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]
|
US blogger Jim Henley has some interesting thoughts about the politics of ace science fiction adventures series Battlestar Galactica. In my typically languid British way, I have just about started munching my way through series 2, which I find rather dark and depressing compared to the excellent series 1, but I am savouring the programmes even so, and looking forward to the third series, already now showing. My addiction to this series is worse even than Babylon 5 or, to roll back the years and to a very different genre, to Blackadder. The acting and the plots are consistently enthralling and entertaining.
It got me thinking about drama and storytelling more generally. If you tell a certain type of person that your favourite television show is Battlestar or Firefly, you are sometimes put in the ‘geek’ category, but it seems to me that in terms of quality and ability to describe the human condition, SF television shows can hold their own with the most pretentious dramas. In some ways, they are the final redoubts of romantic realism in drama.
Now, I wonder if that guy on the Tube was a Cylon…
[Editors note: for some previous thoughts on Battlestar Galactica on Samizdata, see here]
Via the excellent India Uncut, I reproduce this shortest – and most revealing – of short stories in its entirety:
He loaded all his belongings onto a truck and was driving to another town when he was waylaid by a mob. Eyeing the goods greedily, one man said to the other, ‘Just look at all that booty he is decamping with.’ The owner smiled proudly, ‘What you see here is my personal property.’
Some of the men laughed. ‘We know.’
There was a yell from the mob, ‘Don’t let this capitalist get away. He is nothing but a robber with a truck.’
It is a partition-era tale, but still remarkably relevant today – it has been institutionalised and multiplied across society.
There is nothing much these days, in the realm of public affairs, that excite me or provide any material degree of enthusiasm. Hence, I take my little nuggets of pleasure wherever I can find them. Occasionally, an exquisite irony will do.
Take the predictable storm over the comments of Jack Straw concerning the Islamic veil, the incidence of which is widepsread and growing on these shores. To my mind his observations are both fair and reasonable:
In his interview with the BBC’s Today programme, he said it is important in face-to-face meetings that both sides can see each other.
A plausible practical explanation. But what has much broader political impact is his belief that veils which cover the face are a “visible statement of separateness” that is “a barrier to social integration”.
Speaking for myself, I would go further. I find the veils (and particularly those black ‘tent-jobs’) rather sinister and creepy. That may not be the intention behind them but that is what they communicate to me and, while others may take a different view, I submit that not by any stretch of a sane mind could either Mr. Straw’s or my views be regarded as racist.
However, we do not live in sane times and, not a few nanoseconds after Mr. Straw’s words left his mouth, a whole troupe of the usual suspects were hopping up and down yodelling the ‘R’ word at the top of their lungs. Indeed, it took only a few hours Grievance Machine to get its gears in full spin:
The first sign of a racist reaction came in Liverpool on Friday when a man snatched a veil from a 49-year-old woman’s face after shouting racist abuse. Yesterday, protesters took to the streets of Mr Straw’s Blackburn constituency to vent their anger.
A ludicrous and hysterical response one might think, yet it is a response which has been nurtured, fostered and actively encouraged.
Seven years ago, and following on the recommendations of the Macpherson Report, the government instructed the police to adopt the recommendations into a formal set of guidelines which defined a ‘racist incident’ as:
“any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.”
That interpreation is so wide as to amount to a form of administrative intimidation, designed to deter people from making the kind of remarks, even in private, which Mr. Straw has now made quite publicly. Surely the government of Western liberal democracy would insist on some degree of objectivity, no? Er, no:
In his Action Plan on the Report, the Home Secretary said that the Home Office would “ensure that the Inquiry’s simplified definition of a racist incident is universally adopted by the police, local government and other relevant agencies”.
And who was that Home Secretary? Yes, of course, it was the very same Mr. Jack Straw.
So here is some advice for you if you happen to be among the League of the Outraged: march yourself off to the nearest cop shop and report that you perceive Mr. Straw’s views as racist. The police are then obliged to record it as such. I doubt very much whether it would go any further than that but, who knows, word of it may just reach Mr. Straw.
If he not to be quite hoist by his own petard then, at least, his petard can be picked up and wielded like a wet fish to slap around his stupid head.
I knew early on I would not find ‘Death of a President‘ to my tastes, and now that I have heard the plot summary I know it for a certainty. Since most major US film outlets are not running it, I will spoil the plot for you for the movie few of you would have bothered to go see any way.
The black guy did it.
Yes, you heard right. The BBC decided to make the movie villain a black father who had lost his son in the Iraq War. Apparently most of the movie is about a rush to judgement of an innocent Arab-American.
The plot is wrong on so many levels I hardly know where to start. First, the BBC just does not get it. ‘Black Americans’ are Americans first and melanin enhanced second. They are as patriotic as any other Americans and perhaps more so.
