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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Why is a bloody tyrant getting his just deserts generating so many official grimaces and shocked swooning amongst the professional political classes? That Saddam Hussain’s executioners visited upon him a tiny measure of the degradation and horror Saddam’s own busy hangmen inflicted on so many others when he was in power is a trivial matter. Tyrants should have neither consideration nor dignity, deserving only to reap the harvest of hatred from the fields of skulls they have themselves planted, ideally at the hands of their victims or suitable representatives.
Tyrants are killed as punishment for unspeakable evil acts and as a warning to other would-be tyrants. Puncturing their vanity and disrespecting them is not ‘inappropriate’, it is justice and a small measure of revenge for against a person towards whom the most appropriated emotion is hatred. That such a person controlled a state makes their debasement all the more important, though quite possibly that very fact lies at the heart of why so object to what happened to him.
Sic semper tyrannis.
Well, fancy giving money to the Government!
Might as well have put it down the drain.
Fancy giving money to the Government!
Nobody will see the stuff again.
Well, they’ve no idea what money’s for –
Ten to one they’ll start another war
I’ve heard a lot of silly things, but, Lor’!
Fancy giving money to the Government!
– A.P. Herbert (no relation)
Thanks to Brian Walden for reminding me of this, in a brilliant but very depressing radio essay: Lessons from Herbert.
The man tipped as the Labour Party’s next-leader-but-one has made what could be a career-threatening mistake. He has sided with rational evidence against a popular delusion. David Miliband has said in an interview with The Sunday Times that ‘organic’ food is “a lifestyle choice”, and that there is no evidence it is any better for you than the other stuff.
As agriculture minister he may have been trying to be generous to the farmers he works with who are not on that particular bandwagon: “It’s only 4% of total farm produce, not 40%, and I would not want to say that 96% of our farm produce is inferior because it’s not organic.” But it can not be too long before he has to apologise to the green lobby.
There’s a large chunk of the British middle-class that ‘just knows’ organic is good for you, nutritionally and morally, even if they rarely buy it. And as for the Hampstead elite among whom he grew up… Is he suggesting Poppy is stupid paying £6 a jar for strained bio-dynamic baby vegetables to feed little Rufus?
If the best we get by having a choice between a “democratically” elected Statist behemoth and a dictatorially selected Statist behemoth then we’ve got a major problem. So “scale” is important when discussing democracy. Granted local authorities can be corrupt as well, but the whole notion is to “set aside” bad government, not elect in a new batch of the same. In the end, the bigger the government, no matter how it is contrived, the more self serving and unresponsive it will be. The anti-federalists knew this, but lost out for the most part
– Commenter ‘Brad‘
The French involvement in the Rwandan genocide in 1994 has been something about which the chattering classes have been largely indifferent, much to the annoyance of many Rwandans. The Rwandan government recently unceremoniously threw out the French embassy, and any French institutions with links to the French state, after a court in France issued arrest warrants against several leading Rwandans (including the president) for assassinating former President Habyarimana, whose death was the event that sparked the genocidal murder of 800,000 Tutsi. That was rather like France in 1956 calling for the arrest of the few surviving conspirators behind the (sadly failed) plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler in 1944.
I cannot escape the suspicion that if somehow, however tangentially, the USA was involved then articles about Rwanda would be a far more common thing in the media. That said, I have no doubt that someone, somewhere has concocted a conspiracy theory that it was the CIA, rather than France, who was backing the Bad Guys in 1994, supplying the Interahamwe with machetes from a secret Halliburton machete factory in somewhere in Texas.
I believe in democracy because I distrust the elites. I distrust the elites because I believe that self-deception is widespread, and the elites are particularly skilled at it. Accordingly, I believe that it is important for those in power to have the humility of knowing that they may be voted out of office.
Others believe in democracy because they are hoping to see the triumph of a particular elite. Many liberals want to see sympathetic technocrats manipulating the levers of government, nominally for the greater good. I see government technocrats as inevitably embedded in a political system that inefficiently processes information. The more they attempt, the more damage they are likely to do. Many conservatives want to see government used for “conservative ends.” However, I believe that the more that government tries to correct the flaws of families, the more flawed families will become.
