Honduras (catch all)

[AnalyticType]

but I'll accept a nice glass of white merlot.

This software beats the hell out of manually constructing a matrix!

One of the things that my professor neglected to teach was the necessity of working across the matrix evaluating a piece of evidence against all hypotheses, rather than working down through all evidence under a hypothesis. When I was first learning this method, I had all kinds of frustration going on. Between the ACH tutorial and chapter Eleven in the book The Thinker's Toolkit I found the process much easier and effective.

The thing that I like about it is that one matrix can be used to evaluate many hypotheses simultaneously. The software runs the math functions, making it easier to eliminate the highly unlikely hypotheses. Then you can identify intelligence gaps, consolidate or split hypotheses (add new ones too) and improve your evidence list, then reevaluate. I didn't take the time to refine my matrix in this manner yesterday, but if this were for a product I would have done so.

...AT, I owe you a beer if we ever run into each other. I've been looking for a package to do this for some time now.

[John T. Fishel]

AT and JW.

AT the so-called experts could use a look at your conservative data analysis. Your critera for assigning values makes sense. Now, why don't you put together a short article for the Journal part of SWJ.

Cheers

JohnT

[Steve Blair]

Here's an interesting little BBC snippet: link

Granted it's only a handful of people, but it does give something of the local perspective on things.

[slapout9]

One of the things that my professor neglected to teach was the necessity of working across the matrix evaluating a piece of evidence against all hypotheses, rather than working down through all evidence under a hypothesis. When I was first learning this method, I had all kinds of frustration going on. Between the ACH tutorial and chapter Eleven in the book The Thinker's Toolkit I found the process much easier and effective.

That would be my biggest beef. From my LE view once you establish motive (who benefits from an action and how great is the benefit) you don't need a lot of other data. You need to establish his/her alibi(s)for doing or not doing something. My 2cents anyway.

[marct]

Hey Slap,

That would be my biggest beef. From my LE view once you establish motive (who benefits from an action and how great is the benefit) you don't need a lot of other data. You need to establish his/her alibi(s)for doing or not doing something. My 2cents anyway.

Generally, I'd agree, but motive can be tricky. Did Zelaya gain? Yup, but how about Uncle Hugo? Would he gain? Probably, so we've got a whole slew of different actors running around with overlapping motives. Same on t'other side as well - congress, the SC and the armed forces all stood to gain as well (as did the large landowners, businesses, etc.), so there's a whole slew of other, overlapping, motives.

Just my 1.724 cents

[jmm99]

Dick Heuer's book is online (chapter 8 = ACH), in which he notes (para 2):

Analysis of competing hypotheses (ACH) requires an analyst to explicitly identify all the reasonable alternatives and have them compete against each other for the analyst's favor, rather than evaluating their plausibility one at a time.

as the core concept.

[AnalyticType]

Whether engaged in politics, intell analysis, law enforcement, or academic debate, too often people tend to have a 'favorite theory' to which consistent evidence will be applied while inconsistent evidence will be rejected. To reject evidence because it doesn't 'fit the pattern' is likely to be highly detrimental. The purpose of ACH is to reduce that effect significantly by requiring the analyst to make every effort to disprove the theories being evaluated.

Remember Statistics class? (I do... painfully!) Similar concept as Competing Hypotheses, in which you cannot "prove" which is true, but you can prove which is false. The big difference here is that, unlike the "black or white" world of mathematics, the real world scenarios such as Honduras have far too many variables and shades of grey. Therefore, ACH helps identify which hypotheses have the most inconsistencies vis-a-vis the facts, and which have the least inconsistencies. The least inconsistencies indicate the highest likelihood.

[tequila]

Okay, I just have to ask - where did you get that idea of Harper from? A "Chavez-style leftist"?????? Up here, he's usually seen as closer to ex-President Bush than to wanna-be Big Men like Chavez!

Take it easy, MarcT! I'm not one of those folks on "Talking to Americans", I'm just saying that it's not only leftists Chavistas arguing that this is a coup, but even people like Stephen Harper are as well. Then again, perhaps he is taking too many cheap drugs from your apocalyptic socialist medical scheme that have persuaded him to become a lapdog of Uncle Hugo?

I think your analysis is spot on. What concerns me is the unwillingness of the external players - non-Bolivarian - to look at the facts on the ground. They have all created a myth that this was a coup, which if the facts are as reported it was not. Indeed, it was a constitutionally sanctioned action carried out somewhat more crudely than was really necessary - but constitutional nonetheless.

Certainly the expulsion of Zelaya appears to be un-Constitutional. Article 81 and 102:

ARTICULO 81.- Toda persona tiene derecho a circular libremente, salir, entrar y permanecer en el territorio nacional.

ARTICULO 102.- Ningún hondureño podrá ser expatriado ni entregado por las autoridades a un Estado extranjero.

