The Startling Glass

The Republican Gang, Part Seven

2012-02-09T12:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, here goes.

Who's Mitt?

Throughout this series, I have continuously referred to the man as the Whirr/Clack Mechanism. It's not much of a compliment, to be sure, but neither is it much of an analysis.

So, let's delve a little more deeply.

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On Aug. 31, 1967, Romney's father, then governor of Michigan and candidate for the presidency of the United States, did an interview in Detroit. He tried to explain his early support for the Vietnam war. "Well," he said, "you know, when I came back from Vietnam, I just had the greatest brainwashing that anybody can get. Not only by the generals, but also by the diplomatic corps over there, and they do a very thorough job.”

Admitting to having been "brainwashed" by the US military into supporting the Vietnam war? That wasn't a very smart thing to say, not when you want to become president of the United States. "Hi everyone. My name is George Romney. I've been brainwashed by the military, and I think I'd be a swell commander in chief!"

Mitt Romney was 20 years old at the time, serving as a Mormon missionary in France. By all accounts, he never quite got over his father's mistake.

And certainly it seems he has tried, and tried very hard, not to make any of his own. Throughout his adult life, he has been cautious, scrupulous and, oftentimes, secretive. Unlike his father, he never shoots from the hip. Instead, he will amass all the information he can, he will crunch all the numbers, and only then he will do what he feels is right. If, that is, it also seems expedient.

****

Romney's stint as missionary lasted 30 months, as is customary in the Mormon Church. Afterwards, he performed many duties on behalf of his church. Some were more or less organisational, but many others were charitable. He came from a long line of eminent Mormons, and has always taken his task as their successor to heart.

In many ways, this is honourable. In some ways, though, it raises questions. Primarily, this isn't because of Romney himself; rather, it is because of his faith, which is frankly suspect.

Mormonism was founded by John Smith. In March 1826, Smith was convicted by a court in New York for being "a disorderly person and an impostor." The conviction wasn't much of a surprise, since during the trial Smith had admitted to defrauding citizens by organizing gold-digging expeditions (he also admitted to possessing "necromantic" powers).

This was the man who, a few years later, claimed to have discovered the Book of Mormon, a series of golden plates upon which was written, in a strange tongue, the history of the indigenous people of America and the truth of the gospels. Of course, no one ever saw these plates; when Smith set about translating them at his home, with a neighbour called in to write everything down (Smith himself couldn't write), a curtain was hung between them.

The Book of Mormon explained, among many other things, that the American Indians were the descendants of Nephi and his family, a man who had left Jerusalem in 600 BC and travelled by boat to "the promised land" (the Americas). It also explained that Jesus Christ himself visited the Americas after his crucifixion (3 Nephi, Ch. 11).

Such notions seem evidently absurd, as does the notion that Joseph Smith was an actual prophet. Add to this other well known Mormon concepts - such as polygamy (abandoned in 1890 after a "revelation"), or the idea that black people cannot become priests (abandoned in 1978 after another "revelation"), and it becomes very difficult to take Mormonism seriously.

Nevertheless, Mitt Romney does seem to take it seriously. The thing is, though, we don't really know to what extent. There are pieces of the puzzle that are missing, and we have no real knowledge of what he believes in. One might well argue that here, again, the shutters have been drawn, but that's about as far as any conclusion can go.

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After graduation, Romney went to work for the Boston Consulting Group. In 1977, he left to join Bain & Company, a management consulting firm. In 1984, he became CEO of the off-spin company Bain Capital.

The idea behind Bain Capital was to further the techniques already employed by Bain & Company. Unlike Bain & Company, Bain Capital would not just offer consultancy; instead, it would actually buy into companies. It was, in short, a private equity investment firm. And it was a firm that, within a few years, was heavily into so-called leveraged buy-outs. That is: using the money provided to it by its clients, Bain would buy (a controlling interest in) a firm; the clients' money would be protected by means of securing it via the firm's assets.

Although this is by no means set in stone, there are basically two ways Bain's clients could make money from this. The first is simply when the firm acquired prospered. After all, when that happened the shares (the equity) in the firm rose in value; so, generally speaking, would the worth of its assets. The second was when the firm was sold or dismantled, in which case the worth of the assets could well be more than the clients' original investment.

In short, whether or not Bain's activities lead to prosperous and healthy companies - and, therefore, to the creation of jobs - can't be deduced simply by the nature of those activities. Whether Romney was a "job creator" or a "vulture capitalist" can't be concluded from the fact that he was CEO of Bain. In order to reach a conclusion either way, one would have to analyse all the investments Bain made whilst Romney was CEO, and such an assessment is very difficult, given the private (and therefore confidential) nature of the dealings involved.

Having said that, I'd be surprised if Romney didn't come out on top if such an assessment were ever made. I base that on Bain's background as a consulting firm, on its (and Romney's) considerable success, and on some of the well-known examples, such as Staples. He probably can be credited for creating quite a few more jobs than he destroyed, even if that wasn't the business he was in.

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Romney's career as a politician is, at best, a little shaky. All in all, there's rather less to it than one might at first think.

It is, of course, well known that he was governor of Massachusetts. However, he only served a single term, from 2003 to 2007. Halfway through it, in 2005, he had already decided to run for president, which was one of the reasons why he did not seek a second term. Another one may well have been the fact that times were tough for Republicans; if he had run for governor again, he may well have lost.

Besides this, there is not all too much to tell. Back in 1994, Romney ran for the US Senate, rather bravely taking on Ted Kennedy. He lost, though. And of course, in 2008 he ran for president, again losing.

It has been said that, in effect, Romney's political career is less that of a politician, and more that of someone trying to become a politician. It is certainly true that he has effectively been running for president since 2006. It's been six years now; six long and no doubt expensive years. That shows some determination, if nothing else.

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By all accounts, Romney did extremely well at Bain Capitol. He has another accomplishment he can be proud of, however, and it may well be more important: the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. When Romney was brought in, there were severe money problems, not to mention bribery allegations; there was actually talk of moving the games elsewhere. Romney changed all that, and there is no doubt that his efforts were highly successful. He's known by some as Mr Fix-It; if the name is appropriate, it is largely because of the 2002 games.

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So, what does all this tell us? Well, great deal, and not very much at all.

It shows us a man driven by his sense of duty, a determined man capable of many things. But it also shows us someone who is, in many ways, the opposite of what a president has to be.

A president has to be, as much as possible, an avatar. He must be, as much as possible, a composite of his people. He can - and indeed, should - be smarter than most, better educated, more astute. But even if he is better than the mold, he still has be "one of us". He has to be a role model; he has to be the guy you look at and say, "hey, me too", even when you know that's just wishful thinking on your part.

Romney isn't that man. He's got a great business record, but ran a business where it didn't really matter whether jobs were created or destroyed. He's a devoted father, but his faith - which so strongly influences his approach to family issues - is difficult to comprehend, let alone respect. He's running a long, determined campaign, but at least some of his drive seems to derive from his father's failure. And taken on its own, his political record is patchy; in many ways, the four years he was governor are the very years he's now shying away from.

In Utah, he's shown that he can actually get things done, but that was a distinctly Fix-It approach. It doesn't change the fact that, overall, Romney can best be described by what he lacks. What he lacks is vision, and vision is another one of those essential components for a good president.

There's another thread running through all this, or perhaps it's just another way of describing the same thing. It's that Romney has a curious inability to actually be someone, or at the least to appear to be somebody. That is, to be more than a persona, more than a mask. There's a conundrum involved here: the people you respect most are, as often as not, quite similar to yourself, but the reason you respect them is because they are also distinct - different - from you. It's a conundrum Romney hasn't quite been able to figure out. The more he wants to be liked, the less he is; his very desire to be accepted seems to alienate him.

All in all, it must be very difficult to be a Whirr/Clack Mechanism. It must be very difficult to be so cautious, to have shielded yourself to such an extent you've locked yourself up in your own cocoon, and yet nevertheless to feel this need to become president of the United States. To try and break out, only to suddenly hear yourself uttering something terribly alien like "I'm not concerned about the very poor".

In some ways, Romney comes close to being his father's son. In others, he seems more like a flawed simulacrum.

The Republican Gang, Part Six

2012-02-08T15:07:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a day since my last post, so just about everything must have changed, right?

Sort of.

Yesterday was the day of the Santorum Sweepstakes. There's really no other way to put it. Santorum won not just the totally insignificant (and superfluous) Missouri primary, but also the not-so-insignificant caucuses of Minnesota and Colorado.

Who'd have thought it? I wouldn't, for one. Missouri wasn't really a surprise, to be honest. Romney had skipped the primary and Gingrich wasn't on the ballet; it was a contest lacking any and all importance and it just doesn't count. Santorum nevertheless campaigned in the state in what seemed to me a rather risky gamble: if he had lost the primary to Romney, he ran the very real risk of making himself a laughing stock.

He didn't lose, though; he won quite handsomely. And then he went on to win Minnesota, a victory that does count, and that was a bit of a surprise. And then, to just about everyone's astonishment, he took Colorado, too. And that, frankly, was a real upset.

In yesterday's post, I pointed out that Romney had won Colorado in 2008 with some 60% of the vote. I predicted he wouldn't do so well this time round. Boy, was that ever a case of unintentional understatement! In the end, Romney managed a relatively paltry 35%, whilst Santorum walked away with 40%.

In Colorado, by the way, some 65.000 voters turned up. That was some 5.000 less than in 2008. If you add and subtract and divide a few things, you'll realise the scale of Romney's defeat. Effectively, he got about half the votes he did in 2008. And it's not for want of campaigning (although, to be fair, Romney did perhaps not fully commit to the state).

In Minnesota, things were, perhaps, even worse, with Romney ending up with just 17%. Ron Paul easily surpassed him with 27%, whilst Santorum jauntily strolled to the finish with 45%.

So, has everything changed? Well, not really. Yes, there is certainly a buzz going around. Yes, the race has experienced another shake-up, after the Gingrich mutiny in South Carolina. But has the situation truly altered? Is Santorum suddenly going to become The Nominee?

No, I don't think so. What yesterday's results seem to indicate is two things. First, the vagaries of the caucus system. Second, the Whirr/Clack Mechanism Syndrome.

I will address the first issue here (the second will have to wait, just a bit).

I, like many others, tend to view caucuses with some affection. It's a weird sentiment, to be sure, but caucuses bring out an "aw, shucks" reaction in me. They're quaint, for want of a better word. They're even cute.

They're also notoriously unreliable and quite undemocratic, for a great many reasons. Perhaps the major reason is simply one of numbers. In Colorado, for example, some 1.100.000 voters voted for McCain in 2008. That's over a million people. In the caucus that year, 70.000 people voted (and of those, only some 13.000 voted for McCain). Even assuming all Republicans had reconciled themselves to McCain retrospectively at the time of the caucus (i.e.: all caucus voters had voted for McCain) that still means a ratio of 0,06. In other words: just 6% of the people voting Republican in the general election would, even in this very unreal scenario, have bothered to vote for McCain in the caucus. And in reality, it was just over 1%.

That's not democracy by any stretch of the imagination. And no, it doesn't really help to point out that the caucus-goers are die-hards, that they're the real backbone of the political movement. It doesn't really help, because, quite simply, those caucus-goers don't represent real voters. Their views are simply not the views of the people who ultimately go out and select their president.

The second reason - akin to the first, but different - is that caucus results don't accurately reflect the ideas of voters at the time they're held. Given the time difference and given the very different scale and scope, it's always difficult to compare general election results with caucus or even primary results. But the specific problem with a caucus is that it doesn't represent the views of the voters even at the time the caucus is held. That can't be right, surely?

Consider, again, Colorado. Romney won with 60% in 2008. He lost with 35% in 2012. Now, there are some reasons why Romney lost this time round, but the numbers just don't add up. Or subtract, or whatever. Romney got half the votes he got four years ago. Why? I have no idea. A 5% difference would be fine. A 10% difference would be understandable. But a difference of 25%? In Colorado?

Caucuses, simply by virtue of the fact that they squeeze their results out of very small and very restricted platforms, are just not very meaningful. I wish that were different - I like 'em, as I said - but it just ain't.

And, as a result, I must admit that I'd be in favour of abolishing the caucus system entirely.

The Republican Gang, Part Five

2012-02-07T08:36:00.000-08:00

So Florida has come and gone, and so has Nevada. And Mitt Romney is riding high, with a slew of favourable (Mid-)Western states set to follow.

Has he won?

In all likelihood, yes. He won when he wrapped up Florida with 46% of the vote, leaving Gingrich (32%) and poor old Santorum (13%) trailing in his wake.

I would imagine that, when we look back at the 2012 primary season, it will be Florida that is mentioned time and time again. And rightly so. This is were the race was decided.

As for Nevada, well, my thoughts are a little different to mainstream opinion. The Nevada results were touted as a huge success for Romney by just about all the pundits. He got a whopping 50% of the vote, what more could you possibly want?

Except that it wasn't all that impressive, really. Back in 2008, Romney didn't get 50%. He got 51%. A marginal difference, surely, but still: it's Iowa all over again. What seems a victory at first glance isn't anything to get excited about; not when you look a little more closely. Besides, the turnout in Nevada was down by a not inconsiderable 25% compared to 2008.

As such, Nevada was assuredly a solid victory for Romney, but it also underscored the man's basic weakness. He was and still is the Whirr/Clack Mechanism, and let's face it, he's just not loved. There is a surprising, perhaps even rather confusing, emptiness to the man: you can't help but feel that, if you take away the robust exterior, you'll find that there's nothing inside.

Later today, Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri will all have their say. For various reasons, none of these states will make a huge impact in the long run. For one thing, the caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota will be non-binding, whilst the primary in Missouri will be even less significant, since the delegates there will actually be allocated on the basis of a caucus to be held on March 17th. And Newt Gingrich isn't even on the ballot in Missouri (which is why Rick Santorum has been campaigning there quite rigorously).

Saying that the caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota are non-binding does not, however, mean that they are unimportant. The situation in these two states is roughly comparable to that of Iowa: further elections will be held down the road and the delegates who'll ultimately go to the Republican Convention (and vote for the presidential candidate of their choice) will be decided then and there. However, this is the first step in the selection process. (A difference between Colorado and Minnesota is, as I understand it, that in Colorado the caucus is the first step in actually selecting the delegates, whilst in Minnesota, there is no formal link between the caucus and that selection. The Minnesotan vote is actually a sort of straw poll.)

Of the three states, it's surely Colorado that is most relevant to the delegate selection process. It will be interesting to see how well Romney does there, taking the 2008 results into account. In that year, he got no less than 60% of the vote. For what it's worth, my prediction is that he'll do less well this time round. Why? Well, all sorts of reasons, but the primary one is what I've been talking about all along. It's that Romney is, well, Romney.

It'll also be interesting to see what happens in Missouri, precisely because of the skewered nature of the contest. If Santorum wins, he'll live to fight another day; if he loses significantly, he may well drop out.

The Republican Gang, Part Four

2012-01-22T16:27:00.000-08:00

Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina...

It's been an interesting few weeks, to be sure!

When last I posted, Romney had just won Iowa, if only by eight votes. It was effectively a tie, but, well, someone has to be declared the winner, and that winner was Romney. Duly noted: one up for the Whirr/Clack Mechanism.

As for New Hampshire, well, Romney did as well there as may be expected. He won a comfortable 39% of the vote, with Ron Paul trailing him at 23%. To put this into some perspective: in 2008, McCain won New Hampshire with 37%, and Romney came in second with 31%. So: Romney did better there this time around, and even though there may be some doubts as to the substance of that improvement, he thoroughly whooped his main adversaries, with both Gingrich and Santorum limping along at the back of the field with a modest 9% each. Two up for Romney.

And then, of course, we had South Carolina. Wild mood swings all round, it seemed. When last I posted (on January 4th), Gingrich was leading in the polls in the state by 16%. Now, those polls weren't minty fresh even then, and they most certainly hadn't taken the New Hampshire results in their stride. Polls released a while later reversed the situation; suddenly, Romney had dashed to the fore and was leading by some 10%.

Ah, the pundits said. It might all be over soon; Romney will wrap up the nomination by winning all three early states. History will be written, and the Mechanism will ride in triumph through the streets of Florida. His whirr will be wondrous; his clack convincing.

Alas, though, it was not to be. Just two days before South Carolinians headed off to their ballot boxes, a weird thing happened: Romney lost Iowa. It wasn't by much, to be sure: in the official tally, his eight vote advantage was turned into a 34 vote deficit. But, well, someone had to win, and it turned out the winner was Rick Santorum, after all.

And when January 21st came along, it appeared South Carolina had changed its mind again, too. They'd reverted to the Not-Romney, and as far as they were concerned, the Not-Romney was called Newt Gingrich. Gingrich won the state with 40%, a solid 12% lead over Romney.

And so, it turned out, Romney hadn't triumphed at all. He hadn't won the first three states; he only managed to win the smallest one (New Hampshire). He might well go off and ride into Florida with his moneybags a-jingling and an army of staffers at his back, but he is no Caesar yet.

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So what happens now?

Well, in the end, the answer may well be sought by looking at the situation from a negative point of view.

Let's face it: Romney is not well-loved by many Republicans. They don't trust him. They don't know him. He just isn't one of them. And there is, in truth, not all that much Romney can do about this. He can't, because those Republicans are essentially right. Romney's a Mormon; he is a multimillionaire who earned his money in ways that most people do not understand but mistrust instinctively; his track record as a politician is moderate as best and downright opportunistic at worst.

As such, Romney is a very big duck waiting for his Porky.

The thing is, though, Romney's Porkies aren't all that convincing, and there aren't all that many of them left. Bachmann is out, so is Cain. Huntsman's joined them, as has Rick Perry. The list of Porkies therefore boils down to Gingrich, Santorum and Ron Paul. Of these, Paul can't be considered a Porky at all; he's decidedly anti-Pork, in fact. Paul follows his own agenda, and that agenda does not include hunting ducks.

So it's just Gingrich and Santorum. Of these two, Santorum immediately disqualifies himself. Frankly, one really can't imagine him as Porky; at best, he might pose as Porky's young nephew. He's a relatively innocuous piglet who goes around shooting anything with wings and missing without fail. To misquote Jed Bartlet: he's a peashooter in a Magnum world.

And that leaves Gingrich, whose appearance alone elevates him to a great Porky figure. Could he be? Could he really take down Romney? After South Carolina, there's at least a chance. A good chance, surely.

Well, in many ways, the Porky description fits Gingrich perfectly. The thing is, though - as anyone who knows his Loony Tunes will tell you - Porky isn't the best duck hunter in the world. In fact, he's pretty dismal. I mean, he wears a jacket; he's got a bow tie. He might sport a hunting cap. But he doesn't get his Daffy, does he?

And so Romney will, in all likelihood, survive. He won't survive because of any redeeming qualities of his own; he'll simply get by because, well, his opponents are Porkies.

In other words, to put it negatively: Romney is still the hands-down favourite to win the nomination. Not because he deserves it, but because his opponents deserve it less. Not because he's good, but because the others are worse.

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A few final words on the Republican nomination process. In Part Three of this series, I pointed out that the Republicans had taken a good look at the Democratic nomination battle between Obama and Clinton in 2008, and decided to create something similar for themselves. They changed the rules, hoping for a protracted struggle between the candidates.

