Labor as much at sea as the sheep

The sheep, the war and the White House. The phrase has rhythm but the story is a pretty shabby one. It is about political priorities these days and the spineless people who shape them. On Tuesday, in your national Parliament, the Senate debated John Howard's deceit and the worthlessness of his word on Iraq, before voting 33 to 30 to censure him. Parliamentary censure of a prime minister rarely happens. Yet it has happened twice in six months to this Prime Minister. The issue both times has been Iraq. And public reaction? Zilch. This newspaper covered the censure in three sentences. Most newspapers ignored it.

Nobody cares, it seems. In Britain and the US, government verbal 'enrichment' (as the White House has conceded) and/or intelligence failures involving the invasion of Iraq have badly damaged Tony Blair's and George Bush's leadership credibility, and continue to be a live issue of the gravest consequence. Yet in this country Iraq and the deception that justified Australia's involvement has all but faded completely.

Britain's Hutton inquiry ended its sensational public hearings during the fortnight's adjournment before the Australian Parliament resumed sitting on Tuesday. So, too, in that fortnight the interim report of the five-month search to date by 1200 US-led scientists for Iraq's mythical stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction was released. Conclusion: no WMD of any sort. Not one. Some weasel words interpreted as planned WMD programs, but they were little more than attempted face-savers. And did our Parliament take up either issue this week? Did the Labor Opposition ask even one question, make even one speech?

Not in the House, it didn't. Simon Crean and his band of lemmings stayed well away from Iraq all week. In the Senate, nobody raised Iraq during any of the three days of parliamentary questions, but the Greens' Bob Brown initiated the two-hour debate on Tuesday that ended by censuring Howard. Eight senators spoke, among them Labor's Senate leader, John Faulkner, and its defence spokesman, Chris Evans. Remarkably, only a single Government speaker defended the Prime Minister.

I'm confused. Does Alan Ramsey expect parliament to debate the great issues of the day or something?

'Resolving Deadlocks' or death knell to dissent?

It is appropriate that the political mechanism do the bulk of the work in resolving conflicts between the Executive and the Parliament. That's why the Prime Minister's first option fails the test. It would reduce enormously the incentive of the Executive to cut a deal to have a Bill pass the Senate, as a relatively short delay can trigger the joint sitting.

The second option maintains most weight on the political mechanism but gives some real meaning to the constitutional mechanism. It means that a government which wants to govern will need to negotiate to get its legislation adopted. Allowing a standoff to go to the people for resolution in the following parliament has real risks for both the government and the opposition parties in the Senate.

The government might not be re-elected. The Bill might be electorally unpopular, like selling the balance of Telstra, and not the kind of measure the government wants running as a de-facto referendum during an election campaign. The opposition parties face equal pressures of risking electoral setbacks by staring down Bills.

But there will be 'icon' type issues which the political mechanism will never resolve. Labor will not accept the sale of Telstra, or the unfair dismissal laws which limit workers job security. On these issues, the government can legitimately claim to have a mandate, while the Senate opposition parties equally claim a mandate to reject them.

Conflicting political mandates over icon issues need a constitutional mechanism to come into play. The second option in the Discussion Paper has the core of the solution, but it needs the four year term component to get the balance right.

I disagree. The prime minister has an almost unlimited right to call early elections. All I can see happening under Option 2 is that every deadlocked bill will become a whip over the Senate and a strong temptation to call an early election. It's like catching goldfish with a shotgun.

Diebold and the California vote

One of Miller's correspondents performed some number-crunching of the Diebold counties and concluded:

The probability of scoring twice the expected average county % could charitably be construed as the upper limit of the possible. Some candidates exceed that figure in Diebold counties by a four or five fold margin. If you have done statistics, you know that is so far beyond what might be expected that you would reject it as defective data. If it happened to one candidate in this election, I would be surprised but might accept it. There are a large number of candidates who have this same systematic pattern of receiving skimmed votes.

The California recall shows Diebold trying to affect the election outcome by moving votes from high ranked candidates to low ranked candidates.

By doing this, Diebold keep the total number of votes cast constant but rob some candidate of their votes.

At this remove, it's impossible to assess the accuracy of the analysis, but it certainly appears valid, and moreover bears investigating.

