Bali hit again

One Australian killed in Bali blasts

At least one Australian is among 19 people killed in explosions in the popular Indonesian resort island of Bali, Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer said.

Up to four explosions rocked tourist areas of Kuta and Jimbaran Beach, wounding 51 people, including three Australians.

One hospital official said at least 35 wounded foreigners were taken to the main hospital on Bali.

Mr Downer says he is finding it hard to get detailed information.

'There are reports that there could be between 30 and 40 injured and some reports are suggesting that there are nine or so dead but these numbers are very early and they could change significantly,' he said.

'We know from experience the numbers unfortunately could turn out to be a good deal higher than that.'

Daniel Martin, a tourist in Bali, says there was chaos after the blast in Kuta Square.

'There was thick smoke for a few minutes afterwards but there didn't seem to be any fire,' he said.

'People were clambering onto the roof of the restaurant. It's about a three storey building so people were climbing out and screaming and jumping down to the street.

'It was pretty harrowing stuff.'

Phonelines between Bali and other parts of the country were overloaded, as people struggled to contact friends and relatives in the area.

Peter Holden of Gosford on the central coast of New South Wales says he received an SMS message from his daughter Donna, who lives in Bali, telling him about the explosions.

Mr Holden says his daughter has reported several fatalities.

'There have been at least two bombs gone off in Jimbaran in restaurants and those kind of restaurants are restaurants populated by tourists in the main,' Mr Holden said.

'And then a more recent report just a moment ago that there's also reports of another bomb in Kuta Square. That's a pretty busy tourist area,' he said.

The blasts come almost exactly three years since two nightclubs were bombed in Bali's famous Kuta Beach in October 2002, killing 202 people, including 88 Australians.

Deadly blasts rip through Bali again

Explosions rocked�the Indonesian tourist island of Bali last night, leaving at least 23 people dead and dozens wounded.

Witnesses said they saw body parts, including a severed head and a leg, and hospitals filled with injured.

Many foreigners were�among those killed. The Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, said at least one Australian
was confirmed dead.

The blasts at Jimbaran beach and a bustling outdoor shopping centre in downtown Kuta "were clearly the work of terrorists'',
Police Major General Ansyaad Mbai, a top Indonesian anti-terrorism official, told the Associated Press.

Komang, a receptionist at the Graha Asih Hospital, close to Jimbaran Bay, said there were at least eight people in the morgue and that doctors were treating at least 13 wounded. "It's a horrible scene,'' she said. "Some people have had their heads blown off.''

The bombs went off almost simultaneously at�about 7.30pm local time (9.30pm Sydney time).

The blasts hit two restaurants that were packed with foreign and Indonesian diners.

Wayan Kresna said he witnessed the first bomb at a seafood restaurant on Jimbaran beach. He counted at least two dead and said many others were taken to hospital.

Update
Australian agencies to consider Bali response

This attack comes almost three years to the day after terrorists killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, in a similar attack on two Kuta bars.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has condemned the blasts as a criminal act.

Anyone who has relatives or friends in Bali is advised to try to contact them directly before calling the DFAT hotline on 1800 002 214.

Here we go again. Reported fatalities have risen from nil to 23 over the last hour.

NZ final election result

NZ Electoral Commission

• Labour Party 41.10%, 31 electorate MPs, 19 list MPs, total MPs 50 (+1 since original count)
  
• National Party 39.10%, 31 electorate MPs, 17 list MPs, 48 total MPs (-1 since original count)
  
• New Zealand First Party 5.72%, 0 electorate MPs, 7 list MPs, total MPs 7
  
• Green Party 5.30%, 0 electorate MPs, 6 list MPs, total MPs 6
  
• Mâori Party 2.12%, 4 electorate MPs, 0 list MPs, total MPs 4
  
• United Future New Zealand 2.67%, 1 electorate MPs, 2 list MPs, total MPs 3
  
• ACT New Zealand 1.51%, 1 electorate MPs, 1 list MPs, total MPs 2
  
• Jim Anderton's Progressive 1.16%, 1 electorate MPs, 0 list MPs, total MPs 1

Despite claims that the special and overseas vote favour the Nationals, the only change since the original count is to transfer one list seat from National to Labour and to reduce the house frm 122 to 121. Both results favour Labour.

Don Brash, the National opposition leader, has now conceded the election and Helen Clark is finalising negotiations to form the next government, putting her on course to become New Zealand's first Labour prime minister to serve a third term.

somebody tell the president!

Scientists perfect sandcastle recipe

A lesson learned by centuries of beachcombers has been distilled to a physicist's formula: to make the perfect sandcastle, use eight parts sand to one part water.

The physicists' study, released before publication in the journal Nature Physics, is entitled, rather grandly, 'Maximum angle of stability of a wet granular pile'.

While it deals with sandcastles, it could also help determine the stability of retaining walls and the material they hold back, one of its authors said.

This study and those that follow on this subject might have implications for those preparing for or recovering from a watery disaster like a hurricane, physicist Arshad Kudrolli said.

'Our study is the first step, in some sense, in trying to understand what's the most stable angle that one can build, say, a retaining wall,' he said. 'And if it fails, where would the material end up? How much part of the land will give way?'

Inspired by childhood memories of the seaside, the study's authors worked on a simple model of what makes for the most stable construction involving liquid and particles.

In the case of a sandcastle, builders need to use roughly one-eighth the water to the amount of sand, though Mr Kudrolli said there is a range of possibilities that would work.

Quicksand myth exposed

Quicksand is not the bottomless pit portrayed in Hollywood films that sucks in unsuspecting victims and swallows them whole. It is true the more people struggle, the deeper they sink into the soupy mixture.But its buoyancy makes it impossible to be completely submerged, scientists report today in the journal Nature. 'Everybody thinks, thanks to Hollywood, that you can drown in quicksand. Basically if you do a simple buoyancy calculation, the Archimedes force, it is immediately evident that you can't drown completely,' says Professor Daniel Bonn, a physicist at the University of Amsterdam.Quicksand consists of salt, water, sand and clay. It is the water content that makes quicksand, which is found near estuaries, beaches and rivers, so dangerous.

