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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Earlier this week there was an interesting moment in my personal history as a libertarian-activitist-stroke-blogger. I had a phone call from someone at The Times. “Millen” was the name, I think. He was asking me to contribute four hundred “headbanging” – his word – words on how the government is using the War on Terror to trash civil libertiess. I am not sure enough of the details of this story, and suspect that if I was, I might actually favour some of these alleged trashings, so I recommended that he give Perry de Havilland a ring, and Perry was happy to oblige.
For me what was interesting was that in his phone call to me the Times man used the word “Samizdata” – and what is more he was very nice about it – rather than the words “Libertarian Alliance”.
I switched to being a blogger, for Samizdata and elsewhere, from being a Libertarian Alliance person about three years ago. But because my home number used to be the contact number for the Libertarian Alliance, and because with my Libertarian Alliance Editorial Director hat on I used to do lots of little broadcasting performances and am still in their address books as that, I still from time to time get rung by media people who have me fixed in their databases as Libertarian Alliance, asking me to be on something or other. Never, until now, have they rung me up and talked instead about Samizdata. → Continue reading: Samizdata finally gets a mention
I was sorry to hear that Robin Cook croaked. When he was alive I wanted to toss him into a vat of hot tar, to make him howl; but now he’s a stiff I realise what a loss he is to our nation.
– Harry Hutton
Via Dave Barry, I found my way to this story, which seems to have escaped the attention so far of such dedicated Euroblogs as this one:
THE EU has declared a crackpot war on busty barmaids — by trying to ban them from wearing low-cut tops.
Po-faced penpushers have deemed it a HEALTH HAZARD for bar girls to show too much cleavage.
And in a daft directive that will have drinkers choking on their pints, Brussels bureaucrats have ordered a cover-up.
They say barmaids run a skin cancer risk if they expose themselves to the sun when they go outside to collect glasses.
A good way – not the only way but a good way – to understand the atmosphere of politics in any particular year in these times of ours is to ask: how old is the Baby Boom?
The Baby Boom is now nearly sixty. The men are at the pub, and the women are shrieking jealously that those strumpets behind the bar should stop flaunting themselves. But because in their youth these same now-jealous frumps scorned such puritanical opinions – and indeed did their share of breast baring themselves, at pop festivals and the like – they have to find a new way to say this boring old stuff. So, rather than talking the language of morals and of traditional decency, like grannies used to, they reach instead for health, the great modern excuse for ancient animosities and prohibitions.
It is partly to feelings like this that the EUroprats, of all ages and both genders, are now appealing. And partly, of course, they just want to boss people around for the sheer sake of it.
That is a variation on what Sir Alex Ferguson said after Manchester United sneaked a 2-1 win over Bayern Munich in the 1999 final, I think it was, of the European Champions Cup/League/whatever they call it nowadays, with two late late goals in time added on for injuries.
This morning, England were overwhelming favourites to wrap this up by a hundred odd runs, with only two tail end wickets to get. But nobody had told the Assie batsmen that they were tail enders. They batted like batsmen, in conditions which, unlike yesterday when seventeen wickets fell, suddenly looked perfect for batting again. Shane Warne, having got himself out like a pub amateur in the first innings, batted beautifully, until, unbelievably, he was out hit wicket. He kicked his stumps over! And with sixty more runs needed that looked to be it. England were about to win a meaningful test match against Australia by fifty odd runs. Hurrah! When was the last time that happened?
But Lee and Kasparowicz carried right on. There was a close LBW that might have been given. A dropped catch at third man. And suddenly Australia were only one edged four from a win that would have given them a 2-0 lead in the Ashes series and England the biggest kick in the stomach in many a year. But then, Kaspar fended off yet another short ball from Harmison, Jones the Gloves held onto it, show-off umpire Billy Bowden raised his finger, and it was suddenly 1-1 when 2-0 to the Aussies looked a certainty. Two runs. Two runs!! Second narrowest test match win ever, apparently.
This has been a terrific game, which quite blotted me off the Samizdata screen for the duration. The commentators have a concept which they sometimes wheel out called the “champagne moment” of the match. Well this match had two champagne moments at least that will live long in the cricketing memory. There was Warne’s ball that bowled Strauss round his legs on Friday just before the close (Warne’s bowling throughout was a wonder), leaving England jittery instead of confident coming into Saturday. And then there was the perfect slower ball that Harmison bowled Clarke with, with the last ball of yesterday, which seemed to make England’s task this morning easy. There was the great game-turning over by Flintoff, which took Australia from 47-0 to 48-2 (Langer and Ponting) yesterday afternoon. There were eighteen sixes in this game, which is almost two per session, i.e. two more than you usually get.
