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I am getting used to finding nonsense in the Daily Telegraph – when I still look at it.
Whether it is an absurd claim that the Rosenbergs were innocent – a claim made in an obituary of someone who was involved with them, and based upon the sainted authority of the New York Times of all people. Or a claim that Fox News (amongst other wicked things) characterizes Mrs Obama as a “golliwog”, a claim based on a far left smear site – as actually watching Fox News before writing about it would be beneath the dignity of the correspondents the Daily Telegraph sends to the United States.
And, of course, the endless favourable coverage for Comrade Senator Obama himself.
However, I am still capable of being shocked and I was shocked by Andrew O’Hagan’s despicable article on Solzhenitsyn in the same issue of the Daily Telegraph (Tuesday, August 5th) that carried Solzhenitsyn’s obituary – indeed on the very page before the obituary.
No doubt O’Hagan would defend his article (if he bothered to defend it) as light-hearted and basically supportive.
“Light-hearted” being English in this part of the world for “I can get away with being a swine, if I pretend it is all a joke” and “basically supportive” meaning kicking someone when he is down. The reader is told that Solzhenitsyn was not a great writer. Well Mr O’Hagan is entitled to his opinion, although it was odd day to choose to state it – with the man not even being buried yet. But the article went a lot further than that.
The reader is told that it is impossible to read the works of Solzhenitsyn – not just the very late works, but any of them. And then there is weird rant that trying to read Solzhenitsyn drives people to “banjo playing, feeling sympathy for Stalin” and various other stuff. No doubt this would be defended as being “amusing”.
Almost needless to say there was no mention of the tens of millions of people murdered by the Marxist/Leninists in what was then the Soviet Union, or the tens of millions of people the Marxists (the side of such people as the Rosenbergs and Saul Alinsky and his modern followers) have murdered in other parts of the world.
Instead Mr Andrew O’Hagan says that “We didn’t read him, but his thinking changed ours”.
Who “we” might be is not explained (although I think I know), as for “his thinking changed ours”, I have seen no sign of that in Mr O’Hagan himself.
Solzhenitsyn had flaws (as all human beings do), but he had a great respect for truth and Mr O’Hagan has no respect for truth at all. He, like so many at the Telegraph group now, sees his role as pushing ‘progressive’ propaganda at a once conservative newspaper – and if the truth does not fit the propaganda line, too bad for the truth.
I remember well him waxing with rage about how the wicked rightwing Bush and his evil cronies had denied New Orleans money after Katrina. One can rightly attack all layers of government for their messing up at the time of Katrina, and readers of this blog will know how much I despise George Walker Bush. But the O’Hagan picture of a skinflint Bush denying people money years after the event, did not fit well with my knowledge of President Bush as a spendthrift – so I checked. In reality, the Federal government had thrown billions of taxpayer Dollars at New Orleans and much of the money had vanished – as anyone who knows much about the place would have expected.
But O’Hagan had visited the place and so facts were not important – only his empathy with the suffering masses.
Solzhenitsyn would not have had the same opinion. He was no ardent friend of the West – but he was no lover of criminals either. Neither the ‘honest thieves’ (the open criminals with their ‘thieves law’ of the gang) or the ‘bitches’ – the trusties, or local government people and ‘community activists’.
“But the majority of the population are not thieves” – quite so, they are victims and will continue to be so whilst the criminals, both open criminals and government and community activists, continue to rule so many cities.
Lastly I apologize for any slight errors there may be in my account of Mr O’Hagan’s article – I am writing from memory [good thing you have an editor to embed the links for you, Ed.]. After looking at his article in the library I could not bring myself to buy the Daily Telegraph even to get the obituary of Solzhenitsyn – so I bought a copy of The Times instead.
We are sometimes told by its defenders that the National Health Service is the envy of the world. Well, I wonder if all those countries yearning for socialised medicine are dreaming of this?
The conduct of the British Army and the Ministry of Defence begins to crumble under the information leaked from the United States and Iraq. Unwilling to deal with the problems of security in Basra (and the potential damage of soldiers forced to patrol with inadequate equipment), British forces on the ground are alleged to have sought an accommodation with the Mahdi army militias in Basra and forsaken the city. They left the citizens of Basra at the mercy of fundamentalist thugs, whose torture and murder of innocent civilians was publicised in the following months.
The motives behind this accommodation are unclear. Justificatory references to success with the IRA and domesticating paramilitaries in a political process are evasive arguments for the accommodation. Equipment shortages are left unmentioned. More astonishing is the role of Des Browne, Secretary of State for Defence, whose permission was required before any British soldier could enter Basra. Whilst the Iraqi Army and US support staff put down the militias, the British authorities waited an unconscionable six days before they were willing to allow soldiers to enter the city. This was partially caused by the commander, Major-General Barney White-Spunner, who was away on a skiing holiday. This may be unfortunate timing but it does not lessen the air of ineptitude and scuttle that surrounds this whole affair.
