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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The picture below has been making the rounds of the net aviation (and other) communities the last few days. The young Aussie lads chanced upon a motor race event whilst on coastal patrol. They went into a temporary hover all the better to communicate with numerous and luvly birds on the ground.
Someone caught them in the act and the photo went up on a professional pilot’s site from whence it spread to other places.
The lads seem to be in a bit of hot water over it, no doubt due to complaints from the PC (Pulchritudinously Challenged) sector.
Instapundit thinks there is a connection between the dodgy cover-ups in US public life such as Rathergate and the Sandy Berger affair, as detailed here, and the basketbrawl and its public implications as detailed here. For good measure, he invites us to call him crazy.
I do not think he is crazy, but he might be taking a short term view. As Jim Geraghty put it:
There’s one set of rules for regular folks, and another set of rules for celebrities, former high-ranking government officials, and other “important” people. If we break the rules, we pay the price. If a Dan Rather lies on the air, or Sandy Berger steals classified documents, there’s no consequence.
Well, yes. I would posit, though, that rich and powerful figures in society have always benefited from these sorts of shenanegans. There is nothing new there. What IS new is that thanks to the compressed news cycle and bloggers, whistleblowers and better education, is that people are much less willing to put up with it. Compared to the dodgy dealings of earlier times, Rathergate is small beer indeed. We are not talking Teapot Dome here.
That is not to say that we should not worry about this level of dishonesty. Dodgy dealings by those with public responsibilities should never be tolerated. But it is a positive sign that people are increasingly unwilling to tolerate illegal behavior from what is laughingly known in some quarters as the Great and the Good. (Maybe one day people will worry about the actual laws that get passed. I remain an optimist.)
Instapundit thinks there’s a connection between dodgy dealings and boys behaving badly, either playing or attending sport. I remain to be convinced. The actual fight in question seems to me to be a bit excessive, but hardly unprecedented. I have seen worse fights in Australian country football, and as for players and spectators interacting, well, after 25 years of watching cricket, I think I’ve seen it all before.
The shock that US bloggers seem to be in over the affair does suggest that it is new to American sports lovers though. But as a sportslover with a more global perspective, I would say that the behavior of sports fans (and indeed players) is probably somewhat improved, if you take a long term and global view.
But then, when it comes to the long term (longer then the next electoral cycle), I am a raging optimist. I think Professor Reynolds is wrong on this one.
Lt. Charlie William of the British Army survived a 3500 foot fall with minimal damage to his person after his parachute rigging tangled upon exit from the airplane during training over Kenya.
He broke through a corrugated iron roof and gave some Kenyans a bit of a start. I have heard of dropping in for tea unexpectedly, but Charlie seems to have taken it a bit farther than most.
It does not appear to have been reported whether the home owners supplied their guest with a hot cuppa as he awaited assistance.
‘Consultancy’ is the middle class word for unemployment.
-Richard Samuel, highly paid consultant, as related to me by former Daily Telegraph city editor and current business commentator Michael Becket
It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that we have long regarded the Ban on Foxhunting with Dogs as having very little to do with foxhunting.
As David Carr has pointed out before, those who shout loudly that the move against hunting is ‘undemocratic’ are completely wrong: it is perfectly democratic. Welcome to the world in which there is no give and take of civil society… welcome to the world of total politics.
Mr Bradley says: ‘We ought at last to own up to it: the struggle over the Bill was not just about animal welfare and personal freedom: it was class war.’
The MP for The Wrekin adds that it was the ‘toffs’ who declared war on Labour by resisting the ban, but agrees that both sides are battling for power, not animal welfare.
‘This was not about the politics of envy but the polities of power. Ultimately it’s about who governs Britain.’
[…]
‘Labour governments have come and gone and left little impression on the gentry. But a ban on hunting touches them. It threatens their inalienable right to do as they please on their own land. For the first time, a decision of a Parliament they don’t control has breached their wrought-iron gates.
No kidding. That is what we have been pointing out here on Samizdata.net for quite some time and why we have treated commenters who shrugged and said “why get worked up about foxhunting?” with such derision. It was never about hunting but rather things that are far, far more fundamental. It is about those who would make all things subject to democratically sanctified politics (‘Rule by Activist’) seeking to crush those who see private property and society, rather than state, as what matters.
Mr Bradley, 51, admits that he personally sees the campaign to save hunting as an assault on his right to govern as a Labour MP.
