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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We all know that the Olympics is a money-pit; ask any council-tax payer in London about the cost of the 2012 London Olympics and you are likely to get a scowl. The benighted citizens of Communist China, like the Brits, have relatively little say over the vast circus about to start later this year.
And of course, anyone who wants to watch television has to pay for the BBC; “Auntie”, bless her, is sending 150 journalists to cover the Beijing Games. 150 sentient lifeforms. The next time I hear a BBC executive carping about job budgets, I will bear that fact in mind.
On the BBC Radio Four News at 18:00 tonight, there was a story about a ceremony in Spain marking the two hundredth anniversary of a ‘liberation struggle’.
The listeners were informed that this was a struggle against the Empire of Napoleon and it had helped create ‘modern Europe’ where everyone works together. Of course it was actually Napoleon who was working to ‘get all of Europe working together’ (it was called the Code Napoléon and Continental System). The words ‘national independence’, what the Spanish were actually fighting for, were not mentioned. And although it was mentioned that the British call the conflict ‘the Peninsula War’ the name “Wellington” was also not mentioned.
Sometimes I suspect that even North Korean radio presents a slightly less distorted view of the world than the BBC does.
CNN man to Senators Clinton and Obama: “People all over the country are saying if you got together it would be a Dream Ticket”.
Senator Obama: “I was a friend of Senator Clinton before the nomination race began and I will be a friend of Senator Clinton’s after the nomination race is over”.
Senator Clinton: “The Republicans are more-of-the-same, we represent change. You can tell that just by looking at us”.
In short “change” means race and gender – not lower government spending or less regulations.
Indeed both Senators Clinton and Obama think the Republicans should have spent even more taxpayers money on health, education and welfare, and passed even more regulations.
As for CNN – it is like the rest of the main stream media. It can not ask tough questions to ‘liberals’ because its folk share all their basic assumptions.
Guido Fawkes, the blogger who focuses on political sleaze in Britain, can claim a fair measure of credit for exposing the odious Peter Hain’s financial misdeeds. Guido is on the BBC Newsnight programme. It starts at 10:30 tonight. I hope he handles it a bit better than last time.
In terms of sheer effectiveness, Guido is probably far more deadly than Private Eye is these days. If I were Ian Hislop, the Eye’s editor, I would start to wonder whether it was time to pack it in.
“He must be a credit to his country and his newspaper abroad; he should be either a bachelor or a solidly married man who is happy to have his children brought up abroad; his personality must be such that our Ambassador will be pleased to see him when the occasion demands. He must know something of protocol and yet enjoy having a drink with the meanest spy or the most wastrelly spiv. He must be completely at home in a foreign language and have another one to fall back on. He must be grounded in the history and culture of the territory in which he is serving; he must be intellectually inquisitive and have some knowledge of most sports. He must be able to keep a secret; he must be physically strong and not addicted to drink. He must have pride in his work and in the paper he serves, and finally he must be a good reporter with a wide vocabulary, fast with his typewriter, with a knowledge of shorthand and able to drive a car.”
Ian Fleming, former Reuters and Sunday Times journalist, intelligence officer, and creator of 007. Quote taken from this book, on page 171.
Pretty good guidance. Suffice to say that this applies just as much to women as men, of course (Mr Fleming was not what you would call PC).
How’s this for a title and opening for an article:
Gender or race: White male voters face tough choices in S.C.
For these men, a unique, and most unexpected dilemma, presents itself: Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender?
The howls of outrage that framing an article in such terms would cause is easy (and rather fun) to imagine. If ever there were two things that should not have have an impact on whom a person votes for, it should be the genetic characteristics of skin colour and gender. Dare I suggest that ideology and honesty might trump those two non-factors every time?
And yet this article will most likely pass without the slightest murmur from a great many people.
Gender or race: Black women voters face tough choices in S.C.
But if it is reasonable for black women in South Carolina to vote on the basis that someone is black or female, presumably they cannot object if other people decide to vote for candidates on the basis they are white or male. After all, it does appear that framing the choice on whom to support on the basis of racism or sexism is perfectly acceptable to the mainstream media. And there I was mistakenly thinking that those things were the cardinal politically incorrect sins of our day! Who knew?
To this piece by Frank Fisher:
When asked to name countries that impose extensive internet censorship, you might think of China, Iran, or North Korea; I doubt you’d think of the UK, but, after the home secretary Jacqui Smith’s speech to the International Centre for Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence today, you really should.
