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 BBC is running a television series called The Tudors, I believe that the show is in its second series. They seem to think that the Tudor dynasty started with Henry VIII as there were no episodes on his father Henry VII, and the show still seems to be stuck on Henry VIII. Indeed his second wife, Ann Boleyn, has not even been executed yet – sorry if this is a ‘spoiler’ to people who think the fate of Ann is a cliff hanger.
“Sneer as much as you like about how slow paced this series is,” I hear you say, “the BBC is concentrating on telling the story correctly”.
Really?
Today I channel hopped and came upon the point in the show where the actor playing Thomas Cromwell was introducing a new invention – a secret weapon that would win the propaganda war with the Roman Catholics. The printing press (spoken with special stress) – introduced to the show with cries of “by God, what is that?”, and other such, from the actors.
Sadly the printing press was introduced to England during the reign of Edward IV – some sixty years before the time the scene was set, so everyone would have known exactly what a printing press was.
The excuse for the special tax that funds the BBC is that the organization ‘educates’ the population. This excuse just does not stand up.
“Vetted for fifteen minutes”
So runs the subheading in the “Lexington” article about Sarah Palin in this week’s Economist magazine. A choice, the Economist says, which raises serious questions about John McCain’s judgement… and the rest of the normal left media establishment spin.
The line is a lie, as Governor Palin was closely vetted by the McCain campaign over an extended period of time.
No doubt some clever-clever person will come up with the excuse that if I read the small print of the article (or read it up side down and in a mirror) then… However, I am not interested in excuses, the intention of the article is plain. The intention is to use lies and distortions to undermine any challenge to the “liberal” left power elite.
As for the source of the “Vetted for fifteen minutes” lie. The New York Times of course (Joe Stalin’s best friend in the Western World). A cynic might question how close the New York Times is to the McCain campaign, but the Economist would denounce such evil right wing cynics.
On a spring day in Beijing almost a decade ago, tens of thousands of people gathered on the pavement surrounding the high-walled Zhongnanhai compound, the Chinese equivalent of the Kremlin. They were protesting, but there was barely a murmur to be heard from the enormous crowd. There were no banners, no megaphones noisily chanting demands, no unruly behaviour. It was not a typical demonstration – the participants were seated and meditating. They stayed for around twelve hours. These people were members of the rapidly expanding Falun Gong sect, and they were asking for recognition, legitimacy and an end to perceived mistreatment from the Chinese central government. The then-Chinese premier met with the group’s leaders, following which they all left as quietly as they had arrived.
Shortly after this protest, the Chinese government declared the sect a dire ideological threat to the People’s Republic of China, and a huge and rigorous nationwide crackdown followed. Practitioners in powerful positions saw their careers ended abruptly. Thousands were ‘re-educated’. Several, according to numerous human rights advocates, did not survive their enlightenment at the hands of the Chinese state. The sect’s leader was demonised, its teachings subjected to the harshest denunciations. In response, many Falun Gong practitioners held silent protests all over China. A few caught the world’s attention by self-immolating in Tiananmen Square, which explains why each of the numerous military personnel guarding the square have a fire extinguisher placed within arm’s length of their positions.
Unsurprisingly, these protests failed. Falun Gong in mainland China is a massively diminished, illegal underground movement. It is still an extremely politically sensitive topic in China. It is carefully referred to as ‘FG’ when written about on-line, in the (probably vain) hope that such abbreviations will avoid the notice of China’s vigilant internet police (who probably do not care all that much about 99% of these references, but the fact that Chinese internet users go to such lengths is revealing in itself). The government has successfully and widely propagated the idea that Falun Gong is a degenerate cult. → Continue reading: A fork in the road
Bob Bidinotto has an excellent appraisal of John McCain. It should serve as a corrective to some of the hopes that people may have about him after his – in my view – wise choice of Sarah Palin as his VP choice.
John McCain is a decent man of great character, with a wonderful sense of life and a courageous spirit. But he is no intellectual and certainly no philosopher; ideologically, he is very much a mixed bag. He is governed by his feelings, which are shaped in turn by his personal code — the code of national service, of “Country First.” Just as his notion of “selfishness” falsely packages legitimate self-interest with narcissistic self-indulgence, so too does his notion of “Country First” falsely package legitimate patriotism and “free enterprise” with the idea of individual sacrifice to the state.
In this incoherence, John McCain perfectly embodies the fundamental contradiction at the heart of American society: the clash between its conventional morality of self-sacrifice, and its political-economic system of individualism and profit-oriented capitalism. The fact that so many conservatives also try to square the circle of these logically incompatible premises means that McCain’s candidacy is dragging the Republican Party significantly to the left in its basic philosophy.
I can also recommend Matt Welch’s recent book about McCain. For all that the senator from Arizona might like to claim the mantle of a maverick, he is not quite that, and Welch points out that McCain is a different animal in certain respects from his Arizona predecessor, Barry Goldwater.
