Diary: today's chronicle of failures

Jerry Pournelle's blog (on the sidebar to the right if you're in a PC browser, otherwise here) has a recurring theme where he details his struggles with recalcitrant Microsoft products and sundry other applications.

I felt his pain today. The laptop refused to connect to the scanner (Epson BX630FW). I tried all the usual stuff: restarted everything, reconnected all devices to the router, reinstalled the printer software, switched from WiFi to an Ethernet connection, ... .

Result: stuff prints but the scanner remains unrecognised. My best guess is that something in the printer/scanner has broken. The workaround is just to take pictures via the pretty good camera on my Nexus 6 phone - I'm in no hurry to replace the five year old Epson device.

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Work on the 'famous' chatbot has paused. Reason: I know how to do it and consequently I'm already bored.

The interesting hurdle was my bucket-list objective of getting a proper, FOL resolution theorem prover to work. Now that it does (gratifyingly high in Google searches), moving on to a planner has lost much of its appeal.

I suspect much of the power of a chatbot anyway is in the data (ie the data-fill), not the sophistication of the underlying architecture or algorithms. This makes me even less excited.

A deeper problem. A chatbot needs to interact with conversationalists and to learn. Minimally, this needs Internet access and engagement with a messaging platform such as Skype, Twitter or Facebook. But if you start from Common Lisp the integration problems look rather daunting and even expensive. I'm not enthused about shifting to Javascript or Python, where such integration would probably be easier.

So I'm awaiting some conceptual innovation sufficiently exciting to remotivate me. Something like cracking consciousness perhaps 😎 ...?

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My favourite article today: this meditation from Greg Cochran disinterred from 2013 and still completely relevant.

"... Syria was born for trouble. Although we all know that ethnic diversity is our strength, better than ice cream or unicorn poop, it appears that Syria (like much of the Middle East) has managed to acquire too much of a good thing. Paradoxical as it may seem, Syria is actually overly diverse.

There are very ancient Christian communities, as well as Kurds (who aim for an independent Kurdish state, an idea that horrifies Turkey), but the real fight is between the Sunni Arabs (about 60 percent of the country) and the Alawites, who run the show and make up about 12 percent of the population. I’m sure that most of my readers are fully conversant with every detail of the history and practices of the various Muslim denominations,—just as our lawmakers are—but let me talk about the Alawites for a moment.

The Alawites have an esoteric religion, one in which their most important beliefs are kept secret from outsiders. Since those beliefs are only revealed through a long process of initiation, even most Alawites don’t know what they are.

We know some things, most of which don’t sound at all like Islam. Alawites drink wine: they celebrate Christmas and Easter. They reject to the call to prayer and the pilgrimage to Mecca. They have no places of worship. Women among the Alawites are not veiled, and enjoy greater freedom than among Sunnis or Shi’ites, but it seems that this is the case because they are believed to be soulless—they are never initiated into the mysteries. Alawites also seem to believe in reincarnation.

Traditionally, Alawites were considered non-Muslim and treated like dirt—worse than Christians or Jews. You can see how the Sunni majority might resent being ruled by them—indeed, it’s hard to imagine how that ever came to pass.

The roots of Alawite dominance go back to the French colonial era. Most Syrian Muslims opposed French rule and refused to serve in the local gendarmerie—but the Alawites did. After independence, the Alawites continued to enter the armed forces in large numbers, partly because they were poor as heretical church mice. At first, the highest ranks in the army were filled by Sunnis, but each coup led to the expulsion of Sunni generals on the wrong side, and there were many coups. The political struggles bred mutual suspicion among the Sunnis, but the Alawites stuck together. The Alawites were also overrepresented in the Baath party.

So, while the Baath party took over in 1963, the Alawites took over in 1966—and they haven’t let go yet.

The thing is, when you ride the tiger, you can’t let go. Although they have made efforts to build support outside their sect, through nationalist and redistributionist policies, the Alawite government has always faced violent opposition. They’ve put down full-scale revolts, most notably in Hama, 1982, where they leveled the city with artillery, killing tens of thousands. All that official violence means that they can’t afford to lose. Once the Alawites were despised, but now they’re hated. At this point, Peter W. Galbraith, former ambassador to Croatia, says “The next genocide in the world will likely be against the Alawites in Syria.” ...

