There's nothing you can't fix with a quota!

If by "fix" you mean "wreck". Peter Wilby, writing in Comment is Free, starts with a germ of a good idea - then proceeds to leap off the ledge of sanity and plunge down the side of the chasm of madness. How should we address the problem of less than 50% of Oxbridge entrants being state school pupils?

Oxbridge says it can't recruit more from the state sector until schools send them more highly qualified pupils. The schools say the pupils won't go – or won't aspire to go – until the universities appear less exclusive. Bold measures are needed to break this impasse.

A reasonable position to take; what bold measures did you have in mind, Peter? How should we encourage smart state school pupils to apply to Oxbridge in the first place, and how should we help them shine in A-levels and the entrance exams?

Suppose Oxford and Cambridge were to ask every state school to identify, at 15, its brightest pupils academically (one, two or three, depending on size). Suppose those pupils were given every possible support and guidance in A-level subject choice and teaching.

Wow. (Checks URL.) Yes, this still appears to be The Guardian. I can't believe what I'm reading. This sounds... elitist. I do see one or too teeny, weeny problems though. If the top pupils at Maths, Science, English Lit, History and French are not the same person, how do you choose two or three of them for this intensive study course? Draw lots? But, nitpicking aside, the kernel of the idea sounds good. So this gives us (finger in the air, say 2 pupils out of an average year of 200, so 1% - oh, the irony) 1% x 880,000 Year 13 A-Level students, i.e. 8800 "elite" pupils.

Looking at the Independent Schools Council 2012 report we find that:

• a shade over 90% of ISC school pupils go on to post-18 education, compared to a UK average of 48%; and
• there are about 42,000 ISC Year 13 (A-Level) students compared to a UK total of 860,000;

Oxford has about 17300 applicants for 3200 undergraduate places; 57.7% of admitted UK students came from the state sector. Cambridge has about 16000 applicants for 3400 places and one assumes a similar state/private split. So for Oxbridge we're looking at 6600 places and 33300 applicants.

Given that, what does Mr. Wilby recommend?

Suppose, above all, Oxbridge allocated to this pool of talent a fixed proportion of its places – initially, perhaps, 70%, but rising to over 90%, so that its UK intake became representative of the general school population – with those who did best at A-level getting preference.

70% of Oxbridge places is 4620 places - more than half of your "elite" pupils will be getting in by this method. You've shrunk the private sector students from 43% to 30% of the intake, so one third of private sector pupils who were able enough to be admitted to Oxbridge will be frozen out. Incidentally, what effect is this going to have on the admission stats of the remaining Russell Group universities - will you see a huge bulge in private sector entries there, squeezing out state pupils? What are you going to do about that? And it's a bit of bad luck for any state pupil who isn't selected for elite coaching. What about late developers who are bored by GCSE but shine at the more rigorous A-level studies? They'll face more acute competition for the remaining 30% of Oxbridge places with the higher-calibre private school pupils. Let's not even think what happens if you crank the 70% state sector minimum to 90%.

Wilby continues to throw out irrelevant facts to try to bolster his ideas:

Several research studies show that, on average, students from maintained schools perform better in degree exams than their fee-charging-school counterparts with the same A-level grades.

Yes. You'll note that Oxbridge has now more or less given up on A-levels and do their own entrance exams and interviews precisely to avoid this problem. Is there any study that shows to any reasonable level of confidence that state school pupils at Oxbridge perform better than private school pupils? I suspect the differences are noisy and subject-specific. And he addresses the unequal academic attainment of state schools thus:

Middle-class parents would clamour to get their children into comprehensives in disadvantaged areas in hope of them grabbing one of those precious places.

Oh Lordy. Where to start? There's a step function here, Peter. If your child is not number 1 or number 2 in their year (and relative rankings are generally volatile over years) you gain no advantage from this scheme. I'd wager a significant sum of money that this scheme would make next to no difference to school intakes.

Worse yet, Peter, this won't work. Speaking for myself and the high achievers I know, we are motivated by competition. We need to be studying a subject with several other people who are as good as or better than us. We are competitive, we need a spur to achieve and excel, and (friendly) rivalry provides this spur. Private schools achieve their success in part by creating a hothouse of high achievers who reach further together than they could by themselves. Trying to get 2-3 students to cram for two years is destined to fail miserably.

