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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I oppose Gun Control and I oppose Porn Control. In the War on Drugs, I am confident that the side I back (Drugs) will eventually be declared the winner. But what I actually like is classical music, and about a week ago I visited Mr CD in Soho, which is my second-favourite second-hand CD shop in London, to get another fix. Just now, some of the CDs there are particularly fine bargains.
Two purchases from Mr CD have given me special joy, namely two double albums of violin concertos by Vivaldi, at £2 (~$3) per album, i.e. £1 per CD.
I have a love hate relationship with the music of Vivaldi. I love it when it is played as I love it to be played, and I hate it when it is played as I hate it to be played. And I hate it when Vivaldi is played in the “authentic” style, on “original instruments”, by musicians who also fancy themselves as scholars. What this means in practice is coming down on the first beat of every bar with a great bulge of over-emphasis. What I like is best described by the Italian word “legato”, a steady line of melody in which the volume doesn’t come and go within each note. And of all the famous composers, I find that the gap between how good it can sound and how bad it can sound is greatest with Vivaldi. Good Vivaldi is heartbreakingly lovely. “Authentic” Vivaldi is boringly, relentlessly pointless, like the worst sort of ‘elevator music’.
The most detestably authentic musicians I’ve ever heard are some people called “Musica Antiqua Köln“, who are misdirected by a man called Reinhard Goebel. I have a CD by these people, which I have only kept so that I could one day denounce them to the entire world without miss-spelling their names. They shouldn’t all be taken out and shot by a firing squad which specialises in using original weapons, because that would be wrong. As a libertarian I defend the right of people to express themselves in any way that does not aggress against the rights of others, no matter how horribly they avail themselves of this right. But you get my point.
But ah joy, the Vivaldi CDs I came upon in Mr CD were played by the Chamber Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera, in other words by real musicians. I think this orchestra may be a slimmed-down version of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra itself, no less, a suspicion strengthened by the fact that one of the solo violinists in the Opus 3 Concertos (“L’Estro Armonico”) is the great Willi Boskovsky, the VPO’s long time leader. The recording was made in 1964, long before authenticity struck, but just recently enough for the sound quality of the recording to be okay. Viennese opera musicians wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a baroque recording project these days.
I played the CDs eagerly as soon as I got home, and all the joy I used to get in my youth from listening to Vivaldi came flooding rapturously back.
The difference between this sort of music making and Musica Antiqua Köln is the difference between making lingeringly rapturous love, and merely humping up and down, trying and failing to force on an orgasm.
On the same expedition I also acquired the latest recording in the LSO Live series, a beautiful performance of Elgar’s First Symphony conducted by Sir Colin Davis, brand new this time, for a mere £5. This is my favorite LSO Live CD so far. (You can find out more about this and the other excellent and keenly priced CDs in this series, and about how to purchase them, by going to the London Symphony Orchestra website.)
The impression usually left in the mind of the listener by this wonderful symphony is of great dignity and great splendour, the main tune of the first movement being especially dignified and splendid (it’s marked “nobilmente”). But in this performance it was the quieter and subtler orchestral details that most caught my attention. Sir Colin Davis is quoted in the sleeve notes thus:
“If I am conscious of being older now I think my feelings must have changed too! Like a lot of older people, I am looking for space. There is more space between the bar-lines than people understand. There is more time for musicians to gauge the rise and fall of a phrase. There is no virtue in driving things just for the sake of it, which is a temptation of youth. But of course if one did not do that when one was young one would not enjoy not doing it when one was older!”
For once, the artist’s sleeve note claim and the artist’s actual artistic achievement correspond perfectly.
People who say that money can’t buy happiness are just no good at shopping.
I realise I have already written once about this ludicrous EU plan to compel even foreign companies who want to deliver goods and services on-line to people within the EU to collect VAT on digital goods and services from their customers and pass it on to the EU.
But how do they propose to force people to register for Value Added Tax if they are in, say, India or Croatia or Ukraine? What possible motivations could an off-shore company have for collecting taxes on behalf of the European Union? How are they going to prove they have even delivered the ‘taxable’ digital goods? Even if the vendor in is a country willing to cooperate with the EU tax authorities, they can just use disposable third-party re-sellers (i.e. “Acme Sprockets Resale Limited of Bangladesh”). How stupid are these people? At least I have an answer to that last question…
Between 1937 and 1945, Heinz produced a version of alphabet spaghetti for the German market that consisted solely of little pasta swastikas.
[Update: probably an Urban Legend. Too bad, I rather liked the image of little baby Fritz having a tantrum on May 9 1945 “Waddaya mean, no more yummy little swastikas?”]
I hope that if evil days should come upon our own country, and the last army which a collapsing Empire could interpose between London and the invader were dissolving in rout and ruin, that there would be some, even in these modern days, who would not care to accustom themselves to a new order of things and tamely survive the disaster.
– Winston S. Churchill
Tony Adragna of Quasipundit has some interesting and provocative things to say about Libertarianism.
As a Libertarian, I welcome this. Tony is clearly a very intelligent and moral man (and, if he reads this, then I hope he takes those observations at face value because that is how they are meant) and he has done what every intelligent and moral person should do when confronted with any idea or philosophy: he has challenged it and challenged it well.
