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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In the Nanny State, you can never have too many warning labels, so they might as well be scientifically based:
Warning: This Product Warps Space and Time in Its Vicinity.
Caution: The Mass of This Product Contains the Energy Equivalent of 85 Million Tons of TNT per Net Ounce of Weight.
Handle with Extreme Care: This Product Contains Minute Electrically Charged Particles Moving at Velocities in Excess of Five Hundred Million Miles per Hour.
Note: The Most Fundamental Particles in This Product Are Held Together by a ‘Gluing’ Force About Which Little Is Currently Known and Whose Adhesive Power Can Therefore Not Be Permanently Guaranteed.
Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound.
– found on the WAGC website.
(hat-tip to commenter Marcy Quice)
Driving through Adelaide this morning, I idly turned my radio on, not something I normally do. But I happened to hear the South Australian police minister explaining to a couple of bemused hosts that the government here had made the possession of crossbows illegal. The radio hosts were bemused, not so much because of yet another assault on the tattered remains of Australian liberty, but because crossbows hardly seem like a problem hereabouts. It is not like you see gangs of youths roaming the streets with crossbows, after all.
The minister explained that there was a case in New South Wales a few years back and the government was keen to clear up ‘loose ends’. Apparently you can still possess one if you can prove you have a ‘lawful use’ for it; the Australian notion of liberty is that you are free as long as you enjoy the good grace of the powers that be.
Youths are hardly likely to be carrying crossbows, but they may well be carrying knives. I read this morning’s Daily Telegraph and came across an op-ed calling for a crackdown on knives, which are becoming a serious problem. Going by some of the comments to that op-ed, it’s a fairly popular idea with the ‘Torygraph’s’ readers as well. To be fair, Shaun Bailey does point the finger at the weakness of the criminal justice system, which is causing young people to take to knife ownership with such enthusiasm.
However, he also blames ‘culture’, which sounds to me like the old leftist excuse whenever someone did the wrong thing; that ‘society is to blame’.
We need to look at the material that youngsters have rammed down their throats every day. Magazines such as Zoo, Nuts and MaxPower. Programmes and films such as World Wrestling Entertainment, Get Rich or Die Trying, and MTV, City Gangster flicks and the whole music culture in general. If we want our youngsters to stop being violent, we need to stop showing them violent material, especially so early in their development. As a colleague said to me, the music industry is “peddling death to our children”.
I am certainly no expert on ‘popular culture’, but I would question the idea that ‘culture’ forces anything on young people. Cultural industries like magazines and music and television programs really are businesses just like any others; they have to respond to what the market is asking for. The point is that cultural industries are a lagging indicator, not a leading one.
What would change the culture is a change in society so that perpetrators of criminal behaviours face the full consequence of their actions; I suspect that would have a far greater impact on ‘youth culture’ then any ‘initiative’ to meddle with our culture; or to take away from lawful citizens their legitimate right to defend themselves. Which is where sloppy thinking like Shaun Bailey’s op-ed will take us to.
I was interested to read Condoleeza Rice’s remarks about Iran which flagged the possibility of the US joining the European “Group of Three”‘s so far futile talks with Iran about that country’s nuclear weapons program. While answering questions from reporters, Ms Rice seemed to imply that there was some sort of ‘understanding’ with Russia and China on this issue:
QUESTION: To follow on that, do you have agreement then from Russia and China that if you got to that point, having made this overture, sort of, taken the last best hope here for diplomacy, that if it fails at that point they would be willing to back what they have been thus far unwilling to do?
RICE: I think there is substantial agreement and understanding that Iran now faces a clear choice. This is the last excuse, in some sense. There have been those who have said, “Well, if only the negotiations had the potential for the United States to be a part of them, perhaps then Iran would respond.”
So now we have a pretty clear path. We have negotiations if Iran is prepared to suspend. If Iran is not prepared to suspend — and by the way, this an understanding that comes out of New York — that there is another path.
RICE: And while we have worked to get agreement on what had been some tactical differences, I think you can be sure that our friends and our partners understand the importance of the step and the importance that the Iranians must now see of making a choice and making that choice clearly.
I think we have very good understanding with our partners about that.
A very good understanding, huh? I can not imagine what understanding that the United States could come up with that that would compensate Russia for oil being north of $70 a barrell.
Needless to say, Iran has accepted the US offer with conditions of its own, namely that it will continue its business with nuclear research at its own pace. The slow slide towards US surrender on this issue is starting to gather a momentum of its own.
