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]
“The British admitted defeat in North America and the catastrophes that were predicted at the time never happened. The catastrophes that were predicted after Vietnam never happened.”
Ok, so the defeat in North America in 1782 did not result in catastrophe (unless you happened to be an American Tory of course) and that somehow tells us something about Iraq circa 2007 according to the former General. But Vietnam? Thirty years of communist totalitarianism are not a catastrophe? Presumably the Boat People were just Vietnamese tourists looking for Disneyland and everything was really just peachy after the fall of Saigon in 1975.
What would constitute a catastrophe, I wonder?. A couple Croatian chums of mine had the dubious pleasure of meeting Michael Rose in Bosnia (which is a story I would love to tell but do not feel I can) and they told me some rather uncomplimentary things about him and they certainly felt they got the better of him ‘professionally’. If that is his ‘take’ on Vietnam, he does not sound like someone whose judgement I would much care to rely on, that is for sure.
A tip – here is the same video but with better translated subtitles. Alas, the embedding has been disabled, which is rather stupid. Fits the spirit of the thing.
Rather like the current mania for ‘socially responsible investment’ (not investing in ‘sinful’ industries), and carbon emissions trading, another strong trend in the financial world these days is sharia-compliant finance. There are sharia-focused hedge funds (I kid you not), sharia bonds, sharia companies. It all boils down to how devout Muslims who want to raise finance or invest in business can do so while negotiating the complexities of their religious code and its ban on usury.
On one level, I have no quarrel with any of this so long as no coercion is involved and there might even be unintended benefits. If the capital markets can make it possible for people to live their lives in ways they feel ethically comfortable with, then that surely demonstrates the enormous flexibility and benefits of the market (it is as well to remember that anti-capitalist ideologies, be they religious or secular, rarely return the compliment in this way). Of course, in as much as sharia financing does screen out interest on loans, one suspects that the returns on such investments must logically lag behind those of regular capitalist activity, if certain money-making practices are deemed off-limits but then if Muslims wish to surrender some money to comply with their own beliefs, they are entitled to do so, just as environmentalists sacrifice some returns by refusing to put money into businesses such as oil or whatever.
I cannot help but feel there is something rather rum about all this sharia financial wheeler-dealing. Many of the financial instruments that are used for the purposes of sharia-compliant finance look awfully similar to regular capitalism to me. In fact, it is hard to see what is really the difference on ethical grounds between speculating on certain types of assets, such as gold, and lending money to a company in the hope that the firm will profit and repay the interest. It strikes me as being the financial equivalent of splitting hairs.
I also suspect, as this article at Bloomberg lays out, that a lot of people putting themselves around as sharia ‘experts’ are making a huge amount of money out of this trend and yet their motives appear in some ways to be as ‘selfish’ as that of any regular capitalist, not that I have a problem with the honest pursuit of long-term self interest, quite the opposite.
The moral prejudice against usury always struck me as irrational. Here is a good piece on the subject.
He is an admirable character in many ways. He has achieved tremendous success in his professional life; he is by all accounts a devoted husband and I have read that he is good company. It therefore rather a shame even for the most one-eyed follower of Chelsea FC that Jose Mourinho is such a petulant jerk. It takes quite a lot to make me sympathise with Alex Ferguson, the long-standing manager of Manchester United, or for that matter, his highly-paid football stars, but I think the Chelsea boss has achieved that feat.
Class continues to be a sore point in English sport (I am not really qualified to know about how this works in Scotland or Wales). Football has traditionally been thought of as a working-class game although these days the cost of buying a season ticket are beyond the reach of all but the fairly affluent. Cricket is a mixture; rugby union is thought of as middle class, tennis is the same, yachting is for the posh, ditto polo, etc. (I am not quite sure if Formula 1 fits a neat mould any more. It used to be quite posh, since only rich people could afford to drive fast cars). But in football, there is still a strong working class aspect. So I really do not understand why, if the Chelsea manager is going to insult someone, he brings up poverty and humble origins as a reason to abuse someone. In fact, if a person comes from humble origins and becomes an international sports star, like George Best, Tom Finney or Bobby Charlton, that usually counts in their favour.
By reading Samizdata for several years, I am one of the Americans that has received a major enlightenment regarding Tony Blair. I recently received this link from regular commenter RAB and decided to post it for the benefit of other Americans on the site.
Tony Blair, who was swept into office in 1997 amid higher hopes and greater goodwill than any incoming British Prime Minister in modern times, will leave it a few weeks hence with his reputation in ruins.
An opinion poll earlier this month showed that only 11 per cent of voters still like him; 51per cent think that “he manages to convince himself that whatever he has decided to do must be morally right”.
Some 57 per cent say he has stayed in Downing Street too long, and only five per cent agree that he is “in touch with ordinary people”.
Just 27 per cent think Britain is a more successful society than it was in 1997, and 61 per cent believe that it is a much less pleasant one.