I'm sure the California media will get right on it.

The Diebold story gets curiouser and curiouser. More on this here

Bad King John and the Australian Constitution

In one respect Australia could benefit by a large injection of the charter tradition. Perhaps because of our convict origins, when we started with governors possessing absolute powers, we do not have a great understanding of the virtues of limiting governments and putting safeguards between the state and the citizen. We tend to think that, provided that governments are democratically elected, they should be able to do anything. In short, we do not have a strong tradition of constitutionalism properly so called. Our version of the so-called Westminster system encourages our leaders to think that, once they have foxed 40% of the electorate at an election, they have the country by the throat. Our prime ministers and premiers are averse to being told that anything is beyond their lawful powers, and are angered by restraints applied by upper houses or judges. They frequently behave in ways which make King John and Charles I seem moderate by comparison. When they have majorities in both houses of parliament they become more like those monarchs' eastern contemporaries. We have not had a Magna Carta, or a Petition of Right, or a Bill of Rights as part of our own history, and we have not sufficiently valued what we have inherited from those great events. We should, particularly at this time, tap into that inheritance.

Sigh...

Governor-General's Address to RUSI

The second matter for possible discussion - and this has already been recognised by the Government - is to take the opportunity to support reform of the Security Council of the United Nations.

It seems to me that if the world does not want a superpower of the day to take unilateral or multilateral action against threats that it perceives to be inimical to its national interest, then the UN must be given the authority and the appropriate tools to ensure that human rights and the dignity of the individual under Article 10 are maintained.

In time, this may require the UN to consider cooperative, interventionist action in potential or active trouble spots with a view to pre-empting the genocidal bloodbaths that we have witnessed in parts of Africa, Europe, the Middle East and, indeed, our own region.

It may well be that the East Timor and Solomon Islands examples will provide possible models for UN intervention.

A third consideration is to continue to develop, maintain and strengthen links and dialogue with strategic-partner countries - such as the United States.

We share many values with the US, and we have mutually reinforcing interests - interests that, importantly, needn't conflict with our building up strong relations with countries, such as Indonesia, in our more immediate region.

While His Excellency's opinions are not all that unreasonable, this is a direct endorsement of government policy. It is improper in a neutral head of state. I took voices opposed to this appointment with a grain of salt. I was wrong.

The offence is compounded because the government has seen fit to endorse the political opinions of the governor-general. I am beginning to think we need a new governor-general. Again.

At least I fought down the temptation to name this item after Donald Horne's seminal work, His Excellency's Pleasure.

Can a tiger ever make a good pet?

'Even if it's been brought up in captivity, [a tiger has] still got its wild instinct to a certain extent,' says Adam Woodward, team leader of the carnivore section at Chester Zoo. 'It still needs to make a territory and_ they aren't animals to become pets.' And it's not as if the tiger needs to be feeling aggressive to do any damage. 'If it plays with you it can kill you,' says Miranda Stevenson, director of the British Federation of Zoos.

To keep a tiger as a pet, you need permission from your local authority under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976. You're unlikely to get it, but if you do, good luck.

Some people have no ambition. The Green Man dreams of a pet elephant.

Beware Senate reform that seeks to only block the block

At least four further changes are necessary to bring about appropriate reform of the Senate.

First, elections for the Senate and House of Representatives should be required to be held simultaneously. There is no justification for separate elections for the two houses - and indeed the enormous cost of doing so means that, in practice, the ballots are usually now held together.

Second, the budget bills must be seen as a special case. These need to be enacted with greater urgency and certainty than other bills and cannot be delayed for months lest the government run out of money and face dismissal. No matter which party is in government, it ought to be able to enact its budget without having to go to an election. In this case, the Howard proposal has merit. Budget bills ought to be able to be enacted at a joint sitting after being twice rejected by the Senate.

Third, there should be fixed terms for both houses. While the term should be set at four years, it may be sensible to give a government some leeway, such as the capacity to call an election up to six months before the set date. This would reduce the power of governments to manipulate the electoral cycle to their advantage, including using it to threaten the Senate with an early election.