The Guardian publicised the Ministry of Defence’s rebuttal from unnamed officials, who stated that the Iraqi Prime Minister, Al-Maliki, used the Basra campaign to shore up his credibility at the expense of co-operation with the British. They did concede that they had come to an accommodation with the militias and that,
British defence officials today denied reports that a secret deal between Britain and the Shia militia the Mahdi army prevented UK forces from taking part in a major offensive in Basra earlier this year.
Under the terms of last year’s accommodation, UK troops released suspected members of the militia in return for militia leaders ending their attacks.
Maliki was determined to weed out rebel units of the Mahdi army and criminal gangs. Local Iraqi forces and British troops had failed to do this, annoying the US and the Baghdad government, British officials now concede.
The level of political control that Labour politicians hold over individual deployments is difficult to gauge. Yet the delay and dithering over Basra, smells more of the Brown stuff than Browne’s sauce.
This release is just in from Michael Babka at Downsize DC:
We knew that the state of Montana was resisting the REAL ID Act, but we just learned some of the details of that resistance. The story is so good we had to share it, in case you hadn’t heard . . .
Brian Schweitzer, the governor of Montana, wrote a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. The letter informed Chertoff that Montana would not be complying with the REAL ID Act. Our quote of the day supplies one of the reasons for Governor Schweitzer’s rebellion. In response to the letter . . .
Secretary Chertoff called Governor Schweitzer and threatened him. Chertoff told Schweitzer that Montana residents would be banned from airplanes, or subjected to severe, time-consuming inspections at airports.
The Governor countered with his own threat, “How about we both go on 60 Minutes a few days after the DHS starts patting down Montana driver’s license-holders who are trying to get on the planes and both of us can tell our side of the story.”
Chertoff didn’t like that suggestion. He said, “I see the problem. We need to get this fixed.”
So far, the “fix” involves granting Montana and all other rebellious states an extension of the deadline for complying with the REAL ID Act. But the real fix is to repeal REAL ID.
Have you protested to your elected representatives that the Secretary of Homeland Security has been threatening the citizens of states that don’t comply with REAL ID? If not, please do so. You can mention the Chertoff-Schweitzer exchange in your personal comments. Ask Congress
to repeal the REAL ID Act. You can send your message here.
If you’ve sent a REAL ID Act message recently, consider sending another “I am not afraid” message. We have a lot of new people who probably aren’t familiar with our “I am not afraid” campaign. You can check it out here.
Please also consider making a donation to further our work. You can do so here.
Thank you for being a part of the growing Downsize DC army.
Jim Babka, President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
I would also suggest that if you are a Montana resident you write your governor a hearty thank you for standing up to the power hungry DC bureaucracy. If you do not live in Montana, find out if your governor is one of the ones rebelling against DC and thank them if they are and ask them to join with the others if they are not.
Liberte! Fraternite! Up the Revolution! May the fleas of ten thousand camels reside in Michael Chertoffs armpits!
Elon Musk, CEO and owner of SpaceX, has released a statement (or whatever you call it when done in a Q&A!) in which he says:
We’re not quite ready to release details on the initial investigation yet, but we should do it very soon. We think we have a very good idea but I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves and then be wrong. We definitely know where the problem occurred, but ‘why?’ is the question. We think we know, but have to be sure. We think it’s very small and will require a tiny change, so tiny that if we had another rocket on the pad we could launch tomorrow.
I will let you know when I see a more final report.
“I thought I’d begin by reading a sonnet by Shakespeare, but then I thought, why should I? He never reads any of mine.”
Spike Milligan
The moment that a policy “war” is declared these days, you can guess it’s doomed to gradual failure.
Jenny McCartney.
The Bussard ‘Inertial Electrostatic Confinement’ (IEC) Fusion test device has been built and tested. The team is being very tight lipped about precise results due to the terms of their funding. The group leader, Dr. Nebel does seem rather positive about the device which would lead one to believe they are getting good results:
The last time Dr. Nebel was interviewed he offered that the company could prepare and ship workable research units of the current model. This time he’s considering the building of a medium sized machine in the 1-½ meter range that would be large enough to make net power at a theoretical projection of 100MW. In the course of the forum discussion Nebel wrote, “Our contention is that since our projections for a power producing device only require a machine 1.5 meters in diameter (that) would in theory be able to produce something around 100MW of net power. (W)e might as well build the next one in that size range and accept the risk. The machines just aren’t all that expensive.”
The emphasis is mine. I have read elsewhere that the WB-7 has been running stably for many weeks and is churning out much data. Whether there is actual energy output or signs of it is something we do not know yet as the data is under embargo for the time being.
This is definitely one to watch.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the man who helped to tell the world about the horrors of communist Russia and its defining institution, the network of forced labour camps known as the Gulag, has died.
0023. LOX tanking is in progress; there has been some audio coming across now on the live feed.
0025: Note that they are in an ‘unplanned hold’ at the moment. Second tank LOX fill is happening and I believe I heard them discussing Helium pressurization.
0027: On the video you can see the LOX venting on the second stage.
0031: If you think the video quality s… is less than optimal, you are not alone!
0045: http://www.spacex.com/webcast.php in case you don’t know where to go. There is an Aussie presenter at SpaceX you will notice.
