Category Archives: Articles

Thinking about Terrorism Risk

Posted on by

Thinking about Terrorism Risk

William Leiss

Note:  This piece was published in The Ottawa Citizen on 22 April 2013.

Terrorism has a special salience for Canadians:  The destruction of Air India Flight 182 in June 1985 by a bomb placed inside an item of checked baggage within Canada, causing 329 deaths, is the second-largest fatality count from this type of attack in modern times – second only to 9/11.  Twenty-one years later, in June 2006, the arrest of the “Toronto 18,” and the subsequent revelation of clear evidence of dedicated planning for mass murder, showed that we were not immune to ongoing threats of this kind.

The fact that last week’s bombings in Boston was the first such event on U. S. soil since 9/11, as well as the argument that the overall frequency of what may be classified as terrorist attacks in developed countries appears to be declining over the past decades, do not provide much comfort.  This is because terrorism strikes most of us as a special – perhaps unique – type of risk, due to its deliberate malevolence directed against innocent and unsuspecting victims and, sometimes, to its suggestion of complex and intractable issues (the “clash of civilizations”).  Instinctively, we want to know not just “Who?” but “Why?”  And yet the answers to the second question, once provided, are almost invariably unsatisfactory.

The political debate that arose immediately in Canada after the Boston bombings, triggered by the phrase “root causes,” reveals the inevitably unhelpful character of seeking simple, quick responses to these events.  The very nature of terrorism, to the extent to which we can understand it (or even classify it as a distinct phenomenon separate from other forms of intentional violence) at all, defies clear explanation.  Likewise the quick, ritualistic rejoinder from heads of government, to the effect that they will always respond to them with toughness and swift justice, is simply irrelevant; for the perpetrators, present and future, this threat carries no weight whatsoever.

Yet the history of modern terrorism, from its origins in Tsarist Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century, offers at least some guidance.  (I owe what follows to Claudia Verhoeven of Cornell University.)  The mind of the terrorist is governed by one overriding idea, namely, to create a radical rupture in time, in history, and in tradition, by means of a singular event, or a connected series of such events, through “propaganda by the deed,” a phrase which also dates from this historical period.  This idea thus differs fundamentally from the motivations of modern mass-movements with political objectives, which seek by either democratic or non-democratic means, or a combination of both, over a protracted period, through many setbacks, to achieve radical institutional change by ultimately taking the reins of “legitimate” power.

The competing idea of an instantaneous and thoroughgoing rupture in historical time by an exemplary violent deed is sometimes accompanied by an explicit rationale, in the form of a manifesto, but not always.  But this difference is immaterial, because in either case the “thinking” behind the deed is, strictly speaking, delusional.  There is not, and there cannot be, an organic connection between the deed itself and the expected outcome.  This is shown clearly in one of the most notorious cases to date, that of the Unabomber, who penned elaborate academic essays in social theory to accompany his deadly packages:  There is simply no sensible link between the rationale and the means of its intended realization.  But in other cases, such as the inarticulate ramblings of Timothy McVeigh in his interview on Sixty Minutes or the episodic Twitter feeds from the younger of the two Boston brothers, we have almost nothing to go on.  Sometimes the supposed rationale is simply pathetic:  One of the recently-named jihadists from London, Ontario apparently reasoned that, since it was too onerous for a young man to live as a faithful Muslim, without alcohol and women, he would rather earn a quick ticket to Paradise by becoming a warrior for his faith.

For me this clearly delusional character of the necessary acts of deadly violence that must accompany the propaganda by the deed links the kind of events that are explicitly labelled as terrorist attacks with other forms of private acts of mass murder.  Thus it is hard for me to see any essential difference between the Boston bombings, on the one hand, and on the other the terrible shootings in 2012 in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut (in both of which there were accidental circumstances that prevented many more casualties from occurring).  Others may disagree, of course; in both media commentary and academic analysis, we do not yet have a consensus on a definitive conception of terrorism.

Then what do we have to guide us in thinking about terrorism risk?  The surest guide is the evidence that dedicated police work, using a combination of traditional and modern technology-enhanced techniques, has been shown to be, in a number of different countries, a highly-effective means for preventing and mitigating this risk.  In Canada this includes the superb infiltration and surveillance operation that forestalled the planned attacks by the Toronto 18.  To be sure, this work will always be relatively more effective against small groups, as opposed to so-called “lone-wolf” operations; but even in the latter case, as the events in Boston showed, newer resources such as social-media networks can supply additional tools for the police to rely on.

The legitimate special fears to which certain types of risk, such as terrorism, give rise always require an equal measure of fortitude and balanced perspective on the part of the public.  We need to resist the temptation to compromise important civil liberties in our search for an adequate level of protection against this risk, because it simply cannot be reduced much below what we have been living with in recent years.  Above all we must ensure that we keep in mind that there are many sources of risk and that it is a mistake to overcompensate on one while paying too little attention to others.

