Crime - getting it wrong and very right

A tale to warm the cockles of one's heart today; the San Francisco Chronicle chronicling Charmaine Taijeron's marital breakdown:

Charmaine Taijeron believed her husband of eight years was taking his time moving out of their apartment [...] The husband, whose name wasn't released, had recently learned about Taijeron's affair, and the couple had decided to separate, authorities said. Taijeron hatched a plan to stage a burglary, hoping to scare her husband into leaving,

An ingenious plan it was, too; send some men around to the apartment and give them a key, and get them to scare her husband away. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, one of them (a gentleman by the name of Robert Lindsey) decided to threaten the husband with a gun. Even worse, it was a fake gun. The husband promptly grabbed a knife, fearing for his life, and stabbed Lindsey in the neck; Mr. Lindsey promptly bled out. The police came, there was much to-ing and fro-ing, and the result was that Taijeron, her new boyfriend Matt Parker, Parker's brother and another generic thug were booked on suspicion of murder. The husband by contrast will face no charges. Presumably he can now stay in the apartment, and has just avoided any chance of the divorce costing him anything. Nice one, Mrs. Taijeron. Looking at the mugshots in the articles, the Parker brothers don't appear to be the sharpest knives in the drawer, but may be rocket scientists compared to the late and unlamented Lindsey.

Those of you familiar with the British judicial system will just have choked on your tea and scones.

How could this be? Surely the husband was the killer? Well yes, but:

Prosecutors could charge the four with murder under the state's provocative-act doctrine, which holds accomplices responsible when a crime partner acts in a way that leads to death.

California has its share of nutcases and demented laws, but the provocative-act doctrine is something we should take a good look at for the UK. The argument is that it was the criminal actions of Taijeron and her buddies which was responsible for the situation in which the husband found himself; being faced with an apparent gun carried by someone in his apartment with hostile intent, he was legally justified in taking potentially lethal actions in self defence. Can anyone imagine this outcome if the Crown Prosecution Service was involved?

Learning from social media, kinda

Having spent a depressing fraction of my life in airports and on airplanes, some in comfort and some in the kind of squalor that I'd rather forget, any story where a passenger comes out on top attracts my attention. My eyes were thus drawn to the story of Dave Schneider who tried to bring his $10K Gibson guitar on board a Delta plane, was denied and forced to check it as baggage. While at Detroit he saw airport staff loading his guitar onto the plane and pleaded with a Delta steward to ask them to be careful: to his credit, the steward did ask, but the Detroit baggage handlers weren't sufficiently careful stowing the guitar on a baggage elevator. The case was trashed and $2000 of damage was caused to the Gibson.

You may be wondering where I'm going with this. Bear with me.

Canadian guitarist and unexpected social media star Dave Carroll had a similar experience in 2009 with United Airlines, who consigned his Taylor guitar to the tender mercies of Chicago baggage handlers where it was promptly broken. After a year of wrestling with United's customer satisfaction agents (hollow laugh from anyone who's flown United) they denied his claim, at which point he told them that he'd make three music videos about the experience. They scoffed, he made United Breaks Guitars and the rest is history - it broke his career, and delivered a well-deserved kick in the nads to United's share price.

Delta were a little slow to react to the breakage, but being contacted by Yahoo! seemed to kick them into high gear:

"This instance is certainly not indicative of the high regard we hold for our customers' property when they travel with us, and for that, we apologize," Delta spokesman Morgan Durrant said in an emailed statement. "We look forward to making a direct and sincere apology to the customer as we work with him to rectify what happened."

Mr. Durrant has no doubt been briefed on Dave Carroll and his impact on United. I'd be fascinated to learn whether the Delta steward's intervention was motivated by compassion for a passenger or a company warning about the Carroll case - I'll be charitable, since my experience of Delta crew has generally been more positive than United "Not Quite The Worst" service. But social media has turned the tables when airlines screw things up for passengers; anecdotes may not be data, but a well-crafted catchy musical anecdote has a significance all of its own.

