No wonder so many middle-class posters here blame their own racism as a working class problem. Just look at the pinnacle of the class system, and Prince Phillips ongoing fascistic comments -  http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Prince_Philip%2C_Duke_of_Edinburgh


* You must be out of your minds. (1982)
o To Solomon Islanders on being told that their population growth was 5% a year

* You are a woman, aren't you? (1984)
o Said in Kenya to a native woman who had presented him with a small gift.

* If you stay here much longer, you'll all get slitty-eyed. (1986)
o Said to British students in China

* If it has four legs and is not a chair, has wings and is not an aeroplane, or swims and is not a submarine, the Cantonese will eat it. (1986)
o Said at a World Wildlife Fund meeting

* Your country is one of the most notorious centres of trading in endangered species in the world. (1991)
o Said in Thailand after accepting a conservation award

* You can't have been here that long - you haven't got a pot belly. (1993)
o Said to a Briton in Budapest, Hungary

* Aren't most of you descended from pirates? (1994)
o Said to an islander in the Cayman Islands

* How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test? (1995)
o Said to a driving instructor in Scotland

* You managed not to get eaten, then? (1998)
o Said to a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea

* It looks like it was put in by Indians. (1999)
o Said after he saw a poorly constructed fusebox

* Do you still throw spears at each other? (2002)
o To an Aboriginal man on Australia's Tjapukai Aboriginal Cultural Park

* You look like you're ready for bed!
o Said to the President of Nigeria, who was dressed in traditional robes

* Edinburgh: And what exotic part of the world do you come from?
Lord Taylor: I'm from Birmingham. (1999)
o An exchange with Lord Taylor of Warwick, who is black

* "Brazilians live there"
o Prince Philip on the "key problem" facing Brazil

Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (November 16, 1896 – December 3, 1980), was a British politician known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists. He was also the sixth baronet of a title established in 1720.

It is always amusing hearing people compare the relative merits of Channel Four News compared to BBC2's Newsnight. They they are both government run and publicly subsidised stations even though Channel Four carries advertising. There can be little doubt that if Channel Four publicises racists it is a deliberate policy from the government, perhaps to represent the racists among us but more likely to distract from Blairs current woes.

"Prof John also said the far-right party tended to have more support in predominantly white, working class areas. "

 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4915096.stm

"The report paints a picture of support, above all, for the BNP's message, rather than for the party itself, among a substantial pocket of the White working class. These supporters largely do not wish the BNP to actually obtain control of local authorities but, to varying degrees, they endorse its anti-Islam and anti-immigration stance. "

 http://www.irr.org.uk/2006/may/ak000011.html

"Margaret Hodge, the Employment Minister, said that as many as eight out of ten working-class white families in her East London constituency of Barking were tempted to vote for the BNP on May 4."

 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17129-2137856,00.html

"WE NEED to understand the character of the BNP vote in order to cut across the BNP's recent growth in support, particularly in working-class areas. The outlook of working-class people is rooted in their daily experience. Workers have suffered years of constant attacks on jobs, pay and conditions. "

 http://www.yre.org.uk/news/2006/210706.html

The links . adds prove nothing. There is no doubt some working class people are racist. Presumably part of that is having to compete for limited resources and not having the resources to travel. It still holds that we have a morphic resonance with the oppressed of any colour. The creeps who profit most have no such excuses for their racism - and the middle-class creeps who post here should really explain why similar attention is never given to their own Enid Blyton racism.

Well did you hear, there's a natural order?
Those most deserving will end up with the most?
That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top,

Well I say, “Shit floats”.

If you thought things had changed,
Friend, you'd better think again,
Bluntly put, in the fewest of words:

Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world.

Now the working classes are obsolete,
They are surplus to society's needs,
So let 'em all kill each other,
And get it made overseas.
That's the word don't you know,
From the guys that's running the show,
Lets be perfectly clear boys and girls,

Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world.

Oh feed your children on crayfish and lobster tails,
Find a school near the top of the league,
In theory I respect your right to exist,
I will kill you if you move in next to me,

Ah, it stinks, it sucks, it's anthropologically unjust,
Oh but the takings are up by a third,
Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world.
(Cunts are still running the world)
(Cunts are still running the world)

The free market is perfectly natural,
Do you think that I'm some kind of dummy?
It's the ideal way to order the world;
“Fuck the morals, does it make any money?”

And if you don't like it? Then leave.
Or use your right to protest on the street,
Yeah, use your right but don't imagine that it's heard,


Not whilst cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world,
Cunts are still running the world,

Cunts are still running... the world.

But Blyton was born at the end of the 19th century. I think she would have big problems finding an agent today. In an ideal society, her material would be deemed harmful to children and reserved for adult study.

Political science finds strong links between economic insecurity and support for authoritarian politics- almost mechanical. Perhaps that middle and upper classes become involved in poltitical racist parties at all is symptomatic of the 'normal' authoritarian structure- that and the obvious exploitation and ego agenda. Which is ironically the same power structure that upholds the neo-liberal market agenda that scares and preys on the skilled working class voters so much.

Which is an easily understandable- though not acceptable- panic reaction of out of the frying pan and into the fire. Desperate people often act irrationally.

Add to that the age-old instinct to swing for a scapegoat before you swing for a member of 'your community'. Sadly, most do not realise that the people offering the scapegoats are the ones responsible for their misery. It's a scary prospect that 'your own' are out to get you.

Racism transcends all categories. The working classes by dint of being the largest social group will always be targetted as the primary recruiting ground of any extremist and any attempt to make sweeping statements pro or contra regarding the working class is pretty dubious.

Orwell wrote "Hope lies with the proles." And, I would agree that without them there will no be change, and given the utter kicking they have had for the last millenium, I'd hope that they will never fall foul of the false promises of people like Hitler again.

But don't forget that the middle classes aren't all twits either. Any revolution needs the middle classes on board too if you want to dismantle our rancid caste system once and for all. There are after all a lot of anti-capitalist middle class people. And you can only really damn people on their actions rather than their 'birthright'.

Quite what we'd do with the upper classes, given the limited availability of lamp posts, I don't know! Biofeul, perhaps. Just kidding.

painted how it is,the working class are their own worst enemy.

Of course, the racism that emenates from the predominetly middle to upper class establishment is far more subtle but even more sinister and dangerous than some gobby non-entity on a dire TV show.

The crap number 10 spins in newspapers- tabloid and broadsheet alike- and on TV- ITV News to Newsnight- is far more offensive and frightening as it is being said by the people who wield power over us. If only 20,000 people would call Ofcom when the Home Office starts talking about muslim headresses or lies about some fictional global terrorist network that will kill us all in our beds with weapons of mass destruction. About terrorists pretending to be asylum seekers etc.

The deliberate moves to foment islamophobia has real repercussions and is going largely unchallenged in the media.

Essentially: Who are you more scared of Jade Goody or John Reid?

"Political science finds strong links between economic insecurity and support for authoritarian politics- almost mechanical."

Politics isn't a science although recent work by Game Theorists is becoming more scientific. Read 'Critical Mass' by Phillip Ball.

"Desperate people often act irrationally."

I agree. An Indian proverb - a drowning man will clutch at a snake. Which doesn't excuse those on dry land who resort to racism.

"Add to that the age-old instinct to swing for a scapegoat before you swing for a member of 'your community'."

My community is the oppressed regardless of colour.

"Political science finds strong links between economic insecurity and support for authoritarian politics- almost mechanical."

Politics isn't a science although recent work by Game Theorists is becoming more scientific. Read 'Critical Mass' by Phillip Ball.

"Desperate people often act irrationally."

I agree. An Indian proverb - a drowning man will clutch at a snake. Which doesn't excuse those on dry land who resort to racism.

"Add to that the age-old instinct to swing for a scapegoat before you swing for a member of 'your community'."

My community is the oppressed regardless of colour. My 'scapegoats' have been persecuting my community since
feudalism.

"Racism transcends all categories. The working classes by dint of being the largest social group will always be targetted as the primary recruiting ground of any extremist and any attempt to make sweeping statements pro or contra regarding the working class is pretty dubious."

No. The primary recruiting ground of any extremist is those with the most power - the rich. And since the middle and upper classes control the media and academia most emphasis on racism focuses on the working-class.

"I'd hope that they will never fall foul of the false promises of people like Hitler again."

Then stand up for them (us). Your previous post indicates racism is a working-class problem. It obviously is not. And FYI it was the upper classes who fell most for Hitler - and for Blair and Thatcher.

"Any revolution needs the middle classes on board too if you want to dismantle our rancid caste system once and for all. There are after all a lot of anti-capitalist middle class people. And you can only really damn people on their actions rather than their 'birthright'."

So you are rejecting 'Noblesse Oblige'. Most people in the UK who regard themselves as middle-class are actually working-class. It is incumbent on those of us with an education or natural wit to oppose such stereotyping. And education is denied my class. We need to work for others to survive. I am trying to avoid Socialist platitudes here. Of course any person cn choose thier own
class but to choose to be racist makes you the oppressor.

"Quite what we'd do with the upper classes, given the limited availability of lamp posts, I don't know! Biofeul, perhaps. Just kidding."

There is no shortage of lamposts in the UK. And I'm not kidding. You can hang another racist every 10 minutes. "Political science finds strong links between economic insecurity and support for authoritarian politics- almost mechanical."



A few months ago there was outrage at the Ipswich murders of prostitutes where some people chose to stereotype prostitutes as 'drug-users'. There was no similar investigation into the drug habits of other professions. So it is with class. Even I bemoan working-class racists. From personal experience I know that that the middle-classes are more to blame and with less excuse.

Race and gender are diversions from class. You always find capitalists always willing to support efforts to overcome racism and sexism. It doesn't matter that much for them. You lose a little white-male privilege in the executive suite, but that's not all that important as long as the basic institutions of power and domination survive intact.

"Race and gender are diversions from class."

So say stupid white male working-class idiots. Oppression is oppression. I feared I'd attract a pseudo-socialist.

