Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the Moon.
After creating this wonderful capability, the Government did what Governments do. They squandered it. They threw it away.
The State is not your friend.
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The New Yorker(!) teed off very nicely on the rather stuffy account of a certain testy exchange between VP Dick Cheney and Senate Minority Lead Pat Leahy. The background: The Veepster has been accused by none other than The Honorable Mr. Leahy of profiting (via Halliburton) on the blood of American soldiers spilled in Iraq. When Leahy approached Cheney at Senate function recently, full of smarmy bonhomie, Cheney told him to fuck off, or to go fuck himself (accounts vary, but everyone agrees the F-bomb was dropped). The Washington Times reported this as follows:
The New Yorker, well, took it to the next level. July 20th, 2004 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I’ve done several posts at my Education Blog on the theme of the educational gains to be got from blogging, by the blogger. Of course writing things communicates to others. But it also organises the thoughts of the writer, and makes them more likely to be remembered by the writer. Failing that, it makes it easier for the writer to access his written thoughts later, if only because the writer is likely at least to remember having written on that subject. I did another such posting yesterday, in connection with something Michael Jennings said to me last week in conversation about how he blogs about computer matters with this benefit in mind. Rob Fisher commented on this post, in a way that emphasises the point:
By the time I understand that last paragraph I will have had to have made some educational progress myself, although I am sure it is straightforward enough once you understand it. Educationally helpful comments, anyone? “Wiki”? I have heard that word, and the presumably related word “wikipedia”, but what does this stuff mean? Blogging, it seems to me, blurs the distinction between the private and the public. It is not that this distinction is now of no importance. But blogging does shift the economics of (what do we call it?) message management? … towards combining the public with the private, wherever that can be done without too much risk. Simply, by doing both private and public communication simultaneously, you can save both time and effort, and that might make it economical to engage in forms of communication with oneself and with others that would previously not have been possible. I think, as I said in my original posting, that this is one of the big reasons for the success of blogging. Constructing a helpful set of notes as one learns a subject area might be too difficult, and hence beyond you. Writing material good enough to reach a wide readership, ditto. But licking your notes into shape and sticking them on a blog, which obviously can be read by millions, but need not be in order to be an economic proposition, adds up to something that can make a lot of sense. I did not set out with my Culture Blog with the self-conscious aim of learning about new buildings in London, but that is the way it is turning out. And I definitely did start Brian’s Education Blog in order to educate myself, about education, as the ambiguous name, I hope, communicates. Brian’s Blog About Education? A Blog About Brian’s Education? Both. These friends of mine are in the business of helping businesses to set up blogs. They emphasise the benefits blogging can bring in the form of communicating with customers, and that must be right. But a company which blogs will be, it seems to me, a company which learns, individually and collectively, more than it would learn otherwise. But of course there is a further potential benefit to blogging as self-education, I have already tried to illustrate with this posting by asking commenters to explain wiki to me. Commenters can help to educate you. Not all such help is truly helpful, but sometimes it can be very helpful indeed. I would be delighted to hear about any other bloggers who have used blogging as part of their effort to further their own education. I would not be surprised if a consensus were to emerge here, or to have emerged from a comment-fest somewhere else of interest, along the lines of: this is (partly) what all bloggers are doing. July 20th, 2004 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Monday night, I and Samizdata editors Perry de Havilland and Adriana Cronin-Lukas went to the House of Commons in London for the launch of the Hansard Society’s new report on blogging. Pointing out what is wrong with the report will be tackled soon enough, but the overall message of the night is what really got to me – and not in a good way. The launch was being held in Westminster Hall, where the Hansard Society has set up an exhibition called House to Home: Bringing Parliament and people together. The first thing about this exhibition – after the huge plasma screens showing shots from parliamentary debates and self-conscious, empty elements like stacks of chairs hanging suspended from the ceiling – that caught my attention was the large banner telling us that “Politics matters”. Not only that, but that “Politics shapes us as a society”. You can imagine how we each reacted to that supposed axiom from the Hansard Society, the “independent, non-partisan educational charity”…whose exhibition just happened to be sponsored in part by the government’s Department for Constitutional Affairs and the Electoral Commission. The information guide that accompanies the exhibition, copies of which were handed out to everyone present at the launch, contains even more such gems. First, some good news:
Glad to hear it. But did you know that freedom of speech – along with freedom of religion and freedom to protest – is something we only have because of the government? According to the Hansard Society:
Hmmm. Which one of these is not like the other? “Free” education is something to which each human being is entitled just by virtue of having been born, according to the “independent, non-partisan” Hansard Society’s government-sponsored exhibition. The “educational charity” also informs us that it was the benevolent Parliament that recognised this in law – and that it was the benevolent Parliament that granted us freedom of speech, to protest, and to practice religion. What is more:
The Hansard Society has also provided a handy guide to “How to have your say,” including tips on how to solve the vexing mystery of which constituency you live in. The guide advises us to decide which candidate and which party is most likely to speak up for what we believe in. But what if the answer is “none of the above”? Well:
Hey, that is helpful. Finally, on page ten of this pamphlet, the Hansard Society comes clean:
Indeed. It is about telling people that it is imperative that we “get involved” in the political process – because, don’t you know, we would not have any rights if it were not for the government! And it is about freedom of expression being something that only politics can enable. As the Hansard Society puts it:
Because expressing one’s views can only come about through the good grace of politicians. The scary thing is, the government is taking our money to fund the “non-partisan, independent” Hansard Society’s efforts to spread this message. That is to say, British taxpayers are funding this “independent” propaganda machine. Ah, well. It was a night for such things. Walking along Victoria Street from the House of Commons, Perry snapped a photo for me of one of my most loathed views in London – a government propaganda ticker that repeats the same message over and over: “London is getting safer…”
Still, the night was not all dispiriting. Leaving the House of Commons, I paused to admire a police guard’s impressive guns – two Glocks in the holster and a machine gun thingy (that is the technical name, I believe) in his hands. He was eager to show them off to me, and seemed happy to encounter someone who had respect for the weapons and his proficiency with them. It was enough to make a crunchy granola gun-control activist weep – which was more than enough to make me smile.
July 20th, 2004 | 31 comments - (Comments are closed)
I swear I was not going to bash the Tories this week! I was actually trawling the French news and looked forward to writing about some appalling corruption scandal. Well this [link in French] is close enough. It seems that the European People’s Party (to which the British Conservatives belong) has done a deal with the European Socialist Party (to which the British Labour Party belongs) to ensure the election of a Socialist leader of the European Parliament: Josep Borrell Fontelles. In doing so they voted against the Polish former dissident Bronislav Geremek, who if this Communist denunciation is anything to go by, was obviously the right candidate to back. So all the protestations that the Conservatives would defend British interests are a load of cobblers. These people are an insult to invertebrates. It gets better, the French report says that the new President of the European Parliament (elected with the support of the European People’s Party) is a man who comes from the left-wing of the Spanish Socialist Party and who had to quit Spanish politics because of a series of unfortunate misunderstandings over large sums of stolen taxpayers’ money. I seem to recall that this was when the Governor of the Bank of Spain was filmed carrying suitcases of freshly printed bank notes to the Spanish Socialist Party Headquarters. The story was extensively covered at the time in El Mundo, the Spanish conservative daily newspaper. I forget if our new European Parliament President was personally involved (though the discreet shuffling of news reports suggests he may have been), but he certainly had to quit over that affair. So the British Conservatives are fighting our corner within the European People’s Party? Nice one Michael Howard, I know exactly where we stand on the Conservative Party’s policy on Europe. Support hard-core Socialists! Give fraudsters a second chance! Support even more European regulations and taxes! Vote Conservative! July 20th, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, is being investigated for trying to steal classified documents that tend to make him and his boss look a little cavalier in their handling of the Islamist terrorism threat.