This important research has significant rhetorical, domestic and foreign policy implications. George Bush, despite charges that he's all hat and no cattle, loves Western metaphors, like getting Osama bin Laden dead or alive (give or take a delay longer than separates Pearl Harbour and VJ Day). He also loves saving money on flood protection. Now if you can't drown in a quagmire... And if you can build a levee bank that's 8 parts sand...

one ape to rule them

Peter Jackson is obsessed with King Kong. He's also obsessed with making sure we get to know all about the making of his ape movie. Do we have to wait for the documentary on the special features DVD? Nope, just sign up to his RSS feed at Kong Is King.

Katie Kouric just doesn't cut it

The Australian Electoral Commission has just posted its report on the 2004 general election. The Parliament's joinst standing committee on electoral matters is conducting its own review, as it does after every election.

Behind the Scenes - Election Night

National Tally Room Preparations
The NTR for the 2004 federal election was located at Exhibition Park in Canberra. It took about two weeks to build, three days to dismantle and many months of detailed planning to organise.

Transforming the empty hall into the central point on election night was a massive logistical exercise. The AEC had access to the building from 27 September when the work began on:

• laying the temporary floor
  
• building the 35 metre x 7 metre tally board
  
• allocating space to the media, parties and television networks
  
• organising the electricity supply, air conditioning, telecommunication lines and computer cabling.

Elaborate security arrangements were in place during the building of the tally room and on election night. To ensure the smooth running of the NTR the AEC also conducted a rehearsal on the Thursday before election day to test the computer system and to provide training for the casual staff employed on the National Tally Board and in divisional offices throughout Australia.

The NTR cost approximately $650 000 to organise. This included the hire of venue, communication and computing facilities, equipment hire, casual staff wages and security. The television networks met the costs of constructing their own sets.

National Tally Room Logistics
The NTR included:

• 700 members of the media
  
• four major and two minor purpose-built television studios
  
• 100 political party workers and Members of Parliament
  
• 160 international and other official guests
  
• 150 AEC and other NTR workers
  
• 2 400 members of the public (a maximum of about 300 at any one time).

On the technical side there were:

• 84 terminals, four printers and 7 separate data feeds
  
• six kilometres of telephone cables
  
• 8.5 kilometres of computer cabling
  
• two mobile telephone repeater stations
  
• in excess of 300 mobile and 150 static telephones
  
• up to 650 amps of electrical load (enough to power a small town).

The US does not have a more perfect electoral system, despite their more perfect union. Having a public tally where nation-wide results get collated and posted would make a big difference. For that matter, having a single election management body that (subject to judicial review) administers elections transparently, impartially, and professionally would be a good thing too.

Arthur C Clarke on the space elevator

The Times Online guest contributors Opinion

Today's communications satellites demonstrate how an object can remain poised over a fixed spot on the Equator by matching its speed to the turning Earth, 22,300 miles (35,780 km) below. Now imagine a cable linking the satellite to the ground. Payloads could be hoisted up it by purely mechanical means, reaching orbit without any use of rocket power. The cost of launching payloads into orbit could be reduced to a tiny fraction of today's costs.

The space elevator was the central theme in my 1978 science-fiction novel The Fountains of Paradise (soon to be a Hollywood movie). When I wrote it, I considered it little more than a fascinating thought experiment. At that time, the only material from which it could be built – diamond – was not readily available in sufficient megaton quantities. This situation has now changed, with the discovery of the third form of carbon, C60, and its relatives, the Buckminsterfullerenes. If these can be mass-produced, building a space elevator would be a completely viable engineering proposition.

What makes the space elevator such an attractive idea is its cost-effectiveness. A ticket to orbit now costs tens of millions of dollars (as the millionaire space tourists have paid). But the actual energy required, if you purchased it from your friendly local utility, would add only about a hundred dollars to your electricity bill. And a round trip would cost only about one tenth of that, as most of the energy could be recovered on the way back.

Once built, the space elevator could be used to lift payloads, passengers, prefabricated components of spacecraft, as well as rocket fuel up to Earth orbit. In this way, more than 90 per cent of the energy needed for exploration of the solar system could be provided by Earth-based energy sources.
Looking even farther ahead, one could see the virtual elimination of the rocket except for minor orbit adjustments. By extending the elevator, it would act as a giant sling, and payloads could be shot off to anywhere in the solar system by releasing them at the correct moment. Of course, rockets would still be responsible for the journey back to Earth – at least until elevator/slings were constructed on the other planets. If this ever happens, the most expensive component of travel around the solar system would be for life support – and inflight movies.

As its most enthusiastic promoter, I am often asked when I think the first space elevator might be built. My answer has always been: about 50 years after everyone has stopped laughing. Maybe I should now revise it to 25 years.

Clarke (who predicted the communications satellite many years before the first one was launched) also speaks about the 1911-12 Antarctic expedition and the more than 40 years it took to return there and stay. I could think of much better things to do wth the NASA budget than another Apollo Program and a human-crewed Mars expedition. Building a space elevator is one of them.

why the PR-is-evil snowclone lives on

Via Make My Vote Count

MMP: saner and safer, but don't you miss the blood?

Yes, the spectacle of the two major parties slugging it out brought to mind the old system. And yet, curiously enough, the result looks like precisely the kind of outcome MMP encourages a shifting balance of power around the notional centre, where all must take into account the position of the other, not dismiss them as irrelevant. To paraphrase another commentator, this is the opposite of Geoffrey Palmer's famous 'unbridled power'.

If First Past the Post lingers anywhere it is in the mindsets of certain journalists and politicians. Elections are still reported as though they are rugby tests, and there is an almost tangible desire for a close result to mean instability or potential chaos.

Perhaps this is due partly to the journalistic instinct for avoiding boredom. Where Helen Clark plainly revels in the Scandinavian torpor of policy negotiation and strategic alliance building, we hacks would prefer it all to descend into bitching and scratching because it makes better headlines and obviates the need for anything more than superficial analysis.

Attempts now to blame MMP for delivering a supposedly unjust outcome, as Richard Prebble has argued, can perhaps be attributed partly to the Right's lingering distaste for a system that by design precludes absolute minority rule and 'reform' by decree. As Prebble also observed, Brash fought a good First Past the Post campaign. It's just that history has moved on.

The other snowclone well past its meltdown date is the alleged considerate conservatism of Barnaby Joyce. The senator from St George seems to spend an awful lot of time waving his sword at the dragon but somehow always whips it back in the scabbard just before it's time to vote.

Rita floods NOLA

Water pours into Ninth Ward

Hurricane Rita-driven winds pushed floodwaters from the Industrial Canal into the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans and Chalmette as water topped a section of the levee that was under repair, Secretary of Transportation and Development Johnny Bradberry said Friday.

