, which converted the European Community into the European Union, would lead to an institution run by and for bankers, to the detriment of the most vulnerable of society:

Jeremy Corbyn predicted that the formation Euro would lead to the imposition of a “bankers’ Europe” on its members, according to parliamentary records.

Ahead of the 1993 adoption of the EU’s founding Maastricht Treaty Mr Corbyn warned that the creation of the currency’s European Central Bank would undermine European countries’ ability to set their own policy.

“The whole basis of the Maastricht treaty is the establishment of a European Central Bank, which is staffed by bankers, independent of national governments and national economic policies, and whose sole policy is the maintenance of price stability,” he said.

“That will undermine any social objective that any Labour Government in the United Kingdom—or any other Government—would wish to carry out.”

(emphasis mine)

Credit where credit is due.  Corbyn nailed this.

Corbyn Wins in UK, Hopefully, This Presages Bernie in US

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So, Jeremy Corbyn has won the election to lead the Labour Party, which means that after about 25 years, Labour will be an actually supporter of (small “L”) labor, as opposed to the Blairite policies which favor the wealthy in general, and the City of London (their Wall Street) in particular.

What is particularly significant is that he absolutely crushed the opposition, and he did so with a voter turnout that puts Tony Blair’s wins to shame:

Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the British Labour party, in a stunning first-round victory that dwarfed even the mandate for Tony Blair in 1994.

 He won with nearly 59.5% of first-preference votes, beating rivals Andy Burnham, who trailed on 19%, and Yvette Cooper who received 17%. The “Blairite” candidate Liz Kendall came last on 4.5%.

 Minutes after his victory, Corbyn said the message is that people are “fed up with the injustice and the inequality” of Britain.

 “The media and many of us, simply didn’t understand the views of young people in our country. They were turned off by the way politics was being conducted. We have to and must change that. The fightback gathers speed and gathers pace,” he said.

 The north London MP is one of the most unexpected winners of the party leadership in its history, after persuading Labour members and supporters that the party needed to draw a line under the New Labour era of Blair and Gordon Brown.

 Attention will now turn to who serves in Corbyn’s top team, with MPs such as John McDonnell, Angela Eagle, Sadiq Khan, Ken Livingstone and possibly leadership rival Burnham tipped for key roles. Liam Byrne, Mary Creagh and John Healey have also indicated they would be willing to serve on his frontbench.

 ………

 Corbyn’s campaign has also been helped by a surge in new members and supporters who paid £3 to take part in the vote, leading to a near-tripling of those eligible to about 550,000 people. Throughout the campaign, he addressed packed rallies and halls, where he had to give speeches outside the buildings to crowds gathered in the street.

 While his supporters will be jubilant about Labour taking a turn to the left, his triumph will be deeply disappointing to the parliamentary party, which overwhelmingly backed other candidates by 210 to 20.

………

 In the campaign, he promised to give Labour members a much greater say in the party’s policymaking process, in a move that could sideline MPs. His key proposals include renationalisation of the railways, apologising for Labour’s role in the Iraq war, quantitative easing to fund infrastructure, opposing austerity, controlling rents and creating a national education service.

 He is also likely to prove an obstacle to David Cameron’s ambition to launch airstrikes on Syria, although some Labour MPs could defy the whip to vote with the government.

I would expect that a significant portion of the Labour Party, particularly in Parliament, will be dedicated to undermining him. (Shades of McGovern in 1972)

Of course, if they do so by voting with the Tories, and against Labour on war, I think that they will be buying into a severe, and well deserved, sh%$storm at the next elections.

And of course on the donor side, we are already seeing the rich donors who were so courted by “New Labour” now throwing tantrums:

Labour’s biggest private individual donor has pledged to stop giving money to the party now Jeremy Corbyn is leader and instead fund a group of MPs dubbed ‘The Resistance’.

 John Mills, who gave £1.65 million under Ed Miliband, told The Telegraph that Labour would become a “protest” party under the hard-Left MP and warned his economic policies were unworkable.

 He stands ready to “funnel” cash into Labour for the Common Good – the group set up by Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt – and think tanks looking to reinvigorate centrist thinking in the party.