And just to put the cherry on the cake, that geek-maniac Hughes who works for Channel 4 reckons that the final Jones catch was not out, because Kasparowicz’s hand was not touching the bat when the ball hit it. That LBW, on the other hand… There have been the usual crop of umpiring disagreements with the technologically better informed commentators, and they really must give the umpires the same toys as the commentators have.
You do not have to know what hit wicket or LBW or third man means to get the idea. Just translate all of the above into your preferred sport, and slap a hellishly tight finish on the end.
It really is humiliating how much this nonsense still matters to me. I keep telling myself that it – test match cricket between Australia and England – is only a game. Which is true. And King Lear is only a play, and Asia is only a continent.
And because of this particular only-a-game game, the rest of this Ashes series is going to twist my guts around for many more weeks yet.
Plenty more on this game here.
I suppose most readers around these parts would reckon that actors should stick to acting, and keep their political opinions to themselves.
But what about these opinions?
“People think more aid will help, but it won’t,” said Ms. Driver, an actress who is working on her second music CD. “Trade is the surest way of decreasing the savage amount of poverty in our world. These countries have got to be able to trade fairly.”
And the point is, by “fairly”, she does not mean being paid artificially high prices; she means getting rid of agricultural subsidies in the rich countries.
It was never a practical project to silence the acting profession. These people are famous. Having acquired their fame, they then want to use their fame to do good, and in the process to become even more famous. This is only natural, especially when you consider that doing good and being heroic is what, according to the entertainments these people spend their lives making and acting in, life is all about. Trying to stop famous actors from expressing what they consider to be virtuous and heroic opinions in public is like trying to stop the wind from blowing or the sea from being wet.
No, the task that faces us is not to silence the acting profession from ever opining about goodness. That would be impossible, to say nothing of censorious and unpleasant. Rather is our task to change the definition of goodness that actors of sufficient fame to care about such things reach for when they get to the public virtue stage in their careers, and to make goodness really mean goodness.
Ms. Driver’s pronouncements concerning the superiority of trade over aid as a means of rescuing the world’s poorest people is evidence that some progress is being made along these lines.
Many actors surely already believe such things, on the quiet. But it is still a fine step forward when one of them feels able to say such things in public.
Franklin Cudjoe, Director of the Ghanaan think tank Imani, who has been visiting the UK in order to contest the nonsense being spouted about how to solve Africa’s problems by Live 8 etc., gave a fingerclickin’ good talk at my home on Friday. The fingerclickin’ being a reference to the amount of money stolen every second – $4,700 – by African governments. My thanks to Helen Szamuely for also reporting on this event.
Ghana sounds like a relatively prosperous and urbanised country, by African standards, and it was interesting to hear an African talking about the complications of airline deregulation and exactly how much members of parliament get paid per day (enough to keep them snugly on board the gravy train, no matter what they may have said at election time), rather than just famine, malnutrition, etc.
The anti-globalisation crowd say that multinational corporations are causing corruption in Africa. Actually, they often find it a huge barrier to trading in Africa. KLM wanted to run some flights from Ghana to neighbouring African countries, but the bribes demanded of them were too extortionate, and they pulled out. Travelling between countries in that part of Africa seems to involve choosing which bunch of state highwaymen you prefer to be shaken down by. It is understandable that, economically speaking, lots of colonial African countries used to look outwards, so to speak, with most of their trade being organised by their colonial masters. It is not so understandable why this is still the pattern.
I asked Franklin who in Ghana he thinks is doing the most to improve the place. His answer was the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development. What Africa needs is good government. And the way to start trying to get good government is to talk and write out loud with anyone who will listen – especially the next generation – about what that is and ought to be. There as here, in enterprises of this kind, the internet has helped
Franklin sounded a lot like Hayek – which is no coincidence, because he talked about how much Hayek had influenced his early thinking – in his insistence upon the intellectual struggle as the first step in trying to achieve anything more concrete. You get nowhere by nagging politicians direct. You have to change the assumptions within which they work. That takes time but it can be done, and by the sound of it he is doing his best.
Michael Jennings pointed out that all over the Far East, lots of those little upwardly mobile trading niches that used to be occupied by the Chinese diaspora are now occupied by the Ghanaan diaspora. Clearly there is nothing wrong with the talents of the Ghanaan people. They just need the right setting to flourish in.
Harry Phibbs is one of those people who is not nearly as much of an ass as he often pretends to be. In fact, often pretending to be an ass is just about the only assinine thing about him.
