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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It is of course too much to expect much rationality in the debate about immigration occurring on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment. I keep getting completely deranged e-mails from an outfit calling itself Conservative News NYC from across the puddle who are claiming that the USA and Mexico are in a de facto state of war due to the ‘invasion’ of the USA by illegal aliens. They also take the view that anyone who takes a more measured opinion on this is clearly a vile traitor. This is the same outfit who thinks any American who supports Israel is also a traitor, a word they rather like it seems, although of course they preface this with “but we’re not anti-Semitic”. No, of course not, perish the thought.
Now just because I think the fine fellows of Conservative News NYC are barking moonbats that does not mean all is well when it comes to immigration. There are indeed two groups in the USA (and one in the UK) who really are a problem. On both sides of the Atlantic we have an increasingly radicalised and non-integrating community of Muslims amongst whom support is very widespread for values completely antithetical to post-Enlightenment western civilisation.
Add to this in the United States the quite similar, at least in outlook if not action, ethnic fascists of La Raza, the one form of overt in-your-face racist fascism that seems to be quite acceptable for members of the American left to praise and with whom they are quite happy to share a stage (I guess being racist to white people is not really racism, eh Hilary?). At least one good thing about La Raza is that they are a lunatic fringe amongst Hispanics in the USA (much as Conservative News NYC are a radical lunatic fringe amongst US Conservatives). Of course the same could probably be said of Samizdata in many ways as we are hardly mainstream in many of the views we take, so it is not like I am against lunatic fringes per se.
Sadly the same cannot be said for much of the Muslim community who do indeed appear to share a wide range of views with the people we quite incorrectly call ‘extremists’… I say incorrect because it appears they actually reflect increasingly mainstream Muslim opinion, particularly in the UK. They are not extremists, they are merely practising Muslims who actually believe what their religious texts tell them to believe. The problem is not extremism, it is Islam itself and anyone who actually takes it seriously.
One thing both of these groups have in common is that they must be relentlessly confronted and cannot be compromised with or appeased in any way whatsoever. It really is ‘them or us’.
However… → Continue reading: Immigration successes… and disasters
Almeria, Spain. January 2007 (Click on the image to better see the Moorish castle).
Another two countries are determined to support the constitution. This means that only six countries, including the Czech Republic, will remain. These countries will have to decide whether they want to continue cooperating with the core of Europe or whether they want to again retreat from the European integration process, Posselt says.
Bernd Posselt, leader of the Sedeten German Society and an MEP for Bavaria has praised the Chancellor, Angela Merkel for demanding the Czech Republic to sign up to the European Constitution. Posselt may be supporting the initiative, since it favours restitution for properties seized after the War by the restored Czech Republic, desirous to remove irredentist elements from its polity, and abetted by the barbaric Red Army.
Posselt is merely echoing the ‘friends of the constitution’ who met under the auspices of Luxembourg and Spain over the weekend. The noises coming out of this meeting are not good for Europhiles in New Labour. Despite some willingness to show flexibility on some of the phrases, the ‘friends of the constitution’ wish to use the text as a base and add more areas of competence for integration. The mini-treaty favoured by the British, avoiding the need for a referendum, looks like a long shot. If Segolene Royal wins the French Presidential election and upholds her manifesto promise of another referendum, the tabloids will be howling for blood.
Mr Hoon suggested that moves to streamline decision-making in an enlarged EU could be agreed by the government without being ratified directly by voters.
A decision on a vote would be taken once the outcome of negotiations was clearer "bearing in mind that no previous government has held a referendum on the detailed processes that have been involved in treaty change, he said
Europhiles such as Hoon wish to short circuit a referendum, since they would lose their prize. This may form the final frontispiece of Blair’s legacy, since the meeting on this occurs during the dying days of his premiership. Any warmed up document, with the title Constitution dropped to hide the fundamental and radical nature of the text, needs to be opposed as quickly as possible. New Labour, in this as in all other enterprises, is not a friend of the Union or the English. As for Cameron he may have tried to avoid Europe, but it has returned to force the issue upon him.
“It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled.”
Auberon Waugh, journalist, novelist and son of the writer Evelyn Waugh. I once had the pleasure of chatting to Auberon for a long time at a party and reflected on what a thoroughly nice man he was. He is much missed, although not by Polly Toynbee, I suspect.