 It comes as with senior moderates due to go public with their concerns about the party’s direction at a string of policy seminars being organised between now and Christmas.

We also have a large number of Labour “front benchers” indicating, at least for now, that they are uninterested in leadership roles under Jeremy Corbyn.

Clearly, they hope that the party will suffer in their absence, but it suffered in their presence, so make of this what you will.

In either case, it does appear that Corbyn has managed to populate his shadow cabinet:

Jeremy Corbyn, the new Labour leader, is facing the first test of his ability to lead the parliamentary party after appointing his closest political ally, John McDonnell, as shadow chancellor. [of the Exchequer]


 The decision means that the five most senior positions will be filled by men, including Andy Burnham as shadow home secretary, Hilary Benn as shadow foreign secretary, and Tom Watson as elected deputy as well as Corbyn and McDonnell.

 Corbyn’s biggest problem may now be the fierce resistance within the parliamentary party and even among some union leaders to the appointment of McDonnell, with some asking Corbyn to appoint Angela Eagle as shadow chancellor, to balance the shadow cabinet politically and by gender. Eagle was instead given the business portfolio and will also become shadow first secretary of state, deputising for Corbyn in the Commons.

 McDonnell was Corbyn’s leadership campaign manager and has advocated nationalisation without compensation in the past as well as 60p tax rates. Among MPs, his appointment was seen as a disavowal of Corbyn’s commitment to create a political consensus.

Seeing as how the most recent “stand” by the Labour establishment was to abstain, as opposed to opposing, draconian cuts to the social safety net, because there were a few items in the bill that might have engendered mild support from some potential Labor voters.

For anyone who thinks that the political policies of the “New Labor”, are wrong, I would point them to Ian Welsh’s advice on this matter:

So, you voted for Corbyn. You’re a Labour party member, old or new. What MUST you do to have Corbyn’s back?

Because, be clear, he will fail without you. He will lose. He and a few allies within the Labour party cannot win this fight alone. He will be destroyed by lack of cooperation, scandals, and engineered crises. The vast majority of all media coverage will be negative, etc.

You must take over the locals—the branches and constituencies. Flood them. If the officers don’t act how you think they should, let them know. And by “let them know,” I mean, get in their faces.

Make sure your local MP, who probably doesn’t like Corbyn or support him, know that if he doesn’t get onside, he won’t be the nominee in the next election. Make his/her life personally unpleasant. If s/he votes against Corbyn, picket him. Mock her. Make sure there is a cost. Because on the other side, that MP will know that if they oppose Corbyn, they will be taken care of by the City and the other usual suspects.

You must prove there is a cost for opposing the democratic will of the majority of Labour party members. MPs and officials must know that if they try to sabotage Corbyn, their days in the party are numbered and will be extremely unpleasant.

The carrot is that if they get onside, they’re gold. They can keep their positions, they can feel like they’re part of a swelling horde.

This statement would be a good blue print for supporters of the “Democratic Wing” of the Democratic Party.

Lazy Wankers! They Can Work, I Don’t Care If They Are Dead!

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The Tories Must Be Channeling Monty Python and the Holy Grail

A study by the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK has revealed that over 2,000 people died almost immediately after being declared being fit for work.

The Tories have stopped even trying to pretend that they aren’t evil motherf%$#ers who glory in causing pain to the less fortunate:


Nearly 90 people a month are dying after being declared fit for work, according to new data that has prompted campaigners and Labour leadership contenders to call for an overhaul of the government’s welfare regime.

Statistics released by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) revealed that during the period December 2011 and February 2014 2,380 people died after their claim for employment and support allowance (ESA) ended because a work capability assessment (WCA) found they were found fit for work.

Ministers insisted that the data could not be used to link claimant deaths to its welfare reforms, but the figures focused attention on the government’s fit-for-work assessment process, which has been dogged by controversy in recent years.

Anita Bellows, researcher with campaign group Disabled People Against the Cuts, said it would take time to fully analyse the figures, but added the group was “very worried by the number of people who died within two weeks of being found fit for work” [see footnote].

Letters: If I can’t decide which biscuits to buy, would you want me making decisions about how much morphine to give your mother?

