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I did a posting here a few days ago about how political debates are, at any rate in Europe, and most especially here in Britain and in England, becoming more about who we are, and not just about who is right. It was the one about the Renault TV car advert.
There were many commenters, one of whom said that in the USA, things were different. Who we are, he said, is not an issue in the USA, because we know who we are. And in the sense that in the USA, unlike here, or for that matter here, there is no debate about what country they should be, what continent they should be a part of, and so on, that’s true.
But now take a read of this bit, from a Sunday Times article by Andrew Sullivan, on the subject of Hillary Clinton. Hillary C, says Sullivan, is the most divisive US politician since Nixon, and she doesn’t just divide at the level of opinion, she divides at the level of “identity”. (Equals: who we are.) → Continue reading: Andrew Sullivan on Hillary Clinton – and me on the globalisation of the “who we are” question
I just did a random link from the list on the left here such as I like to do from time to time, and I got to this blog, and to a link from it to this article. What is being described here sounds amazing, and although I did look to see if the date April 1st was involved, this seems to be for real. Someone thinks it’s for real, at any rate.
Someone called Appel is busy developing a process which turns rubbish into riches.
The process is designed to handle almost any waste product imaginable, including turkey offal, tires, plastic bottles, harbor-dredged muck, old computers, municipal garbage, cornstalks, paper-pulp effluent, infectious medical waste, oil-refinery residues, even biological weapons such as anthrax spores. According to Appel, waste goes in one end and comes out the other as three products, all valuable and environmentally benign: high-quality oil, clean-burning gas, and purified minerals that can be used as fuels, fertilizers, or specialty chemicals for manufacturing.
…
“The potential is unbelievable,” says Michael Roberts, a senior chemical engineer for the Gas Technology Institute, an energy research group. “You’re not only cleaning up waste; you’re talking about distributed generation of oil all over the world.”
“This is not an incremental change. This is a big, new step,” agrees Alf Andreassen, a venture capitalist with the Paladin Capital Group and a former Bell Laboratories director.
I’m always impressed by the savvy and general informedness of the best Samizdata comments on technology issues. So, people, any comments on this stuff? Is this thing all that these guys are cracking it up to be? Or is it fatally flawed? Miracle or mug’s game? Genius or madness? Alchemy or insanity? Or maybe just somewhere in between, and boring? I’d love to know.
If it’s half as good as they’re saying, this looks like another wonder of capitalism to add to the collection. But then again, maybe this has all been gone into weeks ago, and proved idiotic.
If it does work, how long will it take for the environmental lobby to decide that they hate it? Because if this is a wonder of capitalism, they will hate it.
People involved in political arguments often argue as if arguments are the entire point. Yet the current disputes within the USA, within Britain, and between the USA and “Europe” are as much about who we are, as they are about who is right.
Take France. Ruled by a bunch of sleazebags, right? Their “arguments” for not going to war against Iraq were, if that’s the way you are inclined to think, feeble in the extreme. X ergo Y and therefore it follows Z, blah blah blah.
But what if the real arguments now are not about who is right, but about who we are?
One of the oddities of British life is the extraordinary expensiveness and dramatic complexity of British TV car adverts. Something to do with a car cartel, I believe, which means there’s money to burn getting each buyer to step forward. And one TV car advert in particular goes straight to the heart of the France question, and the “who we are” question. I refer to the one that advertises the Renault Clio, by claiming that this car possesses “va-va-woom”. Various other things do also, like posh French-type birds posing in Mies van der Rohe style modern houses, while various other things don’t, like an over-coiffured small dog, and a strange looking character wearing nothing but a pair of stars-and-stripes bathing trunks and a cowboy hat, and waving guns.
This last one is so ghastly an apparition that Thierry Henry – the ultra-skilled black French footballer who plays for Arsenal (and France) with great distinction and who is in amongst all this, narrating with good humoured subtlety – just stares blankly into the camera. That’s all the comment we need. Those ghastly cowboys are just, you know, ghastly, while those (us) continentals are so suave and sophisticated and cultured.
It’s also a clever ploy to use a black man for all this, because smuggled in there (but totally deniable) is the suggestion that the cowboy is probably the type of hick who’d be bothered by Thierry Henry’s blackness, whereas you, oh viewer, are not, are you? Maybe I’m reading too much into things there, but I don’t think so.
What the advertisers are betting on is that there are a lot of Brits who think of themselves most definitely as on the French side of the France/Anglosphere confrontation, and who are willing to put large wads of money where their preferred identify is. And there surely are. This advert has been running for quite some time, and they’d have pulled it by now if it didn’t do the business. If Renault’s sold better by being smothered in Union Jacks and sat in by British bulldogs, then that’s what they’d have. Lots of Japanese companies sell stuff by waving the Union Jack and sponsoring ultra-British things like show-jumping.