...this cannot be described as social engineering. It would be educational engineering.

This may be news to you, Peter, but engineering involves a significant amount of maths and rigour. Your half-wit ideas involve neither.

Mike Baker is unwell.

If he's just read this half-arsed poorly-thought-out piece, I'm not surprised.

Commentator agbagb points out the educational term that was mysteriously absent from Wilby's piece:

When I was a (bright, working class) kid in Birkenhead in the 60s and 70s, that's what Grammar Schools did - and the teachers that led that charge were largely Oxbridge grads who'd gone into (state) teaching, and whose mission was "talent spotting". But, as I recall, we then tossed all that away, and decided that Grammar Schools were themselves elitist.
Wow - that worked well!

If you want more state pupils to gain Oxbridge places, you have to improve the education given to them by state schools. This certainly will involve a certain amount of elitism and picking winners, but give the schools some extra money and let them do it themselves rather than imposing centrally-planned targets.

From time to time it is necessary to read the sentencing remarks of a judge

...to remind oneself how difficult, and how serious, their profession can be. The sentencing of Sarah Catt for aborting a near-term baby make me get down on my knees, thank God I didn't go into the legal profession, and thank Mr. Justice Cooke for taking on a task which few sober people would envy:

What you did was to end the life of a child that was presumptively capable of being born alive, by inducing birth or miscarriage. I am not able to accept anything much that you have told others about what occurred but I bear in mind all that has been said on your behalf in mitigation, in particular the fact that you are a good parent to your 2 children. However, but for the drugs intentionally taken, there is no reason to believe that you would not have been delivered of a healthy boy. Had he been born safely within a matter of days, and had you killed him after birth, you would be facing a charge of murder. Had that been the case you would have faced life imprisonment and I would have to set a minimum term to be served in prison with a starting point of 15 years, less discount for the plea and any mitigating factors.

Read the whole thing, courtesy of Jack of Kent. For sure we have out-of-touch, barking mad and near-criminally incompetent judges and magistrates, but Mr. Justice Cooke does not appear to be among them.

Cristina needs more fingers for her dike

The Beeb reports that Paypal is being forced to prevent fund transfers between people in Argentina. Funny, I thought that transferring funds between people was the raison d'être of Paypal. What prompted the change?

[The Argentina government restrictions on dollar conversion] has led to an increase in currency sales on the black market - but Paypal's exchange rates are better. Locals were setting up two accounts under different email addresses and transferring money between the two, exchanging local currency pesos for dollars in the process.
Under the new rules only one account per person can be registered within Argentina.

Because obviously the desire of people to exchange pesos for dollars is the root cause, right? We just need to prevent that desire from happening, and everything will be rosy.

Oh, maybe not:

Economist Eduardo Marty told the BBC that currency restrictions had been extended to all economic activities, from the export of goods to foreign travel.
"You have to apply for permission to import any goods," he said.
"If you need to travel abroad the government gives you a meagre amount of money. Sometimes they approve it at the last moment and people are forced to buy on the black market."

Wow. What possible reason could there be for people to be so eager to exit the peso into a harder currency? Well, other than a 24% (unofficial) inflation rate reducing the purchasing power of pesos by 20% per year. And the government adding the 15% tax on purchases abroad.

Cristina Kirchner is heading at flank speed for the rocks of economic reality. She can stick her fingers in the dike of peso integrity all she likes, but that dike is just going to keep springing leaks. No-one has any faith in the value of the peso, Cristina, and this is mainly because you spend so much effort trying to stop people (the market) finding out what this value is. Eventually you're going to run out of state assets to sell for dollars, and then paying for all your imports is going to be somewhat tricky. The final stop on the railway track you're on is Zimbabwe.

(As a matter of curiosity, why the focus on the US dollar? Is it just for ease of exchange? I'd imagine that the CAD or CHF would provide an equally solid peso-inflation-proofing of one's savings).