The mortality data was compiled in response to freedom of information requests, and was released by the department only following a ruling by the Information Commissioner’s Office in April.

 But it gets even better:

The WCA, currently administered by private outsourcing firm Maximus, having for most of the last government been run by Atos, has been widely criticised as error-prone and mechanistic, often causing harm to the sick and disabled claimants who are obliged to undergo it. It has been dogged by administrative delays, which have often left claimants stressed and penniless, and there have been hundreds of thousands of appeals against fit-for-work decisions in recent years, about four in 10 of which have succeeded.

So, not only are they killing people, they are allowing their buddies in business to make a profit out of public money doing it.

At the rate this is going, Dick Cheney is going to have to up his game, or people will begin to think that he is a bleeding heart liberal.

Marie Le Pen Will Probably Be the next President of France

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We know this because the National Front Party, sick and tired of party founder Jean Le Pen aggressively bigoted antics, have expelled him from the party.

The kicking his ass out was done by his daughter, Marine Le Pen:

Jean-Marie Le Pen, a co-founder of France’s far-right National Front, was expelled from the party on Thursday after he repeatedly angered its current leader, his daughter Marine, by reviving the party’s anti-Semitic past, which she is eager to shed.

The party’s executive board voted to kick him out after hearing three hours of arguments from Mr. Le Pen, 87, a former paratrooper who for years has symbolized the most retrograde strain of French politics, including hatred of immigrants and nostalgia for the days of colonial rule in Algeria.

Under his daughter’s leadership, the National Front has broken into the political mainstream, and Mr. Le Pen has increasingly become an embarrassment to her, especially after repeating his familiar views on the Holocaust. He has repeatedly told interviewers that the gas chambers were a “detail of history” and has said the wartime collaborator Marshal Philippe Pétain was not a “traitor.”

The Le Pens have been tussling in public for five months, with Ms. Le Pen saying in April that she was “in profound disagreement” with her father after his latest remarks on the Holocaust. France has been treated since then to a father-daughter political feud of rare virulence, one that at first riveted the French public but more recently has seemed to irritate it.

The National Front is the only credible Euroskeptic party in France, and now that they are consistently getting double digit numbers in elections, the fact that they have made a clean and dramatic break with their racist and anti Semitic origins means that they become a much more credible political player in the French electoral system.

It’s not a big move.  It’s basically their moving from Strom Thurmond to Ronald Reagan:  Still racist as f%$#, but respectably so, but Reagan did win the Presidential election, twice, and Nicolas Sarkosyn used oblique appeals to bigotry in both of his his Presidential bids.

Considering that Holland is currently polling lower than a case of the Clap, and the leader of the center right French Republican Party, the aforementioned Nicolas Sarkosy has still not recovered from his Presidency, and so polls about the level of a visit to a proctologist.

Current polling, taken before Jean Le Pen’s ouster, had Marine Le Pen about 10 points behind both of them, and I figure that removing that albatross from her neck is probably good for at least that.

Quote of the Day

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This is the best comment this far on what is now the ongoing election for the Labour leadership in the UK:

The fervour around Jeremy Corbyn is extraordinary, but it wouldn’t be fair to suggest he’s the only Labour politician who can bring large crowds on to the streets to greet him. Tony Blair is just as capable. In his case the crowds are there to scream that he should be arrested for war crimes and to throw things at him, but that’s being pernickety; he can certainly draw an audience.

Heh.

If You Cannot Make Charter Schools in Sweden, You Cannot Make Them Work at All

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It turns out that when you take well funded and competently run public schools, and decide to sh%$ can that and throw public monies at privately run schools, it all turns into crap:

Sweden’s education system has often been cited by Michael Gove as a role model, especially for its policy of state-sponsored free schools providing increased choice for parents. In 2008 Gove told the Conservative party conference that Sweden’s school reforms would be introduced if he was in government – and in 2010 promptly did so, with the advent of free schools.

A few years later and Sweden’s star has dimmed. The 2012 Pisa results show Sweden’s exam results falling abruptly across all three measures of reading, maths and science – with the country recording the largest drop in maths performance over 10 years. Anna Ekström, head of Sweden’s National Education Agency, said in response: “The bleak picture has become bleaker with the Pisa review that was presented today.”