Funny how the documents still missing are the very ones that make Clinton and Berger look like feckless idiots, no? Not only did Berger steal the first copy of the embarrassing reports, when Archive staff made a second copy, he stole that one, too! Needless to say, Berger is a lying sack of crap:
He “inadvertantly” stuffed top secret documents into his pants? Suuure, Sandy. Although I have to admit this is an interesting twist on the usual pants-related Clinton administration scandal, it still doesn’t pass the smell test. The punchline? Berger is one of John Kerry’s advisors. Since he also has Joe Wilson on his team, Kerry seems to be playing collect-the-set with lying sacks of crap. The Bush team can truly prove their incompetence by giving Kerry a pass on the fact that he is relying on both these clowns for advice on how to beat the Islamists. But hey, a former national security honcho who repeatedly steals top secret documents by stuffing them down his pants? Give the man a job! He’s obviously plenty good enough for government work. July 20th, 2004 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today is the deadline for the Home Office consultation period on ID cards bill. Phil Booth of Infinite Ideas Machine and No2ID campaign draws our attention to the fact that there are still a few hours left… Just in case you need any inspiration he has published the full text of his e-mail submission to the Home Office consultation on ID cards. He also points his readers to Spy Blog’s excellent annotated blog of the Draft Bill, Mark Simpkins’ equally excellent blog of the entire consultation document. For those with some time on their hands he recommends reading Stand.org.uk’s submission [219KB MS Word document]. Please do send something (even if it’s just a simple ‘I am against the proposed scheme and legislation’ type mail) to identitycards@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk, making sure the words ‘consultation response’ appear in the Subject line. Thanks. Cross-posted from White Rose. July 20th, 2004 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Phil Booth of Infinite Ideas Machine and No2ID campaign draws our attention to the imminent deadline for the Home Office consultation period on ID cards bill, 20th July 2004. He urges us, correctly, to send individual objections to the Draft ID cards Bill and I would like to pass that on to White Rose readers. There are still a few hours left! Just in case you need any inspiration he has published the full text of his e-mail submission to the Home Office consultation on ID cards. He also points his readers to Spy Blog’s excellent annotated blog of the Draft Bill, Mark Simpkins’ equally excellent blog of the entire consultation document. For those with some time on their hands he recommends reading Stand.org.uk’s submission [219KB MS Word document]. Please do send something (even if it’s just a simple ‘I am against the proposed scheme and legislation’ type mail) to identitycards@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk, making sure the words ‘consultation response’ appear in the Subject line. Thanks. July 20th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
I do not imagine that Samizdata readers spend a lot of their spare time reading Arena magazine (it does not appear to be available online). It is a chap’s monthly publication that fancies itself as being at the more intelligent end of the man’s magazine world, mixing glossy advertisements for insanely expensive wristwatches and fast cars, not to mention pictures of minor French actresses in a pleasing state of undress, with post-modernist ironic pieces on anger management, etc. I get the impression that it is the sort of publication that pitches to the sort of man who reads the Guardian or Observer but who wants to indulge his blokeish tendencies with a clean conscience – in short, to have his low-fat steak and eat it. Occasionally the tension shows. In the August edition, for instance, we have a largely gushing and Bush-bashing film review of the latest Michael Moore propaganda effort, sorry, ‘documentary’, Fahrenheit 9/11, which contains a remarkable admission by the obviously pro-Moore reviewer that the filmaker had a “cavalier attitude to such niceties as facts” while stating what a swell film it is. Facts eh, who gives a damn about em? But what really did it for me was an article (page 77) containing one of the nastiest attacks on a group of people in a magazine that I have read for some time: the overweight. The writer, Giles Coren, whom I have heard of before, rants against overweight people in terms of amazing verbal violence. Words such as “mountain-arsed”, “the great lumps”, “these pigs”, etc, are sprinkled around. Witty, no? Now I accept that there is something dumb about those who are overweight trying to present themselves as victims. However, I also have nothing but contempt for the way in which the fast-food industry has been targeted for assault by an unsavoury mixture of ambulance-chasing lawyers, moral scolds