Here he is, pictured at that Globalization Institute launch that everyone who was anyone was at, talking about I have no idea who, but almost certainly saying that they ought to be horsewhipped.
But he is and has long been an excellent writer. Here is his excellent description, at the SAU blog, of what it is like being a school governor (while remaining Harry Phibbs of course). I particularly liked this bit of reminiscence:
School governors are entitled, indeed encouraged, to visit the school once a term or so. They also have a chance to report on their visit. I once caused consternation at a primary school in St John’s Wood where I was a governor a few years ago. Reporting on a visit I had made to the school, I named a Bosnian child who had recently arrived at the school. He was unable to speak English but was very good at sums. Essentially his entire time at school was being wasted. For most lessons he stared blankly unable to understand what was going on. In the maths lesson however he managed to correctly complete a whole sheet of sums within seconds which kept the rest of the class going for the whole lesson. Of course he should have been given harder sums and special help to learn English. “We are letting him down”, I declared. Later it was proposed by one of the teachers that reports of governor’s visits should be restricted to general comments as it was “inappropriate” to make comments which should be made by school inspectors.
But I was backed up by the other governors who agreed there was little point in having school visits if specific criticisms could not be made. I never found out if the boy was given harder sums to add up.
Harry also writes about the beneficial effects of Jamie Oliver on school meals, and gives chapter and verse of how much money is spent on each pupil, and who by. (Clue: bureaucracy.)
Read, as we bloggers so often say, the whole thing.
More from the “You couldn’t make it up” department. David Carr is fond of saying that the satyrist’s trade is hard these days, because reality has a habit of being so very much more satirical.
This is presumably the kind of thing he means:
Slovakia and Hungary are being served notice that the Commission is about to take them to the European Court of Justice for not complying with certain parts of EU legislation.
Apparently, neither country has implemented a number of directives on maritime safety. Slovakia is being warned about having no legislation to do with passenger ships and prevention of pollution.
Hungary has no “availability of port facilities for ship-generated waste”. Actually, Hungary has no ports or ships, being land-locked, as is Slovakia. That, apparently, is not the point.
The history of the USSR is repeating itself as farce. EUSSR. And the USSR was pretty farcical to begin with.
Speaking of David Carr and the EU being farcical, whatever happened to Bertrand Maginot. I miss him. The imposition of environment-friendly port facilities on landlocked countries sounds like something he would understand perfectly. It would be interesting to hear his view on this issue.
Last month I was in France, and as always I thoroughly enjoyed it. What a beautiful country it is. And if only because I like France so much I am saddened at how badly us Anglo-Saxons and the French seem to get along with each other. But now, after my recent visit, I think I have a partial explanation for some of this hostility to offer.
On one of the days I was in France, I wandered around the village where my hosts lived, on my own, and I was struck by how almost everyone I met or even merely passed said “Bonjour!” to me. Everyone said it. Even quite young girls, on their own, girls who in England (or the USA?) would never say a word to a middle aged man whom they did not know.
Everyone said “Bonjour!”, I said to my hosts when I got back home. It was rather nice, I said. Very communal. Well, they said, do not read too much into it. “Bonjour!” is all that they say, and in a year’s time, “Bonjour!” may still be all that they say. They are not making friends, just being polite.
Quite so. Just being polite. But it is a politeness that we Anglos tend not to bother with. When we go into a shop, for example, we tend to get straight down to business, with only the most cursory of hellos. Only after we have done our business do we unbend and become human, and say “Thank you!” rather effusively, and perhaps shake hands. Ever since I started thinking about this posting I have noticed myself and the people I have dealings with here in London doing this same one-two pattern, of business, followed at the end of our brief relationship by politeness. First we do the business, impersonally and correctly, and only then, when the business is done, do we unbend, make eye contact, smile, and generally behave like nice friendly people.
So my hypothesis is this. The French have no deep hatred for us Anglo-Saxons on account of our Anglo-Saxon-ness, our foreign policies, our Hollywood movies or our lousy state medicine. It is simply that they do not like rudeness, or rude people, and to them, we come across as extremely rude. Instead of saying “Bonjour Madame” to the lady selling patisserie, we pitch right in and tell her which patisserie we want, without any preliminary courtesies. Which, in France, is very rude. That is why madame is always, to us, so grumpy.
I once had an extremely unpleasant acquaintance, whom I now avoid, who was and remains notorious for saying unpleasant things to everyone he ever meets, perhaps because he has a permanent pain in the top part of his back and wants to spread the pain around. I remember him saying to me once: “Everyone’s in a terrible mood these nowadays.” I knew why. Everyone he met had just had the misfortune to meet him. They were fine until he showed up. They were in a bad mood because he put them in a bad mood.
