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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The new film, V for Vendetta, based on the British comic strip (like so many movies are these days), is an absolute crackerjack of a production, in my view. I watched it last night, having already acquired an outline of what the plot is about from scanning comics over the years, but unlike some transfers from comic to the screen, this film works very well.
It is set in a Britain about 20 or so years from now, a Britain governed by a regime obsessed by managing the citizenry for their own good (sounds familiar), hooked on propoganda and the management of expectations (ditto), scornful of history and traditions (see above), deeply corrupt (recognise anything?) and also quick to resort to violence. Against this is a masked character modelling himself on Guy Fawkes, a character who, in the early 17th Century, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament.
And that is what exactly is the aim of the character “V” in this film. Now, in an age of justifiable fears about terrorism, my first instinct was to recoil at the plot, but in fact if you read this film on a certain level, it is great propoganda against overmighty, corrupt authority, and a celebration of freedom, rather than the sort of totalitarian agenda espoused by the likes of radical Islamists in our own day. It may not be an explicitly libertarian film, but it is unquestionably an anti-authortarian one.
Also, any film that contains the following line has to be a must-see for Samizdata regulars:
“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.”
Not bad, not bad at all.
UPDATE: Objectivist writer Bob Bidinotto, a man who is a fine judge of films, dissents from my positive take on the movie, at least as far as this comment suggests. I agree that this is a flawed film – some of its points are a bit silly – but its overall message is about the need to keep vigilant against the abuse of power, something that a citizen living in a country framed by Jefferson, Madison and Adams would surely understand. Remember, the Founding Fathers were all thought of as subversive pains in the ass in their day. → Continue reading: A fine film
One of my least favourite UK firms is Capita (unaffectionately known as Crapita in some parts), a firm that provides the systems that help run things like the BBC television licence (boo!) and the London Congestion charge (qualified hiss), and which may, perhaps, be involved in operating a proposed national ID card (that would qualify for hurricane force boos all round). Well, in the light of such observations, this is rather interesting, is it not?
The chairman of Capita Group, a services company with government contracts, resigned on Thursday following publicity over a 1-million-pound loan he made to the Labour Party
It is important to remember that businesses like Capita are hardly paragons of capitalist virtue, in my opinion. Capita makes money from things like the licence fee, which essentially extorts money from people who own a TV set, even if they do not watch BBC programmes. If I were an ethical investment fund manager, I would refuse to own its stock on principle.
By the way, the idea of naming and shaming businesses, politicians and individuals involved with intrusive businesses like Capita was mentioned on Samizdata last summer. It will be interesting to see what else happens in the loans-for-peerages affair.
No wonder Blair looked miserable on Budget day yesterday.
Fans of the great Stanley Kubrick satire, Dr Strangelove, will struggle to suppress a wry smile over this story:
Fluoride in drinking water – long controversial in the United States when it is deliberately added to strengthen teeth – can damage bones and teeth, and federal standards fail to guard against this, the National Academy of Sciences reported on Wednesday.
The vast majority of Americans – including those whose water supply has fluoride added — drink water that is well below the limit for fluoride levels set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Maybe all that stuff about flouride in the water being a crazy Commie plot may not have been so nuts after all. On the other hand…
“The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom is courage”.
Pericles’ Funeral Oration (431 BC)
This quotation was always attached to emails many of us used to get from Dr. Chris R. Tame, Libertarian Alliance founder, who died earlier this week. I find it a highly appropriate quotation.
This does not look good for ol’ big ears, does it?
A “cash-for-favours” row threatening Prime Minister Tony Blair has sent his approval rating to its lowest level since he come to power in 1997, according to a poll published on Sunday. The controversy erupted this month when it was disclosed that several wealthy businessmen were nominated for seats in the House of Lords after lending large sums of money to the Labour Party
It is becoming harder and harder to figure out the difference between Blair and the sort of operators who held sway in the Prime Ministerial offices of Italy, Japan and parts of Latin America for much of the last 100 years.
I repeat what I said a couple of days back: I predict Blair will be out of Downing Street in 12 months from now. This stuff is starting to pile on him with increasing weight.
“This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.”
Clint Eastwood. I wonder what particular country he had in mind.
Andrew Sullivan:
It strikes me that people with a secure sense of their own faith are often the least liable to get upset by parodies or comedies about it. Religions may deal in divine truths, but they are run by human beings. And the combination is often funny. True believers know that; and don’t care when they’re made fun of. Insecure believers – and they often need fundamentalism to keep their own souls untroubled by doubt – are the touchiest.