I occasionally watch the Top Gear motoring-lads-having-a-laugh show on a Sunday evening, fronted by the bumptious Jeremy Clarkson. Clarkson is a sort of British version of P.J. O’Rourke, (although O’Rourke is at his best in print, rather than on the box) in that he loves to mock cyclists, Greens, do-gooders and other earnest protectors of our public welfare. Excellent. It is amazing really that his show has run on the BBC for so long. His mails must include a fair share of rudeness from those he mocks and it looks like he has really got up the nose of veteran Green campaigner Jonathan Porritt, a person who at one stage was very much the “reasonable” face of environmentalism.
Porritt misses the point completely. He is part of a puritanical new establishment dedicated to the removal of fun, or at least that of those other than themselves. We have had more than a decade of this, and Clarkson is rather like a shot of brandy to the half-drowned. He may be overly laddish for some people’s tastes, but he acts as handy counterweight to the scolds. Long may he sing the praises of Ferraris, supersonic jet aircraft and other fast machines.
(I have classified this post under “Arts and Entertainment” since Top Gear is purely entertainment. Do not expect to learn a lot about practical car maintenance.)
Chinese Taipai, or Taiwan, or the Republic of China; whatever you call it, you have to admit that the small electronic island has some of the best legislators in the world.
Not because they are particularly wise or sensible, but rather, they are perhaps the best exponents of the ‘scrummage’ school of legislative thought. The proceedings of the Parliament there are frequently punctuated by brawls, biffs, and other exciting interruptions.
And they have been at it again:
Pandemonium broke out in Taiwan’s parliament when deputies attacked a woman colleague for snatching and trying to eat a proposal on opening direct transport links with China in a bid to stop a vote on the issue. Lawmakers of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party charged towards the podium and protested noisily to prevent the review of an opposition proposal seeking an end to decades-old curbs on direct air and shipping links with China.
Amid the chaos, DPP deputy Wang Shu-hui snatched the written proposal from an opposition legislator and shoved it into her mouth, television news footage showed. Wang later spat out the document and tore it up after opposition lawmakers failed to get her to cough it up by pulling her hair. During the melee, another DPP woman legislator, Chuang Ho-tzu, spat at an opposition colleague.
“She spat saliva,” yelled Hung Hsiu-chu of the main opposition Nationalist Party.
In Australia, although there is plenty of legislation going about, I fear it has almost zero nutritional value. However, I applaud Ms Wang Shu-Hui’s novel approach to legislation and I think it should be adopted in legislatures throughout the world.
Go here for video of Boris Johnson‘s amazing football tackle (actually more like an American football block), in that bizarre pro-celeb England Germany match about a month ago. Apologies if this has already been alluded to here, but a search through the archives suggests not. “Finest hour” is, however, an odd way to describe it. More like finest five seconds.
Talking of great sporting moments, ideal for the delectation of internetters, can anyone direct me to any video of Kevin Pietersen‘s equally amazing (and equally subversive of established order and decency) reverse sweep of Muttiah Muralitharan, last Friday? There are plenty of photos of this extraordinary stroke, but you need video to get the full flavour of what Pietersen did.
Immediately after this, Pietersen got out. But nobody cared, because that shot was one of those “worth the price of admission alone” moments. Not that I was there, or paid this price. I just heard about it on the radio, and then saw it on the TV highlights, which I sadly do not yet have the ability to process and pass on.
More ruminations from me about the wondrous enrichment of cricket fan memories offered by the internet here.
Funny that Paul should mention Italian elections; I watched a piece on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Foreign Correspondent tonight that trailed a couple of Australians (I call them Australians, because that’s what they are – not Italians, despite their declarations to the contrary) who have just been elected to the Italian federal parliament under the utterly ridiculous new system that mandates a level of parliamentary representation to “Italians abroad” – that is, emigrants. One of the two men, Nino Randazzo (who’s been an Australian for more than fifty years), nominally supports Romano Prodi’s coalition, however he is seen as a potentially swinging voter in a tightly balanced senate and thus holds power far beyond that which his diminutive stature implies.