Well, given the current results, they may well get it. I'm not at all sure they should be happy, though. The thing is, the 2008 struggle was a positive one: Democrats were divided about who they liked more. Obama was good, but Clinton was better - or was that the other way around? Gosh, let's see...

2012, however, may well be the other side of the coin. It may well be negative, not positive. It may well be a question of who's worst, not who's better. And that's not a struggle you want to drag out, I'd think.

The Republican Gang, Part Three

2012-01-04T15:57:00.000-08:00

So: January 4th, 2012. Another month, and another shake-up in the Republican race.

The results from Iowa - the first time anyone could actually vote - are in. And it's abundantly clear that... err, that....

No, darn it! Nothing's clear at all! Romney "won" Iowa. He won it by getting 24.6% of the vote; he won it by doing worse than in 2008, when he managed 25,2%. And he won it by a measly 8 votes. That's a third of Bachmann's 23 children, for Christ's sake.

And who came in second? Not Bachmann, of course. Or Gingrich, or even Ron Paul. It was, instead, Rick Santorum, the guy who's be polling at approximately 0,002% all year long. Santorum, the Winchester Weasel, suddenly became the mouse that squeaked the Grand Republican Squeak.

There's something rotten in the GOP, indeed, and my word, it has never been clearer than it is now.

Who won the Iowa caucus? Well, I suppose the answer would have to be Barack Obama.

So what now?

Well, conventional wisdom will tell you that Romney - for all his faults, for all his manifest unlikeability - will now go on and sew up the nomination pretty easily. And I suppose that might well be the case. Not because of Romney's strengths, mind, but simply because it's very difficult to see any meaningful challenge emerging from his sorry band of would-be usurpers.

That might be the case. Then again, it might not.

Consider: Romney's riding high in New Hampshire; he should win by a very comfortable majority. But a win by anything less that the current poll lead (the Real Clear Politics average puts that at a whopping 21%), might well be considered a loss.

And afterwards it's South Carolina. And after that, Florida. And currently Romney isn't leading in either of these states. Instead, it's Gingrich who's ahead (by 16% and 7% respectively). The pundits will tell you that all that will change, and that, as the primaries in those states loom larger into view, Romney will simply have too much money and be backed too fully by the GOP establishment to not score well in those states. But you only have to believe one thing to realise that might not be true. You only have to believe that the majority of Republican voters simply don't want him. And if you look at the Iowa caucus, there's ample reason to believe that that's true.

And all this, of course, is playing out against the backdrop of the Rules (the Rules of the Republican Party, to be precise). It's ironic, but these rules may well become a bit of a burden for the GOP.

Let me explain.

In 2008, the Republicans lost. McCain never really had a chance against Obama; the Presidential contest was, in effect, over before it began. The Republicans, as you might imagine, took some note of this, but for some reason known only to themselves, they decided to blame their defeat, not on the fallibility of George W. Bush or the lack of viability of McCain, but on the process of election. There'd been this great big battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, they reasoned, so the answer's simple. If we change our rules and have our own great big battle, we'll win.

As a result, the Republicans changed their election rules. In particular, they changed Rule 15, which now reads (insofar as relevant):

(1) No primary, caucus, or convention to elect, select, allocate, or bind delegates to the national convention shall occur prior to the first Tuesday in March in the year in which a national convention is held. Except Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada may begin their processes at any time on or after February 1 in the year in which a national convention is held and shall not be subject to the provisions of paragraph (b)(2) of this rule.

(2) Any presidential primary, caucus, convention, or other meeting held for the purpose of selecting delegates to the national convention which occurs prior to the first day of April in the year in which the national convention is held, shall provide for the allocation of delegates on a proportional basis.

What this means is, firstly, that any state that holds a caucus or a primary prior to February 1st 2012 be will penalised. The penalty is simple: such a state will have it's delegate count halved. Yes, that's right: all the results from New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida will all effectively be halved. (Rather weirdly, Iowa is exempt, the reason being that it doesn't actually allocate delegates on the basis of its caucus; that allocation comes later on).

Secondly, it means that any primary or caucus held before April 1 2012 will have to be, at least to some degree, proportional. That is: the results of such a caucus or primary will have to be weighed proportionally to the votes being cast, and the delegates allocated will have to be split according to that vote. It's not longer a winner-takes-all system. In the case of Iowa, for example, the results would mean that Romney takes 13 delegates out of the state, whilst Santorum takes 12.

The two changes together, mean, simply put, that it has become much harder to sweep through the first few contests and win the whole caboodle in one fell swoop. As long as there are candidates that have enough money and sufficient organisation to keep going, the process will drag on.

So what will the effect of these new rules be? At first glance, they would not seem to hinder a Romney bid. If anything, the Whirr/Click Mechanism is well oiled; organisation is not going to be a problem. As for wealth, well, anyone care to bet $ 10,000?

But look a little closer, and the problem for Romney becomes clear. Romney won Iowa, but only by a third of Bachmann's children. He did worse there than four years ago. Republicans just don't want him. As long as the rest of the field is fragmented, he's fine: he may well be the 25% guy, but that might well be enough to get him the nomination. But, as the process drags on, the field is going to be whittled down. The first casualty is already known: it's Michele Bachmann. The next to go may well be Ron Paul (who might sail off for a Libertarian bid), or Huntsman. And even as that happens, the not-Romney vote will start to coalesce; it will start to gather like a pall around the remaining competitors (say, Newt Gingrich or Perry). And it is quite possible that, if this happens, 25% will seem very paltry indeed.

And so, in the wake of the Iowa results, nothing is clear at all. Romney should win, there's no doubting that. And he will, but only as long as the competition against him remains fractured. The moment it solidifies around a single candidate - the ultimate Not-Romney - he's in trouble.

The question, therefore, isn't really how well Romney does. It's how well (or how badly) the other guys do. It's whether or not there's anyone amongst them who can rise above the field and take Romney on.

In the end, I doubt that will happen. But who knows? Those pesky, dastardly voters might decide otherwise and blow the whole thing up.

I mean really, will people never learn?

The Republican Gang, Part Two

2011-12-13T18:10:00.000-08:00

My first posting on the Republican battle for the presidential nomination was over a month ago, on November 2nd.

It's now December 12th, and oh my, how things have changed.

Up to a few weeks ago, it was essentially a battle between Romney in the one corner, and the dwarfs in the other. And it was Romney who, in his rather stolid and unconvincing manner, managed to maintain the lead. Maintain it, or recapture it, as one dwarf or another would briefly and diminutively jump up and fall back down again.

All the dwarfs, that is, except for the one who blew himself up into a giant. That dwarf is the improbable - one might say, the fundamentally improbable - Newt "the Grinch" Gringrich.

Gringrich shouldn't be were he is today, proudly and condescendingly ahead of the pack and set to win the Iowa caucus comfortably in just a few weeks time. But he is.

How on earth did that happen?

I think the answer to that has to be Romney himself. For months now, Romney has been the heir apparent, the guy who would "inevitably" win the nomination. His poll numbers were always stuck at around 20 to 25%, but that was enough for him to be the de facto front-runner.

But 25% meant that 75% was not backing Romney, and I think that it's becoming much clearer now that of that 75%, quite a few aren't just sitting on the fence. They're not people who will come round to Romney eventually, if reluctantly - instead, they seem to be people who have, for some time, decided that just don't want Romney. Not now, and not on November 6th 2012 either.

Now we all knew that Romney was not liked by many Republicans. That, after all, was why the dwarfs were able to keep nipping at his heels, and why one after the other had his or her moment in the spotlight. What's becoming clear now, however, is the extent to which these people will go: it seems that many of them will, in all likelihood, vote for the single most controversial, potentially least trustworthy and least conservative member of the pack, just to keep Romney out of things.

I will not say a great deal about Gringrich here (there is, simply put, too much to say to do it succinctly and in passing, so that will be left for another time). I will, however, mention just one fact: $ 300,000.--. In 1997, Gringrich was fined this sum of money whilst he was Speaker of the House of Representatives. It was the first and only time a sitting Speaker had been reprimanded by the House, and the vote was 395 for and 28 against (not just the Democrats, but practically all Republicans voted for the fine). Why was it levied? For a convoluted and murky form of tax evasion. Gringrich had taught two college courses (designed, the House Ethics Committee stated, to further his own political ambitions) and funded them with donations he had received. Donations, of course, are tax-deductible, but only if they're actually used as donations. Financing college courses isn't what donations are meant for, and by appropriating the money in such a manner, Gringrich evaded the taxes he would otherwise have had to pay.

This was bad enough, but then, and perhaps more importantly, he lied about this to the House Ethics Committee. In a number of letters, his lawyers denied the funding, and these statements were found by the Committee to be an "intentional or reckless" disregard to House rules.

All this resulted in the fine of $ 300,000.--; all this resulted in, at the time, bipartisan and almost universal condemnation of his actions. In 1998, Gringrich stepped down as Speaker and left the House; the Republicans had just endured one of the worst mid-term elections results of any party that didn't hold the presidency. This wasn't all due to the events set out above by any means; in fact, the main reason for the poor Republican election result was the way in which they had used the Monica Lewinksy affair to try to rid themselves of Bill Clinton. But that, too, was an endeavour spearheaded by Newt Gringrich (who was, as an aside, having a rather more serious extra-marital affair of his own at the time).

This is one of the many reasons why I find Gringrich's rise to the top so very - so fundamentally - improbable. And it all becomes even more bewildering if one considers the advent of the Tea Party and the current mood of Republicans in general. The candidate they seem to be favouring is the very candidate they should find distasteful. In many ways, Gringrich is the insider's insider; in others, though, he is worse: he's the insider who managed to screw things up so badly that even the other insiders had had enough.

And yet, here he is, and whilst we're still in the land of would-be's and what-ifs (after all, not a single vote has actually been cast yet) he's poised to win Iowa. And South Carolina, and Florida. If that happens, he will effectively have reduced Romney to the same position Romney was in back in 2008. All the planning, all the endless (subtle and years-long) build-up will have been for naught; Romney will have to bow out of the race once more.

How on earth does such a thing happen? Yes, the answer is, in part, Romney himself; it is Bain Capital, it is Mormonism; it is the whir/click character of the man. But part of the answer must also be sought in the minds and hearts of Republicans. I fear that there's something rotten in the GOP, and it's showing.

The Conrad Murray trial - a brief comment

2011-11-03T15:55:00.000-07:00

I’m not really all that interested in the trial of Conrad Murrray. I know a lot of people are; after all, we're talking about the death of Michael Jackson.

The reason I’m not that interested is that, whichever way you look at it, the answer’s the same. Michael Jackson killed himself. It doesn’t much matter whether you feel his doctor was the one who actually gave Jackson a lethal dose of Propofol, or Lorazepam (or whatever drug in may have been); even if that were the case, it would still have been Jackson who hired that doctor and effectively told him what to do.

I will, however, make one comment on the trial. Today, both the prosecution and the defense made their closing arguments. The prosecution’s case was dealt with by David Walgren, who did what was expected of him. He presented a strong and convincing case, and that was about it.

The defense however, was another matter. The closing arguments were handled by Edward Chernoff, a lawyer from - of all places - Houston, Texas.

Throughout the case, Chernoff, ably helped by his associates, made more or less a mess of things. It was very difficult, at times, to even try and figure out where they were going.

Today, however, all that changed. Chernoff gave a blistering closing. It probably won’t wash - Murray will be convicted for involutary manslaughter (it’s Michael Jackson, after all) - but boy, did he do well.

“There is no perfect villain”, Chernoff said, “and there’s no perfect victim”. And that pretty much sums up the case. Murray was hardly a perfect doctor; but then, Jackson was hardly the ideal patient either.

As I said, Jackson killed himself. There is, in this trial, only the question to what extent Murray’s accessorial role is actually criminal. It makes the case, viewed from a broader perpective, more or less trivial, but watching Chernoff today, one has to admire what some lawyers can make of such trivialities.

Well done, Chernoff!

The Republican Gang

2011-11-02T15:14:00.000-07:00

It’s time - past time, surely - to look at the Republican race. Will they come up with a viable nominee? Will they? Will they?! Oooh, it’s so exciting…

Actually, the first few months weren’t all that exciting at all. They were rather dull, in fact. The only thing we really had to work with were the candidates’ debates, and those debates weren’t anything to write home about. By and large, they all followed the same pattern: in one corner we had a cluster of Decidedly Small People (a.k.a. dwarfs), and, in the other, the whir/click Mormon Mechanism known as Mitt Romney. Throughout the debates, the dwarfs would try and aim their peashooters at Romney, and time and again, Romney simply dodged. And the dwarfs would miss, and Romney would emerge unscathed.

Inevitably, though, things started to change. The first reason for this was the entry of Rick Perry, the governor from Texas. Now I’m not quite sure who the Republicans’ coach is (I’ve a sneaky feeling it might be Newt “The Grinch” Gingrich, but don’t quote me on that), but swapping the ailing Tim Pawlenty with the much more interesting Texanator was a great decision on his part. Without actually opening his mouth once, Perry happily leapfrogged over Romney and, for a time, perched at the top of the heap. And then, of course, he did open his mouth, and went tumbling down again.

The second reason was the Black Walnut Guy. Unlike Perry, Herman (known to his friends as “Herb”) Cain was one of the original dwarfs, and at first his presence didn’t really register in one’s mind. But then - one might imagine the utter bewilderment of all the pundits - he won the Florida Straw Poll, a feat seldom accomplished by mere mortals. After all, this is a poll where hundreds (and I means hundreds) of people voted. And Herbie won! Suddenly, the old Walnut was thrust into the limelight, and it was all “Honeypie” and “Sweetiecheeks” and whatnot.

Except that that didn’t last all too long either. One of those honeypies had had a little fracas with Herb, and then it appeared another did too. And Sweetiecheeks didn’t seem to have liked old Herbie’s affectionate remarks either. Oh dear, oh dear.

So, it was back to the Texanator, then. Except that he’d unfortunately chosen just this pivotal moment to show what an incomprehensible ass he was, appearing before a New Hampshire Republican Clapper Society drunk. “No!” his staff quickly replied, he wasn’t drunk at all. “Nothing of the sort!”. Yikes! You mean, he was sober? You mean he's just that weird when he's not on anything at all? Oh yes, I sure want that guy somewhere in the vicinity of the nuclear button. “Hee hee, live free or die!”

Did I miss anyone? Except the remaining huddle of dwarfs, over there by the corner? Oh yes, wait, I can hear the distinct whir. I can discern a click-clack-clicking. The Mormon Mechanism is still in motion, much as you might have missed him lately. And how shall we describe him? Well, he’s still unscathed, for want of a better word. And he will remain so, until someone decides that the belief in a fraudulent imposter who decided to reinvent history and toss all logic to the wind is a little too weird to stomach.

One wonders how well Obama is sleeping, these days. Better than he should be, I’d warrant.

The Verdict in Perugia: The Case Against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito (Epilogue, Part Two)

2011-10-05T15:52:00.001-07:00

Monday, October 3rd, 2011:

Acquittal!

That was the simple and short verdict rendered by the appeal court. (That, and the conviction of Amanda Knox for defamation of the police; a sentence already served, given her four years or so in custody).

Acquittal, then, for the murder of Meredith Kercher. Acquittal for both Amanda and Raffaele.

Why?

Well, we don’t yet know. We’ll have to wait a while (just as we did in the original trial), for the judge to offer the court’s reasoning.

In the meantime, though, there are a few remarks to be made.

Firstly, the appeal court obviously dismissed the DNA evidence with regard to the kitchen knife and the bra clasp. This was not unexpected, given the fact that the experts appointed by the court urged to do just that.

What is, however, less clear, is what the appeal court may have decided next. What did it think of the infamous break-in (which was, according to the prosecution, clearly staged)? What were the court’s thoughts on the forensic evidence found in the small bathroom and in the corridor (the mixed DNA and/or blood stains; the bloody footprint on the bathroom mat; the bloody shoeprints leading to the exit), which, taken together, seem to indicate that more than a single perpetrator had been involved? What of the wounds on Meredith’s body, which again would point to multiple attackers? What of Amanda’s (and, to a lesser extent, Raffaele’s) statements, which were contradictory and seemed to implicate at least Amanda’s involvement?

There are, basically, two ways of looking at this case. The first is to look primarily at the (forensic) evidence; to consider it carefully and then to decide whether or not that evidence is, in and of itself, sufficient for a conviction (which means that the evidence must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt). Taken this way, once the DNA evidence with regard to the knife and the bra clasp is dismissed, it is relatively easy to conclude that an acquittal is in order. The bra clasp was really the only convincing “hard” - scientific - evidence that tied Raffaele to the crime; without it, surely, he should be aquitted. When it comes to Amanda, the knife is more important; again though, dismiss this evidence and the link between the murder and Amanda becomes tenuous (even if there is rather more evidence available).

The second way of looking at the case is different. It takes a more holistic (and perhaps more reasoned) approach. Who committed the murder? Well, we already know Rudy Guede did; he’s been convicted by three courts and the evidence against him stands. The question then becomes: did Rudy act alone, or did he have accomplices? If he had accomplices, could those have been Amanda and Raffaele? Or could these accomplices have been, perhaps, one or more people hitherto unknown?

Taken this way, the case becomes relatively easy to digest. The idea of Rudy committing the murder with unknown accomplices is, frankly, not to be taken seriously. There’s no evidence, no motivation, no means; there’s nothing in the world to assume this could have been the case. I find it almost impossible to point out how farfetched this notion actually is; it is, truly, grasping at straws.

What we are then left with is the idea of Rudy having committed the murder on his own. Is this possible? Yes, I would assume it is. To believe this theory, however, one must believe that a host of improbabilities was stacked up; one on top of the other. And one would have to believe that all these improbablilities would ultimately account for Rudy perpetrating a crime he in all likelihood never wanted to commit in the first place and yet did not avoid, even though he could readily have done so.

You would, for example, have to accept the fact that Rudy broke into the apartment at an odd time and in a strange manner; that he would have started to ransack Romanelli’s room but then decided to use the bathroom; that Meredith returned right when Rudy was in the bathroom and never noticed the break-in; that Rudy would then have decide to attack Meredith instead of simply leaving the apartment. You would have to believe that somehow, having decided to burgle an empty apartment, he turned into a vicious murderer on a whim and ended up not stealing anything of note. And, as stated above, you would have to accept all this whilst disregarding the simple forensic evidence that more than one person committed the crime.

It’s possible, I’ll grant you. It just seems rather unlikely.

_______

Two further thoughts.

The first: the possibility of an appeal to the Italian Supreme Court. As I understand it, quite a few people who think Amanda and Raffaele are guilty feel that the Supreme Court will set things right. They point to the fact that this court has already ruled in Rudy Guede's case, and, in doing so, stated that the crime was committed not by Rudy alone, but by three people.