Samuel Huntington (in Clash of Civilisations) saw all this kind of thing coming. He saw that whereas the communism/capitalism thing was about who and what was right (X ergo Y), now it’s all about who and what we are. This, for example, is what the Euro argument is really about. “Economic interests” have nothing to do with it. Who we are is what that is about.
And this is why, in this new world, “we” (whoever, exactly “we” are) need to go beyond the narrow logicality of political debate – beyond X ergo Y, into the territory of cultural affinities and coolnesses, the territory of who has va-va-voom and who does not.
This is why blogging is such a crucial addition to our persuasive arsenal. We can argue on our blogs. And, as part of and in among and in between the arguing, we can tease out the va-va-voom of things.
I never know with Samizdata postings whether there’ll be lots of comments, or some, or hardly any, or none. If there are comments on this, no doubt some will be easily summarisable: “I’m not French!!” But I’m hoping that others may be more nuanced.
Just a titbit. I’m listening to the England/Zimbabwe cricket commentary on BBC radio 4, and for some reason one of them, Jonathan Agnew, who used to bowl quick for some county or other (and for England occasionally if I remember it right), referred in passing to the fact that his newspaper reading this morning had included the New York Times. There’d been some reference to Agnew in the newspapers, it seems, but in the papers he’d been reading he hadn’t come across it – something like that. They were just making conversation between overs. Anyway, Agnew’s fellow commentator Mike Selvey, who used to bowl quick for Middlesex (and England occasionally if I remember right), then said:
The New York Times? I wouldn’t believe a word of it. Their editor’s just been fired.
I have been listening to cricket commentaries on the radio for the last half century. Never, never have I ever heard the New York Times get any mention on these commentaries before.
That brand is definitely suffering.
Should people be allowed to own their own cruise missiles? It’s a favourite question among libertarians discussing gun control, and always good for a chuckle. But now we are going to have to grapple with this issue for real.
Says Bruce Simpson, 49:
Some time ago I wrote an article in which I suggested that it would not be difficult for terrorists to build their own relatively sophisticated cruise missiles using off-the-shelf components and materials.
Not surprisingly, that piece has produced a significant amount of feedback from the tens of thousands of people who have read it so far.
→ Continue reading: So how do we feel about cruise missile control?
Instapundit links to this UPI report:
WASHINGTON, June 2 (UPI) — As the U.S. media still digests the shock and lessons of the Jayson Blair affair at The New York Times, a far older and far worse journalistic wrong may soon be posthumously righted. The Pulitzer Prize board is reviewing the award it gave to New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty more than 70 years ago for his shamefully — and knowingly — false coverage of the great Ukrainian famine.
“In response to an international campaign, the Pulitzer Prize board has begun an ‘appropriate and serious review’ of the 1932 award given to Walter Duranty of The New York Times,” Andrew Nynka reported in the May 25 edition of the New Jersey-published Ukrainian Weekly. The campaign included a powerful article in the May 7 edition of the conservative National Review magazine.
Sig Gissler, administrator for the Pulitzer Prize board, told the Ukrainian Weekly that the “confidential review by the 18-member Pulitzer Prize board is intended to seriously consider all relevant information regarding Mr. Duranty’s award,” Nynka wrote.
The utter falsehood of Duranty’s claims that there was no famine at all in the Ukraine – a whopping lie that was credulously swallowed unconditionally by the likes of George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and many others – has been documented and common knowledge for decades. But neither the Times nor the Pulitzer board ever before steeled themselves to launch such a ponderous, unprecedented – and potentially immensely embarrassing – procedure. Indeed, Gissler told The Ukrainian Weekly that there are no written procedures regarding prize revocation. There are no standards or precedents for revoking the prize.
The Ukrainian famine of 1929-33, named the “Harvest of Sorrow” by historian Robert Conquest in his classic book on the subject, was the largest single act of genocide in European history. The death toll even exceeded the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people a few years later.
One of the lesser lies now circulating about the Cold War, Communism and all that is that because it is now history, we should all forget about it.
So, in an attempt to spread interest in this important issue by trivialising it, I have a question. Walter Duranty � Jimmy Duranty. What if any is the connection between these two persons?
Jimmy Duranty was the bloke who sang that song that they used at the end of Sleepless in Seattle, right? And in one of my all time favourite movies ever, What’s Up, Doc?, Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand sing a song called “You’re The Top” or some such thing, and during their version of this, reference is made to “The Great Duranty”. Walter, yes? Or is that Jimmy? If it’s Walter, it shows how the lie has reverberated down the decades, but is it?
It’s not that I’m opposed to writing serious prose about murderous famines and about the scumbags in the West who concoct and print lies about how these murderous famines aren’t murderous famines at all and then spend another seventy years lying about all their earlier lies – merely that joking around is one of the ways you draw attention to such things.
