Yes, we only ever hear about local news don't we. Old Mrs Miggins was on the news at 6 again, turns out she's not getting her post. Again.

Give me strength.


Listen to one side of a story and you'll always remain happy in your ignorance.

lol, perspective people.

I love Auntie Beeb and frankly, that's where I get 100% of my wireless audio newscasts from. I think the Beeb is a shining example to the rest of the world. Seriously - no other organisation has anything like the respect they do, at least not in "the west".

On the other extreme, I like reading personal blogs. They can be the definitive inside view. They can also be a load of recycled inaccurate carp.

Just heard a BBC interview with some bloke currently on the 'occupy wall street' march. His name was Thorin. I mean, what?
He also talked the most.. well it was your typical anti capitalist gobbledygook frankly. I'm all for the redistribution of wealth - I mean, seriously, the US is practically feudal it just doesn't admit it - but some of what people are claiming is just cloud cuckoo land.

Jon

I feel your burning love ¬_¬

I get high-handed with Amnesia because I know that he loves to make these grandiose predictions, then I question them, and all he does is abandon thread. But he'll be back in the next thread with some ludicrous prediction for which he will again refuse to show his working. So when he made a particularly stupid claim this time, I couldn't be bothered subjecting him to detailed scrutiny. He has never been worth the effort before, eventually even the waffly-shock one must learn from experience.

As for my remarks about the Russian TV show, I looked at their output and saw clear and obvious problems. I am not the one here who is so vulgar and indulgent as to compare the trivial problems we in the democratic west have with the abject despair that powers the Arab Spring (tm). I don't look at whole towns in Syria being massacred with tanks, and a few hippies being pepper sprayed, and draw a moral equivalence between those actions. There's true and important suffering in this world, and those pasty white Americans aren't the ones it is happening to.

And above all else, before I take the risk of being haughty and obnoxious on the interwebs, I take the basic precaution of thinking... I think "is my own argument stupid?".

If I were to predict a civil war or a revolution for instance, I would want to be sure I had reasonable grounds for doing so. I would take into account the factors that have historically led to civil wars, revolutions and coups d'état, and look to see which of those actually apply in this case. Then I would consider whether I knew of any local factors that might make them more or less likely, and then finally I would consider whether there was any new factor that made history less of a certain guage - there always are.

So for instance, is there grounds for a revolution or civil war in America?
Let's consider some historical revolutions:
In antiquity we have the fall of the Roman Republic / rise of imperial Rome.
There were many factors, but you can summarise them in terms of political brittleness. Roman politics were hyper competitive, highly violent, and the growth of empire made Rome itself both a richer prize and a smaller component of the prize. Traditional checks and balances failed to scale up, making compromise impossible, so the uncompromising seized power - largely because there was little alternative.

The French had a little revolution once themselves. State finances and taxes were clearly a factor, in both cases they were considerably out of date, with the British method of funding a state (deficit financing) being much more efficient, as were its methods for gathering tax income (the French used tax farmers for much of it). Without financial wiggle room, the state was unable to satisfy competing claims from a rigidly stratified society for patronage, an ill judged attempt to get money from the church ensued. Declining patronage had left an entire arm of the aristocracy (the noblesse d'épée) in dire straits. And worst of all, they had in large measure bankrupted the nation to support a republican revolution in the Americas, making Benjamin Franklin a hero in France even though his message was basically that the King must go. There's loads more obviously, but that will do.
The important thing to learn from the French revolution is that it needn't have happened, even with all the above. The king had the instinct for reform that would have saved his neck, had he been able (and brave enough) to appoint sufficiently capable ministers to enact those reforms. But political rigidity struck again, the king wasn't able to enact his will by decree as his grandfather had, and at the Estates General of 1789 he failed to get the support of the various interested parties. So there was a revolution.

We can go through some other revolutions if you want. You'll see the same basic themes repeating though.