For what it’s worth: such a view seems to misrepresent the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Guede case and, indeed, it misrepresents the Supreme Court’s authority. The Supreme Court deals with matters of law, not of fact. Therefore, the Supreme Court never ruled that the murder of Meredith Kercher was perpetrated by three people (let alone that Amanda and Raffele were two of those three); it simply accepted the earlier courts’ factual findings on this matter, as it was obligated to do. I suspect that the appeal court’s reasoning - once it emerges - will be dominated by factual considerations, rather than legal ones; I therefore suspect that the Supreme Court will offer little to solace those who long for Amanda’s and Raffaele’s imprisonment. At best, the Supreme Court may annul the appeal court’s ruling on technical grounds; even then, the case would have to be referred to another (factual) court to be tried again.

Secondly, a more abstract matter.

There is something known as Blackstone’s formula. Or Blackstone’s law, if you will. Generally put, this is how it reads: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer”.

Now, Blackstone lived in the 18th century, when men (and women) were regularly put to death for the most innocuous crimes. His formula seems a bit odd when considered against the backdrop of his time. It seems even odder if one considers that his idea had been around long, long before the Enlightenment: God himself, according to the Bible, was persuaded by Abraham to not destroy an entire city because, amongst its inhabitants, there migt be ten that were “righteous”. And yet God killed everyone in the whole wide world (excluding Noah and his family) when he felt like it.

Nevertheless, throughout all this time, the idea has persisted: it is better to acquit ten quilty people than convict a single innocent man.

It is an abstract notion, as history (and God) has often shown. And yet, I believe in it.

VI. The Verdict in Perugia: The Case Against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito (Epilogue, Part One)

2011-09-27T12:20:00.001-07:00

A while back, I posted a five part series dealing with the case against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

At the time, the appeal trial was well under way, but by no means at an end. There was one bit of business in particular that had yet to be brought to a close: the re-assessment of the DNA evidence with regard to the bra clasp and the so-called “double DNA” knife.

Well, the two experts appointed by the appeal court have submitted their report in this matter. In fact, they did so some time ago, and I’ve still to comment on it. That isn’t due to any lapse of interest on my part; rather, it is caused by - simply put - my inability to truly understand its contents.

It is, of course, clear what the experts’ conclusions are: they regard the evidence of both the clasp and the knife as unreliable and they have advised the appeal court to disregard it.

So far, so good. However, the reasoning behind this conclusion is somewhat less clear. The experts, for example, have stated that the methods originally used by the police in examining the evidence fall short of “international standards”. I am not at all sure what they mean by this. What standards are the experts referring to? Remember that, when it came to the knife, the amount of Meredith’s DNA found was so small that the police had to resort to Low Copy Number testing; such a method could in itself be considered controversial (and therefore “falling short of standards”); alternatively, one might recall that LCN testing has been accepted by various countries (such as the UK), where it is used fairly regularly. Does the experts’ report mean that they do not acknowledge the validity of LCN testing? Or are they saying that LCN is reliable enough, but that the police weren’t applying the proper procedures when carrying out their tests? Or are they saying that they cannot ascertain whether the proper procedures were applied, for example because the available documentation is insufficient to reach such a conclusion?

In short, whilst the report’s conclusions are clear enough, it is not clear how strong the experts’ reasoning is.

Does this matter? Well, yes. And then again, probably not. Not, that is to say, in the current appeal court’s verdict. Regardless of one’s analysis of the report’s reasoning, I have come to feel it’s highly unlikely that the appeal court would decide not to follow its own experts’ advice. In other words, I’m pretty sure the court will toss out both the bra clasp and the knife on the basis of the report, regardless of how convincing that report really is. That, after all, is why a court appoints experts such as these; they’re there to answer questions the court can’t answer itself. (Alternatively, the report’s strengths or weaknesses could be important if the case where ever to be submitted to the Italian supreme court.)

So let’s work on that assumption for the moment: the bra clasp and the knife are out of the picture. Where does that leave the case? On - err - a knife edge, I’d say.

The bra clasp was the one bit of evidence that directly linked Raffaele to the crime. There is one other piece of physical evidence (a not totally clear footprint found in the small bedroom of the apartment), but that’s about all. Without the bra clasp, there seems very little left to convict Raffaele. Very little, that is, except circumstantial evidence. His alibi (such as it is) does not convince. Then there’s the strange fact that he seems to have turned off his phone and the peculiar use (or lack of use) of his laptop on the night of the murder.

When it comes to Amanda, the knife seems the more important item. After all, on it was found not just Meredith’s DNA, but Amanda’s as well. The knife, therefore, provides a direct link between Amanda and the crime. Nevertheless, if the knife is dismissed, the case against Amanda remains much stronger than the case against Raffaele. First of all, there is a lot more forensic evidence remaining implicating her (including the mixed DNA samples found in various locations in the apartment). Besides, if one were to assume the break-in was staged, Amanda seems to be the only one with any reason to stage it.

In short, to my mind, the bra clasp has always been crucially important when it comes to establishing Raffaele’s guilt, but the knife is not necessarily crucial in establishing Amanda’s. Ignoring both pieces of evidence could, therefore, lead to a rather unexpected result. It remains, of course possible (and even likely) that the court would either convict or acquit both of them, but there now also seems to be a possibility that the court might acquit Raffaele, turn around, and then affirm Amanda’s guilt.

We will know soon enough: the court has indicated it will give its ruling in just a few days.

Some Thoughts on Wilful Injustice

2011-07-01T12:19:00.000-07:00

Today, the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the IMK, took an extraordinary nose-dive.

Strauss-Kahn (or, as many call him, DSK) was arrested by the police on May 14th of this year on the suspicion of having sexually assaulted a cleaning-woman in a hotel suite in New York.

Shortly after, he was paraded before the judge in an unshaved, handcuffed state; his bail was set at a total of $ 6 million; and he was required to wear an ankle bracelet and remain in a New York apartment under guard (the costs of which he had to pay for himself).

Today, however, the bail conditions were suddenly waived. Strauss-Kahn was released on his own recognisance, which means that he need only promise to appear in court at further hearings. The bail was dropped; the bracelet is gone; the guard dismissed. One thing remaining: his passport will stay in police hands, for now, so he cannot leave the USA.

All this was brought about by the serious doubts the prosecution now has regarding the credibility of the accusations of the cleaning-woman, who is a 32 year old woman from Guinea.

In a letter sent by the prosecutors to the defense lawyers, the prosecutors explain their change of heart. This, according to The New York Times, was what the prosecutors have learned:

"The housekeeper admitted to prosecutors that she lied about what happened after the episode on the 28th floor of the hotel. She had initially said that after being attacked, she had waited in a hallway until Mr. Strauss-Kahn left the room; she now admits that after the episode, she cleaned a nearby room, then returned to Mr. Strauss-Kahn's suite to clean there. Only after that did she report to her supervisor that she had been attacked.

Prosecutors disclosed that the woman had admitted lying in her application for asylum from Guinea; according to the letter, she "fabricated the statement with the assistance of a male who provided her with a cassette recording" that she memorized. She also said that her claim that she had been the victim of a gang rape in Guinea was also a lie.

The woman also acknowledged that she had misrepresented her income to qualify for her housing, and had declared a friend's child - in addition to her own daughter - as a dependent on tax returns to increase her tax refund."

Furthermore, The Times notes, there seem to be issues not addressed in the letter:

"According to two law enforcement officials familiar with the prosecutors' inquiry, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman's bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

The investigators also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends."

In other words, taking all this in and coming up with a simple (if, at the time, still somewhat premature) conclusion, it seems that the cleaning woman might well turn out to be a fraud. As for Strauss-Kahn, well, he had sex with her, which is morally questionable and most certainly very, very stupid, but it now seems quite possible that his digressions may have ended there.

In the meantime, however, he is a ruined man. He has lost his position in the IMF; his chances of running for president of France are all but gone (in spite of the curious fact that, just for the moment, the current events seem to have actually increased his popularity amongst Les Bleus).

Now why am I bringing this up?

It's simple: I find it interesting how, time and time again, those that support Amanda Knox (and okay then, that Raffaele fellow too) bring up the notion that the Italian judicial system is clearly flawed, or corrupt, or in some other way just downright weird and dastardly. They point to the "fact" that the Italian prosecutors "clearly" had branded Amanda (and that Raffaele fellow too) as guilty "without any evidence at all". And then they seem, time and again, to infer that such a thing could really only happen in a country such as Italy, and that anything prosecutors or judges say over there really can't be taken at all seriously. It would certainly never, ever happen in a free and great country like the USA, they seem to imply.

But, guess what? It just did. Just about everything they accuse the Italian judiciary of seems to have just happened in their backyard. And it's by no means the first time, nor will it be the last.

One of the problems of law is the problem of likeabilty. Prosecutors want - and need - to be liked by the public. Judges find it necessary to be at the very least respected by that public. As a result, there is a constant force at work, a force that threatens to suck both groups away from what it is that they should actually be focusing on, that pulls them towards the the uncertain miasma of the ever-changeable popular opinion.

This is true, no doubt, for the Italian judiciary. And it is certainly true, as has been shown once more, of the American one.

____________________

A postscript:

On The Daily Beast, a chap called Bernard-Henri Lévi posted an article. In it, he states that "The Strauss-Kahn affair is not over." For it to be over, he continues, Strauss-Kahn "must be granted not only his freedom, but—even more importantly—restoration of his honor."

Oh, my. Giggle time.

Restoration of honour? The guy had sleazy sex with a Guinean cleaning-woman half his age in a hotel room on a whim. He may have attacked her to get what he wanted; he may not and just have found the opportunity quite dozy. But for God's sake, what honour do you want restored? There is none.

Who's this Lévi, you might ask? Well, he's a philosopher.

Ah yes, giggle time.

V. The Verdict in Perugia: the Case Against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito (Part Five)

2011-06-21T14:14:00.000-07:00

This is the fifth and last part of a series. Please read the earlier parts to understand the entire article!

V. The Appeal

Both Amanda and Raffaele have appealed against their convictions. The appeal proceedings are currently under way. Up until now, the major aspects these proceedings have dealt with are the following:

- the testimony of one of the witnesses, a man called Antonio Curatolo;
- the testimony of five prisoners;
- the re-assessment of the DNA evidence, in particular the evidence pertaining to the bra clasp and the kitchen knife.

Antonio Curatolo

I have not yet mentioned the testimony given by Anatonio Curatolo. The reason for this is simple: it seems difficult to take this evidence too seriously. Curatolo is a homeless man who has testified that he saw Amanda and Raffaele in the night of November 1st at the Piazza Grimana (at a time, therefore, when Amanda has testified that the two of them were at Raffaele’s). The court considered this testimony reliable, but it is easy to understand why the defence would raise the issue of that reliability on appeal. They’re probably right to do so.

The Prisoners' Testimony

Here, the appeal proceedings take a turn towards the farcical. At the defence’s urging, five prisoners were heard in the appeal proceedings. One of them (a man called Mario Alessi) testified that he is serving a prison sentence in the same jail as Rudy, with whom he became friends. Rudy confessed to him that Amanda and Raffaele were, in fact, innocent. When Rudy declined to publicly announce their innocence, this prisoner became irate and decided to testify himself. According to his testimony, the crime was committed by Rudy and a friend of his.

Two other prisoners, again serving in the same jail as Rudy, have testified they heard Rudy state that Amanda and Raffaele were innocent, although they offered little further elaboration. A fourth prisoner, again from the same jail, stated that he knew nothing of the matter.

Then there is the testimony of the fifth prisoner, a man called Luciano Aviello. Aviello is imprisoned in the same prison where Raffaele is currently serving his sentence. Aviello testified that the murder of Meredith was actually committed by his brother, who happened to be out looking for a painting to rob and ended up at Meredith’s apartment by mistake. There, his brother (accompanied by another man) decided to take advantage of the situation and attacked and killed Meredith.

These testimonies can and no doubt should be discarded in evaluating the case. They are interesting only in that they diverge from the central argument made by the defence in the original case, i.e. that Rudy committed the crime by himself. They raise the issue that Rudy acted with one or more, as yet unknown, accomplices. In itself, such a supposition does tackle one or two of the problems discussed above, but it immediately raises new questions. Who could these others have been? Why were they in the apartment? How had they entered? Why did one of them leave (one should recall the shoeprints leading to the front door), whilst one or more others stayed to clean themselves up in the small bathroom?

The testimony of these witnesses caused the prosecution to call up a few of there own, amongst whom was Rudy Guede. If anyone thought his testimony might actually shed some light on the facts of the crime, they were to be disappointed. Guede testified that Alessi had lied under oath; he also testified that a letter he had written in 2010 to his lawyer was truthful. In it, he had written that the murder was committed by Amanda and Raffaele, without, however, giving any details. He refused to elaborate on the events of November 1st 2007. Two other prosecution witnesses (both prisoners as well) were also heard; both testified that Aviello had lied as well.

The Re-Assessment of the DNA evidence

Arguably the most important part of the appeal proceedings so far concerns the re-assessment of the DNA evidence. It should be understood, however, that the re-examination is restricted to just two pieces of the DNA evidence: the bra clasp and the kitchen knife. In both instances, there does seem at least some reason for the re-assessment. In the case of the bra clasp, for example, one remains rather unsure how reliable this might be, given its long sojourn in Meredith’s room before being secured (and given the fact that it was somehow moved at this time). When it comes to the knife, the problems are even greater: the DNA found was minuscule, the results of the testing were possibly unreliable, and the knife may not have been as compatible with the wounds inflicted as the prosecution made out. Besides, the question remains how this particular knife could have been used in the first place.

At the time of writing this article, the experts assigned by the appeals court to re-assess the DNA evidence have not yet publicised their findings; we’ll have to wait and see. (An intriguing thing about the re-examination of the knife is that the experts may, perhaps, be allowed to examine whether any DNA can be be found “inside” the knife, that is, where the blade enters the handle. For this, the knife would have to be taken apart, something that was not done during the original examination.)

(EDIT (July 1st, 2011): the re-assessment report has been submitted to the appeal court. I will not, however, make any comments until the contents become more clear than they are now.)

VI. Some Personal Thoughts on the Verdict

I find the court’s reasoning with regard to the break-in quite convincing. It is difficult to see how this could have been an actual burglary, let alone a burglary carried out by Rudy Guede. There are, nevertheless, a number of points to be made which, to a certain extent, make the court’s findings less conclusive than one might at first think.

For example, there is the way the break-in may have been staged. The court assumes that Amanda or Raffaele broke the window of Romanelli’s room from inside that room. They had drawn the outside shutters shut first, which would explain the fact that no glass shards were found outside. However, the court had heard the testimony of Romanelli, who had stated that when she left on November 1st, she had drawn the shutters shut, but that they were old and that the wood scraped against the sill. In short, fully closing the shutters would have been hard to do. Because of this, it seems there would still be the distinct possibility of broken glass ending up on the ground outside the house.

Furthermore, is should be noted that the defence have always argued that the distribution of the glass shards in Romanelli's room is only compatible with a rock having been tossed through the window from outside. This was rejected by the court, but the fact remains that there is some doubt as to where exactly the glass shards were before Romanelli and the Postal Police had entered the room and moved things around.

These are, however, relatively minor matters. The main arguments the court makes with regard to the (staging of the) break-in remain, to my mind, sound.

As for the wounds on Meredith’s body and her state of undress, I again think the court’s reasoning is basically strong; the crime was not committed by Rudy alone.

Once more, however, there are some doubts. It does seem odd, for example, that no evidence whatsoever was found inside Meredith’s room to point to the presence of Amanda and Raffaele (with the obvious exception of the bra clasp). There was, the court finds, blood on the floor, and in the court’s reasoning, Amanda and Raffaele must have been barefoot. There must also have been quite a scuffle. Nevertheless, no DNA traces were found in Meredith's room (especially mixed blood and DNA traces) that pointed to either Amanda or Raffaele. Their footprints weren’t found either.

Then there are the alibis presented by Amanda and Raffaele (or, to an extent, the lack of them). At first glance, they appear to be quite suspect. There are a great many reasons why one’s testimony might not quite be up to scratch, and there are many reasons why one would want to keep one’s mouth shut in the first place. None of these truly seem to apply here, though; the inconsistencies (in Amanda’s account) and the silence (on the part of Raffaele) are, to my view, relevant.

My thinking in the case, however, shifts subtly when it comes to the DNA evidence available. I am not fully convinced by the court’s reasoning on this matter. At the very least, the DNA on the bra clasp and (especially) on the kitchen knife seems shaky; the DNA discovered in the small bathroom, in Romanelli’s room and in the hallway does not entirely convince me either. To be more precise, it seems clear enough Meredith’s blood was found in the small bathroom, and that these traces were left by the killer(s), but I am not convinced much can be gathered from the presence of Amanda’s DNA. l realise that, in examining the apartment, choices had to be made, and that perhaps the simple necessity of these choices led to less perfect results than one might have hoped for. In any case, though, and regardless of the reason, the results do not seem totally conclusive.

What does all this mean, in the end? Well, it might well mean that the result of the appeal hangs in the balance. If the DNA evidence with regard to the bra clasp and the kitchen knife were to be thrown out, the prosecution would have lost the most damning evidence directly linking Amanda and Raffaele to the crime. There would still be quite a bit of other evidence, to be sure, but the question arises whether this would be enough for a conviction. Remember that whilst the testimonies of the five inmates in the appeal proceedings appear to be ridiculous, they do raise, in general, a possibility that has not fully been explored: that Rudy somehow committed the crime with one or more unknown accomplices, and that Amanda and Raffaele are, indeed, innocent.

At present, given the state of affairs, that doesn’t seem very likely, but one of the central tenets of criminal law should not be forgotten here: guilt must be established without a reasonable doubt. The defence does not have to prove how the crime was committed; it does not have to prove that Amanda and Raffaele are innocent. It is enough to establish that there is doubt that Amanda and Raffaele were involved, and that that doubt is reasonable.

To my mind, the defence aren’t quite there yet; it is, however, conceivable that they may be moving closer. They may, perhaps, have made a mistake in trying to establish that Rudy was the sole perpetrator the first time round; in a somewhat roundabout manner, they may have started to make amends in the appeal proceedings.

As for the prosecution, they may well have made their own mistakes in trying to present their case as being stronger than it actually is. For example, they presented the court with a smoking gun - the kitchen knife - that now may, upon re-examination, go up in smoke. If that happens, it will be interesting to see how the case unfolds from there.

I started out by saying that the views on this matter have become increasingly polarised. I will end by stating more or less the opposite. This isn't a clear-cut case. On the basis of the verdict, one might very well believe that Amanda and Raffaele are guilty. On the other hand, it seems as if some aspects of the verdict may be flawed. Even if that were to be true, however, it doesn't mean that the verdict can simply be dismissed, and it doesn't mean that it is in any way clear that Amanda and Raffaele are innocent.

Justice isn’t represented by a pair of scales for nothing, I guess. At present, the balance has shifted in one direction; that it might yet shift in the other direction seems unlikely, but hardly impossible.

(This concludes - at least temporarily - this series.)

IV. The Verdict in Perugia: the Case Against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito (Part Four)

2011-06-21T14:10:00.000-07:00

This is the fourth part of a series. Please read the earlier parts to understand the entire article!

IV The Court's Reasoning Explained (continued)

As stated earlier, the basic reasoning behind the verdict is the following.