That is not to say that there is a not much to admire about McCain, especially his obvious courage under captivity. But like Bob I really worry about McCain’s version of “national greatness conservatism”. Any politician that takes Teddy Roosevelt as a political idol should be treated warily. Roosevelt inflicted the monstrosity of anti-trust on the US, for example.
Bob comes to this conclusion:
On individualist philosophical grounds, then, we are left with the choice of supporting either a profoundly flawed representative of America’s founding premises, or of supporting a candidate whose philosophy and every policy proposal are profoundly at odds with those premises. For me, that is no choice at all. (I leave aside the Libertarian candidacy of Bob Barr, who has zero chance of being elected; the only meaningful choice is between McCain and Obama.)
“What is the point of growing food if you let them get destroyed by pests? And another thing, if a sheep gets a headache, I’d give it an asprin.”
That was broadly the gist of a remark made this morning on a BBC food show by Gregg Wallace, the grocer and UK television presenter, who is not a devotee of organic food. Ah, I thought, this guy is prepared to pull the chains of the organic purists on live TV! But then he spoiled it all by going on, as a lot of prominent TV chefs seem to do these days, about the supposed evils of Britain importing food and hence the locals not developing what he regards as a strong national culture that appreciates food. He also criticised working mothers for forgetting how to cook. I must say I smiled at this point since all the folk cooking on the show were men. To be fair, Mr Wallace did not go quite as far as that over-exposed blowhard, Gordon “four letter word” Ramsay, whom Perry of this parish criticised lately.
This is nonsense, to be polite about it. For a start, Mr Wallace bashed the enclosure of UK open land as somehow playing a part in Britain’s historically drab cuisine. Funny, because I thought that the enclosure of farms, and the development of the four-course rotation system that went along with it, helped to make possible the vital leap in UK food production, and hence a surplus, that freed up capital to be used elsewhere: the Industrial Revolution. Up until the late 18th Century, remember, starvation was a regular feature of life in Europe. So much so, in fact, that Thomas Malthus’s prediction that population growth would always be checked by starvation and food shortages was a reason why economics got known as the “dismal science”. Well, the Irish were “self sufficient” by living on potatoes while evil imports of cheap corn from abroad were restricted by the Corn Laws, a situation that came to a terrible conclusion in the Great Famine of the mid-1840s, in which millions of Irish families emigrated to the US to at least have the chance of something to eat. Self-sufficiency, indeed.
All this talk about self-sufficiency by the affluent members of today’s media and entertaiment classes does make me wonder at their lack of understanding of basic economics. To begin with, what sort of geographical area does Mr Wallace think it is acceptable for trade in agriculture to occur in? A county, a parish, a region, a nation, a small street, what? Furthermore, surely the benefits of diversification in agricultural production around the world, made possible by rapid transportation, refrigeration, storage techniques and the rest, actually makes the world as a whole less not more, vulnerable to sudden shifts in economic conditions, or the climate, or even war, although during wars, of course, it may be necessary to build up food supplies, as happened in the UK during WW2.
If it makes more sense economically to grow tomatoes in Spain and fly them over to Manchester rather than for Mancunians to eat only what our foodie superiors deem to be “in season”, why should not such imports occur? For sure, if you want to patronise your local farmers’ market to ensure that local farmers make a living, that is your right. But why are “local” farmers more “deserving” of your wallet than a farmer in Kenya, New Zealand or Canada? At this stage, the Greens will say it is a “waste” to import food from afar if that involves gobbling up expensive fuels, but then in a free market, if the cost of importing food becomes expensive, then local farmers can and should be exploiting that cost advantage. This in fact may already be happening.
And in any event, if there has been an improvement in the quality of food produce and restaurants in the UK in recent years – and I believe there has been – then trade, globalisation and mass transport have driven much of this. A generation that now regards it as routine to fly off to France for a long weekend courtesy of Ryanair or Easyjet has raised expectations of what should be on sale in shops in the UK. We should not forget the significance of the abolition of exchange controls in the UK in 1979 in also driving this increase in travel, and hence a broadening of tastes.
I am sure Mr Wallace means well. He comes across as the sort of no-nonsense, food-loving East End Boy made good for whom I have a lot of admiration. By all means encourage folk to learn more about food, to cook and appreciate food and fine wine. But for goodness sake, TV chefs, spare us propaganda about the evils of imports and stick to what you do best. That’s the division of labour for you.
Right, time for lunch.
The Republicans and their alter-ego Democrats have for decades used their control over the system to give Libertarians no end of grief on our ballot access campaigns. I remember one Libertarian pundit in the eighties commenting ‘it is easier to get on the ballot in Nicaragua than it is in the United States’.
