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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Following on from Perry’s post below, I am pleased to note that there is something we can do to help Geert Wilders.
For those among you who want to actively help, go to his website and donate what you can to help defray what will likely be a ruinous legal bill. The link is here.
Geert Wilders is one of the pitifully few public figures in Europe who is willing to confront the Islamist menace. As a result, his enemies have sentenced him to death (because all they want is peace, don’t you know) and his own government has decided to prosecute him.
Even if you cannot contribute financially then I urge you at least to get a message to him to let him know that he is not alone and that he has many, many friends. He needs them.
With the raised anxieties over national bankruptcy and the failure of the government to produce a strategy over the medium term for the control of public expenditure and the reduction of the national debt, the potential for a crisis in gilts funding has risen.This comes in the form of a disruptive change, propelled by external financial events, that undermines and destroys the government’s economic strategy. If such a crisis were to take place, it is worth considering the transformative effect upon national politics and the government. The decisions taken by Gordon Brown and the Labour party would form the framework of change and we can surmise that they have already examined possible scenarios at some length.
The most likely tactic employed by Brown is to go long, calling an election in 2010, whilst using the same methods to deny responsibility for the crisis and blaming the necessary cuts in public expensiture upon others. The government is mugged by the markets and forced to conform to the footsteps of Healey in 1976. This is the headless socialists mugged by reality model.
Less likely are radical and unpredictable political changes: Labour forming a national government with the Liberal Democrats and/or the Tories; the government toppling in a welter of incumbent incompetence with an election to follow; or Brown knifed by his own Malvolio and a novitiate attempting to rescue their reputation under a caretaker Prme Minister. Whatever political changes do follow, this will not prevent the years of national humiliation and deleveraging: if they buck the trend and halve the state, the recovery won’t come so late.
The most unlikely and frightening scenario is the one that depends upon Brown’s psychology: that the ‘man with a plan’ is convinced he can steer the country through the national crisis and that transferring power to the Tories would be an act of personal and national treason. If so, Brown could invoke the enabling act, prorogue Parliament and declare a national emergency for the duration of the financial crisis. This is the least likely outcome as the stakes are very high and Brown could not be sure that he would enjoy the support of the Civil Service, the police or the armed forces. The support of his own party is a given, spineless apparatchiks that they would become. On his past record of dithering and reluctance it is a long shot that he would only undertake this action in the most desperate of circumstances, but New Labour’s authoritarian bent and antipathy to democratic accountability are clear.
The moral of the story is that any successor to this Parliament should abolish the Civil Contingencies Act and ensure that temptation is placed out of harm’s way for any other self-righteous prophets who happen to pass through the doors of Number Ten.
When visiting China in October of last year, I found myself in a supermarket. I like visiting supermarkets in foreign countries, as despite globalisation, imports, and exports, there are still many products that are produced and only available locally, and a supermarket tells you far more about the culture and consumption habits of normal people than anything you would learn by (say) going to a restaurant.
For instance, China is now one of the world’s top ten (in terms of volume, at least) wine producers. Chinese wine is not generally seen anywhere outside China, but is very readily available in China. The producers have even mastered putting some mixture of faux-Frenchness and Chinese clicheness on the labels.
I suppose, at least, we were spared a panda. I suspect that they may not realise that “vin de table” on a French wine label means approximately “This is bad wine” (ie it failed the quality control tests that exist under French wine laws and which would have allowed the winemakers to put anything else on the label), but in the case of most Chinese wine it is for the moment fairly appropriate.
However, I digress. While Chinese wine can be made fun of a little, there are other products at which the Chinese are indeed the experts. It was not long ago that China was principally known in the west for its tea, and although China now produces and sells many other things, the country still produces and consumes truly vast quantities of the stuff. When I was in the supermarket in Shenzhen, I found seemingly most of an aisle devoted to the stuff.
This happened to be convenient, as my sister happens to enjoy interesting and exotic teas. My thoughts were immediately that I would buy a couple of packets of some of the more interesting teas in the shop, and ultimately send them to her as a Christmas gift. I purchased them, and took them back to England with me.
I rather failed to get my act together in December, and as a consequence, on December 31 I posted a package containing tea to my sister from Clapham Junction post office in London to the Blue Mountains near Sydney in Australia, along with various other parcels that I posted at the same time. I made a deliberately vague statement on the customs declaration sticker. Australia has amazingly (and at times idiotically) strict quarantine regulations, and it is possible that the unauthorised importation of tea is prohibited.
Thus when my sister told me last week that she had not received anything from me, I was not completely surprised. I had visions of Australian customs office going through enormous stacks of mail with large Alsations looking for illicit tea, and the package sent to my sister being confiscated by some stern official with a moustache.