………

In recent months a number of for-profit companies running free schools in Sweden have been in financial difficulties, while a recent TV exposé revealed that the state-funded privately-run schools were prepared to bend selection rules to admit bright pupils.

Sweden’s education minister, Jan Björklund, said the Pisa results were “the final nail in the coffin for the old school reform,” and speculated that the central government could take over running schools from Sweden’s municipalities.

This is not a surprise.

The way to fix public schools is to actually fix public schools.

The charter school movement is based on the twin goals of destroying teachers’ unions and transferring public funds to the parasites on Wall Street.

Charters have not, nor has they ever been about our kids learning.

H/T Angry Bear.

This Almost Makes Me Wish That I Was German

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Please note the modifier here, “Almost”.

Living in an America where pretty much every FBI anti-terrorism operation involves paying an informant to entrap some loser, it is heartening that a German prosecutor has been given the sack over investigating journalists for treason:

Netzpolitik.org, the website at the centre of the treason scandal in Germany, is the real winner in the whole furore as a senior German official was forcibly retired over the scandal, editor Markus Beckedahl told el Reg this morning.

Last night, Germany’s chief federal prosecutor Harald Range was given the boot by German Justice Minister Heiko Maas over his handling of the affair. Technically, Range resigned, but it was his decision to pursue Beckedahl and fellow journalist Andrew Meister for treason that led to his downfall.

The journalists, meanwhile, have seen donations to their website come flooding in. The pair were under investigation for treason for supposedly betraying state secrets after they published leaked documents relating to plans to monitor Twitter and Facebook chats, as well as a €2.75m project to process massive online data sets.

This sort of law enforcement and prosecutorial overreach gets promotions in the US.

It’s nice to see that there are countries where this bullsh%$ is not tolerated.

This Is so F%$#Ing Cool………

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For the past week or so, there have been rumors that divers in Sweden finding a sunken Russian sub, possibly related to the contretemps late last year when the Swedes were hunting what they thought was some sort of Russian submersible.

The story of the discovery is way cooler than that:

Sweden said on Tuesday the wreck of a submarine found off its coast appeared to be a Czarist-era Russian vessel that collided with a Swedish ship about a century ago.

“We are most likely talking about the Russian submarine the Som (Catfish) which sank after a collision with a Swedish vessel in 1916 during World War I and before the Russian revolution,” the Swedish Armed Forces said.

Speculation had been swirling about the origins of the vessel after Swedish divers announced Monday that a submarine had been found about 1.5 nautical miles off the coast of central Sweden.

The announcement came nine months after a high-profile hunt for a mystery submarine in Swedish waters, suspected to be Russian, and some speculated that the divers had chanced upon a modern Russian vessel.

The Swedish military however quashed rumors and said the vessel was old, referring to the design of the submarine and the lettering on the outer shell seen in the pictures of the wreck taken by the divers.

The military added it did not think a full technical analysis was necessary.

………

Stefan Hogeborn, a diver with the Ocean X Team that made the discovery, said the mini-sub was “completely intact” with “no visible damage to the hull” and the hatches were closed.

“It is unclear how old the submarine is and how long it has been laying at the sea floor, but the Cyrillic letters on the hull indicate that it is Russian,” he said in a statement on Monday.

Ocean X Team said the vessel was around 20 meters (66 feet) long and 3.5 meters wide (11.5 feet), adding it was planning a new expedition to study the wreck more closely.

Right now, I so want to fly to Sweden and go SCUBA diving in the Baltic.

You have a submarine, history, and the marvelous preservative properties of the Baltic.

This is like the biggest military history-gasm this decade.

I am seriously getting my geek on here.

Labour is Determined to Suck the Life out of Their Party

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In the UK, the political party formerly known as Labour has been spooked by the popularity of Jeremy Corbyn, who is surging in the race to be the next party leader, because he is talking like he were actually a member of the Labour Party, instead of being a Tory lite like Tony Blair.

It appears that the party has taken a page out of Jeb Bush’s vote suppression playbook in 2000:

Harriet Harman, the interim Labour leader, has defended the integrity of her party’s leadership election system amid claims it has been infiltrated by hard left extremists as well as Conservatives out to discredit the process.

