Ken MacLeod's comments.
The title comes from two quotes:
“If these are the early days of a better nation, there must be hope, and a hope of peace is as good as any, and far better than a hollow hoarding greed or the dry lies of an aweless god.”—Graydon Saunders
Contact: kenneth dot m dot macleod at gmail dot com Blog-related emails may be quoted unless you ask otherwise.
Emergency Links
British Red Cross
Disasters Emergency Committee
UNICEF
Hurricane Relief
American Friends Service Committee
LINKS
Self-promotion
Buy my books
Buy signed copies!
Follow me on Twitter!
The Human Genre Project
The Human Genre Project
Comrades and friends
Charlie Stross
Martin Wisse
Making Light
Avedon Carol
The Pagan Prattle
Cheryl's Mewsings
Farah Mendlesohn
Bridesmaid
Svein Olav Nyberg's old blog
Svein Olav Nyberg's new blog
Alister Black
Kevin Williamson
Alan Freeman
Kathryn Cramer
MaxSpeak
Jim Henley
John Baker
Nicholas Whyte
The Sharp Side
Barbaric Document
The Woolamaloo Gazette
Kevin Carson
Thomas Knapp
Arthur Silber
Grand Hotel Abyss
Devizes Melting Pot
A Finer World
Austro-Athenian Empire
The Art of the Possible
Cupcake Couture
Brian Micklethwait
Diane Hannover
TJ's Place
Mat Coward
Iain Fraser Grigor
Gail Wendorf
ubiquitous surveillance
Dubious Prospects
Ilorien
Sharon King
Kristine Lowe
Rich Puchalsky
Lamontations
Cory Doctorow
Parallel Futures
Lord Dunderheid
Colleagues
Genomics Forum
Genotype
Forum Tweets
the write reality
Pippa Goldschmidt
My Forum page
Sociology, Genomics and SF
EUSci
The University of Edinburgh
Genomics
What Is Genomics?
What is Synthetic Biology?
SynBioStandards
Genetic Future
Genetic Inference
Action Bioscience
Cardiff sciSCREEN
Genomic Minds
The Fourth Domain
Edinburgh
Guardian Edinburgh blog
The Edinburgh Reporter
City of Literature Trust
Textualities
Writers Bloc
Word Power
Transreal
McShandy's
Forest Publications
The Forest Cafe
Avalanche Records
Scottish Knife Collection
Sea Kist
Joyce Paton
Chris Koujou
Author Portraits
Luath Press
Tychy
Dig-In Bruntsfield
Writers Blog
SF Writers' blogs
Dead by Dawn
Forbidden Planet
Ian McDonald
The Mumpsimus
Dr Ian Hocking
Barbaric Document
Mundane SF
Justina Robson
Neal Asher
Michael Rosen
Warren Ellis
John Scalzi
Sean Williams
Jack Deighton
Rudy Rucker
Glenda Larke
Alan Campbell
Gavin Inglis
Hannu Rajaniemi
Lou Anders
Nick Harkaway
Paul McAuley
Lois McMaster Bujold
LabLit
M. John Harrison
Kelley Swain
Robert J. Sawyer
Will Shetterly
Stefan Pearson
aiko writes: poems
The Lost Book
The Trease Project
Peter Watts
Karla Schmidt
Deborah J Miller
Juliet E McKenna
Mike Cobley
Philip Palmer
Nick Wood
Catherynne M. Valente
Gail Carriger
Liz Williams
Morag Edward
Adam Roberts
Jo Walton
Nicola Griffith
Alastair Reynolds
Kari Sperring
Alan Bissett
My Writing Life
Helen Jackson
Caroline von Schmalensee
N. K. Jemisin
Cici James
Joan Slonczewski
Gwyneth Jones
Michael Rosen
Ryan Van Winkle
C.J. Cherryh
Russell Jones
Georgina Bruce
Katrina Leno
Claire Askew
Steven Brust
Mary Robinette Kowal
Regi Claire
Ron Butlin
Ruth Sabath Rosenthal
Jaine Fenn
Nnedi Okorafor
Editor Blogs
John Jarrold
Publisher Blogs
Tim Holman
Brother Blogs
MacLeod Cartoons
Skiffy
Ansible
Redstone SF
Futurismic
SciFiDimensions
io9
Tor.com
Pyr
Orbit
PS Publishing
Feminist SF
World SF News
Biology in SF
Raritania
Steampunk Fashion
Torque Control
Post-Weird Thoughts
Ivor W. Hartmann
StarShipSofa
Star Wars Modern
The Outer Alliance
Eve's Alexandria
Beyond Victoriana
Strange Horizons
Salon Futura
Afrocyberpunk
pornokitsch
SciFi Ideas
Three, If By Robots
Brits Blog
The Sharpener
The Register
Velvet Glove, Iron Fist
Blood and Treasure
The Gaping Silence
The Yorkshire Ranter
Excuse Me Whilst I Step Outside
' ... a treeless, flowerless land, formed out of the refuse of the Universe, and inhabited by the very bastards of Creation'
Socialism First!
