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.
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The Telegraph reports how enemy saboteurs could have made a ‘liquid bomb’. According to Andy Oppenheimer, editor of Jane’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defence Directory:
“We are talking about common, everyday chemicals that are used in perfumes, cosmetics, drain cleaner, batteries, or could for example be stolen from school labs.
“These materials are easy to obtain and hard to detect, and could be smuggled in small amounts in small containers because it doesn’t take much to blow an aircraft up.”
I will be keeping my eyes open for further information.
The thought struck me after reading Adriana’s post that this plot may be quite wide. Last year a fellow here in Belfast was arrested, tried and convicted for studying ways of blowing up airliners using capacitors from tape recorders and such.
I was working in the US at the time that particular story broke… and was quite surprised to see pictures of the very complex in which I lived.
Perhaps it was a good thing my drapes were pulled while I was away so he never noticed the American flag in the corner. I can almost imagine his thoughts had he seen it: “An American! Allah be praised! And me, the only Arab terrorist in Belfast!”
Only those who have lived in Belfast will fully understand the joke.
According to Scotland Yard a plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit “mass murder” on an unimaginable scale has been disrupted.
It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft. High security is causing delays at all UK airports. The threat level to the UK has been raised by MI5 to critical. Three US airlines are believed to have been targeted.
There are no more details about the plan available at the moment other than it revolved around liquids of some kind and that the explosives would have been sophisticated and extremely effective. Flights from Heathrow Airport and Gatwick are suspended until this afternoon at least. The security measures are pretty drastic:
Passengers are not allowed to take any hand luggage on to any flights in the UK, the department said. Only the barest essentials – including passports and wallets – will be allowed to be carried on board in transparent plastic bags.
Another article reports that intelligence is often fragmentary and partial, so the fear perhaps is that there is another, parallel group or other individuals who are also going to carry out similar attacks and that is why such security measures are being taken.
This is all very distrurbing, of course, both for the obvious threat to lives as well as the disruption it will bring to our everyday existence. Another disturbing fact is this kind of comments (a reader’s comment next to the BBC article I got the news from):
This disruption [security measures] is one of the short term limits on freedom that are needed. Tony Shield, Chorley
I remain puzzled by the Porter affair, and the venom with which it is still pursued by nearly all British papers.
The former leader of Westminster Council masterminded the “homes for votes” scandal in the 1980s when good council homes were sold to prospective Tory voters in key wards, in order to stop Labour getting into power.
Summarises The Times, not completely accurately. The policy was based on a reasonable assumption by the councillors involved that owner-occupiers would be more likely to vote Tory. They did not hand-pick the beneficiaries.
I have two questions for which no satisfactory answers have been provided. Indeed, I have not seen the questions asked in the mainstream media.
1. If Porter and her colleagues could be surcharged by an official for selling off some dozens of council flats for indirect political advantage, where are the surcharges for the Labour, Liberal, and Tory politicians who built and subsidised the occupation of London’s three to four million council flats?
2. Why the hatred directed at Shirley Porter in particular? She is not a particularly endearing character, but then neither were most of the other Tory politicians caught up in the sleaze craze of the ’90s, and most of them have been rehabilitated in the public eye and are writing books or presenting TV shows. Is it because she is so rich? Or is it because she is Jewish?
Apparently the terrorism threat level in the UK has just been raised to ‘critical’. Which we are told means, “an attack is expected imminently”.
Pardon me for being critical, but that is entirely meaningless. It has been raised from ‘severe – an attack is highly likely’ which is also meaningless. When I write “meaningless,” I suppose that is because I want to know what is meant by ‘an attack’, and what probabilities are adduced to distinguish between ‘unlikley’, ‘possible but not likely’ [are not those the same? – no, apparently], ‘a strong possibility’, ‘highly likely’, and ‘imminent’? The announcement is full of meaning, but it is a purely political meaning.
This morning the police announce they have “disrupted a major plot” and arrested 18 people overnight, “as part of a long-running operation”. Unless there is actually someone known to the police to be loose with a bomb as a result of the raids, then disrupting a plot would reduce the actual level of danger, wouldn’t it? Maybe the danger was ‘critical’ (whatever that means) before last night, and they did not know it, so now a misleadingly low level of threat is being corrected.