Dave Schneider should send a thank-you note to Dave Carroll, and Delta should probably send a thank-you note to United. If the consequence of social media is a softening in the attitude of airlines towards their passengers then Twitter, Facebook, Google et al will have done the world a service.

UK criminal treatment jumps the shark

I try very hard to take the crime reports from the Daily Mail with a pinch of salt (and possibly lime and tequila, as P J O'Rourke suggests). But the case of scrap metal thieving scroatbag David Taylor really seems to have taken reality beyond satire:

Mr Edwards said his family has lost thousands of pounds through theft and damage caused in a number of raids on their land. They caught Taylor and an accomplice loading stolen metal cables into the back of his Ford Transit after spotting that outbuildings had been tampered with. The thieves jumped into the van and drove it towards the pair as they desperately dialled 999 for help.

Taylor was fined £100 plus £35 damages. I suspect he didn't care much about these sanctions. But what happened to Mr. Edwards when he reacted to the van being driven at him?

Mr Edwards fired his shotgun, which was loaded with lightweight rabbit shot, several times, hitting the van's windscreen and bodywork. No one was hurt.

This seems like a fairly clear definition of self-defence. You can sympathise with the police for initially arresting Edwards - after all, the facts on what happened weren't necessarily clear despite the police having pursued Taylor in a high-speed chase before he crashed. But it took four months of being under threat of prosecution before the CPS decided no further action need be taken against Edwards; he and his mother were held overnight in police cells before being bailed, which was probably not avoidable from the point of view of rigorously establishing the facts of the case, but four months with having a jail sentence hanging over one's head for defending yourself is ridiculous. And a charge of attempted murder is demented. There is no reasonable way that firing rabbit shot at someone inside a van is attempted murder.

The tea leaf's reaction is to be expected, but one wonders what his solicitor is on:

Taylor left court grinning and sneered 'lucky you' at Mr Edwards after finding out the attempted murder allegation had been dropped. Moments earlier his solicitor Ian Brickman said the thief 'is in many ways the victim in this' and was left so 'traumatised' he cannot work.

One can only hope that Brickman keeps a large amount of scrap metal in his garden shed and that Taylor has found this out.

I offer you in contrast the heart-warming story of Paul Slater in Loganville, Georgia:

The woman was working in an upstairs office when she spotted a strange man outside a window, according to Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman. He said she took her 9-year-old twins to a crawlspace before the man broke in using a crowbar.
But the man eventually found the family.
"The perpetrator opens that door. Of course, at that time he's staring at her, her two children and a .38 revolver," Chapman told Channel 2's Kerry Kavanaugh.

Slater was hit by 5 out of 6 shots, ran off, tried to drive away but crashed and crawled away. He's in hospital and may or may not survive. Sheriff Joe Chapman shows no inclination to arrest the shooter, even to establish the facts of the case - Slater was in the woman's house, she had no duty to retreat (even though she did retreat to the house's crawlspace). Any admonishment would likely have related to her choice of weapon, bullet caliber and magazine size.

I can understand the CPS's possible diligence in trying to establish all the facts before informing Edwards that he would not be charged. However, the presumption towards charging in these circumstances is nothing short of appalling. Having established that Taylor the scroatbag was on the Edwards property with felonious intent (and action), and that Edwards only had rabbit shot in the gun which was very unlikely to cause serious damage to Taylor even if he'd been sticking his head out of the van window, the presumption should have been that Edwards was acting in legitimate self-defence; taking four months to exclude the remote possibility of felonious intent was stupid, lazy behaviour by the CPS.

If the UK population comes around to believing that the CPS is on the side of the criminal's rights (and in the process assumes the police force is basically the same entity as the CPS), the public support for the police is going to evaporate like a fart in a tornado. When that happens, everyone is going to suffer.

Dear Argentina...

Too good not to share, despite being on Facebook. Blighty dissects the Argentine claims:

We could probably avoid an argument over the fact that the Falkland Islands, in and of themselves, aren't exactly pretty. There are no hanging gardens, no waterfalls, no exotic wildlife. They're a windy bunch of rocks a long way from anywhere, although I grant they're nearer to you than they are to us.
Which begs the question about why, exactly, you never bothered to settle them.