The tone of the whole article is ironic and satirical. The comments - worth a look - confirm that Americans don't do irony.

"Reinhold says:

September 10, 2013 at 5:48 pm

Is this some kind of a troll? If not: proof that scientists are often brain-dead regarding politics."

A little later another commentator sadly remarks:

"Anonymous says:

September 11, 2013 at 8:49 pm

So far one out of seven people realized that the proposal is satire. That ratio is probably above average."

The standard procedure for Sunni Jihadis with Alawite captives is to behead them. If I hear the neocon-signposting phrase, "bombing his own people", one more time ... .

Cruise missiles in the wilderness of mirrors

En route to Syria

I almost completely agree with the points below made by Scott Adams in his latest blog post.

" ... But let’s say the world believes Assad or a rogue general under his command gassed his own people. What’s an American President to do? If Trump does nothing, he appears weak, and it invites mischief from other countries. But if he launches 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian military air base base within a few days, which he did, the U.S. gets several benefits at low cost:

1. President Trump just solved for the allegation that he is Putin’s puppet. He doesn’t look like Putin’s puppet today. And that was Trump’s biggest problem, which made it America’s problem too. No one wants a president who is under a cloud of suspicion about Russian influence.

2. President Trump solved (partly) for the allegation that he is incompetent. You can hate this military action, but even Trump’s critics will call it measured and rational. Like it or not, President Trump’s credibility is likely to rise because of this, if not his popularity. Successful military action does that for presidents.

3. President Trump just set the table for his conversations with China about North Korea. Does China doubt Trump will take care of the problem in China’s own backyard if they don’t take care of it themselves? That negotiation just got easier.

4. Iran might be feeling a bit more flexible when it’s time to talk about their nuclear program.

5. Trump’s plan of a Syrian Safe Zone requires dominating the Syrian Air Force for security. That just got easier.

6. After ISIS is sufficiently beaten-back, the Syrian government will need to negotiate with the remaining entities in Syria to form a lasting peace of some sort that keeps would-be refugees in place. Syria’s government just got more flexible. It probably wants to keep the rest of its military.

7. Israel is safer whenever an adversary’s air power is degraded.

On the risk side of the equation, we have the possibility of getting into war with Russia. I’d put those odds at roughly zero in this case because obviously the U.S. warned Russia about the attack. That means we knew their reaction before we attacked. And it was a measured response of the type Putin probably respects. I expect Russia to complain a lot but continue to partner with the U.S. against ISIS.

If it turns out that the sarin gas attack that sparked this military action didn’t come from Assad, it doesn’t much matter. President Trump will bank all of the benefits above even if the attack turns out to be a hoax. We know Assad had some chemical weapons at one point, and probably used them. No one will be crying for Assad if the attack was unnecessary. And realistically, the public will never be 100% sure who was behind the attack. ..."

I would just add this. The liberal-dominated media still don't get Trump. They persist in thinking he's operating according to some overarching grand theory. They had him pegged as a Putin-puppet, then as an America-first isolationist and now a latter-day neocon.

Since they approve of this last position they're breathing a collective sigh of relief.

None of this is true. Ordinary folk realise that Trump is not an intellectual, he's just out to defend US interests. He instinctively knows that the way you do that is to operate from a position of strength and not let your opponents diss you.

Liberals, who never think like that, will never understand Trump, But I suspect that the Syrian military are also behind the curve.

Unlike western liberals, they should have no problem figuring out Trump's 'Big Man' politics - those are de rigeur in the Middle-East. But they're so parochial over there, so insular, that until yesterday they still hadn't figured out that the game changed when Obama left the building.

But unlike the liberals, they'll be fast learners.

Many d*gs - none ours

Danny Finkelstein has a characteristically smart piece in today's Times. If I were still a Trotskyist writer, I would add that Finkelstein hides his devotion to the British Imperialist neoliberal project under a veneer of sweet-reasonableness. Yet there is always the barest hint of sophistry in his arguments .. if you can lift up the right piece of the carpet.

He starts with an endearing dig at the bluff, unreconstructed Scottish Nationalists:

" The day after last week’s debate on Syria I bumped into a Scottish Nationalist MP who had spoken forcefully against the action recommended by the prime minister. I told him truthfully that I thought his speech the best on his side of the argument.