– Arnold Kling
The following item is for sale. One bucket of whitewash. This has recently been obtained by the English cricket team at a knockdown price during their tour of Australia.
The English cricket team wishes to sell this precious prize of English achievement in auction as quickly as possible. However, only purchasers of a more unpopular standing may need apply. They are therefore awaiting bids for this most useful of items.
Please note: only politicians or journalists may apply.
For those of you who have been following the story of the Pakistan born ex-Muslim blogger ‘Isaac Schrödinger’ who has been seeking asylum in Canada, I am delighted to report a very happy ending.
President Bush faces two tests on Social Security (the US government pension scheme).
The first test is whether he agrees to the deal US government officials have made with Mexico. This deal would allow Mexican illegal immigrants to the United States to collect Social Security benefits whilst having only paid 18 months worth of Social Security tax to the United States government – as long as they had paid at least eight years two months worth of Mexican payroll tax to the Mexican government (the Mexican government would keep this money, not hand it over). As this is an ‘equal’ deal should any American sneak into Mexico and pay Mexican payroll tax for 18 months, having paid Social Security tax to the United States government for at least 18 months, they will get a Mexican government pension, unlike Mexican citizens who have to pay far longer to get anything like a full pension – even a full pension paid at the Mexican rate.
Libertarians might object to illegal immigrants being deported as Eisenhower did in the un-PC named ‘Operation Wetback’ in the 1950’s, but paying them a government pension seems a bit odd to start with. Even ten years of ‘contributions’ is not sustainable… a illegal immigrant with documents claiming he is 55 years of age comes illegally into the United States, pays the payroll tax for ten years and then gets a government pension till he dies. Indeed government pensions are part of the reason that free migration just does not work in a Welfare State, and make no mistake, that is what the United States has evolved into.
If a poor person can enter the country and say “I have children, pay for their education”, “I am sick give me health care – Medicaid or emergency State and local medical care” and, after a while, “I am old, give me a pension and …” then tens of millions of come and indeed about 12 million already have come illegally, and the system will collapse a lot quicker than it would otherwise. → Continue reading: Social Security: two tests for President Bush
It is some time since the book was published, but as I am increasingly finding due to pressures of time, I only recently managed to finish the book “1421, the Year China Discovered the World”, written by former Royal Naval submariner Gavin Menzies. He writes in the tradition of revisionist historians who, fired by a sense that a group of people have been done a great injustice – the Chinese treasure fleet sailors – puts his own skills to righting a perceived wrong. It is an enthralling read, drawing on Menzies’ own navigational knowledge and seamanship, his thirst for adventure and historical knowledge, and above all, by an almost Sherlock Holmes-like ability to track down awkward facts to build a case.
The case is a pretty powerful one, although there are some holes in it, at least on a first reading. What makes the book enjoyable all the way through is that it does not strike the reader that Menzies is full of that tedious modern desire to debunk the achievements of great men in order to exalt his own cleverness. This trait, this desire to show that certain brave folk have feet of clay, bores me to tears. Menzies reveres Cook, Magellan and other European explorers, but he feels the Chinese, who put together massive fleets of enormous sailing junks, have been the victims of undeserved obscurity.
Without spoiling the book for those who have not read it, what Menzies does is to show how certain maps of the mid and late 15th centuries, used by the Portugese and folk such as Columbus, could not possibly have contained the information in them without someone having done the prior work of charting certain areas. He finds all kinds of evidence: fauna, flora, jewellery, stoneware, and patterns of trade. He shows how the Chinese, centuries before Englishman John Harrison invented his vital chronometer, cracked the problem of accurately measuring longitude. Menzies’ navigational expertise is vital to showing how maps of the Middle Ages, when corrected for certain errors, make sense for the modern navigator (as an amateur yachtsman myself, I find this sort of stuff fascinating).
