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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The Financial Times has long dined out on its reputation as an institution steeped in sound economic principles combined with dispassionate and admirably non-partisan reportage.
The truth is that, for the last few years, that reliable old standard of fiscal soundness has been an amplifier of third-way, interventionist euro-mummery and the kind of kumbaya hand-wringing that most of us more normally associate with the Guardian. Sad yes, but predictably concordant with the miasmic and corrosive spirit of our age.
However, I detect a change afoot and not for the good. If this preposterously fawnographic article on Noam Chomsky is anything to by, then maybe the FT is about to pack up its wagon and head on out into the wild, barren scrubland of drooling lefty-lunacy:
Noam Chomsky pokes fun at President George W. Bush’s “original vision” of a Palestinian state, and the audience chuckles. He talks of Ronald Reagan as “our cowboy leader” and they guffaw. He reminds them that the Reagan administration once described Nicaragua as a grave military threat and they practically roll in the aisles.”
The he tells them the one about two gay guys who go into a bar and they double-up in spasms of choking hysteria. Noam Chomsky: the comic’s comic.
The collective sniggering makes everyone feel at one, and the US’s dissident-in-chief is not above being clubbish.
Nor is he above being childish. In fact, he makes a handsome living out of it.
On this warm evening in a suburban Boston church, they are looking to their unofficial leader for a renewed sense of purpose.
They’ll be looking for a very long time. → Continue reading: From pink to red
Sticking with the ‘names’ theme, it must be silly season in the US Congress. At least, I certainly hope so because this is the quite the daftest thing I have heard in a good long while:
Do devastating hurricanes need help from affirmative action?
A member of Congress apparently thinks so, and is demanding the storms be given names that sound “black.”
The congressional newspaper the Hill reported this week that Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, feels that the current names are too “lily white,” and is seeking to have better representation for names reflecting African-Americans and other ethnic groups.
First there was ‘Scoop’ Jackson, now we have ‘Windbag’ Lee.
“All racial groups should be represented,” Lee said, according to the Hill. She hoped federal weather officials “would try to be inclusive of African-American names.”
What about tornadoes? Don’t they deserve names as well? This is pure weatherism.
Amidst all the buzz and debate over the imminent recall vote in California and the prospects of ‘Big Arnie’ becoming the next governer of the state, I have been struck by another of those cultural differences between Britain and the USA, albeit a superficial one.
I do not know whether American politics is intrinsically more interesting than politics in Britain but I do think that it sounds a lot more colourful. While perusing opinion in the US-end of the blogosphere, I keep coming across American political figures who sound as if they have just jumped straight out of the pages of a James Ellroy novel.
For example, I can imagine ‘Cruz Bustamante’ as a diamond-toothed pimp-turned police informer; ‘Scoop Jackson’, as an alcoholic former baseball player turned seedy private detective. Even Jesse Ventura and Rudolph Guiliani sound like they might have been ‘button-men’ for the syndicate.
Cut to the UK where we have political figures with names like ‘Gordon Brown’, ‘John Major’ and ‘Iain Duncan Smith’. For all the world they sound like dullards with plain suits and narcolepsy-inducing platforms.
I do not know quite what follows from this or, indeed, if anything follows from it at all. If there are any dazzlingly clever cultural observations to be extrapolated then they surely only of trivial significance. The minutiae of American politics is, I daresay, every bit as dry and opaque as it is anywhere else but I would be tickled pink by the vista of characters with names like ‘Bustamante’ and ‘Ventura’ strutting their stuff around Westminster.
“Ashcroft is on a binge”, says South Knox Bubba.
This “Victory Act” (who comes up with this stuff? is it induced by copious applications of Crisco to the brain?) slipped through the media’s All Kobe All Arnold All The Time cracks, as did Herr Ashcroft’s new sentencing guidelines directives for prosecutors.
Crisco? Kobe? Arnold I’ve heard of. And Ashcroft, of course. The links, both to TalkLeft, are both worth following.
I’m telling you, this chipping away at the Constitution and civil liberties is going to cost the GOP some votes.