Red Paper
Aye We Can!
Bella Caledonia
Scottish Roundup
Scottish Politics
SSP
Solidarity
Scottish Left Review
Democratic Left Scotland
Between the Hammer and the Anvil
SNP Tactical Voting
A Place to Stand
Freedom and Whisky
Independence
Gerry Hassan
Better Nation
Bright Green Scotland
Caledonian Mercury
Lallands Peat Worrier
Lesley Riddoch
Clyde Space
Spaceport Scotland
Land Matters
Scottish Review
Scottish Review of Books
The Firm
STV Local
Frontiers
Whitehall 1212
Ian Smart
Notes from North Britain
Amazing Things
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Hubble Telescope
Fragile Oasis
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Dictionary of the History of Ideas
Internet SF DataBase
Arts and Letters Daily
3 Quarks
1911 Britannica
Wikipedia
BBC
Daily Mash
Fortean Times
BoingBoing
Three-Toed Sloth
James P. Hogan
MemeMachineGo!
small WORLD
Derelict London
Good News
Strange Maps
The Simulation Argument
Better Living Through Chemistry
Poems on the Book of Life
The Periodic Table of Science Fiction
RAW Illumination
The Realist Archive
The New Atlantis
Faith
Flat Earth
Fixed Earth
Geocentricity
6 ky Earth
10 ky Earth
4.5 Gy Earth
Creation Wiki
Sacred Texts
The Brick Testament
The LOLcat Bible
Reason
New Humanist
Edinburgh University Humanist Society
WTA
IEET
Cyborg Democracy
Nick Bostrom
Bad Astronomy
WorldChanging
Cosmic Variance
Sean Carrol
Bruce Schneier
i-studies
The Eternal Golden Braid
The Secular Web
NSS
Richard Carrier
Russell Blackford
Conscious Entities
David Chalmers
the Edge
Naturalism.Org
Talk Reason
Stephen Law
Science after sunclipse
The Threat to Reason
Atheists of Silicon Valley
Blag Hag
Rationally Speaking
Bad Science
Enemies of Reason
Tabloid Watch
Daily Mail Watch
Perpetual Motion
Skepticblog
This is What a Scientist Looks Like
Freethought Blogs
Crooked Timber
Kenan Malik
Atheism: Proving the Negative
Stoicism Today
Sense about Science
Evolution
Why Evolution is True
The Panda's Thumb
Pharyngula (SciB)
Pharyngula (FtB)
RichardDawkins.net
The Voyage of HMS Beagle
Evolving Thoughts
The Lancelet
Pleiotropy
The Digital Cuttlefish
Glenn Morton's Pages
Talk.Origins
Creation Science and Earth History
Creation 'Science' Debunked
ASA
The GeoChristian
NCSE
BCSE
Oolon Colluphid's Guide to Creation
Recovering YECs
Beyond the Firmament
Highly Allochthonous
Caught in a Bad Project
Playing Chess with Pigeons
Shit You Didn't Know About Biology
War and Revolution
Antiwar.com
Lenin's Tomb
Empire Burlesque
CounterPunch
World Socialist Web Site
British Army Rumour Service
Circling the Lion's Den
International Crisis Group
Baghdad Burning (Riverbend)
Iraq Today
Left I on the News
Informed Comment
Informed Comment Global
Tom Dispatch
It's No Accident
Empire Notes
the eXile
The Exiled
Inanities
Matt Carr's Infernal Machine
MidEast Shuffle
The Duck of Minerva
In the Mind Field
Mutualist Militants
Free Market Anti-Capitalism
Larry Gambone
Red Lion Press
crispin sartwell
In the Libertarian Labyrinth
Liberty Alone
Rad Geek People's Daily
Propaganda Lalaland
Markets Not Capitalism
Democratic Socialists
Scottish Labour
Tom Harris MP
Bob Piper
LabourList
Socialist Party, USA
Socialist Webzine
Chartist
Appeal to Reason
Labour and Capital
Left Futures
grimmerupnorth
The Bickerstaffe Record
The Socialist International
Labour Lords
Scarlet Standard
Shifting Grounds
Renewal
Impossibilists and Ilk
SLP
SPGB
Socialist Studies