"The MP thanked me and told me that his intention now was to do all he could to undermine David Cameron’s claim that there were 70,000 non-jihadist Syrian fighters. This, he said, was exactly like Tony Blair’s dodgy 45-minute claim.

"As people often do in politics, he said this with a stare and in a stern, unyielding way that didn’t leave much space for questioning. His eyes didn’t say: “And what do you think, Danny?” So I took the hint, nodded politely, and left him to it."

Beautifully written. That's exactly how the SNP come across - dogmatic and immune to argument. Next Finkelstein takes us through the many d*gs in the fight, all of them pretty bad.

"The idea that we should join with Assad has the support of foreign policy realists such as Julian Lewis and Boris Johnson. They accept the moral case against the Syrian regime, but Lewis points out that there was a moral case against working with Stalin in the Second World War. Assad can be our ally, as the Soviets were, in delivering us from the greater evil of Isis.

"On its own terms — on realist, practical, pragmatic terms — this argument is utterly wrong.

"Assad is now in alliance with Shia Iran and its proxies to suppress a mainly Sunni revolt. As Michael Weiss and Hassan Hassan describe in their book Isis: Inside the Army of Terror, his strategy has been to make the West believe he is fighting only jihadists and thereby to draw us in on his side. Throughout the conflict he has therefore been aiding Isis, while fighting the Free Syrian Army and other factions.

"If the West joins with the regime to assist Shia suppression of the revolt against the regime it will drive even more Sunnis into the hands of Isis, making the problems in Syria worse, not better."

It is worth recalling that in the old days, when Syria kinda worked, the neighbouring Israelis always gave the Alawites implicit support. Running a fragile, unstable dictatorship over a majority Sunni population made the Assad regime weak; Israel liked it that way.

"There are many Syrians living in or near Isis-controlled areas who accept jihadist rule for entirely practical reasons. There is fear, of course. But it is also because Isis keeps the lights on and suppresses crime (except its own) and ensures the supply of food (having first taken control of the grain stores).

"One might think of these Syrian acceptors as “shy Isis”. They have little ideological commitment to Isis. They resent the jihadists’ medieval social ideas as much as one might imagine they do. Yet Isis protects them from the regime and from Shia revenge. Western support for Assad would deepen and widen Sunni commitment to Isis, pulling in moderate Syrians. It would be a disaster."

Politicians and the media have demonised Isis as uniquely awful. Yet they are on a continuum with pretty much every Islamic fundamentalist outfit: a little more observant, a little less corrupt, a little more ruthless. Hamas in Gaza, tainted by compromise and corruption, is presently losing members to Isis for just these reasons.

So if supporting the Assad regime would put us on the wrong side of the majority Sunnis, but the Sunnis themselves are dominated by fractious, clannish Islamic fundamentalists, perhaps we should admit our limitations and just clear out?

"Those who don’t want to support Assad argue that our best course is just getting the hell out.

"I think there is quite a strong argument for this. After all, the conflict seems never-ending; the moderate forces, however many there are, appear not that forceful and dubiously moderate; and the sectarian battle is not something we want to be muddled up with.

"There is no clean finish, no victory, so what’s the point?

"The point is that leaving the whole thing alone altogether won’t work either. We can’t allow the creation of what one might call “terrortories” — lands where either Sunni or Shia jihadists settle and can turn from fighting the near enemy (each other) to fighting the far enemy (us).

"So our best bet is to see that we are involved in something that is better thought of not as a war, but as a police action, one that sits alongside our domestic anti-terror policies. One that won’t have a neat ending but will carry on for many years. One in which conquering and concluding is not likely to be an option.

"We have to work with the bogus battalions and the shy Isis and the many Syrians willing to live in peace and under law. There are many of them, however weak or fractious they may be, and however much their status as fighting forces may be questionable.

"We have to help them — that means them, not us; we can’t do it for them — to take control using every lever we have, diplomatic, economic and, where necessary, military.

"I can’t see that we have much of an alternative."

Have you ever seen a more feeble argument? We have a murderous civil war dominated by extremely-unpleasant militias, with no significant forces aligned with objectives any bien-pensant Western liberal would sign up to. And Finkelstein talks about a police action?