"You always find capitalists always willing to support efforts to overcome racism and sexism. It doesn't matter that much for them."

Race doesn't matter to them - obviously it means nothing to you . Gender obviously mean nothing to you.

The basic institutions of power and domination are race and gender regardless of social class. Thje working class are the most astute in this.

Exactly. I had an argument with someone I used to work with. He was saying that black people were criminal. I pointed out that if you go to any country with a low ratio of non-whites you will still find ghettos full of desperate people. Even in Switzerland- albeit their slums are palatial compared to the UK ones.

The authoritarian agenda always needs a scapegoat. If there were no blacks or muslims, it would gays and drug users and if it wasn't them it would uppity women or peasants acting above their station or worshippers of Satan or Baal or Molloch.

"No! Look over there! It's THEM! THEY are to blame for your problems!"

Well, the problem with working class as a badge versus Marxist definition will always be confusing. I was erring more towards the Marxist- despite not being a Communist. The Marxist definition is becoming somewhat outmoded as would naturally happen over the course of time.

There is still however a strong social and cultural distinction between the middle and working classes, despite the crumbling economic distinction, which is every bit as real and prohibitive. Speakers of standard English and with certain accents have greater opportunities.

Which brings us neatly on to your observations on education. The situation in the UK is getting rapidly worse as we rush to adopt a more European model. The current trend is throwing up massive financial barriers that will re-instate education as a matter of privelege rather than nuturing aptitude. This doesn't even make any sense on an economic level, since a more skilled workforce would attract investment. But I guess the greedy aren't interested in long-term returns.

Don't be surprised if the next step is to tie the higher education of the working classes to military service like we see in the US.

In line with the globalisation ethos, we'll see in time the access to medical care throw up greater barricades and we'll be right back to the 19th century. The new "beer and skittles" is lager and chequebook football/Big Brother.

The Ipswich coverage was actually tame compared to the Yorkshire Ripper. But the level of dehumanisation was still reprehensible. I did wonder if the less than total stereotyping was as a result of 10 Downing Street ballooning the idea of prescribing heroin to addicts (as the police have been begging for for years). But yes, the should have reported the murders of 'young women'.

At any rate, there is most definitely an ongoing attack on all the hard-fought rights of the workers. The smashing of unions, the hijacking of Labour, the sale of the means of production to multinationals to move all manufacturing to repressive regimes, the privitisation creep of essential and public services...

Goodbye artisans, hello ASBOs!

However, they have made the mistake of shitting on the middle classes too, who as you say are becoming merged/integrated more and more with the working class, and that may just be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

"No! Look over there! It's THEM! THEY are to blame for your problems!"

It is you to blame for my problems. You can't even condemn a call for a return to slavery from the upper classes. What class are you again?

"In line with the globalisation ethos, we'll see in time the access to medical care throw up greater barricades and we'll be right back to the 19th century. The new "beer and skittles" is lager and chequebook football/Big Brother.

The Ipswich coverage was actually tame compared to the Yorkshire Ripper. But the level of dehumanisation was still reprehensible. I did wonder if the less than total stereotyping was as a result of 10 Downing Street ballooning the idea of prescribing heroin to addicts (as the police have been begging for for years). But yes, the should have reported the murders of 'young women'.

At any rate, there is most definitely an ongoing attack on all the hard-fought rights of the workers. The smashing of unions, the hijacking of Labour, the sale of the means of production to multinationals to move all manufacturing to repressive regimes, the privitisation creep of essential and public services...

Goodbye artisans, hello ASBOs!

However, they have made the mistake of shitting on the middle classes too, who as you say are becoming merged/integrated more and more with the working class, and that may just be the straw that breaks the camel's back."

I'd agree with all that. Once any societies inequalites outweigh the Gini coefficent then the priviliged have something to fear. As is the case now.

they caught the last poor man
on a poor man's vacation
they cuffed him and they confiscated his stuff
they dragged his black ass down to the station
and said, o.k., the streets are safe now
all your pretty white children can come out and see spot run
and they came out of their houses
and they looked around
but they didn't see no one

my country 'tis of thee
to take swings at each other on the talk-show tv
why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun
'cuz we'll never live long enough
to undo everything they've done to you
undo everything they've done to you

above 96th street
they're handin' out smallpox blankets so people don't freeze
the old dogs have got a new trick
it's called criminalize the symptoms
while you spread the disease
and i hold on hard to something
between my teeth when i'm sleeping
i wake up and my jaw aches
and the earth is full of earthquakes

my country 'tis of thee
to take shots at each other on the primetime tv
why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun
'cuz we'll never live long enough
to undo everything they've done to you
undo everything they've done to you

they caught the last poor man
flying away in a shiny red cape
they took him down to the station
and they said, boy you should've known better
than to try to escape
i ran away with the circus
'cuz there's still some honest work left for bearded ladies
but it's not the same going town to town
since they put everyone in jail
except the cleavers and the bradys
my country 'tis of thee
to take swings at each other on the talk-show tv
why don't you just go ahead and turn off the sun
'cuz we'll never live long enough
to undo everything they've done to you
undo everything they've done to you

I think everything I have written indicates a total condemnation of racism (including slavery).

I don't see how one idiot can constitute the whole of the upper classes, just as Jade doesn't represent the whole of the working classes nor David Irving the middle classes.

Bye!

I may be an idiot but I aint a closet Nazi like dp. This fascist will be spewing forth biological determinism next.

As an asian teacher and a victim of race discrimination in my job, the racism of the middle to upper class establishment is the most scary, it is subtle and sinsiter. Such racists are harder to "fight" and harder to run away from.

Hence I'm in absolute agreement with the ealier comment.

However there is a clear denial by the establishment that they can ever be racialy motivated. Yet they are eager to jump on the likes of Goody because she is a nobody.

How about the next time 10 Downing Street or the Home Office spouts a load of islamophobic crap, we raise complaints with the Met regarding breaches of the Religious Hatred and Human Rights laws?

 new.scotland.yard@met.police.uk

----

An Act to make provision about offences involving stirring up hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds.

[16th February 2006]


BE IT ENACTED by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:-


1 Hatred against persons on religious grounds

The Public Order Act 1986 (c. 64) is amended in accordance with the Schedule to this Act, which creates offences involving stirring up hatred against persons on religious grounds.


----

Article 9 - right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion
Article 9 provides a right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This includes the freedom to change a religion or belief, and to manifest a religion or belief in worship, teaching, practice and observance, subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society"


[edit] Article 10 - right to freedom of expression
Article 10 provides the right to freedom of expression, subject to certain restrictions that are "in accordance with law" and "necessary in a democratic society". This right includes the freedom to hold opinions, and to receive and impart information and ideas.

If you people don't like what is being said in this country piss off elsewhere, this used to me a proud and Great Nation, now it's an Island full of Mongrels and Foreigners looking for an easy life, People could once walk the streets in safety, let children play in the streets and you could say what you thought ! Nowadays you dare not speak your mind for fear of arrest for telling the truth ! fuck off back to your rat infested slums and ghettos, go grab some poverty. I'm about to wipe my ass on another sheet of the Koran .

Vermin is really John Reid. Or perhaps, it's more Blunkett's style.

Is that anywhere near Britain ? It used to be such a proud and great nation that it's home-grown racists could spell it's own name properly

"If you people don't like what is being said in this country"
Your upper-class equivalent Lucy Buchanan is embarrassing us from the Cook Isles - no longer 'in this country'. And while she doesn't represent the upper-classes totally I'd say from personal experience that she is closer to them than Goody is to normal working class views - and more abhorrent and less forgiveable. I'd agree Prince Phillip as the monarchs consort (bum-boy) is indicitative of their opinions.

Ah for the good ol' days when 'children could play in the streets' and nice white guardians like Myra Hindley and Ian Brady would take care of them.

Don't you just hate it when foriegners force their language upon us? You wipe your ass with whatever cleans the poor beast while the rest of us Brits will wipe our ARSES on your fucked up racist drivel.

You are on a train, and as you take your seat you find a wallet. It is fat with money. What do you do? At face value this is a simple case of binary choice. You can either try to return the wallet to its owner, for example by looking inside for an address or handing it to a member of staff, or you can place it quietly in your pocket.
Behavioural models have tended to assume that agents in a multi-agent scenario respond to the actions of their neighbours in what we might regard as a knee-jerk or at least a somewhat mechanical way. That is to say, stimulus A induces response B, either invariably or with a certain probability. But in a situation like this, choices aren't made so simply. True, some people are invariably honest and some invariably dishonest. But the terrain in between is not negotiated by the random throw of a die. What flashes through our mind, perhaps involuntarily, is the thought, 'Who would know?' And then, maybe, 'What if I'd lost my wallet, how would I feel?' In such cases, we weigh up our options according to some moral code - but that code is bedevilled by temptation.
Temptation is arguably the fundamental problem for human societies. It sometimes pays not to be the good, kind, considerate citizen but to rebel, to cheat, to fight, to do the dirty. If my neighbours are all meek and law-abiding, what is to stop me from appropriating some of their land, or goods, or cattle? A Hobbesian individual in a Hobbesian world is as miserable as everyone else. But a Hobbesian in Eden can run riot, amass a fortune, gorge himself, and fear no reprisal (unless he believes in God). Temptation is a part of the human condition, and that is the problem for all utopias: not everyone is nice, because sometimes crime pays.
It is not obvious how to devise a 'particle' that can be led into temptation. But in the 1950S Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher at the RAND Corporation in California did more or less just that. They developed a simple mathematical model which incorporated the element of temptation into an interaction between two agents. The model was presented as a kind of game. Flood and Dresher were exploring the theory of games devised by the mathematical physicist John von Neumann in the 19:WS. One of the most formidable math­ematicians of the twentieth century, von Neumann helped to establish the theoretical basis of the computer and made crucial contributions to the Manhattan Project during the Second World War. He cultivated something of a reputation as a playboy genius, which his passion for gambling and poker did much to enhance. But von Neumann didn't just want to play these games - he wanted to understand them.
For sheer complexity, a mathematician can do no better than to study the game of chess. There is a sense, however, in which poker is much more challenging, for it incorporates the psychological element ofblufIing. The question is not, as in chess, what the next best move a choice either to 'cooperate' or to 'defect'. The best outcome - the maximal payoff - for one agent comes ifhe defects (testifies) while the other cooperates (that is, refuses to testifY - the cooperation here is with the other prisoner, not the authorities). In that case, the other player is the sucker and gets the worst outcome. But if the agents play rationally, they get neither this optimal payoff nor the next best thing, which is the payoff from mutual cooperation. Instead, they get the meagre rewards of mutual defection, which are only a little better than the sucker's payoff.
To recast this dilemma in terms of individuals living in a society, we can regard cooperation as being law-abiding and defection as breaking the law for one's own gain at another's expense. The basic dilemma ­ that cooperation is good but defection can be even better - was recognized by Rousseau and Spinoza. In his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau imagined five men from pre-civilized times agreeing to cooperate on a stag hunt, on the understanding that each will get a fifth of the spoils. When a hare comes within reach of one of the men, he grabs it - but without his help, the stag escapes. The 'defector' has the immediate gratification of stewed hare, rather than sharing the difficulties and dangers of catching a stag - but his fellows have nothing.
At face value, the Prisoner's Dilemma seems to confirm Hobbes's pessimism: egoistic individuals guided by logic will always seek to exploit one another. What did it seem to say to the Cold Warriors who drew on the advice of the RAND Corporation? Get the first fist in, for your enemy will try to do the same. Build up your nuclear arsenal with all the resources you can muster, for your enemy is planning to defect, and so you must be ready to do so too. Indeed, you should even consider defecting first - making the first strike. If the other side 'cooperates' even to the extent of not launching a strike immediately, you can make them the sucker by doing so at once. You win; they lose.

