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]
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The spoof post below about how the wretched Tory leader ‘Dave’ Cameron might react to the case for abolishing inheritance tax – a thoroughly good idea – prompted some commentators to wonder about the UK media. It reminded me of an old quote attributed to the late British broadcaster, Brian Redhead, who is supposed to have said (I paraphrase):
“The Times is read by people who run the country. The Daily Telegraph is read by people who fear we are being run by the French; the Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country, while the Daily Mirror is read by people who delusionally think they run the country. The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country. The Sun is read by people who do not care who runs the country so long as she has very large tits.”
I do not read Andrew Sullivan’s blog very often but when I saw the Michael Totten (who is someone I do rate rather highly) was guest-blogging there, I took a peek and saw an article Sullivan wrote a few days ago about the plot to blow up aircraft heading from the UK to the US, which quickly reminded me why I rarely visit.
I wonder if Lieberman’s defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn’t find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration.
Riiiight. It is totally sound policy to distrust what the authorities tell us and instead just look for the evidence as we have been lied to again and again, and until I hit the paragraph I quoted above, I was mostly in agreement with what was being written. Lord knows there are more than ample reasons to give the Bush administration a sound and repeated kicking and I am the last person to urge people to trust governments, but concocting weird conspiracy theories is a clear sign that the point of rational criticism has been past and we are entering Bush Derangement Syndrome territory.
Both Bush and Blair will not hesitate to use any plot by Al-Qaeda, even those of the more common Keystone Cops Terrorists variety, to abridge yet more of our civil liberties without in fact improving our security one iota. But the notion that the timing of such tactical moves by the police are being micro-managed by Blair, let alone Bush, for maximum PR value is stretching things, particularly given that the PR effect of such a bust is extremely uncertain given the recent propensity of London’s Metropolitan Police for arresting, not to mention shooting, the wrong people.
Moreover, the fiasco in Lebanon was an entirely domestic Israeli cock-up caused by the most idiotic leadership in the Jewish state’s history, so other than the ravings of the perpetually BDS infected Kos/Democratic Underground crowd (who are frankly an irrelevant lunatic fringe in any PR calculations likely to be made in either the White House or Downing Street), it is difficult to see why a military and political screw-up by Israel would have Bush or Blair desperately looking to finesse a diversion of attention away from the violence in Israel and Lebanon. It was really not their problem in any major way and it had largly pushed Iraq off the front pages of the world, which was unlikely to be causing many sleepless night in Downing Street or Pennsylvania Avenue. And I really, really doubt Tony Blair is more than dimly aware of who the hell Joe Lieberman is given that he is hardly a household name outside the USA. Methinks the idea such issues were driving the Metropolitan Police’s actions is frankly bonkers.
Still, I will probably be reading far more of Andrew Sullivan’s blog in the days to come now that someone else is actually writing for it.
There is so much happening in the commercial space breakout right now that it is difficult to keep up. I will just give you a few links to recent events.
The waiting list for tourist flights to Space Station Alpha is growing longer as former Microsoft developer Charles Simonyi has passed his Cosmonaut physical. Charles is in line behind a Japanese entrepreneur, Daisuke ‘Dice-K’ Enomoto who is already in training for a September flight. Meanwhile, the lovely Anousheh Ansari, whose family are the all-american heroes behind the Ansari X-Prize and X-Prize Cup is waiting in line for a slot to open up.
Also in the news, efforts towards a Canadian space port are moving ahead. There is something very poetic about a Cape Breton launch site: I can imagine the tourists spending an evening before their flight listening to some of the very fine Cape Breton traditional musicians. What better way to prepare for a flight than sipping a pint and listening to a few good sets of jigs and reels?
Breaking news: ‘Dice-K’ has been pulled from his flight for medical reasons. Anousheh will likely get the next flight opportunity.
The Conservative Party has launched a fierce attack on cabinet minister Stephen Byers following the latter’s call for the abolition of Inheritance Tax.