She said “rigorous due diligence” was being undertaken by Labour staff, and the new electoral system introduced in 2014 was less open to manipulation than its predecessor, which freely allowed opponents of Labour to vote without any checks.

She also disclosed a new email was being sent to local branches setting out how they could check whether bogus applicants were trying to join the party as registered supporters.

Labour has been hit by allegations that the party, by offering a vote to anyone paying a £3 fee, has left itself vulnerable to mass infiltration, mainly by hard leftwingers but also by Tories.

When signing up as a registered supporter – rather than joining as a party member – people must agree to the declaration: “I support the aims and values of the Labour Party, and I am not a supporter of any organisation opposed to it.” More than 20,000 new full members have joined the party since the leadership nominations closed. It is a good chance that most are genuinely enthused, and many are likely to vote for Jeremy Corbyn.

Let me get this straight:  People are willing to pay money to associate themselves with the Labour Party, and you are trying to suppress their votes?

What is the next dumbass policy you are going to try?  Maybe going out of your way to piss off people in the Labour strongholds in Scotland?

Oh ……… wait ……… They already did that, probably losing everything north of Hadrian’s wall for a generation.

This is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

Regulatory Sanity on the “Sharing Economy”

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Uber has been operating illegally in France for some time, and following protests from cab drivers, French authorities took Uber executives into custody:

On Monday, French authorities took two Uber executives into custody for questioning as part of an investigation into UberPop, the startup’s lower cost alternative.

Local media have named the men as Thibaut Simphal, the CEO for France, and Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty, the CEO for Western Europe. Under French law, both men can be held for up to 48 hours without being charged.

“Our general managers for France and Western Europe today attended a hearing with the French police,” Gareth Mead, an Uber spokesman, told Ars in a statement. “We are always happy to answer questions the authorities have about our service—and look forward to resolving these issues. Those discussions are ongoing. In the meantime, we’re continuing to ensure the safety of our riders and drivers in France given last week’s disturbances.”

………

The primary regulatory issue in France is that UberPop’s drivers operate under a VTC license (véhicules de tourisme avec chauffeur, or tourism vehicles with a driver). Created in 2009, this license was designed for pre-booked travel, not on-the-street hails. UberPop’s drivers are like their UberX counterparts in the United States: normal people with regular cars who do not have an expensive French taxi license. As such, traditional taxi drivers in France have been upset that Uber seems to be flouting the law. Uber maintains that it is a technology company and not a traditional taxi company, and therefore the company believes it’s not bound by taxi law.

It’s nice to find authorities who doesn’t ignore the law, “Because ……… Internet.”

Uber has been operating an illegal taxi service, and been abusing its drivers, and the public, with its business model, and it’s good that someone is acting on this, albeit with some prodding by protesters.

Dick Waving like This Could Get All of Us Killed

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Because our coup in the Ukraine is not progressing well, the US is looking at forward deploying armor and troops along the Russian border:

In a significant move to deter possible Russian aggression in Europe, the Pentagon is poised to store battle tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and other heavy weapons for as many as 5,000 American troops in several Baltic and Eastern European countries, American and allied officials say.

The proposal, if approved, would represent the first time since the end of the Cold War that the United States has stationed heavy military equipment in the newer NATO member nations in Eastern Europe that had once been part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine have caused alarm and prompted new military planning in NATO capitals.

It would be the most prominent of a series of moves the United States and NATO have taken to bolster forces in the region and send a clear message of resolve to allies and to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, that the United States would defend the alliance’s members closest to the Russian frontier.

To quote a line from the movie The Hunt for Red October, “This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.“

When we look at this sort of foreign adventurism, what is almost universal is that it comes back to bite the United States in the ass.

What IS universal is that the target of this sort of crap end up worse off than they were before.

But we keep on doing this, again, and again, and again, and again.

Whiny Bitch of the Day: France

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France has its panties in a bunch because Belgium has produced a €2.50 coin commemorating Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo:

Perhaps befitting a battle that ended French hegemony in Europe, Paris, it seems, has been outflanked once again.

