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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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You can institutionalise kelptocracy on a grand scale. You can ethnically cleanse your minority white citizens. You can employ gangs of vicious thugs to intimidate and even murder your political opponents. You can rig elections and disregard the law. You can use the apparatus of state to deliberately starve your own citizens. You can take a prosperous country and reduce it to a debilitated ruin. But, forcefully ejecting a Guardian journalist from your country puts you beyond the pale:
The Guardian’s Zimbabwe correspondent, Andrew Meldrum, was deported last night even though three separate court orders were made prohibiting his expulsion.
After spending 23 years reporting on the country, Meldrum was manhandled into a car outside the offices of Zimbabwe’s immigration service, driven to the airport and put on a plane to London.
Bearing in mind the melancholy fate of others who have displeased Mugabe, Mr.Meldrum might want to consider himself fortunate.
The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, led worldwide condemnation, saying: “I’m very concerned at this case. Petty and vindictive actions like this simply expose the Zimbabwe regime for what it is.”
Well, I must say I am shocked! Up until now I have been labouring under the apprehension that Mugabe was an admirable African leader.
Michael Ancram, the shadow foreign secretary, said: “This is yet another disgraceful action showing the lack of respect for freedom of expression and speech of Robert Mugabe’s evil regime. This is the act of a dictator.”
As opposed to all the previous acts which were the hallmarks of a reasonable and decent man.
The editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, said: “The deportation of our reporter Andrew Meldrum from Zimbabwe is a political act which should invite the strongest possible condemnation from the international community.
Oh now steady on, Mr.Rusbridger. Let’s not be too hasty now. We wouldn’t want to say anything in a fit of temper that we might regret in the cold light of day.
To be fair to Mr.Meldrum he has been meticulously recording and reporting on the horrible predations of Mugabe’s marxist regime not to mention the transformation of a bread-basket economy into a year-zero hellpit. You do not have to be a rocket-scientist to figure out why he is now being unceremoniously bundled out of the country. But is there any chance that any of Messrs. Straw, Ancram or Rusbridger actually read any of the reports? I only ask because they all sound as if they are somewhat taken aback.
I believe I am guilty of taking the latest Conservative proposals on education out of their context. As a result, I made the mistake of regarding them as an aberration; a singular folly.
However, I should have examined these proposals in the round of their ‘Fair Deal for Britain’:
“The Conservative Party’s fair deal for everyone is built on a unifying commitment to ensure that no-one is held back and no-one is left behind…”
Seen in that context, a return to old socialist education policies makes perfect sense. After all, in a society where you won’t be able to turn round without running smack dab into the dead hand of the state, shoving you along a line of pre-determined ‘fairness’, you cannot expect higher education to be the exception, can you.
Just who is advising the Conservative Party these days? Who was it that convinced Iain Duncan Smith that Clintonesque pain-feeling was the wave of the future? What premium do they think they will derive out of being Labour-lite? What, precisely, is the unique selling point of socialism with a Tory twist?
If I thought it likely that I would get any answers I would put those questions on the back of a postcard and send it off to Tory HQ. As it is, I don’t think I’ll bother. I’m too busy adjusting myself to the next 20 years of New Labour.
Just under a year ago, the Prime Minister’s wife Cherie Blair expressed her sympathy with the plight of ‘suicide bombers’:
Speaking at a charity event in London, Mrs Blair said young Palestinians felt they had “no hope” but to blow themselves up.
Her steaming pile of wisdom was delivered just hours after one of them had murdered 19 Israelis.
But that was then. This is now:
The prime minister’s wife Cherie Blair was forced to pull out of a London charity event following the threat of a suicide bomb attack.
Assuming the threat was genuine, it looks like Mrs.Blair’s outreach exercise was a waste of time.
The good news is that British Conservative Party appear, at long last, to have developed a will to challenge the Labour government. The bad news is that they are doing it by moving to the left:
A Tory government would scrap university tuition fees in a wide-ranging overhaul of higher education unveiled last night as part of Iain Duncan Smith’s campaign to offer voters “a fair deal”.