In these repeated games a 'score' is kept of how well each player did on each round. A player scores highest for defecting when the other cooperates; moderately for mutual cooperation; poorly for mutual defection; and worst of-all for cooperating when the other defects (the 'sucker's payoff'). One might imagine each player accumulating points or money, for example, rather than prisoners accumulating years of incarceration.


So in the repeated or iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game, the players have the chance to learn from their mistakes and to build up a relationship of mutual trust. Cooperation can evolve.
Is this how real people play the game? Psychologists have studied that question extensively in controlled tests, and found that co­operation does develop - but to a degree that varies widely, depending on the character of the players, the nature of the payoffs and the circumstances of the interaction. One can imagine, for example, that it is easier to defect anonymously than face to face. And let's not forget the element of temptation. If you think you are facing a nice player who will do their best to cooperate, you might be tempted to throw in an occasional defection, thereby boosting your own score at your oppo­nent's expense. If they are forgiving, you might get away with it if you don't try it too often. Sadly, in a cooperative world, defection pays. This then raises the question of what is the best way to play the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. If you know nothing about your opponent, which strategy should you adopt?
In the late 1970s Robert Axelrod devised an experiment to try to answer this question. He asked professional game theorists to submit strategies for playing the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, and then put each strategy to the test in a round-robin tournament conducted on a computer. Each strategy was played one-to-one against each of the others for many rounds; the winner was the strategy with the highest aggregate score. The fourteen entries came from psychologists, mathematicians, economists, sociologists and political scientists. Each strategy consisted of a set of rules for determining the choice of cooperation or defection. For example, one might simply choose always to cooperate. (This is obviously a bad choice, since it always comes off worst unless everyone else is also an unconditional cooperator. So no one chose this strategy.) Or one might cooperate on the whole but defect every fourth round. Many of the submitted strategies were more complex than this. But the tournament was won by the simplest of them all. It was submitted by Anatol Rapaport, who called it Tit For Tat. Its sole, rule was to begin by cooperating, and thenceforth to do whatever its opponent did in the previous round.
Playing against an unconditional cooperator, Tit For Tat (TFT) cooperates throughout the entire encounter. So both players do equally well. Against an unconditional defector, TFT gets the sucker's payoff in the first round (where it cooperates), but then it defects consistently, as though determined not to be taken advantage of again. Because of the first round, TFT comes away slightly worse off than the inveterate defector - but only just. Both of them, in any event, do much worse than if they'd cooperated. By mirroring its opponent, TFT can adapt to whatever the situation calls for. Against cooperators it is nice; against defectors it is tough. When faced with a mixture of cooperation and defection, it gives as good as it gets. So TFT reaps the benefits of cooperation where possible, but cannot be exploited .. Neithe1does it exploit: it never achieves a higher total payoff than its opponent. Some of the other strategies did well against those with a tendency to cooperate; others could hold their own against defectors. But by making the best of both situations, TFT came out on top in a diverse mixture of strategies. It was a modest, simple-minded victory.
Following the success of his first computer tournament, Axelrod decided to hold a second, with essentially the same rules as before. News had travelled, and this time there were sixty-two entries, from six countries. Some came again from professional scientists and academics, but others were from computer hobbyists, including a ten year old boy. All knew the outcome of the first round and so had a chance to consider the reasons for Tit For Tat's success. Anyone could submit any strategy, but only one person chose TFT: Rapaport. All the others decided that they could outdo TFT with something more sophisticated. They couldn't. TFT was again the winner.
Does this mean that Tit For Tat is the best way to play the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma? Not exactly. There is in fact no best way to play, for it depends who you're playing. It is very easy to illustrate that this is so. If you are playing against a colony of unconditional cooperators, you will do best to be an unconditional defector - that strategy will fare better than TFT, which would behave like one of the cooperators (except when it plays you). But the message of Axelrod's tournaments seemed to be that if you don't know who you're up against, TFT is the best default strategy.
What, then, makes Tit For Tat so special? For one thing, it is flexible: able to cooperate but not open to exploitation. Cooperation from the other player will immediately elicit cooperation from TFT in the next round. But defection is met unhesitatingly with defection. This sends out a clear message: TFT will do as it is done by. It is a strategy from the Old Testament, not the New: an eye for an eye, not turning the other cheek. This clarity of response is in itself a factor in TFT's favour. In the second tournament, one entry was a strategy designed to try to figure out the rules the other player is using, in order to find some way of exploiting them. This often happens in real life: one person will check out the other, weighing up how much he or she can get away with. If you know beyond doubt that you can never defect without being treated the same way, you have a good incentive to cooperate. If you have reasons to doubt that the retaliation will be relentless, you might be tempted to try your luck. TFT, in contrast, guilelessly encourages cooperation and discourages defection.
But there is another telling aspect of Tit For Tat that contributed to its success: it is never the first to defect. All strategies can be broadly divided into two camps by this criterion: will they defect first or not?
TFT takes the other player's actions into account too, but only to the extent of mirroring them - it does not seek any deeper understanding of the opponent's strategy. Those that will not are generally called 'nice' strategies. (There is no consensus on what to call the others; but 'nasty' will do.) Axelrod found that nice strategies do consistently better than nasty ones. Indeed, in the first tournament the ranking produced a clear distinction: the eight top-scoring strategies were all nice, and the others, separated from the nice ones by a substantial gap in points scored, were all nasty. So the Prisoner's Dilemma starts to look less grim when it is iterated: niceness and cooperation fare better than nastiness and exploitation. Even individual selfishness need be no barrier to fair play. But being cooperative does not in itself guarantee success; Tit For Tat plays a much tougher game than that. Axelrod has identified four characteristics of a successful strategy:
Don't be the first to defect (be nice). Always reciprocate.
Don't be too clever.
Don't be envious.
What is envy, in this context? It means not trying to do better than the other players, but simply doing as well as you can for yourself. The Prisoner's Dilemma is not what is called a zero-sum game: someone else's gain does not have to come at the expense of your loss. If you both cooperate, you can both do well (even if not as well as you would if there is an option to exploit the other players). Axelrod confesses that real players seem to find it hard to relinquish competitiveness and envy. In his tests of the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma with student volunteers, he finds that they tend to measure their performance against that of others, in which case any advantage gained can tempt the others into defecting to try to redress the balance. This can trigger recriminatory outbursts of defection.
The live-and-let-live behaviour in the trenches of the First World War can be seen as an example of cooperation arising from a Tit For Tat strategy. Belton Cobb's remark makes it clear that there was no compunction about retaliating in a lethal manner to hostilities from either side - mutual ceasefire did not depend on good feelings between enemies. (Yet, significantly, it seemed that self-interested cooperation allowed these feelings gradually to develop.) And on the whole both sides followed a 'nice' strategy, declining to fire first.
In case we should still wonder whether human sentiments, rather than the mathematical exigencies of game theory, led to this reciprocal cooperation, we might bear in mind that Tit For Tat strategies are also found in the natural world. There is evidence that vampire bats, stickleback fish, monkeys and even viruses behave according to the rules of TFT. No one can reasonably attribute altruism to viruses: their behaviour is purely the result of genetic selection. That is to say, those organisms with a genetic predisposition to show TFT -like behaviour gain an evolutionary advantage, and so natural selection works to their benefit - ensuring that this genetic trait becomes more widespread.
This implies that we too may be genetically hard-wired to co­operate, perhaps in a TFT -like manner. Indeed, it would be astonishing and puzzling if we were not. Edward O. Wilson argues that as civilization evolved, such modes of human behaviour will have become converted from instinctive impulses to social norms, then to legal imperatives, and ultimately to moral principles.
One could even argue that the case for a genetic embodiment of the lessons of the Prisoner's Dilemma is supported by the readiness with which we greet their optimistic aspects. We would be sorely dismayed if game theory were not capable of producing cooperative behaviour; in fact we might then be tempted to dismiss it as nonsense or as mendacious. We are, it seems, predisposed to look favourably upon altruism and to frown upon apparently selfish behaviour. That this might be a learnt response does not evade the issue; we learn it because those are the cultural norms of our society - and where did they come from?
Here, then, is a possible resolution to the divergent views of human nature evinced by Hobbes and Locke, which led them. to such differing conclusions about systems of government. People do not, in the absence of a higher authority, necessarily seek to exploit one another in the way Hobbes envisaged. But neither do they desist from it because of a 'reason' instilled in them by God. The 'reason' can come from nature alone: from the inexorable mathematics of interaction coupled to the winnowing effect of natural selection. The Prisoner's Dilemma is actually implicit in Hobbes's analysis, since he acknowledges the miseries of mutual defection and argues that men are better off cooperating if this can somehow be arranged:
That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himselfe he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himselfe. 22