Looking for trouble

Posted on by

Looking for Trouble

Blog Post by William Leiss, Senior Invited Fellow Fall 2012

Society for the Humanities, Cornell University

I define risk as the chance of harm, and risk management as the attempt to anticipate and prevent or mitigate harms that may be avoidable.  Risk estimation and assessment is the technical tool that can be used to predict both how likely a specific type of harm is to affect us, and how much harm might be done if it comes to pass.  This predictive capacity allows us to take precautionary measures, in advance of the harm being inflicted, to lower the anticipated amount of damage, by spending some money in advance – provided we are wise enough.  Risk management can, if used correctly, help us either to avoid some harms entirely or otherwise to minimize the damage they may do to us.

 

Natural Hazards:  Taking precautionary measures to lessen anticipated damage is sometimes a huge advantage.  Long before Katrina hit New Orleans, it was known that the existing levees could not withstand a category 4-5 hurricane; in the mid-1990s, a decision was taken that governments could not afford the estimated $10-15 billion needed to upgrade the levees.  The monetary damage from Katrina exceeds $100 billion and rising; the human toll has been simply appalling, as it is now with Sandy.  After Sandy there is an active discussion – see The New York Times article on Nov. 7, “Weighing sea barriers to protect New York” – go to http://tinyurl.com/ba35493 – about whether to spend a good chunk of money soon, and on what type of preventative measures, which might substantially lessen the costs of a future event of the same or worse type for the low-lying areas in New York City and New Jersey.  A careful risk assessment can both predict the probabilities (with ranges of uncertainty) for a future event and its estimated damages.  Let’ see whether the relevant parties have a rational discussion about this issue, or whether it just gets lost amidst ideological fevers about the size of government and abolishing FEMA.

 

Social and Political Hazards (USA):  Before election day 2012 there was a substantial risk that a win for the Romney-Ryan ticket could mean a long term shift to the far right in American politics:  a super-conservative lock on the Supreme Court for the next generation, a “permanent Republican majority” achieved through billionaire vote-buying and blatant voter-suppression among the poor, and major social policy shifts, including the cancellation of Obamacare and wholesale repeal of regulatory controls in financial, environmental, and other areas.  (Basically, for those who know their American history, this agenda promised a return to the conditions that existed in the 1890s.)  We now know a lot more about the strategic analysis that went on in the Obama camp, and the counter-measures that were devised to seek to lessen to lessen the chance that the Republican agenda would succeed, thanks to a brilliant piece published on Nov. 7 by Michael Scherer (http://tinyurl.com/afspvq6), entitled “Inside the secret world of quants and data crunchers who helped Obama win.”  (Given how much damage was done in the ongoing financial crisis by quants running wild, this is welcome news.)  Scherer’s story details the highly-sophisticated database construction and statistical analysis that enabled the Obama team to do precise targeting of key voting blocks, offsetting the Republican monetary advantage in the cruder techniques of blanketing the airwaves with negative messaging.    It is very clear from the post-electoral recriminations among the key Romney backers that they were taken by surprise by the effectiveness of these counter-measures, which by the way were based on legitimate democratic objectives in getting out the voters, rather than trying to suppress voter turnout. Good; maybe they’ll learn something useful, although I doubt it.

 

Social and Political Hazards (Europe):  Germany and other powerful northern European states have so far failed to come up with a sensible political strategy for dealing with the never-ending sovereign debt and deficit crisis there.  Virtually all knowledgeable commentators agree that the current “austerity regime” will turn out to be self-defeating on a massive scale.  (See, for example, the editorial in the Nov. 8 New York Times, “Greece drinks the hemlock”:  http://tinyurl.com/czmnhd4.) True, there were serious financial scandals in the now-weakened nations, including profligacy and deception in Greece and horrendous housing bubbles in Spain and Ireland.  But the medicine is now exacerbating the disease, causing a potentially deadly downward economic spiral with no end in sight.  Unemployment rates, especially among the young, are skyrocketing, and impoverishment is spreading.  The urge to punish the formerly-profligate, among citizens in Germany and elsewhere, is understandable but atavistic, and ignores the fact that their own financial institutions were deeply complicit in the earlier wrongdoing.  There is a very serious long-term risk in this situation, already evident in Greece, where rapid economic decline fosters xenophobic political and social violence (all-too-evident on this continent in the 1920s).  If this prospect is not clearly recognized soon, and if the self-defeating austerity measures are not corrected, there is big trouble ahead.

 

So, despite what the old adage tells us, looking for trouble is a very good idea, once we are armed with the concept of risk.  Phrased more precisely, this prescription advises us to try to anticipate trouble in a disciplined and evidence-driven way, seeking to head off at least the worst consequences of highly-likely harms.  The alternative – waiting for the body count to be tallied once the hazard has struck – is unfair to the victims of chance.

