Usefully Useless

After yet more barely coherent babble by Argentina, maybe it’s time to look at the history of the Falkland Islands and just see if Argentina has any claim at all to them.

The islands were first administered by France in 1764. 1765, Captain John Byron explored and claimed another island in the archipelago for Britain, 1766 saw more islands being claimed for Britain.

From 1770 to 1771, Britain withdrew from the islands, allowing Spain to move in, though the British did not relinquish their claim of sovereignty. Spain ruled until 1811 before withdrawing to support its struggle against Bonaparte back home.

The United Provinces of the River Plate (United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata) claimed the islands in 1820, which wasn’t taken seriously by anyone – since both British and Spanish claims were still outstanding, leading Luis Vernet to ask permission of the British to set up a settlement, since the Spanish were in no state (nor had the will) to be colonising the few islands.

From 1826 to 1828, The United Provinces of the River Plate (later to become the nation of Argentina) obtained permission from Britain to operate a settlement on the islands with the understanding that the settlement would provide reports and materials to the British in return for British protection, should Britain decide to return to a permanent occupancy on the islands. The Argentine effort was led by Vernet who was made governor of the islands.

When the Americans invaded Falklands waters to hunt seals, Vernet had the crews arrested and tried for violating restrictions on seal hunting. In 1831, the USS Lexington destroyed the entire Puerto Luis settlement to show that might makes right. That incident provoked the British Foreign Office to re-assert its claim of sovereignty over the islands. Fresh from their beating by the British in the War of 1812 and knowing the Revolutionary War insurrection was a lucky break, the Americans did not wish to engage the Royal Navy over a few barren pieces of rock. HMS Clio and HMS Tyne were not long in arriving to enforce the will of the British, each of which far more than a match for anything the US Navy could muster. By 1833, Britain was in direct administration of the islands once again.

It is recognised that Argentina never actually had a legitimate claim to the islands as, overlapping their own claim, both the Spanish and the British had claims pre-dating it. Indeed, Vernet’s operations were done with British permission (if not under her flag) and without any prejudice as to the British claim of sovereignty.

Argentina’s claim was mostly smoke and mirrors until 1982, when an invasion force was launched by the Argentinian military junta. Believing the British would not enforce their rightful sovereignty, the deeply unpopular military dictatorship thought it would win the hearts of the people by controlling the islands. Alas, Britain did wish to enforce the will of her people and gave the military junta the biggest kicking of its short life, resulting in its eventual collapse.

This had the unfortunate effect of steeling British will and, via the principle of self-determination, ensuring that Britain would defend her territory in perpetuity. With a military might hugely in excess of anything Argentina can possibly muster and with the proven ability to project that might, any complaint would have to be reserved to diplomatic channels.

Which brings us to today. Argentina’s already weak claim, based on barely five years of occupancy under British licence, is arguing against 177 years of continued British presence and administration. While the usual crowd of Venezuela and Peru have banded behind the Argentines, most nations are dismissive of Argentina’s claims. If a territorial claim from almost two hundred years ago could be resurrected, it would result in global chaos.

With the discovery of commercially exploitable oil reserves, Argentina is once again asserting its sovereignty of surrounding waters, extending its territorial waters claim way out from its own coast in a suspiciously convenient finger arcing through the Falkland Islands, forcing British vessels to undergo all manner of unreasonable searches and detaining those carrying oil industry equipment. Argentina has already ruled out any military action (probably on the grounds of attacking a first-world nuclear nation with an extremely powerful navy being not entirely wise) and instead wants to sway international opinion against the British.

Hugo Chaves, the humourously deluded amateur TV personality and president of Venezuela made this amusing statement: “Queen of England, I’m talking to you. The time for empires is over, haven’t you noticed? Return the Malvinas to the Argentine people.” In it, he’s quite strangely neglecting that Argentina has never owned the islands, so such a “return to the Argentine people” makes not a shred of sense.

Indeed, in 1995 the British agreed with Argentina to share proceeds of any oil development around the islands in international waters. Argentina then wanted to expand the agreement to Falklands territorial waters, which Britain was most unhappy with and refused, resulting in Argentina unilaterally tearing up the deal.

The Argentines know that any military action against the British islanders, with Venezuelan support or not, will be met with overwhelming response from the Royal Navy and so does Chavez, the dictator well known for grandoise claims and little known for grandoise action.

