Al Your Qaeda Are Belong To US!

In 2001, war was beginning...

What happen? Someone set up us the bomb!

How are you gentlemen? All your base are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction

Take off every ZIG!

For great justice!

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Yawn.

Despite the hilarious "typo" on Faux News (stay classy, Fox), it was correctly reported elsewhere (literally, everywhere else) that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in a raid on a compound in Abbottabad¹, Pakistan.

But will it matter? Has it, as someone on Twitter suggested, been worth the two wars, ten years and over a trillion dollars to kill one man? The spontaneous crowds outside the Whitehouse chanting "USA, USA" and singing "We are the champions" would suggest that action was not entirely without value.

Much as I would like to believe that it was worth it, I fear I will be disappointed. Were Al-Quaeda to assassinate Obama, would the US cease attacks on terrorist organisations, or adopt a less interventionist foreign policy? I think we know the answer.

It is doubtless cathartic to an injured US that the man named as their Most Wanted, the embodiment of their Terror, is no more. That bin Laden's death may not alter in any real way the level of global terrorism, or the perceived threat to the US, is secondary, at least for the moment.

Do we suppose that Al-Quaeda consists entirely of mangalores who will cease the fight against the imperialist agressors now that their organisation has been decapitated? If we assume that terror attacks on the US are as a result of US foreign policy, then the removal of a single man by the US in no way diminishes that threat. If anything, it will strengthen resolve in the caves of Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The core texts of both Christianity and Islam have the principle of "an eye for an eye", and if the last decade has taught us anything, it's that the US and Al-Quaeda take the Word of God very seriously, especially when it can be shown to provide approval for the machinations of men. The cultures of both sides demand retribution, so this is but the latest battle in war with no end.

While this is a huge political victory - that may help propel Obama to a second term - and one that soothes old wounds, it remains to be seen if it affects Global Terror in any way.

¹ Anyone else hope there's a Costello-abad?

Alternative Vote isn't much of an alternative

So, apparently part of the May 5th 2011 elections is a referendum on the process by which General Elections are decided. This news laregly passed me by in the last few weeks, although I had seen references to "AV" but was not engaged enough to find out what it was.

Currently, British politics uses the "first past the post" electoral system, whereby the election is won "by the candidate(s) with the most votes. The winning candidate does not necessarily receive a majority of all votes cast"¹.

The proposed new system is called "Alternative Vote" (or "Instant Runoff voting", which immediately makes me think of drainage), whereby "voters rank candidates in order of preference, and their votes are initially allocated to their first choice candidate. If after this initial count no candidate has a majority of votes cast, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and votes for that candidate are redistributed according to the voters' second preferences. This process continues until one candidate receives more than 50% of the votes, upon which they are declared the winner".

Wikipedia goes on to state that "Instant runoff voting is used to elect members of the Australian House of Representatives, the President of Ireland, the national parliament of Papua New Guinea, and the Fijian House of Representatives. It is also used to elect hereditary peers to the British House of Lords".

Now, with all due respect to those august bodies, that the highest praise of the system is that it is used to elect the Fijian House of Representatives, does not fill me with hope.

Now, some cursory thought leads me to the conclusion that AV sounds better than FPTP (it's shorter, for a start), but we're still deciding how best to choose weevils here. Sorry, that's a movie reference joke; watch Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. In short, how excited should I be expected to get in deciding how to decide on which steaming pile of shit gets to run the country (into the ground)?

Don't get me wrong; I think it's very nice of them to let "The people" decide on how they choose their shit in future. But, when all the votes are counted, we're still pinning the winner's rosette on a pile of coiled, steaming, brown shit.

So, if you want to get me excited, let's not have a popularity contest to decide the prettiest arrangement of outdoor seating on the largest luxury liner of the age, and instead spend a little more time plugging the fucking hole below the waterline.

¹ For the first time ever, Wikipedia confused me here. I think because it's about politics and therefore is inherently nonsense.