Britain is not a free country. It is free-er than most perhaps, but at most free-ish; and moving steadily towards a free-esque pantomime freedom.
For the inevitable commentators who think I’m whinging about nothing because I’m able to write these lines, consider this: Britain also has an historically low murder rate. Yet generally homicide is still deplored, and we would like less of it. No politician would dare stand up and call for more gang-violence because ‘known criminals’ being murdered is a good thing.
Seeing as we have been talking about Tom Cruise and Scientology earlier today, there is an interesting ruckus brewing on Gawker, who have posted a rather interesting (in a ‘huh?’ kind of way) video of Tom Cruise talking about Scientology. The Church of Scientology’s lawyers have demanded they take the video down and in response fearless Gawker VP Gaby Darbyshire politely invited them to go rotate, citing ‘fair use’ (Gaby is delightful and rather hot, by the way. I met her at Les Blogs in Paris a few years ago).
I take no conclusive view of the legal merits of the case (certainly if extracts of a proprietary video are used, it is a ‘fair use’ slam dunk… not so sure about using the whole thing), but I am much taken by Gawker’s sheer bravery going up against the deep pocketed Scientologists, who are prone on the slightest pretext to sue people who cast aspersions on, or even reveal the details of, their religion. Does that remind you of someone else?
The Scientologists deserve every brickbat they get for their strong arm tactics against detractors. However I do not really understand the intellectual animus directed at the Scientologists for their religious beliefs. Their key myths do not strike me as any more preposterous than those of other more mainstream religions. It seems to me that their only big mistake was going into too much detail, thus in their case it is harder to fog the issue with the ‘allegorical interpretations’ that help us avoid tears of mirth when reading the literal word of other holy texts, ones which were not written by L. Ron Hubbard but rather by his more time hallowed equivalents in antiquity.
A Muslim lawyer in Canada is trying to use the profoundly illiberal notion that ‘contempt and hatred’ should be criminal offences (which are by definition ‘thoughtcrimes‘), to silence Mark Steyn for his critical remarks about Islam. Bizarrely, the move to sanction Steyn is being billed as a ‘human rights’ action. That said, I suppose it is indeed a ‘human rights’ action in the perverse sence that the intention is to abridge Steyn’s human right to express his opinions in favour of allowing Islamists to have a veto over anyone printing anything they dislike.
Well, that sort of fascistic behaviour makes me both hold the likes of Faisal Joseph and the Canadian Islamic Congress in utter contempt and to hate them. I suppose I better give my lawyer a heads up then. Or then again, as it is their behaviour which makes me hold them in contempt and hatred, can I sue them for making that happen? Would that actually be any more unreasonable than what they are doing?
Just askin’.
Of course do not kid yourself that thoughtcrimes do not get prosecuted in Britain, or that it is only something Islamofascist lawyers do to us non-believers, because sadly nothing could be further from the truth.
The Spectator magazine is allergic to the city of Liverpool. Now, having never been there, despite some distant family connections to its 19th Century history (one of my ancestors helped to erect the magnificent St George’s Hall), I cannot comment on whether Liverpool is the sort of place that the Germans should have obligingly finished off in 1939-45 or a place full of cheeky, merry Scousers all singing Beatles tunes and watching Everton and the Reds. Sorry, no idea. But there is something – even to my non-PC eyes – rather grating about how the likes of Rod Liddle, the Speccie’s House Yob, never fails to lob a literary hand grenade at the city. Here it is again:
So the mop-headed ingenue teacher Gillian Gibbons has been released from her torment in Sudan without being horsewhipped or banged up for too long. The Scousers – Ms Gibbons is from Liverpool, naturellement – had insufficient time to organise a candlelit vigil for her or a minute’s silence at Anfield, but they did manage to festoon lots of railings with yellow ribbons and bouquets from the local garage.
Ah, those sentimental scousers. They are such thickies, aren’t they?
Meanwhile, that strange Frank Spencer manqué Gibbons returns safely to Blighty all jolly with stories about how the Sudanese prison authorities gave her lots of apples, what lovely people they all are, and she doesn’t regret a thing, etc. Fine, love — however, on that latter point, we do, so you can pick up the travel bill for the Muslim peers who supposedly sprang you from chokey, you deluded, asinine fool.
She may not be the brightest light in the harbour, but I would love to see Rod Liddle put in an Islamic slammer for two weeks. The benefits would be salutary.