Today is Milton Friedman Day. Interesting selection of links to events marking the great man’s life over at Virginia Postrel’s blog.
Here is the main event link.
On a Sunday afternoon, when recovering from a close friend’s birthday the previous evening – in the Dover Street wine bar – god help my liver and I – there is no better way to resume some semblance of humanity than to listen to this woman. I first chanced upon one of Diana Krall’s CDs about a decade ago and she has held a firm place in my music-playing selection ever since. Her version of “Face the Music and Dance” was my choice of first musical piece at my wedding last year, taken from this CD.
Norah Jones is great, Peggy Lee was wonderful and Ella Fitzgerald could charm the birds off the trees, but Krall is as good as any of them – not to mention rather easy on the eye – and hopefully will be around for a long time yet. No wonder Clint Eastwood went nuts when he saw her playing in a local Carmel bar before she became a megastar.
My hangover is fading already.
‘It’ being the idea that it is a legitimate function of government to dress its servants in uniforms with shiny buttons and have them bully and interrogate people to make sure they are behaving themselves.
The word, Prussianism, was still used between the wars, but was much more common in the Indian summer of the British Empire, a century ago. It encapsulated the contempt of the liberal British (either little Liberals or little Conservatives) for the Bismarckian state and its imperative to dominate and regulate the lives of the people through petty officialdom. And that state was epitomised by shiny uniforms, the image of Prussianism.
Before the launch was buried under a torrent of further Home Office cock-up stories, the new, excitingly repressive, UK Borders Bill was launched with that image. There is nothing in the Bill about uniforms. Those are matters of prerogative. Likewise renaming the immigration service.
So the fact that John Reid chose to show off his latest ‘get tough’ policy* by unveiling the new uniforms for a renamed immigration service, is an epiphany of cultural change. Yesterday’s chaos (of which more in another post) may have covered it up, but I did not detect a whisper of the same public derision of Prussianism that the early 20th century Brits reserved for government by shiny uniforms.
[* Of course, Dr Reid, making Kylie carry an ID-card will stop people-smuggling dead. Now go with the nice man and have a quiet lie down…]
Other people who know far more about military and security affairs than I do will judge what President Bush had to say about Iraq. I was more interested in what the President had to say about domestic policy.
There were some of the contradictions I have come to expect. For example, the words about local control of schools and the words in support of the No Child Left Behind Act (as if the Federal government can keep spending more money on schools without control of those schools ending up more-and-more in Federal hands). How such things as the no-child-left-behind Act are supposed to be consistent with the pledge to ‘balance the budget’ was also unexplained.
There was also the odd use of language. For example, although libertarians tend to favour ‘free migration’ it is irritating for the President to say ‘no amnesty’ for illegal immigrants when an amnesty is exactly what he is planning (although he may use some other form of words for it). Still, I suppose, this type of language use is not that odd among politicians.
On health care it was good to hear the return of President Reagan’s suggestion that income used by an individual to pay for health cover should not be subject to either income tax or social security (pay roll) tax. Linking tax relief to a particular job (via only employer provided health cover being covered) is silly. It was also interesting to see that the tax relief would be limited to a certain level of spending – so that in this (and other ways) people would have an incentive to shop around for health cover that controlled costs (the one good bit of the Medicare Part D. extension of some years ago).
There was nothing on how the existence of Medicare and Medicaid (which started out at five billion Dollars in 1965 and now cost hundreds of billions of Dollars) have had a knock on effect of increasing costs of private health cover – but I did not expect this (Medicare and Medicaid are sacred these days). → Continue reading: The worst part of the State of the Union Address
Just got an e-mail from someone I met in Beijing in late 2005. I enjoyed his company especially because we shared a similarly self-deprecating, absurdist sense of humour. A good bloke – the sort that makes you understand why Aussies and Brits get along so well in spite of the silly state of sporting rivalry that exists between us. Craig was a thirty-something English teacher who had been on the Asia circuit for some time. Stories of his doomed-in-hindsight relationship forays amused me. When we were hanging out in 2005, his current romantic interest spoke no English and they (barely) communicated via the ridiculously inadequate translator installed on their respective mobile phones – think sub-2000 Alta Vista Babelfish – painfully erroneous. They had been out to dinner a couple of times. Boggles the mind, yes. Anyway, today I received an e-mail from him:
hey james….hows sunny australia these days? i got this email from kanjing, the girl with the very cute smile at the jade youth hostel. haha, this poor guys trying to chat her up and she goes and forwards the reply to every westerner she knows. ahhh, chinese girls.