David Farrer links to this story, about a call from a Scottish lawyer to legalise not just cannabis, but all drugs.
A LEADING Scottish criminal lawyer yesterday called for the legalisation of all drugs.
Donald Findlay QC said legalising narcotics such as heroin, cocaine and cannabis was the only way to “break the link” between users and dealers.
The advocate also attacked politicians and the Scottish Executive for failing to get to grips with the problem of drug abuse, accusing them of fostering a “tough on crime” image rather than looking for radical solutions.
However, politicians last night hit back at Mr Findlay, describing him as “irresponsible”.
The Executive also denied Mr Findlay’s claims, pointing to a raft of recent policies to tackle drug abuse.
Mr Findlay, who last week attacked the Executive’s policy on crime, said: “Drugs is a huge issue and there is no question that what drugs do to families and communities is the biggest problem that we have had in recent years, and it is a problem that politicians just will not tackle.
“Since the mid-1980s we have had drug offences. It is now more than 20 years on and the problem is continuing to grow.
“From the law’s point of view, there has to be much more effort to break the cycle, and I really think we should be having a proper look at legalising drugs. You have got to try something to get people away from the dealers.”
Mr Findlay said simply decriminalising cannabis did not go far enough.
Alas, there’s no chance of Findlay QC winning this argument in the near future in Scotland, because, as David notes, Mr Michael McSomeone has said that this would “send the wrong message”. There was, Mr McSomeone added, “a clear need for a consensus”, by which he meant everyone agreeing with him.
I also believe that there is a clear need for a consensus, by which I mean everyone agreeing with Findlay QC and with me. This would send the right message, namely (and with thanks to P. J. O’Rourke for saying something along these lines on a Cato tape I once listened to): (a) do what you want with what’s yours, and (b) accept the consequences.
Are you sick of popular entertainment with every sort of bad person being bad in it except the actual bad people we all know we are actually up against?
Go see a movie. The terrorists trying to blow up the world will be from the Balkans, won’t they? Or they’ll be Germans. Or Russians. In Hollywood movies the villains (and many of us over here take a kind of quiet pride in this) are often British.
What they won’t tend to be is Islamofascist. Islamofascist bad guys are just too close to the truth. If Jeremy Irons wants to make a living playing Brit villains, or German villains, fine. Nobody will confuse that with reality, so no skin off any noses. But Islamic villains? Well, that might cause actual offence, mightn’t it. That might reinforce conventional stereotypes. The sort of conventional stereotypes that are quite widespread. The sort of conventional stereotypes that are quite widespread, because they are rooted in reality. Because, that is to say, they are true. So, no true stereotypes please, they’re trouble. Get Jeremy Irons to do another implausible European, and confine the plausibility to such things as detonators and passports and hidden cameras and AK47s.
However, this does rather create a realism problem. Take this TV series they’re showing now, on the BBC, called Spooks. Episode one of the new series, shown last night, had a villain from – yes you’ve guessed it – the Balkans. A Serbian to be exact, steeling guns from the British army and then shooting up or blowing up the “Cobra” committee or whatever it is, which consists of the Prime Minister and Head of the Army and other such Head Government Persons. But we have a real terrorism problem in our midst and we all know it. Spare us this.
Episode one was on BBC 1 from 9pm until 10pm, and then episode two was at 10.30pm on BBC 3 (a digital channel which I now have), and at the end of episode one they showed foretaste excerpts of episode two which made it seem quite enticing and interesting. For what is this? Episode two starts up, and a fat bloke in a beard and with a cloth around his head, is spouting stuff about how this country will one day soon be entirely Islamic and that it is the great achievement of “a boy like you” that you have kept yourselves pure, so try this on. And he hands this boy a suicide jacket. → Continue reading: The British Islamofascist menace – more than a ripping yarn from the BBC
Asks b3ta.com:
Men: Like looking at pretty ladies? Like laughing at bad translations of Russian mobile phone conferences? You’re in the land of luck as this site combines both.
It certainly does. Eldar Murtazin is impressed, and Andreas Von Horn (that’s what it says) translates:
Year by year, visiting CeBIT, catch myself at idea, that they have better organization, and exhibits for the first time are shown exactly at this exhibition, instead of wandering on the world, turning in an antiquity. But there is one big advantage of the Russian exhibitions and of SvyazExpocomm as one of the most appreciable, there are excessive plenty of beautiful girls on one square meter of the area. The last year one my foreign friend after visiting the exhibition has left in prostration and has told, that knows where to look for a wife. Girls in city centre which caused the genuine interest and remarks in the excellent form, have simply ceased to exist. The friend all the rest three days has spent at the exhibition, and according to him has not been sorry at all about it.
