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.
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The dependably clueless Prince Charles wants the state to require tax funded institutions like Britain’s nationalised public health service and state schools to add insult to injury by not even attempting to get ‘best value for your stolen money’… which is to say he wants such arms of the state to be required to buy British farm products even if foreign products are cheaper/better… not only does he say they ‘should’ buy British, but that the government should force them to.
Like most people with socialist & fascist understandings of economics, producers are all and consumers are nothing to Charles. Why will people like him not be more honest and just admit directly that they want productive taxpayers to be compelled by force to prop-up less efficient areas of the economy and they should not be given any choice in the matter.
The Royal Family usefully occupy the same seriocomical niche as the Flag and ‘Hand-on-heart’ pledge of allegiance do in the USA… and like that inanimate object and rote chant, are largely empty of real meaning beyond their warm-fuzzy-glow value. If only we could devise some means of permanently depriving Charles of speech, leaving him only with earnest looks and poses, then the British monarchy could have another couple centuries of seriocomical semi-usefulness ahead of them.
The Raelians are a truly weird cult, that is for sure, and the fact they are claiming to have produced the world’s first cloned human is hardly going to calm feelings about the technology. However even if their contention to have done so is true (not surprisingly I am disinclined to just take the word of a group which claims humans are the descendents of bio-engineered clones created by space aliens), I must say that I find it hard to get all that excited about the whole matter.
Although I do have worries that the technology and underpinning science is sufficiently immature that there is cause for concern for the health of a cloned child, the principle itself does not bother me at all… a child is a child is a child, and the manner of its creation does not give it any less worth or intrinsic rights.
However the issue of how to assign paternal and maternal responsibility for the child is, of course, going to keep a small army of lawyers busy for quite a while! I would be quite interested to see what people’s views are as to “who is left holding the baby”, if you will forgive the expression 
Season’s greetings to all our readers from all of us at Samizdata.net!
The dependably insightful Melanie McDonagh has a refreshingly clear view of one of the two ‘Home Alone’ items currently clogging up the British media until some domestic or foreign disaster provides some real news.
In case you are unfamiliar with the story, a middle class mother in London somewhat deranged by depression walked out of her house, abandoning Rufus, her 12 year old child, leaving him to fend for himself. He managed to do so for two weeks before someone noticed and reported him to Social Services, in spite of his attempts to hide the fact of his mother’s absence. It was the fact that Rufus tried to conceal his mother’s dereliction which caught Melanie’s eye.
There is one further element of this story that stands out. It’s the villain. It’s the thing that Rufus does everything to avoid, that looms in his imagination like some sort of nightmare.
That is the fear that he will end up in the hands of Wandsworth social services. And I can’t have been alone in feeling my spirits sink at the news that Rufus ends his adventure in the hands of social workers, to whom he’s been turned in by the police, even though they pass him on to family friends rather than to an institution.
It wasn’t irrational fear that made him do anything to keep himself out of their hands. He’d been in care before – another thing that sets him apart from the other pupils at Emanuel School – for some months after his father died and his mother succumbed to depression.
Melanie McDonagh is always good at spotting the ‘off message’ angles to stories such as these. I have followed her career with interest ever since she wrote about the war in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina that was a head and a half better than most of the dreck which passed for reporting there. It has always puzzled me why she is not a better known journalist than many of the blowhard Idiotarians that infest the British media with one tenth her talent.
Mark Steyn is in rare form, delivering a splendid satirical roasting of the detestable Harold Pinter.
‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer had a very shiny nose,’ Pinter continued. ‘You know why that is? Depleted uranium’?
[…]
“George W Bush says he’s dreaming of a white Christmas,” sneered Mr Pinter. “But for the rest of us it’s a nightmare. I wake up feeling like a man trapped in a snowy knick-knack with his face pressed up against the glass howling, ‘Let me out of here’, only to be buried under another ton of artificial flakes.”
Splendid stuff. It is a continuing marvel to me that Pinter can still appear in polite society in Britain without having doors slammed in his face.