And then there’s another link to this guy (a blogspotter) and you have to scroll down to the bits that matter, both called “Will it ever stop?” and dated Wed Aug 6 and Fri Aug 8.
A couple of weeks ago, while taking a little tour of Provence, I found myself in Arles, once a great Mediterranean port but today a small town with some spectacular Roman ruins, famous for being the location where Vincent Van Gogh painted many of his most famous works, as well as being the place where he cut off his left ear.
In one of the town squares, I found a fairly ordinary and old looking memorial to the events of the second world war.
However, there was a very new plaque on it. Let’s get a closer look.
This is quite intriguing. Unless the servicemen in question did something extremely famous, it is unusual to find a memorial to one or two specific men. (At least, it is outside graveyards). While the sacrifice of every soldier or airman who died is worthy of commemoration and remembrance, the numbers who died were so great that it is not possible. So why these two? Were Lieutenants Tippett and McConnell the only Americans to die in Arles in the war? If not, what did they do to merit this memorial? And why was this plaque not erected until almost 60 years after the action in question? Were more details as to what happened in the war only found out recently? Had some historian who knew what they did long campaigned for such commemoration. One senses that there is an interesting story there, either about the actions of the men themselves, or at least about how the plaque came to be erected. I googled for their names on the internet but found nothing. I am sure that if I wrote to the mayor of Arles to ask, I would receive a letter back telling me the answer. However right now I don’t know anything. Still, if any readers of this site know anything, I would be interested to hear it.
And it is worth noting that the citizens of at least one French town felt the need to erect another memorial to the American sacrifices made in 1944 in liberating France as recently as last year. Not everyone forgets.
A recent (these things are relative in London) addition to the London New Building Collection has been the already world famous (thanks to the James Bond movies) MI6 Building, designed by Terry Farrell.
That’s a recent photo I took of it, looking suitably sinister and omnipotent. However, I live only just across the river from this edifice, and in the flesh, so to speak, I find it less impressive than in the many other photographs of it that you see. Even I can’t help making it look impressive in the photos I take, yet I find that the real and everyday look of it is that it is a small and an increasingly drab looking disappointment. Part of it is the colour. There’s something irretrievably un-cool about yellow and green as a colour combination. A for effort. At least they tried. But for me, not A for actual achievement.
The feeling of smallness and unimpressivenes that the MI6 Building gives off has recently been greatly intensified by the, I think, wonderfully good building that has recently arisen next to it, just up river, and just the other side of Vauxhall Bridge.
This is St George’s Wharf, an apartment “cluster” building. The sign outside has a graphic of St George slaying a dragon, and you can’t help thinking that all kinds of exciting and dangerous people occupy the place, and that in addition to the little public pedestrian tunnel under the bridge from the place there must be other more secret and subterranean journeys being constantly made from St George’s Wharf to the MI6 Building, and to all the other mysterious places and operations that are rumoured to exist and operate all the way along the river downstream, in all those various dull office blocks full of organisations with names like “Global Trading Company” that you’ve never heard of.
This is a picture of St George’s Wharf taken by me a few days ago, from upstream, when I was walking from my place to Samizdata HQ in Chelsea, but taking a slight detour along the river.
I love it. Fellow Samizdatista Alex Singleton says it looked like a trashy hotel in Ibiza, but I’ve never been to Ibiza, and anyway, London’s not had a trashy Ibiza hotel before, and in London, there should be at least one of everything. The view of those towers from directly across Vauxhall Bridge, which is how I most often see them (looking towards the river straight along Vauxhall Bridge Road), is obscured by an intervening tower, but is still very impressive, I think.
As I say, St George’s Wharf makes the MI6 Building look, to me, drab and second rate. It’s something to do with the individual elements that go to make up each building. Each is done as a cluster of elements, rather than as a single object (like, say, the Erotic Gherkin that I have earlier rhapsodised about here). And in St George’s Wharf, the constituent elements – the Leggo bricks it’s made of, as it were – look smaller, and that makes the total effect bigger and grander. The eye is tricked into thinking that each Leggo brick is bigger than it really is, and accordingly the combined effect is truly impressive. MI6, with its bigger Leggo bits, ends up looking small and rather silly by comparison. Well, that’s how the contrast looks to me.
