Corrections and Clarifications

To maintain higher standards of accuracy than the punditocracy, we'd like to use this post to do a little cleanup on some recent posts. In one such post, we argued that Niall Ferguson was presenting fertility statistics in a way that implied a massive divergence between population growth rates in the UK and Pakistan. Part of our counterargument was to note the much higher infant mortality rates in Pakistan, which would offset some of the higher fertility. Reader WH notes that this alone won't provide very much offset, basically because the fractions are much smaller for infant mortality than fertility. That is correct. Nevertheless, we're sticking to our broader claim, as reflected in our label for Ferguson's position ("Neo-Malthusian") that basing predictions of doom on long-term population projections is a very hazardous enterprise, because so many other influences come into play over such time horizons.

Second, our post yesterday about events in London reflected the widespread assumption that the man shot dead at Stockwell station was a would-be suicide bomber. Not least with the history of "shoot-to-kill" policies in Northern Ireland, we should have been more skeptical. Clearly the London police are operating in an extraordinarily tense environment and were forced into some very rapid assumptions about the deceased. But it doesn't change the fact of an unnecessary death.

UPDATE: The Sunday Times draws the parallels with Northern Ireland, including some on-point quotes:

Prophetically, a former senior Special Branch officer from Northern Ireland said: "I suspect that the authorities in England will make all the same mistakes as we did." ... Specialist security forces, such as the recently formed Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR), which has been drafted in to combat the present terror threat, are generally protected by law if they shoot first and ask questions later, provided they believe the suspect was a threat to the lives of others.

This proved to be the case when Diarmuid O'Neill, an unarmed IRA man, was shot dead in his Hammersmith flat in 1996 ... "You can’t be afraid to act if life is at stake," said a former Northern Ireland Special Branch officer. "But if you alienate people you can hand the terrorists a long-term support base from which to operate."

Leaving aside the many outs this policy allows, there is a broader issue of the meaning of "shoot-to-kill" -- it can mean (1) that in hot pursuit of a terrorism suspect, lethal force can be used, or (2) a decision is made in advance that lethal force will be used regardless of the circumstances in which the suspect is encountered. We may return to this issue depending on the direction of the commentary on the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes.

OTHER LINKS: Atrios on the distinction between initially giving the London police the benefit of the doubt versus active cheerleading.