Fourth, all senators should serve four-year terms and not, as is currently the case, double the length of the members of the lower house. Eight years is too long for any parliamentarian to go without seeking re-election. This change would mean having to choose all senators at each election, rather than only half. It would give some advantage to the minor parties because they would need to get fewer votes to achieve a quota for the election of a senator.

I'd add the Australian Democrat proposal for proportional representation in the House, parliamentary consent to treaties and military action. Really, the prime minister of Australia is probably the most autocratic office in the democratic world.

Our prime minister can make war at will, can sign and ratify treaties at will, can name judges without legislative confirmation, controls the career path of every senior public servant, has absolute control of the House of Representatives which can be dissolved at will, has no bill of rights to contend with, and has the right not to be told anything by the intelligence agencies.

What happens when the Pope dies?

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, S.J., editor in chief of America, a Catholic Weekly, has written an excellent explanation of what happens next if the pope goes into a coma or dies. See complete report.

There are lots of rules-of-thumb for papal elections. My favourites are that fat popes are always succeeded by thin popes and whoever goes into the conclave a pope comes out a cardinal.

The fat pope/thin pope rule would make us expect a progressive, probably from the Third World or Western Europe, to emerge from the next conclave. However the rules have been changed.

For the first 12 days you need a 2/3 vote to be elected. After that:

If no candidate receives a two-thirds vote after all of these ballots, the camerlengo invites the electors to express an opinion about the manner of proceeding. It is at this point that John Paul II dramatically changed the election process by allowing an absolute majority (more than half) of the electors to waive the requirement of a two-thirds majority vote. Thus, an absolute majority of the electors can decide to elect the pope by an absolute majority. They can also decide to force a choice between the two candidates who in the preceding ballot received the greatest number of votes. In this second case only an absolute majority is required.

That probably favours the conservatives and may put an end to the thin pope/fat pope rule. The other interesting detail is that if the new cardinals, including the fell Dr Pell of Sydney, are not sworn in before the pope's death they have to wait for the next pope before they get the red hat, or a vote in the election.

Russia bares its military teeth

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov has said his country does not rule out a pre-emptive military strike anywhere in the world if the national interest demands it.

He said that Russia faced foreign interference in its internal affairs and instability in neighbouring states as well as classic threats such as the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, international terrorism and the drugs trade

President Vladimir Putin, who met Mr Ivanov on Thursday, added that the Russian military still possessed a formidable nuclear arsenal.

A report by the Defence Ministry also called on Nato to review its strategy, warning that otherwise it would be necessary to pursue 'a radical reconstruction of Russian military planning, including changes in Russian nuclear strategy'.

This is just more fruit falling from the neocon tree. Evidently Israel has adopted the preemptive war doctrine. Who next? China? Pakistan? Iran? We had a world of imperfect law. Now we are fast drifting into a world of total anarchy.

Letters - Sydney Morning Herald

California voters save the world from another sequel.

Obviously the best outcome of the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor of California is the likelihood that he won't be making any more films.

India offers Arnie a pointer or two

NTR and MGR did extremely well in buttressing their screen image to further their political ends. NTR played God in several of his movies, produced at his own studios, and built temples for people to worship him, and he played a similar role as a higher being while in office. MGR, meanwhile, portrayed the role of the savior of Tamil pride perfectly whenever his political stakes were down. The tactic worked a charm.

Schwarzenegger could also learn that in politics, the spicier the better. The current chief minister of Tamil Nadu, J Jayalalitha, was the top actress of her time, and she also happened to be a mistress of MGR. She fought a bitter political battle of legacy with MGR's widow, who was herself chief minister for a short while before Jayalalitha took over.

For further micro studies, Arnold could brush up on the political history of several other stars - Shabana Azmi, Dilip Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Vyajantimala Bali and Raj Babbar, to name a few.

Due to their larger-than-life presence, plenty of literature delves into the role of film stars in politics. Arnold could study this as well. What emerges from this knowledge bank is that when people in the past voted for stars, they did so for style rather than substance, for image rather than reality.

However, the Indian electorate has evolved. It has come to realize that it is the person who delivers that matters. The mantle of NTRs party has been taken over by his technocrat son-in-law Chandrababu Naidu, who dreams of modeling his state on Singapore by making it the hub of India's information technology boom.