Socialism or Your Money Back
Inveresk Street Ingrate
Vaux Populi
Mission
Timid Maximalist
Class Warfare
Reasons to be Impossible
Mailstrom
Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
Wobbly Times
Viva La Quarta
International Viewpoint
In Defence of Marxism
SWP
Socialist Worker (UK)
Socialist Worker (US)
International Socialism
Socialist Action (US)
CWI
AWL
Anti-SEP-tic
Socialist Action
Communist Parties
CP of Britain
CP of Ireland
CPUSA
CPI(M)
Iraqi CP
CP of Israel
SACP
ML Today
SolidNet
21centurymanifesto
Revolting Europe
L'Humanite in English
Other revolutionaries
CPGB
Worker-communist Party of Iran
the commune
Radical Resources
Housmans Bookshop
Morning Star
Critiques of Libertarianism
Hitler was a Capitalist
Labournet UK
China Labour Review
Marxists Internet Archive
From Marx to Mao
Leninist.biz
Autodidact
Amiel & Melburn Trust
The New Reasoner
Lawrence & Wishart
hegemonics
Marxsite
Marxmail
Marx Myths
Revolutionary History
Monthly Review
What Next?
William Blum
Grover Furr
Bertell Ollman
What's Left
Reality
Paul Cockshott
Critique
The Socialism Web Site
Spectrezine
21st C. Socialism
SolidarityEcon
Left Atomics
Socialist Economic Bulletin
naked capitalism
Thoughts on Economics
Debunking Economics
Research on Money and Finance
Southall Black Sisters
Ancient Communism
Key Trends in Globalisation
Readable Reds
Splintered Sunrise
Soviet Goon Boy
Renegade Eye
Dave's Part
Cedar Lounge
Unrepentant Marxist
Though Cowards Flinch
Mark Steel
Critical Montages
The Curmudgeon
A few words before we go
Stephen Gowans
Liam Mac Uaid
Socialist Unity
Southpaw Punch
Harpy Marx
Madame Miaow
Reading the Maps
Stroppy Blog
A Very Public Sociologist
Tendance Coatsey
Boffy's Blog
Penny Red
Show Biz Red
Stalin's Moustache
Lipstick Socialist
For the sake of the argument
Norman Geras
Sean Gabb
Libertarian Alliance (Official)
Libertarian Alliance (Provisional)
Libertarian Party UK
Spiked Online
Poumista
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://buttons.blogger.com/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
Katrina
Excuse me, but did part of America just fall off and drop into the Third World?
Maybe I'm missing something, but from here there seems to be a gulf between the news reports and the framing of them. What it looks like is an ever-expanding disaster that could eventually have a body count in the thousands. Lack of clean water and electricity could do that on their own. The rescue efforts look awfully piecemeal, brave though each one is. In New Orleans the water is still rising. Thousands are still stranded. Tens or hundreds of thousands in the Gulf coast states are homeless and without electricity or communications. The news networks are maintaining a remarkable calm. The reporters sound stressed, the anchors sombre but unfazed. It's unreal.
To stop this from turning into major national catastrophe would seem to require a massive mobilization of ... oh, never mind.
1688 and all that
Nicholas Whyte has replied to my reply. To take this further would, pending further research, be likely to descend to nit-picking or ascend to a contest of grand narratives. (At least, that's how I would be inclined to go, to nobody's profit or pleasure.) This not being Usenet I'm happy to leave the historical question to the judgement of the wide and discerning body of enlightened opinion that undoubtedly makes up the readership of both our blogs.