Notwithstanding the fact that the legitimacy of these foreign men wielding Italian political power is extraordinarily tenuous, what do these people want from the Italian state? According to one of the two, financial assistance for “cultural purposes” to benefit people who have left Italy to make better lives for themselves in other countries. One newly-elected American member of the Italian parliament declared that Italy somehow owed its émigrés something due to the remittances they voluntarily sent back to Italy many years ago.* The mind boggles. Why, oh why do these privileged foreigners think they have the right to extract funds from the already hard-pressed Italian taxpayer – a group they deserted long ago? Why on earth are Italians not apoplectic with rage over these people who are only going to make the Italian government’s deficit slide further into the red with their demands of cultural grants for foreigners? And we’re talking about foreigners who have already helped create rich Italian cultures in their chosen countries and as a group could effortlessly afford to fund whatever cultural boondoggles these new enemies of the Italian taxpayer have in mind. Of course, most Australian-Italians would not give a cent (Australian or Euro) for these cultural pursuits – whatever they may be. Amazingly, in this circumstance the new Italian electoral system has made it easier to arm-twist a foreign government to do one’s bidding.
You have probably ascertained from my colourful use of formatting that I am a wee bit irritated by the exploits of these men. For a start, I do not like parasitic types who think they have some divine right to expropriate other people’s money. Secondly, I cannot stand those who move to a country like Australia, make their lives here and by all accounts do very well for themselves in a way that they could not have if they’d have stayed in the land of their birth, only to turn around and insult the nation that provided them with so much opportunity and declare “I’m Italian”. There is a simple solution to this problem. The Italians can have their new politicians back. It seems only fair; they are paying for them, after all.
*Apologies for not providing quotes; the programme in question – Foreign Correspondent on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s television channel – tends not to post the transcript of the segment until the day after it’s aired. It will be available here, and when it becomes available I will edit this post accordingly.
Ex-communists win re-election in Turin and Rome, and a Christian Democrat type (allied with the ex-communists) wins re-lection in Naples. Pity about Turin, where Rocco Buttiglione, the candidate for the ‘House of Freedoms’ is an interesting Catholic philosopher (but what can one expect from the city of the Red Brigades – and of that black hole for money, Fiat).
In Sicily the candidate supported by the ex-communists was defeated, although ‘the left’ (I know there is no agreed definition as to what ‘left’ and ‘right’ mean, but it is the term these people use to describe themselves) are claiming that “the friends” had a hand in the re-election of the foe of the ex-communists. Of course few complained when the Mafia supported Anglo American action in Sicily against the totalitarians of the time (the Italian Fascists and the German National Socialists), the Mafia may have their own (corrupt) reasons for opposing totalitarianism – but oppose it they do.
Of course the ex-communists now occupy the positions of President of Italy and of Speaker of at least one of the two houses of the Italian Parliament (the other being occupied by an allied ‘leftist’). Prime Minister Prodi has indeed worked hard to entrench his unholy alliance of European Union linked big business (the small family owned business enterprises in Italy tend to oppose Mr Prodi and his ‘Olive Tree’) and ex-communists into positions of power. Re-imposing inheritance tax (to undermine Italian family owned enterprises and hand the economy over to the state and to the corporations) will be the next move.
However, I more interested in what happened in Milan. The lady standing there for the House of Freedoms Party, Letizia Moratti, was not accused of corruption (the weapon the ‘left’ used against Mr Berlusconi.) nor is she a dodgy ‘National Alliance’ type (if one traces the National Alliance party’s history back one eventually comes to rather nasty collectivist statists – although of the ‘Black’ rather than the ‘Red’ variety). The lady was a moderate economic liberal, of exactly the sort one would think would suit a commercial city like Milan.
More than this, there was the terrible incident at the start of May when Letizia Moratti took her father to an event marking the liberation of Milan from the National Socialist Germans and their Italian ‘Social Republic’ (i.e. fascist) allies at the end of World War II. Although the lady was in the company of her elderly and disabled father (who had been sent to a concentration camp by the Germans), she was insulted, pushed and spat on by various ‘leftists’.
“Yes Paul, but Ms. Moratti won the election”.
Yes the lady won the election (in a city which has tended in recent years to vote against the ‘left’) – but she won it by only 51% to 47% (minor parties making up the rest of the votes). One would have thought that the pushing and insulting and spitting on a lady (especially in front of her elderly and disabled father) would be unacceptable to more than 51% of the population.
To put in bluntly, almost half the population of Milan have shown themselves to be lower than shit.
I have come across an allegation I am unable to verify because I am a linguistic curmudgeon, unable to read (or even speak!) Swedish or Danish. Sorry, everyone. A late night trawling through a comments thread over at Tim Blair’s unearthed this very interesting comment from reader “TOGITV” :
I have just read that the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten is about to republish the Mohammed cartoons!
I can’t find any reference to it in any English language press. But here is the link to the article in the Swedish press
TOGITV later posts :
I just read the Swedish article a bit closer. It isn’t the same newspaper (Jyllands Posten) that will re-publish the cartoons, it will be another Danish newspaper called Politiken.