Bradberry said the flooding was waist-deep near the levee.

He said there have not been any reports of flooding in other parts of the area, such near the 17th Street Canal or the London Avenue Canal, two troublespots during Hurricane Katrina.

This is really, really bad because it looks as if the floodwall system itself may be flawed.

Experts Say Faulty Levees Caused Much of Flooding

Louisiana's top hurricane experts have rejected the official explanations for the floodwall collapses that inundated much of New Orleans, concluding that Hurricane Katrina's storm surges were much smaller than authorities have suggested and that the city's flood- protection system should have kept most of the city dry.The Army Corps of Engineers has said that Katrina was just too massive for a system that was not intended to protect the city from a storm greater than a Category 3 hurricane, and that the floodwall failures near Lake Pontchartrain were caused by extraordinary surges that overtopped the walls.
Workers repair a section of the levee at the 17th Street Canal, which breached and caused flooding.

But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina's surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals -- and the flooding of most of New Orleans.

Meanwhile back at the fort the White House was insisting they'd be much more focused on Rita, not they weren't focused on Katrina, but...

White House Briefing: Reporters Wonder About President's New 'Focus' on Hurricanes

Q So the lessons learned from Katrina will be applied in the case of Rita?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, in terms of Katrina, that was a storm that was unprecedented in size and scope and devastation. It is something that we want to make sure all the lessons possible are learned, and we want to make sure that we know exactly what worked and what didn't work. And that's why we are working closely with Congress as they move forward on their investigation. That's why the President has tasked his Homeland Security Council to make sure that there is a comprehensive review of the preparedness and response relating to Katrina, so we're doing that.

Now, in terms of Rita, I just talked about the steps that we're taking. And we're going to make sure that we are doing everything we can to have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments as we prepared and respond to Hurricane Rita.

Q Well, Scott, continuing with what Steve said, how is what you're doing for Rita different from what you did from Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: Sure. A couple of things -- one, the President is focused on making sure we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local governments in the path of Hurricane Rita. We hope Rita is not devastating, but we must be prepared for the worst. Coordination at all levels needs to be seamless, or as seamless as possible, and that's what we're working to do.

Homeland Security and FEMA officials are working closely with state and local governments so that resources can be targeted where they are most needed. They are redoubling efforts to make sure we have a full understanding of what the needs are so that we can make sure that those needs are met. And I went through several steps that were already taken to address these issues.

Q So that's -- you think that that's going to be an improvement over what was done in Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, again, in terms of Katrina, we're still focused on the immediate needs of the people in the region and working to make sure that they are getting back up on their feet, that we're moving forward on the recovery, that we're moving forward on the rebuilding to help people rebuild their lives and rebuild their communities. We are determined to learn the lessons of Katrina, and that's why we have been assessing what's been working and what hasn't been working and taking steps to address those issues. That's why we're also working closely with Congress, and the President is committed to making sure that there's a thorough investigation so that we can learn those lessons.

Q Well, can you distinguish what you're doing differently?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, I just talked to you about where the President's focus is and what we are doing. We want to make sure that we're --

Q And these are things you didn't do in Katrina?

MR. McCLELLAN: We want to make sure that we are better prepared and better positioned to respond to Hurricane Rita and that's what we're doing. That's why I outlined the several steps that we are taking. And that's why I just told you that the President is focused on making sure that we have the strongest possible coordination with state and local officials, and that we have --

Q Which you didn't have before, right?

MR. McCLELLAN: -- as seamless as possible coordination with state and local officials.

Q In other words, better than the last time?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think I just answered that question, Bill.

Q No, not really.

And someone forgot to evacuate the poor. And someone forgot a million people in cars need quite a lot of petrol.

the supposed evils of PR

The Australian media, which barely noticed the New Zealand election, seems to have reached a firm consensus view that the election shows that proportional representation is a messy and undesirable business that leads to hung parliament, ineffective government, and other evils. Sadly for them, we can test the hypothesis. New Zealand elects 69 of the 122 MPs by first past the post in single member districts. We can count them and come up a suitably butch, Anglo and decisive result.

• Labour Party - votes 40.60%, electorate MPs 31
  
• National Party - votes 39.76%, electorate MPs 31
  
• New Zealand First Party - 5.86%, electorate MPs 0
  
• Green Party - votes 5.09%, electorate MPs 0
  
• Mâori Party - 1.95%, electorate MPs 4
  
• United Future New Zealand - 2.74%, electorate MPs 1
  
• ACT New Zealand - 1.52% electorate MPs 1
  
• Jim Anderton's Progressive - 1.21%, electorate MPs 1
  

You'd have a parliament of 69, neither major party would have a majority, and they'd be negotiating a coalition.

Martin Stabe has done the same calculation for Germany.

Germany: don't blame proportional representation

Only half of the Bundestag owes its seats to state party lists and proportional representation. The other half of the chamber are actually British-style constituency MPs. A quick glance at the official results released by the Federal Returning Officer shows that an entirely first-past-the-post election would have led to more or less the same outcome.

If we simply ignore the half of the Bundestag that is elected by PR, and concentrate on the 299 MdBs elected by direktmandat (ie, the first-past-the-post constituency MPs), the composition of the new Bundestag would look like this:

SPD: 145 seats
CDU: 105 seats
CSU: 44 seats
Greens: 1 seat
Left: 3 seats
FDP: 0 seats

I guess you could argue that the fact of PR makes people vote differently, but that argument actually gives the game away. Since people are obviously freer to decide their vote under PR, it follows that more decisive systems are actually not decisive at all. Blair got 35.3% of the popular vote and 55.2% of seats. Clark got 40.6% of the popular vote and a 40.9% of the seats.

There's a whole separate argument about the political effects of SMD, suggesting that it encourages winner-take-all no-compromise results, but I'll go there another time. Our hairy-chested media analysts tend to confirm the theory when they insst that PR parliaments are weak-kneed and lily-livered on economic reform.

north/south red/red grand coalition

In praise of ...

Uncertainty reinforces the Churchillian view of democracy as being the worst form of government apart from all the others. In the meantime, the obvious answer to the problem would be for Germany's SPD party to form a grand coalition with New Zealand's Labour and rule both countries - New Zealand did once rejoice in a 19th-century nickname as 'the Prussia of the Pacific'.