This connection between Leviathan's State of Nature and the Prisoner's Dilemma was pointed out in 1969 by political scientist David Gauthier. Without a contract to cooperate, says Hobbes, a man would 'expose himselfe to Prey,.23 But such a contract is liable to dissolve unless there is some authority that can enforce it, since men's appetites will make them liable to defect the moment they see advantage in doing so. Thus, says Gauthier, Hobbes's omnipotent sovereign provides an escape from the Prisoner's Dilemma that men face in the State of Nature, since in a sovereignty defection no longer brings potential rewards but only certain punishment. Even if, as has been argued, it is somewhat misleading to cast Hobbes's scheme in game-theoretic terms when he had no interest in deducing the psychology of people faced with such behavioural dilemmas, it seems clear that Hobbes recognized the underlying problem that arises when antisocial actions offer potential rewards.
But game theory suggests that Hobbes's rather extreme solution - a capitulation of all individual powers and rights beyond self-preservation - may not be necessary. His error, if we may call it that, was to treat people as blind animals who cannot learn from experience - an 'experience' that can be handed down from previous generations as a genetic predisposition towards cooperation.
By the same token, we might expect to find other implications of game theory hard-wired into human experience. The tendency to form tribal groups increases the likelihood of repeated interactions with other group members and so enables cooperation to develop. Robert Axelrod endorses the notion of prolonged interaction - he calls it 'enlarging the shadow of the future' - as a way of promoting and nurturing cooperative behaviour. The flip side of this principle is distrust of strangers, since it takes time to establish the mutual trust on which cooperation depends. But this apparent biological predisposition for xenophobia should be moderated by the realization that 'nice' strategies do best: even on the first encounter it is preferable to cooperate.
So by arranging to make future exchanges more probable, we can guide two parties towards the benefits of mutual trust. This could entail making a relationship more durable - it was the long-term confrontation of forces at the Western Front that made the tacit ceasefires possible. Or we might increase the rate of interactions: in small communities, the same people deal with one another day after day both socially and economically, and so trust is easier to establish than in large cities where interactions are more occasional and impersonal. Increased demographic mobility reduces the durability of interactions and so reduces the incentive for cooperation: transient neighbourhoods are rarely cohesive and 'neighbourly'.
It is clearly not news to businesses that their interests are served by developing good long-term relationships with clients. But the way in which such relations can break down gives us some reason to suspect that the reciprocity does indeed stem from a Prisoner's Dilemma style of exchange. A study in 1963 indicated that one of the commonest reasons for court action between businesses is the complaint of wrongful termination of a franchise. It is only when relations between businesses are about to cease - when the iterations of the 'game' are about to end that one or both players decides it is worth their while to start a legal battle and risk bitter recrimination rather than to .find a 'peaceful' way to resolve differences. In psychological tests, people who play the Prisoner's Dilemma will often sacrifice mutually established cooperation for a few rounds of defection when they know the game is about to finish. In the same way, companies about to go bust are at greatest risk from non-paying clients, and are themselves more likely to default on debts.
The durability of interactions has implications for modes of government. Karl Popper considers that the most important attribute of a true democracy is not what it does, but that it 'should keep open the possibility of getting rid of the government without bloodshed, if it should fail to respect its rights and duties, but also if we consider its policy to be bad or wrong.' For as Pericles put it in democratic Athens, 'Even if only a few of us are capable of devising a policy or putting it into practice, all of us are capable of judging it. ' In a democracy, unpopular governments can be removed by elections ­ which seems incontestably proper. But the termination of any government carries some risks, for a departing government no longer has anything to lose from acting with blatant self-interest. Bill Clinton's outgoing US administration of 2000 demonstrated this with a display of political backhanding that the president would never have risked in mid-term.
To some extent this situation can be remedied by the existence of political parties, which carry long-term accountability for the short-termism of its members. There is no doubt that in 2002 the British Conservative Party was still paying the price for its deeply unpopular policies, its arrogance and its corruption while in office five years before, even though the perpetrators had largely disappeared from the political scene (several of them ignominiously). The US Republican Party paid the same long-term price for the Watergate affair in the 1970s. Thus a political system with a durable party structure might be expected to be less susceptible to corruption than one with more ephemeral kinds of political organization. Karl Popper called the party system 'horrible', since it makes parliamentarians tend primarily to serve their party rather than their constituents. 'I think', he wrote, 'that we should, if possible, go back to a state where MPs say: lam your representative, I belong to no party.027 But this could be a recipe for eliminating the accountability that political systems need if they are not to be plagued by abuses of power.
FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
It would be a foolish evolutionary psychologist who tried to argue that Tit For Tat is all there is to altruism. For one thing, the self-sacrifice we are capable of showing towards our own kin has biological roots which owe nothing to game theory - it seems to be an aspect of the 'selfish gene' idea, benefiting individuals who share a close genetic similarity to ourselves.
Moreover, behavioural economist Ernst Fehr and his colleague Simon Gachter in Switzerland have conducted experiments with human subjects which suggest that cooperation can arise in groups even when the individuals do not encounter one another repeatedly. Fehr and Gachter divided 240 students into groups offour, gave each of them an equal sum of money, and invited them to invest it (or not) in a group project. The project produced returns in proportion to the degree of investment. If all four members invested all their money, they all got a return that exceeded the investment. So it was in the group's interest for everyone to invest everything. But because each member received less than one monetary unit for investing each unit of his or her own, it was in each individual's interest not to invest but to freeload, relying on the contributions of the others.
This is analogous to a Prisoner's Dilemma insofar as it presents players with benefits for mutual cooperation but temptations towards individual defection. But Fehr and Gachter mixed up the groups after every round of investment and return, giving them no opportunity to establish mutual trust. They found that cooperation could never-the-less flourish if the rules included some provision for punishing defectors (those who invested little). Players would mete out such punishments even when they were charged a fee for doing so. Without the threat of punishment, cooperation was low; when this threat was introduced, cooperation increased sharply. The researchers call this 'altruistic punishment', since it is likely to be of no immediate and direct benefit to the punisher - even if punishment reforms the defector, the punisher is unlikely to encounter him or her again. It is nevertheless altruistic because it may benefit those others who will be grouped in later rounds with the player who defected.
This sort of behaviour suggests that the possibility of Tit-For-Tat-style retaliation or punishment may have a part to play in enforcing cooperation in society, even when encounters are not repeated. Fehr and Gachter reported that players seemed moved by a sense of injustice: they were simply angry at defectors, and acted on that anger irrespective of whether they stood to gain from it. Moreover, players reported that punishment was a deterrent to their own inclinations to defect. It is worth noting, however, that this is precisely the kind of behaviour one might expect from players predisposed towards a TFT strategy. By allowing punishment to be meted out after the game has been played, the researchers were in effect enacting a kind of tworound game, in which first-round defectors are themselves treated to defection from other players in the second round. The results could imply that we are all imbued with a desire for justice which we will exercise, if necessary, at our own expense.
In all these games, mutual cooperation pays best in the long term. If indeed cooperators are more 'successful', we would expect a predisposition towards cooperation to become an irreducible element of our neural circuitry. Sadly, however, this does not mean that Kropotkin was right: that no government is needed because people can be trusted to organize themselves. History shows us what people are capable of, and it does not look much like Eden. Human nature is diverse; it is also mutable, for better or worse. And it is influenced not just by one-to-one interactions, but by the multitudinous society in which each of us is embedded. To deal with that, game theory needs to get more sophisticated.
18 Pavlov's Victory Is reciprocity good for us?
The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.
Niccolo Machiavelli (1513)
Can one wait with calm confidence for the day when the despotic states that have made wars in the past have been turned, by the . social and economic forces of history, into peace-loving democ­racies? Are the forces of evolution moving fast enough? Are they even moving in the right direction?
Kenneth Waltz (1954)
In the interests of peace I am opposed to the so-called peace movement.
Karl Popper (1988)

If the Middle East today bears witness to harsh words and harsh deeds, it has done so before:
You must purge the evil from among you. The rest of the people will hear of this and be afraid, and never again will such an evil thing be done among you. Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.!
The uncompromising reciprocity of a Tit For Tat rule may have worked for the children of Moses (although even for them it was not the lawful response to all insults). But can this really form the baseline of a civilized society? Game theory seems best suited to investigating the State of Nature that Hobbes feared as barbaric and Locke idealized as beneficent; it delivers the hopeful message that goodness can arise out of barbarism. But only at the cost, it seems, of uncompromising retaliation to all aggression. The whole point of government, says Locke, is to eliminate the necessity for every man to be his own judge and enforcer. But does that oblige a government to enforce cooperation among its subjects and its neighbours alike with the same policy of swift and unquestioning retribution? Where in this social calculus might we find room for negotiation, conciliation, mediation, even forgiveness?
To understand the implications of game theory at more than a superficial level, we need to subject Tit For Tat to a rigorous examination. That is my objective in this chapter. We shall circumscribe this strategy's advantages and probe its weaknesses. We shall release it into a community and watch the consequences. We shall ask - as we always must in social physics - not just what the models tell us but what we consider desirable, and whether the two can be reconciled. And so we shall come back to the enduring question: what choices do we have?


