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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In a couple articles in The Spectator, two female writers deplore pornography. One of them, Tania Kindersley, does so in spite of saying she is a believer in free speech, and the other, Rachael Jones writes as a sexually threatened irrationalist who deduces that her obvious personal neurosis indicates the sickness of the society in which she lives.
In fact, I would venture that of the two of them, only Rachael Jones is actually honest, in a pathologically disturbed sort of way. Certainly one thing that galls me about both of them is the implied supposition that all women essentially agree with them. Camille Paglia and I certainly do not.
Tania Kindersley writes in her article The Degradation of the Species, that she believes in freedom of expression and in an unfettered sexuality, but “in this frank and disturbing investigation shows why hardcore pornography is repulsive, demeaning and dangerous”. Well it certainly is a revealing article but not the way she thinks.
Porn isn’t about sex, it’s about money. It doesn’t sate the appetite it feeds it, but increases it: the palate stales quickly, so the industry finds more and more freakish acts and genres and combinations to keep the punters hooked.
Well sorry Tania, but 99% of the sexually oriented things I look at are via the Internet and are completely free. People post things on the Internet for the sheer unremunerated thrill of knowing that somewhere in the world, what they did is turning someone else on. Some of us just happen to like our experiences spiced differently. Also I sometimes like to think about things I would not necessarily do. Is it so terrible that I can find pictures of those things to look at? What is more, does she apply the same logic to cars? Is the fact people tend to buy progressively more elaborate cars with ever more features somehow evidence of sinister manipulation by the Mercedes Car Company Gmbh?
Censorship isn’t the answer. The free market and the Internet would make any attempt at control look like taking on an elephant with a pea-shooter. A war on porn would have the same pompous pointlessness of the war on drugs
So it now becomes clear that far from ‘believing in freedom of expression’, Tania Kindersley does not want to resort to censorship for the purely utilitarian reason that it will not work. With only a few exceptions I find that people who are conservatives and say they support ‘free speech’ will suddenly start equivocating when it comes to pornography if you only dig deep enough and find something they really don’t like.
The only weapon of any potency against the tide of market forces is, paradoxically, fashion: tell the kids that porn is cool and groovy, that the performers really love what they do, and you breed an eager new generation of consumers. But if the rock chicks and movie icons and rent-a-crowd celebrities were bold enough to proclaim that sitting in a darkened room with a can of lager and a copy of Latino Sluts is a pitiful substitute for the real thing, then it might be a start.
Oh Tania, what a sheltered life you bourgeoise English women must lead. I read fashion magazines, skydiving magazines, skiing magazines, hunting magazines, travel magazines, cooking magazines and political magazines. I also buy nice clothes, skydive, ski, hunt, travel, cook and have real life face-to-face political debates. I also read things like Skin Two magazine. Yes, Tania, I do that for real too.
Thanks to Perry de Havilland for editing my article, doing the html black magic and correcting my sometimes confused English. This is my first English language blog post so please be understanding.
I am slowly matching velocity with the world after an absence due to technical problems, something I may expostulate on later. So much has happened I hardly know what to comment on first. So I’ll just pick one…
There seems to be quite an interesting discussion circulating the blog world about The Meaning Of Life, The Universe and Everything and Our Place In It. As I have not yet seen anyone tell it as I sees it and I’ve not much else to do with a Friday Night Sniffle (as opposed to a Saturday Night Fever), I have all the excuse I need.
A reader of Patrick Ruffini pointed out blogs are not newsgathering organizations. I agree with that. Of course if the phenomenon continues to grow that may become less and less true. I live in Belfast for example. If blogs existed ten years ago, my reportage would have been first-hand man on the scene calibre. I once posted a report to a mail list while watching the fires of Unionist rioters springing up all over the city while I was stranded in a 6th floor office in the middle of a “no man’s land” between neighborhoods in North Belfast. I watched the pall of smoke grow thicker and thicker until I could no longer see the lights of the city centre less than a half mile away. Someday when there is a blog on every block they may well become the primary source for raw news. But for now that is not why blogs exist and it is not why they are a force to be reckoned with all out of proportion to their size and readership.
Most of what we call “the news media” is simply the infrastructure that gathers facts, photos and documents. It is the mundane and sometimes extremely dangerous collection of raw data. Doing this well requires global resources. It used to be one of the primary functions of news before the advent of the Superstar TV Newsman. In the early stages of this transformation there were newsmen like Walter Cronkite who were respected because they were good at what they did and were clearly part of their own culture.
It didn’t take the network news long to discover the power they could wield by deciding what would be reported with what slant. Some say the turning point was the Kennedy/Nixon debate. A change in camera angle, a slight difference in which images are selected and which are not… and you can pick the winners and losers, the innocent and the guility and set the national and perhaps even the global agenda. If one major outlet pushes a story as the lead, all the others typically follow it or find related stories. While it is true that print media and radio had done the same with considerable success for many decades, they did not have the profound subconscious story telling ability of imagery on their side. Although we laugh at the what if satires of CNN and D-Day or Pearl Harbour, we should perhaps be profoundly grateful that they did not then exist.