What did they call us in the the 19th century? The Pacific's Bavaria? Burgundy? Champagne? And what was so Prussian about New Zealand?

mainchance chancellor

New election looms as Greens reject Merkel

He [Joschka Fischer, the Green leader] told the Guardian: 'Can you really see Angela Merkel and Edmund Stoiber [the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU] sitting round the table in dreadlocks? This is more our style. It's impossible. I don't see that.'

On issues such as atomic energy, taxation, social policy and Turkey's membership of the European Union, the conservatives and the Greens had nothing in common, he added.

Both Mrs Merkel and Mr Schr�der failed to win an outright majority for their parties in Sunday's election, which Mrs Merkel had been widely expected to win. Her CDU party got just 35.2% of the vote - one of its worst results ever, and far less than opinion polls had predicted. Mr Schr�oeder's Social Democrats won 34.3% of the vote.

Mrs Merkel's coalition partner, the FDP, won 9.9%, with the Greens on 8.1% and the recently formed Left party on 8.7%. Under Germany's constitution, the country's new parliament has to elect a new chancellor when it meets next month. But with Mrs Merkel unable to command a majority in the Bundestag, she is unlikely to win in a secret ballot of MPs.

After three rounds of voting, the country's president, Horst Koehler, could then invite her to form a minority centre-right government. But he is unlikely to invoke this option, which would almost certainly lead to the new government's swift demise and further humiliation for an already weakened Mrs Merkel. Instead, constitutional experts believe, Mr Koehler will dissolve parliament.

Until this happens, Mr Schroeder will carry on as chancellor until Germans go to the polls again, probably in January.Asked who was likely to win the face-off between Mr Schroeder and Mrs Merkel, Nils Diederich, a professor of political science at Berlin's Free University, said he had his money on the chancellor: 'There is now a poker game going on, with Schroeder playing for very high stakes. The reason he was so relaxed on election night is that he knows he is now in a favourable position.'

It's getting more and more obvious why Joschka Fischer is widely regarded as the only German politico who spaks with any fire or wit.

President Koehler does not have a lot of choice about a new election. The Basic Law says:

Article 63 (Election and appointment of the Federal Chancellor)
(1) The Federal Chancellor is elected, without debate, by the Bundestag on the proposal of the Federal President.

(2) The person obtaining the votes of the majority of the members of the Bundestag is elected. The persons elected must be appointed by the Federal President.

(3) If the person proposed is not elected, the Bundestag may elect within fourteen days of the ballot a Federal Chancellor by more than one-half of its members.

(4) If there is no election within this period, a new ballot shall take place without delay in which the person obtaining the largest number of votes is elected. If the person elected obtained the votes of the majority of the members of the Bundestag the Federal President must appoint him within Seven days of the election. If the person elected did not receive this majority, the Federal President must within even days either appoint him or dissolve the Bundestag

The conservatives simply do not have the numbers to elect Angela Merkel. If the SPD/Green combination can get the support of either the FDP or the Left they can elect Gerhard Schoeder.

All in all, this seems to be somewhat of a trend, although the neoliberal right did better in New Zealand and much, much worse in Norway.

Dresden votes on 1 October. The new Bundestag meets to elect a chancellor (with 14 days to do it) on 10 October.

Radio Australia casts its pods on the waters

Pacific Beat now has a podcast. Asia Pacific has been available for a while. They're both excellent programs, but somehow I was never listening to the radio at the right time. Podcasting has changed that.

not seeing the rain for the trees

Tropical Deforestation Affects Rainfall In The U.S. And Around The Globe

Now, a new study is offering insight into the long-term impacts of these changes, particularly the effects of large-scale deforestation in tropical regions on the global climate. Researchers from Duke University, Durham, N.C., analyzed multiple years of data using the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies General Circulation Computer Model (GCM) and Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) to produce several climate simulations. Their research found that deforestation in different areas of the globe affects rainfall patterns over a considerable region.

Deforestation in the Amazon region of South America (Amazonia) influences rainfall from Mexico to Texas and in the Gulf of Mexico. Similarly, deforesting lands in Central Africa affects precipitation in the upper and lower U.S Midwest, while deforestation in Southeast Asia was found to alter rainfall in China and the Balkan Peninsula. It is important to note that such changes primarily occur in certain seasons and that the combination of deforestation in these areas enhances rain in one region while reducing it in another.

This finding contradicts earlier research suggesting deforestation would result in a reduction in precipitation and increase in temperature in the Amazon basin, but carry no detectable impact on the global water cycle.

I guess the Howard government will all breathe a collective sigh of relef that Amazonia's deforestation only impacts the Americas. And the Bush administration can always stop the impact of deforestation by invading Guyana or something.

Dresden gets to decide

German Election: Will Dresden Decide Germany's Next Chancellor?

In truth, it is the complicated permutations of the German electoral system that have turned Dresden into such a hot button area. Although only one representative will actually be elected in the district, Germany's 'second vote' system -- in which individuals vote for a party they want to see in parliament -- could produce three extra parliamentary seats for Dresden. These are known as 'overhang' seats and are created to reflect more accurately and more democratically a party's true support. And it is these seats that are being eyed by the politicians. The current breakdown of seats in parliament is SPD 222, CDU 225. So those three seats could make a big difference and transform Dresden into the German kingmaker.

and:

Indeed, there are already murmurings of a new Dresden "poker game" in which the Left Party might be convinced to encourage its voters to vote for the SPD. Its own candidate, Katja Kipping, is already assured a parliamentary seat due to the second vote system. So that leaves the party and its voters free to maneuver.

The Dresden electorate has one deputy and last time the CDU won it with 33.8% of the vote. That could change if, for instance the Left Party or the Greens asked their people to vote SPD. The electorate will also, effectively generate 1 or more extra deputies through its list votes. A huge turnout for the SPD or the Left could feasibly generate a third seat. It's where a whole lot of bets break down and the great weakness of MMP, using first past the post to elect district MPs, suddenly comes into play.

I am beginning to suspect the new Bundestag may play out without electing a chancellor. If they cannot do that within a fixed time the Federal President has to dissolve them and call another election.