 

11/12/11

Looking for Trouble

Environmental Release of Genetically-Engineered Mosquitoes: The Latest Episode in Frankenstein-Type Scientific Adventures

Posted on by

Environmental Release of Genetically-Engineered Mosquitoes:

The Latest Episode in Frankenstein-Type Scientific Adventures

Mosquitoes [PDF]

William Leiss (2 February 2012)

 

The subtitle for this essay is merely descriptive – not at all intentionally provocative – and is meant to be taken literally.  By “Frankenstein-type” I mean, not the scientific work itself, but rather the arrogant and thoughtless act of a scientist in releasing a novel entity into the environment without adequate notice or prior discussion with the public, whether accidentally (as in the case of Mary Shelley’s story) or deliberately.  Should this practice continue, as I suspect it will, almost certainly there will eventually be a very bad ending – for science itself.  Only remedial action by other scientists themselves can head it off, and so far such action is noteworthy by its absence.  They will regret this omission.

 

Yesterday’s story in Spiegel International Online by Rafaela von Bredow, “The controversial release of suicide mosquitoes” (http://spon.de/adztv), prompted me to look further.  And sure enough, I had missed an earlier report in the publication I most rely on for such matters, The New York Times, in the edition dated 31 October 2011, written by Andrew Pollack:  “Concerns raised over genetically engineered mosquitoes” (http://tinyurl.com/7remh3q).  Other sources for this issue can easily be found by putting “genetically engineered mosquitoes” into your preferred Internet search engine.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito carries the dengue virus, which causes the most important insect-borne viral disease (dengue fever) in the world.  Worldwide there are an estimated 50-100 million cases and at least 20,000 fatalities (mostly children) annually, and there is no vaccine or adequate therapy.  It is a serious public health burden in many countries.  Papers in the scientific literature about the possibility of attacking the problem by modifying or genetically engineering the mosquito itself have appeared over the past fifteen years.  The dominant approach of this type is to release sterilized male mosquitoes into the environment which upon mating with females will produce no young.  This approach has shown limited success.

 

The recent publicity has to do with a new approach in which laboratory-bred male mosquitoes are genetically engineered to express a protein that causes the larvae to die.  The gene was developed by a biotechnology company in Oxford, England.  The controversy involves the decision made by the company to seek approval for the environmental release of the GE mosquitoes in confidence – without public release of relevant information – from governments in various countries.  This began in 2009 in the Cayman Islands; later releases took place in Malaysia and Brazil, and future releases are scheduled in Panama, India, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Florida.

 

Here’s an extract from Andrew Pollack’s story:

In particular, critics say that Oxitec, the British biotechnology company that developed the dengue-fighting mosquito, has rushed into field testing without sufficient review and public consultation, sometimes in countries with weak regulations.

“Even if the harms don’t materialize, this will undermine the credibility and legitimacy of the research enterprise,” said Lawrence O. Gostin, professor of international health law at Georgetown University.

Luke Alphey, the chief scientist at Oxitec, said the company had left the review and community outreach to authorities in the host countries.

“They know much better how to communicate with people in those communities than we do coming in from the U.K.” he said.

Rafaela von Bredow’s recent and useful follow-up report in Spiegel Online also includes comments from other scientists, in particular two who are working on competing projects. The first reference below is to Guy Reeves of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany:

 

The geneticist [Reeves] doesn’t think Oxitec’s techniques are “particularly risky” either. He simply wants more transparency.  ”Companies shouldn’t keep scientifically important facts secret where human health and environmental safety are concerned,” he says.

Reeves himself is working on even riskier techniques, ones that could permanently change the genetic makeup of entire insect populations. That’s why he so vehemently opposes Oxitec’s rash field trials:  He believes they could trigger a public backlash against this relatively promising new approach, thereby halting research into genetic modification of pests before it really gets off the ground.

He’s not alone in his concerns. “If the end result is that this technology isn’t accepted, then I’ve spent the last 20 years conducting research for nothing,” says Ernst Wimmer, a developmental biologist at Germany’s Göttingen University and one of the pioneers in this field.  Nevertheless he says he understands Oxitec’s secrecy:  ”We know about the opponents to genetic engineering, who have destroyed entire experimental crops after they were announced. That, of course, doesn’t help us make progress either.”

 

Commentary.

 

H. G. Wells published his novel, The Island of Doctor Moreau, in 1896:  See the Wikipedia entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Island_of_Doctor_Moreau; the entire book is online at:  http://www.bartleby.com/1001/.  His story deals with a medical scientist living on a remote island who creates half-human/half-animal creatures.  In more recent times we have become aware of experiments in genetic engineering, such as cloning, that have been done in some countries, notably South Korea, and have raised serious issues in scientific ethics.  (See the New York Times editorial of December 2005 [http://tinyurl.com/7xmdlgt] and follow the links, or just search for “cloning South Korea.”)  Later publicity concerned the cloning of human embryos in China:  See the New Scientist article (http://tinyurl.com/7sguhgq) from March 2002.  Significant differences among countries in terms of government regulatory regimes and scientific research ethics programs remind us of the Wells’ scenario.

 

Other modified insects using the earlier technology (males sterilized with radiation), notably the pink bollworm, have been released to control plant pests.  The GE mosquitoes from Oxitec are the first to use the new technology for a human health problem.  They could very well represent an enormous human benefit with insignificant or even no offsetting risks – although it would be very nice to have a credible and publicly-available risk assessment certifying the same (perhaps we will get one from the U. S. Department of Agriculture, which has to approve the field trial in Florida).  It is quite possible that very few people living in countries affected by dengue fever would have any objections to the use of GE mosquitoes.

