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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Perhaps it is just sloppy editing or slipshod reporting that turns what is supposed to be a serious news article into an exercise in bladder-evacuation. Or perhaps it is meant to be funny?
Who knows? Just enjoy the results:
The leading showbiz lights of the anti-globalisation movement descended on Venice this weekend, amid complaints that the world’s oldest film festival has sold out to the Hollywood glamour industry.
Surely, if they wanted to oppose globalisation they would be better off staying put?
Actor Tim Robbins and author Naomi Klein will tomorrow launch the Global Beach, an alternative “festival” down the road from the main event, which is expected to get the backing of actor-director Spike Lee and gay indie-punk star Gregg Araki.
Oh, that Gregg Araki. Illustrious star of such notable films as…er, give me a minute here…
Both Robbins and Klein are noted critics of Hollywood mores and of the failure of actors to criticise their corporate bosses.
That may have something to do with the lear jets and limos provided by those corporate bosses.
Naomi Klein flew in yesterday morning to promote her film The Take, an account of a co-operative business set up by Argentine workers after the 2001 economic collapse, directed by radical Canadian journalist Avi Lewis.
With action, adventure, thrills, spills, ingenious plot twists, dazzling special effects and a stellar cast, ‘The Take’ is set to be the blockbuster hit of 2004. A total sell-out everywhere. Queues of film-lovers round the block. Get your tickets now!
Supporters of the Global Beach project caused disturbances at the premiere of The Terminal, directed by Stephen Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks, which opened the festival on Wednesday. Members of the group parked a car disguised as a pirate ship near the red carpet, a protest, one of them claimed, against “ostentatious show of Hollywood wealth and power”.
Wow! A car disguised as a pirate ship. That is so…significant: a devastating critique of crass commercialism that will really force people to sit up and take notice.
They are not actors, they are clowns.
On the very first occasion that I saw the advert on my TV, I knew, I just knew that is was going to set the fur flying. I was right.
Scenario: a man picks up his car keys and leaves the house to get into his brand, spanking, new Land Rover Freelander Sport motor vehicle. A woman (presumably his wife) spots him leaving. She rushes up to the bedroom, opens the dresser drawer and pulls out a starting pistol. She rushes downstairs again and runs outside just as her husband is getting into the car. She points the gun up to the sky and fires a single shot, thus giving him signal to get started.
Pretty innocuous stuff. But still far too traumatic and disturbing for some people:
A television advert for Land Rover featuring a woman firing a gun has been banned by watchdogs for glamourising gun culture….
The agency behind the advert said it was intended to promote the message “that the Freelander Sport triggered sporting behaviour”.
But 348 viewers complained to media regulator Ofcom, meaning that the advert is in the top 10 of the most complained about commercials.
Most viewers were concerned that the commercial glamourised or normalised gun culture despite the fact handguns are illegal in Britain. Many also pointed out that the gun was stored irresponsibly.
Yes, you are reading that right. People might be encouraged to store the guns which they do not possess irresponsibly. Priceless!
The right to keep and bear arms is not a debate in this country. Nor is it an issue or an idea or an argument. It has all been subsumed into a deep national psychosis for which I see no prospect of any cure.
What would make you think we are trying to provoke?
Alice Cooper, that paragon of conservative values and restraint is… backing George Bush! Methinks the more wingnut elements of the Republican Party will probably have rather mixed feeling about that particular endorsement.
Well at least his reasons are hard to fault. Why? Because so many musicians are backing Kerry and…
If you’re listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you’re a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we’re morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal. Besides, when I read the list of people who are supporting Kerry, if I wasn’t already a Bush supporter, I would have immediately switched. Linda Ronstadt? Don Henley? Geez, that’s a good reason right there to vote for Bush.
Not quite enough to get me swooning for Dubya, but damn, one can find strangely compelling wisdom in the most unlikely places. 
Perry de Havilland has pointed out previously that film critics seem to regard it as safer to sneer at films than to praise them.