Harsh! but fair.

Now, there are many ways people can be oppressed, forced, compelled and abused - just ask Sean Penn - but a polite note is not one of them. The Argentine in charge thought briefly about resisting, but he didn't have many soldiers and besides, most of them were British mercenaries who refused to fight. So on January 3, 1833 you left, Argentina, with wounded pride and your nose in the air.
You had never settled the islands. Never established a colony of your own. Never guarded it with a garrison of your own soldiers. They had never, ever, been yours.

Go read the whole thing. Especially you, President Kirchner.

The USA is a racist oppressive nation

Which is why a millionnaire African-American businessman, author and radio host has a professionally managed website sympathetic to the Tea Party devoted to fiscal conservatism. Sample headling: Credit rating of nation running $1 trillion in annual red ink strangely jeopardized:

You will hear from the media that the possible downgrade is the fault of Republicans who might once again demand spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling. Bolshevik! Your credit rating gets in trouble when you’re carrying too much debt and have no plan for paying it back. Sound familiar? The fiscal cliff deal did nothing to address the debt problem, and we can’t expect a golden credit rating forever when we operate like that.

Very clear, very concise article. If this isn't Cain writing, it's someone who has slavishly copied his style.

Let's remember where America was in 1963, 50 years ago. The Jim Crow laws were still in effect, registering Africa-American voters was enough to get you killed, "whites only" restaurants and bars were common and legal. The transformation to today where miscengenation is everywhere, racial discrimination is outlawed unless you're discriminating in favour of African-Americans and Hispanics, and a white TV host refuses to utter the word "nigger" despite the demands of an African-American actor is nothing short of astonishing. So next time someone in the Guardian (I'm looking at you, Gary Younge) let's remember how far America has come in 50 years.

Google informs me that people who searched for Herman Cain also searched for Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. If that doesn't indicate Cain being in what MSNBC would regard as the "whites-only zone" I don't know what would.

[For extra points, his website is hosted by CloudFlare and has very clean HTML, clearly maintained by someone who knows what he/she is doing; https works just fine; DNS shows very short TTLs and multiple IPs in the A records, which is associated a good dynamic configuration. Cain has clearly done his research and hired competent webmasters and hosting providers.]

Public transportation, American style

Interesting - despite the American love affair with the car, it appears that Bay Area companies like Facebook and Google are re-inventing public transport to make it easier for their employees to get to work:

The relationship between city officials who run the Muni, San Francisco's public bus system, and the largely unregulated world of private shuttles has historically been tense, and is worsening as shuttles become a more prominent feature of city life. At least one San Francisco official, Supervisor John Avalos, has called for more stringent oversight of the behemoth tech buses, including stopping them from picking up passengers at Muni stops.

One can only presume that the Muni (municipal transport) have failed to pick up on the demand for company-specific bus routes, and feel aggrieved that the companies are spending money on private bus companies rather than with the Muni. Well, chaps, whose fault is that?

The article estimates around 750000 car journeys saved annually, which at 230 days per year is 3000+ cars per working day off the road - this isn't bad, though at 1 car per 5 seconds entering a major highway during the 1.5 hours of rush hour, and (best guess) 100 major arterial road entry points, that's only a 3% saving on congestion. Still, it's a start.

It's interesting that an existing governmental monopoly (the Muni) has completely failed to address a clear need and easy, profitable solution to alleviating congestion and improving journey times. Perhaps this implies that government really can't solve problems like this, and it take private enterprise to produce a solution? Actually, I'm surprised that the Muni and friends haven't lobbied the state or federal governments to tax this activity heavily to drive passengers back onto the Muni - maybe that level of lobbying is too obvious even for them?

How to defend the Falklands against Argentina

This article from the UK Defence National Association (implacably opposed to defence cuts) has claimed that if Argentina was determined to invade then the UK could not defend the islands:

It warned that the islands' coastline could not be defended from an invasion and that Argentina could use almost all of its armed forces to invade at a time when the British forces consisted of "just four Typhoons, a Type-45 Destroyer, and Rapier short range missiles around Mount Pleasant airfield".