 

But the biggest risk involved in the use of unpublicized field trials (environmental release) for GE mosquitoes is to scientists and scientific research itself.  Readers of my recent blog, (http://leiss.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Nature-is-the-biggest-bioterrorist.pdf), on the genetic engineering of the H5N1 avian flu virus, will recall the interesting issues in scientific ethics raised in that case which are different from, but related to, those in the current one.

 

Both of these sets of issues encompass the ability and willingness of the scientific community to “police” research practices with the long-term public interest in mind.  To do so they would have to create deliberative structures both international in scope and sufficiently robust to enforce their strictures on unwilling members of their community – for example, by an enforceable policy of denial of research grant funding and publication in journals.  (The suggestion here avoids any necessary involvement by government authorities.)  This is a tall order, to be sure, but there are a few precedents, notably the 1975 Asilomar Conference (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asilomar_Conference_on_Recombinant_DNA).[1]

 

In the case of GE mosquitoes, the offhand comment by the lead scientist, Luke Alphey, quoted above from Andrew Pollack’s article, with its crude justification for ignoring his own clear responsibility for initiating public disclosure and deliberation, is telling.  The other scientists who were quoted in the two articles referenced above were obviously unhappy with him, but they did not suggest what remedies might be imposed for such irresponsible acts.  This despite their recognition that it is the genetic engineering of plants and animals that has been already a source of both intense public curiosity and equally great concern, a phenomenon that will inevitably grow in importance with each further advance in scientific discovery and application in this field.  For scientists to ignore the risks to their own activities in this domain is foolish and short-sighted indeed.

[1]The first famous example was the debate among some scientists over the use of the first atomic bomb in 1945:  See the discussion in the Back Section of my 2008 book, The Priesthood of Science (http://www.press.uottawa.ca/book/the-priesthood-of-science).

Posted on by

“Complexity cloaks Catastrophe”

William Leiss (17 January 2012)

Complexity cloaks Catastrophe - PDF

Good risk management is inherently simple; adding too many complexities increases the likelihood of overlooking the obvious.

Leiss, “A Short Sermon on Risk Management” (http://leiss.ca/?page_id=467)

 

The quoted phrase that forms the title for this paper comes from the opening pages of Richard Bookstaber’s indispensable 2007 book, A Demon of our own Design:  Markets, hedge funds, and the perils of financial innovations (New York:  Wiley).  This book inspired much of my own subsequent work in this area, as published in The Doom Loop in the Financial Sector, and other black holes of risk (University of Ottawa Press, 2010:  e-book available at:  http://www.press.uottawa.ca/book/the-doom-loop-in-the-financial-sector);  see the section on “Complexity” at pages 80-83).  Bookstaber’s key point is that complexity in financial innovations is itself an important risk factor for systemic failure in the financial sector.

Now the New York Times columnist Joe Nocera has written in his January 17 column, “Keep it Simple” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/opinion/bankings-got-a-new-critic.html?hp), about an important new source for this topic.   This is a November 2011 paper prepared by staff at a firm called Federal Financial Analytics, Inc.:  “A new framework for systemic financial regulation:  Simple, transparent, enforceable, and accountable rules to reform financial markets,” available as a PDF file at:  http://www.fedfin.com/images/stories/client_reports/complexityriskpaper.pdf.

In effect, both the paper and Nocera’s commentary argue – with reference to the U. S. Dodd-Frank Act – that responding to complexities in financial innovations with complex regulatory regimes is a mug’s game.  It does not solve the problem of “complexity risk” and in fact may exacerbate that risk.  It also does a poor job of anticipating the next challenge, as the recent collapse of MF Global shows.

The Obama administration has put its faith in “smart regulation,” which ignores the fact that it is the industries being regulated which can hire the smartest people and task them with finding a way to circumvent any set of rules, however complex.  (Meanwhile, his Republican opponents work feverishly to gut his regulatory agencies of competent staff and leaders.)  Similarly, the authors of the paper, “A new framework for systemic financial regulation,” propose solutions involving new corporate-governance regimes, but the private-sector risk governance regimes failed utterly the last time around, so why on earth would the rest of us want to retry this experiment?

In the end we have to turn to the most reliable guide, Simon Johnson, whose advice is simple:  Break up the big banks.  (Follow his blogs at:  http://baselinescenario.com/; the latest is, “Refusing to take yes for an answer on bank reform.”)  Banks to big to fail should be regarded as too big to exist.  And yet the leading financial institutions in the United States are bigger than ever.  No “systemically-important financial institution” will ever be allowed to fail.  The bankers who run them know this.  They also know that they cannot be outsmarted by the regulators.