Well, I surmise that maybe we Anglos tend to do that to the French. They are not snooty and unpleasant all the time. They are just snooty and unpleasant to us, because we immediately come across to them as very rude, and they do not like it.
Could it really be that something as superficial as our different styles of greeting one another is a big reason for the Anglos and the French not getting along? I really think it might be. I would welcome suggestions for further reading along these lines, but am not able to offer much linkage myself, as I have never heard anything similar suggested.
The nearest related thinking I can suggest is the work of Deborah Tannen, who has written books about contrasting conversational styles among us English speakers – Southerners and Northerners in the USA, slow speechmakers and fast interrupters, and most famously, women and men. Maybe she could do another book about us and the French.
Final thought: Australians are famous over here for saying “G’day” all the time. I wonder if they get along better with the French than other Anglos. Maybe not, because it is not just what you say, as Tannen has spent half a lifetime explaining, it is the way you say it.
I attended the GI launch last night, and Alex Singleton turned me loose as the kind of semi-official photographer of the event, and has used some crowd shots I took, and also pictures I did of Bill Emmott and Alan Beattie (who is also quoted here).
Glad to be of use. But what really got my attention last night was the number of nice looking women who were present. Johnathan Pearce is fond of mentioning P. J. O’Rourke’s Law of Babes, or whatever it is called, which goes something like: Wheresoever the Babes are, there shall also the Action be. Tom Wolfe’s description of how the Babes managed to track down the men test flying jets in the top secret desert of western USA in the early 1950s, in The Right Stuff, is an earlier exposition of the same law.
Judged by this standard, the GI Institute is doing pretty well. Here are eight nice looking ladies, and one genuine baby type babe just for good luck, and because he/she was there. (Cranking out more of those being a lot of what this is all about, after all.)
And those are only the ones I got reasonably good photos of. I can recall at least two more ladies who only missed the cut because I did not get good photos of them. So if you are a fully certified Gorgeous Babe and you were there, please do not be offended. You just came out all blurry in all my photos, on account of my chin hanging down and hitting the focussing nob.
Click to get bigger pictures, some of which include extraneous males of the species. Cropping such photos is always a controversial matter.
Last week, on Tuesday evening, Britain’s Channel 5 TV showed a fascinating documentary called “Khubilai Khan’s Lost Fleet”. Some readers may only know “Khubilai” Khan as the Kubla Khan of Coleridge’s poem of that name, but this man did more that decree stately pleasure-domes. The Times summarised the programme thus:
The greatest naval disaster in history took place in August 1281, when 4,000 ships carrying Khubilai Khan’s Mongol army sank with the loss of 70,000 men off the coast of Japan. This rather protracted documentary (below), describes how a marine archaeologist discovered the remains of the fleet, and explains why the vast fleet sank in such mysterious circumstances.
Khubilai used many ships which were shoddily and hurriedly constructed, by recently conquered Chinese labourers who, the archaeologist featured in the show speculated, had no particular desire for his project to succeed. Worse, Khubilai commandeered many Chinese river boats wholly unsuited to ocean travel. When a typhoon struck all these boats sank, and the invasion was a total failure.
This is not a story we often hear in Britain. Understandably, we prefer to reminisce about the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and about Trafalgar. Yet the sinking of Khubilai’s fleet was an event of worldwide significance. Quite aside from allowing Japan to remain independent, this misfortune punctured the myth of Mongol invincibility and speeded the collapse of the Mongol Empire.
The Mongols had a huge effect on world history but might have had even more. They might, for instance, have resumed the attempt to conquer Europe which they had to break off in 1241, in order to go home and elect a new leader. Even this near catastrophe for Europe is not much discussed nowadays, in Europe.
Events in one part of the world have always had big effects elsewhere. The difference is that there used to be less mileage in presenting global history in a global manner. Like the news, global history has tended to be seen through national eyes. But, now, if only so that history documentaries on TV can find more viewers, global history is going global.
I do not believe that we have a “No shit Sherlock” category for blog postings here, but maybe we should. Here is the explanation that the Evening Standard was offering today of what made those who committed the atrocities of last Thursday in London decide to become suicide bombers:
This photograph was taken outside Waterloo Station, at about 3pm this afternoon.
To be fair to the Evening Standard, their actual reportage was somewhat more informative, and more up-to-the-minute billboards revealed that one of the bombers was a primary school teacher. That was news, to me anyway.
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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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