Parents whose children expect to go to university after 2005, the likely date of the next general election, would no longer have to worry about finding £9,000 to pay for an average three-year course if the Tories won.
Not only are the Tories moving to the left, they are actually positioning themselves to the left of New Labour. It was Blair’s first government which scrapped the taxpayer-subsidisation of higher education, hence the introduction of ‘Tuition Fees’ which simply means that those who wish to attend University have to pay to do so.
The Tories are promising to place this burden back onto the exhausted taxpayer.
The Government will find itself arguing for charging students more, while the Tories will be proposing a return to free university education.
Only in a country such as this, where there is barely any concept of the link between government spending and taxation, can subsidised education be described as ‘free’. As if the act of the Treasury raiding your bank account in order to pay for your University course is much fairer than relying on you to raid your own bank account.
But, bizarre as it is, that is the way things are seen over here and I suppose I cannot blame the Tories for wanting to pander to the bottomless British appetite for more government and ever-higher taxes. After all, their job is to get elected.
Speaking for myself, I can’t be bothered to vote. There is nothing to vote for.
Health fascism? Islamofascism? Same thing?
[My thanks to Marc Brands for posting this to the Libertarian Alliance Forum]
I have always regarded blogging as a labour of love. At the very least it is means for people with something to say to the world to get these things off of their chest. But, let’s be honest, recognition out in the wider world is sweet and makes the effort all the more worthwhile.
So Natalie Solent can justly feel as pleased as punch that she can count the venerable Mark Steyn among her fans:
As to sites I like, a lot of them are the obvious ones, like National Review, but if I had to single out a non-big-media site, I’d put in a word for Natalie Solent, who writes from somewhere in England and has a way of looking at subjects from odd angles with interesting historical allusions.
Muchos kudos to our Natalie.
[My thanks to Steve Martinovich of Enter Stage Right for heads-up]
That’s what the voice of this Iranian engineer sounds like to me. He’s spitting out lyrics in his Diary of a Steppenwolf:
I am tired of all the bullshit I spent the last 20 YEARS with.
I am tired of this regime.
I am tired of the stupid mullahs who belong to thousands of years ago.
I am tired of Ali Khamenei the one handed and his regime.
I am tired of all these bearded bastards.
I am tired of this country I live in.
I can’t stand it anymore. It’s over.
What else is going to happen?
You wake up and find all your favorite web pages banned.
What else is remaining for me?
You directed all my social activities into my home.
That was all that is remaining for me.
2 rooms, a TV set and a PC.
I was just READING it! Can you understand that?
I was just READING!
I’m talking to YOU! Yes you!
You stupid religious old man!
You mullah! You dumb fanatic!
You dogmatic bastard who grow beard as an Is-fuck-lamic show off!
You who limit me! You who restrict me!
You who think you are dumb enough to decide for me!
You! Ali Khamenei with all your shitty regime!
YOUR time is over too. One of these days you’ll be as fucked as Saddam Hussein!
You’re dying! You hear me?
These are your last efforts to stay on the surface!
You are going to sink, one of these days.
So ban as much web pages as you can!
Your time is over, mullah!
You’ll be gone,
but the hatred will remain in my heart, and my children’s hearts for centuries
Incandescent passion like this can only smoulder for so long before it bursts into searing flames. I think the House of the Mullahs will soon be burned to the ground.
A message to all the control-freaks of the world: the instinctive human struggle for life, freedom and dignity can be temporarily subdued but it can never, ever be conquered.
Tony Blair is heroic, Churchillian, principled and upstanding.
I’ve been reading a lot of that kind of thing of late and at every incidence I am caught between doubling up in ironic laughter and throwing open the window to shout obscenities into the street.