I can’t read Danish quite as well as Swedish, but I think the article in Politiken says that Harpers Magazine will also publish the cartoons in their June edition also accompanying an article on Art Spiegelman.
Interesting, if true. Perhaps someone versed in Swedish or Danish could enlighten the rest of us as to the articles’ content. If it is true, and the cartoons are published again in another Danish magazine, the seemingly obvious consequence would be another explosion of fundamentalist Islamic vitriol against Denmark, freedom of speech, the West and Western values, you name it. However, the furore over the Jyllands-Posten cartoons occurred several months after publishing, and was certainly incited by a few conspiring Islamic leaders, who provided the nexus between a liberal European paper and the protesting Middle Eastern mobs. On reflection, it is hard to see what good the rabble-rousing has done for the Islamic cause. In response to the disgusting behaviour of the Islamist mob, the silencing veil of political correctness was blown off various issues surrounding Islam in quite remarkable time. I’ve noticed that the educated middle class – possibly the social group most conscious of PC mores – are these days far more likely to openly discuss and criticise the ugly sides of Islam and its (in)compatibility with modern Western society. I’d go so far to say that, post cartoon-rage, even tracts of the left are less willing to defend Islam’s excesses.
I rather think that those who scurrilously incited the cartoon rage did not expect the mob to claw and bay with such intensity. Certainly, the hideous scenes we witnessed on our televisions at the time turned many erstwhile allies in the West away from the Islamic cause. More importantly, an enormous number who had no opinion one way or the other regarding Islam now see it in a negative light. It is most evident that the individuals who all-too-successfully activated the mob dealt themselves an almighty propaganda defeat – possibly one of the more spectacular tactical backfires we’ve seen in recent times. Surely, even the most benighted, zealous Islamic leader has the limited perspicacity required to concede that point. Hence, if the cartoons are soon published in another Danish newspaper, we may hear nothing more of it.
Anyone with the slightest knowledge of economics is aware what a scam a ‘minimum wage’ is. When an artificial bottom placed on hourly rates is raised ,there are only two rational responses an employer can make: fire anyone whose value is now less than their cost; or raise prices to cover the added cost of doing business.
The raising of prices following a minimum wage hike sends ripples through the economy, like those of a handful a pebbles tossed into a farm pond. At some point everything damps out and the steady state returns. No new value has been created by the higher wages so the end result is roughly enough inflation to wipe out the change.
This analysis misses a detail however. The economy does not respond instantaneously. There is a time lag during which recipients have more purchasing power. They will pay for it later of course: TANSTAAFL. But from the viewpoint of a politician if the gain can be timed to properly coincide with something of value to them, say an election, it is a win. The pain comes later and memories are shorter than the interval betwixt elections.
I realized this morning there is a way in which politicians can hide much of the pain indefinitely: illegal immigration. Think it through. Raise the minimum wage in an environment where there is cheap, willing labour, undocumented and outside the system. What is the rational employer response? Raise wages for legal employees and export the costs to the undocumented workers. Illegal immigrants are not voters so this is a win-win situation to both the ruling class and those who keep them there. The voters get a higher real wage and living standard because the inflationary cost has been shifted. The pain has been exported outside the political game.
Statist politicians cannot do anything about illegal immigration because if they stop it, the deferred inflation will cause prices to rise enough to erase the excess income of their constituents. Employers will have to either drop low end jobs or else raise prices to support them. Voters will not be happy and it is well known the wallet is a bigger determinate of election outcomes than just about anything else. So, QED, illegal immigration is now a structural requirement of the centralized Western bureaucratic state.
A second force drives the need for cheap labour: the demographic transition in modern societies leads to a lowering of birthrates and a consequent labour shortage. Some places, like Japan, are looking to solve this with robots: the real deal kind. Less closed societies are covering the short fall with immigration of both legal and illegal varieties.
There is simply no practical way out of the situation in the short run and politics is all about delaying pain in hopes it will either go away or happen after you are gone.
I ran across a fascinating historical footnote in the May issue of Sky and Telescope I feel should be much more widely known.
The builder of the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) on the Spirit and Opportunity rovers was a small Manhattan company named Honeybee Robotics. The company offices are just a few blocks from the World Trade Center site, so it hardly bears saying the engineers were deeply affected by the events of 9/11.
They paid their respects in an unusual and touching way. With assistance of the Mayor’s office they acquired bits of mangled aluminium debris from the site. The engineers pounded and formed them into cable shielding parts.
Those bits of the World Trade Center have now been roving Mars for two years.
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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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