German election result

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

Public broadcaster ZDF and Forschungsgruppe Wahlen have released their first exit poll:

CDU - 37%
SPD - 33%
FDP - 10.5%
Greens - 8 %
Left Party/PDS - 8%

In Germany only the lower house, the Bundestag is elected. Voting is by MMP as in New Zealand. The system was developed in postwar Germany as a reaction to the 'excessive' proportional representation in the Weimar Republic. The makers of the German constitution believed Hitler's rise was partly explained by the instability caused by a multiplicity of small parties in the Reichstag. I suspect it had more to with roughly 1/6 the of MPs being communists and anther 1/6 being rightists. If you're trying to find half the deputies and 1/3 of them are unacceptable life gets tough. You end up with the President appointing chancellors by decree, which is what Hindenburg resorted to with the results we now know.

The Bundeswahlleiter still has no official results up.

The BBC has a rundown on the German parties. That exit poll would leave the CDU/ThisFPD with 47% of seats where they need 51%. The SPD/Greens have 41%. How the Left/PDS will jump between abstaining and supporting the SPD/Greens is literally anybody's guess. This is a much messier result than New Zealand, especially when the CDU went into the campaign with a 20% lead.

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

(6:32 p.m.) Cheers for SPD-chairman Franz M�unterfering, but otherwise restrained reactions in the Willy-Brandt House at the SPD's election party. With the weak results for their own party, the members are calculating that the crisis won't run too deep. Cheers break out whenever a new low number gets reported for CDU/CSU. 'The Union has lost,' is the tenor among the party faithful. And: more and more people are talking eagerly about a 'stoplight' (Red-Green-Yellow between the Social Democrats, Greens and FDP) coalition.'

A CDU/FPD coalition would have been a black-yellow government. There is some chance of a black/red grand coalition, which would translate into Australian terms as a Howard/Beasley government. Who says contemporary politics lacks colour?

The Bundeswahlleiter is still strangely silent.

Der Bundeswahlleiter:

WIESBADEN/BERLIN - As reported by the Federal Returning Officer, 41.9 percent of the persons entitled to vote have exercised their voting right until 2 p.m. (CEST) at today's Bundestag election. The votes cast by postal voters have not been included yet.The Federal Returning Officer has ascertained voter participation in co-operation with the Land returning officers on a representative basis for the entire Federal Republic of Germany.In the 2002 Bundestag elections, voter participation until 2 p.m. was 42.8 percent; total voter participation was 79.1 percent.The Federal Returning Officer asks all persons entitled to vote who have not voted yet to exercise their right to vote. The polling stations will be open until 6 p.m.

There are seat projections floating round the international and German media, but they're all based on exit polls at this stage. The CDU is now speaking about a black/red grand coalition with some enthusiasm. Deutsche Welle has a live radio feed.

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

(6:48 p.m.) The head of the Free Democratic Party, Guido Westerwelle, sees his party as the 'victor of the day.'

The FDP is saying they will not join a stoplight coalition with the SPD and Greens. They plan on heading for opposition if the black/yellow coalition does not get an absolute majority.

From Deutsche Welle's audio feed at 7:44 local time. Schroeder just claimed victory. Merkel, the CDU candidate for chancellor, claimed victory at 7:01 pm German time.

Pope Stimulates Election Betting

Germany isn't exactly known as a den of gambling addicts, but after betting and winning that native son Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger be elected to the seat of Peter, more Germans than ever have been drawn to gambling on this Sunday's federal elections.

Well, it's an ill wind... The pope's brother confirmed that His Holiness, still enrolled in Bavaria, will not vote in this particular conclave.

Live News Blog: The Latest News on Germany's Parliamentary Elections

(7:26 p.m.) Despite his party's poor showing, Chancellor Gerhard Schr�der of the Social Democrats told party supporters Sunday night that he should remain chancellor. 'I feel this validates ... that in the next four years, the country will have a stabile government under my leadership.'

Schroeder and Merkel are both now saying they will negotiate with everyone except the Left/PDS.

The Results feed from the Bundeswahlleiter is interesting because the show the CSU, a Bavarian regional party usually counted as part of the CDU, as a separate party and they also show shifts in support from the last election. Yahoo has a self-updating version. Schroeder is using the alleged separateness of the CSU to claim the SPD as the alrgt party and threfore the legitimate candidate for the chancery.

Essentially, this election marks the failure of MMP. It was designed to avoid the Weimar problem of finding a majority government from only 2/3 of the deputies. The Left Party is held together by opposition to globalisation and economic change. In a sense it is an exact analogue to One Nation, although its formal positioning is left-wing rather than right-wing. Their polices are about as realistic as One Nation's were. All other parties refuse to negotiate with the Left Party, an amalgam of former SDP members and East German ex-communists. This means that today's Germany faces the Weimar problem all over again - finding a majority government from 90% of the deputes. The results would have been quite different under STV, but I'll go into that in more detail in another post.

The Vote in Germany: Preliminary Results Show Schr�der, Merkel Stalemate

Sunday's results are not yet final. The results from 220,000 voters in Dresden will not be known for another two weeks -- votes that could be vital for the final outcome. Last week, far-right candidate Kerstin Lorenz of National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) died of a stroke while giving a campaign speech, meaning that ballots there had to be reprinted and the vote delayed until Oct. 2.

Why do I feel the people of Dresden will see an amazing level of plitical camapigning in the next few days?

A lot of it is now only historical (except in Dresden) but Deutsche Welle has an English language election podcast.

the dunes! the dunes! I mean the wires, are alive with, um

Dune tunes...the greatest hits

It might not knock Coldplay or Kanye West off the top of charts, but physicists who say they have cracked the riddle of 'singing' sand dunes are compiling a CD of sand music. The team say their new theory allows them to predict the notes that different dunes will make.

Sand dunes in certain parts of the world are notorious for the noises they make as sand avalanches down their sides. Some emit low powerful booms, others sound like drum rolls or galloping horses, and some are even tuneful. These dune songs have been reported to last for up to 15 minutes and can sound as loud as a low-flying aeroplane. Physicists know it is the avalanches that set the grains humming, but the precise mechanism has remained controversial.

St�phane Douady of the French national research agency CNRS and his colleagues shipped sand from Moroccan singing dunes back to his lab to investigate. They found that they could play notes by pushing the sand by hand, or with a metal handle. That put to rest one theory that the noise was the result of the entire dune resonating.

You might think that orchestrating a sand dune is the height of musical eccentricity. You would be wrong...