When you see logic replaced by artful sophistry, you know that the real reason for intervention is going unmentioned. And what would that be, Danny?

Yes, it's the Great Game all over again.

Bomb in Syria? Don't bomb?

The weak point of all the arguments for extending UK bombing to the whole of Islamic State is generally agreed to be the lack of a ground strategy, essential to defeat IS and build some kind of replacement governance structure.

Patrick Cockburn writes:

"In Syria, allies on the ground are going to be the armed opposition who are supposedly fighting both Isis and Bashar al-Assad. These forces are dominated by the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, a Sunni hard-line group allied to Nusra. The one place where the “moderates” had some strength was in the south where they launched a much-heralded offensive called “Southern Storm” this summer, but were defeated.

"Mr Cameron’s explanation of his strategy is peppered with references to “moderates” whom he wisely does not identify because their existence is shadowy at best. It would, indeed, be very convenient if such a powerful group existed, but unfortunately it does not.

"Mr Cameron’s Government does not seem to have taken on board that it is intervening in a civil war of great complexity and extreme savagery. There is a supposition that, if Assad were to depart, there could be a transitional Syrian government acceptable to all Syrians. A more likely scenario is that the departure of Assad would lead to a collapse of the state and the triumph of Isis and the self-declared caliphate."

In truth, I do think those voting to bomb are aware that air power alone cannot win this one, and that identifying acceptable boots on the ground is highly problematic. Just as with the Iraq adventure (despite Blair's 'true believer' stance) it's clear that the UK establishment 'almost consensus' for bombing in Syria is composed of three elements:

• The need - as always - to stay close to the Americans (who are doing most of the heavy lifting - or should I say 'dropping');
• A desire to show some solidarity with the French (and not be upstaged by them militarily in Europe);
• A desperate urge to be 'relevant' in this crisis in Europe's backyard, and not be consigned to the sidelines when solutions are eventually hammered out.

So realpolitik rules.

Since we know all the players in the region and what their general dynamics are, it should not be difficult - at least conceptually - to figure out the outlines of a plausible end-game.

• The Alawites are never again going to control the territory of the former Syria - they will end up with an enclave at best.
• The prospects of a Sunni-Alawite federation in the territory of the former Syria are precisely zero. We're talking of clan-societies with a 'never forgive, never forget' model of retaliation over the centuries. Remind me how long the Sunni-Shia schism has lasted so far?
• A partition of Syria with the Alawites running their own bit, and vaguely 'acceptable' Sunnis running their bit is actually where this is going. If only we could find those 'acceptable Sunnis' ...

And can any solution endure without the dissolution of an already fictitious integral Iraq? The Kurds, Shia and Sunni are three genies which will not easily be put back into the bottle - and why are we even trying?

The Economist: intelligent stupidity about migrants

The Economist says:

"Tens of thousands of asylum-seekers flowed towards Germany by rail, bus and on foot, chanting “Germany! Germany!”, to be welcomed by cheering crowds. Germany is showing that old Europe, too, can take in the tired, the poor and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It says it can absorb not thousands, but hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Such numbers will inevitably raise many worries: that cultures will be swamped by aliens, economies will be overburdened, social benefits will have to be curbed and even that terrorists will creep in. Anti-immigrant parties have been on the rise across Europe. In America, too, some politicians want to build walls to keep foreigners out.

Yet the impulse to see migrants as chiefly a burden is profoundly mistaken. The answer to these familiar fears is not to put up more barriers, but to manage the pressures and the risks to ensure that migration improves the lives of both immigrants and their hosts."

All of this would be very compelling if the social capital represented by the incomers was at the same level as or, better, superior to that of the present northern European incumbents. The Economist thinks (or pretends to think) this is a non-issue .. but unfortunately, it's not.

This is what the UCL guy who looked at the evidence had to say.

"Same War, Different Country" by Thomas L. Friedman

Thomas Friedman has the following piece in the New York Times today, which I mention because I agree with most of it.