As for civil wars, those are much more complex. But I will point to one important factor that is required.... there must be two institutions involved that are capable of raising roughly equivalent armies.
In the past that might be a senator of Rome versus a general from the Rhine or Gaul. Or a king and a parliament etc. But the two armies have to come from somewhere. In Rome that was easy, they had multiple armies spread out across their borders, it was easy for two generals to each raise one and have a fight. In the 1860s, when wars were fought with rifles and canon, it was still easy for the southern states to form their own armies, so long as they formed two governments first.
In modern countries there is a tendency to have only one army. Civil wars require that army to split into two factions each following a different leader. The US army wouldn't do that. They don't group soldiers from the same town into regiments any more, the chain of command is no longer elastic thanks to modern communications, and all the senior officers are graduates of institutions such as West Point, which exists mainly to drill into soldiers the importance of never using military force to seek political power at home.

So could one section of America break off and form its own government and army and take on the rest? Of course not, don't be stupid. If they went to war against the US army with whatever they could buy or steal in the preceding months, that wouldn't include satellites, stealth bombers, drones or the command and control functions needed to operate all of those things. They would get wiped out, their Antietam would also be their Waterloo. Not that it matters, if the South held a plebiscite and seceded again today, there wouldn't be a civil war. The Supreme Court would get hot and bothered, but that's the final extent of the hostilities.

So that's the general historical factors in civil war and revolution. Plus the modern and local ones for civil war. I've concentrated briefly on the necessary rather than sufficient conditions for both, because that's the quick way to rule them out imo. If somebody wants to present counter arguments we can look at it in more depth.

But if all that is on offer is gnomic single sentence predictions of apocalypse followed by hiding, then I don't see why I am the one who always has to raise the bar. I'd like other people to explain their positions sometimes.

I applaud your tetchiness and sarcasm. perhaps you would like to dilute it a little with some kind of argument that has any bearing on my point?
Did you find the BBCs coverage of the Tea Party rallies to be inadequate, forcing you to look to Fox for more information?
No you didn't. You are wielding double standards sir.

You seem to have misunderstood the concept of analysis. Worthwhile analysis takes all available information (there may sometime be more than two sides you know) and places them into context. Worthwhile analysis is cautious in arriving at conclusions. To analyse with worth, one must be aware of the seductive quality of simplified narrative and to be ready to reject it. The best analysis requires a willingness (and ability) to rationally mistrust* one's sources. Any source that is capable of such analysis is to be treasured. I don't think your Russian TV station qualifies, but you've seen more than I have, perhaps you can link to one of their better peices and we can all be our own judges?

Nor frankly do I think the BBC web site does (although they seem to try harder than most), BBC tv news lacks the ambition to analyse in depth. American TV news seems no better from what I've seen (again this is an insufficient sample to make a solid claim). So perhaps tv news isn't the answer at all. I recommend the Economist and Private Eye.


* note. It is rational mistrust to always take into account potential conflict of interest - you wouldn't let The Times make your mind up about a phone hacking story at its sister paper for instance. Likewise I would be highly suspicious of any source that I thought was presenting what they thought I wanted to hear. I find that there are a lot of people who claim they never believe what they are told, who will actually believe anything at all you tell them so long as it panders to their prejudices.

The point you were making was that the BBC has 'British' in it and asserted that it looked at 'British' news, I thought I'd retort in a similarly daft fashion and thus there is the bearing.


Seeing as much of my working life has been involved in analysis across various fields, I think I have a good handle on the concept. All data can, to some degree, be skewed to say what you want it to say in reality and you can pretty much always get it to say something which supports a presumption that you want it to.

I think you missed my point, much of the masses see very little news other than what is fed them. I thought it interesting that marches on Wall Street did not fit the category of worthy news whereas the optimum time for boiling an egg and the length of time you toast bread for to make soldiers did. That was the BBC.