Also the replacement government has extended the curfew another three days, as well as suspending several Constitutional liberties during those hours.

For English-language speakers, this blog by an American Catholic lay volunteer has been quite informative - Hermano Juancito.

[John T. Fishel]

here is an article in the Honduran newspaper, El Diario Exterior that details the reasons for the action taken by the other 4 constitutional organs of govt*. http://eldiarioexterior.com/noticia....articulo=31965 It closes with the question Tequila raises about forcing Zelaya into exile.

* The Ministerio Publico (roughly Attorney General) in most Latin American countries is an independent constitutional component of govt not responsible to the Executive, Legislative, Judicial branches nor, in HO, the Armed Forces. As the Constitution of HO says, there are 5 branches of govt.

Cheers

JohnT

[marct]

Hi Tequila,

Take it easy, MarcT! I'm not one of those folks on "Talking to Americans", I'm just saying that it's not only leftists Chavistas arguing that this is a coup, but even people like Stephen Harper are as well.

Well, okay then - I never said that he was smart, just not a "Chavez-style Leftist" !

Then again, perhaps he is taking too many cheap drugs from your apocalyptic socialist medical scheme that have persuaded him to become a lapdog of Uncle Hugo?

Hey, we aren't the ones with Gov't funded prescription medicine (I wish we were!!!)! I always try to follow the old adage that one should never ascribe to malice (or Chavez-style Leftism ) what can be ascribed to stupidity....

For English-language speakers, this blog by an American Catholic lay volunteer has been quite informative - Hermano Juancito.

Nice blog, thanks for it.

[tequila]

here is an article in the Honduran newspaper, El Diario Exterior that details the reasons for the action taken by the other 4 constitutional organs of govt*. http://eldiarioexterior.com/noticia....articulo=31965 It closes with the question Tequila raises about forcing Zelaya into exile.

* The Ministerio Publico (roughly Attorney General) in most Latin American countries is an independent constitutional component of govt not responsible to the Executive, Legislative, Judicial branches nor, in HO, the Armed Forces. As the Constitution of HO says, there are 5 branches of govt.

Cheers

JohnT

Maybe the Google translation is off, but I saw no mention of why the Constitution could be ignored w/regards to Zelaya's exile in the article mentioned. Looks here as if the Supreme Court, not the Ministerio Publico, ordered Zelaya's expulsion. However, there doesn't appear to be any explanation as to how this was Constitutional given Article 102 especially.

This is the closest thing I can see as to an "explanation".

Por eso la Corte Suprema ordenó a las FF AA la salida violenta de Zelaya y los ministros firmantes del decreto, ocurrido esto el domingo por la mañana, y horas más tarde, el Congreso Nacional conoció de la renuncia del Zelaya, que la admitió y procedió a destituirlo legalmente por las acciones ilegales cometidas.

[John T. Fishel]

Tequila, in noting that forcing him into exile probably violated the constitution but arresting him for his crimes did not so violate it. Perhaps, the officers carrying out the Supreme Court order thought it was more civilized to put Zelaya on a plane to Costa Rica than throw him in the carcel - I dunno.

The linked article, however, does raise exactly the point that sending Zelaya into exile doesn't quite fit with the Constitutional rules and the paper says they will keep investigating (Veremos -we'll see - the last line).

As far as the Min Publico is concerned, nobody ever stated that the office ordered the arrest of Zelaya - the Supreme Court did that. The Min Publico has said that it will prosecute him for his crimes (its job) should he return. Please remember that the legal systems in Latin America in general follow from the french system but with their own modifications. In this, they are very different from our own. That is why Judge Baltazar Garzon in Spain could order the arrest of GEN Pinochet and the Executive could do nothing about it. On top of that, the Min Publico (at least in Panama which may differ some from HO) - as the Atty Gen - is the public prosecutor but independent of the Courts. JMM might have something to say on this topic.

Going back to AT's quantitative analysis, what we are dealing with is the preponderance of the evidence. As she shows, pretty conclusively IMO, that weighs heavily in favor of the 4 branches of the govt other than the Executive. 4 out of 5 is certainly better than 2 out of 3!

Cheers

JohnT

[Surf n Turf]

Dick Heuer's book is online (chapter 8 = ACH), in which he notes (para 2):



as the core concept.

jmm99,
Thanks for the link to Dick Heuer's book.
I have had the software for some time (unused), now the "users manual".
Most helpful
SnT

[slapout9]

Whether engaged in politics, intell analysis, law enforcement, or academic debate, too often people tend to have a 'favorite theory' to which consistent evidence will be applied while inconsistent evidence will be rejected. To reject evidence because it doesn't 'fit the pattern' is likely to be highly detrimental. The purpose of ACH is to reduce that effect significantly by requiring the analyst to make every effort to disprove the theories being evaluated.

