I am away from HQ for a few days and looking out over the horizon I see this…
Where am I*?
This may cause a delay in un-smiting legit comments that get smitten/smote/smitted by the samizdata Smite-Bot.
* Not you, Jennings, you already know 😛
|
|||||
|
July 9th, 2016 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I remain unapologetically fascinated by the Brexit phenomenon. The campaign, the result, and the aftermath of the result, are all things that I have been finding hugely diverting. It is already the greatest domestic political upheaval in my country during my lifetime, and not in a bad way. And that is not even to mention its possible impacts on Abroad. But for the time being, what with the weekend approaching, here is a very Samizdata-ish photo which I would like to show you:
I took this photo last Sunday, at the home of our very own Michael Jennings, just after he had got back home from his latest jaunt. The receptacle it features is one of a set in which Michael served his guests a most agreeable round of drinks, the name and exact nature of which I forget, but which I do remember greatly enjoying. (I have a vague recollection of tea being involved, in some way. But that could be quite wrong.) I was sober enough to take this photo, and to get the glass in approximate focus, but not sober enough to get all of the glass in my picture. Was this the expedition during which Michael acquired these glasses, or was it a later one? He probably said, but again, I don’t recall. Demilitarized Zone. You can’t help thinking that this particular demilitarized zone is a hell of a lot more militarized than the word “demilitarised” ought to mean. But what I really want to say is: cool, even though no ice was involved. I mean, being served a drink in a glass decorated with a barbed wire fence, topped off with more barbed wire in a roll. Cool? That’s downright frigid. For some reason, this reminded me of a visit I once made to the home in Cornwall of my late uncle, the one who got parachuted into Yugoslavia during the war and who was as a result awarded an MC that he never talked about. On his mantelpiece, he had a miniature trophy on which were inscribed the words: “School of Psychological Warfare, Bangkok, with grateful thanks”, or words to that effect. Alas, this was back in the 1970s and I did not then possess a digital camera. Nor was there then any means of showing people photos that was easy for them to ignore if they were not interested. July 8th, 2016 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here’s a newsflash for Marvel: race-baiters and gender warriors who complain endlessly about the “lack of diversity” in comic books don’t buy comic books. They’re interested in identity politics, not fun. When your customers — lifelong comic fans — pick up the latest issue to find a smorgasbord of irrelevant, hectoring social and pop culture commentary, they probably won’t buy the next issue. Not because they’re sexists and racists, but because the stuff you are publishing sucks. – Charlie Nash at Breitbart. PS. I haven’t yet seen the latest Captain America film but it is on the list of ones I do want to see. Any recommendations? July 8th, 2016 | 60 comments - (Comments are closed)
Remain voter and quintessential Guardian writer of the old school Simon Jenkins now says,
July 7th, 2016 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
In late June Michael Jennings, Patrick Crozier and I travelled to Israel with some other friends to have a look around. We met up with regular Samizdata commenter Alisa who lives there, and spent an evening and night in Tel Aviv.  Israeli equivalent of a keg on the beach in Tel Aviv On Friday we drove to Jerusalem and checked into our Airbnb appartments before meeting up with another friend who had promised to take us on a tour. I drove and our guide joined us in our seven seater MPV. Our first stop was the Haas Promenade where we could see the whole city. Our guide explained the different areas and we could see the barrier wall.  View from Haas Promenade So after some lunch, we went to Rachel’s Tomb. We drove along the wall before turning through an open gate guarded only with an empty armoured personnel carrier. The road winds around with the wall on both sides and leads to a small car park, itself entirely enclosed by the concrete wall. I do not remember seeing any soldiers. All was quiet apart from a call to prayer emanating from the other side. July 7th, 2016 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the arguments I occasionally hear is that the European Union has been an important force for peace in Europe following the Second World War and that further, the weakening of the EU as a result of UK departure will embolden enemies of Western Europe, such as Putin. However, here’s a thing: it was arguably the decisive defeat of Nazi Germany, and the determination of the NATO powers, led by the US, to contain the Soviet Union and combat forms of anti-West subversion, that was more important in keeping the peace. The EU was in my view part of the overall architecture of what the Western powers put together, but whether it was decisive is unproven at best. And the the various missteps of the EU after the Berlin Wall came down have seriously reduced