Jayalalitha was voted back into power not because of her star status, but due to the ineptitude of the previous government, as well as her reputation as an iron-fisted leader.

Actors, like anybody else, have the right to stand for elections, and like anybody else they need to perform or they will be shunted out. No doubt they have an initial advantage, but honeymoons have a horrible habit of ending all too soon.

Actors, like everybody else, also need to understand that you can't balance the budget by raising spending and cutting revenue. The new fiscal technique of waving a broom about has not been tested yet.

Catholic Churches Say Condoms Don't Stop AIDS

The World Health Organization, guardian watchdog of global wellbeing, rejected the Vatican view.

'These incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people, and currently affects at least 42 million,' the WHO told the program.

It conceded condoms could break or be damaged and permit passage of semen, but said they reduced the risk of infection by 90 percent and were certainly secure enough to prevent passage of the virus if not torn.

[BBC's] Panorama said scientific research had found intact condoms were impermeable to particles as small as sexually transmitted infection pathogens -- a view rejected by Trujillo.

'They are wrong about that...this is an easily recognizable fact,' he told the program.

From Nicaragua to Kenya and the Philippines, the Panorama team found the same tale from the Catholic church -- that condoms can kill.

No official comment from the Vatican was immediately available on Thursday.

Still shaking my head in disbelief...

Clare Short: The U.S. needs the world's help -- now

Salon: Given that he didn't believe Iraq was an imminent threat, why did Blair go to war, anyway?

[Former UK Secretary of International Development] Clare Short: There are six points that he supposedly wrote down and was working with throughout the crisis. He never shared them with the Parliament or his cabinet. But one of them, apparently, was that after Sept. 11 it was inevitable that America would go to war in Iraq. It would be better if they went through the U.N., but it would be very dangerous if they went alone, so Britain would have to go with them. I don't understand this logic. I don't understand why if America makes a mistake Britain doing it with them would make it any better.

He has said that the danger of America is that it becomes isolationist, so we have to remain engaged with America. But then his logic fails completely, because by that logic, to stop America from being isolationist, Britain will always do whatever America says.

Britain's role should have been to say that if you do this right and go with the United Nations and keep the international community involved, we will be your strong supporter, and this time we will deal with Iraq and not let pass another 12 years of sanctions and suffering for the Iraqi people.

If America had had no allies, the American people would have had more doubt, and they might have taken more time and done it right. We didn't have any leverage to correct mistakes. That was Blair's error, and he lost the support of his country. It's a tragedy for everybody.

Blair's position fascinates me. John Howard's decision was clearly based in beliefs about Australia as the hyperally. You'd expect Blair to know better. Despite his various prose rhapsodies and his channeling Margaret Thatcher's 'The lady's not for turning' I still don't understand why he joined Bush, far his intellectual inferior, in this madness.

The aftermath has been a disaster and Britain stands in danger of becoming as isolationist as the US.

Hear Me, California!

Let me speak to you all individually, my Californian friends. Your Governor ought to be smart. Really smart. Preferably smarter than you. Not just savvy, not just clever, but the kind of book-readin', history knowin', problem solvin', degree earnin', flexibly thinkin' smart that will ensure a measured and creative approach to whatever arises. If George Bush has proved anything, it's that a likable Regular Guy can't really balance the budget, or protect our interests, or refrain from pissing off our allies, or navigate the tricky waters of domestic and global affairs. No, only in the movies can a Regular Guy do that. A Regular Guy (if he's lucky) can become a movie star, or work out a lot, or buy a baseball team, or get rich, or be the last person standing on a reality TV show. And yes, a Regular Guy can develop very strong 'leadership skills.' But a Regular Guy really, truly isn't qualified to run a major state or a nation. Please, please, stop electing Regular Guys. They're making things worse. Much, much worse.

Is Arnold dumb? Despite the horrible scripts he accepts, probably not. That's not the point. The point is that the unnominated, unqualified, and under-educated Candidate Schwarzenegger has given you absolutely no reason to think that he's got what it takes. Sometimes political outsiders are a boon. But sometimes they're outsiders for a reason. Arnold's given you nothing to go on except the obvious opinion that he's too Big to accept anything from the government of California short of the starring role.

