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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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Christ but I hate the BBC. This morning – probably out of some masochistic urge – I had the BBC Breakfast News channel on. I suppose my only defence is that I wanted to see those goals that England had contrived to score against that footballing colossus, Switzerland. Anyway, one item that came up was the issue of a proposed nationwide minimum drinking price for booze. There is already one in Scotland . There is a very high chance that such a minimum price, which flagrantly breaches the rights of sellers to flog their stuff at whatever price they think fit, will come into law.
Now it is no surprise, really, that the BBC tends to act as unwitting or even witting voice of government-favoured conventional wisdom, but the interviewer on this morning’s show who was giving a representative of the alcohol retailing industry a hard time was particularly bad. This is the guy I mean, by the name of Simon Jack. His biography states he worked as a decade as an investment banker, so presumably the BBC thinks this gives him a terrific insight into the world of business. Well, I don’t know about that – it may be that if this guy was any good at that job he’d be still working in the financial sector and earning zillions. Or maybe he realised that his heart was not in it and preferred to act as early-morning interrogator of businesses instead. This character seriously gets up my nose: a lot of his questioning is hectoring and demogogic, with questions such as: “But how can you defend your profit margins, Mr Evil Banker?”
This morning, he asked about how can the booze industry justify selling product at below cost of production. Surely, he said, this is designed to entice us poor moppets into buying lots of liquor and drinking ourselves into a stupor? Well, if Mr Jack had been awake during his college days while studying some economics, he’d realise that firms routinely sell some items at such cheap prices, even below production costs, to encourage a new market, whether it be for booze, cars or whatever. Free samples and all that. But obviously such pricing policies could not occur indefinitely: firms wish to make a profit. It was particularly weak for the industry lobby man not to state as much, and to assert that the industry is entitled to set its prices how it wants, and that anyway, why should not people be able to buy at prices mutually agreeable to them and the sellers – the vast majority of alcohol consumers do not turn into George Best or Oliver Reed and do not vomit over the pavement. But of course the BBC now endlessly repeats the charge that cheap drink is turning our city centres into beery nightmares and therefore, the rest of us should have to pay more for whatever is deemed to be causing the problem.
The BBC is leading the way as a news organisation that constantly hammers the booze industry, just as, in times past, happened to the tobacco industry. And the BBC Breakfast show, with its mix of hard news and what is a lot of fluffy, lifestyle features with lots of chats on the sofa, is a particularly persistent channel for this sort of temperance advocacy. In some ways, with its red sofas and pretend air of jollity in the morning, it is far more dangerous in this regard than snarling Jeremy Paxman in the evenings. At least you can usually switch channels to a late-night movie and watch Clint or whoever blowing bad people to glory.
I’ve known about the Kochs, and about their legendary wealth and about their massive support with some of it for the US libertarian movement, ever since I first became a part of the London libertarian scene in the late 1970s. (Although, I’m still not sure how they are pronounced. Cock? Coke? Kotch? (Coach?)) So the idea that their support for libertarianism is now or ever was some kind of covert operation, rather than just rich people spending their own money trying to do and spread goodness as they saw it, is, to me, utterly ridiculous. One of the Kochs even ran for vice-President, I am reminded here. Was that secret too?
Well, I guess it sort of was. What happens is that you spend two or three decades generally stamping and shouting and raising all kinds of heaven and hell, saying that every bit of sex and drugs and rock and roll and free marketeering that you can think of should be legalised, and they ignore you. Finally you start making some rather big waves, in some way that doesn’t involve them helping in any way, even by them deigning to denounce you, and they then call you “covert”. It wasn’t even that they couldn’t get you on the phone despite trying, twice. No. You couldn’t get them on the phone, ever.
Personally I think it’s a very good sign that they are now attacking libertarianism, pro-capitalism etc., by pointing out that there are these rich capitalists who are in favour of it. This tells me that they feel they are running out of actual arguments. It also tells me that they don’t think that them drawing attention to the libertarian movement, by banging on about how these evil capitalists support it like this, can draw much more attention to this movement than we are now contriving for ourselves. In short, we are now up and running as a force in the real world beyond that of mere ideological intercourse among consenting ideologists, and they know it.
