We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.

Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]

The Big Brother State video

Something for the afternoon tea break:

Samizdata quote of the day

“The Olympic Games are not the place for demonstrations.” Aren’t they? Actually, the Olympics seem an ideal place for demonstrations.

– Anne Applebaum, pointing out the obvious fact that the Olympic Games are highly political by their very nature. I am feeling a greater and greater sense that the Beijing Olympics are going to be highly memorable, quite possibly in the sense that a trainwreck is highly memorable. And I am not sure this is bad.

Not ignored enough

The top headlines from BT Yahoo! news a moment ago:

* Anger problem ‘ignored’ in UK

ITN – Chronic anger has reached endemic heights in the UK but is often ignored, according to a new report.

* Miss Bimbo website provokes outrage

VBS does North Korea

The crazy guys from VBS have 14 parts of strange-but-interesting video footage from that open air prison known as North Korea… check it out.

I do not think they are going to be invited back.

Samizdata quote of the day

“Can you believe this place?” Admiral Driscoll said to me. He sounded like a bit like a kid on Christmas morning. I felt weirdly like a jaded old man who had seen it all even though he is older and more accomplished. I understood then what some American soldiers and Marines mean when they say the top brass lives and works at “echelons above reality”. I’m not blaming the admiral. His job requires him to be isolated from nuts, bolts, and the street most of the time.

Michael Totten

Saying it the way they see it

Michael Totten’s latest from Iraq is up and as usual highly recommended:

The Middle East beyond Israel strikingly lacks anything resembling political correctness. I hear much more severe denunciations of radical Islam there than I do in the U.S., and I don’t mean from Americans. I hear it from Arabs, and from Persians and Kurds. I hear it in Lebanon all the time, and in Iraq too.

Sabah Danou walked with Commander Summers and Admiral Driscoll. He’s an Iraqi who works for the multinational forces as a cultural and political advisor in Baghdad. “Look,” he said to me and gestured toward a local man with a long beard and a short dishdasha that left his ankles exposed. “He’s a Wahhabi,” Danou hissed. “He is linked to Al Qaeda. That’s their uniform, you know, that beard and that high-cut dishdasha. God, what pieces of shit those fuckers are.”

In less dissembling mealy-mouthed times, that would simply be described as saying it the ways he sees it.

A strange resemblance

In my neighbourhood of Pimlico stands one of the ugliest public buildings in the known universe: Pimlico School. Unbearably hot in the summer (all that glass), miserable in the winter, with the sort of cavernous, Stygian style unlikely to suit enquiring young pupils, the place is being demolished for hopefully something rather more attractive. I cannot help but wonder, though, at the resemblance between the school and the main spacecraft in Battlestar Galactica. Mind you, I have not seen any Raptors flying out of the end of it.

Some people actually like Brutalist architecture.

An inconvenient truth …

For those who want us all to live in terror, is that would-be terrorists are seldom very competent, and that doing any very big damage is difficult. An illustration just how difficult has just turned up. The Guardian luridly reports:

Terry Jupp, a scientist with the Ministry of Defence, was engulfed in flames during a joint Anglo-American counter-terrorism project intended to discover more about al-Qaida’s bomb-making capacities.

There has been no inquest into his death, as the coroner has been waiting for the MoD to disclose information about the incident. An attempt to prosecute the scientist’s manager for manslaughter ended when prosecutors said they were withdrawing the charge, but said the case was too “sensitive” to explain that decision in open court.

The Guardian has established that Jupp was a member of a small team of British and US scientists making bombs from ingredients of the sort that terrorists could obtain. There is also evidence pointing to experiments to discover more about radiological dispersal devices – so-called dirty bombs – which use conventional explosives to scatter radioactive material.

A properly skeptical report probably would not use the magic word “al-Qaida”, rather than referring to terrorists in general. Nor would there be the superstitious mention of “radioactive material”.

However the salient facts are informative: An expert; no difficulty obtaining the materials and knowing what was wanted; proper care and attention – and he still managed to go horribly wrong. The task is a very difficult one.