This is probably a useless and overlong entry, and it's a little self-defeating: As a comedy writer, naturally, Arnold's election would be a windfall. But the same could be said for President Bush's rise to power, and at some point the tragedy of the decline of the United States of America starts to outweigh the punchline bonanza.

Curing Cailfornia's problems will take more than a broom and a movie script. They still have a deficit. They still need a 2/3 vote in each house of their legislature to pass a budget or increase taxes. The Enron allegations are still out there.

Vatican: condoms don't stop Aids

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk.

The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to the HIV virus.

A senior Vatican spokesman backs the claims about permeable condoms, despite assurances by the World Health Organisation that they are untrue.

I am not going to try and pick holes in the Vatican's argument. They only took 300 years to admit they were wrong about Galileo.

Pity that this scientific error, unlike the geocentric theory of the universe, will kill people.

Honest John and the Chamber of Horrors

On 8 October 2003 the Prime Minister released 'Resolving deadlocks: a discussion paper on section 57 of the Australian Constitution'. This paper considers additional options for resolution of deadlocks between the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Section 57 currently provides for deadlocks between the House of Representatives and the Senate to be resolved by a double dissolution election.

The first option canvassed by the discussion paper would allow the Governor General to convene a joint sitting of both houses to consider a deadlocked bill, without the need for an election. The second option would allow the Governor General to convene a joint sitting of both houses after an ordinary general election.

The discussion paper is fairly light reading. Its case is persuasive only if you accept that the national interest and government policy are always the same thing. If you accept that governments are occasionally wrong then you probably want the Senate to have a second look at government bills.

Option 1 would simply abolish the power of the Senate while keeping the appearance of a second chamber. An upper house without power to stop government bills is pointless and a better approach would to honestly and openly advocate abolition of the Senate.

Option2 is more interesting but ultimately would just generate more and more elections. The effective term of the House is already shorter than 3 years:

Since 1901 the average elapsed time between elections has been 30.7 months, though if the six double dissolution elections are not counted, this figure climbs to 32.5 months.

If we look at specific periods over the years, we note that there has been a marked reduction in term length during the past 25 years. The average for all elections during this time is only 28.5 months, though the holding of four double dissolution elections no doubt distorts the figures. Even with these four elections removed from the figures, the average parliament (ignoring the current parliament) has lasted barely 31 months (see Table 4).

Under Option 2 the prime minister gets a chance to pass all government bills rejected by the previous Senate. The effect is that the prime minister has a heavy temptation to call extra general elections because, after every such election, the deadlocked bills can be passed in a joint sitting.

The Australian people like divided government:

Of course, the winning threshold for Senate elections (14.3 per cent) is far less than the tentative figure given above for House of Representatives elections. Still, the votes have shifted, and the consequence has been the inability of the major parties to gain a majority in the Senate.(41) The well-publicised consequence has been the increasingly interventionist style of the Senate when performing its review role. An obvious way of dealing with this is to alter the voting method arrangements, but such an approach would simply turn a blind eye to the seepage in major party votes that seemingly reflects long-term changes in voting behaviour.(42)

The discussion paper admits, by implication, that more Australians vote for opposition and minor parties in electing senators than in electing MHRs. It follows that many Australians vote for a major party in the House and for a minor party in the Senate. That's their choice. That choice coud be seen before the increase in the size of the Senate.

Adopting Option 2 would not cure the propensity of the Australian people to elect divided parliaments. It would merely ensure even more frequent elections than now, driven by prime ministerial ambition.

Berkshire Eagle Online - Today's Editorials

The White House did not equivocate while making its case for war. President Bush asserted that Iraq had reconstituted a nuclear weapons program and could have a bomb within a year. The president claimed Iraq had 500 tons of chemical weapons, 25,000 liters of anthrax and 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin. Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed U.S. troops would discover four chemical munitions bunkers in Taji, a factory for making poisons and explosives in Khurmal and a center for testing biological and chemical weapons in Amiriyah. None of the above were found, and chief inspector David Kay's assertion that evidence was discovered of Saddam Hussein's 'intent' to develop such weapons is too feeble to take seriously.