Expect this kind of rubbish from time to time. It’s the Argentina’s way of reminding everyone that it still claim those little islands which it has no historical claim to, so Argentina simply makes a lot of noise and hopes no historians are listening.

Alright, Australia, just what the hell is wrong with you? Something bad in the water down there? I’ve been covering your shenanigans on this blog and they’re getting more and more surreal.

One such surrealist, a certain Pauline Hanson, set her political career all about anti-immigration with her party One Nation. Like certain elements over here, she claimed it wasn’t at all racist.

Let that be forever buried: She’s becoming an immigrant herself! Why? Why doesn’t it count when she’s the immigrant? Apparently because she’s white.

And that’s not racist.

Pauline, my dear, can you pick somewhere other than Britain to bring your pathetic immigrant arse? We’re getting about full of racist pondlife, we plain don’t have enough ponds. I hear Siberia is nice at this time of year.

Australians, what the hell is wrong with you people? Is this some elaborate scheme to prove that you’re incapable of self-rule so we’ll take you back?

Answer? They’re all repressive power-mad regimes and they all want to censor Google. Wait, Australia?

Oh yes. Australia continues to hurtle along the line of a government approved Internet only. Clueless Communications Minister Stephen Conroy wants mandatory ISP censorship of any content ‘refused classification’ by the government and recently set his sights on dissenters on YouTube.

Wanting Google to filter YouTube of any comments critical to the rulers, Conroy stated in the state-filtered media “Google at the moment filters an enormous amount of material on behalf of the Chinese government,” moments after trying to justify it with “in Australia, these are our laws and we’d like you to apply our laws” where it’s clear that Conroy admires the Great Firewall of China and wants to build his own Great Internet Barrier Reef.

Google, naturally, told the repressive regime to go screw itself. Conroy’s comments come just days after Google’s spat with the Chinese authorities and Google’s decision to stop self-censorship in China.

The idea is that the Australian govermnent wants to block anything it doesn’t like the smell of using the Australian movie, video games and entertainment ratings board. If the government gives out a “Refused Classification” notice, said content disappears from the Internet.

Australia, you are a tiny economy and a negligible player on the world stage – Any prestige you may have was inherited from us. If you want a policy of isolation, don’t be surprised when people treat you as the totalitarian hell hole without respect for basic human rights that you are. You’re already facing huge skills shortages and let’s face it, a land which is variously deadly venomous or on fire isn’t an attractive target for skilled workers. Adding a power-obsessed regime into the mix makes it not just unattractive, but a place to avoid.

After being published in Lancet in 1998, Dr Andrew Wakefield caused one of the biggest health scares in years. His finding was that the MMR vaccination was closely correlated with, even caused, autism spectrum disorders.

It causes vaccination takeup rates to plummet and caused the deaths of hundreds of children from easily preventable diseases.

Dr. Wakefield failed to disclose that he was being paid by lawyers looking for someone to blame autism on, failed to disclose that he’d paid children £5 at a birthday party for blood samples (hardly clinical accuracy or professional integrity) and carried out invasive tests on children “against their best clinical interest”. The General Medical Council ruling that Wakefield had acted with “callous disregard for any pain they might suffer” and considered the case proven on both counts in a ruling made public yesterday (27th Jan).

As the medical world geared itself up for another ‘thalidomide’ type case in 1999, researchers around the world started to discover that they weren’t able to reproduce Dr. Wakefield’s results. If there was a link between MMR and autism, they couldn’t find it. Nobody could. Only Dr. Wakefield and the lawyers paying him were able to find a link. How surprising is that?

After numerous independent doctors called into question Wakefield’s study, Lancet came out and admitted it didn’t meet standards of integrity and accuracy and should never have been published. Lancet’s reputation took quite a beating in the aftermath.

Even a newspaper got in on the story, The Times of London, bringing up clinical abuses and inconsistencies in the way Wakefield had conducted the study and demanding he be held to trial for it.

The end seems in sight for the corrupt doctor’s career, as he seems certain to be struck off by the General Medical Council as the two and half year investigation draws to a close, with a verdict of “serious professional misconduct” being almost predetermined at this point.