A. Guede is guilty of the murder;
B. Guede did not act alone;
C. the only possible accomplices of Guede are Knox and Sollecito;
D. that Knox and Sollecito are culpable of the murder is corroborated by the forensic evidence available;
E. and it is also corroborated by the fact that their stories don’t seem to be logical and do not constitute convincing alibis.

Points A through D were discussed in my earlier posts; this post will look at the final point: the alibis of Amanda and Raffaele.

E. Amanda and Raffaele’s Stories

Neither Amanda nor Raffaele have strong alibis to disculpate them. By and large, their story seems to be that they spent the night together at Raffaele’s apartment. In the morning, Amanda testified, she went home (i.e. to the Via della Pergola) and took a shower. There, she noticed some blood stains in the small bathroom, and she felt that something was wrong. She returned to Raffaele’s apartment; the two of them then decided to go back to the Via della Pergola.

There, they called the police (that is, the Carabinieri). Before they arrived, however, there were other visitors, in particular two representatives of the Postal Service, who had come because, by this time, Meredith's phones had been found and one of them was registered to Romanelli, who obviously lived at the Via della Pergola. At more or less the same time, Romanelli herself arrived (having been called by Amanda), along with her fiancé and two friends. With all these people present - but still no Carabinieri to be found - Meredith’s door was forced open and her body was discovered.

The first thing that can be pointed out in this regard is that one might wonder why, if Amanda’s account is basically accurate, there is no clear confirmation of it from Raffaele. For some reason, Raffaele did not take the stand during the trial.

Furthermore, Amanda’s story does not sit well with what she had told the police earlier. During her first interrogation, she had stated that she was actually in the apartment when Meredith was killed and that her boss, Patrick Lumumba, was there too. This was an extraordinary statement to make, and one that may, to an extent, have been occasioned by the fact that she was under considerable pressure from the police at the time. However, it seems strange to imagine that she would have said anything of the kind if she had simply been with Raffaele the entire evening and had no knowledge whatsoever of the murder.

Then there is the issue of Meredith’s door being locked. As mentioned, that door had to be forced to enter Meredith’s bedroom on November 2nd. Someone, therefore, had locked it after killing Meredith. Amanda’s statements on this are puzzling. On the one hand, she has pointed out that Meredith often locked her door (the fact that is was locked was therefore not at all exceptional); on the other hand, however, she wrote to friends in America that when she returned to the apartment on the morning of November 2nd, she discovered the door was locked and “panicked”. Raffaele attempted to force the door, she added, after they’d tried to peer inside the room by leaning out of a window nearby. These two versions obviously contradict one another, and it doesn’t seem likely that they can easily be explained by any mental confusion (such as she might have felt when first being interrogated).

Besides this, there is the problem of the telephone calls made by Amanda in the early afternoon of November 2nd. According to police analysis, Amanda first tried calling one of Meredith’s cell phones (the phone Meredith used to contact her family in the UK). That call was made at 12.07 o’clock and lasted 16 seconds; no one answered. Amanda then called Romanelli (12.08 o’clock); shortly afterwards, she called both of Meredith’s phones. Again, of course, there was no answer. These last two calls lasted 3 and 4 seconds respectively.

Now, Amanda has testified that she called Romanelli because she was worried about what she had seen in the apartment. She stated that Romanelli shared her concern and that she responded by saying that she would try to call Meredith. Nowhere in this conversation (according to the testimony of both Romanelli and Amanda) is any mention made of Amanda having already tried, unsuccessfully, to reach Meredith. In itself, this seems odd enough. To this can be added, however, that the two calls to Meredith’s phones after the Romanelli call were of such short duration that one wonders whether any real attempt to reach Meredith was made. The court, in looking at these facts, finds that it reasonable to assume that the first call to Meredith’s phone was made to ascertain that no-one had found it (the phones having been thrown away after the murder by Amanda and Raffaele); then Romanelli was called, and the two subsequent calls to Meredith were made.

The court also notes that, when Meredith's door was forced open, Amanda and Raffaele were some way away (in the living room area); they did not seem particularly interested in what would be found in Meredith's room.

As an aside, and returning, for a moment, to the subject of mobile phones, the court also takes into consideration that, according to police evidence, neither Amanda's or Raffaele's phones recorded any activity on the night of November 1st (at least not between the crucial period of, roughly, 9.00 o'clock at night and 6 o'clock in the morning). In the case of Amanda's phone, an explanation was provided by Amanda herself: she had switched off her phone to spend the evening with Raffaele. In the case of Raffaele's phone, one would have to guess (Raffaele has not given any explanation), but a similar explanation would certainly be possible. The question remains, though, if such explanations explain anything; in today's age, turning off two mobile phones for a considerable number of hours seems odd. (To this can be added that, during the time when Meredith was presumably killed, there was no activity on Raffaele's computer either.)

(This series will be concluded in Part V, which deals with the appeal proceedings and closes with some personal thoughts.)

III. The Verdict in Perugia: the Case Against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito (Part Three)

2011-06-21T13:52:00.001-07:00

This is the third part in a series. Please read the earlier parts to understand the entire article!

IV The Court's Reasoning Explained (continued)

As stated earlier, the basic reasoning behind the verdict is the following.

A. Guede is guilty of the murder;
B. Guede did not act alone;
C. the only possible accomplices of Guede are Knox and Sollecito;
D. that Knox and Sollecito are culpable of the murder is corroborated by the forensic evidence available;
E. and it is also corroborated by the fact that their stories don’t seem to be logical and do not constitute convincing alibis.

The first two points (Guede's guilty, and the notion that he did not act alone) have been adressed in Part II of the series. Points C and D (Guede's accomplices and the corroborating evidence of their guilt) are discussed here. Part IV of the series will look at Amanda's and Raffaele's alibis. The fifth and final part of the series will discuss the appeal proceedings and contain some closing thoughts.

C. The accomplices were Amanda and Raffaele

The court considers that only Amanda (and Raffaele) could have any real motive for staging the break-in. The reason for this is almost self-explanatory. Staging the break-in must have been an attempt to divert attention towards one or more hypothetical “outsiders”. It must, therefore, have been done by one or more “insiders”. The only insider that can possibly be taken into consideration is Amanda. I point out that, in theory, one might also consider the two Italian girls living in the apartment on the first floor, or, indeed, the four boys living downstairs. All of these seem to have had, however, watertight alibis (they simply weren’t there), and no evidence whatsoever was found to even remotely implicate any of them.

Simply by a process of elimination, therefore, the only “insider” remaining is Amanda.

D. The corroborating evidence regarding Amanda and Raffaele

The following biological evidence was discovered linking Amanda and Raffaele to the crime:

– Raffaele’s DNA was found on Meredith’s bra clasp;
– Meredith’s DNA was found on the blade of a kitchen knife found in Raffaele’s kitchen;
– blood and mixed DNA traces were found in the small bathroom;
– further mixed DNA traces were discovered elsewhere in the apartment.

The Bra Clasp

As stated, Meredith’s bra had been cut loose. One of the bra clasps (the metal and a small bit of cloth) had been cut from the rest of the bra. The clasp was not initially secured as evidence when the forensic team examined the apartment on November 2nd and 3rd; in fact, it was only secured on December 18th, during a further search of the apartment. It was then taken and examined for DNA, and a trace of Sollecito’s DNA was found.

When it comes to the clasp, there is, I believe, little discussion with regard to the DNA testing itself. The problem that does exist, however, is related to the question of how that DNA actually got on the clasp. Because of the very late securement of the clasp, there is a threat of contamination. Such contamination may have happened sometime during the weeks between the murder and the securement; it could also, perhaps, have happened on December 18th (when the clasp was secured).

In addressing these issues, the court relies heavily on the testimony of the police and the forensic experts involved. Its reasoning boils down to the assumption that no contamination could have taken place before December 18th, because the clasp was in Meredith’s room all this time and was not handled by anyone. No contamination took place on December 18th, because the forensic experts took the precaution of donning clean gloves before handling the clasp. One fact remains, however: sometime during November 2nd (or 3rd) and December 18th, the clasp was moved; it was found in December one and a half meters or so from the place where it was filmed on November.

The Kitchen Knife

With regard to the kitchen knife, other problems arise. The DNA found on the blade was minute; in fact, it was used up during the DNA testing. There was and is no way of repeating the test. Furthermore, the amount of DNA was so small that a method of testing had to be used (known as “low copy number” testing) that could be considered less reliable. In other words, the results of the test itself are a matter of debate. In particular, the defence argued that it was unclear whether it was actually Meredith’s DNA that was found, and that even if it were, this could readily be explained by some form of contamination within the laboratory that conducted the testing.

Again, the court rejected the defence claims. Again, it relied heavily on the testimony of the DNA experts, in particular the statements made by dr. Patrizia Stefanoni, who worked with the Scientific Police (the Polizia Scientifica) in Rome and lead the DNA investigations. Dr Stefanoni explained how the tests were conducted, pointing out that no contamination could have resulted from the method used.

It should be noted that there are further issues concerning the knife. These have to do with the wounds inflicted on Meredith’s body. The court finds that some of these wounds (in particular, the wounds on the right side of the neck) could not have been made by the kitchen knife; it was just too big. With regard to the wounds on the right side, the court finds that the wounds are compatible with a knife of this side, but one has to assume that the knife was not used with great force. The kitchen knife had a blade some 17.5 cm long; the most grievous wound was, however, just 8 cm deep. The court explains this by looking at what it assumes was the rationale behind the attack on Meredith: the perpetrators did not, according to the court, at first wish to kill her; they wished instead to force her into complying with their sexual intentions.

Moreover, there is the simple question of how the knife came to be used in the attack against Meredith in the first place. If this was a kitchen knife belonging to Raffaele, how did it end up at the Via della Pergola? The court considers this question, but only briefly: it decides that Raffaele may very well have given the knife to Amanda as protection, in which case she was carrying it around in her handbag.

The Blood and Mixed DNA Traces in the Small Bathroom

In various places in the small bathroom (the bathroom used by Amanda and Meredith) blood traces were found, and it was determined that the blood belonged to Meredith. This was true, for example, with regard to a trace found on the lightswitch and a trace found on the door; it was true also of a bloody footprint (made by a naked foot) found on a mat in the bathroom. This means that (at least) one person entered the bathroom covered in Meredith’s blood, and at least one person entered who was barefoot.

The first thing to remark is that this again rules out the single-perpetrator scenario. It should be recalled that there is another set of footprints (shoeprints) which led directly from Meredith’s room to the front door; it is impossible to imagine that just one person managed to leave both those shoeprints and the traces found in the bathroom.

The second thing to consider is that whoever entered the bathroom obviously did so after having killed (or assisted in killing) Meredith and did so in order to clean himself (or herself).

Besides these blood traces, there were mixed DNA traces found in the bathroom (in particular: on a box of Q-Tips, and in the bidet and the sink). “Mixed” in this case means that the traces provided, upon testing, both the DNA of Amanda and Meredith. It should be noted that whilst the traces did contain blood, that blood came from Meredith, and not (necessarily) from Amanda as well. However, the traces did also contain the DNA of Amanda, and this, the court decides, is most readily explained when one assumes that Amanda had entered the bathroom to clean Meredith’s blood from her body.

As to the footprint, a different conclusion is reached: the evidence with regard to the size and shape of the foot that led to the print leads the court to assume that it was made by Raffaele.

It is pointed out that the defence did not contest the mixed samples; they simply stated that the existence of Amanda’s DNA was to be expected when the samples are taken from a bathroom used by her. As to the footprint, the defence argued that, depending on how the print was analysed, one might also conclude that it had been made by Rudy.

Further Mixed DNA Traces

Various further traces were found elsewhere in the apartment. This was done after the use of Luminol, a substance that can reveal the presence of blood traces invisible to the naked eye. Two of these are of particular interest: a trace taken in Romanelli’s room, and a trace taken in the hallway in front of Amanda’s room. Both traces again contained the mixed DNA of Amanda and Meredith.

One should realise that the use of Luminol and the DNA samples subsequently found should be taken in context. Luminol causes a chemical reaction when applied to blood, but it reacts equally to various other substances, such as fruit juice. DNA will provide the genetic profile of individuals, but it is often difficult to establish from what source (blood, exfoliated cells, sweat etc.) that genetic material has come from. When taken together, however, the two can clearly be important.

When it comes to the two samples found in Romanelli’s room and the hallway, the court acknowledges the relevance of the combination. In particular, the court finds that in both cases, a reasonable supposition is that the traces consisted of the blood of Meredith, mixed with the DNA of Amanda. Again, the court concludes that this attests to Amanda’s presence in the apartment on the night of the murder, and that Meredith’s blood was on her body.

Once more, the defence did not contest the DNA testing or the mixed DNA; it again only pointed out that the presence of Amanda’s DNA was to be expected in the apartment where she lived.

(The court's verdict will be discussed further in Part IV of this series.)

II. The Verdict in Perugia: the Case Against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito (Part Two)

2011-06-21T13:44:00.001-07:00

This is the second part of a series. Please see Part One for the introduction!

IV The Court's Reasoning Explained

As stated in part I of this series, the court's reasoning amounted, basically, to the following:

A. Rudy Guede is guilty of the murder;
B. Rudy did not act alone;
C. the only possible accomplices of Rudy are Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito;
D. that Amanda and Raffaele are culpable of the murder is corroborated by the forensic evidence available;
E. and it is also corroborated by the fact that their stories don’t seem to be logical and do not constitute convincing alibis.

In this part of the series, I'll look into the first two points: Rudy's guilt, and the notion that he did not act alone.

A. Rudy Guede Is Guilty

The first of court's points - Rudy’s guilt - is not really in dispute. In fact, the defence argued that Rudy was, indeed, the murderer; their case centred on the notion that, contrary to the prosecutors’ view, Rudy had acted alone. As stated above, the evidence against Rudy was incontrovertible; he had, in fact, already been convicted of the murder in a separate case (a conviction upheld on appeal and again by the Supreme Court of Cassation, Italy’s highest court).

B. Rudy Did Not Act Alone

The court arrives at this conclusion mainly by two observations.

The first of these is that there appears to have been a break-in in the apartment. However, that break-in was, according to the court, staged. There is no viable reason why Rudy would stage the break-in; there is no plausible scenario that accounts for him actually being able to do so. The staging of the break-in was, therefore, done by others.

The second is that the wounds inflicted on Meredith’s body (and the fact that she was largely undressed when found the next day) indicate the attack was perpetrated by more than one person.

Both observations are explained more fully below.

The Break-In

The break-in is one of the most extraordinary aspects of the trial. This obviously is not some Agatha Christie novel; this is a real, and quite horrible, murder. Nevertheless, some aspects of the case are almost classic detective fiction material, and of these, the break-in is probably the most arresting. (Another one would be the trail of bloody shoeprints that lead from Meredith’s room straight to the apartment’s front door.)

To understand the relevance of the burglary - staged or otherwise - one should first understand
how it might have taken place. To understand that, one should have a basic grasp of where it occurred.

As stated, Meredith lived in an apartment. The apartment was actually the second floor of a house, situated at the Via della Pergola. The ground floor was occupied by four young Italian men; the second floor was the domicile of four women. Besides Meredith, this apartment was occupied by Amanda Knox and by two Italian women, one of whom was Filomena Romanelli. Each of the women had her own sleeping room; they shared a communal living room (with an open kitchen area attached). There were two bathrooms.

The (staged) break-in took place in Romanelli’s bedroom. Her window was broken, and the room was ransacked. If a break-in had actually taken place, the burglar must have broken the window and entered the apartment from there; he would then have had the opportunity to ransack the room.

The court first examines the likelihood of such a break-in having occurred. It takes the following aspects into account. First, that the window was on the second floor of the house, in fairly clear view from the street the house was situated on. In order to enter the apartment this way, the burglar would have had to climb up to the window and then enter, taking the risk that he could have been observed. In doing so, moreover, the burglar would have ignored a safer method of entrance (via a balcony at the back of the house).

Second, the means of securing access would have been convoluted. The courts observes that the window had shutters on the outside. On the basis of Romanelli’s testimony, the court concludes that these shutters had not been latched, but had been drawn together (the shutters were old and the wood “scraped” against the window sill when drawing them closed, Romanelli stated; since she was leaving for a few days, this is what she did). In order to break in, the burglar would have had to open these shutters first, which would entail climbing up the wall. He would then, according to the court, have to climb back down to the garden below, where he would have had to pick up a rock (which was, indeed, later found in Romanelli’s room) to toss through the window, thereby breaking the glass. He would then have to climb back up, reach through the broken window to open the window, and then enter.

In short, such a burglar would have had to climb up to the window twice, throwing a rock to break the glass halfway through this exercise, and he would have had to do this in spite of the fact that he could easily have been observed by anyone who happened to be passing on the street nearby. It is not, the court decides, a very likely scenario.

It becomes (the court continues) even less likely when it is considered that no traces of such an event were found outside of the house. It had rained on October 30th; the ground of the garden would, in all likelihood, have been wet. Nevertheless, no traces at all were found of someone trying to enter via the window; there were no traces found on the ground below the window, and no traces on the wall the burglar must have climbed.

The court furthermore considers the fact that (some of) the glass shards inside Romanelli’s room were discovered on top of items than had been waylaid, thereby suggesting that the window was broken after the room had been ransacked. It also takes into consideration that nothing was missing from Romenelli’s room; someone had clearly disturbed it, but that was all.

The court also takes into account that no evidence was discovered in Romanelli’s room to indicate Rudy was ever present. There is no DNA evidence; there are no fingerprints. There is, in short, nothing that might point towards Rudy’s presence.

Finally, if the burglar did indeed break in, the question arises what Meredith did. It seems inpossible that she would not have heard him; it seems impossible that she would not react in some way and would, instead, simply remain in her room (where she was attacked).

All in all, the court finds the notion that a burglar - Rudy Guede - broke into the apartment via Romanelli’s window highly unlikely. There was no break-in, the court concludes; the break-in was staged.

Having come to this point, I point out that there is a scenario to be envisioned where, contrary to the above, one might still assume that Rudy was the sole perpetrator. That scenario assumes that Rudy entered the apartment (simply to burgle it) via the window at a time when Meredith had not yet returned home (she came back around 9.00 o’clock at night). He was in the apartment when she entered; at this time he decided to approach (and attack) her. In this scenario, therefore, the break-in was not staged, and Rudy would have left via the front door after killing Meredith.

Such a scenario does not, of course, address the unlikelihood of Rudy wanting to burgle the apartment; since he was on friendly terms with the boys living downstairs and knew Meredith and Amanda, if only fleetingly, it seems an odd place for him to burgle. Nor does it explain why he would do so in the manner described above. There are further aspects which make it seem far-fetched. As stated, Meredith returned home just after 9.00 o’clock at night; if Rudy were already in the apartment, he would have had to break in a little earlier. The crime was committed in November, so it would certainly have been dark by this time. Still, breaking into the apartment via the window at such a time would seem to be a very risky undertaking, given that just about anyone passing along on the street next to the house would have seen (or heard) him entering.