St George’s Wharf has what for me is another equally hard to describe quality, and about this, when I showed him photos I’d taken like this one, Alex agreed with me.
 → Continue reading: How MI6 is now being upstaged by St George
Whilst The Philosophical Cowboy may indeed be too paranoid about this, there are also 100% legitimate civil liberties issues involved, even without the slippery slope concerns:
“Iain Murray has more on an on-going natural justice train-wreck: basically, the government has found it can’t define abuse precisely enough for legislative purposes, so, in the words of the head of the Family Planning association, they’re going to criminalise
“behaviour [ defined so broadly that it] could include common petting activities such as kissing and touching, through to full sexual intercourse…. This kind of sexual exploration is completely normal and an important part of adolescent development. If the bill is passed without any amendments, such activity could carry a prison sentence of up to five years.””. I.e. any “sexual activity” by anyone under 16, even with their peers, is illegal.
“”The criminal law has a very poor record for influencing consenting sexual behaviour,” she said. “The bill devalues true abuse from desired sexual activity by failing to distinguish the two.”
The Home Office accepted Ms Weyman’s interpretation of the bill, but said there was no plan to change it.”
Now, as I say, I’m not normally paranoid. But this strikes me as a gift to a regime, sorry, government (“regime” came automatically, I’m not sure why) that wants to suppress dissent. A law that would automatically criminalise the normal behaviour of a government’s opponents (as well, of course, of its own offspring) is an open invitation to abuse.
Perhaps jury nullification (a refusal to convict) might save kids maliciously prosecuted because of who their parents were, but any offenses sent to judge-only courts (coming to a mistrial near you soon….) would presumably lead to convictions, even with minimal sentences. And then a life-sentence of a “sex offender” registration.
Who’d oppose a government when they have a perfectly legal means to destroy your children’s lives? What an incredibly stupid (and pernicious) idea.
This post by The Philosophical Cowboy isn’t exactly on the standard issues of White Rose, but does have a civil liberties fringe – basically, it appears we might be in for a resurgance of arguments for high taxes, based on alleged “negative externalities” of earning more money.
The solution? A 30% marginal tax rate to penalise the “pollution” involved, and a 30% additional tax to, well, just encourage people to take time off.
It’s worth reading for more background, and (a lot more objections), but I think this is the key objection that can be raised, and should be if this idea gets more circulation:
“But the main issue is a moral one. Let us stipulate that there are negative externalities from me working an extra 10 hours a week – I make X number of people feel bad, and I also substitute some leisure time I’d probably have rather not given up. So what?
Lots of rights have the potential for negative externalities. Without even being nasty, my use of my right to free speech can see myriads of your pleasing illusions shattered, destroying your happiness. I can act in innumberable ways that can make you uncomfortable or unhappy – I have a moral obligation to be a good neighbour, but the right not to (within obvious limits); I can drive you out of business by building a better mousetrap; my less reputable mates can date your daughter or woo away your significant other; I can advocate political positions you consider reprehensible (just ask me). And whilst I probably wouldn’t do most of those, I pretty much have the right to, and the government doesn’t get to stop me just because it would make you sad.
So why do you get to take 30% of my income just because me exercising my right to work as and where I can find useful things to do, just because it makes you want to work harder? There are certain “negative externalities” that shouldn’t be compared to things like pumping oil into a river, noise next door, etc – they’re not even the same ball game.
I think it’s fair to say (correct me if I’m wrong) you get to complain about a negative externality if it reduces the value of your property or that you extract from some right of yours. But just because me working harder can cause you to value your leisure less, doesn’t mean you should tax me – after all, on that rational, Martin Luther should have been hit with a 90% tax to pay for the Protestant work ethic…”
Just for those who haven’t heard yet, and timed to coincide with the world-wide release of Terminator III, Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided to run for the Governorship of California. His politics are described as being socially liberal and economically conservative. Does this mean he’s a thinly-disguised libertarian?