 

Nature is the biggest bioterrorist

Posted on by

“Nature is the biggest bioterrorist”:

Scientists, the Risk of Bioterrorism, and the Freedom to Publish

William Leiss (22 December 2011)

[Nature is the biggest bioterrorist] – PDF

The quoted sentence in the title is attributed to R. A. M. Fouchier, a scientist at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and the University of Wisconsin, in an interview with The New York Times.[1]  He is the lead researcher for the team that, working in a highly secure laboratory in the Netherlands, genetically engineered the “highly pathogenic” avian influenza A(H5N1) virus so as to make it easily transmissible in mammals.  H5N1 is an extraordinarily lethal group or clade of viruses which has killed about 60% of the 600 or so humans that have been infected by it since 2003 (the virus was first identified in 1997).  A pertinent comparison is with the 1918 pandemic, which killed only about 1% of those infected.  The H5N1 viruses are easily transmissible among birds and are sometimes transmitted from birds to humans, but so far there is no evidence for direct human-to-human transmission.

Scientists have been studying its genome in order to understand why human-to-human transmission has been inhibited to date – knowing that, should this inhibition be overcome, at a time when no vaccine was available, the human death toll around the world could be enormous.  Scientists have also been trying to manipulate its genetic structure so as to identify exactly what gene changes would allow it to overcome this inhibition; working with ferrets in the laboratory, they now think they know what kinds of gene changes would enable the virus to move freely among members of a mammalian species.  In the press release from Erasmus Medical Center Professor Fouchier explains why this work was done:  “We now know what mutations to watch for in the case of an outbreak and we can then stop the outbreak before it is too late.  Furthermore, the finding will help in the timely development of vaccinations and medication.”

Now comes the tricky part.  The researchers want to publish their work in full, in the journals Science and Nature, arguing that other researchers working in this same area need to know the details in order to evaluate the results properly.  But the U. S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity has asked the two journals not to publish major sections of the papers, specifically the “experimental details and mutation data that would enable replication of the experiments” – lest terrorists seek to weaponize the engineered pathogen to deliberately produce a global pandemic.

Professor Fouchier and others prefer to treat the issue as a matter of practicalities:  (1) terrorist groups cannot easily duplicate the expertise, lab equipment, and development time needed to engineer this virus, even with the blueprint in hand; (2) even if the experimental details are restricted to recognized researchers, the results will eventually be circulated more widely; (3) there are other, available candidate materials for producing biological weapons for terrorist purposes that are far easier to work with.

One problem in resolving this issue is that Professor Fouchier has muddied the waters considerably with his comment about nature being the “biggest bioterrorist.”  Another scientist, Professor John Oxford, London School of Medicine, further clouded the matter with these remarks:  “The biggest risk with bird flu is from the virus itself.  We should forget about bio terrorism and concentrate on Mother Nature.”[2]  They should both be forced to wear dunce caps and sit in the corner for a while.  As they should know, by the word “terrorism” we refer to deliberate acts of human malevolence and injustice causing great harms in the name of political objectives.  Its commonest and age-old form is state-sponsored terrorism, such as that being suffered now by the citizens of Syria and dozens of other countries around the world; non-state actors also employ it, on a much less widespread scale, and sometimes in pursuit of legitimate struggles of political resistance against tyrannical regimes.

But Mother Nature is not a terrorist.  In using this provocative language some scientists are trying to sidestep the very difficult issues in responsible decision making that have been raised by the proposal to publish this research in its entirety.  These difficulties can be seen if we array the decision problem in the form of offsetting risk scenarios:

  1. What is the probability or likelihood that the full publication of this research will enable public health agencies to save many lives – that would otherwise be lost – if and when the H5N1 virus naturally evolves into a form that is directly transmissible from one person to another? And:
  2. What is the likelihood that restricting full publication to designated members of the research community will achieve the necessary scientific advance from a public health standpoint?

 

Versus

 

  1. What is the likelihood that the full publication of this research will enable terrorists to weaponize this pathogen and deliberately cause a human pandemic that might not otherwise happen through the virus’s natural evolution?  And:
  2. What is the likelihood that the restricted circulation of these research results will succeed in keeping the information out of the hands of potential terrorists?

Framing the choices we face as a set of contrasting risk scenarios is a way of using a systematic and disciplined approach to identify the trade-offs and assumptions that are otherwise hidden in the narrative problem-formulation.  It also acts as a requirement for participants in the debate to specify what types of evidence could be assembled in support of attempts to answer these specific questions.

It would be possible, were sufficient time and resources to be made available, to undertake a formal set of risk assessments to address these four propositions; or we could just decide to rely on educated guesswork, for example, through an established procedure known as “expert elicitation” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_elicitation).  This is unlikely to happen:  Some behind-the-scenes jockeying between the scientific journals, the research community, and the U.S. biosecurity committee will produce a resolution of this particular issue that the rest of us will read about later.

However, if either kind of systematic decision analysis were to be carried out and then published, all of us could perhaps learn a bit more about how to make sensible decisions of this type, which might be helpful when the next problem of this type rolls around.  Because there is a virtual certainty that there will be more problems of this type.  This is a simple function of the increasing power of scientific investigation itself, especially in highly sensitive areas like genetic manipulation and some others, such as synthetic biology and the detailed understanding and potential manipulation of brain functions.