I have no way of knowing for sure if this report is accurate. Certainly it’s appearance in the Guardian/Observer means a source-warning is essential. However, if it turns out that they are telling the truth, then the ‘heroic, Churchillian’ Mr.Blair is about to usher in the last stages of the Great Betrayal:
Tony Blair is to give Cabinet Ministers the green light to campaign to join the euro even though the majority of the key ‘five tests’ will not be met.
In the clearest signal yet that he wants to pave the way for Britain to join the single currency, Whitehall sources said that he will allow Cabinet members a ‘freer reign’ to push the arguments on the issue. When the results of the tests are announced in the next three weeks, Blair wants to make it clear that Britain has taken an ‘enormous step’ towards joining, and will argue that the British economy is now closer to that of other European countries, essential to the euro working.
The man who helped liberate Iraq from tyrrany could be about to sell Britain down the river to Euro-serfdom.
Next time you run into a bunch of eco-loonies howling from the rooftops about the number of innocent Iraqi children killed by Anglo-American sanctions or the number of Africans whose lives are blighted by the alleged predations of globalisation, you might want to take some comfort from the realisation that what is really going on here is a massive exercise in guilt-displacement.
Green campaigns, you see, are not just a laughable manifestation of Western illiberal neurosis. They actually kill real people in the real world. There is no better illustration of this than their the long-standing (and shameful) war against DDT, an extremely useful chemical spray that has a proven track record in stopping the spread of malaria but which the greenies regard as a ‘toxin’ that must be eradicated in order to ‘improve’ the environment.
Using their customary formula of junk-science, scare-mongering, moral blackmail and religious fervour, the enviro-mentalists have managed to persuade Western governments to lean on the governments of developing countries to prohibit the use of this life-saving bit of technology.
This is neo-imperialism of the worst kind. Western greenies seem to regard the Third World as a sort of benevolent plantation where they can administer their muddle-headed, quasi-mystical, do-goodery to the poor, benighted fuzzy-wuzzys.
The results have been disastrous but the good news is that the ‘noble savages’ have had just about enough of this crap:
Kenya’s leading research center has come out in favor of using DDT to stem the toll of malaria in the country, reigniting a bitter debate between those who want to protect the environment and those who favor saving African children.
With the announcement, Kenya is poised to join a handful of other African countries, which are disregarding donor-nation admonitions that the chemical is an environmental disaster.
Proof (as if any more were actually needed) that one can afford to play along with these self-indulgent parlour games and humour the participants until such times as actual lives are on the line as a result. The Kenyans have rudely (and justly) reminded the world that they are critically vulnerable to the consequences of fashionable clap-trap in a way that over-stuffed and ridiculously coddled Western metropolitan elites are not.
“DDT is not the only weapon against malaria, but given its success in other parts of Africa, it would be of great benefit for malaria control in Kenya,” Richard Tren, director of Africa Fighting Malaria, in Johannesburg said yesterday. “Not using DDT, in effect, condemns Africans to die.”
Dr. Davy Koech, director of KMRI, said DDT is one of the most effective pesticides against the anopheles mosquito, which transmits malaria. He said malaria in Kenya has reached epidemic proportions.
Every person engaged in this campaign of prohibition should hang their heads in shame and ignominy.
Cheap and effective, DDT was once considered a modern miracle for dealing with malaria and insect pests in agriculture. It was used during World War II, when entire cities were sprayed to control lice and typhus. DDT was used to eradicate malaria in the United States, but it was also used by the ton for agriculture, where it killed birds. DDT was named the culprit and vilified by Rachel Carson in her 1962 book “Silent Spring,” leading to its ban in the United States in 1972.
I wonder if that book has even been objectively scrutinised?
Zambia recently decided to reintroduce the chemical for malaria control, and Uganda announced that it would begin using DDT again.
“In Europe, they used DDT to kill anopheles mosquitos that cause malaria,” Ugandan Health Minister Jim Muhewezi told the Monitor newspaper in Kampala. “Why can’t we use DDT to kill the enemy in our own camp?”