I would be very interested to learn what our American commenters make of Andrew Breitbart. My impression is that he’s really making misery for the One Party Media in the USA, but occasionally making mistakes. Did he mishandle that video featuring Shirley Sherrod? Or is he being falsely accused of having done so by lilly-livered Conservatives who are too keen on being liked by liberals who will always despise them? My impression is that Breitbart didn’t call Sherrod a racist, but that he did, rightly, call her audience racist.
I ask because the latest Breitbart sally seems to contain a (another?) quite serious error. The New York Times has issued what looks to me like a deeply dishonest “retraction”, saying that the racist things said to some Congressman in the street were nothing to do with the Tea Party Movement, when the actual truth, as commenter number one on his piece immediately points out, is that they were nothing to do with anything because they never even happened. And Breitbart seems to me to be letting the New York Times get clean away with this piece of blatant scumbaggery, contenting himself with merely demanding that all the other One Party Media organs issue the same utterly dishonest semi-retraction. If this is Breitbart hitting back twice as hard, my reaction is that he could have landed a far heavier flurry of punches than he just did. Is that a fair criticism, and even if it is, am I just doing that old arm-chair moaner thing of saying that whoever is doing the real business for my team, when I am doing nothing, could be doing even better. Am I demanding the best in a way that is for practical purposes hostile to the good?
Whatever the particular truth about just how good a job Breitbart is or is not doing on the One Party Media, I get the distinct impression from over here that something very big is happening to the US media. Some kind of – sorry but the phrase is exactly appropriate – “tipping point” seems to be being reached.
The thing is, people on the whole tend not to unleash cumbersome solutions upon circumstances that don’t seem to be a problem. It takes time for people to desert their old familiar ways of acquainting themselves with what’s going on in the world, and there has to be a solid reason to do this, same as there has to be a solid reason to move house or switch from PCs to a Mac, or to stop drinking any alcohol. It takes some particular lie about something that they are personally familiar with, to “tip” them, like when their own genuinely good-guy cousin and his thoroughly nice wife get called (along with a few thousand other people) racists by some loud-mouthed hand-deep-in-the-government-till scam-artist on the television, without any corrective complaint from the grey-haired professorial old guy introducing it, and when they read the same stuff in their newspaper the next morning. At which point they start suspecting that everything else in their formerly trusted newspaper, or on their hitherto perfectly adequate TV channel, could also be deception and scumbaggery. The point being that this switch wasn’t going to happen all in one go, with the overnight arrival of the internet. But I have the feeling that the number of US citizens who are, just about now, arriving at this point in their news and current affairs habits, is becoming something approaching a Moment in US History.
Is that right? Or just wishful thinking. To put it another way, Paul Marks is fond of saying in comments here that “most people” still get their news from the regular old media rather than from blogs and such. Is that observation starting to become seriously obsolete? After all, if a quite large percentage of those who still read (exclusively) and trust (implicitly) the regular old media now have family or friends whom they do not consider to be completely mad who don’t and who don’t, that has to change things. Doesn’t it? At the very least, that means that the One Party Media are now experienced by most as putting forward a distinct point of view, rather than just serving up The News. And that’s quite a change. Isn’t it?
ADDENDUM: I wrote what is immediately above before reading Dale’s piece immediately below.
For all of the talk about a fourth branch of government, calling to account corruption on both sides of the aisle, and informing the people’s decisions with transcendent objectivity, the media has always been a bullhorn for specific biases. The virgin media of our youth did not exist, and it should not exist. As with every other facet of life in a free society, it is only competition that creates progress and openness. In media, this means diverse views and diverse sources, calling not only corrupt politicians into account, but each other as well.
– Jeremy D. Boreing
Yet again “JournoList” (the international organization by which leftist journalists cooperate to serve the cause of collectivism) has been exposed. Tucker Carlson over at the “Daily Caller” has exposed more of their propaganda and disinformation campaigns. Specifically the effort to distract attention from, and smear as a “racist” anyone who tried to report Barack Obama’s two decade membership of an extreme “Black Liberation Theology” (an ideology that mixes Marxism with black racism and then puts a “Christian” cover on both) church and his close connection with the vile bigot the Rev. Jeremiah “Audacity of Hope” Wright.