What is entirely evident is that in the threat levels do nothing to inform the public. They contain no information. Actual threats (those that might succeed) are by definition unknown unknowns, because the security services can (we hope) cope with what they know.
What threat levels do do is provide justification for actions the authorities might otherwise have to explain in detail. One cannot help notice the timing, immediately after a vague but minatory speech by John Reid:
[W]e may have to modify some of our freedoms in the short-term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy our freedoms and values in the long-term.
It is up to each and all of us to ask the questions: what price our security? What price our freedoms? At what cost can we preserve our freedoms?
I do not think the plot is invented to support the Home Office’s war on liberty but I do think it is so interpreted. I do think that Reid, with knowledge of what would happen in the next few hours, was well situated to take advantage. And the timing could not be better to monopolise the news.
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An acquaintance of the left-liberal establishment, whom I will not embarrass by mentioning his name on this blog, remarked on Reid’s speech that it marked another step in the perversion of language: “None of us should be anything other than vigilant and that vigilance is the price of securing our freedom,” the Home Secretary said, inverting the meaning of a well-known phrase.
“The price of liberty is eternal vigilence” once meant we should take care of our liberty at all times lest we lose it to surreptitious encroachment. Now the official meaning is to be that we may only repurchase our freedom (at some indefinite time in the future) by indentured labour for state security, exchanging it just for now (and future nows to be determined) with vigilence – that we should subordinate our lives to watching for the Bad Wolf. And Big Brother is a TV programme.
The Channel 4 programme the other day called What Muslims Want raised a number of important issues. The presenter Jon Snow showed evidence that Muslims are not, as I had hoped, assimilating and in fact the process may be going backwards. If so, that means Muslims are unlike any other major immigrant group in Britain: Blacks, Eastern Europeans, Jews, Huguenots, Sikhs, Hindus, etc. have all become intermingled and inter-marriage is increasingly common. Not so for the Muslims. Snow also made the rather interesting distinction that most alienated Muslims in Britain are not ‘extremists’ so much as ‘separatists’: they simply want to live a separate Islamic life that draws little from British society. His argument on this was quite well made but it is also quite incorrect as I will soon explain.
Snow pointed out that there is considerable diversity of opinion amongst Muslims in Britain but there are a small number of key issues in which there is a very considerable Muslim consensus indeed, namely that of opposition to any British foreign policy that involved force being used against Muslims anywhere, opposition to free speech and opposition to common social liberalism (particularly issues relating to sexuality).
The first is an issue which should properly lie within the purview of democratic politics: at some point in the future Muslims may be able to find enough non-Muslims to support their apparently widely held views on foreign policy matters, though in truth I have my doubts. Nevertheless it is by no means impossible that British policies could one day be more to their liking. The second and third however are quite different matters. It is intolerable that any attempt even be attempted to find ‘middle ground’ on free speech and social liberalism because there can be no middle ground. Muslims say that people should ‘respect’ each other, which is clearly both a lie as that suggest they too are willing to ‘respect’ values they clearly oppose, and in any case the whole notion of respecting things you oppose is arrant nonsense. Tolerate, perhaps, but respect? No. One of the issues that seems to have a very broad basis of support, according to Jon Snow at least, is a spectacular lack of respect for people exercising social liberal values.
Now I have no problem with Muslims refusing to respect homosexuals, adulterers, women in short skirts or whatever else, because speaking personally I neither want not expect Muslim respect. I insist on their tolerance but their respect, or lack thereof, means less than nothing to me. As long as they do not try to stop women with short skirts walking down the street, or throw rocks at homosexuals and adulterers, I really do not care what they think.
But this is also where Jon Snow is incorrect to describe them as ‘separatists’. If all Muslims in Britain wanted was to live in ghettos where Muslim social norms are accepted, well I really think that is a ‘manageable’ problem. However it seems that what they also want is to prevent me, by law, from poking fun at their religion and demonstrating just how much I do not respect the things they hold dear. They insist I tolerate their beliefs, which I regard as deeply offensive barbarism based on superstitious nonsense, yet will not tolerate my belief in the unlimited nature of civil free expression, because they find what I will say offensive. They are not ‘separatists’ because they want their prohibitions on poking fun at Mohammad to also apply to me. There ain’t nothing ‘separate’ about that.