The question this all started as an aside to is something neither of us has pursued, and it's this: if you are going to limit free speech at all, is it more illiberal to do so by making the proclamation of certain specific and narrowly defined doctrines illegal, or by making administrative decisions based on broad and vague provisions? Which - if pressed to choose - would you prefer as a precedent in the hands of your political opponents, whoever they may be, who are of course much less wise and just than you and your friends? Which, for that matter, would you trust your side to use wisely? That too I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Glorious Indeed
In the previous post I referred to the Iraq-based Iranian MEK and the KLA as 'jihadists'. A couple of emails have flooded in to call me on this. And yes, in this instance I can only put my hands up and say this was unjust and I retract it. Thre is plenty to be said against both organizations but calling them jihadists only confuses things.
Nicholas Whyte, a very intelligent guy and so influential that his name has been mentioned in conspiracy theories, has kindly overlooked my trespasses on his own patch and taken me to task for my historical references below:
I'm going to detach this completely from the context of present day argument because I think Ken's history is wrong (or, perhaps, I have failed to see the joke). I'm frankly surprised by his blithe acceptance of a) the 1688-92 revolution being a Good Thing and b) the "international conspiracy of religious and feudal reaction" which lasted "for centuries". I realise that this is because I come at this from an Irish Catholic perspective, from which the Penal Laws appear as a crucial instrument of suppression of the rights and powers of the majority of Ireland's inhabitants in order to entrench the power of a minority, with assistance from England. (And that's the moderate version; the more hard-line version would deny that there was any "real" Irish person who benefited from the Penal Laws at all.) I don't know much about Scotland at this period, so it may just be that Ken and I are talking past each other. But I've met enough otherwise sensible people from across the water who don't, for example, realise that Cromwell was a Bad Thing, that I think it's worth expanding on why I think Ken's history is wrong.
Let's indulge in a little counterfactual speculation. What if James II had not been overthrown? I carry no particular brief for him; he was obviously not the greatest king England (or Scotland, or Ireland) ever had, and was largely the architect of his own downfall; but before you start to rejoice at his overthrow, just bear in mind that the straw that broke the camel's back was his enactment of the Declaration of Indulgence - ie that Catholics and Dissenters should have the same civil rights as Anglicans. Shocking, eh? The argument at the time was that this was part of the slippery slope to a Catholic absolute monarchy, but really, any leftist should find this about as convincing as Pinochet's justification for overthrowing Allende in Chile in 1973. In fact, it's difficult to believe that a continuing Jacobite regime would have done anything other than summon a new Parliament, which would this time have had significant Catholic and Dissenter membership, ie been more representative of the people, and come to a modus vivendi between the three groups based on rights rather than repression. (See for a supporting argument the Catholic Encyclopedia's interesting nuances on the Revolution.)
Sure, under my scenario James would probably have continued to mismanage his politics, and may very well have ended up forced to abdicate later rather than sooner, if he didn't die first. But it is absurd to argue that that he could have reversed the Reformation, and I don't believe that was ever his plan. (if it had been, he certainly could not have kept the loyalty of invaluable aides like Samuel Pepys, who was a conforming Anglican and whose wife was a Huguenot refugee.)
I realise that part of the reason I don't see much worth celebrating in the events of 1689-92 is that the people who I did see celebrating it as I grew up gave me every reason to believe that I personally had lost rather than gained as a result. I think my views have now moderated, to the point where I can relatively calmly argue that it didn't make much difference, rather than that it was an actively Bad Thing. (My views on Cromwell, however, have not moderated.)
As for the "international conspiracy" lasting for centuries - well, when James lost the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, a Te Deum in thanks for William's victory was sung in Vienna and the Vatican was lit up in celebration, so it looks to me as if the agents of the international Catholic conspiracy won rather than lost the war! Especially since the French recognised James' overthrow as early as 1697; and I'll bow to any Scot's superior knowledge of the events of 1715 and 1745, but would be surprised to learn that an international conspiracy of feudal and religious reaction was the sole cause of conflict in either case. Certainly the British government doesn't seem to have thought so; the Penal Laws as applied - especially in England - were clearly designed more to entrench the monopoly on legitimacy of the Church of England than to root out loyalists of foreign powers.