I don’t know, but what I do like is what he said about the current Democrat Governor of California, Gray Davis, who’s just run up a record state budget deficit of $24 billion dollars:
The politicians are fiddling, fumbling and failing. The man that is failing the people more than anyone is Gray Davis. He is failing them terribly, and this is why he needs to be recalled, and this is why I’m going to run for governor.
Whichever way you want to put it, $24 billion dollars is a whole heap of schmoola, and the taxpayers of California, who’re expected to put their hands in their pocket to repay it, have just acquired themselves a rather interesting candidate to help them do it. May the best tax and spending terminator win!
There is, of course, one other thing which must be said about this news story. It will be back! (sorry)
Nice roundup on recent trends running our way on the gun control debate in USA Today.
Democrats, who believe that their calls for gun controls might have cost them the White House in 2000, are less willing to take on the gun lobby. Polls suggest that public fears about terrorism have helped mute the debate.
Meanwhile, the gun industry is racking up legislative wins. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, says there are not enough votes in the House to renew Congress’ 1994 ban on certain assault weapons when it expires next year.
And now, gun rights supporters are closing in on what probably would be their most enduring victory.
The Senate is close to passing a bill that would shield firearms manufacturers and dealers from civil lawsuits brought by victims of gun crimes. The measure, which the House passed 285-140 as 63 Democrats voted with the GOP majority, is an effort to shield the gun industry from the type of lawsuits that have been successful against tobacco and asbestos companies.
Perhaps more important than the pure politics, though, is some evidence of a deeper shift:
On the same day last month, five factory workers in Mississippi were shot and killed by a co-worker and five people in a family in Bakersfield, Calif., were killed by gunfire.
Not too long ago, dramatic slayings such as these would have created a new chapter in the national debate over gun control. There would have been angry speeches in Congress and new proposals to crack down on firearms.
I have a nice long day at the range planned on Sunday – the hunting rifles (all four) need to be tweaked out for the coming seasons, and the springs in my high-capacity handgun magazines need to be exercised. I feel bad for my brethren in England, that you are denied the simple pleasure of making things go bang.
Here is some real news that the big media missed so far, straight from the horse’s mouth:
Abdul Al Aal Batat, known as “the lion of the marshes” because of his ferocious reputation or, alternatively, as “the man Saddam looked to for all of Southern Iraq”, was captured by the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment (QLR) in Basra last week.
He was a leading player in Saddam’s regime on the civil side, right hand man to Chemical Ali and known for killing and torturing his employees. As part of Saddam’s close circle through a connection to Saddam’s brother-in-law, he grew rich on sanction busting, smuggling, owning a lot of property around Basra on behalf of the Ba’ath party. Although just below the level of the pack of cards, he knew Saddam personally.
Until last week he was a leading criminal player, heavily involved in extortion from businesses courtesy of his tribal links from the smuggling side. He is believed to have been probably the top Former Regime Loyalist left in the south, funding and directing most of the anti-CF activity from their side in Basra (although not all of it).
He was caught by one of the QLR VCP’s (Vehicle Check Points) because his bodyguard was armed. He was then recognised by Int despite trying to grow his beard and change his dress. This is the biggest catch in the British AO (area of operations) and into the British detention facility at Umm Quasar since the end of the war.
Finally, they captured someone who has actually been running a lot of anti-coalition forces activities. It is always good news when they capture the pack of cards criminals but post-war some of the big fish are not in the pack of cards. Getting rid of the ones who are causing disruption right now may be doing more for the everyday lives of ordinary Iraqis.
Update: The QLR Media Ops Officer is John Ainley, at BASRA. The official media links should have his contact details.
The latest flash adventure by our most splendid Dissident Frogman shows the correct application for the wonders of modern technology in Iraq.
Ignore the warning and…press the Red Button in the main column of the blog. Pure genius.
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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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