And Mr. Bradley is correct but for one thing: the battle in question is about the limits of political power and not just Labour’s political power. Until the supporter of the Countryside Alliance see that they are actually struggling against the idea of a total political state, they will not even be fighting the right war. It is not about who controls the political system but what the political system is permitted to do under anyone’s control. The United States has a system of separation of powers and constitutional governance which (at least in theory even though not in fact) places whole areas of civil society outside politics. Britain on the other hand has no such well defined system and the customary checks and balances have been all but swept away under the current regime. Britain’s ‘unwritten constitution’ has been shown to be a paper tiger.
But those who look to the Tories to save them from the class warriors of the left are missing another fundamental truth. During their time in power, the Tory Party set the very foundations upon which Blair and Blunkett are building the apparatus for totally replacing social processes with political processes, a world in which nothing cannot be compelled by law if that is what ‘The People’ want: populist authoritarianism has been here for a while but now it no longer even feels it has to hide its true face behind a mask.
Moreover it would take another blind man to look back on Michael Howard’s time as Home Secretary and see him as being less corrosive to civil liberties that the monstrous David Blunkett. Have you heard the outraged Tory opposition to the terrifying Civil Contingencies Act? Of course not, because the intellectual bankruptcy of the Tory party is now complete… for the most part they support it. If the so-called ‘Conservatives’ will not lift a finger to stop the destruction of the ancient underpinnings of British liberty, what exactly are they allegedly intending to ‘conserve’? The Tories are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem and the sooner the UKIP destroy them by making them permanently unelectable, the better, so that some sort of real opposition can fill the ideological vacuum.
Those who were marching against banning foxhunting completely miss the issues at stake here. The issue is not and never has been foxhunting but rather the acceptable limits of politics. And you cannot resolve that issue via the political system in Britain. It is only once the people who oppose the ban on foxhunting and the people who oppose the Civil Contingencies Act and the people who oppose the introduction of ID cards and data pooling all realise that these are NOT separate issues but the same issue will effective opposition be possible. And I fear that opposition will, at least until the ‘facts on the ground’ can be established, have to be via civil disobedience and other ways to make sections of this country ungovernable by whatever means prove effective. The solution does not lie in ‘democracy’ but rather by enough people across the country asserting their right to free association and non-politically mediated social interaction by refusing to obey the entirely democratic laws which come out of Westminster.
Peter Bradley is right and he has provided any who are paying attention with a moment of utter clarity: It is time to challenge his right to ‘rule’ by whatever means necessary.
There was debate here about just how bad the situation is in Africa in general, just how corrupt African governments now are, and just how pointless and/or harmful it may now be to send them charitable aid, etc. But I take it that no one will claim that matters have improved very much, in particular, Zimbabwe during the last decade.
Up to 70 per cent of Zimbabwe’s workforce, some 3.4 million people, has fled the country to escape the political oppression and collapsing economy under President Robert Mugabe’s rule, according to research by an independent church study group.
The South African-based Solidarity Peace Trust said that most of them had crossed the borders into neighbouring countries, with an estimated 1.5 million skilled and able-bodied workers arriving in South Africa to seek work to support families left behind in Zimbabwe.
“An estimated 25 to 30 per cent of the entire Zimbabwean population has left the nation,” the Peace Trust reported.
“Out of five million potentially productive adults, 3.4 million are outside Zimbabwe. This is a staggering 60 to 70 per cent of productive adults.”
Zimbabwe’s economy is in its most dire crisis since independence in 1980.
But do not worry. Some skilled workers are about to go to Zimbabwe, in the form of a visiting England cricket team.
Which might explain why someone thinks it worthwhile to place adverts featuring this website, next to the Telegraph piece quoted from above. I cannot think of any other reason to want to visit this dreadful place.
Looking for ZIMBABWE flights? Book your cheap holiday or business trip dates? Check availability for all airplane tickets and flights to ZIMBABWE airports, then compare discount airfare rates to find the cheapest airline tickets and ZIMBABWE air travel from Kelkoo UK.
Book your cheap holiday or business trip dates? That would be a real fun holiday. And business? What on earth business might that be? Nothing very civilised I should imagine. Selling cheap bus journeys out of the damn place, perhaps.
What a horror story. Death to Mugabe. Seriously, the sooner that stubborn old bastard drops dead the better, from whatever causes God (in the insurance sense of that much overused word) chooses, the better. This will probably be the next good thing that happens to this wretched country, and if he is as stubborn about clinging on to life as he is in clinging on to his idiotically destructive policies and damn the consequences, then the people of Zimbabwe could be in for a long wait.
I know that many who read this blog might feel that I ought to be angry about those cricketers, but honestly, I cannot see their visit making much difference one way or another. After all, nobody in a position actually to improve matters in Zimbabwe seems at all inclined actually to do that. In South Africa, for example, the big debate now seems to concern whether or not to be nasty to the millions of refugees from Zimbabwe, not about whether anything can or should be done to improve things in Zimbabwe itself.