Moreover, there is the fact that Rudy’s faeces were discovered in the toilet in one of two bathrooms in the apartment; Rudy had clearly used the toilet and not flushed. One might think that, having entered the apartment and having started to ransack Romanelli’s room, he decided to use the bathroom, but this seems an odd thing to do. One might also assume that Meredith returned home at the time when Rudy was already in the bathroom, so that she did not notice his presence, but that requires rather a curious timing. Furthermore, it requires one to assume that Rudy had closed Romanelli’s door when he went to the bathroom, since otherwise Meredith would in all likelihood have seen the state it was in and been aware that something was afoot. Perhaps most difficult to explain in this scenario is the sudden change of heart that Rudy must have had. He had entered the apartment to burgle it, but for some reason he became an attacker. That doesn’t seem logical; it would seem much more plausible that, confronted with Meredith’s return, he would have tried to slip out the front door the instant the coast was clear (i.e. the instant Meredith entered her room). And even if one were to assume such a turnaround on Rudy’s part, one would still have to explain the fact that Rudy, after having killed Meredith, did not actually seem to have taken anything (it was not established that anything was missing from the apartment, not from Romanelli’s room or anywhere else).

The forensic evidence: Meredith

Secondly, the court considers the (forensic) evidence with regard to Meredith’s body and the wounds inflicted. The court is of the opinion that this evidence points in the direction of more than one culprit.

I will not delve too deeply into the technicalities of the court’s appraisal of this evidence. Not because it isn’t interesting, but because it requires a level of expertise which I simply don’t have. I do point out a few of the major aspects, though.

Meredith’s body was discovered lying under a duvet in her room. She was largely undressed: she wore only a top which had been pushed up to uncover her breasts. Her bra had been cut loose. There were wounds on her neck, both to the right and the left side, caused by one or two knives.

The court, in considering these facts, finds it unlikely that Rudy could have committed the crime by himself. Rudy would have had to undress Meredith and stab her, both to the left and right side of her neck, at more or less the same time. He would have also, again at more or less the same time, have had to finger her (his DNA was found in Meredith’s vagina). The court takes into account that Meredith was a healthy girl, and would no doubt have resisted the attack for all she was worth; however, there is little or no evidence to suggest that she put up a struggle. On the basis of these facts, the court finds it far more likely that more than one person was involved, and that Meredith was effectively subdued (i.e. held down by one or two others) whilst Rudy sexually approached her.

It should be mentioned that both Amanda’s and Raffaele’s defence teams attempted to explain that the evidence available could nevertheless point to a single culprit. Somewhat confusingly, they presented different scenarios, with Amanda’s defence assuming the assailant had attacked from the front, whilst Raffaele’s defence argued that the culprit had attacked from the rear. Raffaele’s defence, in particular, detailed the attack as it might have happened, but whilst their exposition did to an extent explain the various wounds, it left the state of undress effectively unresolved; the defence simply assumed that Meredith had been undressing herself when the attack occurred. That, however, seems a shaky hypothesis, not only because it would have meant that Meredith must have undressed by taking off all her clothes below the waist first (a rather strange way of undressing), but also because it seems very unlikely that she would have been undressing in the first place. It is a notion that doesn’t fit in with any burglary Rudy might have committed; if he was already in the apartment (in the bathroom) when she returned, then he would have had to wait for some time before Meredith had not only entered her room, but also partially undressed herself.

To this it can be added, as will be explained later, that Meredith’s blood was found in the small bathroom, clearly left by someone who had attacked her, whilst there was a trail of bloody shoeprints leading directly from Meredith’s room to the front door. These facts, too, seem to exclude the possibility that there was only one perpetrator.

Summary

To summarise: the break-in was staged; that assumption, along with the evidence provided by Meredith’s body (the state of undress and the wounds inflicted), indicate that the crime was not committed by Rudy alone. There must, according to the court, have been accomplices.

(The court's verdict will be discussed further in the next part of the series.)

I. The Verdict in Perugia: the Case Against Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito (Part I)

2011-06-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

Please note that this is the first part in a five part series. The series was first written as a single article, and the various parts posted here reflect this.

Contents

I. Introduction
II. The Background of the Case
III. The Massei Report: Basic Reasoning
IV. The Court's Reasoning Explained
V. The Appeal
VI. Some Personal Thoughts on the Verdict

I. Introduction

A great deal has been said about the trial of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

For many, the trial was, in effect, a travesty. The proceedings, they stated, were instigated by a mentally unstable Italian prosecutor; any reasonable person could see that there is no real evidence against either Amanda or Raffaele. The guilty verdict that was eventually given was the result of the Italian media having gone viral once details of the murder emerged, coupled with the fact that the "jury" was not sequestered and therefore susceptible to influence from such sources.

For others, the verdict presented a satisfying (if only a temporary) conclusion to the murder case. The culprits, these people argued, had been brought to justice, in spite of a plethora of lies and dumbfounding disorientation.

A great deal has been said about the trial of Amanda and Raffaele. A lot of it has been exaggerated, misleading, or simply untrue. Views on the trial have become so polarised that it has become quite difficult to grasp the major aspects of the case.

This article doesn’t pretend to reveal the truth about the guilt or innocence of either Amanda or Raffaele. What it does set out to do is to provide some understanding of the reasoning of the court when it handed down its verdict. Because of this, the article focuses, almost exclusively, on the verdict itself.

II. The Background of the Case

Meredith Kercher, a British exchange student, was murdered sometime during the night of November 1st 2007, in the city of Perugia. Within days, the police had picked up Amanda Knox, her boyfriend at the time, Raffaele Sollecito, and her boss, Patrick Lumumba (Lumumba owned a bar in Perugia where Amanda worked). Lumumba was later released, at which time the (German) police had arrested Rudy Guede as the third suspect.

In a trial that did not include either Amanda or Raffaele, Rudy was convicted of the murder. Not because he had confessed (indeed, Rudy has always maintained his innocence), but because the evidence against him was incontrovertible. It was, for example, clear that Rudy had been present in the apartment where Meredith lived when the murder was committed (a fact he himself admitted); his DNA was found on her body. A bloody handprint clearly left by Rudy had been discovered. His alibi, such as it was (he had been in the bathroom when others entered the apartment and attacked Meredith, whom he attempted to help after the attack) was considered unbelievable.

When it came to Amanda and Raffaele, however, the case was not quite so clear cut. First, neither admitted to being in the apartment at the time concerned. Second, there was much less forensic evidence linking them to the murder. Third, they seemed rather more determined than Rudy to establish their innocence, hiring a fairly hefty contingent of lawyers and experts in the process.

Nevertheless, on December 9th, 2009, both were convicted by the Court of Assizes of Perugia. In a long and detailed explanation of the verdict, the chief justice of the court, dr. Giancarlo Massei, set out the court’s findings and provided the motivations for the court’s verdict. This explanation is known as “the Massei report”.

(As an side, I point out that the Court consisted of two professional judges and six lay judges; there was, in short, no jury, as in there would have been in an American trial.)

III. The Massei Report: Basic Reasoning

The basic reasoning behind the verdict is the following.

A. Rudy Guede is guilty of the murder;
B. Rudy did not act alone;
C. the only possible accomplices of Rudy are Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito;
D. that Amanda and Raffaele are culpable of the murder is corroborated by the forensic evidence available;
E. and it is also corroborated by the fact that their stories don’t seem to be logical and do not constitute convincing alibis.

These issues will all be adressed in parts II through IV of this series. The fifth and final part will contain some thoughts on the appeal proceedings, and a few closing remarks.

The US Elections: The Shakespearoes

2008-07-02T03:12:00.000-07:00

Whatever happened to all the heroes?

Roosevelt and Truman, sitting in a tree,
New deal, true deal, you can't catch me,
Along came the Parson with his wicked shears
Snip snap, crackerjack, and that was that.

Kennedy and Carter, sitting on the fence
Gazing at their memories a long way hence,
Along came the Parson with his sharpened sense
Snip snap, crackerjack, and that was that.

Why did I like Bill Clinton?

The fact is, I can't quite remember. I remember a morning back in 1988, when I was walking to work and someone thrust a microphone under my nose, asking me whom I'd vote for in the upcoming US presidential election.

"Clinton," I said.

Why? I honestly can't remember.

But all through the next eight years, I liked the man. I admired him. He was, I thought, strong on liberty, strong on the economy. What more could you ask for? Someone who defended personal freedom, even if that freedom flew in the face of the religiously or otherwise bigotted? But that's exactly what he did. Someone who could pull the American economy out of the dirt and turn a deficit into a surplus? Again, that's what he did.

In other words, he was pretty good leader.

Perhaps, writing this, I do remember.

Certainly I remember how Monica Lewinsky didn't change my opinion of the man one iota. What on earth could one man's brief infatuation with a cute intern have to do with running the country? How ever could that matter?

But, in retrospect, perhaps it did. Or rather, it does.

Bill Clinton's role in the recent primaries has changed my mind. I used to have a pretty lucid opinion of him. It may have been right and it may have been wrong, but it was clear-cut. Now it's a bit of a fog.

In South Carolina, on January 26th, 2008, Clinton was asked why it took two of them (two Clintons, that is) to defeat Barack Obama. Clinton chuckled, and then said:

"Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice, in '84 and '88. And he ran a good campaign, and Senator Obama has run a good campaign."

It was a weird thing to say. Why bring up Jackson? Why compare Obama to Jackson? Yes, Jackson is black; yes, he ran a good campaign. But he also hadn't a chance in hell to get the Democrats' nomination, in spite of winning the primaries in South Carolina. Oh, wait, that's exactly why Clinton brought this up.

Okay then; political posturing. Perhaps not too clever, but no big deal, either. After all, on the stump, in the thick of things, not everything that's said is wise.

Except that wasn't the end of it. Two months later, when asked about the South Carolina "incident", Clinton said:

"They played the race card on me."

Huh? What's that? They played the race card on him? It was Clinton who brought up Jackson, who decided to compare Obama with a black fringe candidate who "ran a good campaign" but wasn't actually going anywhere. And who's "they", and what did they do?

Clinton elaborated:

"(...) this was used out of context and twisted for political purposes by the Obama campaign to try and breed resentment elsewhere."

Context? What context? There was a question: Why does it take two Clintons to defeat one Obama? There was an answer: "Well, Jesse Jackson won too, but not really." What context could there be other than the one Clinton devised himself?

And how could it possibly have been "twisted" by "the Obama campaign? Again, Clinton elaborated: "and we now know from memos from the campaign and everything that they planned to do it all along."

Well, yes, there is a memo. Not memos (and certainly not a whole bunch of "everything" as well). And that memo doesn't say: "Let's try and portray Clinton as a biggot". What the memo does is list the possible instances where the Clintons attempted to insert a racial tone into their campaigning. Nothing, as far as I know, was ever done with it; Obama himself expressed regret that it had even been written at all. Nevertheless, it was probably correct in its general tone, as the South Carolina incident made clear.

Given all this, why on earth did Clinton say the things he said? Why didn't he just acknowledge that he made a stupid comment back in January and let it go?

One might still let all this slip by. On the stump, in the thick of things...

But that's not where things ended, either. Because when he was confronted by his own reaction ("They played the race card on me"), Clinton decided to respond as follows:

"No no no, that's not what I said."

In spite of the fact that, of course, that was exactly what he had said.

And, for me, that was it. It was an Eureka moment. It was like having a stone unturned and finding the worm crawling underneath. I hadn't cared about the Lewinsky debacle; like many others, I felt it to be a purely personal issue. When pressed, Clinton evaded and eventually lied; but since there was no reason to attack him in the first place, his reaction wasn't going to bother me.

This time round, though, Clinton simply lied because it was convenient. And he lied about making a mistake which he only made because he wanted to drag Obama down. And he wasn't spinning the truth, and he wasn't interpretating things, he was just lying.

Snip snap, crackerjack, here's where it's at:
take a girl, make her whirl, show her where's it's fat,
Along came the Parson, made me stop my clock,
Ding dong, sing-along, it's all a bunch of crock.

Whatever happened to my heroes? All those Shakespearoes?

We watched their Rome burn...

US Politics: The Redemption Of Regret

2008-06-11T10:44:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how much attention this will grab, but it's astonishing:

President Bush Regrets His Legacy As Man Who Wanted War

Here's a snippet from the article, which is based on an interview with Dubya:

"President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq. He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.

In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. 'I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.' "

Think about this a moment. And let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that the war in Iraq was probably the worst idea ever since someone said: "Humpty Dumpty, take a big jumpy." After all, with hunderds of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children dead, millions displaced and the country's very foundations broken to smithereens, one or two nagging doubts might be order. Especially if the reasons for all this destruction were false to start with.

So, what do you do when your big claim to fame raises a few eyebrows? Why, it's easy. You say: "You're right! I admit it! I should have presented it a bit differently."

And then we can all say: "Well, that's a relief! For a moment there, we really thought something horrible had happened!"

To which you answer: "Haha! Glad we got that sorted. Now let me present a few things with regard to Iran..."

Astonishing, too, is that this tactic hasn't been used more often. On the other hand, perhaps it has been, and the fact that we don't really know about it is because it's just so bloody brilliant.

Who knows, maybe the London police managed to find Jack the Ripper after all. And here's what happened:

Police: "Ho, ho! Wots all this then, eh?"

Jack: "Oh, just a bit o' crumpet I killed, officer! Been doing that now for a while, you know! Great fun!"

Police: "Now that ain't cricket, me young bloody friend! It's the bucket and pail for you!"

Jack: "No, no, no! You don't understand! Look at the writing on the wall! I wrote that before inserting this huge and spiky object up between her filthy little legs and tearing up everything inside!"

Police: "Oh! Well now. Let's have a look at that there writing, then." (Moving to the wall and scratching his beard:) "Err, now - that says: 'I, Jack, do solemnly proclaim my deep' - Wot's that there? - 'my deep regret that any of my actions may be seen as, as' - Wot's that word?"

Jack: "Reprehensible. Good, ain't it? Reprehensible! I looked it up!"

Police (thoughtfully): " '... as reprehensible.' That's nice, that is. Very posh. And then it says: 'I will make everything look nicer next time round.' "

Jack: "And I will! My presentation wasn't good, but I'll do better! I promise!"

Police: "Well! That seems to clear things up nicely, I must say! For a moment there I thought Dasterdly Deeds were afoot! I do apologise, good sir! And I wish you a very good night!"

Jack: "And the same to you, Officer! The same to you!"

The US Elections: Nelson's Notions

2008-06-10T05:08:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat from Florida, proposed some wide-sweeping changes to the way US presidents are elected.

On June 6th, he filed his proposals with Congress, where they are certain to die a slow and unnoticed death.

One of the problems with the bill is that it's just too ambitious. Nelson wants, for example, to scrap the Electoral College. Now there may well be quite sound arguments for doing just that, but the fact of the matter is, it just ain't going to happen. The College is part of the US Constitution and it's been chugging along gamely for over 200 years. It's doing quite well, thank you very much. There's just no way Congress will set it out to pasture, let alone that the required 75% of all states would give their ratification. After all, the Electoral College system works to the benefit of small states, which are in the majority.

One wonders, though, what would happen if Nelson had been a bit more humble and had limited his reform package to the primary election process. On that score, surely, his ideas make some sense.

Those ideas amount to the introduction of a regional primary season, running from March through June (the exact months aren't important, but the total duration is). The US would be divided into 6 regions, and each of these regions would get their turn to vote (with, I'm assuming, all the states of a given region voting on the same day). Next time round, the same thing applies, but the sequence of the voting revolves. That way, in the larger scheme of things, no region would have preference over the others.

I must admit I like this idea. Its advantages are obvious:

the duration of the primary season is shortened to three months or so, diminishing the chance that voters start changing their minds during the process and the candidate that ends up being the voters' choice loses because of a bad start;
the unseemly jostling of states to set their primary dates as early as possible is eliminated. This is important, because the state's interests in early voting are by no means congruent with a party's interests in adhering to a fair and balanced election process;
the system allows for focused campaigning by candidates, but widens the scope of the issues which they will have to focus on. It will simply become less feasible to atempt to pander to the voters of one state, only to turn around and attempt to pander to the voters in the next with a potentially different message.

This system would render the repeat of the 2008 Florida and Michgan debacle impossible, which in itself is a huge advantage. However, it does nothing to address the concerns that the Democratic primary seasons have revealed when it come to other shortcomings of the election process. More specifically, it does not address the problems concerning the significance (or lack thereof) of the popular vote or the doubts surrounding the role of the so-called superdelegates.

Because of this, I would imagine a few further changes might be in order:

Abolish the caucuses; mandate a primary-only system. I happen to like the idea of caucuses, but I don't really think you can have both caucuses and primaries and not get into a very real muddle when it comes to determining if the winner actually deserved to win. In 2008, Clinton's claim to having won the popular vote was probably false and should, strictly speaking, have been irrelevant, but it's clear that's not the way things work in the real world. So I think future bickering about such things really needs to be avoided;
Make pledged delegates stick to their pledges. That is: make it mandatory for pledged delegates to vote according to the outcome of their respective primaries. The current "good conscious" rule - which, in theory at least, allows for a pledged delegate to ignore the voters' wishes and vote for a different candidate during a party's convention - is frankly ridiculous;
Abolish the category of "add-on" superdelegates and limit the supers to representatives, senators, governors, and (former) presidents and House Speakers;
Limit the power of the supers to a block vote, and allow them to weigh in only if a candidate does not get a majority of the pledged delegate votes. Mandate that, in such an event, all the super-votes will be cast for a single candidate, to be determined on the basis of simple majority of supers.

These changes obviously strengthen the power of the voters in determining the candidate and should greatly diminish the rather murky political manoeuvering that goes on amongst the party insiders. After all, who on earth are all these supers? The so-called unpledged PLEO's - the Party Leaders and Elected Officials - well, we know a bit about them, by and large. But the others, the so-called add-ons? They're selected by the state parties, but on what grounds?

As for the block-vote rule: I would hope that this reflects the reason for having the supers in the first place. I believe they should only be of consequence if the electorate can't decide and I feel it's fair to force them to reach a consensus amongst themselves in the interests of their party.

Now, what would have happenen if this system had been in place during this year's primary? The answer is: who knows? The effects of the regional primary notion is anyone's guess. At most, one might assume that the system slightly favours the candidate who's the strongest as the race commences, since he or she might be expected to do well in the first region to vote, making it harder for opponents to catch up. However, that's just a guess; it would, of course, also depend on which region gets the first say.

Abolishing the caucuses would seem to have been in Cinton's favour, but again, that's speculation. Obama could still well have won the caucus states if they'd had held primaries, even though his victories may not have been as convincing.

One thing I am fairly sure about, though, is that the whole process would have been quite a bit more orderly and less confusing than it was now. I also feel that the potential for divisiveness - so surprisingly but resoundingly realised during this particular Democratic nomination - would probably not have existed.

So, while I don't think we're about to see an overhaul of the nomination process on anything like the scale described above, I do really hope some people give the matter the thought it surely deserves.

The US Elections: A Brilliant Little Coup

2008-06-04T14:55:00.000-07:00

Most people will be aware that the Little Coup marked the beginning of the downfall of the Union.

Well, alright, perhaps not most people. In fact, perhaps not anyone at all. I certainly didn't. Not until I read this, that is.

I do know a bit about another little coup, though, since I've just watched it unfold last night.

Enough will be said - now and in the years to come - about Obama's successful bid for the Democratic nomination for the president of the United States.