Outwardly such magazines as Time and the Economist pretend to compete and to offer different world views (the Economist pretending to be a free market supporting journal – in spite of its support for endless bailouts and other corporate welfare, and support government “stimulus” spending). Yet Mr Carlson shows (by publishing their discussions) that high ranking people at these (and most other) “mainstream media” outlets actively cooperate, and coordinate their disinformation and propaganda campaigns for the collectivist cause.
As I have attacked the “mainstream” media, especially the Economist – whose lying claim to support liberty has long offended me, for years, I might be expected to be saying “I told you so” at this point…
…But actually I am astonished…
This is because like Bernie Goldberg (of “Bias”, “A Slobbering Love Affair”) I have long believed the source of the pro-big government bias in the media to be a “mindset” produced by education at both school and university, and the environment that MSM (“mainstream media”) people operate within. To find out that their really is a sort of electronic “Star Chamber” where people (supposedly from competing media outlets) deliberately set out to cover up the truth and to coordinate their lies and disinformation (knowing they are lies and disinformation), well that is rather a shock. → Continue reading: “JournoList”… why Paul Marks is NOT rubbing his hands and saying “I told you so”
One of the biggest eye-openers you can have is seeing a story in the press which you have personal knowledge of…
Of course, it could be that you just got unlucky and that all the other stories out there are 100% bang on, deadly accurate.
But that seems rather unlikely, doesn’t it?
– 6000 ruminates on false media prophesies of doom regarding the organisation of the soccer World Cup in his native South Africa.
Paul Marks, as regular readers know, regards the Economist as a sort of bellweather of conventional (ie, frequently wrong) wisdom. The magazine recently carried this editorial on the supposed inadequacies of the US political Right.
He sent this letter to the magazine. Somehow, I think they are unlikely to run it, but we can:
Dear Sir,
In your current edition you have as the main cover story an attack upon the “American right”. In reality, of course, it is not the fact that the people you attack are American that causes you to hate them – you hate them (and attack them in the most abusive terms you can) because they commit the dreadful crime of not agreeing with you.
You hate the British “right” just as much as you hate the American “right” – with “right” really being defined as people who do not support endless bailouts, corrupt “stimulus” government spending, and corporate welfare (such as the Central Bank producing more credit money and issuing it in various sweetheart loan forms to politically connected financial sector enterprises).
I am not really interested in the fact that you use abusive language (“mad” and so on) and cartoons against people whose only crime is to have different political opinions to yourselves, after all I have used abusive language (such as “corrupt”) to describe your editor, Mr John Micklethwait, and the only reason I have never drawn an abusive cartoon of him is that I can not draw.
No, what interests me is your claim that America needs a “better opposition” to President Barack Obama – and your implied claim that you should be the guide to such an opposition.
→ Continue reading: An open letter to The Economist
The Times has vanished behind a pay wall and… frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.
There is nothing about The Times that cannot be easily replaced with other on-line sources. Move along, nothing to see (literally).
Here is a report about progress, so to speak, in the construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China.
This dam, just as was earlier prophesied, is causing lots of environmental problems, as in real environmental problems, as in: people are finding themselves living in buildings that are collapsing, beside roads that are cracking up, on land that is sliding into the water. We are not talking imaginary rises in sea level here, but real damage to real human habitats. Earthquakes are now happening.
That Telegraph piece links to this Times report, which explains things thus:
As the water rises, it penetrates fissures and seeps into soil. Then it loosens the slopes that ascend at steep angles on either side of the river. Eventually, rocks, soil and stone give way. The landslides undermine the geology of the area. That, in turn, sets off earth tremors. It may be the world’s biggest case of rising damp.
The Times report also includes this choice little paragraph, concerning some crumbling building that was hurriedly vacated by government officials and allocated instead to mere people:
“What kind of dogshit government moves itself out and moves us into somewhere like this?” one of them complained.
A key point made by the Telegraph piece above is that less is now being done than you might expect by Chinese higher-ups to suppress such reports:
Three years ago stories were already emerging in the Chinese media about landslides, ecological deterioration and accumulation of algae further down the river. And less and less effort seems to be made to plug the leaks.