ACCIDENTS HAPPEN
After Axelrod's second computer tournament, Tit for Tat looked invulnerable. But it isn't. In the real world it has a fatal flaw: communications are imperfect. Mistakes are made; intentions are misunderstood. In 1983 the Soviet Union shot down a South Korean civilian aeroplane which had mistakenly strayed into Soviet air space, in the belief that it was a military craft. All 269 passengers, including several Americans, were killed. A Tit For Tat policy, rigidly applied, would dictate that this error could be avenged only with Russian blood. Fortunately it was not, although the incident did heighten Cold War tensions. The NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the attack on Serbian forces in Igg8 was at face value another apparent 'defection' resulting from a mistake. (There is still debate about whether it was truly unintentional.)
The hair-trigger status of American and Soviet nuclear arsenals during the Cold War highlighted the awful risks of a retaliatory policy in the face of potential mistakes. Taken to its extreme, this creates the scenario gloriously and chillingly lampooned in Stanley Kubrick's film Dr Strangelove, in which a rogue US army general launches a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union. All but one of the BS2s is recalled in time; but the one that cannot be contacted releases its warheads. This triggers global nuclear war even though the Soviets know the bombs were dropped 'by mistake', because they have automated their missile system with the Doomsday Machine, which retaliates to any nuclear attack without the option of human intervention. They believed that the absolute certainty of retaliation would enforce cooperation, but the system did not allow for errors.
The problem with mistakes, as far as Tit For Tat is concerned, is not simply that a lone, erroneous defection provokes the same in return. Tit For Tat's simplicity means that, if this happens between two players who are using this same strategy, they get locked into a cycle of mutual recrimination. One defects by mistake; in the next round it returns to cooperation (since that is what its opponent did in the last round), but the other player returns the defection. This causes the first player to defect in the round after that, and so on: the mistake echoes back and forth for the rest of the match, so that mutual cooperation is never restored. (In the Strangelove scenario, of course, a single round of defection from each side is enough to end the game once and for all.)
This sort of behaviour arises in many cultures and societies. Axelrod points to the example of family feuds in Albania and the Middle East, which can continue with mutual reprisals for many generations - even after the original incident has been long forgotten. Agonizing vicious cycles of mutual slaughter have plagued the Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland for decades, and currently seem to be destroying all hopes of a peaceful settlement between Israel and Palestine. Clearly, Tit For Tat does not guarantee a harmonious world.
Nor, amid the mess and confusion of reality, is it always the best strategy. This became apparent when Axelrod's tournament was repeated, this time allowing for the possibility that the players may make errors. The players would occasionally choose their response at random rather than according to the rules of their strategy. For an error rate (a 'noise' level) of 10 per cent - one in ten random choices- TFT is no longer the winner. In fact, TFT then fares even worse when playing against other TFT players than when playing a mixed bag of strategies, since occasional errors create ample scope for fruitless cycles of reprisal.
In such a situation, TFT needs modification if it is to score highly.
One alternative, called Generous Tit For Tat (GTFT), lets a certain fraction of defections go unpunished. Another, Contrite Tit For Tat (CTFT), declines to retaliate to a defection that follows a defection of its own - it 'accepts' that it got what it deserved. GTFT outperforms all the other entrants in Axe1rod's second tournament when there is 1 per cent 'noise'; CTFT comes sixth. For higher noise levels, CTFT outstrips GTFT. Tit For Two Tats (TFTT) is a strategy that retaliates only after suffering two consecutive defections: it waits to see whether a defection implies that the other player's intentions really are bad, rather than being simply a mistake (that is, noise). TFTT was devised by the evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith, and it came tWenty-fourth in Axelrod's second tournament. Maynard Smith did not enter it in the first tournament; ifhe had, it would have won, because that first mixture of strategies contained some which impaired TFT's performance by getting locked into mutual retaliation (even without errors). This reinforces the point that there is no best way to play the game.
Another strategy which copes well with noise is less benevoknt.
Pavlov is a strategy based on pure opportunism, and was named in 1988 (although invented earlier) by David Kraines of Duke University and Vivian Kraines of Meredith College, both in North Carolina. Its philosophy can be summarized as 'win-stay, lose-shift'. Like TFT, it bases its choice of action on what happened in the previous round. If it did well, it makes the same choice again; if it did poorly, it switches. 'Well' here means either the reward for mutual cooperation or the best payoff of all, that for unilateral defection. In short, Pavlov sustains behaviour that brings rewards but changes behaviour that brings punishment. This recalls the simple, conditioned responses of Russian physiologist Ivan Petrovich Pavlov's dogs.
With a tough customer like Tit For Tat, Pavlov is quite happy to cooperate. It doesn't fare well with an incorrigible defector - it will try to cooperate every other round. But Pavlov will mercilessly exploit a habitual cooperator once it realizes it can get away with it, whereas TFT would nobly cooperate. Pavlov performs poorly against the con­testants ofAxe1rod's original tournament - in 1965 Anatol Rapaport gave this strategy the dismissive label of'simpleton'. And it doesn't do a great deal better even in the presence of noise. But it has the virtue of being able to recover quickly from an isolated error, and if the circumstances are right it can come into its own, as we shall see.
DARWIN'S ALGORITHMS
That history is a sound guide to policy is a cliche, although Friedrich Hegel doubted that nations and governments were so guided. Yet people, businesses, institutions and even countries surely do sometimes change their behaviour in the light of experience - just as the British and German troops whose job it was to eliminate one another on the Western Front ended up entering into unspoken truces of mutual self-preservation. Some lawbreakers can be reformed. It is this capacity for change that makes international relations both complex and worth arguing over. Some observers believed that Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq might not have been given inevitably to unconditional defection but could have been transformed into a more cooperative regime had it been engaged in dialogue rather than isolated with sanctions and then barraged with bombs.
One of the most interesting and important questions we can ask of the Prisoner's Dilemma is what kind of behaviour emerges when the players can evolve - when they are allowed to change their strategies. In reality, people apply all sorts of moral, ideological, habitual and whimsical criteria in deciding how to behave. But in the spirit of game theory, it is useful to begin by asking what players will do if they are purely pragmatic: that is, merely seeking to optimize their gains. It seems reasonable to assume that players will tend to adopt those strategies that are more successful. This can be simulated in Axelrod-style tournaments by including an evolutionary dimension. At the end of one full round-robin, for example, we might allow players to adopt a new strategy with a probability proportional to that strategy's overall score. In this way the more successful strategies will multiply, while ones that perform poorly will die out. It's not hard to see that this is a Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' scenario. It Inimics the way in which genetic mutations spread in a population: those carrying a mutation that conveys a reproductive advantage generate more offspring, en­hancing the prevalence of that 'adaptive' mutation.
Martin Nowak at the University of Oxford and Karl Sigmund at the University of Vienna conducted just such an experiment in game theory in 1992, with salutary results. They set up a diverse population of strategies, in all of which the choice of whether to cooperate or defect was determined by what the opponent did in the previous round. Some strategies were more inclined towards defection, others tended to cooperation. Nowak and Sigmund let them all compete against one another, and then altered the proportions of each of them in line with their relative successes. Naively, we might expect that this evolutionary model will be ruled by Tit For Tat, which appears generally to fare best in a mixed population. And this did at first seem to be the outcome. Early in the game the defectors had the upper hand; cooperative strategies died out, and the average payoff of the population fell towards the low payoff gained by mutual defection. But at some point a tiny band of TFT players began to grow rapidly until they dominated the population (Figure 18.1). This takeover was accompanied by an upsurge in cooperation and a rise in the average payoff.
The abruptness of this change is reminiscent of (although not strictly equivalent to) a phase transition. The rise ofTFT is a collective effect, a result of many mutual interactions between players. Mutual defection eventually becomes so self-defeating that a small group of

TFT players gains more from their mutual cooperation than defectors do from exploiting the TFT players' initial attempts to cooperate. At this point the tables are turned, and it pays to cooperate with the doughty TFT group. Their presence helps seed the spread of cooperation throughout the population. But Nowak and Sigmund found that the triumph of TFT is short-lived. Once it has established a culture of cooperation, TFT starts to suffer from its Achilles' heel: unforgivingness. These simulations contained an inherent amount of noise in the way the strategies worked, and this meant that TFT was gradually superseded by its more tolerant sibling, Generous Tit For Tat. In the end only GTFT remained.