What I wanted to point out, though, is a minor but interesting point. It's this: Obama realised his win yesterday by means of a coup - a little one, to be sure - which was brilliantly timed and superbly executed.

For a few months now (ever since the close of February), just about anyone who can count knew that the nomination would, in all likelihood, go to Obama. The question wasn't really if, it was how and when.

But things weren't looking up for him as the weeks passed, and the worst possible demons of American politics - demagogy, egomania, hypocrisy - were dragged on and off the stage in the guises of Wright, F&M, the popular vote, and the like. And although, as time passed, it still wasn't really if, it was rapidly getting to yes, but what if.

Obama's real problem during this time wasn't that he was losing states he ought to be winning, since he wasn't (although, to be fair, Clinton performed better than many expected in some primaries). His problem was Clinton was managing to slowly dissolve the entire premise of the campaign; she was making such a mess of the whole process that the one rule of determining a winner -who gets the most delegates? - was slowly sinking into a deliberately created quagmire.

Yesterday, only two small states remained. Together, they had 31 pledged delgates on offer - too few to push Obama over the finish, even if Obama scored heavily in both primaries. And it got worse for Obama, since South Dakota was sliding towards Clinton.

There was, in other words, a very real risk that yesterday would have have been the end of nothing, and the beginning of mayhem. That it would leave the road wide open for Clinton to pursue the course she had taken after February. Pledged delegates? Ha! That was then, this is now. Rules? What rules? They didn't get us anywhere, did they? It's all up for grabs, folks, and I'm just getting started...

Clinton seemed poised, in other words, for total war. And a war on the ground of her choosing.

But all that was abruptly halted yesterday. Not by the primary results: they weren't good for Obama by any means. He won Montana, but lost South Dakota. The results should and would have helped Clinton.

It was halted by what happened before all the results were in. It was halted by a sequence of events that effectively rendered the state results inconsequential. It was halted by the little coup, which played out as follows.

In the hours before the results came in, in a carefully choreographed action which, no doubt, was in part scripted by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the superdelegates started to move. They started to crawl out of their holes; they stated committing themselves to Obama.

They'd said they wouldn't, not till the primaries were done and dusted. Time and again, they said that Wouldn't Be Right. That they should Wait And See. But yesterday, one by one, they crawled out nevertheless.

One by one they came, and by the time the potentially troublesome South Dakota results started coming in, there was such a clump of them - shivering, perhaps, in the harsh light of day, but all of them mouthing "Obama" gamely - that that state's results didn't matter at all. And when Montana proclaimed itself for Obama, a possible disaster was suddenly transformed into a triumph. By God! Obama hadn't just won, he'd won convincingly.

Suddenly, Florida and Michigan were moot. Suddenly, the popular vote argument was moot. And out went the big states/small states issue. And the caucus/primary thingy? It was tossed into the garbage can by a disgruntled Clinton afficiando who had packed his things and was heading off home.

The nomination was decided then and there, and each and every possible route to scurry around that outcome was abruptly cut off.

It was bloody brilliant, and it was brilliant because of one simple thing: because the supers came out before the results. Because they came out hours before the results, and there was nothing Clinton could do to halt either them or the inevitable consequence of their sudden emergence. And it was superbly executed because they came out in just the right numbers: not quite enough to tip the scales all by their lonesome, but sufficient to have the voters do that without even realising they were pushed over the winning line by the superwind in their backs.

It was a brilliant strategy, and the people who devised - and realised - it deserve huge acclaim.

Hats off to you, Messrs. Axelrod et al. You've done a great job.

__________

The US Elections: Tuesday Morning

2008-06-03T03:20:00.000-07:00

It's Tuesday morning.

We got there, in the end. The final day of the primary season; the final two contests.

Later today - quite a bit later, in fact - the results from South Dakota and Montana will come in. Two small, Republican states, whose Democratic primaries wouldn't, in the general scheme of things, amount to diddly-squat.

Except this year - this election - they do. If only because of the fact that, due to the vagaries of the primary calender, these are the last outposts on a road so long many of us stopped travelling it some time ago. We returned to our daily lives, watching from an ever increasing distance as the two candidates moved on, dwindling into the distance.

But we can still see them, out there in the vastness of the Badlands. Look: there's Clinton, waving her arms and mouthing - well, it's difficult to hear. Papa la vole, papa la vole... Could that be it?

And that's Obama, over there. It's looks like he's trying to turn around, to get back to us. But Clinton won't let him, and each time he tries, she grabs him tight and they're off again, into the distance.

But there's a line drawn across the emptiness between those two outposts, and today they'll cross it. And what will happen then?

Perhaps they'll vanish there in a puff of dust, only to re-appear right in front of us. Re-invigorated, somehow, by their ordeal, with Obama somehow larger, and Clinton smiling at him.

Or perhaps they'll just keep going once the line is crossed, tumbling across the landscape like a dustball, certain only of mutual defeat.

Who can tell, so early in the morning?

__________________

The US Elections: And Pigs Will Fly

2008-04-29T14:51:00.000-07:00

On March 26th, Bob Cesca at the Huffington Post posted a video he'd assembled to the tune of Roger Waters's "The Tide Is Turning".

This was right after Obama's extraordinary race speech in Pennsylvania, and there was, amongst Obama-ists and general optimists alike, a sense that the cynical, subversive policies of Politics had been averted.

Cesca wrote:

I have no idea who Roger Waters is supporting in this thing (and I hasten to note that this video was created without his permission), but when I heard Senator Obama's historic Philadelphia address last week, this song, "The Tide Is Turning," from Waters' underrated 1987 album Radio KAOS kept running on a loop in my head.

Cynicism averted? No so. Indeed, less than a month later, after the state of Pennsylvania had held its primary, it was the triumphant old guard - Clinton - who went on stage to claim the self same slogan. Unlike Cesca, Clinton presumably had never heard of Roger Waters. And even if she had, she certainly wasn't aware of the bitter-sweet song Cesca refers to.

No matter, though. Neither were the Pennsylvanians. And neither is, it seems, America.

But a few days later, April 27th - last sunday - Roger Waters gave the closing concert at the Coachella music festival in California. And he brought a huge inflatable pig with him. And guess what? The pig had "Obama" written on its belly. So Cesca had it right, even if he didn't dare say so out right at the time.

But here's the thing:

As Waters drew the song to a close, flame bursts exploded on the sides of the stage and the swine floated into the night sky. Waters said sadly and comically, "That's my pig."

Ah, yes, Obama. Floating away into the night sky. There's our pig, going, going - gone.

Although, of course, there is a reward. It seems that if you manage to salvage the whole thing - and get the pig back - $ 10,000 will be yours.

Well, that has to be a worthy cause, right?

The US Elections: Indiana or Bust!

2008-04-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

Here's a fact no-one will bother mentioning: Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary by 9%.

Prior to the results, just about all the pundits were pointing out that she needed a double-digit victory in the Keystone State. It was 10% or more - or bust.

She almost managed the 10% minimum, but not quite. By current calculations, she got 1,260,208 votes. Obama got 1,045,444 votes. In other words, she beat Obama by a margin of 9.3%. Rounded, that's 9% - and not 10%, as every media source in the world is exuberantly reporting today.

Does that matter? No, not really, but it's a interesting little example of how the media push a message which makes little sense, even to themselves.

In any case, it's on to Indiana. For what it's worth, I've considered this the truly key state for a little while now. And since perceptions tend to change - and change strangely - over time, I'm laying the down the current state of affairs in that state, as far as we know them.

Clinton's ahead in the polls. In the current RCP average, she's beating Obama by 2.2%. Pollster has her in the lead by 6%.

In other words, Clinton should win, certainly given the state's demographics (roughly similar to Ohio or Pennsylvania) and certainly given the boost her campaign will inevitably get from the Pennsylvania result.

But let's see what happens. If Obama has sufficient appeal with Democrats to be a viable candidate in the general election, he will overcome his current deficit, thereby convincingly cementing his advantage over Clinton in terms of pledged delegates and waylaying Clinton's popular vote arguments. If, on the other hand, Clinton has any real momentum, she should be able to maintain and indeed augment her present lead, and we will once more have a real battle unfolding.

If, come May 6th, the Indiana results simply reflect the current situation (a marginal Clinton win by 2 to 6%), I think it's fair to say the Democrats have a very real problem.

__________

Edit I (April 25th): today, CNN's "poll of polls" has both candidates at 45%, with 10% unsure.

Edit II (April 28th): today, the RCP average too shows a tie, with both Obama and Clinton at 45.5%. The most recent poll to be included in the average, though - from Survey USA - shows a lead for Clinton 0f no less than 9%.

Edit III (April 30th): today, the RCP average is at + 2.2% for Clinton.

Edit IV (May 4th): RCP puts Clinton ahead by 5.8%.

US Law: Harry Potter and the Mirror of Noisufnoc

2008-04-21T04:13:00.000-07:00

On Halloween 2007, author J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros (who own the rights to the Harry Potter films) filed a lawsuit against a small US publisher, RDR Books.

Their aim was and is to block the publication of The Harry Potter Lexicon, which is effectively an A-Z encyclopeadia of all things Potter.

The Lexicon is not, by any means, a new work: it has been around for some time on the Internet and has received praise from Rowling herself, who awarded the web version of the Lexicon with a "Fan Site Award" in 2004. The intention of tranferring the contents of the site to the printed page has, however, provoked a remarkable turnaround in her views on the Lexicon.

During the trial - which commenced on April 14 2008 and lasted three days, the outcome not being expected for a month or so - Rowling accused the author of the site (and the book), Stephen Vander Ark, of "wholesale theft", pointing out that the publication felt like "an act of betrayal". She has also mentioned that the dispute had left her unable to continue work on a new novel, and "decimated my creative work over the last month". Finally, she said the Lexicon threatened to scupper her desire to write a Potter encyclopaedia of her own.

All of this seems, to be frank, a bit rich. It was enough, however, to reduce Mr. Vander Ark - who might be fifty years old or thereabouts, but who himself bears a striking resemblance to Potter - to tears when he testified at the trial.

All in all, it was three days of high courtroom drama, and it's no wonder it caught the public's eye.

It did so, however, mostly for reasons that have little to do with the case's merits. Those merits are, after all, legal and bear little relation to Rowling's curiously vehement and disparaging remarks, or indeed to Vander Ark's equally emotional response.

That's not to say the merits weren't interesting, though. They are.

In effect, the case revolves around the murky concept in American copyright law referred to as "fair use". Fair use, to put it simply, allows for the limited use of copyrighted material in certain instances. The most obvious examples are works of criticism or commentary, where the critic or commentator will have little choice but to regularly quote the original work in order to make his point.

Fair use, US copyright law states, "for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (...), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:

the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
the nature of the copyrighted work;
the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work."

In applying these criteria, two of them can effectively be ignored. "The nature of the copyrighted work" refers to the distinction which might be made between, for example, works of fiction or non-fiction, or the distinction between published or unpublished works, the idea being that it might be easier to assume fair use if the original work is non-fictional, and easier still if it hasn't even been published yet. Here, we're talking about the best known children's books in the world, and they're obviously fiction and obviously published. You can't, in short, assume fair use on the basis of this criterion.

The second criterion to be dismissed is "the effect of the use upon the potential market or value of the copyrighted work". I don't think anyone is arguing that the Lexicon will noticeably effect the market or value of the Harry Potter books. The encyclopaedia Rowling herself wishes to write, by the way, is not relevant, for the simple reason that she hasn't written it yet and it therefore can't be protected by any copyright whatsoever.

That leaves us with the remaining two criteria.

Of these, the first is the most interesting. What is it about "the purpose and character of the use" that means it amounts to - or doesn't amount to - fair use? In case law, some answers have been given, but they are hard to apply to this specific situation.

The most well-known answer is that use is fair (or at least tends towards being fair) when the use is "transformative" and not merely "derivative". Does the use add to the appreciation or knowledge of the original work, or does it seek to "supersede" (parts of) that work?

When it comes to, say, literary criticism, this criterion works well enough. Actual criticism (even if it's bad criticism) almost per definition attempts to add to the understanding or knowledge of the work criticised. When it comes to an encyclopaedia, however, the lines can become a little blurry, certainly if the encyclopaedia focuses solely on a single work (which the Pottter books effectively are).

There are two diametrically opposed ways to deal with this issue in this case. The first is to argue that if, you simply take all the characters of the Potter books, all its places, spells, potions, beasts and the like, and sort them all into neat alphabetical lists, you aren't doing much more than taking a large chunk of Rowling's work (and imagination) and regurgitating it.
The opposing argument is that, by its very definition, an encyclopaedia such as this adds to the understanding and knowledge of the original work. It is intended to be used as a reference tool, a work that therefore has a different (and "transformed") purpose than the original work. Forgotten who Kreachure was or what his background amounted to? Look it up in the Lexicon! Want to write an essay on Platform 9 3/4? Check the Lexicon first!

Ironically, Rowling herself has admitted to using the online Lexicon for just such a purpose. On her own website she once wrote: "This is such a great site that I have been known to sneak into an internet café while out writing and check a fact rather than go into a bookshop and buy a copy of Harry Potter (which is embarrassing)."

I must admit to being on RDR's side when it comes to these opposing views. Once a work is published it is, to a certain extent, handed over to its audience. They aren't allowed to copy it - they must accept the work's integrity and the author's rightful claims to the work as a whole - but the audience is certainly free to scrutinise, dissect, and digest it in pretty much any way they wish to. And yes, that includes, in my opinion, writing something like the Lexicon. In fact, I would consider the Lexicon a prime example of "fair use".

This criterion, it should be noted, also mentions the distinction between use that is commercial and that is non-profit and intended for educational purposes. And this is clearly where Rowling herself has drawn a line: the online Lexicon is freely available to all; the printed version will have to be bought. The trouble is, though, that just about any printed work is, at least in part, a commercial exercise. The trouble is, too, that nowadays extensive sites like Vander Ark's are exactly the same. They will almost always allow for commercial advertising; they may very well call for readers' donations to keep the site up and running. And they can clearly result in commercial fringe benefits for the owners of the site, the impending publication of the Lexicon as a book being, well, a case in print.

As a result, it is difficult to see how this can be a reasonable and practical distinction in today's world. Having said that, though, it might well prove to be Rowling's only real line of attack: if she and Warner Bros can successfully argue that RDR is only in it in order to make the proverbial "fast buck" (and, by implication, couldn't care less about the quality of the Lexicon as a reference), they may stand a chance. That judge in New York may well make the same mistake Rowling is making: that a fansite like the Lexicon is a cute, innocuous affair, whilst a publication of the self-same material in book form by a small publisher is a horrendous breach of copyright.

The final criterion - the "amount and substantiality of the portion [of the original work] used" - ties in with the previous one. Again, the arguments to either side will have to express polarities, with Rowling and Warner Bros echoing their view that since it is in the Lexicon's very nature to basically sum up everyone and everything in the Potter books, the Lexicon uses a great amount of the original work indeed. And RDR will argue that that is exactly why it can be considered a reference tool - it wouldn't be very much use if Vander Ark had, for example, left out all entries starting with the letters "H" through "P".

All in all, this is an intriguing case, the more so, perhaps, by virtue of the fact that quite a few legal experts don't seem very sure of the outcome. That may surprise some people, but the fact is that an endeavour such as the Lexicon is a rare thing, the more so if it is undertaken with a regard to a more or less recent work (where copyright protection still applies), but not by the original publishers and without the author's consent. In other words, such a dispute just doesn't really crop up much.

Equally and additionally, though, it is another example of how the Internet has totally changed everyone's perceptions on so many issues. This time round it's legal issues that count, but simmering below the surface we have Rowling's clear and no doubt honest difficulty in letting go of some aspects of her own creation - not in the ethereal world of the Internet, but in what she seems to perceive as the real world. And on the other hand we have the hapless Vander Ark, who spent years working on his site out of love for Potter and admiration for Rowling to just about everyone's acclaim, only to now be told he is "really" just a thief after all.

There's something decidedly odd about this case. It does two things at once: pose a legal problem that's intriguing enough in itself, and then juxtapose it to the ever-transcending reality of the virtual world. It's a Mirror of Noisufnoc.

The US Elections: Predicting Pennsylvania

2008-04-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

Later today, ABC News will be broadcasting the Clinton/Obama debate in Philadelphia. It'll be interesting to see how well - or indeed, how poorly - Obama does. He's certainly gotten better at these debates as the campaign moved on; on the other hand, there is sure to be some emphasis on the recent "Bittergate" controversy.

Meanwhile, though, predictions are always fun to read, especially if they're specific and clearly well thought-out.

Predictions of the outcome of the Pennsylvania primary have been made in the past months. Here's an example from Real Clear Politics, written by Jay Cost. However, these have tended to be a bit unspecific. The RCP article doesn't, for instance, actually state a likely outcome when it comes to the one thing that matters above all else: the delegate tally.

Two other articles, on the other hand, provide just such a tally, based on a district by district breakdown of the state. The first is from CQ Politics. The second can be found over at Daily Kos.

To understand all the numbers, you have to first understand that Pennsylvania's pool of delegates amounts to a grand total of 187. However, that includes 29 superdelegates, who aren't going to be subject to the vote at all. That leaves 158 delegates that are actually going to be up for grabs during the primary.

Of these, 55 will be allocated on the basis of the statewide popular vote. If, for example, Clinton wins by 55% to 45% (the same margin of victory she had in Ohio), these 55 delegates will be split up as follows: 30 to Clinton, 25 to Obama.

The remaining 103 delegates will be allocated on the basis of the outcome of the vote on a district by district basis. There are 19 congressional districts in total. Each district has a certain number of delegates, the "largest" district (the 2nd) having 9 delegates and the "smallest" (the 9th) having three. 6 districts have 5 delegates to allocate; 5 districts have 4 delegates. (Strange, there almost seems to be a patern of numerical reflections here...)

Given the peculiarities of the district system, the outcome per district will either substantially augment the victor's win or substantially decrease it. The winner of the popular vote in a district with an uneven number of delegates will generally walk away with a relatively high number of pledged delegates; the loser, on the other hand, benefits when the number of delegates is even. If one candidate were to win the popular vote by, say 5%, in a district with 5 delegates, he or she would get 3 delegates, leaving 2 for the opposing candidate. The 5% margin in the popular vote, in other words, translates into a 20% margin in the delegate tally. Conversely, if that district had only 4 delegates on offer, those delegates would be split evenly. In fact, if the popular vote margin went up to, say, 20% the delegates would still be split down the middle (if there were only 4 of them to begin with).

The consequence of this system is that, when it come to the district delegates, it makes very little sense to campaign hard in a district with 4 delegates if your chances of sweeping it aren't very high; on the other hand, getting that slight edge in a 5-delegate district could be well be worth your while. The campaigns, therefore, are waging an on-the-ground war aimed at key districts; the statewide polls of the popular vote are meaningful, but not necessarily as decisive as many people think.

Now back to the two predictions. In both cases, the outcome is not really good news for Clinton. In the CQ projection, the 103 district delegates will be split as follows: 53 will go to Clinton and 50 to Obama. That's a Clinton victory of just 3 delegates. Unfortunately, CQ doesn't say anything about the expected outcome of the popular vote, so it remains unclear how they think the other 55 delegates would be allocated. Assuming, though, that Clinton "wins" Pennsyslvania as a whole by 10%, that would mean her net gain in the state would amount to (5 + 3 =) 8 delegates.