What would be a realistic plot? If I were writing such a script, I would make the killer a Cindy Sheehan follower. There are loads of serious nutcases around – you can find hundreds of them on certain web sites – who no doubt day dream about doing something like this. The attempt on President Ford and the wounding of President Reagan were both done by fruitcakes. It is almost certain the biggest threat to George Bush would similarly be a nut. It is of course possible a nutjob presidential assassin wannabe could be black… but it would be a first in US history.
I think the people who created this movie are simply detestable.
Correction: It was not a BBC production. It was done by Gabriel Range and is to be or was shown on UTV Channel 4 in the UK as part of a series on the effects of the War on Terror
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
– Hubert H. Humphrey
Not everything left-liberals say is nonsense.
I have been keeping an eye on David Cameron’s videoblogging efforts since I was alerted to Webcameron by Thaddeus. It is providing an interesting depiction of the modern Conservative party. Take the entry where Cameron brags over the success of the recent Tory conference. He proudly declares
We had debates each day; should we ban advertising to children? Is it time to end cheap air travel? Are companies a force for good or not?
That Cameron thinks the first two questions are worth debating confirms he’s the statist grub most here labelled him long ago, but when the final ponderance was mooted, someone really should have jumped up and declared the affirmative answer beyond question, and if anyone wants to debate this further then here’s what they need to do to resign their membership of the party. Completely disregarding the outcome of this debate, I find it absolutely jaw-dropping that the Tories would hold a discussion over whether companies are a beneficial force in society. Unbelievable.
In the days before accurate timekeeping, determining your longitude was an extremely difficult task, requiring extremely accurate timekeeping. The British Admiralty expended enormous resources and considerable sums of money on the problem until it was solved by John Harrison in 1761. These days, we just turn on electronic devices and communicate with satellites.
This is particularly useful when, as this afternoon, one is in a place where one couldn’t possibly discover the longitude any other way.
The Royal Greenwich Observatory no longer exists as an institution, having been abolished in 1998 (after moving its last astronomical faclities away from Greenwich in 1957), and the observatory buildings are today part of the National Maritime Museum, which has its main facilities in the former Greenwich Hospital buildings at the bottom of the hill below the observatory. I provide a picture merely because the view is nice.
Alas, the statue at the top of the hill does not seem right. The statue is of General James Wolfe, who captured Quebec City for the British in 1754. Whilst I do not begrudge Gen. Wolfe his statue, it seems wrong, for two reasons. Firstly, why is the statue in pride of place in Greenwich, a place of great maritime heritage, a General rather than an Admiral. Secondly, given the history of the place, there is another figure who to me should be the man standing there. → Continue reading: Satellite navigation is a wonderful thing
“Purchaser shall not sell or transfer any Cat purchased hereunder to anyone other than an immediate family member, and shall not offer to any person the purchase of a Cat or any genetic material from a Cat, the rights Purchaser may have under this Agreement, or any other right related hereto, without the Company’s express written authorization.”
– An extract from the click through licence one is required to agree to when ordering a genetically modified hypoallergenic cat from a company named Allerca. (Via Boingboing).
Firefox users rejoice… at least those who use it via Windows XP… the push button formatting now works in the comment entry forms, but you will probably have to clear your browser cache first to notice any difference.
I love the Science Museum in London, and there is another good reason to go there: it has an exhibition about the Spitfire fighter aircraft. Here is a nice review of it at the Social Affairs Unit blog.
Do not believe the nonsense about how the RAF was not essential to preventing an invasion of Britain in 1940. It was vital, and it seems morally right somehow that the aircraft that helped to nail the Luftwaffe was not just a brilliant piece of engineering, but also drop-dead gorgeous.
I can see why people have their doubts about celebrities-turned-politicians, but my goodness, it is hard to resist the appeal of someone as funny, and as sharp as Kinky Friedman (I love Americans’ names). Jesse Walker has a brief look at his campaign to be governor of the Lone Star State. He concludes that Friedman will do Texan voters a favour by annoying the usual political parties. My main doubt would be his ability as a manager, but then frankly how much worse could he be than a professional politician who has probably not done a hard day’s honest toil since leaving college?
He may not get to the governor’s mansion in Austin, but boy, the election will be fun to watch.
Granted, these days the United States of America has saddled itself with a big ol’ government fat enough to set the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves. However, the USA’s genesis was so well-considered – such a precise ideological crystal – that it gave rise to the mightiest of nations; enormously prosperous even in the face of the myriad bureaucratic hindrances witnessed today. I love to reacquaint myself with aspects of such a universal, timeless and (in my opinion) optimal design of a nation – the Minutemen inspired this post. Such history is criminally superseded by modern reality, but it nevertheless provides something to work towards.
There is so much in the USA’s formative years that is inspirational.
|
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.
|
Recent Comments