However, as it turned out, I was imagining things. The truth, to the extent that I have discovered it, was far stranger than that. This morning, my sister received a package with my handwriting on the envelope and my return address on the back. One side of the envelope had been ripped open, and had been sealed again with plastic tape. Attached to the envelope was a sticker from Canada Post, stating (in both English and French)
Package found damaged, torn, or opened and officially repaired.
Adressee:
If liability coverage applies, please contact Canada Post on 1-800-267-1177 or www.canadapost.ca
Please note the packaging and contents may be required.
When my sister opened the envelope, it contained a data CD entitled ‘Canon Step Up Photography – Accessories to enhance your creativity’ for Windows and Macintosh, but no tea.
Okay, I can just about imagine that some mail was damaged and the postmen had difficulty figuring out what had fallen out of which envelope. But what in the name of Micklethwait was the package doing in Canada in the first place?
In all, I think this has to go down as my oddest experience since the time a French policeman called me in my flat in London from a village in the Pyrenees to ask if I was lonely. If people ask nicely, I will tell that story next week.
Also, I am intrigued as to what happened to the tea. Perhaps the mysterious world odyssey of this product that was never intended to leave China is continuing, and it has somehow, Teela Brown style, found its way to South America, or is somehow plotting its way to the far side of the galaxy in search of Arthur Dent.
Just as Gordon Brown steers the UK full throttle into the ground for the most spectacular economic crash since the 1930’s, far from fighting the culture war in order to set the nation up for an alternative, yet again the utterly absurd David Cameron and his lemming-like party are bending over backwards to show that they represent kleptocratic continuity with the Labour Party.
Demos, a leading thinktank, is today launching a major project to develop “progressive conservative” policies. David Cameron, the Tory leader, will be speaking at the launch of the initiative, which will explore ideas such as how the market can be organised to alleviate poverty and what policies can bolster civic autonomy. Demos, which is independent but which used to be closely associated with New Labour, will have up to four staff working on the project, which will be funded by outside partners, but not the Conservative party.
[…]
As Tory leader Cameron has pledged to pursue “progressive ends”, such as social justice and poverty reduction, through “conservative means”. But this claim has been challenged by Labour and the Liberal Democrats who have questioned his credentials as a true progressive.
How “the market can be organised to alleviate poverty and what policies can bolster civic autonomy”… When politicians ‘organise’ markets, that is always high on political organisation and low on markets. And what policies can “boost civic autonomy”? Dave needs a think-tank to tell him that? Less state policies, taxes and interference generally. Anyone want to make a book on the chance Demos offers that up as a solution? Fat chance.
“But this claim has been challenged by Labour and the Liberal Democrats who have questioned his credentials as a true progressive.” This is like members of a cartel howling about other members competing with them as a way of hiding the fact there is actually no competition going on at all. Labour, the LibDems and the Tories make a fetish of the minor difference between each other to hide the fact there is actually very little between them.
My theory? They have no interest whatsoever in the traditional Conservative voter, whose ovine voting can usually be counted on anyway, but rather plan on gaining power via the strategy of simply waiting for Labour to lose rather than planning to pro-actively win themselves. Therefore they are working up policy statements calculated to appeal to the same Guardian reading looter class seeking more of the same only this time with ‘a sensible safe pair of hands’, to use nauseating Tory-speak.
A vote for the Tory party (I refuse to call them the ‘Conservative’ party) under Cameron is a vote wasted because even if they win, nothing changes. Even if you ‘win’, you lose. They are beyond salvage.
Want to vote? Then vote UKIP. I do not support all their policies but there simply is no meaningful choice any more and at least they have a more or less nationwide political organisation. Is a vote for UKIP a wasted vote? Well at least you will be wasting your vote on a genuine alternative rather than the illusion of change under ‘Dave’ Cameron and his dismal shower of ‘progressives’.
And if enough people do that then it was not a wasted vote after all.
It has taken this Labour government longer to wreck the economy than previous ones, but they have done so comprehensively.
– Fraser Nelson, The Spectator.
IKEA customers across the world are led to believe, naively, that the world is composed of simple elements that we can understand, interlink, and repair if necessary. Populist politicians throughout the world exploit similar social engineering… I respond critically to this European hypocrisy with an IKEA flat pack in the shape of the Swedish kingdom, which conceals an inconvenient truth.
– ‘Sonja Aaberg’, the Swedish sculptress, quoted by Mark Steyn in Euro-artists Speak
Random link-chasing brought me here. “Leg-iron” writes:
I have a pack of tobacco with no hideous picture. Instead it has a phone number and the words:
Choose freedom. We’ll help you get help to stop smoking.