0058: I am having diffs due to the bandwidth the video is sucking up, so my posting may be more erratic than I would have liked. When you see the public affairs team again, the thing behind them marked Dragon is the mockup of the manned capsule they will be flying to ISS in the 2012 time frame.
0129: You may have noticed they lost video for awhile until someone rebooted their Mac streaming application. We are down into the t-30 range and all is looking good so far. Other than my Virgin Media cable connection which keeps seems to go off line entirely every now and again…
0133: This rock is so highly automated that there are a lot fewer people acting as controllers than in old fashioned 20th century artillery rockets. Things will not get really interesting until we get into the last few minutes. Also, remember that they have on board cameras so we will get live feeds from the rocket during ascent. Last time we had a really good view of the 2nd stage engine bell glowing red hot as it fired.
0246: My link was down for about 45 minutes… I am hoping it will stay up long enough for me to watch the launch! Looks like they are still in a hold so I have not missed anything big.
0251: The detanking is something they did last time as well. If things take too long, the fuel starts getting cold and this caused a shutdown on flight 2 because the thrust is below nominal if the temps are wrong.
0310: Since I have to sit and wait like everyone else, perhaps I can give a bit more explanation. They have a Helium tank there for pressurization I presume, at least from the size of it. Helium is a super cryogen. It makes LOX look like burning petrol by comparison. If they sit too long, the Helium starts chilling the fuel, which is Kerosene. You want your fuel and oxidizer to be warm and volatile when you
inject them; otherwise some of the energy is taken from thrust to heat them up. That lowers the efficiency of the engine, something usually measured as ISP. The computer controls know the expected profile from initial injection to when the igniter fires and as the burn starts and stabilizes. If it is outside of the expected band, the engine is shutdown.
0319: The have restarted the count and launch is now scheduled for about 0300 UTC, which would be about 0400 here since we are on BDT. Weather at Kwajalein is crystal clear by the way, at least from the weather map!
0325:They are back on the air doing the recycle. Incidentally, you may have noticed that the webcast appears to be done by a video camera focused on a computer screen at the Hawthorne facility. My guess is they have a single circuit from Kwaj and for security reasons wanted to totally isolate the public net from the operations net. I would do the same, but perhaps a little differently. It may simply come down to them having too little time to do anything more than this work around. This is all pure speculation on my part, but it is based on doing a paper system level design for an LCC for someone else.
0338: It looks like along with the rewind of the count we are also getting a replay of the video clips we saw earlier… I’d rather listen to the control loop myself!
0344: Their Mac video application just fell over again… and a few minutes later the talking heads are repeating the same description of the Falcon 1 that they did a couple hours ago. Meanwhile, while they jabber on, from other sources on Kwaj I read that everything is in the green. We should be about 15 minutes or less from launch now.
0352: While they are showing silly repeats, terminal count is about to start, or probably has. Everything is go for launch at the moment.
0403: A terminal abort, But there could still be a launch tonight. Er this morning. I think this is a good time for me to put the kettle on…
0415: If you have been reading the announcements, they think they may recycle the count to t-10, which means they have had a minor issue. The automatic check out that happens at ignition is extraordinary fascist and they want it that way: you can’t bring it back to the pad once you’ve launched!
0426: Wow. They have recycled to t-10 terminal count start in almost no time!
0440: They called it an anomaly. I wish they had not killed the video so quickly… the plume from the first stage was looking rather strange just before that, with streaks and instabilities that didn’t look right to me, also I was seeing a greyish color that did not seem quite right. But I could be totally wrong. We will just have to wait for more information. Not what I was hoping for tonight, but this is rocket science… The most likely response to an ‘anomaly’ is flight termination.
0530: Well, I am calling it quits as there is unlikely to be any real news for quite some time. The vehicle either blew itself up or was commanded to do so; I have the impression it performed its own self disassembly but have nothing to back that up. My own eyeballs are on the new regen engine bell but I will with hold judgement until I have had a chance to watch the video again and more importantly have some expert feedback. But tonight, with my bed calling, I will place my bets on the new engine, perhaps the regen cooling channels. It is a wild stab in the dark and I will probably disagree with myself by the time I have some sleep. But there you go.
Good night all.
0552: Elon issued a statement, and here is an excerpt on the problem:
It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight. On the plus side, the flight of our first stage, with the new Merlin 1C engine that will be used in Falcon 9, was picture perfect. Unfortunately, a problem occurred with stage separation, causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation and I will send out a note as soon as we understand exactly what happened.
Spacex will attempt the third launch of the Falcon 1 tonight at 1600 PDT / 1900 EDT / 2300 UTC. You can go here and test your video set up with the available webtest.php link.
Video will go live around 30 minutes before the scheduled launch time. I will attempt to add comments here as it happens if I have any thoughts that might be useful to our readers.
Make: has a wonderful way of dealing with security cameras.
This balloon-based anti surveillance camera project by Brooklyn-based artist William Lamson is an easy way to fool even the most sophisticated forms of surveillance technology. Helium filled rubber balloon set to the correct height and covered with enough static electricity to stick to any surface, such as a public camera. Now if only they made robotic pins for security officers to pop them.
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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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