Marcela Trust, part 2

[In which we meet the Botnar family, discover an unpaid £250mm UK tax bill, and find that hating bacon doesn't pay the bills. Now available: Part 3, where we take a look at the accounts of the Camelia Botnar entities. ]

Following my original post on the Marcela trust, Tim Worstall's repost occasioned several comments including a very helpful one from Vinny Burgoo:

I came across Octav Botnar, Marcela's husband, while trying to identify an associate of John Bloom [...] Botnar was the brains behind Nissan UK, which expanded rapidly then lost its import monopoly and was eventually found to have systematically cheated the taxman for a decade or more.

So I did a bit more digging to try to ascertain the source and intent behind the sudden £70 million donation to the Marcela Trust in 2010 and what the connection to CASH was.

The Octav Botnar story

Octav Botnar died in 1998 in Switzerland, owing the UK Inland Revenue about £250 million in unpaid tax. It seems that the Inland Revenue were bringing a court case against him, but dropped it when it became clear he was terminally ill. Former Nissan MD Michael Hunt wasn't so lucky, getting 8 years in chokey for his part in the frauds while financial director and company secretary Frank Shannon got 3 years.

The prosecution said the fraud started in 1976 and lasted 16 years. Bogus invoices and 'sham' shipping agents in the Netherlands and Norway were used to inflate the costs of shipping Nissan vehicles from Japan to Britain by as much as 50 per cent, to conceal an extra profit averaging pounds 115 on each car and van.
The money was laundered through a Bermudan company and secret Swiss bank accounts. The cash then disappeared into a black hole - the term used by tax investigators who have failed to trace a single penny.

Keen readers of my original post will remember the company "Camelia Botnar Limited" and the charity "Camelia Botnar Foundation" which are both interests of Marcela Trust trustees, including Dawn Pamela Rose whose company OMC Limited contributed the £70 million at issue. It seems that Camelia Botnar was Octav and Marcela's daughter, and was killed in a 1979 road accident, hence the foundation of the charity. Marcela Botnar seems to be still in Switzerland, working for the Fondation Botnar in Basel (Elisabethenstrasse 15).

This made me wonder more about the source of the money and whether there might have been any connection to Octav's original fortune. OMC Investments Limited was founded in 1970 but wasn't called OMC Investments Limited then: they were originally Datsun UK Limited, changing name to Nissan UK Limited in January 1984 and OMC Investments Limited in 2007. OMC Investments Limited now has £69 million of share capital, nearly all of which is owned by The Marcela Trust since it was gifted to them in 2010.

It looks to me as if all the value in Octav Botnar's original Datsun/Nissan UK company, headquartered in 14 Buckingham Street, Westminster, was transferred to charity The Marcela Trust, also headquartered in 14 Buckingham Street, Westminster and sharing at least one trustee/director (the aforementioned Dawn Pamela Rose).

The Trust itself donated £800K to charities in 2010 - 500K to The Nuffield hospital which seems to have a link to the late Camelia, 200K to bacon-hating CASH and 100K to "Open Eyes" in Lausanne, Switzerland (which seems to be the interest of trustee Dr. Martin Lenz). I suspect that it's not a coincidence that Octav Botner lived most of his life in Switzerland - perhaps he had eye problems, perhaps Dr. Lenz was a family friend. But why would The Marcela Trust donate all that money to CASH? What's the connection?

CASH - kept afloat by OMC funds

CASH staff are all in the field of nutrition and cardiovascular health. The 2010 CASH annual report makes it clear that it is primarily a lobbying organisation, organising the 11th National Salt Awareness Week (I must have missed the first 10 of them, how guilty do I feel) and bugging various national and international agencies about salt. It is a registered UK charity with no trustees common to the Marcela Trust network, and in FY 2011 it raised 283K from all sources and spent 113K on Salt Awareness Week and various surveys.. Interestingly the accounts note:

The funding from OMC Investments Ltd (the Marcella[sic] Trust) which comprises a significant component of the income will cease in 2011-2012 leaving a considerable gap in the charity's resources.