My own rather uncharitable view is that she was released from prison far too soon; having told us all that Islam was a gentle and peaceable religion, she should have been allowed proper time inside to reflect upon this interesting perspective. And without apples. The whole affair also made me worry about my children’s education; teachers interviewed on TV seem to get more stupid, further down the league tables of sentience, with every year that passes. And now we have Gillian Gibbons. Please God, they can’t all be that thick, can they?
Quite possibly, Rodney, she is as dumb as a stump. Naivete might be the worst thing she can be accused of (I must agree to sharing his nagging worries about the sort of folk who are schoolteachers these days). But this sort of gratuitous name-calling against a person imprisoned and threatened with flogging for something so batshit insane is beyond the pale. But hey, let us not turn up the chance to take the piss out of those sentimental scousers.
His article does move on to better ground here, however, where I think Liddle has a decent point:
But – whisper it quietly – some considerable good may have come of the whole shebang. The most unequivocal and persistent protests about Ms Gibbons’ arrest, back home, came from Britain’s self-appointed guardians of Allah, the Muslim groups. Including the Muslim Council of Britain. Note the word ‘unequivocal’. They protested loud and strong and without those previously ubiquitous caveats always beginning with the conjunction ‘but …’. As in ‘We condemn this outrage entirely, but you have to understand that…’ This time there were no buts, just condemnation. And it was truly heartening to see a niqab-clad British woman protesting outside the Sudanese embassy holding aloft a placard bearing the photograph of a teddy bear, under which was written, with wit and acuity, ‘Not in my name’.
Quite possibly true. It may be the case that the sheer, oh-my-god-how-mad-can-they-be craziness of the teddy bear-as M. has made even the more ardent Muslims wonder whether certain regimes are taking their professed religious beliefs a step too far. He may be right.
Gary Rosen has been out in China, burning his boats, the ones that might ever take him back to China in the foreseeable future. Good for him. My thanks to the ever useful Arts & Letters Daily for the link.
I particularly liked the bit about how the Chinese regime censors the awkward stuff, and I offer no apology for quoting it at some length:
Someone asked (well, it was me again) how Mr. Liu could reconcile his presentation of China’s peace-loving ways with Beijing’s clear position that, if Taiwan were to declare independence, the mainland would invade – a threat made more credible by its arms build-up across the Taiwan Strait and its provocative military exercises in recent years. Mr. Liu did not like my use of the word “provocative.” In the first place, he said, “You should phrase your questions with more respect.” More to the point, he rejected the underlying premise: “China has a population of 1.3 billion people, including the 23 million people of Taiwan. It is not for them to decide their own status.”
Which is about as excellent an exposition of the imperfect correspondence between the ideals of democracy and of liberty as you could ever hope to encounter, don’t you think?
Rosen continues:
None of this was exactly surprising, since it adhered closely to long-standing Chinese policy. What was surprising, as we shook hands and prepared to leave, was Mr. Liu’s insistence that his remarks were entirely off the record. This was news to us. All of our sessions, unless restricted in some way beforehand, were explicitly on the record, and we had been busily taking notes, with our tape recorders in plain sight. Liu Jieyi, in all his worldliness, was perfectly aware of what we were doing. Out of pique at my impertinence or perhaps because he did not like having lost his cool, he wanted the interview to go away.
This task fell to Mr. Huang, who called us together in the lobby once we were back at the hotel. “I need you to tell me that you won’t report about this,” he said. “It is best to respect the host; that is the international practice.” Pressure had plainly been brought to bear on him, and several in the group, feeling that they had no particular use for Mr. Liu’s words (and not wishing to jeopardize our sponsors or future trips), said they were unlikely to write about the session. Others, myself included, were less accommodating. One member of the group explained that she would find it hard to continue with the tour if the rules were continually changed after interviews. “We are not Chinese journalists,” she told Mr. Huang, “and this smacks of censorship.”
Knowing that I considered the material from the session valuable and might well use it, Mr. Huang pulled me aside several more times the next day to ask again that I “respect the host,” adding that if I did, “I would get better interviews the next time.” The threat in this, as reporters who cover China informed me, was that my future access might be limited; denying visas is a favorite tactic for punishing Western journalists who upset the authorities. But as I said to Mr. Huang, I was unsure that I would ever again report from China, and I could not relent on a key journalistic principle. Moreover, I felt obliged to tell him, his effort to suppress the story had become the story.
You seldom read reportage like that from China, or from any other efficiently administered despotism with a definite future, do you? And the reportage itself explains why. The exception that explains the rule, you might say.
The only thing I believe in print these days is the date.
– Sienna Miller
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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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