The crucial role of TFT -type strategies in bringing about this change is emphasized if the evolutionary game is replayed with no TFT players to start with. Then the prognosis is a gloomy one: cooperators die out and we are left with a colony of selfish defectors that plough their Hobbesian furrow to eternity. rather than the aim, of an evolution towards cooperation. In other words, it is needed to establish cooperation in a diverse population, but once that has been achieved, 'softer' cooperative strategies will take over. In fact, since even GTFT will occasionally get caught up in unproductive recrimination caused by mistakes, a better strategy in a universally cooperative environment is unconditional cooperation: complete forgiveness. This sounds all very nice and inspirational. But the best strategy of all in a population of unconditional cooperators is unconditional defection: ruthless exploitation of the meek. Pitted like against like, cooperators do better than defectors, but cooperators are highly vulnerable to rogue defectors. A small band of defectors can wreak havoc in a cooperative culture. Tit For Tat can prevent this from happening, for it treats defectors severely while rewarding cooperation. It can be regarded as the police force of game theory, imposing cooperation with a firm hand. It models an ideal policing strategy in some respects, for (in the absence of noise) it only ever -and invariably - punishes defection, and never exploits cooperation. The implication seems to be that if we accept some level of defection as inevitable, we have to concede that a society needs at least some TFT players in order to maintain a general culture of cooperation.
Even that, however, may not guarantee a fair society. In 1993 Nowak and Sigmund discovered that TFT's implacable sense of justice does not always come out on top. In their earlier evolutionary games, players based their strategies for their next move on their opponent's previous move. But Pavlov, the opportunistic win-stay lose-shift strategy, does more than this: it takes into account the player's own last move too. When the two researchers pitched their earlier strategies against Pavlov, they found that Pavlov's opportunism triumphs. Pavlov does poorly against defectors and lacks TFT's ability to 'invade' a defecting population and spread cooperation. But in a (slighdy noisy) community imbued with a spirit of cooperation, Pavlov thrives. N owak and Sigmund found that in such a circumstance Pavlov emerges victorious, even outstripping GTFT.
Both these strategies, Pavlov and GTFT, are somewhat tolerant to errors, unlike TFT. But Pavlov has another advantage. If in the model we allow strategies to randOInly mutate into new forms, GTFT comes to share some ofTFT's transience, becoming 'softened' by a gradual drift towards more unconditionally cooperative strategies. Pavlov, however, retains a hard edge. If it discovers by chance that it can get away with unilateral defection, it will continue to do so. So it is a wolf in sheep's clothing: it behaves well while cooperation becomes the norm under the firm authority ofTFT, but it remains quite capable of exploiting a cooperative population once the TFT police have been transformed to unconditional cooperators. The motto of a Pavlovian society is no longer 'Do as you would be done by', but 'Never give a sucker an even break.'
The simulations from which Pavlov emerged as victor reveal a fascinating history. Because they involved the interplay of strategies which all based their next move in some way on the previous moves of both players, they took a more complex course than the earlier simulations. Most strikingly, there was far less of a sense of inevitability about the changes that took place over time. Each run of the simulation produced a different sequence of events. In the sample history shown here, there is an early attempt to establish cooperation: after a turbulent period this fails, and unconditional defectors reign for a long time. Then, after about 92,000 generations, the cooperators gain the upper hand.
This victory is short-lived and soon collapses into defection. Close inspection of the breakdown reveals that it is caused by the drift of TFT towards GTFT and thence to more forgiving strategies, creating a nation of 'softies' which is ultimately destroyed by rogue defectors. But this time the defectors are not quite unconditional: the dominant strategy is instead one called Grim Trigger, which meets cooperation with cooperation until it encounters a defection (as, in a noisy game, it inevitably must). Thereafter, Grim Trigger defects unconditionally. It is rather like Dr Strangelove's Doomsday Machine. After about 220,000 generations, however, there is another resurgence of cooperation, which - after some initial adjustments - proves long-lasting. This switch is again triggered by TFT, but gradually it drifts towards a predominance of GTFT players before ultimately being taken over by mostly Pavlov agents, or close variants of it. This population is cooperative but potentially opportunistic, and is robust against invasion by defectors. It is not such a bad place to live - but the more virtuous of its citizens are not entirely safe from the threat of exploita­tion by superficially 'nice' Pavlovians. These simulations display a mixture of chance and certainty.
Cooperation always wins out if you wait long enough - there is always a happy(ish) ending. And Pavlov is not always the final dominant strategy, although it triumphs in about four cases out of five. Most remarkable, though, are the sudden revolutions that punctuate the course of events: we see 'good' and 'evil' empires rise and fall, and uprisings that falter and fail. Even in periods of apparent stability (for better or worse), the tally of strategies (and a detailed inspection of their characteristics) shows a certain amount of variation and a shifting of norms.
It is hard not to see in all of this an allegory of human history. Marx believed that the socialist revolution was inevitable. Game theory seems to be saying that nothing is so certain, since even if things are going to end up a particular way, we can't be sure just where along the evolutionary path we are at the moment. Did the players in the Second Cooperator Uprising (generation 92,000) think that the Age of Perpetual Cooperation, long forecast by the martyred philosophers of the failed First Uprising, had finally arrived? Were the commentators of the Third Cooperator Uprising (gen. 220,000) right to conclude that this was the 'end of history'?
Empires rise and fall not only in time but in space. Rome once ruled from Portugal to the Black Sea, from the Scottish borders to North Africa. Charlemagne's Frankish realm reached deep into Germany, Italy and the Balkans. The Ottoman Empire overran lands from Transylvania to Egypt. The history of the world is a patchwork of borders, growing and shrinking. Imperialism seems mercifully to be a thing of the past, but the borders of NATO and of Europe are still liable to shift, and the maps of the Central and East European nations have changed more in the past ten years than in any other decade since the end of the Second World War. Does the Prisoner's Dilemma have anything to tell us about the way national and international boundaries move?
Introducing the element of space into the contests of game theory is no trivial matter, since it places constraints on the interactions that each player can have, and can therefore strongly influence the outcomes. In a tournament where everyone plays against everyone else, cooperators have the chance of deriving mutual benefit from their interactions; if they are on opposite sides of a map, they can no longer draw strength from the group and may be overwhelmed by defectors. So isolation can militate against cooperation. Israel's geographical location, surrounded by predominandy Islamic states, surely contributes to its self-perception as an embatded nation, and its supporters might argue that this situation prevents the country from being able to adopt the kind of conciliatory policies that European nations can afford to pursue. On the other hand, players in fixed locations may find a greater incentive to cooperate than do itinerant players, since they are compelled to interact repeatedly with their neighbours rather than moving on after 'one exchange. One of the difficulties faced by travelling people is that they have litde opportunity to establish mutually trusting (and trustworthy) relations with those they encounter on their journeys - the 'shadow of the future' is not long enough.
Axelrod began to explore the notion of territoriality in the Prisoner's Dilemma in the 1980s. He considered a chessboard-like world in which each player occupies one grid space and interacts with the four neighbours with who it shares an edge. Colonization of the board by successful strategies can take place by means of an 'evolu­tionary' mechanism. In each round of the game, all players play against all four of their neighbours. If one or more neighbours of a particular player gets a better score, the player converts to the strategy that was most successful.
Axelrod was primarily interested in how cooperation can spread in an exploitative society by means of Tit For Tat - or conversely, how a cooperative society can be undermined by defectors. He found that, for certain values of the payoffs, a single defector can spread its baleful influence throughout a community of Tit For Tat players, providing the seed from which defecting strategies gradually expand. Curiously, however, the growing colony of defectors is not so much like a spreading stain as like a snowflake: it sends out branches which split and rejoin to form a complex tapestry.
Strictly speaking, the 'spreading of defectors' is really the spread of the use of defection strategies among players that stay immobile at each grid point. But one could equally choose to regard this as the replacement of cooperative players by defecting players, as though the 'defectors' kill off the 'cooperators' and colonize their grid spaces. The two perspectives are entirely equivalent. If defection is more lucrative, however, it becomes the :ommonest mode of behaviour. Yet small islands of cooperation constantly appear and vanish across the grid. The fraction of cooperators now quickly evolves to a stable average level, irrespective of the starting configuration - there is a kind of 'irrepressible' tendency to cooperate even in a relatively selfish environment. Thus defection md cooperation need not inevitably annihilate the other, but can coexist indefinitely in patterns which are unpredictable in detail but entirely predictable in terms of averages.
The spread of defection and the spread of cooperation are not equivalent. Cooperators do best in dense clusters, where they can benefit from their mutual support. As Edmund Burke put it in 1770, When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall me by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.' But defectors in the midst of cooperators do best on their own, since they do far better to interact with cooperators than with other defectors. So although defection breeds more defection, the exploiters tend to repel me another, which leads to the formation of the thin threads of defection. Nowak and May found that a single defector spreads through a cooperative colony in much the same kind of snowflake permutations as Axelrod had seen. Again, these ramified magic carpet' patterns can be regarded as the result of the 'repulsion' between defectors, which militates against their forming a dense colony. You might say that each defector prefers to find its own patch, as isolated as possible from its rivals.

GOVERNED BY REASON?