"SAY, did you see the news from Libya — the last country we bombed because its leader crossed a red line or was about to? Here’s a dispatch from Libya in the Sept. 3 British newspaper, The Independent:

“Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Qaddafi two years ago. Government authority is disintegrating in all parts of the country putting in doubt claims by American, British and French politicians that NATO’s military action in Libya in 2011 was an outstanding example of a successful foreign military intervention, which should be repeated in Syria. ... Output of Libya’s prized high-quality crude oil has plunged from 1.4 million barrels a day earlier this year to just 160,000 barrels a day now.”

I keep reading about how Iraq was the bad war and Libya was the good war and Afghanistan was the necessary war and Bosnia was the moral war and Syria is now another necessary war. Guess what! They are all the same war.

They are all the story of what happens when multisectarian societies, most of them Muslim or Arab, are held together for decades by dictators ruling vertically, from the top down, with iron fists and then have their dictators toppled, either by internal or external forces. And they are all the story of how the people in these countries respond to the fact that with the dictator gone they can only be governed horizontally — by the constituent communities themselves writing their own social contracts for how to live together as equal citizens, without an iron fist from above. And, as I’ve said before, they are all the story of how difficult it is to go from Saddam to Jefferson — from vertical rule to horizontal rule — without falling into Hobbes or Khomeini.

In Bosnia, after much ethnic cleansing between warring communities, NATO came in and stabilized and codified what is in effect a partition. We acted on the ground as “the army of the center.” In Iraq, we toppled the dictator and then, after making every mistake in the book, we got the parties to write a new social contract. To make that possible, we policed the lines between sects and eliminated a lot of the worst jihadists in the Shiite and Sunni ranks. We acted on the ground as the “army of the center.” But then we left before anything could take root. Ditto Afghanistan.

The Obama team wanted to be smarter in Libya: No boots on the ground. So we decapitated that dictator from the air. But then our ambassador got murdered, because, without boots on the ground to referee, and act as the army of the center, Hobbes took hold before Jefferson.

If we were to decapitate the Syrian regime from the air, the same thing would likely happen there. For any chance of a multisectarian democratic outcome in Syria, you need to win two wars on the ground: one against the ruling Assad-Alawite-Iranian-Hezbollah-Shiite alliance; and, once that one is over, you’d have to defeat the Sunni Islamists and pro-Al Qaeda jihadists. Without an army of the center (which no one will provide) to back up the few decent Free Syrian Army units, both will be uphill fights.

The center exists in these countries, but it is weak and unorganized. It’s because these are pluralistic societies — mixtures of tribes and religious sects, namely Shiites, Sunnis, Christians, Kurds, Druze and Turkmen — but they lack any sense of citizenship or deep ethic of pluralism. That is, tolerance, cooperation and compromise. They could hold together as long as there was a dictator to “protect” (and divide) everyone from everyone else. But when the dictator goes, and you are a pluralistic society but lack pluralism, you can’t build anything because there is never enough trust for one community to cede power to another — not without an army of the center to protect everyone from everyone.

In short, the problem now across the Arab East is not just poison gas, but poisoned hearts. Each tribe or sect believes it is in a rule-or-die struggle against the next, and when everyone believes this, it becomes self-fulfilling.

That means Syria and Iraq will both likely devolve into self-governing, largely homogeneous, ethnic and religious units, like Kurdistan. And, if we are lucky, these units will find a modus vivendi, as happened in Lebanon after 14 years of civil war.

And then maybe, over time, these smaller units will voluntarily come together into larger, more functional states.

..."

Don't hold your breath.

Friedman refers to US and allied military forces as 'the army of the centre' but the role is straight out of Hobbes' Leviathan, the dictatorship which curbs the alleged natural tendency of all men to be beastly to one another.

Hobbes is more accurate if we take the unit of mutual antipathy to be kinship groups rather than individuals: clans and tribes, or the ersatz kin-groups of shared religious fanaticism. And Friedman is effectively arguing that in these fissiparous states, the US must replace the dictator it has overthrown or the whole show goes to hell in a handcart.

Roll on the US legislative vote for bombing Syria, on Wednesday.

The missiles will soon be flying ...

Hand-wringing aside, what is a rational case for a military strike against the Syrian government? Tony Blair, writing today in The Times, is both smart and well-informed. Surely if he can't make the argument, then nobody can.

He starts by talking about Egypt and I agree with every word.

" ...