With very little money coming from actual people (262K of the 283K came from OMC and the British Heart Foundation), and appearing to be pretty much an anti-salt lobbying arm of The Marcela Trust, CASH is clearly deserving of a their Fake Charities label - and with luck their £800K in the bank will run out soon; they estimated 3-4 years with the current reserves.

Who's behind OMC and what are they doing now?

Mrs. Dawn Pamela Rose, director of OMC Investments Ltd. and trustee of the Marcela Trust, seems to be also known by her (maiden?) name Dawn Pamela Lawson in her role as a director of Camelia Botnar Ltd. The manager "D Lawson" to whom The Marcela Trust paid £240K seems to be she. I suspect that administrator "N Malby" (£24K) is Natasha Sarah Lara Malby (age 36) who is similarly a Marcela Trust trustee and director of Camelia Botnar Ltd. Natasha seems to be a bit young to have any involvement in Nissan before things went "foom"; I wonder how she got involved with the Trust?

Dawn is a director of company QHH Limited (registed number 07637088) which appears to be a newly formed (as of May 2011) company with as yet unknown purposes and cashflow since no accounts have yet been filed. Brian Arthur Groves of OMC and the Marcela Trust is a co-director, so this isn't just a sole venture by Ms. Rose. I note in passing that Brian is nearly 80, whereas Dawn is a sprightly 56 years of age. Brian's directorship history includes Nissan Plant and Industrial Machinery Ltd., Debretts says that he used to be a motoring journalist before becoming advertising, PR and marketing director for Nissan UK Limited until 1988 (that must have fun when the Inland Revenue came a-calling for his colleague Octav Botnar) and his given business address is... 14 Buckingham Street, Westminster. Shocker.

QHH Ltd. registered address is currently COMEWELL HOUSE, NORTH STREET, HORSHAM, WEST SUSSEX RH12 1RD. Oh look! As well as OMC Investments Limited, Spofforths Private Client Services LLP is at that address - Spofforths are the accountants who signed off on the Marcela Trust accounts for 2010, so seem to be favoured by Ms. Rose/Lawson for her business arrangements. Presumably they are holding the company details and managing correspondence until an actual office is opened.

I wonder whether QHH Limited are is going to start engaging with OMC Investments Ltd, Camelia Botnar Ltd, the Marcela Trust or the Camelia Botnar foundation? If so, how and why?

Summary

The Marcela Trust is populated with people who have been and are involved with a variety of Botnar family enterprises. CASH is kept afloat by OMC money, but now that's gone to the Marcela Trust they have to live off their reserves. There's no indication where this £70 million in the Marcela Trust is going to go, but it seems that being a trustee can be a very lucrative quarter-of-a-million-quid-a-year gig, as Dawn Pamela Rose/Lawson could tell you.

The Marcela Trust donated virtually nothing to anyone in FYE July 2011. I am going to be watching with interest to see what the accounts for FYE July 2012 reveal, when they finally get published. What are they planning to do with the £69 million-odd of investments they are holding? If CASH isn't expecting anything, who is? To which charities are they going to be donating - and whom will they be paying fat salaries? What's going on at 14 Buckingham Street, Westminster - is anyone around to ask questions of Mr. Brian Arthur Groves or his representative there?

A rare voice of sanity on public pensions

This opinion comes from The Ledger Independent in Kentucky, USA, and is rare in that it actually captures the full range of people and organisations that are to blame for the current public sector pension crisis:

Taxpayers should be furious that lawmakers – through greed, mismanagement and inaction – have allowed this system to deteriorate. State employees should be equally as angry at the prospect that they may never collect the pensions they have been promised.

It perfectly captures my feelings on the current situation. Most^[1] public sector employees are angry that the pension deal they were promised when they joined will no longer be valid, taking an effective pay cut. Most taxpayers are angry that their prospective private and state pensions are shrinking rapidly when the pension rights accumulated by public sector employees, which are funded through their taxes, are protected. Not enough attention is paid to the weasel and financial illiterate state and national officials who agreed to these pension deals and never cared about whether there would be enough money in future to fund the promised payments.

