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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Grovelling in Zimbabwe takes a different form from the NuLab sycophantism that Brits are used to although a Blair babe may wish to take up the option:
Making a belated birthday message to Mugabe, Senator Chief Musarurwa from Mashonaland East told fellow senators that Mugabe should be allowed to be a life President….The President was anointed to be a leader of this country and we wish that he should grow old to the extent that his back is rubbed with cow dung and until the followers know that his duty is to take care of this country, until there are no such things as corruption and until there is peace and equal distribution of land in this country.
Mugabe follows the strategies of his communist role models, eating the nation from the inside out, wasting away civil society until the power of the party is revealed behind the barrel of the gun, and all opposition is exhausted. In countries where such strategies are undertaken, all political forms are gradually hollowed out by a creeping militarisation as the crisis spirals. The problem is that the pirate state has to ensure that the army gets the majority of the spoils. The war veterans may have been bought off after their chairman, Jabulandi Sibanda, was expelled from ZANU-PF for the heretical thought that benefits should accrue to all Zimbabweans:
Max Mkandla, president of The Zimbabwe LiberatorsVoice which represents peaceful war veterans who believe all Zimbabweans deserve benefits, told us the government is trying to persuade war vets in the association not to walk away from ZANU-PF and follow their chairman Jabulani Sibanda who was expelled from the ruling party last week. Mkandla said the majority of war vets have thrown their support behind Sibanda and the new ‘salaries’ are a bribe to keep them close so their activities can be monitored. Mkandla added that ZANU-PF has lost the support of its own members and is attempting to buy loyalty from the police, military, nurses and now the war veterans.
The armed forces are taking control of state and parastatal institutions as Mugabe’s regime attempts to stave off hunger and maintain its core functions:
The use of the army to take control of the countryside has been mirrored by the appointment of military commanders to top positions in the civilian institutions, in an effort to strengthen 82-year-old Mugabe’s grip on the country.
Generals, some still on active duty, others retired, now control the reserve bank, the grain marketing board, the electoral commission, the state railway, energy ministry, parks authority and other key institutions formerly run by civilians.
Jonathan Moyo, a former minister of information who quit the Mugabe government and is now Zimbabwe’s only independent MP, said: “This is an admission that things have fallen apart and that governance can no longer continue in civilian mode.”
Perhaps the generals will tire of wiping Mugabe’s behind with cow dung and will feel that they can run Zimbabwe better themselves.
The Deputy Prime Minister is in trouble again. Apparently he has had a rest from the toils of office to play croquet at his grace-and-favour mansion. This has lead the something-must-be-done crowd to accuse him of slacking and call for his resignation. Apparently ministers – even ones without portfolio – are supposed to spend their every waking hour governing us.
Since Samizdata’s point of view (generally speaking) is that we would really rather be governed less, then I submit this is the sort of ministerial behaviour we want to see more of. With luck, it might spread to the Senior Civil Service, and stop the more serious business of the bureacratic dictatorship. Then Prescott would merit a dukedom. Meanwhile he certainly gets marks for making Britain a worse place more slowly than he might, and at the same time showing up the miserable priggishness of his political colleagues.
Or would you choose a world where a pleasant afternoon is better spent in a committee meeting figuring out how best to control other people’s lives, rather than enjoying a gentle game in the open air?
It appears that so-called “animal rights” thugs’ targetting of scientists and attempted intimidation of investors has backfired, at least in terms of trying to win around public opinion to their cause. Well, it is true that the majority of Britons loathe such groups, but I don’t think these folk are really concerned about winning hearts and minds as so much working out their own damaged psychological problems through a “cause” that gives them a sense of power and fame. The sadness of it all is that the case for advancing animal welfare – hardly a trivial issue – gets lost in the noise. For all that I am an unapologetic meat-eater, I certainly think everything practical should be done to minimise suffering of animals. In fact, one of the great things about growing advances in the fields of biotech, genetic engineering and the like is that it reduces the need for animal testing, possibly removing it altogether.
Green terrorism is not something cooked up by science fiction. It is all too real and threatens immense damage to our economic and material wellbeing. Maybe the famously sentimental British animal-loving public are getting the point.