He is right – she did have an awfully cute smile and was really quite lovely – in an untouchable sort of way. And he is also right about her forwarding said correspondence to a bunch of vague acquaintances – that is exactly the sort of thing a Chinese girl would do! Gotta love ’em. It is all one big English lesson.
What our amorous charge wrote to his fair damsel – and her response – is somewhat beside the point, but I could not help but note that the English proficiency he demonstrated was not enormously superior to that of our (slightly coherent) Chinese heroine. If I was feeling sympathetic, I would mark it down to the less rigorous standards demanded of e-mail communication. But still… awww… I had such a great time in China! I want to be there now. I laughed a lot. The glorious clash of customs taking place can be quite hilarious.
The other night I glanced at the television to see an advertisement for a smooth-looking new car by Hyundai. All very clever with a sort of liquid metal effect – due to the wonders of computer generated technology – but absolutely nothing at all about the car. There was no description of how fast the car could go, what sort of gearbox it had, how many seats, how much it costs, what its fuel consumption is. Nothing. It was about as informative as watching a North Korean press release.
The reason, I think, why modern car advertisements are like this is because of a campaign by the UK authorities, with bodies like the Advertising Standards Authority, to remove all reference to the idea that a car is desirable because it goes fast. One must not offend against the Gods of Health and Safety by implying, stating or otherwise celebrating that this or that set of wheels goes like a rocket. No sir. One must not lead the gullible British public into the sin of speeding and other naughtinesses. What we therefore have are adverts that are self-indulgent eye candy, of no more import than a nice piece of modernist artwork. Here is an example of what I mean.
It is, I suppose, a reflection of the society in which we live that advertisements, like old Tom and Jerry cartoons, get bowdlerised or otherwise influenced by the desire to remove all risk from life. But life is not free from risk, and risk is actually one of the ways that you know that you are alive rather than dead.
On a brighter note, Richard Hammond, “The Hamster” as he is known to his Top Gear TV colleagues, is back to the screens this Sunday after recovering from a stunt that went badly wrong. What I continue to love about that show is that you know, you just know, that the serried ranks of the do-gooder classes cannot abide this programme.
Go Hamster!
Sir Richard Branson is an excellent example of the pitfalls of branding, and how reputational risk is not as disastrous as some consultants would make out in search of their paycheque. Public relations is important, and Branson is a past master at exploiting the attraction of novelty. One of his most risky and perhaps adroit moves is the extension of the Virgin to new potentailly radical technologies that will have a visible impact. Trains are not included within this structure, though it is interesting how the poor performance of Virgin trains has not yet impacted on the wider reputation of the name.
Now Branson wishes to capitalise on the potential of stem cells and is providing a vital service, by storing the umbilical stem cells of newborn babies. This is a nascent and growing industry:
Public cord storage is becoming more common, particularly in the U.S., but there is also a growing private industry taking advantage of the promise of these cures. However, the industry is extremely controversial because the chances of developing a disease that stem cells can cure, such as leukemia, is small while the new cures may never materialize. Some anti-abortion groups believe that any use of stem cells will lead to human cloning.
Private storage of stem cells is unlawful in France and Italy and is opposed by the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies, which is a European Commission body.
This has not stopped more than 11,000 families in the UK using stem-cell storage facilities. The services typically cost about £1,500 for collection of the blood and about £100 a year for cold storage. A number of celebrity parents are reported to have used these services including Thierry Henry, the Arsenal footballer, and Darcey Bussell, the dancer.
Trust the European Commission to recommend banning something which has the potential to do some good and possibly liberate individuals from a date with disease.
The interests of do-gooding organisations are always at odds with their goals. Succeed and you put yourself out of business. With racism in rapid retreat and mixed-race children on the rise, there is one great contribution the Commission for Racial Equality could make to its official cause. Stop existing.
– Jamies Whyte, who is what he sounds like and who has a black wife and a brown daughter, ending his comment piece today in Times on line today (also linked to by Mick Hartley)
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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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