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]
|
I have been on the road for the last week and God only knows how much longer. Right now I am backstage doing edits on the webcasts from the JP Morgan Healthcare conference in San Francisco. Twelve hour plus days… but the pay is good. A few minutes ago the Surgeon General of the United States spoke and I took a photo, not of him, but of the video monitors and the backside of the scrim.
I imagine this is a slightly different view of things than the media out in the Grand Ballroom are getting!
 Photo: D. Amon, all rights reserved
I was so struck by the hostility expressed inthe comments section of my previous post about Virgin airline boss and entrepreneur Richard Branson, in some cases for quite valid reasons, that it got me thinking of whether there is, in today’s business world, any entrepreneur who would pass the kind of harsh ideological standards we libertarians might want to set and be able to become a major business player.
I doubt it, sadly. If I am wrong about that, comment away.
While driving down Virginia’s crowded Route 28 this afternoon, I heard a radio spot from our good friends at UNICEF that almost caused me to drive right off the road. The announcer solemnly intoned that with your help, UNICEF would create “a tsunami of love, a tsunami of hope” for children affected by the Dec. 26th disaster in the east Indies.
A “tsunami of love?” Even if these people have their hearts in the right places, just how tone-deaf is this organization? Apart from the fact that “tsunami of love” sounds like it could be the title of a song by Def Leppard, who actually thought that this was clever? Somehow, I cannot imagine soldiers liberating the German death camps of WWII telling prisoners, “We are going to build you a concentration camp of compassion!” or Amnesty International offering “a gulag of love” to political prisoners.
UNICEF must have gotten complaints about this, because the downloadable version of the ad available on their website now says “a wave of love.” Which isn’t a huge improvement, actually.
Of course, that still is not as bad as this Seattle Times column, from Saturday which dismisses tsunami victims as “clutter” apparently worthy of a tsunami of scorn for deigning to develop beaches into tourist attractions.
(A tip o’ the hat to Jesse Walker of Reason Online for the Seattle Times link.)
Al-Muhajiroun was the extremist organisation that recruited or converted young Muslims and British men to their political goal of a worldwide Islamic state, starting with the Emirate of Great Britain. It was never clear whether they would recognise England, Scotland and Wales but the overall objective was clear. A troublesome development was the disbandment of this organisation which appeared to portend greater underground activity on the part of the radicals.
Hannah Strange, UK correspondent for UPI, was attending a women’s conference where Sheikh Omar, the former head of Al-Muhajiroun, was setting out his philosophy: Since Britain had invaded Iraq, the covenant of security that protected these islands from Islam was now broken, and as a consequence, war was declared. No doubt these sentiments weighed heavily on his heart since his patriotism was not in doubt:
Either withdraw your own forces or don’t expect Muslims not to support the Muslims abroad,” said Sheikh Omar, adding that the West supports dictators abroad when they see fit.
If the government met those conditions, Muslims could continue to live peacefully in Britain, he said.
“After that there will be no need to fight anybody, we’ve been living in peace here for years, and we can continue to live in peace,” he said. “We love Britain.”
However, the usual epithets on 9/11, killing all non-Muslims and blaming the Jews outweighed his love of bully beef and the Queen. It was the story that they always tell themselves. They are not to blame. They were invaded. They are merely defending themselves against the hand that is raised against them. Indeed, their pathology is a puzzling outpouring of delusional bombast reinforced by the blood of innocents. → Continue reading: Who will rid us of these turbulent kuffaar?
I find this all too persuasive. George Trefgarne sketches out how Tony Blair could win not only the next election by a mile, but then the Euro-referendum by enough to settle the matter for ever.
Key towards-the-end paragraph:
As the polls start to switch, other arguments are deployed by the pro-constitution lobby, of which the most potent is that the real choice is between ratifying the constitution, with all its disadvantages, or being reduced to a colonial outpost of George W Bush’s America. Scare stories are spread that withdrawing would also mean the end to cheap flights to France and Spain. Then, in March 2006, a referendum results in a Yes vote, by 52 per cent to 48 per cent – and Teflon Tony will have done it again.
At the heart of Trefgarne’s view of Britain now is the utter and continuing hopelessness of the Conservatives.