As an anti-statist, free market capitalist libertarian, I am often ‘accused’ of being on the political right. Yet as so many libertarians will tell you, many of my ilk refuse to accept the statist left/right axis as having any relevance to us. One only has to listen to a pro-immigration libertarian such as myself and then listen to most Tories in the UK/Republicans in the USA to see an issue which shows the differences.
We often find that neo-conservatives agree with libertarian antipathy to Marxist and Keynesian state centred economics and the wealth & liberty destroying regulatory state. Yet to think that advocating laissez-faire makes us ‘right wing’ is to misunderstand just how large the cultural and philosophical gulf is between most true (i.e. capitalist) libertarians and most conservatives. Conservatives are about conserving, they are about continuity above all else… however libertarians are about liberty, conserving it where it can be found but also tearing down whatever impeeds it, regardless of whose sacred cows get gored in the process. We may wish to conserve what is objectively good but otherwise we are as Promethean as the Marxist left.
In the Daily Telegraph article Britain risks huge influx of east Europe migrants by Philip Johnston, Home Affairs Editor, we see loaded language even in the title: ‘risk’. How about calling the article:
‘Britain opens doors to those formerly oppressed by Communism’
or maybe:
‘Britain steals a march on Continental Europe in grab for east European labour’
But no. The thrust of the article is that only the wonderful Tories want to ‘protect us’ from the Eastern Hordes.
Ministers said that allowing migrant workers from these countries into Britain at the earliest opportunity would help the economy. But Oliver Letwin, the shadow home secretary, challenged the Government to explain why it had not made use of the transitional arrangements. “We live in a small and crowded island,” he said. “Why does the Government consider it appropriate not to have transitional controls when other EU countries have imposed them.”
Well it just so happens that the Telegraph article I am quoting from actually links to an article here on Samizdata.net from the Telegraph external links sidebar (cheers, guys!) called Why do people think that Britain is overcrowded? It really is not overcrowded and the idea we are somehow not going to be able to assimilate other Europeans is laughable. Oliver Letwin does not really care about providing the British economy with high initiative eastern European workers and entrepreneurs, he is just concerned with playing politics and attacking anything the dismal Blair government does, even when it is entirely correct.
The excellent Reason magazine is starting a blog called Hit & Run, which will be up and running first thing Monday (US time). The new blog will be presided over by Reason’s new Web editor, Tim Cavanaugh, formerly of the much-lamented commentary site Suck.com.
A British court today has ruled that Darren Taylor, a burglar who was stabbed to death with his own knife by homeowner John Lambert, was lawfully killed.
Taylor and his accomplice, Ian Reed, both high on drugs and drink, burst into the Lambert’s home and held a knife to the throat of Mrs Lambert, demanding £5,000 from the couple. In the ensuing melee, John Lambert managed to kill Taylor and drive off Reed.
When the police finally arrived, they arrested Mr Lambert for murder, although all charges were later dropped against him whilst the surviving criminal, Ian Reed, was sentenced to eight years in prison for robbery.
It would be nice if there was a presumption of innocence when the cops show up and see situations such as these. After all, when the cops shoot a man dead for no good reason at all, it is just taken as a given that it was lawfully done. In John Lambert’s case, his rights were ultimately upheld but it is hard to escape the feeling that there is one rule for agents of the state and another for its subjects.
Not me, that is for sure. Even harder to figure out is the film going public… and after a chat with Hollywood film producer and blogger Brian Linse the other day, I get the impression from him that even Hollywood cannot figure out the film going public.
Take two movies, both based on computer games. Firstly, Tomb Raider, staring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft.
Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft: striking a Lara-ish stance
The Tomb Raider series of computer games were massive and more or less redefined the genre. I thought they were all quite gripping and am very eager to get my paws on the latest episode of Lara Croft’s adventures, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.
Angel of Darkness: Lara Croft in all her pixellated glory!