NZ election results

At 11:42 in New Zealand the count, on 99.9% of polling places, was:

• Labour Party - votes 40.60%, electorate MPs 31, list MPs19, total MPs 50 (52)
  
• National Party - votes 39.76%, electorate MPs 31, list MPs 18, total MPs 49 (27)
  
• New Zealand First Party - 5.86%, electorate MPs 0, list MPs 7, total MPs 7 (13)
  
• Green Party - votes 5.09%, electorate MPs 0,, list MPs 6, total MPs 6 (9)
  
• Mâori Party - 1.95%, electorate MPs 4, list MPs 0, total MPs 4 (0)
  
• United Future New Zealand - 2.74%, electorate MPs 1, list MPs 2, total MPs 3 (9)
  
• ACT New Zealand - 1.52% electorate MPs 1, list MPs, total MPs 2 (9)
  
• Jim Anderton's Progressive - 1.21%, electorate MPs 1, list MP 0s, total MPs 1 (2)
  

The bracketed numbers show the seats held by in the old parliament. Roughly, the minor parties of the right have haemorrhaged support to National and many New Zealand First voters appear to have transferred to the Maori Party. National have almost doubled their seats, but largely at the expense of smaller right-wing parties.

The Australian media are carrying fairly inaccurate reports that the election result will not be known for days. That is wrong. It will take some time to form a government as the two major parties negotiate for support, but it's hard to see how anyone but Helen Clarke can emerge as prime minister. The election result, however, is likely to be very close to these results and should be finalised within 72 hours.

Labour and National correspond fairly closely to the ALP and the Liberals, although NZ Labour is a long way to the ALP's left and National is probably slightly to the Liberals' right. New Zealand First is essentially a personal vehicle for Winston Peters who was formerly a National MP. The Green Party needs no explanation. The Maori Party broke with Labour over the foreshore and seabed controversy and because they felt Labour was attacking Maori rights. United Future New Zealand is a centrist and Christian Party that, in some ways, resembles Family First. ACT New Zealand and Jim Anderton's Progressives are personal vehicles led by former Labour MPs representing, respectively Rogernomics and opposition to globalisation.

Clarke starts from a base of 50 seats and needs 12 for a majority of 62. Clarke has an existing coalition with the Greens which leaves her looking for 6 MPs. New Zealand First said before the election they would support the largest party which is 7 more, although United Future say they will not support a government with Green MPs. It is impossible to see the Maori Party supporting Brash's project to abolish the Maori seats and end any special standing for the Maori people. A Green/UFNZ/Maori Party arrangement gives Clarke a majority of 63 without New Zealand First.

Brash starts from a base of 49 and needs 13 to govern. His only certain partner is ACT New Zealand and that leaves him 11 short. Even if Winston Peters, the head of New Zealand First, persuades himself (as he has on past occasions) to support a National Party government Brash is still 4 short and looking for Green support. Even if Brash cobbled together a New Zealand First/Act New Zealnd/United Future New Zealand arrangement he would still need one more MP. Where would he find them? The Greens, the Maori Party and Jim Anderton all stand to Labour's left.

The unicameral New Zealand parliament is elected by the Mixed Member Proportional system used in Germany and other countries. The parliament comprises 63 electorate MPs, 7 Maori MPs and (usually) 51 list MPs. The electorate MPs and Maori MPs are elected in single member districts by first past the post. Every New Zealander gets an electorate vote and a list vote. Maori can decide to enrol in the local electorate of in one of the Maori electorates. The list votes are counted in a single electorate comprising the whole country. The list MPs are elected in proportion to the party's share of the list, but their party has to to either win an electorate or get more than 5% of the national vote. The number of list MPs varies slightly according to the performance of the party in the electorate vote. Any Australian journalist who begins an election report with a complaint about the complexity of the system is only telling you they're too lazy to do any research.

All in all, this looks like a famous victory for Helen Clarke who has almost certainly won a third term as prme minister. I'll update the results tomorrow but I do not expect them to vary much from now.

Update
The comments at John Quiggan include some misguided souls who say the way the NZ parliament is elected is better than STV. I may post some thoughts on MMP v STV tomorrow, after I've tracked down some detail on the German election.

Update 2
At 12:05 am on 18/09/2005 NZ time, the results in terms of numbers of seats had not changed. there are 35000 overseas voters on the roll, and it's not clear from the Electoral Commission website how many of these have been counted. Special votes, by electors not on the roll with a claim to vote, are in the sme situation. 25000 ovrseas votes are unlikely to change this result, but we'll know more tomorrow.

There's been some really bad reporting on Wnston Peters, leader of New Zealand First. Natonal defeated him in his electorate of Tauranga. However, his party won list seats and he is the number 1 candidate for those seats so his election as a list MP is assured.

I'll update again tomorrow when the situation with special and overseas votes should be clearer and I've worked out what the Bundeswahlleiter is reporting in Germany.

the ostrich in the greenhouse

Warming world blamed for more strong hurricanes

Worldwide since the 1970s, there has been a near-doubling in the number of Category 4 and 5 storms %u2013 the strength that saw Hurricane Katrina do such damage to the US Gulf coastline late in August 2005.

Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, says the trend is global, has lasted over several decades and is connected to a steady worldwide increase in tropical sea temperatures. Because of all these factors, it is unlikely to be due to any known natural fluctuations in climate such as El Niño, the North Atlantic Oscillation or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation.

"We can say with confidence that the trends in sea surface temperatures and hurricane intensity are connected to climate change," says Webster's co-author Judy Curry, also of the Georgia Institute of Technology. The team looked at the incidence of intense tropical storms and the study results are the strongest affirmation yet that Katrina-level hurricanes are becoming more frequent in a warmer world.

The study finds there has been no general increase in the total number of hurricanes, which are called cyclones when they appear outside the Atlantic. Nor is there any evidence of the formation of the oft-predicted "super-hurricanes". The worst hurricane in any year is usually no stronger than in previous years during the study period.

But the proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 or 5 - with wind speeds above 56 metres per second - has risen from 20% in the 1970s to 35% in the past decade.

"This trend has lasted for more than 30 years now. So the chances of it being natural are fairly remote," says Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) at Boulder, Colorado.

Moreover, says Webster, natural fluctuations tend to be localised. "When the east Pacific warms, the west Pacific cools, for instance. But sea surface temperatures are rising throughout the tropics today." The surface waters in the tropical oceans are now around 0.5C warmer during hurricane seasons than 35 years ago.

The International Panel on Climate Change and Australia's own Greenhouse Office both make certain predictions about what the greenhouse world will be like.