The next time someone tells the prewar WMD claims are confirmed by the Kay report I will run through:

• 500 tons of chemical weapons
  
• 25,000 liters of anthrax and 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin
  
• four chemical munitions bunkers in Taji
  
• factory for making poisons and explosives in Khurmal
  
• a center for testing biological and chemical weapons in Amiriyah
  
• the massive terrorist facility in Iraqi Kurdistan
  

The last 4 are rather large items and (I would have thought) somewhat difficult to conceal. That is probably why the massive terrorist facility was exposed as a myth before the war even began. We are not told the size of the vial of mass destruction, but I suspect it does not hold 35 000 litres.

Troppo Armadillo: Supporting Rimmer

...hype to fill the tabloid columns. For instance, a headline in today's NT News;

Pom fans spark kinky sex boom

Australian brothels are stocking up on whips and chains for the World Cup in anticipation of a boom in business generated by posh English fans.

Some blogposts just cry out to be quoted word for word.

How Blair Lost by Winning

Someone who saw through this was Hugo Young, the longtime columnist for The Guardian, who died last month. Mr. Young was a man of very high principle, who despite all he had seen retained a capacity to be shocked by political mendacity. He was also a liberal centrist with much fondness for America, if not for the Bush administration.

Shortly before his death (when Tony Blair, needless to say, fulsomely joined in the tributes to Mr. Young's career), and maybe with an urgent sense of mortality, Mr. Young wrote a series of devastating columns. He put his finger on 'the great overarching fact about the war that Blair will never admit but cannot convincingly deny.' This was that 'he was committed to war months before he said he was.'

He was committed because he had persuaded himself - though not the British people - of the necessity of following the United States, come what may. Mr. Blair even elucidated this (albeit only in private, as reliably recorded by the journalist Peter Stothard): 'It would be more damaging to long-term world peace and security if the Americans alone defeated Saddam Hussein than if they had international support to do so.'

And so what he insistently calls 'my decision' was, in truth, made for him in Washington. After that, it was simply a matter of finding what the deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz, has called 'bureaucratic reasons' for war. And on that count, Mr. Blair performed a very useful service for President Bush.

When the Cuba correspondent in 'Citizen Kane' cables back to the newspaper that he could 'send you prose poems' about the scenery but that 'there is no war,' Charles Foster Kane replies, 'you provide the prose poems - I'll provide the war.' That, in effect, was the deal between George Bush and Tony Blair.

And provide them Mr. Blair duly did, even if some of the prose rhapsodies - particularly those about 45-minute missile deployment and exotic minerals out of Africa - were just a little too fanciful. Now even the prime minister must begin to see the perverse consequences of this: far from a greater closeness between the two countries, there is now a palpable estrangement.

Although no cleverer or nicer than the Americans, the British are perhaps more literal-minded, with an innate distaste for being misled. More and more they sense that they were taken into war on false pretenses. And, no, they do not think that this was such a beautiful thing.

I think this is broadly true of John Howard as well, although his chances of managing a prose rhapsody are perhaps more limited. The Howard government has been more fortunate in that the ADF has suffered no casualties, the war has had little impact on our budget, and there was probably a bipartisan consensus on the importance of Australia's role as hyperally. Those saving factors do not exist in Britain and Australia has yet to see opposition to the war from people at the same level as Robin Cook.

Despite that, I suspect the long run will be no kinder to Howard's government than to Blair's. Life will get tougher as more information emerges about the actual date on which Howard committed Australia to war - presumably not long after Blair. Life will get even tougher once the Hutton inquiry reports and the number of occasions that Howard was not told anything grow and grow.

Pentagon offers 'bioterror kit' online

The Pentagon has been selling surplus laboratory equipment that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons, according to a congressional investigation released yesterday.

Defence officials were called in to answer questions before a congressional inquiry about the sale of the army surplus, which included centrifuges, evaporators, bacteriological incubators, and protective suits to unknown customers in other countries, including Egypt and the Philippines, where terrorist groups have been known to operate.

The news is particularly embarrassing, coming only days after the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group claimed the discovery of similar equipment in Iraq was evidence that the Saddam Hussein regime had a covert weapons programme.

Ouch...