Could it be the reason the average would-be terrorist doesn’t blow himself up prematurely (as used to happen quite often to old-style IRA/Fatah, etc., bombers equipped with commercial/military explosives), is because he lacks the knowledge to make an explosion at all? The idea that even a real expert could disperse suitably weaponised chemical/radioactive agents, or biological ones using low-explosive paint-tin bombs is just a bit ludicrous. The idea that an inexperienced religious nutter/power fantasist using recipes off the internet could do so is wholly absurd.

Terrorists in Britain are a threat to life comparable with police car-chases. Terror of terrorists is the threat to civilization.

No chance of the government, media, security services, just suggesting we all calm down, I suppose? Nope.

The war on…

What is it this week? Ah, tobacco again. Now displaying them for sale is to be banned. It is a public consultation – but the point of public consultation is to be able to point to endorsement of policy and to disarm objectors at the point of actual legislation, not to discover anything. Departmental minds are clearly made up:

Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said it was “vital” to teach children that “smoking is bad”.

“If that means stripping out vending machines or removing cigarettes from behind the counter, I’m willing to do that,” she said.

‘Its-for-the-children!’ – usually delivered in a sobbing voice on the edge of hysteria – remains an unstoppable weapon by which public life crushes private life.

Religions fight for ‘market share’ like everyone else

I came across a couple articles that puzzled me. Advocates of all beliefs, be they religious, political or philosophical, generally try to argue their position and convince other people their view of the world is the best one. Of course some religions (and pretty much all political systems) are evangelical, whereas some, like Judaism for example, are not. Nevertheless even Jews will argue their corner on why their beliefs are sensible and it is far from unheard of for people to convert to Judaism, something most Jews would probably regard as A Good Thing.

Yet strangely as of late, some Jews and Muslims seem a bit bent out of shape when another religion, the Roman Catholic Church, either lands a high profile convert or prays openly for non-believers to convert.

Being God free myself, I have no dog in this fight but this all strikes me rather like shop owners protesting that some other shop is advertising and therefore ‘stealing’ their customers. Guys, like everything else, religion is a market… why are you shocked that the Boys in Rome engage in marketing?

XCOR Press Conference

XCOR will be holding a press conference this Wednesday about the spaceship they are building. It will be their third manned rocket powered vehicle so this is no idle threat.

This press event will be held Wednesday, March 26, at 10 a.m. in the Canon Room of the Beverly Hilton at 9876 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Lunch will be served afterwards. The speaker will be XCOR test pilot Rick Searfoss. Rick has also flown the Space Shuttle three times as pilot and commander. If you are a media person who would like to attend, I presume you should call XCOR as soon as possible, although the information passed to me did not give any details on this.

According to a source associated with XCOR:

The prototype propulsion system for the Lynx now has more than two hundred flight equivalents on it and is in flight test now.

Fourteen engine runs yesterday, probably as many today.

The key to economic space transport is safe, reusable, and operable propulsion.No one else has anything like XCOR engines in that regard. Because engines are the most difficult and expensive part of the vehicle to develop, XCOR has a big advantage over its competitors. That includes giant firms like EADS Astrium.

In fact, no one anywhere has ever built anything even close to the economic efficiency of the XCOR engines.

I must of course note that I have worked as a consultant to XCOR, which basically means I know from the inside how good they are at this!

I would tell you more but I would have to shred you afterwards.

Conscience knows no compromise

The BBC states that MPs who oppose the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill will be allowed a free vote and will not face sanction as long as the law is passed by Parliament. An act of conscience becomes an exercise in power.

The prime minister is prepared to allow MPs who oppose a controversial embryo bill to vote against pieces of the legislation, the BBC has learned.

A senior government official said the sanction would be permitted only if it did not threaten the passage of the bill to develop human-animal embryos.

The official said Gordon Brown accepts that some members of his government object on grounds of conscience.

This is a compromise that smacks of Brown’s calculation: you may vote as you wish, but you will have to take the possibility of defeat into account. That is when you will face sanctions. Like many other vanished parliamentary conventions, this government will overturn liberal principles in pursuit of advantage.

All MPs whould receive a free vote, even though the Bill is worthy of support. No law needs to be passed: another hoary shibboleth trotted out by Labour. Comparisons with the masochistic contortions that the Liberal Democrats put themselves through under Clegg are clear.

One almost wishes that the bill is defeated so that the ‘moral’ Prime Minister is seen to punish those who acted freely. If any Prime Minister is able to sully an act of conscience, it is Gordon Brown.