[1] Denis Grady and William J. Broad, “Seeing terror risk, U.S. asks journals to cut flu study facts” (http://tinyurl.com/89w7cfl) and Doreen Carvajal, “Security in flu study was paramount, scientist says” (http://tinyurl.com/76kn2om), The New York Times, 21 December 2011; Fergus Walsh, “When should science be censored?” (20.12.11)  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16275946.   For a very thorough summary of background information see the Wikipedia article at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H5N1.

[2] See further Richard Ingham, “Scientists fight back in ‘mutant flu’ research,” The Globe and Mail, 22 December 2011, A14:  http://tinyurl.com/77tm52w.

Germany as Saviour or Demon: Political Risk in the Eurozone and the Burden of History

Posted on by

Germany as Saviour or Demon:

Political Risk in the Eurozone and the Burden of History

[Germany as Saviour or Demon] – PDF

William Leiss (9 December 2011)

 

Introductory Note:

These reflections were inspired by the insightful article published on December 6 in Spiegel Online, “A controversial paragon:  Europe shudders at Germany’s new-found power”: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,801982,00.html.  See also (1) the opinion column by Jakob Augstein, “The return of the ugly Germans:  Merkel is leading the country into isolation:” 8 December: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,802591,00.html and (2) Christoph Schult, “Summit advice:  How about a little humility, Frau Merkel?” 8 December: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,802515,00.html.

 

The sheer scale of the irony now playing out on the European continent is mind-boggling.  The first phase of the Eurozone crisis is just about over and the second – marked by the German-French alliance’s proposal for a dramatic upgrade in fiscal integration of at least some subset of the EU’s national economies – is about to begin.  Almost certainly the  practical implementation of this new strategy will set the nations who sign up for it on a one-way street:  The external oversight and self-discipline for national budgets that will be required to halt the euro’s downward slide toward destruction will lead, step by step, to a deeper functional unity, first in fiscal matters and later in other institutions.

If the financial markets can be persuaded to accept it as a viable long-term strategy, they will do so only with a highly sceptical mindset.  Those markets will be alert to any hints of backsliding, playing for time, or fakery in the national accounts, and undoubtedly they will punish the malingerers severely should they find evidence of the same.

As the marvellous Spiegel Online article shows, Germany appears to have won over the French – not just Sarkozy, but much of the French decision-making élite more widely – to its concept of long-term financial and economic health.  In a speech in November Sarkozy said:  “All my efforts are directed towards adapting France to a system that works.  The German system.”  In fact, as of now, Germany stands alone as the one and only model for all of the Eurozone (and indeed EU) economies.  Thus 66 years after France and the rest looked around, in the Summer of 1945, at the immense destruction, loss of life, and raw memories of the unimaginable savageries perpetrated on them by their German neighbours, are they about to say:  “We are all Germans now”?

One of the smaller ironies for the French was the news, just this past week, that German police were raiding the homes of the last surviving members of the SS unit that carried out the notorious massacre at the village of Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944:  There were only two survivors (out of almost 700 men, women, and children); the French have never rebuilt the town (http://www.oradour.info/), leaving it as a memorial to those who died there.  After all this time, the German police apparently were looking for evidence of their complicity in that shameful episode.

But ironies abound.  Who in 1945 could have imagined that in 2011 the Foreign Minister of Poland – a country which suffered so terribly during the Nazi occupation – would give a speech in Berlin in which he said:  “I’m less worried about Germany’s power than about its failure to act.  It has become Europe’s essential nation.  It must not fail in its leadership.”  (See also the New York Times article, December 9, “Europe’s debt crisis brings two former foes closer than ever”:  http://tinyurl.com/7j66llw.)

Meanwhile, in the nation whose citizens have been ordered to impose upon themselves the harshest “austerity” measures to date – Greece – Germany’s presumed role in dictating the bitter medicine they are being forced to swallow is palpable to them.  (In both Dublin and Athens, the EU bureaucrats who have been sent in to oversee these measures are referred to by the natives as “the Germans,” no matter what their actual nationalities happen to be.)  Their memories of the harsh Nazi occupation in 1941-44 are still easily recalled.  So most Greeks will not be joining in the chorus of, “We are all Germans now.”  But could this too change?

As it battles for its fiscal health the EU will arrive at a crossroads, perhaps in one year, or two, or longer.  Persisting along the straight and narrow path – that is, emulating the German model – could, if all goes well, allow citizens of Europe to see with sufficient clarity through the chill winds of austerity to a better and stable collective future.  But in traversing this path they will come upon alternative turnings from time to time.  Taking some of those turnings will mean rejecting the medicines they are now being offered and digging in their heels, resisting the restructurings of employment patterns, pension and retirement schemes, and (to some extent) the welfare benefits they now enjoy but cannot really afford.  There will be strong temptations – already on view in Greece – for citizens and public officials to seek to thwart the application of austerity measures through sabotage and noncooperation.