No fair-minded person could dispute that in England the various laws against Catholics and Dissenters were prolonged by popular prejudice and Anglican interest well beyond any point where they could be justified by reasons of state; nor that they were an instrument of oppression against the majority population of Ireland. To say that they 'worked' in England wasn't on my part any considered historical judgement, merely to note that the auto-da-fe never became one of the crowd-pulling entertainments of London. Maybe they weren't needed. The Jacobite conspiracies were real and produced two uprisings. Possibly with a less severe repression against Catholicism the uprisings would have met with more success.
Nicholas makes two points which I hope he won't take offence if I call debating points. The first is that the immediate occasion of James II's overthrow was his Declaration of Indulgence. The second is that the Pope was on the same side as William of Orange. Now nobody, from Macaulay to the author of the Catholic Encyclopaedia article cited, allows that James was a sincere convert to toleration. He had been, right up until that point, a relentless persecutor of Presbyterians and other Dissenters. The Declaration of Indulgence was indisputably unconstitutional. James had no authority to annul laws, however odious, that had been passed by Parliament and accepted by the courts. It didn't take long for the Dissenters to be persuaded that the risks to them from an arbitrary Catholic monarchy far outweighed whatever temporary relief it might bestow. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes was hot in the memory. (If, to take up the Allende analogy, the (counter-factual) constitutional Marxist president of a neighbouring state, say Argentina, had withdrawn previous solemn guarantees and used great violence against the Argentine middle classes, and Allende was in the meantime busy promoting hard-line revolutionaries to positions of power, Pinochet would have been even more widely hailed than he was.) Indulgence was a tactical manouevre, and as Macaulay shows it was recognised as such in widespread debate at the time.
My counter-factual speculation is this: If James II had succeeded in drawing Catholic and Dissenter into a pincer movement against the Established Church and the limits placed on the monarchy, it is doubtful to say the least that he would have established religious pluralism. (And, let me say again, the Catholic Encyclopaedia produces no supporting argument for this.) More likely there would have been a Catholic monarchy (now with a guaranteed succession) and a immense increase in Catholic power in the state. That after all had been his consistent course and aim. He had used his limited prerogative to place Catholics in every key position he could. What he would have done with an unlimited prerogative was expected to be more of the same. He might not have reversed the Reformation or even aimed to but there is no doubt at all that most of the population would have suspected him, with good reason, of such a design. James might well have had to rely on aid from France to hold power. A second Civil War seems a likely consequence. Defeat for the Protestant majority would have meant national subjugation; victory, a massacre and expulsion of Catholics. It is as well for England that it was spared either.
That the Pope celebrated William's victory at the Boyne may for a moment nonplus an opponent who has never heard of this (and we've all met them), but it won't wash as a serious historical argument. The Pope was allied with the other European powers, Catholic and Protestant, against the overweening ambition of France. That does not at all affect the point that William's victory advanced the Protestant interest, and that his defeat would have favoured the Catholic interest. The Orangemen are no more deluded on that than the Irish Catholics were who supported James.
Was the Glorious Revolution a Good Thing? I'll try to emulate Nicholas's candour and admit that I come to it from a perspective of having heard from childhood of the sufferings of the Covenanter martyrs, and later finding the same martyrs extolled in Marxist and Liberal histories. All the same, I find that I agree with the final 'nuance' of the Catholic Encyclopaedia:
But on the other hand we can now realize that the Revolution had the advantage of finally closing the long struggle between king and Parliament that had lasted for nearly a century, and of establishing general principles of religious toleration in which Catholics were bound sooner or later to be included.These achievements seem glorious enough.
Send them to Guantanamo then give it back to Cuba
'They're thinking of using the treason laws against seditious clerics,' I said over breakfast last Monday, catching up with the news. Then I had one of those mind-catching-up-with-my-mouth moments: how very seventeenth century that sounded! As it turns out, it was just another Blairite trial balloon. (From 'joined-up government' to 'Post-It Note government' in eight years. Another first for New Labour.)
Some post-Revolution precedents for dealing with seditious clerics are suggested by Mike Macnair, an erudite Marxist who reminds us how the anti-Catholic Penal Laws successfully defended Britain's bourgeois revolution against an international conspiracy of religious and feudal reaction for centuries. He holds overt but strictly delimited religious persecution and public trial a superior alternative to secret administrative decision. It's not entirely clear whether he's speculating how our once and future republic might defend itself, or giving tips to the present state. Either way, he might be onto something. The Penal Laws worked against the Jesuits, but will something like them work against jihadists? It's an interesting suggestion. Not Mill or Milton would have rejected it out of hand.