More super-hurricanes? Check. More bushfires? Check. More droughts? Check. Greater intensity in all three? Check. Urgent government action to minimise the harm greenhouse will do the planet? Um...

America's Sorrow

The Confucian and Daoist parties at the court of the Emperor Han Chengdi debated the best way to control the flooding of the Yellow River, already known to them as China's Sorrow. Although the Daoists, led by Engineer Jiarang, triumphed at a court conference held in 8 BCE, their success was short-lived and by 58 CE the Confucians were using levees to control the floods. The river deposited silt between the levee banks and after some centuries the bed of the river was higher than the surrounding plains. Sadly the US Army Corps of Engineers had no access to the records of the court conference. and the Mississippi suffered the same fate as the Yellow River.

Role of the Yellow River Basin in Chinese Culture and History

This deep connection between Chinese culture, the Yellow River and flood control can be seen in the Legend of Yu. The Great Yu (c. 2,000 BC) was one of the three early, probably mythical, leaders of China and was known for taming the Yellow River floods using a strategy of channel clearing rather than dike construction. While it is unlikely that Yu, or anyone else, successfully controlled Yellow River flooding by any strategy, the story continues to be told, in part because it carries with it the moral analogy that adverse human nature can be better corrected by guidance (clearing a path) than punishment (constructing a barrier). More fundamentally, the channel-clearing versus dike-construction can also be seen as a reflection of a general philosophical debate in river management which has continued in China for more than 2,000 years between Taoists, with their emphasis on letting nature, human or otherwise, follow its own path and Confucianists, with their desire to channel behavior through virtuous moral codes (Needham 1956).4 The dichotomy of approach can still be seen in the modern debates on Yellow River management. In fact, both the historic and modern debates form part of a broader, and in many ways uniquely Chinese approach to river management predating Confucianism and Taoism of using the river to tame itself.

Differences between ideals and practice not withstanding (Rhoades 1967; Tuan 1968; McNeill 1998), the value of recognizing the role of philosophy in Chinese water management, and the role of water management in Chinese philosophy and culture, is not simply for academic exercise. Rather it highlights a more historically robust and broadly defined concept of integrated water management than exists in the West in which concern is placed not only on basic science, engineering and appropriate management units, but also on a philosophical understanding of man and nature. For example, current Yellow River managers approach the problem of environmental requirements with a Chinese perspective of the interrelationship between man and the environment, and so, define environmental water uses differently than may typically be the case elsewhere. In general, the concept, if not the practice, of environmental water use in China can be considered to contain not only the maintenance of biodiversity and natural ecosystem function, as emphasized in the West, but also the maintenance of the landscape as a place for human habitation and livelihood.

Okay, it was an undergraduate epiphany that all politics is about dike building and channel clearing. It is not an undergraduate epiphany that the Mississippi problem is an issue of the human landscape and not just a question of engineering technique.

The Chinese saw flood disasters as a mark of dynastic failure and the inevitable passage of the mandate of Heaven to a new dynasty. At one level this is just folklore about the anger of Heaven. On the other hand, a failing dynasty usually lost so much revenue to the aristocracy and to corruption they could not maintain the levees. Mengzi argued that: 'Bad rulers suffer not because they get worse weather but because they do not deal properly with the weather they get. A discussion with King Hui of Liang illustrates Mengzi’s view. The king describes how if the year is bad in a certain area, he moves the people elsewhere and he sends grain to the affected area. In spite of this, his people do not increase, and the king complains that Mengzi’s advice – that if you are virtuous your kingdom will benefit – is false. Mengzi responds by saying the king is not good enough, and that praising himself over other rulers is like a deserting soldier who laughs at those who run a little further away. Mengzi affirms the connection between virtue and reward by claiming the king is not virtuous and thus not rewarded.' and wrote:

Dogs and pigs eat the food of people, but you do not realize it is time for gathering, and when men drop dead from starvation by the wayside, you fail to realize that it is time for distribution. People die from starvation on the roads, and you do not issue the stores for them. People die and you say, “It’s not me; it’s the year.” In what way is that different from killing a man by stabbing him, and then saying, “It’s not me; it’s the weapon?

Too Many People in Nature's Way

The more advanced the nations, the bigger the blow may be. Terry Jeggle, a U.N. disaster-reduction planner, cites the New Orleans levee system -- dependent on pumps that run on electricity produced by fuel that must be transported in. One failure will lead to another along that chain.

"Complex systems invite compounding of complexity in consequences, too," said the Geneva-based Jeggle.

Experts fear more is to come.

The scientific consensus expects global warming to intensify storms, floods, heat waves and drought. Climatologists are still researching whether climate change has already strengthened hurricanes, whose energy is drawn from warm ocean waters, or whether the Atlantic Basin and Gulf are witnessing only a cyclical upsurge in intense storms. Computer models of climate change in the decades to come point to more devastating Category 5 storms.

The prospect of more vulnerable populations on a more turbulent Earth has U.N. officials and other advocates pressuring governments to plan and prepare. They cite examples of poorer nations that in ways do a better job than the rich:

• No one was reported killed when Ivan struck Cuba in 2004, its worst hurricane in 50 years and a storm that, after weakening, killed 25 people in the United States. Cuba's warning-evacuation system is minutely planned, even down to neighborhood workers keeping updated charts on which residents need help during evacuations.
  
  
• Along Bangladesh's cyclone coast, 33,000 well-organized volunteers stand ready to shepherd neighbors to raised concrete shelters at the approach of one of the Bay of Bengal's vicious storms.
  
  
• In 2002, Jamaica conducted a full-scale evacuation rehearsal in a low-lying suburb of coastal Kingston, and fine-tuned plans afterward. When Ivan's 20-foot surge destroyed hundreds of homes two years later, only eight people died. Ordinary Jamaicans also are taught search-and-rescue methods and towns at risk have trained flood-alert teams.

A couple of memes are floating down the river of spin pouring out the White House in an apparent attempt to dam a flood of water with a flood of words. The Bush administration's performance does not compare favourably with much less advanced nations. Only last month, China successfully evacuated almost a million people in the face of Typhoon Talim. The nonsense, since disproven, that Louisiana's governor did not declare a state of emergency or request federal help is disproven. The President, Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff and Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Brown were all warned by the National Hurricane Center well before Katrina's landfall. Why the relief effort was bungled matters, because it will control how the relief effort, and beyond it the reconstruction effort is executed. The only interesting question is why, if the White House has a true excuse, they have resorted to infantile and risible lies.