Praise a film (at least praise a serious but non knee-jerk leftist film) and you run the risk of being considered weak minded. Sneer at the film – and you are a sophisticated person who is not taken in by commercial tricks.
The film critic of the Daily Telegraph is one of the sneering school of critics (that a Conservative newspaper allows its cultural coverage to be dominated by the standard knee-jerk crowd is, sadly, normal). In his review of The Village he duly sneered at the film – and, for good measure, sneered at The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable as well.
Well this got my attention (which, I suppose, is the point of a review) as I liked both of these films. Many people got to see the Sixth Sense – but, and in my opinion unfortunately, most people followed the far stronger and more unified critical attacks on Unbreakable and did not see the film.
Recently Unbreakable has been shown on British television and many people have said to me that they thought it was a good film. “Did you go and see Unbreakable when it was on at the cinema?” – “No, because the critics said…”
It seems to me that what the critics really hated about Unbreakable was that it was not ‘tongue in cheek’ or a ‘good romp for the kids’ but also did not make any ‘serious’ (i.e. leftist) political points. Unbreakable was essentially a non political but serious film which examined the question of what if a man really did have ‘special powers’, why would he deny them – and what would make him not deny them.
Of course one could say “Of course old Paul Marks liked the film – the hero is a bald security guard” as I am a bald security guard. However, the film stands up in the view of most people who have seen it (and most of these people are not bald security guards).
As for The Village itself:
Well yes, I liked the film (so thank you to Daily Telegraph reviewer for sneering at it – otherwise I would not have gone to see it). There are a couple of twists in the film (one fairly mild another more radical), but the film is well made, does make sense (and the more you think about the film, the more sense it makes that certain things happen the way they do) and was a good film to watch.
If you go to see the film (because of what I write here) and do not like it – well I am sorry to have badly advised you. However, at least I am giving my honest opinion – not just sneering to seem hip.
The latest engagement in the file sharing wars is a victory for the forces of, well, file sharing.
The makers of two leading file-sharing programs are not legally liable for the songs, movies and other copyright works swapped online by their users, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday in a stinging blow to the entertainment industry.
So far, so good. Those using file-sharing software to violate property rights are, after all, personally responsible for what they do. File sharing software has legitimate uses, and its makers should no more be held responsible for illegitimate uses than a camera manufacturer should be held responsible for child pornography.
Among other reasons, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Grokster Ltd. and StreamCast Networks Inc., unlike the original Napster, were not liable because they don’t have central servers pointing users to copyright material.
One begins to suspect that the court is straining a tad to distinguish its earlier decision shutting down Napster, but let that pass. One is always surprised to find the reliably statist Ninth Circuit signing paeans to the market, but whatever gets them through the opinion, right?
“History has shown that time and market forces often provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology be a player piano, a copier, a tape recorder, a video recorder, a personal computer, a karaoke machine, or an MP3 player,” [Judge] Thomas wrote. “Thus, it is prudent for courts to exercise caution before restructuring liability theories.”
Finally, a quote from the Ninth Circuit that I hope to find cited in other cases. Full opinion here, and hat tip to Hit & Run.
The other day the Daily Mail, a British tabloid newspaper written for the statist right prejudices of ‘Indignant of Tunbridge Well’, called for certain video games to be banned. This resulted is a rather splendid riposte by Benet Simon in The Spectator called Ban this evil rag!’:
But before you panic, remember that you’re better off trusting your child than the Daily Mail. Over the last few days I have been checking the Mail’s website discussion board to see what sort of response they have been getting to their call for a ban. At first, scores of anti-censorship postings appeared, many of them pointing out a fact that the Mail had omitted to mention in either of its two front-page stories: the murderous game, Manhunt, wasn’t in fact owned by the killer Leblanc but by his victim. Another popular complaint was that the Mail had entirely ignored a statement by the police which said that Leblanc’s motive for the so-called ‘Manhunt murder’ was certainly robbery. The kid had debts, it seems, was into drugs and killed to pay for his habit. The police went on to assert that they had never made any connection between the crime and the video game. The Mail’s response to these letters was to delete them while leaving the comments from concerned mothers who won’t let their children watch Spiderman for fear that they’ll think they can climb down walls.