OK, so let's assume that Argentina manages to get the element of surprise, lands a planeload of commandos at Mount Pleasant airfield (by pretending to be a commercial flight from Uruguay or something), puts a serious amphibious force to sea and devotes all its active airforce to supporting the invasion. Let's assume that there is no intel warning of the attack, so the first the Falkland Islands military contingent knows about it is when the commando force spills out of a C-130 on Mount Pleasant airstrip and the radar simultaneously picks up the inbound 34 Skyhawks and 15 Mirages comprising the entire long-range offensive capability of the Fuerza Aerea Argentina. Would the attack succeed?

The Falkland Islands military force could scramble one (QRF) Typhoon before the commandos made things too interesting to take the other aircraft out of their hangars. That Typhoon could at best take out 8 Skyhawks with a combination of missiles and guns before they could reach Mount Pleasant, but also reduce the fuel of other Skyhawks by locking them up with radar and forcing them to take evasive action without knowing if a missile is on the way. Then, assuming their mission is to target Mount Pleasant airfield and eliminate concentrations of forces, the Skyhawks have to avoid Rapier 2000 batteries specifically placed to expect attack by low-flying Skyhawks. Again, 1980s planes face missiles developed 10-15 years later than them. If 20 aircraft approach the target, another 5-10 will take hits from Rapier and machine gun fire so only 10-15 will be able to deliver their (dumb) bombs.

The problem the Argentine aircraft now have is the Type 45 destroyer alerted to the invasion. Generously assuming that the inbound strike aircraft have somehow managed to slip by it (say, by flying very low and thus reducing their already-low maximum range), any survivors will now be exposed to an alerted and very pissed-off Type 45 firing salvoes of modern Mach 3+ Aster missiles at 1980s design aircraft. If 3 or 4 aircraft manage to return from the strike, they'll be doing well.

Let's look at the commandos. Assuming they use their Special Operations Forces Group they should be able to muster 64 armed commandos (max capacity of a C-130) for the attack on Mount Pleasant. The commandos have the advantage of surprise and being elite forces; against that, even if only 1/3 of the 1200 British soldiers on the islands are in the area, those are unfavourable odds of 7:1 against the attacking force. Bear in mind also that most British Army units have spent time in Afghanistan and Iraq, and are very familiar with being shot at and conducting small-unit action under live fire - an advantage not to be underestimated. At best, the commandos will be able to destroy a couple of Typhoons and aircraft facilities before being surrounded and immolated or forced to surrender. An airfield is a very large area, and takes many hundreds of troops to secure.

So what of the amphibious force? Let's be generous and assume that the commandos have knocked out Mount Pleasant for at least a couple of days, so the amphibs can sail the 400 miles and land unopposed by aircraft. We also assume that no Astute or Trafalgar sub is in the area launching Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles at them. They will have no effective air cover, and the British will have reasonable advance warning of their approach, so they will either have to mount a major landing against dug-in and pre-warned opposition near a port to secure it (good luck with that), or land light forces away from military concentrations and then hike over land to their target. They will not be able to transport over any significant helicopter force, so will be restricted to what they can carry on their backs and in light vehicles.

All the UK forces need to do is secure Mount Pleasant, fix any damage to the runway, then wait a few days for a squadron of Typhoons to deploy via Ascension. They can then proceed to bomb the living crap out of the landed Argentine military, deny them air or sea resupply, and wait for surrender.

The 1982 invasion of the Falklands pitted 600+ Argentine troops against 60 UK Marines and 10 sailors (8:1 odds), and was by no means a cakewalk - one of the senior Argentine Marine commanders was killed assaulting Government House. One of the deciding factors was the presence of Amtracs (armoured amphibious vehicles). I don't see either overwhelming odds or east amphibious assault being realistic this time around. The Argentines are not going to assault the Falklands unless they are crazy - and if you want to stop them, just bolster the AAA defences and ground security of Mount Pleasant.

