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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Austin Meyer, author of the X-Plane flight simulator, has posted a picture showing a mockup of a home computer from 1954. I particularly like the “easy to use Fortran interface”. But then I would… I started off as a Fortran hacker.
I must admit thinking this is what the (one, only) home computer of 2004 would have looked like had it been a government operation as space flight has been.
Ooops: I got taken in, as did Austin: Snopes had it. Found out minutes after hitting the publish button. We catch things fast here on the net! But it is a cute image and my final point does still stand, faked photo or not.
On the face of it, this is good news, of a householder standing up for his rights, and using reasonable force:
Rock star Ozzy Osbourne has been praised by police for “very courageously” tackling a burglar who stole jewellery from his house.
The singer grabbed an intruder who then jumped 30ft (10m) from a first floor window as the star gave chase at his Buckinghamshire home on Monday.
But of course, this event leaves the definition of ‘reasonable’ in the same old totally unreasonable state that it has long been in. If you are Ozzy Osbourne, and you take it into your head to interrupt a criminal in the course of his criminality using only your bare hands, and not actually hurting the criminal, and you merely chase him away, with his swag, then fine, the Police will shower you in praise.
But if Ozzy had actually smacked the criminal with a chair leg or something, and had done it hard enough to ensure that the criminal would not be in any state to fight back, as would have been entirely reasonable and as would have been very much in the interests of everyone other than criminals, his legal position would now be far more awkward. Never mind that if Ozzy had done this, the criminal might have been caught, and might even – who knows? – have ended up being punished in some way. And Sharon Osbourne would have got to keep all her jewels. But no. Ozzy only managed to chase the criminal away, and the criminal gets to go on being a criminal. Well done Ozzy!
Well, Ozzy did do quite well. At least he had a go, as the saying goes. But he could have done far better, and if he had, the Police would have squealed like outraged, upstaged pigs.
Further to this posting and previous postings involving Zimbabwe, the England cricket tour of Zimbabwe, etc., this story is the kind of reason why I am not that bothered about this apparently very stupid cricket tour that is now going ahead. No tour, and there would be that much less reportage of Zimbabwe and its disgusting ruler. What has happened is that about half the media have been banned from entering Zimbabwe, to write about the cricket! I suppose the fear is that they might wonder what all that shouting and screaming and people bashing is that goes on outside cricket grounds (and everywhere else – except in Safari parks apparently, see the comment on that previous posting) in Zimbabwe these days.
All the same, the ICC, cricket’s global governing body, is making itself look ever more ridiculous:
For most countries, intervention from the government in this manner would be grounds enough for withdrawing from the tour but the ICC gave Zimbabwe special dispensation because of the situation in the country under the regime of president Robert Mugabe.
Well, exactly. A normal government cannot be allowed to behave like this. The Mugabe regime, on the other hand, must obviously be spared the interfering attentions of inquisitive journalists. How else can this disgusting regime grapple unhindered with all of the many, many problems caused by its own disgustingness?
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.
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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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