Over time the star system led to a more paternalistic news system. It became more about deciding what the news was to be. If the newsmen are Stars and know what we should consider important then we inevitably end up with their beliefs and prejudices buried in that selection. Intentional or not, the effect is equally bad. It has reached the point where the relevance of a story to the public is of less importance than the relevance to the political beliefs of the media personnel. Of course all bets are off if there is a human interest story of no importance whatever (such as the OJ Simpson Trial). It will be the lead simply because it is an extremely profitable form of entertainment. Media is a business and there nothing wrong with that. Many millions of people love soap operas. But this is not an effective way to keep a citizenry informed.
That is where the blog revolution comes in. Blogs are anarchic. The entry cost is low and falling so anyone who wants can jump in. If the new blogger has ideas and communicates well they will collect a readership; if they grow tired of it someone else with similar ideas will take up the slack and the readership. Any thought that can be thought will be written, rewritten, torn apart and reassembled a hundred times. The better the idea, the more relevant and interesting and important it is, the more widely it will spread… regardless of to whose interest or detriment it is. That is the glory of Chaos.
If we look at the current war we see time and again that the Media Formerly Known as Major have been called to task over their spin and over the central framework of the Story they decided to tell. A decade or two ago, I and others would have grumbled to our mates in the local and said they were getting it wrong. But we would have left it at that because we had no voice in the matter. After enough repetition of the Story, we might come to agree with it or at the very least begun to argue within the designated framework of the Story. That is what classical rhetoric is all about for those who know what it is. It is also what Marxists called the Dialectic.
Now don’t get me wrong. I do not believe that the global media is going to shrivel up and die. It serves a purpose. Journalism was once and can once again be an honourable profession if it goes back to its’ roots and forgets the Star thing. Someone has to go out and collect the raw data. What has changed is who makes the decision on what the data means, what is important and to what use it should be put. That is now the niche of the blog.
All Hail Eris!
Here are some very interesting articles relating to Somalia and it’s ongoing experiment without any central government. First there is A Dying Dream by Joshua Holmes, followed by What’s Really Going On in Somalia by Jim Davidson
Also of interest is a Somali perspective of the military actions that resulted in 18 US deaths and many more Somali deaths in 1993. Not exactly what we had heard from the western media thought the numbers were about right. Jim Davidson is not some kook so do not be inclined to just reject this out of hand.
I’m nursing an oncoming cold and sitting back with a hot cuppa (coffee not tea) whilst I do a bit of hardcopy reading. I’m rather seriously hooked on aircraft in general and warbirds in particular so my sneezetime reading material is not surprisingly on that subject: FlyPast. It is one of two very fine UK magazines about the world wide warbird scene I read every month.
There is a particular relevance to current events in a series of articles written jointly by the crew of a WWII American B-24 Liberator. The narrative is taken from their collected diaries, scrapbooks and recollections. At one point they say their formation had a very good day and all hit their Magdeberg target with extreme accuracy:
The squadron’s bombs hit right on the MPI (Mean Point of Impact) with 95% within 1,000 feet (300 meters) and 100% within 2,000 feet. The crew could see explosions and flames shooting into the air. Smoke rose to about 8,000 feet and was visible for about 100 miles as the aircraft proceeded towards home.
A very good mission indeed. Now fast forward it to today and imagine the squeals of horror we’d be hearing if 219 bombers hit a target inside an historic city and 5% of their load hit between a thousand and two thousand feet away from the Taliban facility that was being targeted.
I’ve seen some improvement in reporting, perhaps because the news media has been getting thoroughly and justifiably battered during the last few months. They still have some learning to do. Perhaps the biggest story of the war is the wonder of the changes in military capability over the last 60 years. Changes that now allow us to specifically target and kill the SOB’s who done it without leveling an entire city around them. So what if we occasionally miss with one or two bombs? Big deal. “Dog bites man” or “Bomb misses target” is not news.
Now “Dogs don’t bite much anymore” and “Bombs don’t miss much anymore”… that’s news.
Capitalism will always win out in the long run. The job of the libertarian is to make the long run as short as possible.
– Perry de Havilland, said at a ‘Brian’s Friday’ event
The querulous Eric L. Bainter replies to George Guttman’s views and verbiage.
Mr. Guttman writes:
Why is a US military tribunal “wrong” for foreign terrorists… when it is also what US military personnel face.
I agree with his basic message – that there’s nothing wrong with the military tribunals for foreign terrorists/war criminals – but his comment as stated is incorrect in strictly factual terms. There’s enough loose verbiage flying around about the tribunals now, generally from the anti-tribunal crowd, which certainly undermines their positions.