The Tit For Tat policy and its more generous variants have defined most thinking about how cooperation evolves. Although TFT can yield to softer 'nice' strategies or to the opportunistic Pavlov once cooperation is established, there is still no better way to initiate cooperation in a Hobbesian world of exploitation than to meet tit with tat. On this basis, some argue that firm and immediate reprisals for bad behaviour are the only way to make 'rogue states' act responsibly: hence the recent bombings of Serbian Belgrade and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Popper put this conclusion into words which sound almost shockingly brutal, coming from one who had a reputation as a liberal: 'What is happening in Bosnia is proof of the failure, the cowardice, the blindness, of us in the West. It shows we do not want to learn what this century should have taught us: that war is prevented with war., The idea of'preventive war' goes back at least as far as Kant, who advocated it in his essay 'Perpetual peace' - not that kings and princes in times past needed any philosophical endorsement for taking up arms. It is certainly true that strategies in the Prisoner's Dilemma which make softer or delayed reprisals, such as Tit For Two Tats, fare less well in a diverse population. By itself this seems to argue for air strikes rather than sanctions.
But as we've seen, TFT has its drawbacks too. It is painfully evident in both the Israel-Palestine conflict and the troubles in Northern Ireland how reprisals can hold back progress towards cooperation and peace. They can simply serve to undermine the establishment of trust. There is clearly a need for mechanisms that can 'damp out' the echoing cycle of retaliation, if good relations are ever to be resumed between TFT players who, for whatever reason, have broken rank. The Contrite or Generous Tit For Tat strategies offer some solutions; another is to operate a Partial Tit for Tat approach, where the reprisal is slightly less severe than the event that provoked it.
Human nature seems likely to complicate attempts to generate cooperation via TFT exchanges. It would be foolish indeed to ignore the strength of passions or the longevity of resentments when human lives are lost in episodes of 'defection', while TFT remembers nothing beyond the previous round and will 'forgive' at the first sign of cooperation. And consider the proposal in the United States that the custodial parent in separated couples who have children might be given the right to deny visits if the other parent does not keep up maintenance payments. This scope for retaliation could be regarded as an incentive for the maintenance-payer to co­operate. But quite aside from the fact that this scheme would logically have to allow the converse (payments legally withheld if access to the child was denied), it would be short-sighted not to take into account the irrational behaviour that can arise in partnership break­down and arguments over child care responsibilities, which may override the ability of the 'players' to decide dispassionately what course of action is most advantageous to them in the long run. More pertinent still is the matter of whether there can possibly be any justification for letting children become bargaining chips in such exchanges.
The threat of a Tit For Tat response has been advanced, both implicitly and explicitly, as a theoretical rationale for the policy of nuclear deterrence. The argument here is that, even if the awful prospect of an exchange between nuclear powers does not materialize, the evident capacity and stated readiness of a nation to retaliate to such an attack is an essential element of a peaceful status quo. Popper again supported the notion: 'We should have learnt by now that peace on earth needs to be backed up with weapons ... You could never get peace inside a country by reaching a compromise with the criminals.,5 This might be valid for war in general; but for nuclear war - and in particular the Cold War concept of mutually assured destruction - the iterative process that is essential for TFT's superiority (indeed, for its very definition) is not an option.
Strategist Hermann Kahn describes with compelling clarity the confused and irrational thinking he often encountered at the RAND Corporation during the early years of the Cold War:
One Gedanken [thought] experiment that I have used many times and in many variations over the last twenty-five or thirty years begins with the statement: 'Let us assume that the President of the United States has just been informed that a multi-megaton bomb has been dropped on New York City. What do you think that he would do?' When this was first asked in the mid-I950s, the usual answer was 'Press every button for launching nuclear forces and go home.' The dialogue between the audience and myself continued more or less as follows:
KAHN: What happens next?
AUDIENCE: The Soviets do the same!
KAHN: And then what happens?
AUDIENCE: Nothing. Both sides have been destroyed.
KAHN: Why then did the American President do this?
A general rethinking of the issue would follow, and the audience would conclude that perhaps the President should not launch an immediate all-out retaliatory attack.
In other words, according to political theorist Brian Skyrms, 'A strategy that includes a threat that would not be in the agent's interest to carry out were she called upon to do so, and which she would have the option of not carrying out, is a defective strategy.
In any event, it would be naive in the extreme to assume that real players in the international politics game will display the rigorous rationality of the idealized players in game theory. Supporters of an 'assured Tit For Tat' deterrent, for example, must grapple with the strong possibility (as Popper admitted) that Khrushchev had every intention of using his missiles in 1962, had he been able to get enough of them into Cuba secretly - deterrent or no deterrent. Looked at in this light, TFT simply creates the climate and the conditions for such a crisis. Moreover, the spectacle of many long-term adherents of the deterrence argument for American nuclear proliferation who are now advocating a missile defence system which undermines the very basis of this argument - what is mutually assured destruction if it is not mutual? - should remind us that the formal logic of game theory is no more than an expendable tool in the face of political ideology and expediency.
Another of the less attractive implications of Tit For Tat is that in effect it compels cooperation from defectors only if they 'know' how implacable it is. This implies that one needs to acquire a reputation for being ready to go on the offensive, which can become manifest as hypersensitivity - refusing to tolerate the slightest perceived threat or insult - or as a bullying propensity to adopt gunboat diplomacy. In the 1960s the United States was prepared to fight a bitter war on the other side of the world primarily to maintain, during the height of the Cold War, its reputation for toughness. This was admitted in a memo sent by John McNaughton, Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, to Secretary of De fen se Robert McNamara, outlining US aims in Vietnam: they were '70 percent - To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor)' (my italics), and only 'IQ percent ­To permit the people of [South Vietnam] to enjoy a better, freer way oflife.'s
In other words, the success of Tit For Tat could be regarded as an incentive to act belligerently. After all, the disastrous consequences of facing an opponent who does not appreciate one's ruthlessness were brought home in a gloriously sardonic manner in Kubrick's classic study of Cold War diplomacy, when Dr Strangelove explodes down the phone at his Soviet counterpart, 'You fools! A Doomsday Machine isn't any good if you don't tell anyone you have it!'
Anyone who considers using the Prisoner's Dilemma as a basis for deciding policy should feel duty-bound first to enumerate all the factors t neglects. Most obviously, as I have indicated, it takes a highly simplistic riew of human nature: the assumption that people act rationally to seek he best gain for themselves neglects not only irrational passions, the faIlibility of our reasoning powers and sheer foolishness, but also the positive influence of moral codes of conduct. Both experience and :volutionary biology lead us to expect that many people have an innate nstinct to cooperate with their fellow beings, and do not have to learn that his serves their best interests before they will do it. On the other hand, a ew people are probably pathologically inclined to defect within society, lometimes even when they see it does them no good in the long run. Moreover, the Prisoner's Dilemma provides no scope for negotiation: the prisoners" remember, are not allowed to collude, but must deduce each }ther's motives only from the way they play the game. Suspicion thrives n such circumstances, and in real life we generally seek to quell it by :onducting our transactions more collaboratively.
All the same, there is no denying the strong implication from game :heory that an unswervingly retaliatory strategy is the best way to bring about cooperation. As game theorist Karl Sigmund says:
It would of course be rather silly to attempt to reduce all human interactions to the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, or to negate the role of superior authority In civilized communities. But with all due restraint, it is worth pointing out :hat the brutally simple principle of paying back in kind leads to cooperation In a society of egoists, while the apparently higher summons to dispense with reprisals undermines such cooperation ... The harsh law of retaliation seems to have been the foundation stone of many, possibly all, stable societies.
At the risk of posing a question which evolutionary psychologists might regard as tautologous, one surely has the obligation then to ask: is this a moral way to behave?


The notion of Tit For Tat sits uncomfortably with liberal sensibilities. 'I came to this project', said Robert Axelrod in 1984, 'believing one should be slow to anger. The results of the Computer Tournament for the Prisoner's Dilemma demonstrate that it is actually better to respond quickly to a provocation.'IO But pacifist thinkers from St Francis to Gandhi have asserted that to meet violence with violence is self-defeating. That is surely the message of the New Testament: love thine enemy, for it is the meek, not the vengeful, who shall inherit the earth. Many pacifists would argue that non-violence is a choice based not on cold logic but on higher moral imperatives, such as 'Thou shalt not kill.' When faced with behaviour that can only be considered as exploitative, even murderously so, this can induce agonies of doubt which, if honesdy confronted, belie any suggestion that pacifism is a soft option. David Jones, a conscientious objector in the Second Wodd War, explained the dilemma:
The pain of being a conscientious objector was the increasing knowledge of the enormity of what the Germans were doing. So that was the really challenging thing, not the war, so much as how one can justify not somehow trying to do something about it.
Cecil Davies, a kindred spirit in the same conflict, found the question irresolvable:
Wilfred Owen said he was a conscientious objector with a bad conscience, and I think lots of COs often had a bad conscience, and while I still think I was right to do what I did when I did, I suppose if! had known about the Holocaust it might have been different ... Life isn't simple.
Indeed not - and the Prisoner's Dilemma should not let us pretend otherwise. But one cannot avoid the conclusion that, on its own terms, game theory implies that a retaliatory policy to defection might truly be more 'moral' insofar as it serves the greater good. A Tit For Tat strategy not only protects oneself from exploitation but also helps to safeguard the entire community. For it is only when TFT is eroded by softer cooperative strategies that the community becomes endangered by exploitative defectors or Pavlovian opportunists. Unconditional cooperation might seem more noble and kindly but it also places the burden of policing on the rest of the community. A utilitarian would be hard pressed to find an objection to TFT.
All of this seems like knowledge worth having. But we must beware of how easily it might be twisted or misconstrued. Naively, one might argue that TFT justifies the death penalty for murder - even if we allow that the state, not the individual, should implement the punishment. But the whole point of the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma is that it teaches cooperation through experience and adaptation: defectors convert to nice strategies because they are better off for it. Capital punishment simply eliminates the player, so that no further iterations take place. There is nothing in the Prisoner's Dilemma which suggests that one player learns from the mistakes of another - that the death of one defector warns others away from defecting. This could happen, of course, but game theory is silent about it - so the success of TFT is irrelevant to debates about the death penalty. The same surely applies to nuclear stockpiling during the height of the Cold War. Game theory and the Prisoner's Dilemma were very popular at the Pentagon, but one could hardly draw lessons from TFT when the game was, by its very nature, one that would be over in a single reciprocal exchange.
John Locke had the wisdom to see that, while he advocated the 'tooth for a tooth' form of Tit For Tat in his State of Nature, it would not do in a civilized society, and that relinquishing matters of policing, justice and punishment to the state both lightens the burden on the individual and lessens the need for savagery in enacting them. In an anarchic state you would not, in general, have the option of protecting yourself from assault by locking your would-be assailant away, and so you may be forced to do them harm. By implying that punishment is necessary to maintain a peaceable society, the success of TFT does not say much that will surprise anyone. It cannot tell us a great deal about the form that punishment should take, nor can it prescribe a course that will convert a sinner into a saint.
What the Prisoner's Dilemma does is help us to move beyond the pessimism ofHobbes without recourse to the rose-tinted assumptions ofLocke. Ifwe know that cooperation is possible, even in a world that lacks altruism, we have no reason to despair. Getting there is another matter, on which it is appropriate to let Popper have the last word: 'We should cautiously feel the ground ahead of us, as cockroaches do, and try to reach the truth in all modesty.'
Epilogue ,.
Curtain call
The performer who provides his own applause is surely either deluded or desperate; but where better than in conclusion to describe this delightful manifestation of social physics?
In some countries and cultures, particularly in Eastern Europe, the applause with which a gratified audience expresses its appreciation of a performance tends to slew back and forth between random and synchronized. At one moment each person is clapping to their own rhythm, and the hundreds of overlapping pulses of sound create a continuous clattering roar like the sound of surf on shingle. But then something remarkable happens: this wash of noise resolves itself into a regular beat, as each pair of hands claps in unison with the others. The synchronization lasts for perhaps a minute or so, then dissolves again into chaos.
There is no one conducting this performance, no one to set the pace or to signal when synchrony should begin. It just happens - not once but several times during an ovation. Now, it is no great feat for two or three people to bring their handclaps into phase with one another. Indeed, it can be hard for them to avoid doing so, just as two people tend to synchronize their steps when they walk side by side. But the synchronized clapping of an audience of many hundreds is a challenge of another order. That it can crystallize so quickly is surpnsmg enough; but why, once synchronized, does the clapping not stay that way, given that each member of the audience can consciously sustain it with little effort? Why this see-sawing alternation between order and chaos?
Tamas Vicsek, Albert-Laszl6 Barabasi and their colleagues have asked this same question. They made sound recordings of the post-performance applause in several theatres and opera halls in Hungary and Romania, and looked at how the sound volume changed as clapping veered between incoherent and synchronized. They found that, although synchronized clapping produces 'spikes' of noise that can exceed the sound level during incoherent clapping, nevertheless synchronization decreases the average noise intensity in the hall.
This decrease happens not because the audience members are clapping any less vigorously when they are in phase, but because they clap less often. Each person spaces their claps roughly twice as far apart in the synchronized mode than when they are clapping freely. This is presumably because it is harder to clap in time with everyone else if the rhythm is too fast - synchronization of a slow handclap disintegrates if the pace quickens. No one in the audience thinks consciously about this; the measured rhythm of the synchronized clap essentially selects itself.
The researchers suggest that the difference in average sound volume explains why applause at concerts oscillates between incoherent and synchronized. An appreciative audience wants to make a lot of noise. It also appears to enjoy the communal experience of synchronized clapping, which lends the crowd a single voice. But these two things are in conflict, because synchronization results in a drop in the average noise intensity. No one registers this drop consciously, but the audience, having switched into synchronized mode, nonetheless begins to speed up the rhythm so as to restore the sound volume to it's earlier unsynchronized level. In doing so they lose the ability to keep their claps in step and the synchronization dissolves into incoherence. Moments later the attractive tug of sychrony reasserts itself and the cycle repeats.
A push and a pull; a tension between conflicting desires. This is all it takes to tip our social behaviour into complex and often unpredictable patterns dictated by influences beyond our immediate experience or ability to control. Regardless of what we believe about the motivations for individual behaviour once we become part of a group we cannot be sure what to expect.