I have a few problems though with this thesis, although they may not be fatal to it. First of all, the mandarin-run China destroyed pretty much all the known written evidence that the voyages that Menzies writes about took place. Several of the admirals who led the expeditions were killed or disappeared. Thousands of their sailors died or found shelter in the lands on which they were shipwrecked. Although a European monk – converting to Islam to avoid problems, perhaps wisely – apparently sailed on the ships and transmitted evidence of the expeditions, it is often rather hard to see how the details that Menzies uses to base his claim can be assembled coherently. I find it frankly incredible that not one major Chinese sailing officer ever laid down independently verifiable accounts of his actions and voyages and that those accounts were all destroyed. The probabilities of such an outcome strike one as low. Menzies relies to a large extent on informed and clever conjecture. But conjecture is what we have and I am not sure how all this would pass muster in a court of law.
→ Continue reading: The Chinese got there first – quite possibly
There is an interesting story about Simone Clarke, a ballerina with the English National Ballet who has incurred the ire of many by being an outspoken member of the neo-fascist British National Party (and who happens to also have a Chinese boyfriend). Calls have been coming in thick and fast for her to be sacked by all the usual suspects.
Lee Jasper, equalities director for the mayor of London and chairman of the National Assembly Against Racism, said: “The ENB must seriously consider whether having such a vociferous member of an avowedly racist party in such a prominent role is compatible with the ethics of its organisation. I seriously doubt that it is and that should lead to her position being immediately reviewed. I think she should be sacked.” He called on funders and David Lammy, the arts minster, to intervene.
As the ENB gets tax money, it is inevitable that this becomes a political issue, which is yet another reason no artistic organisation should ever be given public money for any reason whatsoever. However I really have no fundamental problem with the owners of a company or institution sacking people or refusing to hire them in the first place for no other reason than they do not like them (which is not to say I necessarily think firing someone because you dislike them is always a good idea). Just as Lee Jasper wants Simone Clarke to be fired, I would probably be disinclined to hire Lee Jasper to work for me because I just do not like people who support using the law to abridge the right of people to freely associate and dis-associate. Oh I share his aversion to racists (though Simone Clarke can hardly be a conventional white supremacist given that she has a Chinese-Cuban boyfriend), I just despise people who want to use the the state to back their social prejudices with the violence of law.
I am perfectly happy to state my prejudices and to act on them to whatever extent suits me on my own property and perhaps to try and get them acted upon within any company I have any degree of control over, but I do not expect my views to be imposed as the law of the land. So although the issue of the detestable tax funding makes this a more murky issue, if I was one of the Nobs at the ENB, I would hire and fire on whatever criteria I thought was appropriate to the job. If the bosses think being a member of the BNP is bad for their ‘business’, they should feel free to sack Simone Clarke. If they feel her nasty fascist politics make not a jot of difference to her ability to do the job and other considerations do not matter, they should tell the people calling for her to be fired to get stuffed… but it should be their call (and of course that will only be really true if they stop taking tax money to support themselves).
Finally, thirty or so years too late, the Communists have come up with a slogan with makes Communism sound attractive:
Well, not quite. Actually this poster is a send-up of the attitude of the music industry, which is now engaged in suing the Russian-based online music website AllofMP3.com for $165 trillion.
This meme – downloading mp3 files for free is Communism! – is but the latest in a long line of similarly wrong-headed memes collusively created by stupid anti-Communists and not-so-stupid Communists, or not so stupid anti-anti-Communists (also scum in my opinion), which make Communism look and sound far better and far sexier than it ever really was or will be. Workers demanding the right to free association is Communism! Workers going on strike is Communism! Adolescents having sex is Communism! Rock and roll is Communism! Having fun is Communism!
Please note that I am not saying that downloading mp3 files for free (or for that matter going on strike or having sex) is necessarily right or wise, merely that it is very attractive, and in a way that Communism never was. I mean, for starters, how many people, under actually existing Communism, had the kit to download, legally or illegally, and then listen to mp3 files?
I tried copying the above poster from this website, but I couldn’t make that work. So, I googled it and found it from somewhere else. Does someone perhaps have something against people downloading picture files for free? (LATER: the downloading of that poster is not a problem, see comments, but just a problem for me and my photo-processing software. Apologies.)
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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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