Indeed… my comments were amongst those they deleted from the thread on the Daily Mail forum entitled Discuss: Should violent video games be banned?. And now that it has turned into an embarrassing fiasco for them given the overwhelming response to the contrary, they seem to have since deleted the entire thread.
It seems that ‘Indignant of Tunbridge Wells’ is a gamer too. 
* = ‘Gib’ being an expression used by computer gamers for blowing a person into bloody chunks.
Judging by the many dreadful reviews I have seen regarding Catwoman, this should be a turkey of epic proportions.
Well… bollocks to that.
It actually is not that bad. Sure, even a connoisseur of B-movies such as myself can see that it is not a great movie… the special effects were pretty good in places but during some scenes it was painfully obvious that they were computer generated. The dialogue was serviceable rather than inspiring, the story was derivative and predictable with some feminist claptrap tacked on. The acting was of variable quality – Halle Berry’s job was to shake her ‘thang’ and be alternatively sexy, confused, sexy, predatory, sexy, all of which she did to perfection; Ben Bratt’s job was to shake his ‘thang’ and be a ‘tough-but-nice-guy’, which he did engagingly; Sharon Stone’s job was to be sympathetic, unsympathetic, menacing and sexy, all of which she utterly failed to deliver which was rather disappointing.
But what strikes me is not the failings of this flick, which are indeed many, but the fact I found it vastly better than the reviews would have lead me to believe. It was by no means a waste of a few quid/bucks/euros and just confirms my suspicions that for most reviewers, sneering at things is a safer and more ‘credible’ option, a default mode in fact.
It is not a great movie, or even a particularly good movie… it just does not suck. Bored this weekend? You could do far worse than look at the exquisite Halle Berry strutting her stuff very effectively in Catwoman.
This is without a doubt the movie I have most anticipated seeing since spotting a certain trophy in the background of a few frames at the end of Predator 2 back in 1990.
Oh yeah. I mean, OH YEAH!
This is exactly the time one one should avoid writing: immediately after being poured out of a Belfast taxi on a Saturday night. But it is also the time when “In Vino Veritas” holds most true and one will say what comes to mind rather than considering details like flow and cute turns of phrase.
I go out for music. If a woman happens to fall into my lap during the search, that is certainly a plus, but not a prerequisite. Tonight, I decided on the Shaftesbury Square/Botanic Avenue area rather than the usual good chat and trad music at my local. For a bit of a change I started at Madison’s. A couple pints, a bit of girl watching… but after three or four songs I simply could not take the music. Not that it sounded bad. Au contraire. It sounded marvellous. The problem was… it was a Milli Vanilli band: karaoke tracks with occasional backup from live guitar, bass guitar and maybe vocals. To most of the audience I am sure it was just two guys making a lot of music. Never mind there was no drummer or cowbell or keyboard player on stage; never mind that sometimes the guitarist was playing a D chord when the sound was lead guitar. The guys on stage were making their nut; the audience was happy… capitalism at work.
But I was not a happy camper… and despite the pulchritude surrounding me I decamped for a more classical low down rock bar.
I found what I was looking for. Not that it was much of a search. I knew where I was going. I would tell you except I do not wish to get them into trouble. They had the real thing. Five live musicians with driving Rock and Roll so loud a Brussell’s regulator would have pissed herself. “If it is too loud, you are too old”. I was, naturally, up close to the stage where I could feel the volume. That is the proper way to experience AC/DC and Judas Priest covers… up where your clothes are vibrating.