In this case, it was greedy lawyers who bought off a corrupt doctor, but it wasn’t just the lawyers. Wakefield also had financial interest in a company who was trying to market an alternative to the MMR vaccine. However, the alternative vaccine was less effective and hadn’t been adopted anywhere. If Wakefield could discredit MMR, then he stood to make a fortune. The end result of their greed has been dead babies.

In the end, science roots out bad eggs due to its distributed, competitive and independent nature. But there’ll always be bad eggs in science or any field of human endeavour. Ill-informed or outright ignorant parents are just as much to blame, however.

Go here to read about the story if you like. I’m not about to go into the event, but instead why it’s happened.

Why would anyone want to contaminate milk with melamine? What’s there to gain?

Usually milk is tested for concentration, to ensure it isn’t watered down or adulterated, and this is done by testing its protein content. Watered down milk, or milk powder cut with flour, will contain less protein as it contains less milk.

The standard test done is simply measuring nitrogen content, since in milk most of the nitrogen is in protein. Protein in milk is usually around 15% nitrogen by mass. However, melamine is 66% nitrogen by mass and so can be added in to watered down milk to make it appear to be undiluted.

Normally this would be almost undetectable, without specific reason to test for melamine. Melamine is about as toxic as normal table salt, you could drink melamine contaminated milk every day for your whole adult life and merely have a heightened risk of kidney stones, nobody would notice without specifically testing for it

It’s fraud, plainly and simply. By passing off the milk as undiluted and passing off animal feed as higher in protein than it is, the companies who buy the stuff to use it are being ripped off.

Melamine itself is harmless, but mix it with cyanuric acid (again totally harmless) and the two form melamine cyanurate, which is insoluble and forms crystals in the kidneys, kidney stones. An adult’s kidney is large enough to simply expel the crystals before they grow any larger, but a baby (or small animal) cannot.

If melamine contaminated milk finds its way into infant formula, then the problems start. A baby’s kidney will form melamine cyanurate itself, infants do not have the same kidney function or renal chemistry that adults (and older children) do, meaning melamine is much more harmful, rapidly forming kidney stones which can prove fatal in babies.

It’s not just milk formula, however. Other products tested and sold by protein content are also known to have been contaminated in the 2006-2008 timeframe, such as animal feed. This is harmless to humans, but did kill 1,500 raccoon dogs being bred for fur and can find its way into eggs produced from chickens fed with contaminated feed.

China already sentenced two people to death for their part in the 2008 scandal (which affected 300,000 children, hospitalised 50,000 of them and killed six) , it’s likely more will follow. China is very protective of its booming export trade and will deal very harshly with people or companies which threaten confidence in its exports.

Jim McCormick, director of the company ATSC, was yesterday (Friday 23rd) arrested on suspicion of fraud by misrepresentation.

For around £30,000, he would sell you an “explosives detector” (Iraq spent about £52 million on them) which worked using the “body’s own static electricity” for power. The device had a wand on a loose hinge and “detector cards” would slot into the base to make it detect different things, in ATSC’s claims anything from TNT to semtex to elephants with the ADE-651 (the device in question). I didn’t make that last one up.

Except that BBC’s Newsnight got hold of one of the cards, one for TNT, and had it analysed. It turned out to be nothing more than a simple retail anti-theft tag. In essence, the device is a dowsing rod, which have never been shown to work any better than dumb chance in any trial. Iraq has ordered an investigation, the UK has banned their export and Mr McCormick is looking at time behind bars.

I’d like to know what the hell Iraq was thinking of? The FBI had had warnings out since 1995 not to use “bogus explosives detectors”, the ADE-651 had never passed a single effectiveness test and James Randi offered McCormick his $1 million USD prize for proof of paranormal power should the ADE-651 pass a controlled effectiveness trial.

All the warning signs were there, yet Iraq still blew £52 million on a piece of plastic, a few clothes tags and a bent coathanger which was even claimed by its own vendors to operate in a “non-scientific” way.

Ever watched Mad Max (Road Warrior in some territories), the Mel Gibson-led movie set in Australia which won pretty much every award around? Three Kings, a glorious drama with George Clooney? What about Fight Club, the meme-spawning classic with Brad Pitt? How about Bruno, Cohen’s latest comic masterpiece? What about Blade Runner, Ridley Scott’s glorious sci-fi adventure?

You have? You’ve actually seen one of these forbidden films?