The White House is now pushing a particularly disastrous idea that FEMA should manage the reconstruction.

Talking Points Memo

Even if FEMA were still a model government agency, as it was by most accounts in the 1990s, this would still be a really, really bad decision. As the title says, FEMA is an emergency management agency, not a reconstruction agency. It doesn't have the organizational structure or competence to run the economy of a significant chunk of the United States for the foreseeable future, which is what this amounts to.

Failed leaders pushing a failed policy through a failed agency, and hoping failed lies will hide their failure.

God blew and they were scattered

Letters from Voltaire, 24 November 1755, describing the great Lisbon earthquake

This is indeed a cruel piece of natural philosophy! We shall find it difficult to discover how the laws of movement operate in such fearful disasters in the best of all possible worlds-- where a hundred thousand ants, our neighbours, are crushed in a second on our ant-heaps, half, dying undoubtedly in inexpressible agonies, beneath débris from which it was impossible to extricate them, families all over Europe reduced to beggary, and the fortunes of a hundred merchants -- Swiss, like yourself -- swallowed up in the ruins of Lisbon. What a game of chance human life is! What will the preachers say -- especially if the Palace of the Inquisition is left standing! I flatter myself that those reverend fathers, the Inquisitors, will have been crushed just like other people. That ought to teach men not to persecute men: for, while a few sanctimonious humbugs are burning a few fanatics, the earth opens and swallows up all alike. I believe it is our mountains which save us from earthquakes.

Personally, I suspect God wanted to encourage the Enlightenment so he flattened Lisbon in order to seed Europe with disbelief.

Boiling Over

Apart from what it revealed of human depravity, Mr. Barry says, the flood of 1927 changed America. It put Herbert Hoover in the White House, even while his duplicity in dealing with blacks helped begin the shift of black voters from the Republicans to the Democrats. It inspired Congress to pass a law putting responsibility for the Mississippi in Federal hands, making it easier for both Congress and the public to accept an even larger Federal presence during the New Deal years. And the pressures the flood brought to bear on the delicate racial fabric of the Deep South caused tears that could never be mended.

Altogether, then, ''Rising Tide'' stands not only as a powerful story of disaster but as an accomplished and important social history, magisterial in its scope and fiercely dedicated to unearthing truth. What the book doesn't do, doesn't intend to do, is to give us much reason to think that humans are ever going to control the river for any length of time (as the floods of 1993 demonstrated once again). The river's power is too great and our dreaming too small (and perhaps too ignoble) seriously to impede the course of what Mark Twain called ''the great Mississippi, the majestic, the magnificent Mississippi rolling its mile-wide tide along.

Octavio Paz on the politics of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake

One of the most significant results of the [1085] earthquake was autonomous action outside of the PRI and the government.

We are in the process of a transformation that began in 1968 with the student revolt. While the student revolt was a leftist revolt, its main demand was welcomed by the Mexican public: democratization.

That revolt instigated the Echeverria 'apertura,' the Lopez-Portillo political reforms and now De La Madrid's proposed changes for more seats in the legislature for the opposition parties. I wrote in 1968 that either we are going to have serious upheavals or we are going to move toward a more modern democracy. Although the effort is too slow for me, I am happy to say that democratization is happening, little by little. We are on the verge of change.

One of the great obstacles to democratic progress in the past has been the weakness of the opposition parties. Now we have
a new phenomenon in Mexico: the democratic right is more powerful than ever before, mainly in the north.

Apocalypse in the USA

The rest of America has rallied. Despite the Lone Ranger rhetoric of freedom, amazing reserves of solidarity bind US society. It starts with neighbourliness, swells into civic pride, and becomes patriotism. My university opened its classes to students displaced from the Gulf Coast, helping to lead a similar movement around the nation. Schools where refugees have taken shelter have done the same. Disaster relief has become a national, rather than a federal, effort. The government is outdone, engulfed and isolated by a wave of sympathy for fellow citizens in distress.

Regional authorities in the Mississippi Delta who failed to foresee the tragedy are, for the moment, escaping most of the resentment. Governor Hailey Barber of Mississippi disarmingly confesses failure while wanting to make up for it. His popular touch comes naturally, where the President's always seems scripted. People believe Mr Barber when he promises that "we're gonna hitch up our britches". Mr Bush, meanwhile, keeps promising a better future, when what the victims want is present relief. His uneasy optimism seems reflected in the gleaming eyes of fat-cat friends, already prowling around for prospective reconstruction contracts.

When the terrorists struck on 9/11, Mr Bush could make any number of mistakes, and still gain in popularity, because there were aliens on hand to hate. He could launch and mismanage wars with impunity, counting on the electorate's fidelity in the face of the foe.

This time Mr Bush cannot rail against God or, with his environmental record, make an enemy of nature. He cannot bomb the sea or invade the wind. God and nature are on the same side; and they no longer look like America's coalition partners. Even in the context of a natural occurrence, where there is no real enemy, people still need to hate and long for vengeance. Slowly, inexorably, with a chilling uniformity, the accusing gazes are focusing on the White House.

Bush could lie his way into Iraq because it is far away and little understood. When he brought the big lie home and tried to privatise social security he was arguing against his own supporters' direct experience and the spin did not work so well. When Spin does not sway the Fox network, the Bush administration, in his father's immortal phrase, is in deep doodoo. Historical crises destroy, they do not strengthen, rulers. Historical crises where the relief effort is a manifest failure can bring down entire elites. Robert Frost said it a lot better than I'm ever going to:

The Flood
Blood has been harder to dam back than water.
Just when we think we have it impounded safe
Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),
It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter.
We choose to say it is let loose by the devil;
But power of blood itself releases blood.
It goes by might of being such a flood
Held high at so unnatural a level.
It will have outlet, brave and not so brave.
weapons of war and implements of peace
Are but the points at which it finds release.
And now it is once more the tidal wave
That when it has swept by leaves summits stained.
Oh, blood will out. It cannot be contained.

The death toll will be horrendous and there is not going to be any way to prevent comparison with other hurricanes and other disasters unnecessarily. In particular, the death toll of those who died unnecessarily, because the relief effort moved so slowly, will take more than cute word tricks like Bush condemning an effort he headed and directed. Blood will out.