The Civil Contingencies Act became law last Thursday in what can only be described as a blaze on non-publicity. This legislation, which represents perhaps the most serious threat to liberty in Britain since World War II, has put in place the legal tools for some future government to impose rule-by-edict.
It would be hard to overstate how grave this situation is.
The Civil Contingencies Act became law last Thursday in what can only be described as a blaze on non-publicity. This legislation, which represents perhaps the most serious threat to liberty in Britain since World War II, has put in place the legal tools for some future government to impose rule-by-edict.
It would be hard to overstate how grave this situation is.
In about three months’ time from now, the centuries-old country practice of foxhunting with hounds will be a criminal offence in England and Wales, following the decision by Labour MPs to vote for total abolition of the activity. It has already prompted thoughts on whether foxhunting groups will defy the law and make life in marginal rural constituencies difficult for Blair and his cohorts. Personally, I hope Labour lose a swathe of key seats on this issue, although in practice I do not imagine the issue will be a make-or-break one. But it will have an effect.
In issues like this, it is easy to get caught in the thickets of whether foxhunting is particularly cruel or not, a necessary activity, etc, etc. But it seems to me that the supporters of foxhunting allowed themselves to devote too much time stressing how many jobs would be lost from a ban, and not enough time on the fundamental issues of liberty and property rights. What appals me – as one who has never been to a hunt meeting in his life – is that the banners of foxhunting are determined to crush a particular form of enjoyment. Foxhunters have fun. Yes, their idea of fun may not be yours or mine – but our lives would be pretty bleak if our pleasures could be struck down at the whim of a temporary majority of our fellow electors. In banning a form of fun, this government has shown itself at its bullying worst and established a particularly nasty precedent, coupled with a rancid amount of bigotry against the ‘upper class’. The affair is a reminder of just how much class hatred still exists inside the so-called New Labour Party.
The property rights issue also has not been stressed nearly enough by the now-defeated hunting lobby. The government has essentially told owners of land that they are not allowed to hunt game on it in a certain way. It is, along with the outrageous ‘right to roam’ legislation giving ramblers freedom to go on owners’ land, an attack on the ownership rights of landowners.
The question now has to be – who is next? Game shooters, anglers, horse riders? What happens when today’s cheerless puritans run out of things to abolish? Will they spontaneously combust?
I am writing this up in deepest rural Suffolk, which is not a main hunting area like Leicestershire or Gloucestershire, but nevertheless the locals are steamed.
UPDATE: In case anyone brings up the argument about cruelty to animals, while I strongly sympathise, I should point out that the abolition of hunting with hounds will not mean the end of killing foxes, which are classed as vermin. They will be shot, gassed and trapped. Nice.
This afternoon, the BBC showed the highlights of the international rugby match played yesterday between England and South Africa, at Twickenham. I already knew that it would have a happy ending. (I find important rugby internationals very hard to watch properly, and always try to tape them, so that, if England win, I can then settle down and enjoy them properly. I am not, in other words, a Real Fan.)
Anyway, yes, England won 32-16, scoring two tries in the first half, with South Africa only managing one try, at the end when it was too late.
This was not a result that many people expected. Why? Because no one really knew what to expect.
South Africa won the recent triangular tournament of the Southern Hemisphere giants (i.e. against Australia and New Zealand), but what does that mean nowadays? Hard to say. After all, last weekend, Ireland beat them in Dublin. Narrowly, but they beat them.
As for England, who knew? Since that World Cup triumph (actually since just before it – England peaked before the World Cup rather than at it and only just clung on to their form enough during the World Cup to win it) England have been in decline, and then in – disintegration. Big Name after Big Name announced their various retirements. Leonard, Johnson, Dallaglio, Back. Manager Clive Woodward had always said in public that the World Cup, once won, was only the start and that he and his happy band would then proceed to win the next one. But in truth, winning this thing once (and for the very first time remember) was always the important thing, and once Everest was climbed, climbing it again held insufficient magic for the older players, especially since their only contribution would be supplying a bit of continuity before retiring in a year or two’s time. Other players got injured, or revealed that they already were injured, and in no state to play in any games other than such games as World Cup Finals. Others just needed to put their feet up. So the World Cup team fell to bits with extraordinary suddenness. England came third in the Six Nations at the beginning of this year, their lowest position for many years, and only escaped a total thrashing from France in the final game (which had earlier been billed as some kind of huge decider type confrontation) because the French got bored and let England back into the game. And then when England journeyed yet again to Australasia to try to repeat their pre-World Cup triumphs of a year earlier (that was when they peaked), they were just murdered.