…
Tony Blair has shown himself the most accomplished political actor ever to occupy the premiership.
He is an orator of near-genius, a performer who has for years dominated party conference platforms, TV studios, Parliament, White House press conferences, even the U.S. Congress.
Put him before an audience in his heyday, whether of three people or 3,000, and he could weave a spell worthy of Gandalf.
But now let us step over the camera and lighting cables, walk past the brilliantly painted frontage of whichever modern temple of glitz he is patronising – the Millennium Dome would be appropriate – and venture backstage.
Examine the real Britain after ten years of Blair.
The problem is, they will outlaw almost everything while enforcing very little. Imprisonment by stealth. People will not know they are encircled until it is too late – like putting in all these very deep, robust fence-posts with no fence panels. All seems open. One day you will wake up and the panels are in, you are trapped and they can decide what law they wish to impose to nail whomsoever they desire.
As some people involved in Samizdata know, I have promised not to write posts attacking the local election campaign of a certain political party – at least until the election is over.
As I have promised this I feel uncomfortable in writing anything that could be seen as an attack on any other political party. So in the following both the name of the candidate and the party that candidate represents will not be stated.
On Sunday I came upon a political leaflet. Along with the normal fluff about loving Association Football (candidates, of all parties, really do write stuff like that – some of them even list the pubs they go to) I read the following:
“I have been involved in campaigning for the … party since the age of 6, leafleting and canvassing…”
Now I hope that that “6” was a misprint for “16” – but, such are the times we live in, I can not be sure.
I wish I understood Turkish politics better than I do. There was a large pro-secularism rally in Ankara, which is surely a good thing. The fact these people are backed by the army is an even more encouraging sign.
On Friday evening military chiefs said in a statement they could intervene if the election process threatened to undermine Turkish secularism.
EU politics however, I understand just fine. The usual halfwits have moaned that the Turkish army is interfering with democracy because they made it clear they will not tolerate Turkey becoming an Islamic state. Yet strangely all manner of constitutional limitations on the democratic will of the majority exist in many countries (the USA and Switzerland, for example) and yet that does not seem to attract the displeasure of the fools who live off our tax money in Brussels.
In Turkey, the army is probably the best bulwark against Islamism and the fact the same €uro-spokesmen allegedly responsible for working towards integrating Turkey with the EU want to weaken the role of the main opponent of Islamist political aspirations in the country is… astonishing.
Sean Gabb has written a fine piece called Defending the right to deny the Holocaust, stating why censorship undermines our ability to decide what is and is not true.
With regard to the holocaust, I have – broadly speaking – two options. I can believe that it did happen roughly as claimed. Or I can believe that it is a gigantic conspiracy of lies maintained since the 1940s in the face of all evidence. Since debate remains free in the English-speaking world, it should be obvious what I am to believe. I believe in the central fact of the holocaust. On the secondary issues mentioned above, where my authorities do not agree, I suspend judgement.
Take away the freedom to argue with or against these authorities, though, and my assurance that they are right must be weakened.
Groups like ‘Alcohol Concern’ like to use the force of the state to make people act the way they want. They do not care about making an argument and convincing people to act a certain way, they want prison and truncheons to make people tow their particular highly debatable line.
Parents who give alcohol to children under the age of 15 – even with a meal at home – should face prosecution, a charity says today. Parents who let children drink should face prosecution, says Alcohol Concern. […] A charity spokesman said: “It is legal to provide children as young as five with alcohol in a private home. Raising the age limit to 15 would send a stronger message to parents of the risks associated with letting very young people consume alcohol.” It is illegal to buy a drink in a pub under 18, but a 16- or 17-year-old can drink wine or beer if having a meal with parents.
You know what I would like to see? Whenever someone threatens me with force if I do not modify my social behaviour more to their liking in my own damn home, I would like them get arrested and thrown in jail. And I would like to see them beaten with truncheons if they do not comply with the cops just like they want for others who do not comply with their wishes. Such people are addicted to using force to impose their will on others and so why not “send a stronger message” that threatening people via the political system is really no different to threatening them with violence via some other institution, like the Mafia, for example.
If ‘Alcohol Concern’ want to convince people that they should not allow their children to drink (which is bullshit, I might add, as I suspect that encourages alcohol abuse in later life), well fine, let them take out adverts and evangelise their views like civilised members of civil society. However when they want the violence of law to impose their views, they should be regarded as anti-social thugs calling for the destruction of yet more civil society. Such people want to see society replaced with ever more politically derived formulae for personal behaviour. And of course such nonsense is unenforceable other than by family members denouncing each other a la the Communist model, which no doubt is what a group like ‘Alcohol Concern’ would like to see happen … which is literally anti-social.
It is not enough to reject the message of groups like ‘Alcohol Concern’, people who want to impose their views on every household in the country need to be held responsible on a personal level for advocating the force backed destruction of civil society. Such people are part of the problem of modern Britain, not part of the solution.
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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