 After it objected to a decision in March by Belgium to introduce a new 2 euro coin to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, the Belgians retreated, scrapping 180,000 coins they had already minted.

 But victory for France is proving elusive.

 This week, Belgium decided to circumvent French resistance by invoking a little-known European Union rule that allows countries to issue euro coins of their choice, provided they are in an irregular denomination.

 That led to the unveiling of a €2.50 coin — a first in Belgium — and 70,000 of them have now been minted. The coins, which can only be spent inside Belgium, display a monument of a lion atop a cone-shaped hill on the site of France’s humiliation, as well as lines indicating where troops were positioned when forces led by Britain and Prussia defeated Napoleon in the countryside near Brussels.

 Johan Van Overtveldt, the Belgian finance minister, insisted on Monday that the new coins were not meant to provoke Gallic anger.

 “The goal is not to revive old quarrels in a modern Europe — and there are more important things to sort out,” he was quoted as saying by Agence France-Presse. “But there’s been no battle in recent history as important as Waterloo, or indeed one that captures the imagination in the same way.”

 ………

 In Britain, where the 19th-century poet laureate Robert Southey called the Battle of Waterloo “the greatest deliverance that civilized society has experienced” since Charles Martel repelled an Islamic conquest of Europe in 732, the new €2.50 coin aroused similar adulation.

 “Well done Belgium beat the French at their own game of finding ways around EU rules, the English should take note!!” Michael Dunn, from Stratford-upon-Avon, wrote on Twitter.

 Others were less impressed. On Facebook, Manuel Di Pietrantonio suggested that the value of the dispute was about €2.50.

I agree with Mr. Di Pietrantonio.  It’s a tempest in a teapot, and it is the French who are making it so.

Commemorating its 200th anniversary is completely appropriate.

Waterloo is a very big deal:  Not only did it end the career of Napoleon, but it was the triumph of the General Staff over the lone general, which served to transform war.

I so want to get one and try to spend it in Paris.

Smart Political Move

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During the (quite disastrous for Labour) UK elections, Ed Millibrand was insistent on two big issues: He would not go into a coalition with the Scottish National Party (SNP), and he would oppose a referendum on Britain’s EU membership.

Both positions were big political losers, with Labour being basically turfed out in Scotland, and losing votes from a significant Euroskeptic constituency.

Ed is gone, and the acting Labour leader, Harriet Harman, has announced that the party will support the referendum, but campaign for a “No” vote:

Acting leader Harriet Harman has said Labour will now support plans for an EU referendum by the end of 2017.

 Ms Harman told the Sunday Times the change in position came after they “reflected on the conversations we had on doorsteps” during the election.

 The PM has pledged to renegotiate a “better deal” for the UK and hold an “in/out” referendum by the end of 2017.

 Ms Harman told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show the party would still campaign for the UK to stay in the EU.

 She said: “Whether we are in the European Union or not is a huge, important, constitutional, political, economic decision.”

 The Conservatives were bringing forward a bill to allow the referendum to happen, said Ms Harman, and Labour “wouldn’t succeed” in stopping it.

While she coaches this decision in terms of a lack of agency, this is actually a very politically savvy move.

The mainstream Tories (Conservatives) want to stay in the EU, because big business, particularly The City (London’s equivalent of Wall Street), because it makes doing business (and hiding income from Inland Revenue HM Revenue and Customs) much easier, and, particularly for the British FIRE sector.

As such I am sure that the reelected Prime Minister, David Cameron, is really not particularly eager to put Britain’s continued membership in the European Union up to a vote.

However, political realities forced Cameron to promise a referendum, because the loony right of his party was pressuring him, and because the even more right wing UKIP has been taking an increasing portion of what would have been Tory votes, which in the UK’s first past the post system, could prove problematic.

With Labour saying that they will not oppose a referendum, it removes one of the few excuses for Cameron to delay a vote on status, and regardless of what happens, this will not be good for him politically, because, even while he has promised a referendum, which necessarily will upset UK big business, he must also campaign against it, which would serve to strengthen UKIP.

I am not sure if Ms. Harmon intended for there to put the Conservative mainstream in this position, but they appear to be thoroughly skewered on the tines of Morton’s fork.