This all made me think of a book I read a year or two ago about the Western Way of War, or some such title, by Victor Davis Hanson (I think it was this book, although I believe I read a proof copy with a different title). The connection? Well, Hanson identifies one of the strengths of the Western Way of War to be the way that western war efforts are often preceded by almighty rows, often woundingly public, about how to set about, or even whether to set about, doing whatever it is they are attempting, which typically continue after the effort has begun. One of his major points being: this is not recent, it’s always been like this.
The result, for all the mess and unpleasantness and unfairly ruined careers, tends not to be the division and confusion that you might expect, or not only that, but also (a) better decisions, and (b) better understood decisions. Even the losers of such arguments at least understand the plan the others fellows are now making everyone follow, so even they follow it better. Both decision-making and decision-implementation are improved. Then, often with even greater doses of injustice, wars, even successful wars, are then raked over and argued about yet again, afterwards. It’s all very indecorous, and “debate” doesn’t do justice to the chaotic nature of such public rows. But the result is better decision-making and better informed and better prepared decision-makers, at all levels.
And for war, read: everything else big and dangerous also, like mega-engineering projects. Tyranny, aka dogshit government, in war and in everything big, imposes bad and un-thought-through decisions on baffled subordinates, decisions which still might have worked after a fashion if implemented properly, but not if even quite senior subordinates don’t really have a clue about what they are supposed to be doing and are just following orders blindly, or worse, perhaps not even doing that, because, you know, who gives a shit.
It must now be becoming clear to quite a few Chinese high-ups that had they had a big, messy, public ruckus about how exactly (or indeed whether at all) to build this damn great dam, then it might at least have been a damn sight better dam than it now looks like being. It might have been messier and more difficult and more stressful deciding about it all beforehand, but far better afterwards, once all the dust, and in this case also all the mud and all the various bits of collapsing land and roads and buildings that are now sliding and tumbling hither and thither, had settled.
And even if they failed to argue about the Three Gorges Dam properly beforehand, it would be better than nothing to at least have a bit of a public row about it now. At least that way, some harsh lessons might be learned and spread around, and such things might be done a bit better in the future.
As well as the normal “liberal” distortions (in this case pretending that the de facto ban on both Alaska land drilling, off shore shallow water drilling, and Mountain State oil shale production, do not exist – these being the restrictions that force difficult and expensive deep water drilling) that Michelle Oddis outlines – please ponder the John Stossel story.
J.S. said whatever libertarian says on race – that racism is evil, but people should be allowed to keep people they do not like (for whatever stupid reason) off their property.
And for that all Hell broke lose – with “MediaMatters” and all the rest of the (very well funded) leftist (in the modern sense) organizations demanding that he be dismissed. The man is Jewish (counts for nothing – the left will smear him as a racist anyway), the man was a Democrat before he became a libertarian and has never been a Republican (counts for nothing – the left will smear him as …..), the man has “socially liberal” attitudes seeing nothing wrong with homosexual acts or whatever (counts for nothing – the left will smear him as……).
Being opposed to the left (in the modern sense of the establishment – to the elite that control most of the institutions in society, including many private ones) and yet in the public eye is to undergo trial by fire every day – against a ruthless enemy that will stop at nothing to destroy you. They will lie and cheat and smear, do anything they believe they “have” to do for the collectivist cause).
So one faces a choice – either give in and become a de facto leftist (like the house “conservatives” the New York Times employs to attack real conservatives, or like David Frumm, or Andrew “cash for clunkers is an example of good limited government” Sullivan) or accept that you will be treated as a monster – and that even after you die your name will be spat on and the left will try and train even your own children to hate your memory.
That is the alternative that, for example, Glenn Beck has accepted (he knows that the left will eventually destroy him – and has asked his children to keep private journals so that they will have something real to remember their father by), but it is a hard road to walk. As Mr Stossel is discovering.
Stossel is lucky that he works for the one major media organization that might not fire him or force him to resign – but even that is not certain, for Rupert M. is no hero.
“Why do journalists not dissent from the leftist consensus” – because the left will DESTROY you if you do dissent (if they can find any way to do so).
Deep down the left support the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States about as much as they support the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. And the British left is not different.
This is what Oddis wrote:
I turned on the TV Sunday morning just in time to hear TIME Magazine’s Joe Klein on the “Chris Matthews Show” claim that Obama’s approval ratings won’t be affected negatively by the Gulf oil spill.
