A Place to Stand

A very good article by the SNP's Alex Neil on growing the Scots economy:


Land Value Tax is a very good idea & his argument that it does not punish people who add value to property. Antonia Swinson has written on this as well. Personally I would like to see LVT applied specifically to built up areas or within half a mile thereof & excluding green belts. To put LVT on all farming land would bankrupt the farming industry & while there are very good economic arguments that that would be a good thing (government subsidy considerably exceeds the combined income of all farm workers) but I think it would be somewhat heartless. In areas where building is likely it would certainly be have the indicated effect.

As regards housebuilding I think habsolutelylutly right though I personally would like to see some specific encouragement giving to off site manufacturing which would turn housebuilding into a mass manufacturing process. See my undebated proposal 20/11/4.

His ideas about encouraging R&D are new to me & as a general supporter of hi-tech have my full support. He has also chosen to mention this rather than cutting corporation tax specifically because the latter requires Westminster agreement. I do not think this is an either/or choice - I would happily consider both to be good investments. Only caveat I would give is that such grants should be an automatic result of spending on the R&D not a PC government grant - we currently have a windmill industry which is munificently supported by all sorts of grants, particularly granted to small firms in marginals - economically this is all wasted.

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Meanwhile there are a few letters from Nationalist dinosaurs pushing the idea that independence was the cause of Ireland's success (starting 68 years after independence) & that the SNP shouldn't sully themselves with such practical matters until such time as 51% of us put our trust in them (or slightly more sensibly in the pro-independence SNP, SSP & Greens combined). Labour must really be wishing for an opposition who thus abrogate the responsibility of government.

Posted on www.jerrypournelle.com/mail/mail364.html

""Union employees at Reuters are stepping up their campaign against the wire service's outsourcing of U.S. jobs, most recently transferring the editing and caption writing of photos to its Singapore office and some Internet work to Toronto."

Editing and caption writing? Singapore? "

This is not a sign of outsourcing to the 3rd world but something rather more ominous. Singapore is a developed country that happens to be in south Asia, it has a standard of living between that of Italy & Spain. If Reuters chose to go there they are expecting a better job.

"Gorgeous" George Galloway is pretty well known here. I was once involved in working for his opponent in an election, unsuccessfully. I wouldn't entirely trust him financially, or with somebody's wife (or vice versa apparently despite being short & bald) & he is generally a bit of a leftie ranter. On the other hand, for a knee jerk pro-moslem he was one of our few MPs who voted against bombing Yugoslavia. I don't for a minute believe he would be stupid enough to do what Congress has accused him of.

He's also one of the decreasing number of politicians who actually know how to speak to a crowd. I think Congress was outmatched.

Neil Craig

This morning I heard this reported as a "news" item. To be fair the BBC did actually quote the authors as saying that it was possible this was within statistical limits & could mean nothing. Then they spoilt it by getting some shrill woman who went on about how no politicians are "experts" on this, as if she was, & we should therefore "trust" anybody spreading fear.

Bull. For a full background read this on Spiked. Basically this whole case depends on "about 5" more cases out of "400-420" annually. Now on planet Earth random events don't happen at a perfectly even rate (that's why they are called random). Toss 400-420 coins (lets say 410 just to achieve an arithmetical base to make it more valid than this case) & you will be very unlikely to get exactly 205 heads (or more than 220). So to produce an excess of 5 would be meaningless even if they knew how many they should be dealing with.

This is supported by the fact that these cases have happened at up to 600m from the power lines at which point the magnetic field, the only credible cause, is non-existent. The "evidence" for the danger of passive smoking is of this order.

So the politically interesting questions are why was this non-proof published (when it is quite clear the authors are embarrassed by it) & even more, why did the media think this was actually a story. The former, I suspect, is that you have to publish something to earn your grant (& the extent to which you are under pressure to make your figures more interesting is obvious - not so much by making up figures as omitting them - had they also found a statistically equally insignificant fall in cases of flue would that have been reported - if not then if the statistically insignificant health increases had matched the statistically insignificant worse cases they would have been reporting wrongly to say they had found increased illness - this is what happened in the passive smoking case where the BMJ reported that 7 out of 40 cases had found increased cancers among passives - the corollary is clear).

And why did the media jump on this non-story. Partly, perhaps mainly, the relatively innocent story is that they have to produce news & "No Danger from Anything" doesn't cut it. However, at least within TV reporting there is clearly an agenda that everything that isn't compulsory ought to be illegal & anything involving technology, even a mature technology like this, involves incomprehensible magic. This is quite strange considering that broadcasting is a high tech enterprise but the people who run it aren't the technical staff. You never get to be promoted onscreen if you drive a camera - very much like officers & soldiers (mind the soldiers are pretty well paid & don't have to wear suits).

Maybe it would be nice to see one of them actually on air explaining something to the suits, Susan Watts on Newsnight shouldn't have to carry the whole can.

So on C4 & ITN we have film "proving" that the Serbs committed a massacre at Srebrenica, or at least that a small group of people carrying guns went bang & some other people lay still but apparently didn't bleed.

Of course this is the same ITN that "accidentally" faked their notorious concentration camp video (a British judge decided that the allegation of fakery was "essentially true" but that if you don't mention the possibility of accident it is libel to say so). ITN have a rarely discussed problem with the accident story - if ITN is so slipshod that they can manage such an accident with the most influential single film ever made by ITN without noticing, & they can let it be used round the world, & they can not notice when their journalists go into court to announce it as an accident (they never publicly apologised on air & are still using this film) then obviously there are no circumstances when you can be even half sure these people are telling the truth. When you get the silly item at the end of the news about a cat stuck up a tree they cannot say for certain the Trevor didn't accidentally stick it up there in the first place.