Over at Daily Kos, a statewide Clinton win of 9% is assumed, with Clinton gaining a net advantage in the district war of 5 delegates. That would put her total gain in the state at (5 + 5 =) 10 delegates.

The predictions are, therefore, effectively the same. Interestingly enough, Clinton won Ohio by 9 delegates. So Jay Cost at RCP, who wasn't explicit when it came to delegate numbers but who did say that Pennsylvania might well go the way of Ohio, may be even more correct than he imagined.

Oh, and to put it all into some perspective: Obama currently leads Clinton in the pledged delegate tally some 164 delegates. Let's say that does, indeed, decrease to 154 or thereabouts.

After six weeks, some bowling, a few shots of whiskey and all the rest, that's not really much to talk about, is it? More than anything else, I feel this proves the silliness of the entire "Bittergate" thing. Which is why I'll not say more about it.

International Affairs: Freedom Stir-Fries

2008-04-10T03:03:00.000-07:00

When France raised strong objections against a possible invasion of Iraq in 2003, many Americans were outraged. This is from Wikipedia:

On March 11 United States House of Representatives Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio) and Walter B. Jones, Jr. (R-North Carolina) declared that all references to French fries (...) on the menus of the restaurants and snack bars run by the House of Representatives would be removed. House cafeterias were ordered to rename French fries "freedom fries".

Well, the invasion went on as planned and turned out to be, as we now know, a resounding success.

The "freedom fries" absurdity - perpetuated, I understand, to this day by some restaurants - is one of the silliest examples of boycotts I know. It wasn't even a real boycott, since absolutely no-one actually stopped eating French fries (which aren't even "French" at all).

Olympic boycotts, on the other hand, do tend to be real, even if their impact varies greatly depending on who's boycotting whom. It doesn't mean they can't be silly too, though.

The first Olympics to be boycotted were the Melbourne Games of 1956. A few European countries decided on a boycott as a reaction to the Soviet Union's quashing of the uprising in Hungary earlier that year; a few other countries boycotted due to the Suez Crisis. Both were obviously important and disconcerting (international) events, but neither boycott achieved anything. Looking back, it is, in fact, difficult to imagine how the boycotting countries could have imagined that their absence in a sporting event in Australia could ever have been seen as an significant reaction to Cold War politics in Europe or Africa.

The most famous boycott, no doubt, was that of the Moscow Games in 1980. The year before, the Soviet Union had effectively invaded Afghanistan in an attempt to save that country's communist government from defeat at the hands of the so-called Mujahideen, the "freedom fighters" portrayed so favourably in American media and in American films such as Rambo III.

The boycott, led by the US, was an actual succes in the sense that some 65 countries did not attend the games (although not all of them were absent due to the Afghan crisis), leaving only 81 countries to compete. It did not, however, have any effect on Soviet policy in Afghanistan. The Soviets didn't pull out of Afghanistan until 1989 (clearing the way for the Taliban to emerge out of the ranks of the Mujahideen and thereby setting the stage for a new invasion of the country in 2001, this time led by the US).

The Soviets reciprocated in 1984, boycotting that year's Olymics in Los Angeles. It was clear they didn't have any real reason to so except petty retaliation, and I don't recall anyone missing them (or their Eastern Block allies) very much at the time.

For some time after that, the Games were relatively boycott-free (although there were minor exceptions).

Now, however, things may change again. This time round, it's China's turn, and the reasons for a possible boycott are again tenuous.

The IOC awarded the 2008 Olympics to Beijing back in 2001. At the time, it was, perhaps, a surprising decision. Communist China's history when it comes to human rights has never been good, and it certainly wasn't any better in 2001 than it is now. If anything, the memories of what happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989 were more vivid then than they are now; China's crack-down on the Falun Gong movement had already started in 1999.

It was, however, a decision that acknowledged the undeniable fact that China was emerging as a new superpower and that, like it or not, there really wasn't any way the (Western) world could afford to ignore that reality. And it was also a decision that seemed to express the hope that engagement - the essentialy non-divisive engagement of sports in particular - might bring its own dividends.

In short, the decision was both realistic and optimistic, and it was taken in the full knowledge of the Chinese government's shortcomings.

So what, one could ask, has changed since then to perhaps justify a boycott? The only possible answer to that is: nothing at all.

Yes, China supressed the recent unrest in Tibet, and it did so using some force. It wasn't, however, the first time: in 1959, there had been a larger but still presumably small-scale uprising in Tibet, which Mao swiftly crushed by considerably harsher means (and which led to the Dalai Lama's flight to India). There wasn't, in other words, much reason to be surprised or shocked by China's reaction to the March 2008 events.

Besides, do any of us know what the recent unrest amounted to, how it was started or to what degree the Chinese reaction was or was not justifiable? I rather suspect that many people in the West have an essentially romantic and fuzzy perception of Tibet and that a lot of us look at the country in rather the same way we looked at Afghanistan in the 1980's, with the ascetic and peace-loving Tibetans taking the place of the fierce and noble Mujahideen. We tend, therefore, to gloss over the fact that, insofar the recent unrest in Tibet was accompanied by violence, that violence was initiated by the Tibetans themselves. And whilst one might vehemently diagree with China's rule over Tibet in the first place, it is possible that China's response to that violence was, in effect, proportional and more or less reasonable.

Then there's the issue of China's involvement in the horrendous Darfur crisis, which is an even weaker reason to argue for a possible boycott by virtue of the simple fact that China's involvement actually amounts to a non-involvement. The argument here - as again evinced by mainly Western critics - is that China, given its links to the Sudanese government, is not doing enough to ameliorate the situation in Darfur. When Steven Spielberg withdrew as artistic adviser for Beijing Games, he expressed this point of view as follows:

“Sudan’s Government bears the bulk of the responsibility for these ongoing crimes but the international community, and particularly China, should be doing more to end the continuing human suffering there,” [Spielberg said]. “China’s economic, military and diplomatic ties to the Government of Sudan continue to provide it with the opportunity and obligation to press for change."

China's policy in Africa, however, has been consistently non-intervenionist throughout. It is consistent, also, with China's own reaction to any outside interference in what it regards as its internal affairs, such as Tibet. China's inaction in Sudan can therefore hardly come as a surprise either. In addition to this, it's fair to say that the West's own policies with regard to Sudan (and Rwanda, and Congo, and Zimbabwe) have been remarkably passive as well. And to the extent that the West did attempt to pursue a positive and active role in Africa it has hardly been very successful. Had that been otherwise, all those African countries wouldn't have welcomed China with wide-open arms in the first place.

The reasons for awarding the 2008 Games to Beijing were, it seems to me, valid back in 2001. And if they were valid then, they are equally valid now (and, if only because of China's increasing importance on the world's economic stage, even more so). Boycotting the Games would be hypocritical and illogical, and it would have no other effect than to humiliate and isolate a country that we should be attempting to engage with.

A boycott - that is to say: a real boycott - should be out of the question. And it probably is: at this moment, no country has yet declared it will not allow its athletes to compete in Beijing.

That, however, leaves open the option of the boycott that isn't. And currently, world leaders - not to mention wannabe world leaders - are scrambling to grab hold of it. Neither the UK's Gordon Brown nor Germany's Angela Merkel, it has recently been announced, will attend the opening ceremony of the Games (although in Brown's case, it's the closing ceremony that counts, given the 2012 Games are in London). The Polish PM, Donald Tusk, has been a little braver is linking his absence unequivocally to the Tibetan issue, whilst today, the European Parliament urged all other European heads of state to follow suit.

Meanwhile, in the US, Clinton and Obama both have prompted Bush to go AWOL as well.

So, it seems, we'll end up with the silliest of all things: a boycott that not only has no impact, but that is intended to have no impact. And rather like Representatives Ney and Jones, we'll all be watching the Games come August to our hearts' content, happily munching our way through our freedom fries (though they'll be stir-fried, this time round) and secure in the knowledge that we Did Something About It All.

In their bid to win the 2008 Games, the Chinese confirmed that the Games would "advance the social agenda of China, including human rights". I suspect that they believe they have adhered to this "pledge", and are in all honesty wondering what on earth hit them.

The US Elections: The Popular Vote Myth

2008-04-03T14:59:00.000-07:00

Things seem relatively quiet today on the Democratic front. As a result, a little news snippet that otherwise might have only have led to a comment or two in passing has been given some attention, if still not enough.

It's the assertion by two stalwart Clinton supporters, John Murtha and Jon Corzine, that Clinton needs to win the popular vote to have any real chance of winning the nomination.

Now the relevance of this seems obvious enough. Clinton can't realistically hope to overtake Obama in terms of the pledged delegate count. To stay alive and have a shot at convincing the superdelegates to back her, she needs to be able to argue that the voters, overall, prefer her to Obama.

And if that argument could be made truthfully, it might be persuavive (although not in itself conclusive). After all, quite a few Democrats are still smarting from the fact that Bush bested Gore in 2000, in spite of the fact that Gore led the popular vote by about 500,000. What could be worse than that the Democrats, after having to accept that grievous injustice, were then to turn around and inflict it upon themselves?

You can see how this could be a seen as a strong argument. It is, however, fundamentally flawed for a number of reasons.

The first flaw is as blatantly obvious as it is convincing. The Democrats set up their own rules when it comes to choosing their nominee. What they've chosen is a delegate system, not a system based on the popular vote. There's no reason on earth why they couldn't have switched to a popular vote system if they'd wanted to. They didn't. They chose for a system whereby the delegate count was the determining factor.

The second flaw, though, is the one that I find more interesting at the moment. It's this: how on earth does one actually determine the popular vote?

In the presidential election, that's easy enough. The count can certainly be hampered by technical issues - which is what happened in Florida in 2000 - but the idea is that everyone gets to vote in basically the same way, all the votes get counted and that it.

Not so in the primary season. For starters, when it comes to the popular vote there's a huge difference between primaries and caucuses. Turnout in caucuses is obviously very much lower than in primaries, so how does one compare the two? It would, perhaps, be possible to set up intricate number crunching models that would allow for some sort of extrapolation of a caucus turnout to a virtual primary. Alternatively, one could just accept the actual numbers. In both cases, however, it's essentially comparing apples and oranges.

Take, for example, State X. It's in the mid-West, and it looks a bit like Colorado. Or perhaps Oklahoma. It's got 5 million inhabitants; it's predominantly a red state, but it might just turn blue in November.

Now say it's a caucus state (like Colorado). Comes the caucus date, 100,000 people show up to vote for their Democratic candidate of choice. 60,000 vote for Obama, 40,000 for Clinton. In the total popular vote tally, that's a net gain of 20,000 for Obama.

But now let's assume X is a primary state (like Oklahoma). Suddenly, the turnout isn't 100,000. It's 400,000. Assuming the same divisions apply, Obama wins the popular vote by 80,000.

That makes for a significant difference in the popular vote tally. But that difference has nothing to do with the candidates or how well they're doing.

Now, the above example assumes that voters vote the same way whether it's a caucus or primary (the only variable being the number of voters). We all know that's not true. Caucus states favour the grass-roots candidate; primary states, by comparison, favour the more establishment candidate (whilst Texas, in an maudlin fit of madness, favours both).

In state X, if Obama would have won by a margin of 20,000 in a caucus, he may well have lost in a primary by, oh, 50,000 or so. And the vote tally would be totally different again.

So it's apples and oranges; oranges and apples. And that's just for starters.

Another thing to consider is that some states don't even release voter numbers. This is true for Iowa, Nevada, Washington and Maine. We simply do not no how many people voted for their candidate of choice in these states. If you think this is amazing, consider that these states are - quite rightly - working on the basis of the assumption that the popular vote isn't the deciding factor. So how to determine the popular vote in those states? You can't; the only option is to guesstimate.

A third issue centers on the debacle of Florida and Michigan. In the popular vote debate, does one count the voters in these states or not? And if so, how? In particular, it would certainly seem weird to include Michigan, where Clinton was the only major Democratic candidate to leave her name on the ballot after the DNC sanctions were levied. By what means could anyone assume the outcome in that state was a fair and balanced representation of the voters' views? Besides, the major non-Clinton vote went to a candidate called "Uncommitted". What is one to do with those votes in a popular vote tally? Any choice made is inevitably a wrong choice.

So, what does all this mean? Well, in the end, it's very simple. Given the Democratic nomination process in general and the specifics of this campaign, there simply is no way to accurately determine a relevant outcome of the popular vote.

As a result, the entire concept of Clinton potentially winning such a vote and thereby having a legitimate shot at the nomination is essentially a myth. With apologies to all those doing their very utmost to prove the opposite, it just can't be done. And that's as it should be: it's not what the Democrats wanted in the first place.

The US Elections: The Law of Unintended Consequences

2008-03-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

In the 1970's, the US government provided the Shah of Iran with presses capable of printing currency of the same quality as American bills.

In 1979, the Shah decided to take a very long vacation; two weeks later, grand ayatollah Khomeini rode in triumph through Persepolis (oh all right, then, Tehran).

And then, some years later, counterfeit $100 bills began to flood the Mideast, eventually spreading around the world. Given the global dependency on American currency, these bills posed a serious problem for international markets. Accusatory fingers were pointed in various directions, but the most likely suspect was obvious: an anti-US Iranian government that possessed the very same printing presses used to create American money.

True or not, this story - which I found here - is a nice example of the Law of Unintended Consequences. This is the law that states, according to a Wikipedia entry, "that for any action one can will, there will always be some unintended consequences that result, that are not intended to be". Or, to put it a more simply: any action aimed at a certain consequence will have unintended consequences as well.

Even better examples of this law, it might be argued, can be found by looking at the various changes the Democrats have made in their presidential nomination process over the last 40 years.

Back in 1968, that nomination process was, to put it mildly, a very undemocratic thing. Yes, there were primaries, and so ordinary Democrats could go out and vote for their candidate of choice - but that choice didn't amount to much. And so, during that year’s disastrous DNC in Chicago, it wasn't the anti-Vietnam War candidate Eugene McCarthy who got the nomination. It was the insider Hubert Humphrey, who hadn't actually campaigned during during the primary season and who, during that campaign, had amassed no more than about 2% of the popular vote. And who, of course, went on to lose the election against Richard Nixon.

With riots having broken out on their very doorstep, the Dems felt it was time for an overhaul of the nomination process. A commission was set up - spearheaded by George McGovern - which resulted in the balance of power being shifted resolutely from the party elite to the voters. In effect, a new rule was added to the Delegate Selection Rules, Rule 11 (H), which stipulated that delegates at the convention were henceforth required to vote for the candidate they had been elected to support.

Unfortunately, though, the Law of Unintended Consequences set in straight away.

McGovern himself won the 1972 nomination on the basis of the new rules, only to lose - in a landslide - to the incumbent Nixon (a defeat due in part to the fact that the Democratic establishment didn't like McGovern at all, leading some of them to actively campaign for Nixon). Four years on, a second surprise materialised in the form of Jimmy Carter, another outsider who astounded the party elite by clinching the nomination. And whilst Carter did, of course, go on to win the White House, it is difficult to this day to find a sentence containing his name that does not also include the words “failed presidency”: by the end of his first term, the aforementioned Khomeini had set up shop in Iran and a resounding defeat to Ronald Reagan was a foregone conclusion.

All in all, the new delegate voting rule had had just about the opposite result it was intended to have. Instead of ensuring that viable and popular candidates were nominated to the delight of radical and moderate Democrats alike, it had effectively strengthened the party’s penchant for internal bickering and the likelihood of bickering's baby - a.k.a. the Democrats' nominee - being The Wrong Guy.

It was, in short, a triumph for the Law.

Not surprisingly, a new change was deemed to be in order. Another commission was set up, led by Governor Jim Hunt of North Carolina, which argued - with astonishing success - that a substantial slice of the power to nominate should revert back to the party bosses.

Here's a snippet from what Hunt said at the time:

“We must also give our convention more flexibility to respond to changing circumstances and, in cases where the voters’ mandate is less than clear, to make a reasoned choice. One step in this direction would be to loosen the much-disputed “binding” Rule 11 (H) as it applies to all delegates. An equally important step would be to permit a substantial number of party leader and elected official delegates to be selected without requiring a prior declaration of preference. We would then return a measure of decision-making power and discretion to the organized party and increase the incentive it has to offer elected officials for serious involvement.”

Now, to understand this, one should realise that "loosening" Rule 11 (H) meant that pledged delegates would no longer be compelled to act in accordance with the wishes of the electorate,
but that their votes should still “in all good conscience reflect the sentiments of those who elected them”. The pledged delegates, in other words, were still bound, even though the rule binding them was deliberately worded vaguely.

More importantly, however, the proposals called for the creation of a new and “substantial” class of delegates who would, by definition, not be bound by the popular vote at all. If you're wondering who belongs to this “substantial" class, don't. You know who they are: they're called superdelegates.

Fast forward to 2008. We still live by these two Hunt tenets. And they are, as everyone knows, the lifeline of the Clinton campaign. Well, one of them, at least: whilst technically it's conceivable some pledged delegates would allow their “good conscience” to ignore the voters’ wishes (something Clinton has recently pointed out) – Clinton's only truly viable option lies with the superdelegates.

But the way that option currently might work out is, again, a prime example of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

You see, when Hunt made his proposals, there was understandable opposition from the left of the party. These were basically the people who favoured Edward Kennedy above the more establishment figure of Walter Mondale; and they included, amongst others, the party feminists.

These people weren’t against the “loosening” of Rule 11 (H); in fact, it was Kennedy himself who, during the 1980 DNC, argued that pledged delegates could shift allegiance if they felt like it (Kennedy’s interest in this being that Carter had managed to get more delegates during the primary campaign than he had done). They were, however, very much opposed to the creation of the superdelegate class.

The feminists, in particular, were ready to wage a war on that issue. They felt that the superdelegates would be predominately white and male, and that – even if women made up about half of the total of all delegates – a male-dominated, unpledged superdelegate class amounted to an unacceptable shift in power.

In the end, they didn't manage to land any real blows, though. Unbeknownst to them, a deal was struck between the Kennedy and Mondale camps and the superdelegates were a reality, the compromise being that they didn’t make up 30% of the delegate total (as Hunt had proposed), but only 14%. The feminists were left gnashing their teeth in frustration, as a recent article by Susan Estrich – who spearheaded the feminist front at the time - makes clear.

Back to the current campaign and, indeed, the future. If there is one group supporting Clinton for president, it is the group of Democratic feminists. These are the women who sometimes seem to be having real (and therefore often honest) difficulties in understanding that a Democrat could prefer Obama to Clinton without being driven by suspect and perhaps sexist motives. They are the ones I wrote about – not too seriously - in The Wondrous World of Misogyny.

But they are also the ones whose only hope of a nomination success rests entirely in the hands of the superdelegate class, a class which they must now firmly support and which in their minds must surely see reason and help overturn that horrid pledged delegate count.

And so the Law threatens to strike again. If it were ever true, as the feminists argued, that the superdelegate rule threatened to adversely affect a woman candidate’s chances, then these same feminists are now fervently hoping that the actual consequence of that rule turns out to be the exact opposite.