As you might expect, I was rather keen to see Tomb Raider: The Movie, directed by Simon West. It had everything going for it: Angelina Jolie is an interesting looking woman and without doubt a technically skilled actress. Although she is not quite ready to challenge Gwyneth Paltrow for her crown as ‘Best-Yank-Actress-who-can-do-a-perfect-British-accent’, she is pretty damn good nonetheless.
The film clearly had a truly humongous budget, was adequately acted and tolerably directed in parts (with a couple startlingly bad scenes: it takes a certain perverse skill for a director to make a gratuitous shower scene with Angelina Jolie laughable for all the wrong reasons). Unfortunately the story line was weak, convoluted and confusing. Worst of all, the production was dire: it was almost as if it was three separate movies, casually spliced together, differently paced as if styled by three sets of completely unconnected film makers, then finally so badly edited as to make some parts of the story incomprehensible. Although Tomb Raider: The Movie was not utterly without merits, the overall effect was shockingly disappointing. 
And yet, due to the Tomb Raider/Lara Croft brand name and massive marketing, this clunker rode out the appropriately scathing reviews and was by no means a commercial failure in spite of costing a great deal to make. A sequel is in the pipeline.
And then let us look as the second movie, Resident Evil staring Milla Jovovich as Alice.
Milla Jovovich as Alice: about to demonstrate how unhappy she is with her ex-boyfriend
The game that the movie is based on, similarly called Resident Evil is a big name in the Playstation console world, but it does not have anything like the brand recognition of ‘Tomb Raider’ and ‘Lara Croft’ with the general public.
Killer pixels: Veronica from the Resident Evil – Code V game
The Resident Evil movie, directed by Paul Anderson, clearly has a far smaller budget, it was marketed poorly to put it mildly and with the exception of Milla Jovovich (Fifth Element, Zoolander, Blue Lagoon, Two Moon Junction etc.) had a cast of more or less unknowns. Resident Evil had a simple but nearly flawlessly executed story, was artfully directed, skillfully produced and very atmospheric. It was well cast and Milla was excellent as the killer amnesiac conspirator known simply as ‘Alice’… and unlike the jarring T&A scene in Tomb Raider, the opening shower sequence with dazed Milla worked perfectly, setting the deliciously ill-at-ease tone for the whole movie.
In short, this movie rocks… vastly superior to ‘Tomb Raider: The Movie’ on every level. It has no pretensions to be high art or intellectually challenging, but it does exactly what it sets out to do with considerable flair. 
And yet unlike the dismal Tomb Raider, Resident Evil almost immediately vanished off the screens and onto video/DVD. Fortunately, because it cost so little to make, the picture seems to have still made a profit and thus in this case too, a sequel is in the pipeline called Resident Evil: Nemesis (which will no doubt cause confusion with the impending Star Trek movie called ‘Nemesis’). Movie making is a very strange business.
Go out and buy or rent Resident Evil: The Movie on DVD or Video, it is destined to be a cult classic. Avoid Tomb Raider: The Movie like it was smallpox.
Update: The Resident Evil follow-up movie has been retitled Resident Evil: Apocalypse, presumably to avoid confusion with the recent Start Trek movie flop called ‘Nemesis’
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else
– Frederic Bastiat
Thousands of British students have gathered in London today in order to protest against a Government proposal to introduce university top-up fees. Coming from across the UK, they started marching at noon today (I am pleased to report it is pissing down with rain) in protest against a Government plan to require students to pay for at least some of their own university education. The protestors are backed by trade unionist and assorted socialist groups, who are claiming 20,000 students are marching. Police have said there are closer to 10,000 present.
Mandy Telford, president of the National Union of Students (NUS), said: “Education should be based on your ability not your ability to pay. Going down that road is putting a price tag on degrees and that’s not positive for society.”