Still none of this stops them announcing this film as proof A number of questions they don't ask & neither does the surrealistically named Mr Nice, the chief prosecutor. Where did this film appear from, why was it made & who was stupid enough to keep it - it is not impossible that such film could have been made - Nasir Oric, Moslem commander of Srebrenica showed journalists videos from his extensivehome video collection of him massacring Serb civilians (in the same area where the "Moslem" bodies were found) whose bodies are officially still missing. However Oric's videos are now missing & the ICTY, while charging him for other crimes, has not charged him with this genocide. While ITN is at pains to report that half of all Serbs don't believe in the massacre (I would have thought a lot more) they still censor the evidence why.

A little examination of what actually happened in court is instructive. The interesting thing is that Nice has produced this film in conjunction with "documents" about the Scorpion unit which are clearly faked:
Mr. Nice spent a great deal of time reading documents allegedly seized from facilities in Republika Srpska in 2004. These documents identified a unit called “Skorpions” as being part of the Serbian MUP. Stevanovic said that the Serbian MUP had no “Skorpions” unit, and had no idea what the documents were all about.

According to the documents, these “Skorpions” were sent to the Srebrenica area in the summer of 1995. Mr. Nice claimed that the commander of the “Skorpions” was Slobodan Medic, and that the Scorpions had been tasked with guarding the Djeletovci oil fields in Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK). Gen. Stevanovic had no idea what Mr. Nice was even talking about and consistently denied that the Serbian MUP had a unit called “Skorpions.”

The Milosevic trial has already heard evidence about the “Skorpions” from the former Deputy Defense Minister of the RSK, Mr. Milan Milanovic who testified as a prosecution witness.

Beginning on page 27492 of the 14 October 2003 transcript, Milanovic testified that he personally recruited Slobodan Medic to establish the “Skorpions” in order to guard oil fields in the RSK. Take a look at the following excerpt from Milanovic’s testimony:

SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC: Let's move on to the next topic. You testified about a Skorpions unit which was led by Slobodan Medic. Where were they from? Are they from your area? [i.e. the RSK]

MILAN MILANOVIC: Yes.

MILOSEVIC: Did you engage them?

MILANOVIC: Where?

MILOSEVIC: Did you engage them in your area?

MILANOVIC: As far as the area is concerned, I proposed, as is stated in this text, in my statement, I proposed to the director of the oil company that they secure the oil fields that were on the separation lines.

MILOSEVIC: Does that mean that you personally found them, rallied them, organised them, and engaged them privately to protect the oil fields?

MILANOVIC: That is not true.

MILOSEVIC: Well, who engaged them, then, to defend the oil fields in your area?

MILANOVIC: I proposed Slobodan Medic as the person who should be in charge of that security, and then they were under the director of the oil company.

MILOSEVIC: So this was a security unit for the oil company, the head of which you yourself proposed.

MILANOVIC: Correct.

MILOSEVIC: Why did it happen that you chose Medic to be at the head of the security detail in the oil company in your area?

MILANOVIC: Having toured the area, I realised that the oil fields were in jeopardy as they were along the very confrontation line. And it is common knowledge that if a shell were to fall, this would cause an ecological disaster. I toured the area. I met this young man for the first time. He was proposed to me by several people. And I even remember that I asked Badza even whether he had anything against this, and he said he didn't.

This young man was about 22 or 23 years old at the time, and he organised the task well and continued working at it until the end of 1996.

MILOSEVIC: But you also sent them to Bosnia and Herzegovina, didn't you?

MILANOVIC: I didn't send them. The command of the [VRSK] corps sent them to accomplish various assignments, and most of those units that went outside the area I would visit very frequently.

MILOSEVIC: Well, as deputy defence minister, I assume you had a decisive say. As you appointed Medic yourself, you would decide where you would send him.

MILANOVIC: As you know yourself, according to the law on defence, the ministry does not have the right to order the engagement of the army. This is a right vested in the government and the command.

MILOSEVIC: Very well. So the government [of the RSK] sent them.

MILANOVIC: Yes, the [RSK] government and the [RSK] army command.

/// END TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT ///

As you can see from the transcript of Milanovic’s testimony, the “Skorpions” were not a unit of the Serbian MUP, they were a unit of the Army of Republika Srpska Krajina (VRSK). Milanovic, as deputy Defense Minister of the RSK, would certainly know which units the RSK had under its command. Milanovic, as the Deputy Defense Minister of the RSK, personally appointed Slobodan Medic to lead the unit, the Serbian MUP had absolutely nothing to do with it.

The fact that Mr. Nice had so many different documents containing the same wrong information suggests that somebody is forging documents in order to bolster the prosecution’s case."

Assuming the prosecution witness wasn't lying, in a way which could have had no reason at the time, then the documents are faked. If the documents are faked, the film, of no provenance, must be assumed to be faked (not after all a particularly difficult thing). Of course you won't be seeing this possiblity mentioned in the official media & when, as happened with all the stories about rape camps, mass graves, 500,000 dead, Serbs rather than NATO bombing refugees, the lorry full of bodies etc etc, these are proven to be lies it will accidentally go unreported.

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