I confess that once upon a time I expected that America would be an issue to unite the Conservatives while still dividing Labour. But for many months now the Conservatives have been as split about America as they are about everything else. This means that they will remain a shambles for the foreseeable future, and that they will be in no state to argue persuasively against all that “colonial outpost of Bush’s America” stuff, as and when it comes on stream. Even more than now, I mean.
Our hosting company has been under sustained DOS attacks from some worthless scrotes over the last couple days and if you have been finding it hard to reach samizdata.net, that is why.
It is also why there has been a low volume of posts here as we have frequently been unable to access our blog’s ‘back-end’. The good folks at Hosting Matters have been doing their best to keep things operational under difficult circumstances.
And speaking of rain, so here I am in Los Angeles, having escaped dreary grey London for a while and…
…it has been pissing down with rain here for 11 days now! Wonderful.
Severe irony has swept the northern parts of Britain over this weekend. Samizdata readers may be interested to know that Britain, the north of it especially, has been afflicted with flooding caused by the old fashioned method: a lot of water dropping out of the sky, all of it trying to use the same rivers.
It has also been extremely windy. It has been fairly breezy down here in London.
The city of Carlisle, the most northerly habitation in England, has been especially hard hit. Last night, the place with without any power, and tonight I heard a TV weather person predicting more rain for the area. There have been casualties, but the deaths so far are in single figures and look like they will stay that way.
[Correction!! Carlisle is NOT the most northern place in England. See comments 3, with a link to a map, and 4. I had at the top right of the Anglo-Scottish border but it is at the bottom left. Apologies.)
Under the circumstances, this report, dated last Friday just as the city was filling up with water, is particularly ironic. It is about Carlisle’s efforts to collect money for the Asian Tsunami victims:
THE DEVASTATION wrought by the tsunami disaster was brought close to home this week as one Carlisle woman waits for news of her missing brother, another family recovers from the trauma they suffered, and thousands contribute to fundraising.
Disaster caused by un welcome water was about to be brought a little closer to home even than that.
Musicians and singers Will Harris, James Formby, Martin Lee, Ben Gates and Tony Mason will perform in The Source tomorrow night at 8pm.
I do not think that this event was able to proceed as planned, and if anything similar is rearranged in the near future, I suspect that at least some of the proceeds will be distributed nearer home.
There are a lot of big shiny 1940s-era aircraft zooming across our cinema screens at the moment. Yeh! We have had Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, we are due to get the remake of The Flight of Phoenix, based on the wonderful old movie starring James Stewart, and I have just returned from watching The Aviator, starring Leonardo Di Caprio as mogul, test pilot and eccentric, Howard Hughes. It is a fine film, and makes a number of important points about the man himself, the nature of doing business in America in the mid-20th Century and the evolution of modern air travel.
The story is quite well known of how a rich young oil family son becomes a major player in the aviation industry, challenges rivals like PanAm, produces smash-hit movies, before descending into madness and solitude. Director Martin Scorcese has long been fascinated with Hughes’ tale and gets DiCaprio to convey the mixture of driving ambition, brilliant engineering skills, bravery and craziness. Hughes could be seen, from one vantage point as an almost Randian-style business hero, challenging rivals like PanAm, whose boss was played with appropriate menacing charm by Alec Baldwin.
There are two great scenes which get the pro-enterprise, unpretentious side of Hughes across. He drives with his then girlfriend, Katherine Hepburn, excellently played by Cate Blanchett, to see Hepburn’s family. At lunch, Hepburn’s mother, instantly declares to Hughes that “we are all socialists here”, and “I do hope you are not a Republican”, and Hughes, bless him, looking around the vast mansion and its grounds, is too dumbstruck at these comments to make a fast and smart reply. Recovering his composure, later Hughes tells the preening Hepburns that his favourite reading is technical engineering reports on planes, which of course has the welcome effect of shutting the ghastly Hepburns up.
In a later scene, set in 1947 when Hughes is fighting for the future of his airline TWA against the monopolistic ambitions PanAm in cahoots with the U.S. Senate, Hughes makes a number of fine points about competition and business risk-taking that almost got me cheering in the stalls. Hughes wins his battle and PanAm is forced to concede.
Hughes was a troubled man and spent the last two decades of his life in circumstances so lonely and depressed that it of course will colour one’s view of his life in the round. But I came away from the film feeling a certain admiration for Hughes in how he was willing to challenge the status quo. Long after people have forgotten corrupt U.S. senators and complacent airline bosses, they will remember the man who built and flew some amazing planes. I also cannot help but wonder whether people will think something similar in future about our contemporary airline boss and daredevil man of action, Britain’s own Richard Branson. We shall see.