And so when Jon Snow suggests this issue is what may lead to violence and inter-communal strife, he is no doubt correct. And that may well be a process we need to go through. If the majority of the Islamic community in Britain truly does think that, they must not be accommodated, they must be utterly denied without apology and their repressive aspirations condemned.
Tolerance they get (for now), but it needs to be made clear that Muslim sensibilities do not trump secular values and they do not get a veto on what gets said about them or the things they value. They are free to respond in kind. However if that leads to violence by some extremists, well, so be it. They can say what they like about my values, I do not care and I suggest they take a similar attitude because I intend to say what I like about their values and any politician who tried to pander to them to prevent that from happening is someone to be implacably opposed.
The British Medical Association’s response to a proposal by the British government to allow optometrists more leeway to prescribe medication for eye problems.
“In order to safeguard patient care, the BMA’s ophthalmic committee can only envisage extremely limited opportunities for optometrists to make therapeutic interventions.”
I wonder whose interests are really being ‘safeguarded’ here.
This I wrote elsewhere in a discussion about politics and public opinion:
‘Courting the anger of small out-groups in order to prove himself to a broader public as acting bravely in the “greater interest” is such an established and successful Blairite technique that they are all at it: Cameron goading the right into denouncing him; Brown picking up Trident as a touchstone guaranteed to infuriate Lefties. Blair himself appears to have internalised technique as policy, believing that if he is irritating civil libertarians and better lawyers it is a sure sign he is in the right.’
And I think I was correct. Blair’s destruction will follow, as he is already starting to broaden the principle to include the rest of his party and the public. “I don’t care what you think.” is not a sustainable position for a politician.
It does surprise me that no mainstream commentator appears to have spotted that this is what Brown is doing over Trident, positioning himself as trustworthy to the general public by prompting a group hate from the sandal-wearing left (whom the public definitely do not trust) while reserving his position on the more important matters of domestic policy that he might wish to change.
I’ve been re-reading the report of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee – Identity Cards Technologies: Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence in preparation for an interview this evening. It is full of wonderful sarcasm couched in parliamentary politeness, and I recommend it to you, if you care to understand how Britain is governed and/or have a taste for black comedy. MPs are as much bemused spectators as the rest of us.
Nobody knows what the Home Office is up to, because it refuses to tell anyone – even select committees – any more than it can get away with. It does have 180-odd people now working on its Identity Cards programme. But I begin to wonder if they themselves know what they are about…
In case you think I am exaggerating, this is from section 30 of the report:
In written evidence, Microsoft said that “the current phase of public consultation by the Home Office has primarily focused on issues of procurement”. Jerry Fishenden [NTO for the UK] from Microsoft elaborated that “every time we came close to wanting to talk about the architecture, we were told it was not really up for discussion because there was an internal reference model that the Home Office team had developed themselves, and that they did not feel they wanted to discuss their views of the architecture”.
Richard Ehrlich asks whether the present vogue for celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver, Gordon (“the F-word”) Ramsay, Delia Smith, Nigel Slater, et al, is really based on any solid, honest talent. It is a good point he makes and there is no doubt a fair amount of flim-flam in some of the phenomenon. Even so, I think his article leaves a slightly sour taste (‘scuse the pun). Celebrity chefs may, even in a marginal way, have helped improve the quality of cooking or opened people’s eyes and hence their tastebuds to foods they would otherwise have never thought of before. It is also, let’s not forget, a part of the growth of “middle-class” habits among the population. Shortly after the war, there was nothing like this, except for drab government documents telling us how to make do on rations. Then along came Elizabeth David, the first proper celebrity cook who revolutionised British cooking by advocating the delights of Italian and French food. And we are all the better off for it.
Celebrity chefs may annoy some folk and in some cases do not deserve their fame, but at least they seem to contribute something to the sum total of human happiness. Which is no mean feat. If Nigella Lawson wants to invite me over for supper, I am hardly going to turn her down (I hope my wife is not reading this).
UPDATE: apologies for some spelling snafus in the original.