Eventually Woodward himself realised that putting together another team to win the World Cup again would not be the same either, so he said bye bye also, muttering about being some sort of soccer manager, and amid autobiographical claims that he only played rugby instead of soccer because his snobbish dad made him. Now he tells us. → Continue reading: England 32 South Africa 16 – England back(s?) in business
Since Brian brought the subject up… I too have been following the political posturing that has been going on about regulating the nascent human space flight industry. The regime that currently exists is quite satisfactory to all. Customers have to read a list of all the horrible ways in which they will probably die, but once they have done so the FAA will get out of the way so long as the launch company guarantees the body parts will not cause more damage than the insurance covers when they hit the ground. (It is a little more complex than that, but I am not about to give a tutorial on spaceflight FARS just now.)
I think this open letter from an old friend of mine will explain what is currently going on in DC, or at least give you an intro to it.
Friday, November 19, 2004
Dear Space Advocates & Correspondents:
This afternoon the House of Representatives had a 40 minute debate on legislation designed to advance the U.S. commercial human spaceflight industry. It was a good and spirited debate, with bipartisan supporters speaking in favor, and two partisan Democrats speaking against HR5382.
Unfortunately, the opponents’ arguments reflected the same misunderstanding of this issue that so many people have. Their presumption is that the federal government needs to set standards to protect the safety of the early adventurers who wish to buy a risky ride into space. Even before the vehicles that would fly them are designed, let alone built and flying. Frankly, Mr. Oberstar and Mr. DeFazio, the Ranking Minority Members of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee and its Aviation Subcommittee, seem to believe that we need to regulate spaceflight as if it were just another approach to Aviation.
But rockets are not airplanes, and the Commercial Space Launch Act and the U.S. commercial space transportation industry are not under the jurisdiction of the Aviation Subcommittee. Space is a new sphere of economic activity, and the House’s experts on these issues are members of the House’s Committee that is focused on America’s future, the Science Committee.
More importantly, the House worked for several months with the Senate to develop a compromise version of the original HR3752, which was passed by a vote of 402 to 1 in March of this year. It is important to note that HR3752 told the Secretary of Transportation to promote and license the carrying of “space flight participants” for compensation, i.e. to make money, under an “informed consent” regime. In other words, the rocket company had to tell the passenger how likely it was they might crash, and then the passenger could choose to take the risk or not. All regulation was focused on making sure the rockets didn’t hurt anyone on the ground. The Secretary was not given any authority – and has none under current law – to regulate in order to protect people riding on the vehicle.
And I might just point out, Mr. Oberstar and Mr. DeFazio both voted for HR3752 in March, along with every other Democratic member of the Transportation Committee who showed up to vote. (The only vote against HR3752 in March was by a libertarian Republican who didn’t think the government had any right to regulate rockets at all !)
So today’s choice on HR5382 is a choice not between one level of safety and another. It’s between Congress telling the American people they have a right to go into space and an expectation that, over time, it will become more affordable and more reliable to do so… and saying “we can’t be bothered to write legislation to help enable this new industry”. Fortunately, the American people *already* have the right to go into space. And the American free market will make it ever-more-affordable and ever-safer, even without the help of federal regulators. But it would be a good thing if this bipartisan legislation were enacted into law to help accelerate the process.
Ironically, the two members speaking in favor of higher safety today will actually leave the industry free to do whatever it wants under current law, with no process by which the Secretary could, let alone would, start to set safety standards. So perhaps they are more committed to stopping legislation – and a new industry – than safety, after all.
James Muncy
Consultant to several Commercial Human Spaceflight companies
I am sure some will complain the government should not regulate space industry at all. I agree. Unfortuneately that option does not exist. We can either ameliorate what government is going to do and have a space industry, or close our eyes and let the worst sort of Nanny Statists have their way. That could kill the industry before it grows big enough to defend itself. That is to say, big enough to get your and my bottoms off this dirtball.
According to Dutch health investigators, going to church can cause lung cancer and other respiratory problems, because of the carcinogenic effects of candles and incense. Dr Theo de Kok, says that it is “very worrying”. With Christmas approaching, levels of pollutants would be expected to rise.
The solution is obvious. The European Union must immediately ban church-going for all children, impose a tax on adult church-goers, put health warning signs on the outside of all churches and copies of the Bible.
Oh, and ban Christmas.
Obviously, the EU must also impose diplomatic and economic sanctions on any country that does not comply with this (the USA).
In dreaming up appropriate health warnings for church-going, I like the following:
God kills!
Do not worship God in the presence of children
and cutest of all:
God can seriously damage your unborn child
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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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