According to the Party’s Shadow Treasury Spokesman:
“This is neo-liberalism gone mad, a selfish Thatcherite appeal to naked greed and self-interest”.
He added:
“This ludicrous idea of handing out tax cuts to the rich is outmoded and has no place in 21st Century Britain. We in the Conservative Party are committed to increasing the rates of Inheritance Tax in order to build a fairer society based on inclusion and social justice”.
Party Leader, David Cameron has confirmed that his party will “fight tooth and nail” to save Inheritance Tax and “conserve the post-war walfare state settlement”.
I am listening to the test match cricket commentary, and I can tell you that cricket is about to become extremely big news, of the front page variety.
England are playing Pakistan, at the Oval cricket ground in London. England are two up, but Pakistan are looking favourites to win the final game, despite a good England batting fight back.
Or, they were. Because now something far more serious has happened. A while before the tea interval, Pakistan were punished by the umpires, for ball tampering. (Ball tampering in this case means deliberately and excessively scuffing up one side of the ball, to make it swing more.) The umpires changed the allegedly tampered ball, allowing the England batsmen out on the pitch to choose the replacement ball, and England were awarded five penalty runs. The Pakistanis were found guilty of cheating, in other words. There appears to be no evidence one way or the other to back up or disprove this judgement. (Where are those cameramen when you want them? They were all over it when Cook was given not out when he looked to have hit it, earlier in the day.) The Pakistanis carried on with the game at that point, but now the Pakistan side are refusing to take the field after tea.
“Under law 21,” one of the commentators is saying, “if a side refuses to come out, the umpires shall award the match to the other side.” This has never happened before in international cricket.
The umpire at the centre of this row is Darrell Hair, and he has a history of battles with Pakistan. → Continue reading: Darrell Hair versus the Pakistanis
The ‘end-times’ must be upon us. Former Labour cabinet minister, Stephen Byers, has just said something with which I agree: abolish inheritance tax.
At last we can put an end to all the quarrelsome debates and ill-informed speculation
A fundamentalist Islamic movement is emerging as a common link between several of the men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners.
Well, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
(And, by the way, I wonder what links the remainder of the men? Perhaps it was too soon to call for an end to the quarrelsome debates.)
…or anything, but I think have some reason to feel smug about my over/under on the Israeli/Hez ceasefire.
On day six of the ceasefire, we get:
Israeli commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold deep in Lebanon on Saturday, engaging in a fierce gunbattle, and the Lebanese government threatened to halt further troop deployments in protest as the 6-day-old U.N.-brokered cease-fire was put to a critical test.
…by Mr. Lileks. A taste:
There was no such thing as Castroism, after all. Only Castro. In the end it all dies with you.
Eventually it will come down to this, my friend: history will note that the people in the American jails at the tip of this island ate better than the average Cuban.
Lets hope he dies Real Soon Now, and that Bush manages through some miracle not to miss the opportunity to lift the embargo, so the succession struggle gets swamped in a tide of US dollars.
Sartre said “Hell is other people”, and as usually he got it wrong. Hell is a foreign keyboard.
– Perry de Havilland
I received a press release from my old drinking buddy Rick Tumlinson at the Space Frontier Foundation last night. NASA has announced the winners for the ‘Commercial Off The Shelf’ (COTS) space launch program:
Los Angeles, CA – August 18, 2006 The Space Frontier Foundation
congratulated SpaceX and Rocketplane – Kistler, the two winners of
NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation (COTS) program announced today
at NASA headquarters. The winners, selected out of a field that began
with at least 20 teams, will split a total of approximately $500 million
in funding to help them develop transportation systems that can be used
to support the International Space Station (ISS).
Many of us in the space field applaud this. Whether we like government involvement or not, it is there. This puts more money into the pot at just the right time and pretty much guarantees success of the SpaceX Falcon. A commercial manned orbital capability might now arrive in time to save NASA’s bacon: the sell-by date on the Space Shuttle fleet is rapidly approaching and their ‘CEV’ (Yesterday’s Space Program Today!) does not seem to have progressed past the view graph thus far.