Congratulations, you’re a vile fetishist and a danger to society. According to Australian lawmakers, in a law passed to cover “violent pornographic fetishism” and to “protect children”, any movie with an R18+ rating (BBFC 18 here) cannot be promoted, advertised or displayed. Such movies must be displayed in “plain packaging”, which is defined as a blank cover with merely the name of the movie displayed.

Organisations such as the Labour Party (who have already banned “violent pornography” with a wonderfully broad definition which means the Sharon Stone movie “Basic Instinct” is now technically illegal), Conservative Party and Internet Watch Foundation seek to bring such laws to the UK. Should we support them?

Think back to June 2007, when Britain flooded pretty much top to bottom. That has the same underlying cause as the big freeze of 2009-2010. What cause would that be? Global warming.

Surely I have to be making some kind of bad joke?

Absolutely not. Let me explain.

Britain’s climate is controlled by the jet stream, in the winter it hovers over Britain, deflecting air masses which would otherwise be coming down from the Arctic, the jet stream’s moist but not so cold air from the North Atlantic (warmed by the Gulf Stream). This keeps us much warmer than our latitude would suggest, after all, we are as far north as Moscow, Edmonton and Minsk and further north than Winnipeg.

(Note: This is why usually in winter when we have snow, it’s when easterly or south easterly winds bring up air masses from the continent and it’s the source of the phrase ‘it’s too cold for snow’, since when it really gets cold in Britain, it’s usually a stationary winter anticyclone)

However, the jet stream never came north this winter, it remained over the Mediterranean, giving Spain some terrible floods in December 2009. Without the jet stream protecting us, the northerly winds from the Arctic could freely blow south over Britain, giving us the sort of weather our northerly latitude would otherwise consider to be perfectly normal.

Why would such a thing happen?

The jet stream changes course as it cools from summer to winter, but the jet stream was too warm to head north, so it remained in its summer position. Back in 2007 a similar thing happened, the jet stream didn’t cool down enough in the winter (2006-2007 was an exceptionally mild winter) to head south for the summer, so remained over us in its winter position and dumped off a ton of rain from the North Atlantic which gave Spain a hell of a bad drought and was meant to be distributed across the Mediterranean as far as Egypt, instead we got it all.

The same problem both times: The jet stream was too warm.

Hard-line extremism seems to be everywhere. Stop them talking about who’s god is bigger than who else’s, and you’ll find the BNP and Iran have a lot to agree on. Far-right extremist parties are popping up all over the place, typically playing on the hyped-up “Islamisation” card to convince people that doing as the Muslims do is a good thing, sacrificing your own freedom for some “greater good”. It doesn’t make much sense when put like that, does it?

The latest band of gullible idiots comes to you from Switzerland. Newcomers to the extremist brigade, the Swiss have recently decided that they’re going to ban minarets. Yes, you read me right, minarets. So much for the Swiss’ muchly bragged about “direct democracy” protecting the rights of the people, how can it protect the minorities from the tyranny of the majority?

The Swiss apparently agree with Iran that banning the construction of religious buildings they don’t like is the way forward. As Iran doesn’t permit the construction of Christian churches, the Swiss believe the Muslims are worth copying, so have pretty much banned the construction of Mosques.

Here’s a hint, you idiots, if you want to fight something you don’t generally accept and copy their beliefs!

So while Europe seems to be busy converting to extremism, is there really any need for external threats like the Taleban anymore? We’re quite capable of destroying ourselves, thankyou very much.

It’s just before dawn and you’re getting out of bed, ready to shower, make breakfast and go to work.

Just then, government forces with submachine guns break down your door and forcibly bundle you into a vehicle with blacked out windows. You’re taken to jail on suspicion of a crime – They think you’re a subversive, you might believe things the government says you’re not allowed to, but you’re not allowed to know what.

You’re denied bail and you still don’t know what it is you’re supposed to have done. The government considers the evidence to be secret, such that you can’t see it. Your access to a lawyer is only a few minutes a week, even if he was able to prepare a defence for you, which he’s not allowed to do.

Which country are you in? Iran? Zimbabwe? Maybe Orwell’s fictional 1984 dystopia?

No, you’re in Britain. Manchester, to be specific.

It took senior judges to point out the clear injustice and absurdity of what happened when, to two men from Manchester, this ostensibly western government turned on them.