Because, Mr.Muhewezei, some Westerners regard ideology as being more important than life itself.
I sincerely hope that this outbreak of common sense continues to spread. I also hope that this episode goes some way to persuade sensible people in the Third World that their lives will not improve until they dismiss the idiotic ravings of Western socialist cranks and start to embrace the enlightenment of technology, capitalism, progress and property rights.
And, if there is any justice in this world, Western enviro-mentalists will all be rounded up and prosecuted for crimes against humanity.
[My thanks to Chris Cooper for flagging up this issue on the Libertarian Alliance Forum]
Because I grew up in the 1970’s I still associate Trade Unions with the rank-and-file of the British urban proletariat; the lantern-jawed, barrel-chested, horney-handed, hobnail-booted sons of industrial toil. These were the rough, tough, no-nonsense men who hewed the coal, forged the steel and rivetted iron plates down in the boiler-room of the British economy.
In those days ‘male grooming’ meant a smell of honest sweat and a smear of brickdust and anyone who was stupid enough to go into a working class pub and prissily complain about the smokey atmosphere was more likely than not to experience ‘Death by Shipbuilder’.
Alright, I know that’s a cartoon but at least it was corroborated to a small degree in real world of shop floors, lathes and jackhammers. But the coal fields are silent now, the shipyards have all gone and the smokestack industries are billowing clouds of vapour over Taiwan not Teesside and so the Trades Union Congress (TUC) needs new rubrics to campaign on. Out has gone the fiery old rhetoric of revolution, strikes and class war and in has come the priggish, condescending ideology of health fascism:
Pubs, clubs and restaurants could increase their takings by banning smoking, says the TUC.
The TUC is pushing for the ban, because it believes passive smoking presents a health risk to waiters, waitresses and bar staff.
Very useful this ‘passive smoking’ hoax. What would organisations like the TUC do without it?
Rory O’Neill, editor of the TUC-backed Hazards magazine which published Saturday’s report, said: “Big Tobacco (the lobby) has spent big money to prevent UK workplaces going smoke-free.
Ah yes, the hobgoblin of ‘Big Tobacco’, yet another shadowy capitalist conspiracy determined to preserve our right to choose. They’re a ‘lobby’, don’t you know. All ‘lobbies’ are malevolent and driven by greed, as opposed to organisations like the TUC which is motivated solely by altruism and love for their fellow humans.
Let us hear the voice of the ‘lobby’:
But Simon Clark, director of smokers’ rights group Forest, said: “Neither the consumer nor the hospitality industry wants a complete ban on smoking and there is absolutely no need for it.
“If the overwhelming majority of people wanted smoke-free pubs and restaurants it would happen, believe me, because people vote with their feet.
Is this Apostate of Hell trying to tell us that if that people wanted a smoke-free environment then any entrepreneur who opened a non-smoking restaurant would clean up? Just further proof that the concept of a free market is a standing affront to people with agendas to advance and empires to build.
My, how the TUC has apparently changed its tune. In the good old days they denounced ‘profits’ and told the workers that they had nothing to lose except their chains. Now they seem to want to enourage profits while telling the workers to lift that barge, tote that bail, have a little smoke and land in jail.
Not even for a fleeting moment do I believe that President Bush and his cabinet need me to jump their defence. Indeed, jumping to the defence of any politician is not an activity that generally sits well with me.
However, I am prepared to set aside my customary reluctance in the case of George Bush but only because he seems to have become an Aunt Sally for every loud-mouthed class-war agitator who is looking to make a name for themselves with the woolly-hatted, mushy-brained, stapled-face brigade.
A case in point is the current (and I am so ashamed to have to type these words) Mayor of London, Mr.Ken Livingstone. Livingstone is veteran political shape-shifter who has spent the last thirty or so years hitching himself to every po-mo leftist bandwagon that rolled into town and maybe even invented a few of his own. Having been shoved back under his rock by the Thatcher government of the eighties, wily old Ken has since re-invented himself as a cuddly ‘man of the people’; an image that he has assiduously cultivated as a base from which to launch a political resurrection.