As we enter Day whatever-it-is (sorry, lost count) of the war between Israel and Hizb’Allah, the ongoing suffering of the British chattering classes shows no sign whatsoever of easing up. In fact, and according to reliable eyewitness reports, Israeli attacks on Lebanon have led to the intellectual and moral displacement of tens of thousands of innocent journalists, politicians and media types, all of them old women, and who now have nowhere to go.
But I suppose that that is only to be expected given the Uberissue media status of the current war in the Levant. So dominant is coverage of unfolding events and so extenstive is the (usually wrong) analysis that even news of impending all-out, balls-out civil war in Iraq has been relegated to the ‘and-now-for-the-rest-of-the-news’ section.
However, I have noticed what appears to be a slight change of emphasis. Amid the dwindling number of pro-forma demands for ‘proportionality’ (as if flogging that dead horse for long enough will cause it to reincarnate), the blanket indignation at what Israel is doing is morphing into a sense of grievous effrontery over what Tony Blair is not doing, i.e. he is not caling for am immediate ceasefire. Some talking-head or other on Newsnight this evening even when as far as to suggest that Tony Blair’s lamentable failure in this regard was the cause of the continued strife.
But what if Mr. Blair was to oblige his critics and duly demand a ceasefire? Would the warring parties, upon hearing the plaintiff Voice of Blair wafting in on the Mediterranean breezes, forthwith end their hostilities? Would the Katushya rockets fall silent? Would the Israeli armoured divisions gratefully slam their gears into reverse and head, teary-eyed, back to Israel? Will the lion lie down with the lamb, the Hobbit embrace the Orc and so on and so forth? Well, no, and not even the most woodenheaded of the Ceasefiristas imagine that any of that would happen.
And if Mr. Blair were, indeed, to succumb to these demands (which seem to mostly emanate from his own party backbenches) what then? Nobody seems to know. But then, nothing need follow because calls for ceasefire are not really about saving lives in Lebanon, Israel or anywhere else. Nor are they about solving the problems or establishing peace. They are really about adopting the right posture that, in turn, absolves the posturer from having to make any difficult or embarrassing decisions. In short, it is a respectable cop-out.
The incessant, prating ceasefire demands have little to do with either the Middle East conflict or, indeed, any other conflict and are much more to do with internal politics. The pressure on Mr. Blair is not really to put a stop to the fighting because everyone really knows that he cannot do any such thing. Rather it is pressure on Blair to toe his party line, mollify his backbenchers and let everyone off the moral hook.
So does this mean I get a sick kick out of watchiing the continued bloodshed? The answer is an emphatic ‘no’. I, too, would like to see an end to the war as soon as possible but, as balanced against that, I would like to see an end to Hizb’Allah even sooner. Call me callous if you will but I would rather risk being seen as callous than offer myself up as a fashionably useless poseur.
A woman who had (what I certainly think was) a humorous sign on her gate saying “Our dogs are fed on Jehovah’s Witnesses” was forced to take it down by British police because it is “distressing, offensive and inappropriate”. Yet seeing as Muslim extremists can walk down the street holding signs threatening to decapitate people, all with a police escort, it is clearly time to stop co-operating with the police and being so damn polite to them. Instead urge them not to allow themselves to be used to repress people’s right to express themselves and force them to fill out as much paperwork as possible. Got a lawyer? Call him. Just do not meekly co-operate.
We need to establish that there is no right not to be offended that trumps the reasonable right to self-expression. In fact I would argue that police escorted Muslims have already established that. If Muslims extremists can threaten people with death unless they express themselves in accordance with the restrictions Muslim activists want imposed on them, then we clearly do indeed have the right to make jokes about feeding Jehovah’s Witnesses to our dogs.
So stop making the job of the police easy when they try to impose such restrictions. If they want to stop you expressing themselves, do not threaten them but do not feel any great need to be unduly polite, make them arrest you and take the matter to court, every single time. I often go out wearing a tee-shirt saying “My Imam went to Mecca and all he got me was this lousy Tee-shirt”. Offensive? I do not think so but if anyone disagrees, I will not take it off and will force any policeman who takes issue with it to arrest me if he wants to stop me walking around wearing it.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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