Getting a lecture on morality from a politician is like getting a lecture on chastity from a whore
– Perry de Havilland
A combination of perfect timing and extremely strong arms. Repect!
The alleged atrocity carried out by a fire-team of US Marines in Iraq is ghastly news and whilst I hope, like so many other allegations against Allied soldiers in the Middle East, it turns there is much less to this than meets the eye, the reports do seem to be indicating that this time there really was a monstrous massacre of innocents.
However the fact this horrendous incident has not been swept under the table shows that the US military does have structures that work as intended. Whilst it is appalling such a thing could have happened, it would be even worse if it had happened and the people responsible got away with it.
In that respect at least, one cannot but compare the accountability of the USMC with what happened when British police shot dead Jean Charles de Menezes, a innocent Brazilian man, and what we got was a stream of barefaced lies and complete fabrications and still no one has been brought to book (which should not just be the people responsible for the killing, but everyone involved with what has clearly been a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice).
It is when things go badly wrong that you discover how decadent an institution has become. The contrast between the US military and British Police is quite revealing.
Last night Adriana showed me a very strange DVD which will probably not appeal to folks who dislike ‘art house’ movies… but if you like bizarre English phantasmagoria at its quirkiest, set in Brighton and by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean no less, then you will probably just love Mirrormask.
Young actress Stephanie Leonidas has presence beyond her years and reminded me of the young Natalie Portman in Leon, which makes me think she may be one to watch in the future.
I particularly liked the evil sphinx-cats. It is all intensely English, in a magic mushroom induced hallucinogenic Alice in Wonderland sort of way. “We are not at home to Mister Grumpy”.
The Daily Telegraph reckons that global warming might advance the chances of England, or at least select bits of it, one day rivalling the wine producing prowess of France. Maybe. It has been rather hard to become convinced of the global warming thesis in what has been, by any standards, an exceptionally wet month of May. There is no doubt that a run of hot summers has got people thinking about the implications for agriculture. In my native Suffolk, there are a few quite famous wine producing farms, such as this one. The wine tends to be a bit too sharp for my taste, rather like the stuff produced in the Rhine area. (My favourite wine from the north European area is the very distinctive white wine from Alsace). Personally, I think the best booze in East Anglia is the cider, although it is very strong.
England produced quite a lot of wine in centuries past, when average temperatures were quite possibly hotter than now. The Romans produced a fair amount of the stuff (and no doubt their passion for baths and washing was partly driven by the desire to sweat away the subsequent hangovers). So maybe England could become a great wine producer again. Even so, it will have to go some way before it can rival the Lafites, Latours of Montrachets of France. Anyway, it is my 40th birthday today, so I may just have to find an excuse to do some tasting.
Blogger and friend Andrew Ian Dodge, at one of his many venues, Tech Central Station, offers this poser on the recent, ahem, bracing winners of the Eurovision song contest:
Does Lordi’s win reflect the rot in Europe, a final admission of rock’s power on the continent? Or is it merely an unintentional blip that Eurovision’s chiefs will seek to keep from ever recurring? Will heavy-metal find its way into Finland’s EU presidency? Is it just a silly music contest won by a bunch of rubber clad nut-cases? Oh no dear reader. It is far more than that.
Hey, heavy metal music is not exactly everyone’s cup of tea, although I often find that the most unusual sorts of people (mostly men, but some women too), will confess to a passion for the odd heavy metal track, played as loud as possible. I have had some of the funniest and most enjoyable nights out at gigs where such nutters play. Most of these people don’t take themselves remotely seriously. The very fact that their music offends “right thinking” people of the crusty left and the crunchy right only adds to the appeal. Rush, the Canadian rock band, were inspired by Ayn Rand. The Iron Maiden front man, Bruce Dickinson, is a qualified and working commercial airline pilot. Heavy rockers often seem to have an equal passion for gadgets and cars. I once visited a Royal Navy warship at London’s Docklands and went into the navigation/weaponry control room, and in the background, ACDC was playing (Very ideologically sound, if you ask me).