Their mis-use of power has become more and more egregious these last few years. I still keep tabs on Pennsylvania because that is where my absentee ballot goes. The last time I voted I had to return large parts of it blank because the LP was not on it. On top of that, Democrat Murta’s people pulled some real low-life shenanigans to prevent our candidate in his district from running against him. I got the that story via private communications with the Pittsburgh LP of which I was a long ago member.
This year it is the Republicans taking the low road in Pennsylvania. I suspect we will defeat them in court there, but I and most LP supporters are not of the victim mentality. Simply responding to their efforts is just not satisfying enough.
Fortunately we have an opportunity to turn the tables on them in Texas. It seems both parties failed to deliver their papers to the appropriate authorities in Texas by the time of the legal deadline. This is Texas law. Had it been our party, we would have been shut out, no questions asked. move along now boy. We would have had no hope of getting on the ballot.
The Republicans and Democrats are different. They are the ruling class. Laws are made for us, not for them. So the Texas authorities have attempted to waffle around the problem. I am sure the Texas legislature will do whatever needs to be done to assure the McBama twins are on the ballot if they can get away with it.
Normally this would just be done behind the scenes in a ‘gentlemanly arrangement’. But not this time. We are going to rock their boat and with some luck teach them the bitter taste of their own anti-democracy medicine.
I remember several years ago when I commented on ‘having my right to vote stolen’ in Pennsylvania, some one commented my vote was not stolen because I could always do a write in. So if by chance we block Obama and McCain from the ballot in Texas this year all you Republicans and Democrats should not be at all fussed about it.
After all… you can just write in your candidate.
“In general the most important effect of the government attempt to shield itself and its clients from uncertainty and risk is to place the entire system in peril. It becomes at once too rigid and too soft to react resourcefully to the new shocks and sudden challenges that are inevitable in a dangerous world.”
– George Gilder, Wealth and Poverty, page 235 (1981). His comment ought to be on the walls of every state regulatory authority and central bank.
Any regular reader of newspapers will be familiar with the phenomenon of the newspaper article which says one thing, but with a headline above it, written by someone completely different, saying something completely different. Yesterday’s Telegraph piece written by Bruno Waterfield, entitled Brussels admits defeat in EU blog wars is, I think, a good example. I read the headline and rejoiced, but then I read the article.
What Waterfield’s piece actually says is not that the EU has admitted defeat in the face of blogs, but that the EU commission does not like blogs. Blogs have enabled those who think ‘No’ to say ‘No’. Blogs are too cheap to be bought off or controlled, too easy to set up to be silenced. Blogs are bad news. Blogs have been especially bad news in Ireland, where Irish bloggers saying No lead directly to Irish voters voting No. But nowhere in Bruno Waterfield’s report did I read any suggestion that the EU commission is ready to give up in its struggle with this new media menace to its power, and just to lie back and allow people to put whatever they think up on the internet. On the contrary, this ‘secret’ report that Waterfield quotes from sounds to me not like a surrender at all, more like a declaration of war.
A question that occurred to me in some of the recent jousting on the Samizdata comment threads about Russia’s annexation of parts of Georgia was this: what other countries might get in the cross-hairs? It seems to me that there could be a real risk that Ukraine and the Baltic states like Latvia – many of which have Russian-speaking populations living among them – might “provoke” poor old put-upon Russia to send in the tanks. Questions:
What, if anything, will the NATO powers do about it?
What should such powers do?
Is the risk serious anyway?
In the late sixties and seventies I lived in DuPage county, Illinois. This was/is a county remarkable for the concentration of scientific and physical research conducted there. In addition to Argonne National Laboratories and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, there was the largest of Bell Laboratories many facilities, the one in Naperville/Lisle, Illinois that employed about 11,000 people. That period of time was the zenith of Bell Labs legendary status. In the seventies its employees received two of the six Nobel Prizes for Physics that have been awarded to Bell Lab’s researchers.
It was with sadness and some sense of foreboding that I learned via Instapundit this morning that Bell Labs is abandoning basic research and instead “focusing on more immediately marketable areas”. I say “foreboding” for the likelihood that Alcatel-Lucent will join the chorus (if it hasn’t already) of companies demanding that tax-payers assume the sole cost of basic research ‘for the common good’. I also say it because I believe it is the inevitable consequence of a long trend of companies being taken over by accounting priorities and run for short term profits. At least as recently as the late nineties, four Bell Labs researchers were awarded two Nobel Prizes for physics, one received his for cooling and trapping atoms with laser light and, three shared one ” for the discovery and explanation of the fractional quantum Hall effect “. No, I have no clue. If you must know, look it up. Bell Labs has been my number one example that it is possible to do pure research without being part and parcel of the state.
I encourage you to read in the Wikipedia entry some of the history of Bell Labs. Perhaps some commenters can cheer me up with information about other profit motivated corporations (or individuals) engaging in pure, no application yet visible, research.
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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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