This, incidentally, is what infuriates me when the BMA complains about rising contributions when the UK NHS pension system is in "surplus":

The BMA argues the NHS pension scheme is currently in surplus to £2bn a year, which is returned to the Treasury. It says: "Given that the amount being paid into the scheme currently exceeds the amount being paid out, there is no justification for further immediate increases. They equate to an additional tax on NHS staff to help pay for a economic deficit which they did not create."

Listen up, you financial illiterates. The reason the NHS pension scheme is in surplus currently is because of the steady increase in staff numbers - 20% increase in the 10 years 2001-2011. If you're so confident that the scheme is in surplus, let the NHS pension scheme keep that £2bn and accumulate it. But as soon as the pension scheme falls into deficit, it comes out of the pensions and salaries of the scheme members; the Government is no longer involved. Like that idea? Thought not.

[1] Those public sector employees in the UK who have retired or are about to retire are quids in - their deal is effectively untouched. This is not the case in the USA where public sector pensioners are paid out of current state and county budgets - if there's no more money, their pensions could well be directly at risk.

Greg Smith finally re-emerges

Ex-Goldman salesman Greg Smith has finally completed his book about life in Goldman Sach and publisher Grand Central is releasing it on 22nd October:

"Many people on Main Street distrust Wall Street right now, yet few can put their finger on why," Jamie Raab, publisher of Grand Central, said in a statement. "Greg Smith’s candid account of his years at Goldman Sachs does just that."

It has taken 6 months to write; either Greg is a two-finger typist, or (I suspect more likely) the Grand Central lawyers have been through the proofs with a fine tooth comb and a stack of red ink...

They're certainly not short on hype;

Grand Central considers the book a potential successor to "Liar's Poker"

I bet they do... I look forward to ordering my copy, and will endeavour to provide you, dear readers, with my thoughts on Greg Smith and whether he can hold a candle to Michael Lewis.

The Marcela Trust won't bring home the bacon

[Author's note: this started as a rant about bacon, but the more I dug up, the smellier this seemed. Anyone wanting to chase down the threads here and ask some pointed questions, do feel free.]

According to Consensus Action on Salt and Health we should be eschewing bacon as two rashers of bacon contains over half one's daily salt allowance.

They say that like it's a bad thing:

"For every one gramme reduction in salt intake we can prevent 12,000 heart attacks, strokes and heart failure," said Cash chairman Graham MacGregor.

The RDA of salt (an amount no doubt pulled out from between Mr. MacGregor's tofu-fed gluteus maximus) is 6g. We eat an average of 9g. So if no-one ate more salt than recommended, we'd save 36,000 heart attacks, strokes and heart failures. In a pig's eye.

So who are these Concerned Upstanding National Treasures at CASH?

CASH was set up in 1996 as a response to the refusal of the Chief Medical Officer to endorse the COMA recommendations to reduce salt intake, following the threat of withdrawal of funds by the food industry to the Conservative Party.

"Was set up". I note the use of the passive tense there. "Was set up" by whom, exactly? And who is funding them?

CASH is reliant on voluntary contributions in order to fulfil its expanding role such as running National Salt Awareness Week, producing and distributing resources etc. CASH is unique in its work. The role it performs is not undertaken by any other organisation, so your support is vital.
...
We are very grateful to The Marcella[sic] Trust and the British Heart Foundation for their continuing support of CASH.

Who are the The Marcela Trust and what do they want?

THE CHARITY PROVIDES SUPPORT TO SELECTED CAUSES IN LINE WITH THE CHARITY'S OBJECTS.

Could they be any more vague? And, oh look! Income for 2009 was £730K, most of it was spent. Income for 2011 was £0 and £14K was spent. Income for 2010 was £70MM and £800K was spent. WTF? The 2010 accounts confirm that these clowns have a £69MM balance.

It's quite hard to find out any information about what The Marcela Trust does; Google doesn't reveal much, and their entry on the Charities Commission site is rather unhelpful. Interestingly, The Marcela Trust contact address is 14 Buckingham Street, London - the same address as Guardian favourite the Institute for Public Policy Research. Perhaps they are next door neighbours? Or perhaps the IPPR knows more of what The Marcela Trust does than one might expect?