The maxim that generals always fight the last war is a useful one, but in this case it's almost literally true - the Argentine forces are essentially unchanged from the end of the 1982 conflict due to an economy that is constantly circling the drain, and meanwhile the British have had 30 years to evolve their military in general and the Falklands defences in particular against a very specific threat. The only way Argentina could muddy the waters is to bring the Venezuelans into the conflict or something.

2012 predictions evaluated

Looking back at my predictions for 2012, how did I do?

Eurozone: Eurozone governments engage in a sequence of progressively more desperate kicking-the-can-down-the-road exercises. A replacement source of funding fails to appear. The tension between the Germans resisting inflation and the rest of the Eurozone demanding economic relief. The ECB is inexorably pushed towards turning on the printing presses. Greece, Ireland and Portugal turn on the screws demanding more help with the threat of default. French and German banks turn out to be shockingly undercapitalised, to the surprise of no-one who was paying any attention.

6/10: there's certainly been nothing in the way of solutions here, and Greece has been leading the screw-turning.

North Korea: Kim Jong Un has an attack of common sense that may or may not result from being hung from a lamp post by a length of rope. North Korea opens the shambles of its nuclear enrichment program to international inspection in exchange for desperately needed aid. The humanitarian crisis turns out to be even worse than expected, with deaths of tens of thousands from cold and famine before the West and South Korea can organise aid shipments. China is less than helpful.

1/10: talk about hopeless optimism. China, at least, has been less than helpful.

UK economy: Growth peters out to practically nothing, perhaps dipping in and out of negative territory. Huhne gets squeezed by popular pressure resulting from ever-rising energy bills as the Conservatives keep him in the firing line. More effort is finally made on new gas plants, probably some more test drills for shale gas, and the planning permission and local challenges for nuclear plant additions grind on. Inflation stays above the 2% target as groceries in general and goods from China in particular rise in price.

9/10: UK economy barely grown over 2 years, inflation stayed above 2%. Grumbling about energy bills but no action yet, Huhne is still around. We are dashing for gas and building new plant.

UK politics: Con-Lib coalition effectively falls apart on several issues (e.g. energy). Labour fails to capitalise on this. Grumbling in the Labour party about Miliband and some early manoeuvering by potential challengers.

5/10: Coalition having problems, but gay marriage appears to be one of the key issues. Not much grumbling about Miliband, perhaps they've forgotten he exists.

Olympics: Substantially poorer showing for the UK than 2008, except in sailing and cycling. Boris makes at least four major gaffes during the Games, making him the only real entertainment. Fewer visitors than expected results in a significant financial loss for the UK.

2/10: Glad to be proven wrong in most of this. We still ate a pretty solid financial loss though.

USA: SOPA passes albeit in a modified and mostly annoying rather than harmful form. Congress and the Senate continue to be bought and sold. Obama starts feeling the pressure from within the Democratic party but just edges the election against a Romney/Bachmann ticket.

6/10: SOPA died, unexpectedly but thankfully. Plenty of buying and selling in politics persisted. Obama had an easier ride than I expected, and Romney's running mate was Ryan rather than Bachman.

China: A slow-motion implosion, rising popular anger at financial losses mostly held in check by increasingly brutal actions from the PLA. China makes an increasing effort to diversify out of US Treasury holdings but is stymied by lack of a reasonable alternative given events in Europe.

4/10: financial problems are clearly bubbling under the lid, but the PLA and Party are keeping the lid on; their continuing actions to tighten Internet access show what they're really worried about. Looks like Africa is one of the areas China is trying to expand into.

Middle East: Iran continues to posture, Iraq's new government breaks apart and reforms a couple of times. Afghanistan is still a mess, Pakistan becomes an even more dangerous snake pit.

7/10: generally nailed, apart from Iraq government breakage. If anything, I understated the problems in Pakistan.

Climate: 2012 weather proves to be a combination of too hot, too cold, too windy, too wet and too dry. Much like 2011.

7/10: drought up to April, unseasonably warm March, then a deluge for the next 8 months.

Random: Britney's engagement doesn't last 2012. It may barely survive 2011.

3/10: Despite persistent rumours about a breakup it looks like Britney and Jason will end 2012 together. Whodathunk?

50/100 overall, slightly better than the UK Met Office. Wonder what 2013 will bring?