and sundry bores who would legislate our pleasures out of existence rather than rely on our own self-restraint and personal responsibility. Coren’s article, in particular, seems to be steeped in a sort of fashionable puritanism and also draws on a deeply suppressed need to be able to hate a particular group. Let’s face it, hatred is out of style. There are laws against it. If our demented British Home Secretary, David Blunkett, gets his way, it will not be possible to express anything more than polite scepticism about the irrational superstitions known as official religions. But humans love to hate, or at least some of them do. I very much fear that the overweight among us are in the cross-hairs of our fashionable haters. Of course, one should not make too much from a single article in a pretentious guy’s magazine, but Coren’s piece is all part of a trend. To hell with him, I am sending out for pizza with extra cheese. July 20th, 2004 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Greg Nemitz has been a ‘love him or hate him figure’ within the space community for quite some time. Many have wondered what he could possibly accomplish by claiming the Asteroid Eros and charging NASA parking fees to leave their probe on its surface. Some were outraged when he took NASA to court for the failure to pay… not outraged because they felt it was silly; outraged because they thought he might generate bad case law. Now Greg is on to the next step up the legal ladder. I am beginning to see the outlines of what may be a fascinating and outrageous (in a good sense) plan to settle the issue of extraterrestrial property rights in the US Supreme Court. I will let Greg speak for himself: July 20th, 2004 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Today is the 60th Anniversary of Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg’s attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler and remove the Nazi Party from power in Germany. In the 12 long years of the Third Reich, it was the only serious attempt that was made to remove Hitler and his vile regime. Graf von Stauffenberg was a mid-ranking Colonel who had been severely injured during service in North Africa but he was a talented officer so he was sent to Berlin. to fulfill a staff role in the ‘Home Army’. As part of his duties, he was to give briefings to Hitler at his Rastenburg headquaters. On the day itself, Colonel von Staufffenburg hid a bomb in his briefcase and made sure he left in in Hitler’s main working room. It was placed so that the blast would be lethal to the dictator. But another officer found it was in his way and moved it, critically, so that a leg of the heavy table that the papers and maps for the briefing was between the bomb and Hitler. So when the bomb went off, although many were killed, Hitler himself survived. Colonel von Stauffenburg had planned his escape well, and flew back to Berlin, blissfully unaware that Hitler had survived. There, he tried to organise his co-conspirators into taking power, but their attempt was feeble, and once word reached Berlin that Hitler was still alive, the attempt failed miserably. Colonel von Stauffenburg was shot that night; a merciful end compared to the barbaric fate that awaited some of his collegues, and many more who had done nothing. The ramifications of the affair sent shockwaves through Germany until the total destruction of the Nazi regime. Although it is not well remembered, Germans now honour Colonel von Stauffenberg and his collegues who tried to actually do something about the hideous regime. July 20th, 2004 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Government of the Philippines, like the Spanish government before it, has stared into the face of evil… and capitulated. They are pulling their troops out of Iraq to appease terrorists and keep head on shoulders of one of their citizens. One can make many arguments pro and con about the decision they, as a sovereign nation, have made. I am not going to fight those one way or the other. I merely wish to point to consequences which will almost certainly follow hard on the heels of their decision. Unlike Spain, the Philippines have not bought even a temporary respite by their action. They have a local flock of Islamist nutcases to worry about in Mindanao: the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The MILF operate far to the south of Manila perhaps… but perhaps not far enough. This home team watches television, reads newspapers and follows the internet just like every other revolutionary group on this planet. MILF leaders will already be pondering tactical changes. How much might they accomplish by kidnapping a few high profile persons? Would al Jazeera be willing to send a camera crew that distance for a beheading? How far will the government cave in? The government in Manila has made its choice. Now they must live it. Actions have consequences. July 20th, 2004 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
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