The next SpaceX launch test from Kwajelein is due in the November-December time frame.
“If Israel uses its military decisively to wipe out Hezbollah, such an action will simply create a whole new generation of terrorists.”
Someone close to me recently lectured me on this fact. It appears to makes sense prima facie, but such an enlightened-sounding utterance falls apart as an empty truism with the addition of a little perspective. The Middle Eastern conflict must be viewed from a long-term angle, whilst attempting to countenance the ramifications of the alternative tactic mentioned. Those who might be attracted to the deceivingly pacific fog shrouding the above statement would benefit from realising that by strategically not responding in kind to a belligerent act by zealots like Hezbollah is no silver bullet to the problems of the Middle East; on the contrary, such a strategy may well carry consequences that could ultimately be unthinkably awful.
A powerful expression of the quote I provided above can be found in Steven Spielberg’s recent movie, Munich. The moral of that tale is identical to the one pronounced by my close relative; if one hunts down and kills those who planned and carried out the kidnapping-murders of the Israeli athletes at those fateful Games, all one does is inspire a new and more brutal generation to rise up in its place and start spreading increased chaos.
In response to this assertion, I ask; was this same generation not destined to pollute the earth with their hatred and intolerance in one form or another? Israel, by its relatively frequent, um, non-diplomatic actions, may well have inspired many, many Muslims to embark on violent jihad over the course of its existence. However, if Israel left – for example – the horrors of the Munich Olympic Games unanswered, it is perfectly conceivable that the people who reacted to Israel’s subsequent blatant retaliatory assassination programme by joining Islamic militant movements would readily join the same sorts of organisations (or even Arab state militaries) when inspired and emboldened by a flaccid Israeli reaction to a travesty of this kind, or perhaps an aura of weakness created by such a profound act of Israeli inertia in the face of this sort of crime. Long and rambling sentence, sorry. Considering that the existence of Israel is an anathema to so many Middle-Eastern Muslims, Israeli inaction and the perception of Israeli weakness is plausibly just as strong an inspiration to take up arms against the relatively tiny Jewish state as a hail of super-potent Star of David-marked precision-guided missiles.
The overarching problem – and this extends beyond Israel and into the international arena – is Islam and its unique propensity, amongst the major religions, towards radicalism. It seems more than likely that Israel will defeat Hezbollah in the future, however I have no doubt that some other radical Islamic organisation will fill any breach left expeditiously. If radical Islam’s nature is hydra-like, as those urging Israeli restraint imply from the above quote (and I believe they are correct), chopping off the heads of the hydra when they appear until the organism is exhausted through struggle or circumstance seems a perfectly logical grand strategy for the enormously durable West to pursue over the decades.
The ideal that lasting peace could reign in the Middle East if Israel would simply act passively towards its aggressors when she comes under attack is delusional nonsense. Israel is (again) biblical territory in Huntingdon’s oft-quoted, prescient – and surely by now undeniable – Clash of Civilizations, and ultimately the conflict between the liberal West and conservative Islam is a fiendishly complicated, opaque and unpredictable game of strategy that will be played out over many, many years. Every move in this game has the potential to yield both highly predictable and confoundingly unpredictable consequences. It is predictable that when Israel neutralizes an external threat using its military, a certain kind of person will be motivated to fight this force. Conversely and equally predictably, if Israel fails to respond adequately to an external threat, the enduring pan-Arab desire to drive the Israelis into the sea will stir in the heart of the same sort of person, provoking a similar outcome. I fear Israel, due to its location, will suffer negative long-term consequences emanating from the actions of the armed belligerati of conservative Islam, regardless of whatever strategy Israel chooses (ranging from rank appeasement to overwhelming military retaliation) to deal with blows bestowed by these aggressors, for that is the nature of the consolidated foe. Hence, Israel needs long-term support from the Western world. Israel may not be a liberal place itself in many ways, but in many ways it is the (somewhat unlikely) vanguard of liberalism.
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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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