Conspiracy courtesy of the GRU

Too entertaining not to share, mostly because it's just within the boundary of what's plausible: why we haven't seen much of US Foreign Secretary Hillary Clinton recently.

Within minutes of leaving Bahrain airspace, this report says, the C-12 Huron carrying Secretary Clinton and her US Navy Seal [sic] protectors, "without notice," deviated from their assigned flight path heading, instead, directly towards Iran's Ahwaz International Airport where, coincidentally, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had previously landed on an "unscheduled" visit.
[...]
Upon the C-12 Huron landing at Ahwaz, however, this report says it encountered "extreme turbulence" causing it to leave the runway where its main landing gear then collapsed causing it to crash.

The article quotes the Kremlin's GRU (Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noye Upravleniye a.k.a. Foreign Military Intelligence) as the source. Obviously there's no possible motive for them to exaggerate...

At least some of the facts are verifiable: Clinton has indeed been out of the public eye for several weeks, and the cause is quoted as concussion after fainting at home, some time in the week leading up to December 16th. The SEAL commander suicide is quoted as happening on Saturday December 22nd though, which is a rather big time gap. The Army alone has 112 C-12 Huron craft so concealing the loss of one is at least plausible.

The main points that jar, though: why would a SEAL unit commander be on diplomatic protection duty, even for Hillary Clinton? Protection work is a young man's game, and Commander Price was 42. Why indeed would you need a SEAL unit? If you're deliberately landing an aircraft in Iran at a commercial airport and the Iranian military are expecting you, then if things go wrong you are already so deep in the yoghurt that even SEALs aren't going to help you. And what would Clinton hope to achieve with a covert meeting that would not be possible with an overt meeting? It's the job of a Foreign Secretary to go around the world and meet dubious people; no-one would have batted an eyelid if the existence of the meeting was public.

If Clinton was "bleeding profusely" after the crash then transporting her out of Iran and back to the US would potentially be dicey - she's 65 years old, and one's response to trauma at that age is less than elastic. However, if they managed to get whole blood in her and exclude the possibility of significant head trauma then a medevac would just about be plausible. I wouldn't have liked to take the risk of moving her far from that crash site though.

Overall this is a great example of conspiracy theories: just on the edge of plausible, some facts lining up but others forming something of a ragged edge, originating from a source with ample reason to foment trouble, and failing to answer the basic question of why all this would be so secret in the first place.

The innocent have nothing to fear

Eric Falkenstein addresses the current flap over TV presenter David Gregory who brandished an empty high-capacity gun magazine while on the news show "Meet the Press". There is now frenzied debate about whether Gregory should be prosecuted, since he did the brandishing in D.C. where possession of such items is illegal. Gregory and his friends are contesting that, since he is clearly not a criminal and had no criminal intent in possessing the magazine, police action is not warranted. Sadly the law seems to have no such loophole, and "do you know who I am?" is rarely a successful strategy in a legal defence.

Falkenstein points out that this is a classical consequence of the disease of over-regulation:

There are so many laws regulating your average business that at any time one is probably being broken. This puts everyone at the mercy of their regulator's goodwill, because like David Gregory you will probably get off if the right people are on your side. If they are indifferent you are at the mercy of the mob, government, or wealthy antagonist.

Some poor schmuck in D.C. who finds an empty 30-round magazine in the trash, walks home with it to show his mother, gets pulled over by the cops and searched will find himself at a substantial legal disadvantage to Gregory's situation, despite being (if anything) less culpable.

This is why any MP, Congressman or Senator who tries to promulgate an over-reaching law with the assurance "it's OK, we would never use it for inappropriate prosecutions" should be a) ignored and b) hung from the nearest lamp post. Laws are always used inappropriately. Those drafting the law only care that the law is sufficiently acceptable to 51% of voting parliamentary representatives, and that all sponsors have what they want in the law. Once the law is on the books, a thriving business around negotiating the new law will spring up; as Falkenstein notes, the regulator and/or government will normally be the gatekeeper of the law and therefore able to gain power and favours by exercising its discretion around that law.