In fact I wasn't implying that the BBC is a paragon of news, far from it, much of what they get nowadays is fed directly from the news agencies. I also wasn't implying Russian TV was somehow better, or worse for that matter (please note the use of quotation marks in the title...) but it was the only place on freeview that I saw footage.

As for Fox, occasionally I watch a few minutes here and there. It's always good for a laugh. Hell, I've even listened to alot of the Tory conference, you can't disagree with someone unless you hear their argument.

Anyway, there may have been a miscommunication of misunderstanding. I shall apologise for tetchiness though, I was to bed not long after that.

Well I must admit there has been a little edge of sleep deprivation in my handiwork this week also :<

My feeling on the Russians is that they are participants in the propaganda requirements of Putin's corrupt kloptocracy (and 100% owned by the Russian govt). They have an agenda which is to portray America as Russia's political-moral equal, and these protests give them an opportunity to make believe that America is somehow just as repressive and undemocratic as Russia, which is far from accurate. In the forthcoming Russian elections, they will be giving coverage only to Putin's campaign (with little if any mention of the fact that no serious contender is permitted to run), and they will play down scandals (as they did recently when Putin and Medvedev's shameless job swap, followed by an insane policy announcement, lead the reform-minded finance minister to quit). The underlying message in their work is that anarchy reigns when you don't have a strong man in the Kremlin/White House.

As for the actual protesters. Well they are lovable scamps really, a loose collection of people who are generally unhappy about roughly the same stuff, but with no common agenda, message or spokesman. They have this vague 1% vs the 99 thing going on, but no considered resolution to their grievance. In the Arab Spring it was easy for protesters to all want a single thing, because the root cause of their problems was easily identified as a lack of something that their American counterparts have - representation. The Americans have the representation- but feel they have no effective voice. However they can't think of anything worthwhile to say with it, and they won't until such time as their fledgling movement is hijacked by some kind of demagogue. You can't easily manufacture a serious political movement armed with nothing but angst and a single context-free statistic.

It could be worse though. They could actually find a common voice and do something bad with it. This is what the Tea Party has done on the right. Those guys are puritanical to the point that they regard Bush (Jr) as a traitor to the Republican cause (because he cut taxes but not spending). They are active in primary candidate selection to the point where it's virtually impossible to get a decent Republican into office any more. And they are the the kind of Spartan Mothers of American politics. Their battle being tantamount to "come home with your shield or on it", a death or glory stance that makes sensible deal brokering impossible in American politics right now, leading to insane showdowns that threaten the stability of the entire world economy.

A left wing Tea Party would further reduce the supply of centrist, pragmatic politicians in America, leading only to worse crises. I suppose there is an outside chance that moderates from both sides would become so disenchanted as to create a genuine third party for the first time American history - or maybe even two - and that could be a good thing in the longer term, but I don't think anyone is likely to enjoy the journey that would bring them to that situation.

And as for media coverage and the BBC in particular. It takes two to tango. Occupy Wall Street is hardly the first grass roots protest movement in the USA. They have to evolve beyond their incoherent flash-mob stage into something interesting before they can seriously expect coverage that goes beyond"who are these guys and what are they talking about?", it is after all, a question that still defies any serious answer.

If they could be corralled behind a set of coherent issues, it would change. They don't like that the rich pay a low rate of tax - so force politicians to deal with the huge differential between income tax and capital gains (and accept that this is more sensibly done by allowing the Republicans to keep their lower rate of income tax on the rich). They don't like the influence of money on politics - so turn campaign finance into an actual issue. With a couple of sensible and achievable objectives like that, they could actually make a difference, and bizarrely find common ground with those puritanical Tea Partiers while they are at it.

If they let their message get muddied with paranoid delusions about the Fed, or clumsy demands for trade protectionism, new collective bargaining rights and all the other cruft that appeals to their disparate causes more than to the rest of the electorate, they will be anonymous and avoidable again before too long. Because the other thing that separates them from the Arab Spring is that those guys had enough support to bring entire countries to a standstill. These guys can't shut a bridge.