Taking trustee Dawn Pamela Rose as an example, a lady with a remarkably similar name is director of a number of "generic" names, including "OMC Investments Limited", "Camelia Botnar Limited" and (my personal favourite) "QHH Limited". Dawn is listed as living at Park Farm, Saham Hills, Norfolk. Oh look! OMC Investments Limited is also listing 14 Buckingham Street, Westminster as its contact address. What a coincidence. They seem to be into property investments in a big way. I wonder if any of that £70MM in the Marcela Trust accounts came from OMC's investments? Apparently so, according to the accounts:

During the year the Trust received a donation of 95.5% of the share capital of Omarca Investment Holdings Limited. Omarca Investment Holdings Limited is a dormant intermediary holding company which holds 100% of the shares of OMC Investments Limited. OMC Investments Limited's principal activities are property dealing, management, development and investment.

That seems very out of line with the Trust's previous fundraising and spending. I wonder what OMC intend it to be spent on? I note that staff costs (1 manager, 3 administrators) were £290K wages and salaries, plus about 10% of that as pension contributions. "D Lawson" (manager?) was paid over £240K and N Malby (administrator?) gets just over £40K. Nice work if you can get it.

Trustee Mark Robert Spragg from Teddington is a director of Zwischenzug Limited (apparently "Zwischenzug" is a chess tactic) based in Pinner. What do we know about Zwischenzug?

Their current status is 'Company not trading', and their founding director, Norman Mcmillan, has been the director of 2 other companies. Norman Hamilton Mcmillan is the only shareholder of Zwischenzug Limited [...] The company's current net worth is £20, and the value of their shareholders' interest is £20.

Wonder what he uses it for?

Trustee Brian Arthur Groves is a director of the Camilia Botnar Foundation which appears to be a legit and active charity - Dawn Rose's Camilia Botnar Limited company appears to be the same as Camelia Botnar Homes and Gardens which sells things made by the craftsmen and trainees employed by the Foundation. According to the Marcela Trust accounts he has a Guernsey-based company B G Consultants Limited, which is where The Marcela Trust paid him £85K in 2010, and presumably he doesn't have to worry about too much tax there. I'm surprised that the IPPR haven't let their neighbours know their feelings about tax avoidance.

I would be fascinated to learn what's going on with The Marcela Trust, these trustees, and their mesh of companies and charities. In my experience, the more an organisation tries to deflect interest about what it does, the more reason there is for people to ask pointed questions about it. Any journos out there up for a bit of digging around Companies House and doorstepping 14 Buckingham Street, Westminster?

Housebuilder wants money for building houses

The uncritical reporting by some British journalists -- in this case, Emma Rowley from the Daily Telegraph -- never ceases to amaze me. She's covering the speech of Steve Morgan from housebuilder Redrow at the RESI conference:

"Financing is the problem, the biggest issue of the day, but even if we were able to overcome the finance issue, planning is a massive obstacle," he said. "It's outside of London, where the principle of development comes into question."
...
He called for more Government support for the housing industry.

I bet he did. Oddly, it seems that banks are happy to lend at bargain-basement rates to those with substantial equity in their properties. This doesn't smell like a balance sheet problem. Rather, it bears all the hallmarks of the banks believing that a) residential property is overvalued and b) overextended home purchasers are likely to default on their loans.

Gah! I don't blame the housebuilders for trying to snaffle more Government cash, especially as current and past governments have been so willing to provide it. What I do resent is clowns like Ms. Rowley failing to do basic journalistic due diligence and challenge the housebuilders' assertions. Just how is the print media conducting indispensible journalism, again?

John Hoad from the Campaign to Protect Rural England is at it as well:

"The real problem is market failure," he said. "As a society we can't seem to create the situation where we value housing enough to invest in it long-term."

Wrong, John! We've created the situation where housing is overpriced, and now people can't afford and aren't prepared to buy it at that price. If there's a functioning market in a commodity, and the clearing price is below that which you think is correct, it's unlikely that the market itself is wrong. The CPRE wants to safeguard green belt land, thereby keeping high the price of houses at the edge of that land (the marginal commodity). If the Government plans to simplify planning permission go ahead, contrary to the CPRE wishes, those house prices will fall. Just how is that a problem?