Freedom? Really? That would be nice. I don’t have the freedom to smoke in a bar, at a bus stop, bus station or on the open platform of a railway station.
There is more, please do read it. I should explain for foreign readers that British cigarette packets must by law bear an anti-smoking slogan such as “smoking kills” or “smoking causes impotence” and often, these days, a repulsive picture showing the bad consequences of smoking. I do not smoke so I do not often need to look at these pictures, but nothing about their appearance repels me as much as the fact that our laws force people to publish material designed to humiliate themselves. Truly, that does repel me. I neither like nor dislike cigarette manufacturers or those who work for them as a category, but when I imagine whichever bureaucrat thinks up these rotating slogans sneeringly transmitting the latest one to some servile flack in a cigarette company along with orders to start the print run – then I feel a faint echo of the shame someone living in Mao’s China must have felt at the sight of a wretch bearing a placard saying “I am an enemy of the people.”
I scrolled down Leg-iron’s blog and found another good post on the same topic: → Continue reading: “Choose freedom?” That would be nice.
A court in the Netherlands has ordered the prosecution of Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party, for daring to express his opinions. Wilders is the author of Fitna, a critical polemic against Islam.
The three judges said that they had weighed Mr Wilders’s “one-sided generalisations” against his right to free speech, and ruled that he had gone beyond the normal leeway granted to politicians.
“The Amsterdam appeals court has ordered the prosecution of member of parliament Geert Wilders for inciting hatred and discrimination, based on comments by him in various media on Muslims and their beliefs,” the court said in a statement.
“The court also considers appropriate criminal prosecution for insulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and Nazism made by Wilders,” it added.
This judgement completely destroys the myth of both Dutch civil liberties and the nation’s reputed tolerance for differences of opinion. It seems you can have a difference of opinion just as long as it is not inconvenient to the state for you to express it. Yet again, the Dutch state proves that when the going gets tough, the Dutch state has a backbone of rubber.
So here is Fitna for you to watch. And to the authoritarian thugs in their court in Amsterdam… up yours.
And as a little bonus…
I have never felt the urge to buy an iPod as I am really not that interested in music-on-the-move, but maybe it is time for me to reconsider… I feel another overdue hunting trip to Central Europe coming on.
Here is something very topical for today, Inaugaration Speech Generator:
A grassroots internet campaign helped Barack Obama get elected. Now he’s calling for the internet’s assistance one more time – to help him craft the best inauguration speech ever…
This is the result of my humble efforts to help out:
My fellow Americans, today is a psychadelic day. You have shown the world that “hope” is not just another word for “moon”, and that “change” is not only something we can believe in again, but something we can actually fly.
Today we celebrate, but let there be no mistake – America faces confusing and rigorous challenges like never before. Our economy is embarassing. Americans can barely afford their mortgages, let alone have enough money left over for spaghetti. Our healthcare system is lethal. If your nostril is sick and you don’t have insurance, you might as well call a dustman. And America’s image overseas is tarnished like a aubergine bullet. But cookin’ together we can right this ship, and set a course for Hebrides.
Finally, I must thank my excruciating family, my beautiful campaign volunteers, but most of all, I want to thank bankers for making this historic occasion possible. Of course, I must also thank you, President Bush, for years of shootin’ the American people. Without your rotting efforts, none of this would have been possible.
God Bless… the Internet!
Meanwhile, back in Britain, the markets are continuing to fret over the scale of the financial hole the country is in a day after the UK government stepped in and hosed the banks with yet further large amounts of public funds. According to the media pundit and investor, Jim Rogers, sterling is a sell and the country’s economy is headed for further trouble. Even though Rogers’ prediction of a 25-year commodity boom has not quite panned out – oil prices have crashed from $140+ to about $40 now in just four months – he did predict some of that boom and commodity investors who sold out at the right time would have made a killing in some of Rogers’ funds. His take on the economic situation is worth studying.
I see no reason to buy sterling on speculative grounds until Mr Brown is removed from office along with his re-heated Keynesian colleagues. Even then, the return to sound money will be hard and unpleasant. It almost makes me wonder if the Tories would want to regain power with such a poisonous inheritance.
Thanks to Guido Fawkes for the Rogers quote. Guido has been a bear of sterling for some time. To stay with the lingo of the markets, investors should be shorting Brown stocks, a heavily touted investment based on no underlying merits whatsover.
In the mind of the anti-free-marketeer, the government occupies the same kind of intellectual territory as the divine designer in the mind of an anti-Darwinian.
– Brian Micklethwait
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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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