He is “incredibly lucky in his opposition — the oil spill is a great example,” said Klein. “The Republicans look worse on that than the Democrats do.” A chuckle was shared between Klein and Matthews.
In hindsight Democrats should be reminded that we are drilling in deep offshore wells (5,000 feet or more) because berserk environmentalists refuse to let anyone drill into the rocky tundra of ANWR even though over 75% percent of Alaskans support this kind of exploration.
Now how does this situation make Republicans look worse? Read more here and watch Glenn Beck back in 2008 explain the truth about ANWR.
British tax funded broadcaster the BBC (it does not like the term “state broadcaster” as it prides itself on its political independence from the government of the day – although it shows no independence from collectivist ideology in general) does not run advertisements apart for what it considers good causes. Such as, of course, itself – BBC shows and other products.
The first “Director General” of the BBC, when it stopped being a commercial company, was a man called John Reith – and annual lectures are given in his name, the “Reith Lectures“. The BBC proudly advertises these lectures as a high culture jewel, something that no nasty commercial or charitable broadcaster would ever produce. Each year some establishment person actually lowers him or herself to speak to the unclean masses.
However, this year the endless advertisements were useful. The lecturer (a former head
of the Royal Society – although Newton, Boyle, and the others must be spinning in their graves) is to be a man of science, but of the modern sort in that the advertisements quote him saying that science must avoid investigating certain things – there are “doors that should remain closed”. This is an attitude that would have pleased the more extreme people in the Inquisition, but is unlikely to inspire children to question established orthodoxies – but, of course, questioning is no longer the function of “science”. Also the main modern functions of science appear to be to combat “climate change” (by supporting ever greater power for governments, pretending that more regulations and taxes will “save the planet” rather than be a corrupt scheme for special interests to gain money and power – by the way this is true even if, as may well be the case, the theory that human C02 emissions are a danger is correct, as such schemes as “Cap and Trade” will do nothing to reduce such emissions and such political scams are not part of science anyway) and to make sure that the “benefits of globalization are equitably shared”.
How “science” can be twisted so that this last nakedly political aim can be claimed to be part of it, I will never find out – as, of course, I will avoid the Reith Lectures as if they were the plague (which they are – the plague of ignorance and collectivist fanaticism), but I am still grateful for the advertisements for, as always with BBC advertisements, they warn people that the show being advertised is excrement, something to be avoided unless one enjoys stepping in excrement. However, if should be remembered that for children, especially for intelligent children interested in the world, such things as the “Reith Lecturers” are presented as key to the golden door of knowledge.
This is the tragedy – it is the most intelligent and hard working children who are ruined, those who hunger for knowledge are poisoned with a political message disguised as science (or history, or high culture). Not everyone has access to books (especially in modern times – the days when ordinary homes were full of serious works are long gone, at least in Britain), and many people are not first inspired by books in any case – they are inspired by the spoken word. And both the education system and the media (especially the broadcasting media) target such young people for ruination – for taking what is good in them, and turning it bad. Teaching them a rigid orthodoxy (which they must not question) which is really a mask for a political ideology – world egalitarianism, the “equitable sharing” of “the benefits of globalization”, with its basic denial of private property rights.
Perhaps, as so many tell me, the internet will save such young people – but perhaps it will not. I remain doubtful.
Oh and I, of course, remain open to correction – for example it is possible that the lecturer (his name did not make an impression on me – such beings being rather close to being parts of a hive mind anyway) may explain various new designs for atomic fission power stations in his lectures and discuss various approaches to nuclear fusion in great and enlightening detail. If he does I will have been, partly, refuted.
I commend this fascinating article to those who have not yet come across it – A Hidden History of Evil:
Why Doesn’t Anyone Care About the Unread Soviet Archives?
The archives contain “unpublished, untranslated, top-secret Kremlin documents, mostly dating from the close of the Cold War”, yet their guardian “can’t get anyone to house them in a reputable library, publish them, or fund their translation.” Amongst numerous other tidbits, there is some very interesting stuff about Soviet dealings with François Mitterrand, Neil Kinnock, and several past and present “European Project”/EU bigwigs.
(From the excellent Michael Totten, who’s doing a fine job of holding the fort over at Instapundit)
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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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