Masoud

Unfortunately John Reid is genuinely working-class. He is just a 'class-traitor' who has sold out his constituency for personal profit like so many other apparatchniks in the Labour party. He is racist but too stupid to understand what racism is. John Reid is a sick man.
There is much talk of 'the politically correct brigade'. I have never encountered such a brigade except in splintered forms like the anti-fascist movement. Perhaps it is time for such a brigade to face down the regiments and battalions who daily oppress us. Time for a militia ready to physically oppose the ongoing attacks on minorities; on muslims; on women; on ethnic minorities; on the oppressed and the underdogs. In uniform like in 1936 Spain; with temporary tactical commanders but no long-term leaders Perhaps it is time we abandon guerilla tactics and start to fight pitched battles. It certainly is time we hold those rhetoriticians to their words. Too many people are dying to fear confrontation.

Hey Vermin, perhaps you'll have to leave too. Where are your great-great grandparents from?

Obviously, the EZLN are also a good role model for a more democratic mode of protection.

Journalists are seemingly mobbing her parents house in Edinburghs new town so I checked up on her address. I may be mistaken but there seems to be sixteen different properties that they own. Her poor mother must be run off her feet doing all that housework while all those lazy homeless people never have to vacuum a carpet - no wonder she wants slavery reinstated. I'd guess many are all rented out to pay for little Lucys school fees but I think I'll visit a few of them just to make sure. I'm not a socialist but if you don't live somewhere you shouldn't be allowed to own it and noone can justify owning more than two properties at once. God forbid but say her family all died in a car accident the 'trickle-down' effect on the housing market would be immense. Maybe they are just buying up as much of the UK as possible to stop it falling into foreign hands.

and not enough action

I shut down a local 'defence' company last night (temporarily) by burning out a nearby electricity junction box. What the fuck did you do that compares with that Mr Yak ?

If you do do more than criticise then the junction box tip is an excellent way to disrupt an organisation without any risk - boasting about it here is the only thing that may get me caught but I thought it was worth sharing. What would you have me do about Lucy ?

if what you just wrote is true your allready caught.

Don't lose the plot or get personal.I mean fuck big brother off.And what you just admitted to could get you a life sentence.

A life sentence for petty vandalism ? Get real. Besides, I've admitted to far worse on Indymedia and never had any repercussions. I'm tempted to add my real name just to show you you don't need to be so afraid. It was you who wanted action, fair enough, why not act yourself ? A little bit kindling, a crowbar and a firelighter and you can disrupt virtually any industrial estate. I've a more appropriate target lined up for my next bonfire, I'm just waiting for an appropriate date, I'll try and borrow a digital camera to show you how easy it is.

What your doing could cost people their lives.Especially in an arms factory were some manufacturing process is dependent on electricity for safety.So how you justify it as petty vandalism won't hold water in a court.And if they catch you,and with your ego they will.Remember when your sitting in a cell that i told you so.I have no doubt you are arrogant enough to publish your real name.I hope your ego gets the better of you and that you do.Because you are a dangerous indivdual with no thought for the consequeces of your actions.This conversation is over.

Any installation where a power cut would be a danger to life and limb will be required by health and safety laws to have a seamless/"uninterrupted" power contingency.

I should imagine if security is so soft you can gain access to the electrical system without spending a fortune, they are not in the above category- albeit they could be simply cutting corners.

Go look at a BAe Systems installation if you want to see what kind of security sensitive/dangerous sites have.

I would also hope that dp ascertained the risk to others before undertaking the sabotage.

That aside, I would however remind dp that despite the fact the IMC UK does not log IP adresses that there is nothing to stop agencies from sniffing the data both at the IMC end and dp's end.

While such activity without due process would be illegal and inadmissable as evidence, it obviously could be used to reverse engineer the necessary evidence to obtain the warrants and move forward under a seemingly legal manner.

There really is no such thing as Internet anonymity. It's just a matter of how badly they want to find you.

Any installation where a power cut would be a danger to life and limb will be required by health and safety laws to have a seamless/"uninterrupted" power contingency.

I should imagine if security is so soft you can gain access to the electrical system without spending a fortune, they are not in the above category- albeit they could be simply cutting corners.

Go look at a BAe Systems installation if you want to see what kind of security sensitive/dangerous sites have.

I would also hope that dp ascertained the risk to others before undertaking the sabotage.

That aside, I would however remind dp that despite the fact the IMC UK does not log IP adresses that there is nothing to stop agencies from sniffing the data both at the IMC end and dp's end.

While such activity without due process would be illegal and inadmissable as evidence, it obviously could be used to reverse engineer the necessary evidence to obtain the warrants and move forward under a seemingly legal manner.

There really is no such thing as Internet anonymity. It's just a matter of how badly they want to find you.

"Too much yak and not enough action" suddenly becomes too much action and not enough yak !
You are a funny little beast of burden aren't you ? I take it you've never worked in an arms manufacturer if you think they blow up every power cut. Anyway, I said defence company not arms factory, not the same thing at all. I would like to point out that if you are as mentally challenged as Yak is then you probably shouldn't go anywhere near an electricity junction box or you'll end up shorting the circuits the hard way. Wellys, rubber gloves and a healthy respect for high voltages can't hurt.

to more serious acts and threatening more in the near future sounds like someone they will want to find.And maybe IMC don't keep ip addys but ISP's do.

I've never got into a BAe site. I think it is possible to take one out but I wouldn't expect to get away with it, they are tighter than your average company. Mind you I've worked in higher security companies and most, but not all, have an achilles heel or at least momentary lapses of security. The thing about the junction boxes are they are so easy and many small to medium companies rely on them especially in winter. They are away from buildings and you don't get passers by in that estate at night. Wear gloves and beware getting caught on CCTV approaching the box but they don't train the cameras on the boxes. A small bag of kindling burning for less than ten minutes was enough to melt the cables insulation, it doesn't even need to be as big as a campfire. Firemen can deal with small electrical fires easily enough. If someone in the building tried to put out the fire then they could get hurt but the estate was empty and no one even noticed until this morning - the first person to go to the company was an alarm guy for some reason. It's a bit of a shot-gun approach as they often serve more than one company and it's really just a temporary measure rather than a knock-out blow, but it wasn't fixed by the end of the day so I'm happy. If you have the courage you could just cut the cables, I did that once in the past but just took out the street lighting. I'd like to open up more of these boxes to see if any of them are telecomms. I don't have any special security on my PC and have admitted greater crimes without anyone bothering to arrest me - maybe they are just waiting until there is space in prison. I don't normally brag about actions even to friends but I did want to share the technique. I've a better target in mind and will post it here if I'm successful. Unless they read this then they'll doubtless put it down to teenage vandals. I've actually learned some stuff from local kids that is way too violent for me - how to smash a window behind an iron grid using ball bearings, how to blind passing drivers at night using a camera flash. I try and stay friendly wth my local reprobates now I know how smart, dangerous and useful they are.

is the most commented on story i've ever seen on IMC

A telecoms box would wreak total havoc and would take more than a day to sort out. However, they are usually next to roads. So, a saboteur would need to use accelerant combined with something slower burning (preferably inside too, if access could be gained) to effect destruction before anyone could save it.

I'd make sure there were no emergency services buildings nearby.

Older industrial units sometimes have overhead analogue distribution boxes. These are often on poles with the lines fanning out like a web. They are often a total mess inside and a headache to navigate for engineers. So, if someone were to detatch all the cables and rip the patches inside out, it'd be a major chore to rectify. I doubt many evil defense contractors would be using such ancient technology.

If someone could engineer getting the companies telecomms account details there are all sort of mischievous things that could be done such as redirecting numbers, barring mobile phone and international numbers or simply cancelling the account. But they would run the risk of having their voice recorded.

Well, I suppose she knows a lot about being an Irish nigger!

....is a Scottish name, but they're still Celts.

Not Anglo-Saxon, who destroyed the ancient Celtic culture and structure of society.

Sounds like this bitch doesn't know much about history, but then the professors of the swp don't either, and they also went to private schools.