That is exactly what LE does when it is done well. You multiple suspects and motives and evidence. Your job is to look at the alibis to disprove the evidence(ie use inconsistent evidence) and eventually arrive at factual proof. You may want to take a look at chapter 5 of the above quoted book: Chapter 5 is titled- Do You Really Need More Information.

I hope you take this in the spirit it is intended, your work was very good and you should keep doing it because you believe in it and based upon my experience that will increase your quality of analysis as opposed to subtract from it. However what happend in Hondo Land was just a plain old Power Grab and The existing Power Oligarchy gave him a spanking for doing it.


Video of Predictive Analysis from TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/br..._s_future.html

[jmm99]

now we are communicating in Basic English:

However what happened in Hondo Land was just a plain old Power Grab and The existing Power Oligarchy gave him a spanking for doing it.

[jmm99]

may want to DL: 2009 A Tradecraft Primer: Structured Analytic Techniques for Improving Intelligence Analysis (.pdf) and 2005 Curing Analytic Pathologies (.pdf).

[John T. Fishel]

If it was a power grab, then it was a power grab by four institutions of the Constitutional Government to forstall a power grab by the fifth institution of the Constituional government.

Nobody here comes out smelling like a rose. The substantive issue for the Hondurans is which bad solution was the least bad.

cheers

JohnT

[jmm99]

it gets misuninterpreted ...

from Slap
However what happened in Hondo Land was just a plain old Power Grab and The existing Power Oligarchy gave him a spanking for doing it.

He's saying "him" (Zelaya) was making a Power Grab and that the Power Oligarchy (the Four Mouseketeers) gave him a spanking for doing that.

And a legal spanking according to this Hondo JAGGIE:

NYT
Leader’s Ouster Not a Coup, Says the Honduran Military
By MARC LACEY
Published: July 1, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Flipping through a stack of legal opinions and holding up a detention order signed by a Supreme Court judge, the chief lawyer of the Honduran armed forces insisted that what soldiers carried out over the weekend when they detained President Manuel Zelaya was no coup d’état.

“A coup is a political move,” the lawyer, Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza Membreño, said Tuesday night in an interview. “It requires the armed forces to assume power over the country, which didn’t happen, and it has to break the rule of law, which didn’t happen either.” ... [much more in article]

and from the same paper and writer, Compromise Is Sought to Honduras Standoff, which includes this OAS action to pursue suspension of Hondoland:

After a marathon session that stretched close to dawn, the Organization of American States “vehemently” condemned the removal of Mr. Zelaya over the weekend and issued an ultimatum to Honduras’s new government: Unless Mr. Zelaya is returned to power within 72 hours, the nation will be suspended from the group.

Anything beyond that suspension (negotiated compromise excepted), will get into the territory of intervention.

[AnalyticType]

Slap, I have read Heuer's book a couple times over the last five years, and you're right. Don't worry, I understand where you're coming from.

PM inbound.

Victoria

That is exactly what LE does when it is done well. You multiple suspects and motives and evidence. Your job is to look at the alibis to disprove the evidence(ie use inconsistent evidence) and eventually arrive at factual proof. You may want to take a look at chapter 5 of the above quoted book: Chapter 5 is titled- Do You Really Need More Information.

I hope you take this in the spirit it is intended, your work was very good and you should keep doing it because you believe in it and based upon my experience that will increase your quality of analysis as opposed to subtract from it. However what happend in Hondo Land was just a plain old Power Grab and The existing Power Oligarchy gave him a spanking for doing it.


Video of Predictive Analysis from TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/br..._s_future.html

[Rex Brynen]

That is exactly what LE does when it is done well. You multiple suspects and motives and evidence. Your job is to look at the alibis to disprove the evidence(ie use inconsistent evidence) and eventually arrive at factual proof. You may want to take a look at chapter 5 of the above quoted book: Chapter 5 is titled- Do You Really Need More Information.

You're absolutely right, Slap--all good deduction (or induction) involves some form of ACH. To be frank, I'm a little leery about doing it with a software package--while it avoids some common analytical pitfalls, it creates other sorts of problems too, and disguises some of them behind the apparent scientific veneer of numbers and graphs.

Video of Predictive Analysis from TED

--yes, I saw that when it came out, and thought it was a truly dubious way of trying to predict anything useful about Iranian domestic or foreign policy. Give me a room full of smart analysts, and a manager who lets them debate and challenge conventional wisdoms, any day.


On the Honduran events, I agree with the many in here who have underlined Zelaya's apparent unconstitutional ambitions, and the legal mandate given to the Army by the Supreme Court. That being said, the potential threat posed by interventionist militaries in Latin America is so great that there is some value in maintaining a hemispheric norm against anything that even looks even faintly like a coup--especially since LA militaries often cloaked (and indeed, internally justified) their past interventions in the name of some higher national interest.