Meanwhile, on the subject of music competitions and the usual feelgood sense of life they tend to give out, this comment by Timothy Sandefur on the recently completed American Idol is rather nice:
Moreover, American Idol is a rebuke to those silly “crunchy conservatives” who insist that modern technology and mass production denigrates community, and so forth – in T.S. Eliot’s idiotic words, “The remarkable thing about television is that it permits several million people to laugh at the same joke and still feel lonely.” But that’s not true! The community has all joined in on this wholesome, fun, harmless moment to celebrate opportunity, singing, and lightheartedness. What could be more American than that? Lightheartedness is, I think, a profound and incredibly rare value, and one which our country has figured out how to mass produce. That may be among its greatest accomplishments ever.
Recently someone added, or tried to add, a comment on to ancient (July 1st 2004) Samizdata posting of mine, about some great photos taken by a guy called Richard Seaman, of the SpaceShipOne launch. Such are the ways of Samizdata that I got an email about the comment, and was thus reminded about the original posting. Which was quite short and included the following:
Seaman used a Canon 1Ds digital SLR camera, a snip at $8,000.
Seaman is a fine photographer, but much of the genius of these photos lies in the automatic focus system that this camera has in it. More fuss should be made of the people who devise things like this, I think. Boy would I love one of these – but smaller and for nearer $80, in a couple of years time.
Well, even since about last November, I have had just such a system on my camera. This camera didn’t cost me $80. It cost me just under £130. But then, I only had to wait just over a year for it. But in about July of this year, exactly two years after that earlier posting, I reckon that a cheapo digital camera with automatic focussing will probably cost, I don’t know, around … $80?
Imagine a world in which politicians cut there prices for their “services” to the tune of about 99% (or whatever amazing figure it is), over a period of two years. Ah, statists will say. But what politicians do is so much more difficult. But that’s the whole point of capitalism. It concentrates its efforts on that which is not merely desirable but on that which has become, despite all appearances to the contrary, possible. If it can’t be done, they just walk away from the problem, and make a note to come back later when it can. Meanwhile, they don’t throw good money after bad.
Politicians spend fortunes merely shuffling back and forth the fact that this or that problem is indeed a very great problem, claiming all the while that ever more money must be pointlessly thrown at it, right now, so that we can continue to hope against hope for an answer, immediately, from them.
And of course many of the problems of politicians are self-inflicted and impossible. Like: how do you abolish a queue for something very nice that you are giving away, but which you have only a limited supply of? Answer: forget it, fools. Many politicians actually prefer impossible problems, because if their preferred urgent problems were solved, then no more money would be “needed”. (The whole environmental movement is best understood, I suggest, as a search process to invent problems which are impossible to solve, because impossible to really know about, but very, very important – thus requiring infinite money and political interference, for ever.)
Capitalism. I love it. Just so long as nobody tries to make it compulsory reading.
The litany of failures for the immigration system in the United Kingdom continues to defy imagination. This New Labour government allows rapists, paedophiles and violent criminals from all corners of the globe to stay in Britain, live off the welfare state, escape from prison and commit crimes at the expense of the law abiding public. Now they are giving them passports.
THE Home Office was under more fire yesterday after it was revealed jailed foreigners are being given British passports after release.
Officials confirmed convicted criminals from overseas were granted British citizenship if they stay out of trouble for a period after prison.
The length of the “clear” period depends on their sentence.
Yet the Government has promised to deport overseas convicts in an immigration crackdown.
It is clear that Britain cannot be trusted to run its citizenship programmes in an efficient or secure manner. Therefore, the United States should remove Britain from its Visa Waiver program without further ado. That would concentrate minds at the Home Office.
Alain Lamassoure, a prominent French (naturally) MEP is proposing the idea of a pan-European tax on e-mail and SMS text messages and is quoted as saying:
“Exchanges between countries have ballooned, so everyone would understand that the money to finance the EU should come from the benefits engendered by the EU.”
Huh? I hate to break this to Mr. Lamassoure but countries neither communicate with each other nor ‘exchange’ with each other, companies and people do. Moreover I think the ‘benefit engendered by the EU’ is highly debatable. If I am understanding this klepto correctly (and as he is both French and a politician, that may be beyond me), he thinks that without the EU, people would not be able to exchange e-mails and SMS messages? And if that is not what he means, what the hell does he mean? I do not even grasp what he is talking about, let alone understand why even more money should be appropriated from people to pay for that sublimely corrupt institution.
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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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