They may even try to ignore their budgetary targets, but they will not be able to conceal their noncooperation, as before, by faking the national accounts.  What is perhaps even worse, at the political level they may try very hard to cooperate but be unable to do so, because the institutional changes that are presupposed in the austerity targets simply cannot be carried out in the necessary time-frames.  This is the scenario described in a very recent OECD report (Spiegel Online, 8 December, “OECD report questions Greece’s ability to reform”: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,802514,00.html.)  Should this scenario play out, punishments may arrive from the North (because citizens there will demand this of their governments), and national bankruptcies will loom, leading to full-blown social crises.  It is impossible to forecast how that might all end.

In short, there are enormous political risks inherent in Europe’s present situation.  Much of the pathetic, fumbling search for pseudo-solutions during the last two years has been designed to avoid entering deeply into the zone of political risk by confronting the need for radical changes to the EU institutions.  For example, if national referendums are required to ratify such changes, will the necessary approval be given?  To take the case of Ireland, it was the national government there which made the catastrophic mistake of nationalizing 100% of the debt of its private banks.  The money that enabled them to do so, when their sovereign debt could no longer be financed through the markets, came from the EU.  Will the Irish citizens, knowing how long it will take them to dig themselves out from under this monumental blunder, perhaps conveniently forget how this mess was made and take out their grievances on the EU?

The risk will have to be run, because the earlier strategy is broken.  There will be no quick fix, as Merkel sees clearly, and it is impossible to say how much time will be required; but all the while the financial markets will have Europe’s politicians on a very short leash.

It’s far too simplistic to “blame the markets.”  This is entirely the politicians’ own fault, because in the long run-up to the 2008 crisis they had been fiddling while their bankers stuffed their huge businesses with combustible materials.  European politicians watched from the sidelines as the Irish and Spanish housing bubbles expanded; they allowed their banks to bulk up on toxic assets from the US subprime mortgage assembly-line; they acceded by default to the weakening of international regulatory regimes that was pushed by US and UK interests; they allowed their banks to accumulate large portfolios of sovereign debt instruments on the theory that they were “risk-free”; they turned a blind eye to the Greeks’ blatant lies about their budgetary deficits; and so on.  A slice of these depressing stories is told in Michael Lewis’s inimitable and entertaining style in his latest book, Boomerang:  Travels in the new third world (New York:  Norton, 2011).

The latest German-and-French-led initiatives are a hopeful sign, but there is no guarantee that they will succeed in staunching the bleeding in the Eurozone.  The risk of political disintegration in the EU will remain high for some time to come.  But if it works in the end, with Germany leading the way to a brighter collective future, would this not be the supreme irony, after all that happened in the preceding century?

Author’s Note:

My personal interest in Germany’s role in the burden of history in Europe is dictated in part by the fact that I am of German ancestry, and in part by my long apprenticeship with Herbert Marcuse.  I have discussed this autobiographical background, including reflections on Marcuse and Heidegger, in a recent interview, available at:  http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=690.

Hoaxes and Hobgoblins

Posted on by

This past September we learned of The University of Calgary’s embarrassment over the discovery that oil industry funds had been moved through its research accounts to carry out non-research activities dealing with climate change issues.[1]  These funds were used to support the activities of a group calling itself, somewhat mischievously, “Friends of Science” (http://www.friendsofscience.org/).  Of course one thinks immediately of the old saw:  “With friends such as this, who needs enemies”?  Is the irony implicit in the name intended or not (the case would be more interesting if it were).

Read full article: Hoaxes and Hobgoblins [PDF]

Death by Debt

Posted on by

Here are extracts from Chapter 3 of my book, The Doom Loop in the Financial Sector, and Other Black Holes of Risk (University of Ottawa Press, 2010), pp. 101-2:

Thus, by the middle of 2010 six of the seven largest economies in the world looked to be in no shape … to spend their way out of another serious financial meltdown for a very long time to come [due to accumulated debt levels]….  Recent events have seriously eroded the margin of safety in the discretionary public resources available to most of the world’s wealthiest economies; that is, the capacity of their governments to incur additional debt responding to a further financial crisis,…”

Read the full article: Death by Debt [PDF]

Three new papers on Risk

Posted on by

Three papers on risks associated with the long-term storage of high-level radioactive waste in Canada, commissioned by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization: Go to http://www.nwmo.ca/conceptofrisk

Paper #1: How should matters of risk and safety be discussed?

The first paper addresses the question of how to approach discussions about risk in this area. Four “reference frames” are used to demonstrate the different approaches or perspectives that can be applied to a conversation about this risk: the energy policy frame; the risk and safety frame; the overriding values frame, and; the geographical frame.

http://www.nwmo.ca/uploads_managed/MediaFiles/1673_nwmosr-2010-10_paper1_thinking.pdf

Paper #2: How might communities organize their discussions about hosting a site for used nuclear fuel?

This paper presents a variety of deliberative tools that a community might use when holding discussions about hosting a facility. Communities involved in a site selection process may wish to consider how the process of engagement might unfold in the context of their own unique situation, and the author describes some types of formal and informal methods for facilitating reasoned debates about controversial issues.

http://www.nwmo.ca/uploads_managed/MediaFiles/1671_nwmosr-2010-11_paper2_howmight.pdf

Paper #3: What is happening in other countries where similar issues about used nuclear fuel are being discussed?