I am writing this in the wee island of Malta, a country which has one of the largest church attendances per head of any country in the world, from what I understand. (The Maltese have churches with the same frequency as golf courses in Florida). And yet the good-natured folk of this island strike me as taking pretty much the sort of robust attitude to their faith as Sully mentions. (Why are you blogging and not on the beach, Ed?)
And interestingly, his point applies just as forcefully to other, non-religious beliefs too. Humour can be a weapon but it is also a shield.
This story about advances in creation of artificial limbs and muscles caught my attention:
Scientists have developed artificial, super-strength muscles which are powered by alcohol and hydrogen. And they could eventually be used to make more advanced prosthetic limbs, say researchers at University of Texas.
Writing in Science, they say these artificial muscles are 100 times more powerful than the body’s own. They said they could even be used in “exoskeletons” to give superhuman strength to certain professions such as firefighters, soldiers and astronauts.
As we ponder the flow of day-to-day news, it is easy to overlook the tremendous advances going on in fields like this. As the article mentions, applications of such medical technologies apply not just to repairing existing injuries or coping with the terrible effects of losing a limb (a sobering reality for victims of terror, car accidents, conflicts, etc), but even for perfectly healthy people looking to augment their physical strength.
The story demonstrates how blurred the boundaries now are between medical technologies that can be used to repair or heal injuries and those used to make what we have picked up in Darwin’s great lottery draw even better. The genetic fatalists will decry all this for tampering with God’s Will or whatever, but I don’t see any difference between this and say, laser surgery for the eye, or technologies to make it possible to vastly increase our hearing strength, or enhance our cognitive capacity, and so forth.
Mind you, it makes me wonder how this technology, if it really works, is going to affect sport. At the moment the sporting authorities controlling events like the Tour de France cycling event, say, or the Olympic Games, treat any form of human augmentation or performance enhancement as off-limits. I guess so long as participants agree in advance not to use such techniques, then they cannot complain if they are caught breaking the rules. But in some occupations like those mentioned in the story, such as astronauts experiencing the effects of zero-gravity environments, this sort of stuff might be a basic necessity rather than a luxury.
Meanwhile, here is an interesting story about nanotech and possible cures for blindness. And I can recommend this book by Ronald Bailey.
Makes a change from writing about Tony Blair, anyway.
Tony Blair’s weak and rather feeble effort to give a tincture of independence to state schools – arguably none, in reality – was only pushed through in the House of Commons last night because of support from the Conservatives, as this BBC report and others have stated. Dozens of Labour MPs, outraged at the very idea of schools loosening any controls from the State, rebelled. The Labour Party, having kept its mouth tightly shut in some ways while Blair sought to pass himself off as a pale Tory, is getting increasingly stroppy. The Iraq war clearly has had something to do with it, but there seems to be a sort of natural life cycle with Prime Ministers. As the years go by, and enemies are made, MPs passed over for promotion, the groupings of malcontents increases. It seems rather odd that Blair should suffer such a blow from his backbenchers on what is in fact hardly a radical education bill.
The irony of course is that Blair continues to be fixated by the career and achievements of Margaret Thatcher, a true radical in some ways with some significant achievements to her credit. Blair talks a good game on radicalism, as they say in sport, but delivery is often way short. His achievement, if we can call it that, has been a sustained and deep assault on the network of checks and balances that constrain State power, in particular, his determined assault on the English Common Law.
My bet is that Gordon Brown will be Prime Minister in 12 months from now. Any takers?
Don’t ever become a pessimist… a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.
– Robert A. Heinlein.
I love this story:
Armed with nothing more than a couple of sensors, a robotic fish unveiled by Japanese scientists this week could one day be used to observe fish in the ocean or survey oil platforms for damage.
Modelled on the koi, a decorative strain of carp popular in Japan, the remote-controlled white, red and gold robot can manoeuvre its way around a fish pond with a realistic flick of its tail.
The 80-cm (32-inch) carp can also use sensors in its mouth to monitor the concentration of oxygen in water, a key to fish health, said project leader Tetsuo Ichikizaki of Ryomei Giken, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd <7011.T>, in Hiroshima, western Japan.
I wonder if this works with the great white shark.
“We have paid dearly for idealizing the state. There is no virtue in denying the law of gravity, and there should be no virtue in denying the limitations of government. Good intentions are no excuse for perpetual failure and growing oppression. The more we glorify government, the more liberties we will lose. Freedom is largely a choice between allowing people to follow their own interests or forcing them to follow the interests of politicians, bureaucrats, politicians and campaign contributors.”
James Bovard, “Lost Rights”, cataloguing the destruction of liberties in the USA during the Clinton years. The message applies everywhere and at any time, of course.
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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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