They’ve been getting plenty of mad props from all over the ‘sphere, and rightly so: no one bashes the UN better than Diplomad. Every self-absorbed, self-interested, counterproductive flaw you ever imagined the UN had, has been on display in response to the tsunami, and Diplomad has the goods.
This Embassy has been running 24/7 since the December 26 earthquake and tsunami. Along with my colleagues, I’ve spent the past several days dealing non-stop with various aspects of the relief effort in this tsunami-affected country. That work, unfortunately, has brought ever-increasing contact with the growing UN presence in this capital; in fact, we’ve found that to avoid running into the UN, we must go out to where the quake and tsunami actually hit. As we come up on two weeks since the disaster struck, the UN is still not to be seen where it counts — except when holding well-staged press events. Ah, yes, but the luxury hotels are full of UN assessment teams and visiting big shots from New York, Geneva, and Vienna. The city sees a steady procession of UN Mercedes sedans and top-of-the-line SUV’s — a fully decked out Toyota Landcruiser is the UN vehicle of choice; it doesn’t seem that concerns about “global warming” and preserving your tax dollars run too deep among the UNocrats.
We can never get too much UN-bashing here at the Rancho Dean. Add ’em to your blogroll, sez R. C.
At Joanne Jacobs I learned about another of these teacher/pupil ruckuses where the teacher would appear to have behaved very stupidly.
17 year old Ahmad Al-Qloushi disagreed with his teacher, Professor Jospeh Woolcock, about America being great. Ahmad Al-Qloushi thinks it is. His teacher, Professor Joseph Woolcock, on the other hand, said to Ahmad Al-Qloushi that he needed therapy for expressing such an obviously bonkers opinion. The story is already bubbling away on the internet and will surely spread. Al-Qloushi has put his version of the story out there, and however much the Professor may curse, he cannot now reverse this. The Professor has filed a grievance, whatever exactly that means, against Al-Qloushi, for putting his, the Professor’s, name out there, but out there it is and out there it will now remain.
Whenever I hear about disagreements like this, I always think to myself: well, maybe the guy is a bit crazy. Maybe, in this case, the essay was a bit bonkers. And maybe Al-Qloushi had said and done other crazy things which he is forgetting about, and this essay was just the final straw in a hayrick of craziness that we are not hearing about. So, I am especially interested that in addition to reading Al’Qloushi’s complaint, we can also read the offending essay. → Continue reading: The lefty Professor versus the Arab college Republican president
Seamus Heffernan takes Richard Gere to task.
It has become the unfortunate reality of all things political: celebrities love to chip in with their insights and opinions on the Big Events of our time. Following Yasser Arafat’s death, this weekend the Palestinians are holding elections. As a result, they have been treated to this television ad in an attempt to rouse them into voting, which starts with:
Hi, I’m Richard Gere and I’m speaking for the entire world.
Excuse me?
We’re with you during this election time. It’s really important. Get out and vote.
Wait – the entire world?
What is about being left-leaning and famous that makes most people so grossly overestimate not only their intelligence, but also their relevance? Does Gere really think that there are hordes of Palestinian girls out there getting all weepy over An Officer and a Gentleman?
Indeed, most Palestinians greeted the ad with a shrug.
But many voters, already struggling with the labyrinthine politics of the West Bank and Gaza, say they have never heard of the actor.
“I don’t even know who the candidates are other than Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), let alone this Gere,” Gaza soap factory worker Manar an-Najar told Reuters.
It is too bad that Manar is not more familiar with the Gere canon. Surely he and his fellow Palestinians would just love to take political advice from an actor perhaps most famous for his role as a degenerate, imperialistic tool of American capitalism who falls in love with a prostitute. Or perhaps he would be more interested in hearing the views of Gere’s co-stars in the ad, one of whom has gone on record as saying:
[T]he Jews are destined to be persecuted, humiliated and tortured forever, and it is a Muslim duty to see to it that they reap their due. No petty arguments must be allowed to divide us. Where Hitler failed, we must succeed.
Nice work, Rich – the Dalai Lama would be proud.
(Hat tip to Little Green Footballs.)
|
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