This final paper deals primarily with high-level radioactive waste management and provides an overview of the plans of various countries to deal with their high-level waste. All of the information is taken from publicly-available Internet sources, most of which are websites maintained either by national agencies that have legal responsibility for the waste within their borders, or international agencies with other types of mandates in this area. Profiles for 16 countries are provided, along with a large collection of references and links to internet-based resources, as well as a table illustrating the progress of each country in managing radioactive waste.

http://www.nwmo.ca/uploads_managed/MediaFiles/1672_nwmosr-2010-12_paper3_whatisha.pdf

William Leiss, OC, PhD, FRSC

Risk Blogs – Summer 2011

Posted on by

The following series of short essays was written in the period June – August 2011 and posted on my website: www.leiss.ca. Similar pieces will be added to the series on a regular basis. If you are interested in them you may check the website periodically or follow me on Twitter (@WilliamLeiss), where I post a Tweet (a) each time a new short blog appears on my website and (b) when I read something in the current press relevant to risk issues and provide the URL for those who also might want to read it.

LeissRiskBlogsSummer2011rev2 [PDF]

Update: the PDF was updated August 29, 2011

New article – Managing Prion Disease Risks

Posted on by

W. Leiss, M. G. Tyshenko, N. Cashman, D. Krewski, L. Lemyre, C. Amaratunga, M. Al-Zoughool. “Managing Prion Disease Risks: A Canadian Perspective.” International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, Vol. 14, no. 5 (2010), 381-436.

Abstract: This paper reviews the history of the risk management challenges faced by many countries and regions of the world which have had cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) from 1986 to the present. The paper first summarizes the nature of prion diseases from a scientific perspective, and then presents an overview of the findings of an extensive set of country case studies, devoting special attention to the Canadian case. It derives from these studies the need to reconstruct the frameworks which have been guiding risk management decision making, using formal schemata based on a step-by-step approach. The paper presents and illustrates a revised format for an integrated risk management framework, including a set of specific and explicit objectives that should guide the use of this framework in practice, and concludes by raising policy issues that are currently outstanding with respect to the management of prion disease risks.

This article is now available in its entirety (PDF file) to all interested readers. Please go to the following site and follow the link:

http://www.prionetcanada.ca/landing.aspx?landing=Research

WikiLeaks and the Mushroom Industry

Posted on by

There has been a fair amount of frothing at the mouth by media commentators, including some academics, about the latest trove of documents. Great quantities of damage have been alleged, although (unlike the information in the WikiLeaks documents) these are entirely speculative in nature; huge risks have been postulated, but again, with little intimation of what or who is allegedly at risk (apart from those persons associated with WikiLeaks).

A Canadian diplomat offers to resign for having told his masters that Afghan President Harmid Karzai is a crook. What a surprise! Are these deep thinkers among the commentators really unaware that the President’s office in Afghanistan is and always has been a hub of money- laundering, bribe-taking, and narcotics trafficking? Are they unaware that, no matter what noble sacrifices our soldiers, and those of other countries, have and will make before they finally depart, the country in question will revert to some version of a failed state, run by warlords and manipulated by our stalwart ally, Pakistan’s so-called intelligence service, immediately upon their departure? That then the helpless women of Afghanistan will be subjected to the same vicious brutality and mutilation – see the current issue of National Geographic – they have always endured, with a little extra thrown in for their presumption in seeking a modicum of relief during the foreigners’ occupation?

One or two rotund sheiks from the oil kingdoms urged the U. S. to obliterate the Iranian regime. Here some confusion might be engendered in the public mind: Were they motivated out of concern for the welfare of the Israelis? Probably not. It’s more likely that these pious Sunnis were thinking of how much more peaceful the Islamic Umma would be if about seventy million of their heretical co-religionists were abruptly wiped off the face of the earth.

Pakistan is a failed state, where the fractious government makes promises to their foreign benefactors that they know they will never keep, while gleefully cashing their cheques for vast new stocks of military equipment, and while slyly encouraging popular opinion to blame foreigners for all their woes. Russia is indeed a mafia-controlled state where massive corruption occurs among the political and economic elite. These are truths well-known to all who have eyes to see, and now we realize, courtesy of WikiLeaks, that some diplomats are also aware of them. What an astonishing revelation!

To his credit our own Stephen Harper backed his diplomats in Afghanistan. As far as most other politicians are concerned, their real interest in maintaining secrecy in such matters is to dupe their own citizens about the realities of global affairs. For politics is a subsidiary of the mushroom industry, the modus operandi of which is simplicity itself: Keep the product in the dark and feed it on horseshit. Throwing a bit of light on this dark industry is not good for mushrooms but is always an excellent tonic for the public.

So far as Mr. Assange is concerned, he probably has little to fear from Canadian-based assassination squads, but he really ought to turn himself in to the Swedish justice system and answer the charges against him. After all, it’s not as if it’s the Chinese authorities who are after him. Or is that another unpleasant truth that we shouldn’t talk about?