Society? It is not ‘society’ which takes money from one group of people by force and gives it to another, only the state (or organised crime) can do that to whole sections of the population by force. If students are entitled to take other people’s money in order to educate themselves, and the object of this education being to benefit themselves, why not also for food? For housing? For petrol? For clothing? In fact, why should they need to pay for anything from which they benefit? It seems they do indeed want that invidious form of outright theft called progressive taxation to fund the priorities of others and of course students are just the thin end of the paleo-socialist wedge being offered up here.
Ms Telford [of the National Union of Students] said students were converging on London from across the country. She said: “The march will send a very clear message to ministers. Students are angry and their families are angry.
Well I am bloody angry too! These ‘protestors’ are nothing more than parasites calling for the state to continue to engage in theft on their behalf. What makes their needs and priorities so much more important than mine that they feel they have the right to take my money for their benefit? Well up your, you scruffy leeches… you will get very little from me. Any future business of mine will be off-shore benefiting someone else’s economy, and 10,000 of the reasons are marching through London today.
Islamic preacher Abu Obeida, an Algerian asylum seeker in Britain, has allegedly said that Islamic law requires Muslims everywhere to come to the assistance of Ba’athist Socialist Iraq if it is attacked by the West.
British journalist A.N. Wilson decries British and American threats against the Iraqi regime in his article called War on Iraq is madness, claiming that Anglo-American actions make Abu Obeida’s call to British Muslims to take up arms against British forces seem quite reasonable.
But it is the achievement of Tony Blair’s government that he has managed to make Mr Obeida and his friends sound like the voice of common sense.
Of course one should not think for a moment that A.N. Wilson has qualms about governments using violence, particularly against their own nationals, as he favours the forcibly sterilisation of social undesirables. Thus given his taste for violence backed state enforced eugenics I suppose his de facto support for Ba’athist National Socialism is not so hard to understand, i.e. he favours the type of regime which could actually implement the sort of views he holds.
Saddam may be a brute to his own people, but surely, by the standards of international law, this is less threatening than the Israeli occupation of territory that is simply not theirs. Think of Mrs Thatcher’s reaction when General Galtieri “did an Ariel Sharon” on some barren little rocks in the south Atlantic.
So Saddam Hussain, who used poison gas to exterminate entire towns which opposed him, who invaded Kuwait and before that Iran, is less of a threat that Israel? And Wilson’s history seems to have airbrushed out the fact Israel is in occupation of the West Bank and Gaza because its neighbours repeatedly attacked Israel first. I was not aware of any recent British attacks on Argentina prior to General Galtieri’s military occupying the Falklands but perhaps A.N. Wilson is privy to some secret history which I am not aware of.
If I were young enough for military service and was compelled to fight either for Iraq or America, I would fight for Iraq, on the simple grounds that the Iraqis and their surrounding countries should be allowed to work out their own destinies without Western bullying. If I feel that, how much more strongly would it affect a young British Muslim?
And there we have it. Presumably if A.N.Wilson were old enough to have been available for military service in 1939 and was compelled to fight either for Nazi Germany or Britain, he would have fought for Nazi Germany, on the simple grounds that Germany and its surrounding countries, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, the Netherland, Beligium, France and Austria, should have been allowed to work out their own destinies without British, and later American, ‘bullying’.
No doubt… after all, his views of forcibly castrating and spaying the underclass would have been very well received in Berlin in those days.
Sundon Lower School in Bedfordshire has banned video and digital cameras from its nativity play this year, because it is worried that the images may get into the hands of paedophiles.
So let me get this right… The head teacher of a state school has banned parents from recording their children in a play. How can it be okay for a woman in authority to be instilling fear of sexual predators into small children, clearly implying their own parents are collectively under suspicion?
This is the toxic paranoid psychology of the witch hunt. The world is not packed full of paedophiles hunting for pictures of nativity plays but it suits some people to act as it that was the case… powers must be expanded to ‘protect’ children after all and who better than a pettifogging head teacher to do that?
I suspect that this head teacher must be a fifth columnist for the Home Schooling Movement in Britain because no one is really that idiotic and paranoid, right? Right?
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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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