Demented QE

Ben Bernanke is all out of ideas, so he signs off on another round of quantative easing. After all it worked so well the last two times, right?

The Fed said it will buy $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities per month in an attempt to foster a nascent recovery in the real estate market.

Oh Lordy. Look, Ben, the USA's housing market collapsed because it was massively overvalued. So far, so good. But ultra-low interest rates induce asset bubbles, and so the housing market (along with gold, oil etc.) is rapidly re-inflating. You don't need QE to force house prices up, they're rising rapidly enough already.

If you want to fix the American economy, you have to reduce the costs to American small and medium businesses of doing business (the large businesses generally have good lobbyists and are doing just fine). The current administration's plans (Obamacare etc.) are having precisely the opposite effect; uncertainty and worry about the future costs of employment are making them pull in their heads and wait to see what will happen. In the meantime we get no economic growth.

I think Ben Bernanke has no idea what to do, and is pulling QE out of the hat in response to the famous "Yes, Minister" syllogism: "We must do something, this is something, therefore we must do it." I note that he's never had a job that involves employing people or trying to make a profit.

Of YouTube and RPGs

A fascinating conflagration of noise and politics arose following the attacks on the US consulates and embassies in Libya, Egypt and Yemen. What does it all mean?

The Libyan attacks, which resulted in the deaths of 4 USA citizens including the ambassador and two Marines, received the most coverage. However, there hasn't been much coverage of how the attack was conducted:

Captain Fathi al-Obeidi, whose special operations unit was ordered by Libya's authorities to meet an eight-man force at Benghazi airport, said that after his men and the U.S. squad had found the American survivors who had evacuated the blazing consulate, the ostensibly secret location in an isolated villa came under an intense and highly accurate mortar barrage.
"I really believe that this attack was planned," he said [...] "The accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any regular revolutionaries."

First, American citizens should be grateful to Captain al-Obeidi who by all accounts conducted the evacuation and protection of the consulate in an examplary fashion. But mortars are not standard equipment of the aggrieved citizen, and the ability to put mortar fire on a specific target in a city is not exactly handed out willy-nilly. The people behind these mortars were trained and knew exactly what they wanted to do.

Separately, it seems that the USA Embassy in Cairo was not as well protected as it might have been:

Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson "did not permit U.S. Marine guards to carry live ammunition," according to multiple reports on U.S. Marine Corps blogs spotted by Nightwatch. "She neutralized any U.S. military capability that was dedicated to preserve her life and protect the US Embassy."

If true, and I emphasise the if, it seems that the lessons of the 1983 Beirut Marine barracks bombing (which killed 241 Marines) were not learned:

The sentries at the gate were operating under rules of engagement which made it very difficult to respond quickly to the truck. Sentries were ordered to keep their weapons at condition four (no magazine inserted and no rounds in the chamber).

By contrast, read the account of Marines Jonathan Yale and Jordan Haeter defending an outpost in Ramadi, Iraq:

While Iraqi police fled, Haerter and Yale had never flinched and never stopped firing as the Mercedes truck -- the same model used in the Beirut bombing -- sped directly toward them.
Without their steadfastness, the truck would probably have penetrated the compound before it exploded, and 50 or more Marines and Iraqis would have been killed. The incident happened in just six seconds.

The individual threads of intelligence seems to weaving a tapestry that talks of a pre-planned Al-Qaeda attack in Libya. One has to wonder at how the Libyan and Egyptian populaces managed to co-ordinate an attack on Tuesday, when Friday is the traditional day that the imams and mullahs at the mosque denounce the infidel act of the week. Who was riling up the masses?

Separately, I'm amazed that there hasn't been a suicide bombing or shooting at YouTube headquarters yet ,although their takedown of the film today may have helped. What's fascinating is the back story of the Coptic Christians who appear to be behind the inflammatory film. I wouldn't go as far as the supine US Embassy in Cairo in denouncing the use of free speech to offend Muslims:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others

but one has to wonder whether the Copts have finally managed to get some payback for the dreadful persecution and killings that have plagued them over the past few years.