They are, in effect, banking on the Law to take full effect once again.

And, to be fair, their hope is not without merit: Clinton has led in the superdelegate count right from the word go. And in spite of everything - and, frankly, there have been a few too many everythings lately - she does so still. It is, even now, very possible indeed that the Law might ultimately pull her through.

As for those printing presses in Iran, though, I hold lesser hopes. Frankly, I doubt they’re in much use today. Unless, of course, some bright soul managed to convert 'em to produce Euro bills instead.

The US Elections: The Wright Stuff

2008-03-27T02:34:00.000-07:00

So much has been written and said about the speech Obama gave that morning in Pennsylvania on March 18th that it sort of boggles the mind.

Well, it boggled my mind, at least.

Now that some time has passed and we're back to simpler issues (such as Clinton's amusingly fictional heroics at Tuzla), I guess it might be time to try and give a few comments of my own.

The first - and very obvious - thing that caught my attention is how differently the speech was viewed by the commentators. As a result, they initially reminded me of the blind men examining their elephant, all of them coming up with surprisingly self-confident conclusions that were often partly true and always partly wrong.

Here are two quotes which illustrate this. The first is from a piece written by Andrew Sullivan for The Atlantic Magazine:

"(...) I do want to say that this searing, nuanced, gut-wrenching, loyal, and deeply, deeply Christian speech is the most honest speech on race in America in my adult lifetime. It is a speech we have all been waiting for for a generation. Its ability to embrace both the legitimate fears and resentments of whites and the understandable anger and dashed hopes of many blacks was, in my view, unique in recent American history."

The second is from Charles Krauthammer's article in The Washington Post:

"The question is why didn't [Obama] leave that church? Why didn't he leave -- why doesn't he leave even today -- a pastor who thundered not once but three times from the pulpit (on a DVD the church proudly sells) "God damn America"? Obama's 5,000-word speech, fawned over as a great meditation on race, is little more than an elegantly crafted, brilliantly sophistic justification of that scandalous dereliction."

Huh? Are these two people actually talking about the same thing? How did Obama manage to give what was a relatively compact speech and end up with something "we have all been waiting for for a generation" and reveal a "scandalous dereliction"?

Well, as mentioned, the elephant answer is the first to spring to mind. To paraphrase John Godfrey Saxe: each disputant, it seems, is railing on in apparant ignorance of what the other means. They're prattling on about an elephant they're not able or willing to look at in total.

I have come to believe, though, that this answer doesn't quite cut it. It's true as far as it goes, but it ignores a very basic fact: however diametrically opposed the reactions to the speech at first seem to be, there is also an underlying similarity.

Consider for a moment Krauthammer's outrage at Wright's words "God damn America!"

And now compare it to the the final part of the Andrew Sullivan article:

"Bill Clinton once said that everything bad in America can be rectified by what is good in America. He was right - and Obama takes that to a new level. And does it with the deepest darkest wound in this country's history.

I love this country. I don't remember loving it or hoping more from it than today."

Isn't Sullivan in effect saying: "Listen to Obama. Isn't this a great country?" And isn't Krauthammer saying: "Don't listen to that crazy anti-American pastor! This is a great country!"?

Taken that way, don't they - in essence - have a similar starting point? The fact that they nevertheless totally disagree is not because their approaches are different. It's because they apply the same approach differently. Sullivan is enthralled with what Obama said because, for him, it exemplifies America's greatness. Krauthammer is appalled by what Wright said because he feels it disavows that greatness.

The underlying notion is, however, identical: the perceived notion of the inherent greatness of America. And since America is the land of the free and the home of the brave, Americans are great too.

Americans, to put it another way, have the right stuff. To quote Tom Wolfe:

"(...) and the idea was to prove at every foot of the way up that pyramid that you were one of the elected and anointed ones who had the right stuff and could move higher and higher and even – ultimately, God willing, one day – that you might be able to join that special few at the very top, that elite who had the capacity to bring tears to men's eyes, the very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself."

America is great; Americans are great: it is this idea, it seems to me, that is ingrained in both Sullivan's and Krauthammer's minds. And it's hardly surprising: it is, after all, ingrained in the minds of the vast majority of Americans. Children are basically force-fed it every day as they pledge their allegiance. Sport fans enact it with their invarying cries of "USA! USA!" at every international competition. And again and again, it is evoked at times of difficulty, most recently by John McCain in his first presidential election ad ("Stand up! We're Americans and we'll never surrender!")

But this is also, perhaps, the very idea that invites comparison between commentators like Sullivan and Krauthammer on the one hand, and those reputedly wise men and their elephant on the other. Unlike the wise men, though, Sullivan and Krauthammer aren't really blind; instead, they choose not to see. In his outpouring of love for America upon hearing Obama's words, Sullivan chooses to essentially ignore the fact that it is America that not only has given but still gives rise to the dark anger of Wright; in denouncing Obama, Krauthammer chooses to ignore those that are willing to work towards bridging a very real divide, and that one of them - by some rather miraculous twist of fate - has a very real chance of becoming president.

And because of this, it seems to me that this idea - this notion - of the right stuff, and the delusional but ubiquitous idea that it has already been attained, is preventing America from truly dealing with the Wright stuff. And from becoming - ultimately, God willing, one day - great.

US Elections: Clinton's test

2008-03-15T07:11:00.000-07:00

Throughout the primary campaign, Hillary Clinton's major strategy in attempting to prevail over Barack Obama has revolved around creating the perception that she has the experience to lead the country, whilst Obama hasn't.

In the beginning, the Clinton mantra was: "Ready on Day One". More recently, her line of attack has focused on foreign policy and national security concerns, culminating in what must be one of the strangest statements of the campaign so far:

"I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

Leaving aside the obvious fact that the satement is rather illogical (doesn't everyone alive have, per definition, a lifetime of experience?) and politically very imprudent (any such "lifetime" argument is bound to favour McCain), it is also contradictory with Clinton's flirtatious suggestions that Obama could be her VP running mate. After all, far and away the most important qualification a vice president needs is to be ready and able to take over office at a moment's notice. So how can Obama not have a "lifetime of experience" and not be "Ready on Day One" and still make a good VP?

Rather like Clinton's foreign policy claims, the statement is undoubtedly "a wee bit silly".

Even more silly, however, are the ways in which the Clinton campaign has attempted to explain their reasoning. In order to do this, they have made up what they call "a commander in chief test".

Now obviously no such test exists (although setting it up might actually not be such a bad idea: please tell us, Contestant Number 1, who the next president of Russia will be?). But that doesn't prevent the likes of Howard Wolfson (Clinton's chief spokesman) from using their fabrication in order to explain their position:

Asked about the contradiction of touting Obama as a vice presidential candidate while condemning his ability to lead, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson implied there was still time for Obama to prove himself before the Democratic Party convention in Denver in August.

"We do not believe Senator Obama has passed the commander in chief test," Wolfson said. "But there is a long way to go between now and Denver."

Ah, I see. So whether Obama can or cannnot become VP - or, indeed, president - is dependent upon how well he's going to do in a nonexistent test, the results of which are to be determined by the Clinton campaign?

Hmm. That goes beyond being a wee bit silly. It's disturbingly delusional.

The US Elections: The MaD race

2008-03-12T04:02:00.000-07:00

So, Mississippi has come and gone, leaving Obama with yet another big but curiously unappealing victory. Depending upon whose figures you trust most, he won by about 60% or 61% to Clinton's 38% or 37%. In the pledged delegate count, he notched up 17 of the blighters, as compared to Clinton's 11.

More or less simultaneously, we finally got some projections from the Texas caucus. CNN is predicting that Obama's lead there will translate to 38 delegates, as opposed to Clinton's 29. If you set this off against the primary in that state (which Clinton narrowly won) you end up with an overal Texan "victory" for Obama amounting to a net gain of 5 pledged delegates.

Torturous math, indeed! No wonder a lot of pundits have been bemoaning the Democrats' proportional voting system. If only those overly fair Democrats had adopted the hard and fast winner-takes-all approach of the Republicans!

But wait a moment. What would be the situation if the Democrats had done that? Assume, for a moment, that each and every state where the Democrats' contenders have competed had allocated all their delegates to the winner, regardless of his or her margin of victory. And while we're at it, let's take the uncertainty of the superdelegates out of the equation as well and assume all superdelegates pledged themselves according to the vote in their state.

According to my (possibly slightly shaky) math, here's where we'd be after the Mississippi primary:

Obama: 1695 delegates
Clinton: 1660 delegates

In other words, the race would actually be closer than it is now.

Now I'm not suggesting that these would have been the actual figures if the Democratic primary had been structured along the lines of the Republican one. I am suggesting, however, that it is quite likely that such a system would, in this particular instance, not have provided the clarity many people seem to take for granted.

The problem, of course, is that this race has basically been split down the middle from the word go. It's been Clinton vs. Obama all the way, and as the race runs, so do the demographics: whites and blacks; blue-collars and "upscales"; young and old.

And this is why yesterday's victory may well leave a slightly sour taste in Obama's mouth. Yes, he won big, but he won big because of the black vote. Gone, it seems, are the days when it appeared he was significantly broadening his appeal with white voters in general (remember Virginia?). Core components of that constituency - ordinary, everyday workers and "older" women - remain as elusive as ever, if not more so.

And this is also why Clinton can afford to be just a little bit optimistic. Her "big states" rhetoric falls a little flat when taken only in the context of the primaries (where a delegate from Wyoming counts every bit as much as one from Ohio), but come the fall and the vagaries of presidential electorial system, things could work out a little differently.

Math and Demography: it's a MaD race.

International Affairs: A Step Towards War?

2008-03-11T15:42:00.000-07:00

Forget, for the moment, Geraldine Ferraro's ill-advised comments about Obama (which, incidentally, nicely compliment yesterday's post, The Wondrous World of Misogyny). Forget, too, Spitzergate, the latest instalment in that ever-popular soap, Politics & Sex.

The news that should - but probably won't - dominate the headlines today is the sudden and premature "retirement" of Admiral William J. Fallon. In case you didn't know, Fallon is the commander of the United States Central Command (known as CentCom). As such, he is effectively David Petraeus's boss. You'll know who Petraeus is, of course: he's the guy spear-heading the war in Iraq.

Fallon retired? Now that's the sort of news that makes me feel a little queasy.

Why? Well because, simply put, Fallon is generally seen as being the top brass that's been calmly and quietly attempting to edge Bush away from what could be an international catastrophe on a scale to actually eclipse the Iraq invasion: a war against Iran.

Now, however, he's been fired. Yes, fired (the "retired" thing is, I am sure, a smoke screen). The reason is clear enough: it was an article published last week in Esquire, appropriately called "The Man Between War and Peace". In it, the author, Thomas P.M. Barnett, writes:

Just as Fallon took over Centcom last spring, the White House was putting itself on a war footing with Iran. Almost instantly, Fallon began to calmly push back against what he saw as an ill-advised action. Over the course of 2007, Fallon's statements in the press grew increasingly dismissive of the possibility of war, creating serious friction with the White House.
Last December, when the National Intelligence Estimate downgraded the immediate nuclear threat from Iran, it seemed as if Fallon's caution was justified. But still, well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way.
And so Fallon, the good cop, may soon be unemployed because he's doing what a generation of young officers in the U. S. military are now openly complaining that their leaders didn't do on their behalf in the run-up to the war in Iraq: He's standing up to the commander in chief, whom he thinks is contemplating a strategically unsound war.

A war against Iran? Now? Surely that's unthinkable... Yes, but most reasonable people felt more or less the same way shortly before March 20, 2003. And look where that got us.

The US Elections: The Wondrous World of Misogyny

2008-03-10T16:17:00.000-07:00

In yesterday's Los Angeles Times, there was an article by Leslie Bennetts titled "Go Away? Why Should She?"

The "she" is, of course Hillary Clinton.

Now it is true that recently - and certainly before the Ohio/Texas primaries - voices had been raised asking whether it might be best for Clinton to call it a day. And it is equally true that whilst arguments exist for suggesting such a departure, counter-arguments are readily found.

Given the title of her article, one might assume that Bennetts had set herself the task of pointing out what those counter-arguments actually are and why they should prevail.

Instead, Bennetts only mentions the Super Tuesday II results briefly and then heads off on a totally different tack. The reason why, she argues, some people want Clinton to quit is because they're misogynists.

She isn't the only one. Time and again I've encountered quite virulent comments on the Internet asserting, in one way or another, that Clinton would have wrapped up the nomination weeks ago if only The Misogynists hadn't come traipsing in with all their rampant... well, misogyny.

Gosh. Could that actually be true?

Well, duh! Of course it is! The logic is very clear indeed. Let me spell it out for you.

Firstly, Clinton is a better candidate than Obama. This superiority is a given. From this starting point, it follows that the people who nevertheless favor Obama over Clinton are motivated not by the candidates' merits, but by something else. Since Clinton is a woman, that something else must be misogyny.

Once you understand this, everything else becomes quite clear. Yes, Obama has won more states than Clinton. Yes, he's leading in the popular vote. And, yes, he's got more pledged delegates. But none of that has to do with Obama's qualities; it's all down to misogyny. It has to be, since Clinton is the better candidate.

At this point, you may wonder why Clinton is better than Obama. You may, in other words, question the starting point.

In that case, however, you haven't been paying proper attention. The only reason Obama is in the overal lead is because of The Misogynists. Take them out of the equation, and Clinton wins hands down. From this it follows that she's the better candidate.

It all makes perfect sense, you see. You just need to get into the right groove.

The US Elections: The Monster Mash

2008-03-07T12:15:00.000-08:00

What monster have we here?
A great Deed at this hour of day?
A great just Deed — and not for pay?
Absurd, —or insincere.
- Elizabeth Browning, A Tale of Villafrance

No sooner had I posted about Obama's small window of opportunity or it was shut, it seems, by Samantha Power, one of Obama's chief foreign policy aides.

Who's Power, and what did she do?

Well, she's a very bright, relatively young graduate of both Yale and Harvard. She's American, but was born in Ireland. And she knows a hell of a lot about foreign policy issues, including - but certainly not limited to - Darfur.

Unfortunately, she's also quite outspoken. And today, she resigned from the Obama campaign for making the following comment about Clinton to a reporter from The Scotsman:

"She is a monster, too – that is off the record – she is stooping to anything."

Hmm. Testing the virulence of American politics via the backdoor of the British tabloid press? That is not a very sensible course of action.

So it's bye bye Power. Thanks for your Pulitzer-prize winning book A Problem From Hell. Thanks for having some pretty original ideas. Thanks for being honest. Bye bye. Have a nice day, now!

But where does that leave Obama? It's obvious my previous notion of him wading into the "lost" delegate fray in decisively presidential fashion has become somewhat obsolete (in my defense: I posted that hours ago). The only decisiveness he could show was in damage control.

But what's the damage?

I think quite a lot of people - and not just the Clinton bashers - will recognise something in what Power said. I also think quite a lot of them may take some note of it - it was, after all, an obviously heartfelt remark not at all meant for public consumption. It was a remark by someone in the know. And, too, it was a remark made by a woman. In the end, perhaps, there is some truth in the adage: it takes one to know one.

In short, if someone like Samantha Power feels this way about Clinton, the question arises: could she be right?

To hark back to the Browning quote: what Clinton have we here?

I truly don't know.

The US Elections: Rise and Fall... and Rise?

2008-03-07T08:11:00.000-08:00

Here's what I expected, just before the primaries got underway: Clinton would win by Super Tuesday, and Obama would have put in a strong innings, setting himself up nicely for 2012 0r 2016.

My expectations changed after South Carolina. Obama won the state by a landslide, and listening to his victory speech, I found myself thinking: "That guy's actually going to win".

Fast forward to the day before Super Tuesday II, and there was Clinton waving a memo on the meeting that took place between Canadian officials and Obama's senior economic advisor. Somewhere in the background, a phone was ringing. And I thought - for want of a better word - "Oops".

It's now three days after Texas and Ohio, and whilst the delegate math might suggest otherwise, everything's changed again.

In an article in today's New York Times, David Brooks put it like this:

Barack Obama had a theory. It was that the voters are tired of the partisan paralysis of the past 20 years. The theory was that if Obama could inspire a grass-roots movement with a new kind of leadership, he could ride it to the White House and end gridlock in Washington (...)

Yes, but that didn't take into account actually losing important states. Brooks goes on to say:

There are a few ways to interpret the losses in Texas and Ohio. One is demographic. He didn’t carry the groups he often has trouble with — white women, Latinos, the less educated. The other is tactical. Clinton attacked him, and the attacks worked.

The consultants, needless to say, gravitate toward the tactical interpretation. And once again the cry has gone up for Obama to get tough.

And Brooks points out that, this time, Obama's heeding that advice. He's going after Clinton. The result?

These attacks are supposed to show that Obama can’t be pushed around. But, of course, what it really suggests is that Obama’s big theory is bankrupt. You can’t really win with the new style of politics. Sooner or later, you have to play by the conventional rules.

So, is Brooks right? If so, Obama's finished. Yes, he won more states, got more delegates, and he's ahead in the popular vote. But if Tuesday's result unearths the fact that Obama doesn't believe in his own theory, no-one else will, either. He'll go limping towards the Democratic convention with an ever dwindling advantage, and upon his arrival the superdelegates will snuff him out like a spent candle. And they'd be right to do so

So, it's up to Obama to prove Brooks and those like him wrong. And he'll have to do it quickly, before Clinton entagles him further into the web of old-fashioned political shenanigans.

He needs to revigorate his campaign. And since his campaign is basically about himself and his ideals, no atttack on Clinton, however effective, can suffice.

Can he do it? Yes, I think he can. In fact, I think the answer might be fairly simple.

Think Florida. Think Michigan. Think about all the horrendous wrangling over the "lost" delegates in these two states. It's a classic example of just about everything that's wrong with American politics. Does anyone actually believe in the sincerity of Governors Crist and Granholm when they say the disenfranchisement of their voters in "unconscionable"? For God's sake, they're the ones who signed the legislature that led to that disenfranchisement in the first place! And does anyone have any doubt as to Clinton's motives in trying to seat the "lost" delegates?

So what does Obama do? He does the exact opposite of what everyone expects. At a rally, a press conference - somewhere, in any case, where he can look presidential - he gently criticises the current state of affairs and firmly requests full new primaries for both states.

Sounds crazy? Think about it a minute.

If Obama were to take such a step, he'd be showing leadership. He'd be seen stepping in to end what already is an very unattractive spectacle. And he probably would end it, too, showing not just good judgement but effectiveness as well. Just as importantly, he'd be seen as someone willing to act in the public interest and not just his own. After all, Florida and Michigan are not states he's currently expected to win.

And here's the kicker: he'd probably be doing himself a big favour, as well. Some sort of re-vote is going to take place anyway, and what better way to woo the voters than to actually stand up for them?

Finally, will he do anything like this? Unfortunately, he won't. He's still got a small window of opportunity, but I just don't see him jumping through it. After all, that would take real guts. And American politics - indeed, American life - is not about guts. In the end, it's not about ideals, or justice , or doing the right thing.

It's about winning.