Military personnel face trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is largely similar to US law for civilians, not a tribunal as laid out in Mr. Bush’s executive order. The UCMJ does have some differences from most civilian trials. For example, UCMJ panels (juries) can generally convict with a two-thirds, except, I believe, in capital cases (maybe some JAG out there can comment).
I told our local JAG office that I would be happy to serve on a tribunal, and I eagerly (if not optimistically) await the call.
Eric L. Bainter
Alas but that vertiable babe of the bloggistas and erratic contributor to the Samizdata, Natalie Solent is out of action with a broken computer. We will have to manage without our daily fix of her sardonic Frédérique Bastiat impersonations until she can shell out for the repairs. Visit her blog and donate vast sums of money to her.
I just spotted this muslimpundit blog mentioned on Instapundit.
“Going after starry pan-Islamic futurists with a rubber glove and a sharp stick”.
Way to go! I have always believed that there is a large body of rational, reasonable and moral Muslims living in the west who did not subscribe to the crap spewing out of the mouth’s of some of their community ‘leaders’. Now we know that is indeed the case!
Far be it for me to dispute that Perry de Havilland fits the profile for a sinister globalist illuminatus, as it is clear to us all that he is indeed one of those pain-in-the-ass illuminated ones.
However, if this is some sneaky attempt on his part to become the Sinister Globalist Illuminatus Poster Boy of the Month for December 2001, I have news for you… when the Mont Pelerin Society, the Bilderburgers, the Comte de St. Germaine, the Trilateral Commission, the House of Windsor, Henry Kissenger, George Soros and (of course) the Knights Templar vote on that, they always pick someone Jewish… preferably a banker.
Sorry Perry, you are just too damn WASP.
Here are yet more insights sent in by Samizdata reader George Guttman , who has not finished with us yet.
Taliban leader Mullah Omar is planning to give up? Didn’t he tell his people to fight to the death?…I guess he meant their death, not his…
Didn’t Omar want to become a martyr and cavort with 72 virgins in paradise???…Well, maybe he is gay and the virgin stuff is not for him…
It has been widely reported that no sooner does the multi-party conference in Germany select pashtun leader Hamid Karzai as the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan than a stray 2000lb JDAM bomb from a USAF B-52 comes within a hair’s breadth of killing him. I suspect the only reason the conspiracy theorists are not already in full voice on this one is that three US soldiers were killed in the same incident.
But give them time… once it has rattled around in their heads for a few days, the dark theories will start to emerge. You think I am wrong? Well if an armed prison revolt in Mazar-i-Sharif can be reported in some quarters as a ‘massacre involving US forces’ in spite of the fact a German TV crew caught on video a captured prisoner blowing himself with a hidden grenade (and injuring attractive British ITN reporter Andrea Catherwood) and SkyNew filmed outgoing rifle, machinegun and mortar fire (having a camera man injured in the process), then methinks you underestimate the strangeness of the conspiratorial mindset. When wild and woolly theories about Hamid Karzai’s close call start to appear, I call on all Samizdata readers to e-mail them in to us.
Emmanuel Goldstein and I have crossed swords over this one on the Libertarian Alliance forum. That said, I do not regard Emmanuel as a complete looney tune conspiracy theorist (in spite of some intemperate remarks I may have made in the past), merely someone with a few looney tune theories and his Airstrip One blog is not without it’s perverse charms.
Although I am someone who finds 90% of all conspiracy theories not just bogus but ludicrous, they do have a certain entertainment value. I have my own pet theories regarding the conspiracy fetishists (as I prefer to call them). One of my more sublime discoveries after reading many of them is that they almost all, if you regress them far enough, will be traced back to the Knights Templar.
As Fox Mulder of the X-Files would say, “The truth is out there”… but so is the paranoid bullshit. And so for your edification, gentle reader, I present my semi-serious conspiracy meta-theory:
The vast majority of conspiracy theories tell us nothing about the subject matter of the conspiracy but quite a lot about the mind of the theorists themselves. However the endless procession of conspiracy theories are in fact perpetuated by institutions with real conspiracies to hide on the basis that when a true conspiracy theory actually hits the mark, it will then be dismissed out of hand as the paranoid ravings of a fantasist.
Are you impressed? You should be: that is an anti-conspiracy theory conspiracy theory!
Of course as I fit the profile of a sinister globalist illuminatus myself, you can safely assume I am just saying these things to conceal The Truth.
Christopher Hitchens is in typically ebullient form on The Nation as he writes The Ends of War, in which he makes a remark that I suspect is destined to became a classic quote:
The United States of America has just succeeded in bombing a country back out of the Stone Age.
Outstanding. Just for good measure, he yet again carves up Noam Chomsky in his Parthian shot. In a battle of wits, nauseating Noam is unarmed. This whole article is well worth a read.
I am only just starting to get used to the idea of not reflexively thinking of Christopher Hitchens as the enemy.
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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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