rather than increased the EU’s status as a stabilising, pro-peace, force. The greatest misstep of all was launching a single, fiat currency without full, democratically accountable political union. (I would not have objected to a common, hard-money system for those who wanted it, but that was never the aim of the European Union’s most ardent federalists.) I can understand why leaders such as Margaret Thatcher (until the late 80s) regarded membership of the EU as one of those dues that had to be paid to keep the West together and why she fretted that it was becoming more of a problem towards the end of her time in office. It should not be forgotten that during the 60s, under the Presidency of Charles De Gaulle, France withdrew itself from the command structure and active operations of NATO. Leave aside the reasoning behind it: you have a large, relatively strong Western European country leaving one of the main transnational groupings of the post-war era, a couple of decades before the Berlin Wall came down and before the end of Communism. But I hardly ever hear France getting heat for this. Maybe I read the wrong journals and websites. It is worth remembering this episode if one ever hears a French commentator or politician bashing the UK for somehow “weakening the West” for getting out of an organisation that it did not like. Because France did leave an important group, but the sky did not in the end fall in. July 6th, 2016 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
Because I cannot bring myself to write about Brexit yet again, I thought I would let you know what sits behind me every day…
…that said, as the UK will be taking control of its borders, we can keep those damn xenomorphs out now! Oh, I just wrote about Brexit again! 🙁 July 5th, 2016 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
A commentator on Breitbart, ‘Rob’, says of the decision by the FBI not to recommend charges relating to alleged violation of the law relating to the use and security of the Secretary’s private email server:
July 5th, 2016 | 93 comments - (Comments are closed)
OK, you’re angry. But ignore the vote and tanks could be on the streets. If you wanted to convulse the country with rioting on a revolutionary scale, to cause a lethal rupture between the governing class and the governed and even to provide the conditions for the rise of 21st-century fascism across Europe, here’s what you do. After a referendum in which an unprecedented number of voters took part, and in which well over a million more people voted for change than for the status quo on our membership of the EU, you declare that the decision cannot be allowed to stand, chiefly on the grounds that the people were too stupid. – Dominic Lawson (article behind Times pay wall unfortunately). July 5th, 2016 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
In the run-up to the EU referendum there was a widespread conspiracy theory that
Pathetic delusions. The elite have much more sophisticated methods than that:
I suppose that one should not be surprised that people who saw nothing wrong with the EU’s favourite strategies of ignoring inconvenient popular votes or having referenda repeated until the (almost invariably less well-funded) opposition is worn down see nothing wrong with these views:
This leaflet, Why the Government believes that voting to remain in the European Union is the best decision for the UK, was sent by the Government to every household in the UK some weeks before the referendum. On page 14 it says,
An oft-repeated argument of those who seek to use a procedural trick to overturn the result is that the Leave campaign won as a result of ignorant tabloid-readers believing lies. If it turns out that the biggest lie of all was that the votes of the common folk would count equal to the votes of the quality, expect trouble. July 4th, 2016 | 39 comments - (Comments are closed)
This outpouring of anti-democratic sentiment, this unquestioned faith in the wisdom of the elite over the will of the people, did not begin with the Brexit vote. Through the rise of evidence-based policy and quangos, experts have crept into more and more areas of policymaking. And the sentiment that the masses are a bit thick, brainwashed by the media and stirred up by demagogues, has long greeted every General Election result that doesn’t go the metropolitan elite’s way. But the Brexit fallout has brought this long unspoken prejudice out of the bistros and into the streets. The idea that the people are effectively incapable of taking part in politics, that you need a PhD in European law to have an opinion on EU membership, is now being shouted from the rooftops and scrawled on placards. Left-wing Remain types, so long the sort who would pretend to speak on behalf of the little people, are now openly calling for elite rule. July 4th, 2016 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tax haven route won’t work for post-Brexit UK, OECD says. Ok then, making the UK a tax haven is clearly an excellent idea, enhancing competitiveness vs. the rest of the OECD. Of course that could not possibly be why a mouthpiece of the OECD thinks it would be a bad idea, right? Right? July 3rd, 2016 | 33 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
Recent Comments