A war on Islamist terrorists, jihadists, or whatever the hell we are supposed to call them this week would be a very good idea. The war we actually have, an open-ended imperialist war, the forever war, tends to undermine this in two ways. The first is that it gives the jihadists plenty of legitimate gripes to flourish before potential recruits. The second is that the US and its allies keep on backing on-side jihadists: the Iranian MEK, the KLA, the Chechen freedom fighters (the beasts of Beslan). These good on-side terrorists have a way of popping up elsewhere. It's like pumping oil into a pipeline. The US and its allies must know this. Why do they do it? Islamism originated in wars against movements and regimes of the left, and it remains too useful a weapon to drop, as does terrorism in general. Any government that acts as an impediment to the free flow of investment - nationalist, socialist, or ex-socialist-but-not-yet-willing-to-roll-over - can expect terrorist attack, and can expect its offers of intelligence and military assistance against anti-Western terrorists to be, as in the Cuban case, rebuffed.
Meanwhile, as all the online world has reason to suspect by now, Iran may be being set up for attack following a mass-casualty terrorist outrage in the US. One or more of these is expected very soon. I have a bad feeling about this.
Update, Monday 15 Aug: The now-famous American Conservative article by ex-CIA man Philip Giraldi on the Iran contingency plans is here. Svein Olav Nyberg has reminded me of a good summary of the war on terror's origins in US-backed terrorist wars, by Juan Cole, who in turn directs us to some online excerpts from Steve Coll's book on the secret history of the Afghan counter-revolution, its aftermath and blowback, Ghost Wars.
Is Serious the New Fannish?
Last weekend I was at Interaction, the 63rd World Science Fiction Convention (the Worldcon) in Glasgow. The venue was the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre with its associated hotels. Constructed on a formerly derelict stretch of Clyde shore, the SEC and the Science Park across the water from it look some spaceport of the future.
If you want links to blogs by people who were there, Cheryl is rounding them up. (If you're reading this much after it was written, go here and scroll down.) My own impressions are limited by the fact that I was on thirteen programme items from Thursday through Sunday, and had neither time nor energy to go to any others apart from the opening ceremony and Christopher Priest's Guest of Honour talk.
The opening ceremony was fun and I was pleased to see that it used part of a greeting to the con by Edwin Morgan, the poet laureate of Scotland, which I and Ron Butlin had recorded some months ago. (The rest of that DVD, including two readings and an interview, may be available to any serious fannish or academic panel that may want it. Ask me sometime.)
Almost every panel was packed out. The SEC concourse looked a lot quieter than it had ten years ago at Intrsection, the previous Glasgow Worldcon. This was almost certainly because most of the con was at panels. The programming had a strong backbone, and the discussions were mostly sensible, though I had a qualm at one point when I found myself citing SF stories in evidence. Is serious the new fannish? There seemed to be fewer people in the sort of costumes that the media like to equate with SF fandom. This may well be because I've grown blase about them in the last decade.
Also in the past decade I've made a number of friends in fandom. I met quite a few of them there, and I hope I made some new ones. Carol and I thoroughly enjoyed the various bid and fandom parties that swirled around the balcony of the Hilton stairwell. Patrick Neilsen Hayden took us out to dinner. Orbit threw a fine party. I talked to my editors and agent about the next book. Charlie won a Hugo, as did Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn. Farah and Edward wangled an invite to the Hugo nominees' party for contributors to their winning volume, The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction. So Carol and I got in. For that and all other hospitality, much thanks.
The Dealer's Room trade seemed steady rather than busy. The NESFA people were pleased to see me, and I them. They gave me a book and discussed my forthcoming NESFA collection (for Boskone in February 2006). I bought Parietal Games, the new collection of essays by and about M. John Harrison, from the Science Fiction Foundation stall. It looks good and I will no doubt blog about it later. Ever the sucker for space movement memorabilia, I bought badges of Gagarin, Koralev, and a pioneer cadre of cosmonauts from the Russian fans' table (manned by the same guys as ten years ago, selling the same commie kitsch). Their Worldcon bid is for Moscow 2017. I wouldn't rule it out.