Now I may have an advantage over some. I probably blew out half my hearing long ago standing in front of a Fender amp in a Pittsburgh bar band; or perhaps from that time I half laid on the stage at a Patti Smith concert at the Leona Theater in the South Side, my head resting inside the lower Altec Lansing. That was a good few years and a lot of substance abuse ago.
One thing you need not worry about. The rockers will simply not obey the regulators. I have said it here before. ‘Turn it down’ is simply not in an electric lead guitarist’s vocabulary. “Fuck off”, on the other hand, is definitely there.
You can only be enslaved if you are actually willing to obey the law… or, as Robert Heinlein said: “You can never enslave a free man. The most that you can do is to kill him.”
Oh yeah… I went out for a cheeseburger with bacon afterwards. Dripping grease and ketchup… yummy. Screw the Health Nazi’s too…
I am sure David Carr would have approved.
Although Australia and the US have signed a free trade agreement, it is an imperfect document, with many exemptions on both sides. In Australia, there has been a loud campaign to have existing ‘local content’ rules for Australian television excluded, and this campaign has been successful.
The ‘local content’ rules mean that a certain proportion of television programmes that are broadcast on Australian television must be locally made. The scrapping of this rule was an American objective in the free trade negotiations, as it meant that US television companies were restricted in their access to the Australian television market by what in effect is a quota.
Australia resisted this; we should not have.
Australian television has had local content rules for a long time, they provide that at least 55% of the programming on Australian television between 6am and midnight must be locally produced. This creates a local internal market for television, which is actually quite a cut-throat industry. The economies of scale mean that Australian television products are not cost-competitive, but they do rate well. → Continue reading: Cultural protectionists win in Australia
It is not difficult to sneer at the new King Arthur movie. One can sneer at its historical errors – for example where is the mention of Ambrosius Aurelianus, who even writers who believe in the existence of Arthur admit was the original leader of British (or Briton or Romano-British or whatever you prefer) resistance to the Germanic invaders (dividing people into neat tribes ‘Angles’, ‘Saxons’ and so on is harder than might be thought). And Ambrosius Aurelianus was certainly a leader of south west Britian (his centre of power would have been in areas like the Cotswalds – places like Cirencestor). Nothing ‘northern’ about him.
And one can sneer in simple film-story terms. For example if going north of Hadrian’s wall is so dangerous, why is there such a lightly defended villa (containing such important people) doing up there?
But to sneer is to miss the point. This is a very brave film.
For example to make the point that there were different sorts of Christian in Britain and that the ideas of Pelagius on free will and moral responsibility might have political importance is to touch on matters that most films seem to assume are well above the heads of the audience.
The avoiding of “all Christians good, all Pagans bad” or (more likely in a modern production) “all Christians bad, all Pagans good” is brave.
Also brave was the direct treatment of de facto serfdom in the late Roman Empire. Whilst formally free men, peasants had been tied to the soil (originally for reasons of tax collection) since the time of the Emperor Diocletian. The Emperor Diocletian (with his price controls and semi serfdom) did not rule Britain at first (there was great resistance to him in this province), but his writ eventually ran here. → Continue reading: King Arthur: a brave movie
Yes folks, this is a quiet Friday and it is Strange Photographs by Brian time.
This time, what we have is a fake Thunderbird rocket, which has been temporarily installed in Trafalgar Square in honour of the new Thunderbirds movie, which opens in London around now. I took the photos yesterday.
There have been all kinds of ideas floating around about what objects to put in Trafalgar Square, next to Nelson, and (I think) Havelock, and the lions. I think this is one of the better ones.
Here is the general context, which means lots of tourists clambering about on the lions and photographing one another:
Here is the one where the rocket is dwarfed by an earlier and more famous erection:
Here it is looking a bit like a rival church. What this also shows is that actually not much attention was being paid to the thing, because it is actually rather small:
And here is the Samizdata friendly shot:
Apparently quite a few of the scenes in the movie are set in London, and feature many of London’s famous landmarks, old and new, including the new local politician hutch that London has just recently had inflicted upon it.
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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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