Let us start with Egypt. To many in the West, it is clear: the Egyptian military have aborted a democratically elected Government and are now repressing a legitimate political party, killing its supporters and imprisoning its leaders. So we are on a steady track to ostracising the new Government. In doing so, we think we’re upholding our values. I completely understand why this view would be taken. But it is a grave strategic error.

The fallacy with this approach lies in the nature of the Muslim Brotherhood. We think of it as a normal political party. It isn't. If you want to join the UK Conservative Party or the German Christian Democrats or the US Democrats, you can do so with ease and they will welcome you with open arms. And in all these countries, the basic democratic freedoms are respected by all parties. The Muslim Brotherhood simply isn’t like that. To become a member even at the lowest level is a seven-year process of induction and indoctrination. It is run by a hierarchy that is more akin to the old Bolshevik party system.

This is a movement. Read their speeches — not the ones they put out for Western ears, but the ones they actually believe, for their own ears. What they were doing in Egypt was not “governing badly”. If you elect a bad government, then tough — you live with it. What they were doing was systematically changing the constitution, taking control of the commanding heights of the State in order to subvert them and to make it impossible for their rule to be challenged. And they were doing so in pursuit of values that contradict everything we stand for.

So you can rightly criticise actions or overreactions of the new military Government but it is quite hard to criticise the intervention that brought it into being. Now all the choices that Egypt faces are ugly. The bloodshed is horrible and will shock all Egyptians. There are large numbers of soldiers and police among the casualties as well as civilians and, partly as a by-product of the fall of Gaddafi, Egypt is awash with weapons. But simply condemning the military will not get us any nearer to a return to democracy.

Egypt is not a creation of 19th or 20th-century global power games. It is an ancient civilisation stretching back thousands of years and is imbued with a fierce national pride. The army has a special place in its society. The people do want democracy, but they will be disdainful of Western critics whom they will see as utterly naive in the face of the threat to democracy that the Muslim Brotherhood posed.

We should support the new Government in stabilising the country, urge everyone, including the Muslim Brotherhood, to get off the streets, and let a proper and short process to an election be put in place with independent observers. A new constitution should be drafted that protects minority rights and the basic ethos of the country, and all political parties should operate according to rules that ensure transparency and commitment to the democratic process."

Now we come to the heart of it: what to do about Syria? Blair continues:

"In Syria, we know what is happening. We know it is wrong to let it happen. But leave aside any moral argument and just think of our interests for a moment. Syria, disintegrated, divided in blood, the nations around it destabilised, waves of terrorism rolling over the population of the region; Assad in power in the richest part of the country; Iran, with Russia’s support, ascendant; a bitter sectarian fury running the Syrian eastern hinterland — and us, apparently impotent. I hear people talking as if there was nothing we could do: the Syrian defence systems are too powerful, the issues too complex, and in any event, why take sides since they’re all as bad as each other?

But others are taking sides. They’re not terrified of the prospect of intervention. They’re intervening. To support an assault on civilians not seen since the dark days of Saddam.

It is time we took a side: the side of the people who want what we want; who see our societies for all their faults as something to admire; who know that they should not be faced with a choice between tyranny and theocracy.

... "   (my emphasis).

OK, great, but here's the problem. In Syria we see the Alawite ruling clan, a Shia offshoot battling with radical Sunni forces, some of whom are signed-up with Al-Qaeda. The majority population are surely less politicised and less relentlessly religious; still, it's the guys with the guns who'll end up running the place and setting the policies.

The people who want what we want - secular, western-oriented, progressive - are socially and militarily insignificant. Nothing we can do can either strengthen them or help them prevail (as they have not prevailed anywhere else in the Arab Spring). So sure, we can hit Assad and/or we can hit the Sunni fundamentalist armed units - but to what end?

Blair's arguments amount to no more than wishful thinking. The problem is that the stifled development of capitalism in the Arabic Middle-East has resulted in a flimsy and weak civil society: the people who want what we want won't exist in great enough numbers to call the shots until those economies have been totally transformed.

Neither the Islamists nor the generals have a great track record at sponsoring modernity so we can be confident that our grandchildren will be having similar outbursts of angst about the piteous and dangerous Middle-Eastern situation.
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Note: I would be shocked, shocked to think that Tony Blair was being disingenuous - and that this was really all about Iran, and Russia.