Refugees and Immigrants

The New Republic and the Atlantic  both have interesting stories about immigration and refugees. The story in the New Republic is about extra-continentals, which are basically immigrants the Middle East and Asia that fly into Brazil -- visas are easy to get -- and then hike their way to Mexico. Once in Mexico, the Mexican government gives them around a week or so to try and make it across the border into America. Why are the coming from so far away? Well the number of extra-continentals crossing into the U.S. has been increasing since 2010, but a lot of the immigrants say they're doing this because it's too hard to gain status in Germany.

Over at the Atlantic they show us how Germany is attempting to screen their refugees. Simply put, they think a lot of applicants for asylum are trying to game the system.

Anyways, read together, I think the articles provide an interesting perspective.

French Consular Official Accused of Arms Trafficking in Israel

Romain Franck, a French official working as a driver at the French Consulate in Jerusalem, has been accused of trafficking arms into the Gaza Strip.

Mr. Franck, 23 years old, was on a year long contract, designed to give young people an opportunity to work overseas.

According to Shin Beth, the Israel Military Intelligence Service, Mr. Franck was motivated by money, not political belief.

More at Paris Match and RFI.

Russians Pushing Cambridge Analytica Story

According to the German Marshall Fund, Russian trolls are pushing the Cambridge Analytica story for all its worth. The German Marshall Fund's Securing Democracy program conducts a real-time analysis of 600 accounts linked to Russian influencing operations.

Here's the stories these accounts are pushing at the moment.

Does this mean the story is fake? Of course not! This is a serious story that merits attention. Do read up on it.

Trust but verify.

25% of @MassAGO Followers are Fake

As I mention in a previous post, when investigating the #CambridgeAnalytica, I noticed that a lot of @MassAGO's followers weren't active. Here is some follow up:

Twitter Audit says 25% of @MassAGO's followers are fake.

According to Twitter, at least 5% of Twitter users are bots. And roughly 15% of users involved in political discussions are bots. So it looks like her numbers are a little higher than usual. Anyways, all of this is still preliminary.

If you know a better way of doing this, please let me know.

Observatory of Social Media: Cambridge Analytica

Looks like the Cambridge Analytica story is gaining traction. Here is some data from the Observatory of Social Media.

This is what people are tweeting about when they tweet about Cambridge Analytica. Mostly Facebook. Bannon also is on there. Trumprussia and impeachtrump. This was just tweets for the last few days. You can explore the graph here.

There has been a huge up tick in tweets about #cambridgeanalytica. 

These are the people that are tweeting about it. Examine the graph here.

Finally, who are these people? Using Botometer, we can see if these accounts or bots or not. One of the weaknesses of this approach is that organizational accounts often have quite high scores.

Anyways, a lot of the users don't have high bot scores, but some do. Like MassAGO, which is the official account of the Massachusetts Attorney General, Maura Healey. So I decided to go through her followers looking for bots. Why? Because the data above was a bit boring. She was one of the more interesting hits. Here is a list of followers with a bot score 60% or higher. There are also interesting examples of followers with no tweets. Has she paid a service to inflate her follower numbers? I'll save that for another time. Here are the first 30 potential bots discovered. 

In coming posts, I will attempt to examine some of these users in more detail.

Thoughts on Xi and Trump

This week Xi was officially renamed President of the People's Republic, hardly surprising. I'm not sure people really care. I know some netizens do, but the average man on the street probably doesn't. I don't really get a chance to hear the views of common people all that often. A few years ago, on slow train to Chengdu, I had a conversation with two men, roughly my own age. They admired Putin greatly. They liked strong leaders. And they found Obama somewhat lacking.

We were told, after Obama's election, that his apotheosis would restore faith in the American system. Hardly. The image might be inspiring to some, but America's pathetic attempt at virtue signaling is drowned out by the images pumped out by Hollywood and the media. Indeed, the Atlantic has an interesting piece, explaining why a lot of Trump's Chinese supporters like him. Quite a few of them studied in the U.S. where they found themselves caught in the middle of our culture war, and they didn't like it one bit.

I sometimes wonder why Xi is doing it? Does he hope to turn the Chinese State into his private property -- in the manner of an African dictator? According to selectorate theory, motivation is assumed. Every leader, whether they lead a democracy or a tyranny, wants to remain in power. They do so by bribing the people that matter.

In a country with a large selectorate, leaders are forced to bribe the selectorate with public goods: infrastructure, schools, health care. In a country with a small selectorate, it's cheaper to bribe the selectorate with private goods: women, private jets, Swiss bank accounts.

So how is Xi staying in power? Is he bribing people with private goods or public goods? And what about Trump?

With Trump, the bribes are clearly public so far: tax cuts, infrastructure spending, increased defense spending. For example, I don't much care about infrastructure spending or tax cuts. Living overseas, I don't use the infrastructure and I don't pay taxes unless my income exceeds a certain level. But being the son of an arms manufacturer, I'm all for increased defense spending. I think it happens to be sound policy, but I have to admit, I'm not a disinterested observer.

One thing Xi has done is increased pensions. This seems to suggest that Xi is relying on bribing people with public goods, but is he. Pensions are interesting. Corporate employees pay part of their income into pension funds, 8%. Government employees don't pay anything into the pension funds. In other words, the pension scheme can be seen as redistributing money from private sector employees to public sector employees.

Ask yourself this, who is more likely to be part of the Chinese selectorate? A mid-level civil servant or a mid-level wage worker in the private sector? I'd know who I'd bother bribing.

Which brings me back to Trump. Liberals like to portray Trump's attack on officials as an attack on the rule of law. But in fact what his attacks are indicative of is this: in America the electorate is still the selectorate; his power isn't dependent on some cabal of civil servants.

A Hollow Navy

When the Cold War ended. the U.S. Navy consisted of 594 ships. By 9/11 the U.S. Navy consisted of only 316 ships. According to the Naval Fleet Register, the U.S. Navy consists of 282 ships, of which 242 are active in commission. Despite the shrinking size of the U.S. Navy, it is being called upon to deploy more frequently than ever before. 

Since the cold war, the Navy has been cut in half, but the number of ships deployed overseas has remained almost unchanged: 100. That means less time for crews to train and more wear and tear on the ships themselves. In 2014 the average sailor spent 108 hours a week standing duty. Is it any wonder that the Navy has started wreaking ships into things? 

I think not.

Seablindness, judging by the sample, is an excellent book that tackles this important subject and more. I look forward to reading it in the coming weeks.