On results of the first day has collected about 500 photos of girls from various stands, a part from them we’ll publish in this picture story. I can not give up to myself such pleasure, and the reputation needs to be supported, in fact the tradition began the last year. To try listing all photos is senseless, further are photos that have appeared by will of case beside and have pleased me.
For knowing people and visiting the exhibition not the first year, CBOSS name talks a lot about, but I beg to assume, that in the last turn about billing. However, judge, I in my turn dream to shake hands with the person, which selects girls for this company!
Ah, those wacky foreigners.
 
My excuse for writing about cricket is that writing about cricket means writing about Zimbabwe, which is one of the wretched-of-the-earth countries just now, lest we forget. But the truth is that I just love cricket, and that I have loved it ever since the days of Hutton, Compton, May, Cowdrey, Laker, Statham, Truman, Dexter … and those are just (some of) the English names.
So, what is the big story in cricket just now? Read Jennings, and the news is just that people have been, you know, playing cricket. Look at the cricket web sites and it’s just cricket as usual. Who’s in and who’s out. Who’s firing on all cylinders, and who has a cylinder injury and will be missing the next few games. Earlier in the week, the British cricket pages were full of how well the new England quick bowlers had done, and how badly the Zimbabweans had batted against them on that horribly one-sided Saturday when nineteen wickets fell and by the end Zimbabwe had lost by an innings in three days. (Girls and Americans: “by an innings” is very bad, and three days is not long at all.)
Yet above and beyond all these regular comings and goings, I believe that cricket posterity will have no hesitation in deciding that the current big cricket story happened just over a week ago, just before the England-Zimbabwe series got started, in the form of the newly announced ICC Test Championship table.
→ Continue reading: The significance of the new Test Match Cricket international ranking system
I suppose that to many Samizdata readers the quotes below will be old news. But it was newsworthy news to Patrick Crozier when he wrote it, and it was news to me when I read it about two days ago. I realise that two days in blog time is a lifetime, but I think this double titbit may still have enough pep left in it to be worth recycling here in full. I hope so.
Two bits of news today (or at least news to me today) suggest that there’s going to be a hell of a battle between rival blog management systems.
First up is Movable Type who are introducing a new system called TypePad. This will be a sort of Movable Type Lite with the additional features of a template design facility and inclusive hosting. The idea is to appeal to the casual ie not very technical blogger and bearing in mind that the lack of templates and fact you have to find your own host are the very things that put people off switching to Movable Type it would appear that they could be on to something.
Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Blogger is hitting back with Dano, the Blogger that works ie a Blogger where the archives don’t do a runner every five minutes. I assume that they will lick their archives problem which should prevent a haemorraging of customers but that still leaves the problem of lack of flexibility which the introduction of no more than about five new tags will do little to alleviate.
So, to sum up, MT are going to compete on Blogger’s ground of being easy to use and Blogger are going to compete on MT’s ground of actually working. Things are about to get very interesting in the Blogosphere
And the morals of that are, I suppose, (a) that if you are still with Blogger and you are a technophobe, give them a few more months to fix their archiving nonsense; and (b) that blogging as a whole is about to conquer the known universe, or they wouldn’t be fighting over it like this.
Patrick has been quietly writing things at CrozierVision, but hasn’t been telling anybody. What I’ve been telling him is: stick with your two blogs, CrozierVision and Transport Blog, and help the rest of us sort ourselves out. Transport Blog is slowly improving its regularity and broadening its scope, now that Patrick is being assisted by a handful of Transport Blog occasionals: me, Michael Jennings, David Farrer, with more to come I expect. It is slowly becoming a group blog. I wonder where he got that idea from.
Patrick and I have been collaborating on the look of my two blogs, starting with the Education one. It has taken me months to persuade some blog-techno-savvy person to sit next to me in my kitchen and press buttons for me while I strode about making aesthetic judgements, because it has taken months for Patrick to decide that being blog-techno-savvy is what he does, but finally it has happened.
The verdict so far is: a few like it and the antis have stayed quiet. Which is as it should be. I made it clear that I was only in the market for compliments and would be ignoring all complaints.
The London-and-surrounding-areas blogosphere is showing no signs of running of out steam.
“I’ll tell you why people find it “hard” to give up smoking: they don’t really want to do it, is why. Using force against yourself is a bad idea. It sets you up for magnificent failure later on, as anyone with bulimia will tell you. What I say to people who don’t 100% completely absolutely and totally actively want to give up smoking, actually enjoy the idea of living without smoke, anticipate with joy the thought of nurturing their health and becoming energised breathing human beings, is: don’t bother. Carry on smoking, because if you don’t want to give up, you’re only setting yourself up for failure. Anyway, the rest of us aren’t interested in your self-sacrificial whining. It’s your life you’re saving, not ours, don’t expect us to be grateful!”
– Alice who is back from her camping expedition
[Editor’s note: apropos the second link, as usual the blogger.com/blogspot archives are not working correctly]
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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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