Thanks to his favourable media coverage and a severe outbreak of Memory Deficit Disorder (a condition endemic to this country) ‘Ken Il Sung’ managed to get himself elected to this high-profile office that enables him to regale the world with what I suppose he regards as his words of wisdom:
Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, was widely condemned yesterday after comparing George Bush to Saddam Hussein.
Oh well, I suppose it makes a change from comparing George Bush to Hitler.
The Left-winger described the American President as a “coward” who was at the head of a “venal and corrupt administration”.
Anyone who accepted large sums of cash from Colonel Qaddafi in order to set up a trotskyite newspaper has got some nerve calling other people ‘venal and corrupt’.
Addressing an audience of schoolchildren…
I don’t suppose adults would want to listen to all his tiresome bollocks.
“This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown.”
Yes, which is why ‘cuddly’ Ken was at the head of every ‘Stop the War’ march.
Mr Livingstone is used to courting controversy. Shortly before being elected mayor he appeared to endorse anti-capitalists rioters when he said: “Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War Two. But at least Hitler was mad.”
But, Ken, Hitler’s views on the ‘international financial system’ were remarkably close to your own. What are you trying to tell us?
Yesterday he played down his latest remarks, saying that he had made the same point at an anti-war rally in February and that no one took much notice.
No doubt because they were all stunned to hear that you wanted Saddam Hussein ‘overthrown’. You did tell them that back in February, Ken?
Asked about the row, Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush’s spokesman, said: “I’ve never heard of the guy.”
The perfect response. Ken Livingstone: the nobody’s nobody.
If the Devil makes work for idle hands it is surely because he has no need to find any for busy bodies. They are far too engaged on Satanic projects of their own.
These infernal Children of Eternal Night are, it appears, girding their loins and grinding their battleaxes for another Unholy War, this time against….Vitamins!!
In accordance with sacred Samizdata liturgy there is no link to this UK Times article but here are some of the best bits:
The Food Standards Agency says that many vitamin supplements do more harm than good, and urges people to cut down on vitamin C, calcium and iron. It has for the first time set safe daily limits for various supplements, issues strong warnings on six and even demands the ban of one product — chromium picolinate, which athletes and slimmers use to help them to stay lean or lose weight.
Just a warning, of course. Mere sensible advice. A directive. Guidance. Official common sense. Satanic intentions are usually dressed up in the terminology of caring and sharing in order to mask the faint whiff of sulphur. We all know the Path to Hell has been pre-scripted though. This is where it starts and it is only a matter of time and bureaucratic stealth until the vitamin products they have targetted become restricted by law and then made available by prescription only (which must be accompanied by payment of the state fee, of course).
But this is not the first time ominous noises have been made:
Workers at a Sussex vitamins firm could lose their jobs if a European directive on food supplements becomes law.
Owners of G&G Food in East Grinstead have called on Euro MPs to block the European Directive on Food Supplement which they fear would take vitamins, minerals and herbal remedies off the shelves.
So is this an empire-building initiative from the British Food Standards Agency or are they merely minions taking their order from the Pit of Hades? It matters not, I suppose, because battle is enjoined and the signs are that it is going to be long and bloody:
Ralph Pike, of the National Association of Health Stores, which represents 12,500 health shops, was incensed by the “meddling”, and demanded: “Where are the dead bodies? There has not been one death anywhere in the world from people taking a legitimate vitamin supplement. This is disgraceful, and all it will do will scare people from taking safe and legitimate products for no good reasons. The authorities just don’t like people taking control of their own health and they want everyone to abrogate responsibility for their lives to the nanny state.”
Praise be to Mr.Pike for he has surely Seen The Light and is ready to step up to the ranks of the Holy Warriors.
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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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