It would be tempting to respond be hectoring him about Libertarian ideas; tempting but unnecessary and probably counterproductive. Tony has obviously been more than a little exposed to those ideas and finds them wanting. As far as rebuttal is concerned, I shall confine myself to a rejection of his use of the term ‘anarchy’ when he really means ‘chaos’. The two concepts are quite different both in theory and practice.
But, of all his statements, this, for me, is the most telling:
“I think libertarianism is the most noble model for human society, but I don’t believe that humans can make the model work. Not yet, anyway…”
Whether intended or not, Tony pays Libertarians quite the highest of compliments. He is saying is, your world would be wonderful, if only it were practically realisable. The argument between us, therefore, is not about the worth of Libertarian ideas but about the nature of human beings and the societies they create.
But this is not why I applaud Tony. I applaud him because rather than display the reflexive conformity of so many otherwise intelligent people, he has taken the time and trouble to develop a serious critique and that is a good thing. He seeks not to dismiss but to engage. Rather than start a debate with Libertarians, Tony has done something far more significant and laudable; he has started a debate with himself.
All philosophy and political thought, of whatever stripe, has one goal: the improvement of the human condition. Welcome to the battlefront, Tony.
When society and state come into conflict, government will always choose the interests of the later. Here is some insight from Michael Wells, who sees what is happening to Gibraltar and why
After nearly 300 years, Spain is regaining control of the Rock of Gibraltar, against the wishes of nearly everyone who actually lives in Gibraltar.
The British government plans to “share sovereignty” with Spain. Until recently, Britain has insisted that any deal would have to be approved by the people of Gibraltar in a referendum, as required by Gibraltar’s constitution, but now they appear to be backing off from that position. Gibraltarians are livid, and the Gibraltar government has refused to take part in the negotiations as anything less than equal players. They’ve even made a desperate appeal to the Queen.
“Shared sovereignty” is merely a foot in the door. Spain considers anything less than full control to be an interim measure and will continue to claim full sovereignty over the territory. Spain’s foreign minister Josep Pique expressed indignation at the idea of a referendum in Gibraltar to accept or reject the agreement: “Negotiations between two sovereign states cannot be subsumed to the will of 30,000 Gibraltarians. The opinion of 30,000 people will not dictate the will of two sovereign states.” The taint of Franco endures.
Britain’s willingness to relinquish control comes partly from Gibraltar’s decreased military significance and partly from a desire to strengthen ties with Spain. According to the Telegraph, Britain wants a closer relationship with Spain to balance the power of France and Germany within the EU, a situation reminiscent of the Habsburg-Bourbon power-jockeying that created the Gibraltar situation in the first place.
But Gibraltar was probably the least significant of what Spain ceded after the War of Succession. Why are they so intent on getting it back? A peevish nationalism is certainly a large factor, but just as important is Gibraltar’s tax status. Gibraltar is exempt from the EU’s tax uniformity and, in particular, has no VAT. Pique’s belligerent ravings about smuggling and money laundering are a result of this, and echo the OECD’s criticisms of ‘harmful’ tax practices.
Gibraltar is an easy target, since it’s already part of the EU. But other European tax havens are at risk as well. Andorra, though ostensibly sovereign, is a co-principality under Spain and France. Monaco reverts to France if there is no male heir to the throne, and is dependent on France for water and electricity. As long as the EU is bent on spreading bureaucracy and high taxes throughout Europe (all EU countries are members of the OECD), the situation looks bleak for Europe’s tiny tax havens.
The Demopublicans are at it again. A campaign ‘reform’ law we all thought was born dead has been revived. It’s a congressional effort to deflect attention from the fact virtually every member raked in the Enron largesse while it lasted.
The rhetoric is they are reforming. The truth is they are passing a law aimed at holding onto the Demopublican power monopoly. Jim Babka of Real Campaign Reform reports:
Shays-Meehan (the House version of the McCain-Feingold bill) and any alternative bills will be debated in the House of Representatives Tuesday and Wednesday, February 12 & 13.
Shays-Meehan is a terrible bill that restricts your 1st Amendment rights. There are several dreadful provisions included in it, but in this message I’ll just focus on one of them.
Shays-Meehan provides for 90 days in every election year when you and organizations you belong to will be prohibited from running any ads on radio or television that might influence a federal election campaign. In other words, there will be 90 days when you will be denied the right of free speech regarding election campaigns.
And the penalty for violating this law could be as much as $25,000 or five years in prison.
Of course Samizdata’s ruling elite are not in the USA, so we’ll back the Libertarian Party candidates all we want up to election night. Perhaps we’ll add a raised finger logo after our VOTE LIBERTARIAN posts to show our opinion on the collective intelligence of Washington.
Americans can send messages to their congresslime via the Real Campaign Reform web site.
Since I made the reference to Tom Lehrer it is only fair to explain it. Or rather, let Tom Lehrer explain it in his own words.
Smut
I do have a cause, though, it is obscenity. I’m for it! Thank you. Unfortunately, the civil liberties types who are fighting this issue have to fight it, owing to the nature of the laws, as a matter of freedom of speech and stifling of free expression and so on. But we know what’s really involved: dirty books are fun! That’s all there is to it. But you can’t get up in a court and say that, I suppose. It’s simply a matter of freedom of pleasure, a right which is not guaranteed by the Constitution, unfortunately. Anyway, since people seem to be marching for their causes these days, I have here a march for mine. It’s called:
Smut!
Give me smut and nothing but!
A dirty novel I can’t shut
If it’s uncut
and unsubt–le.
I’ve never quibbled
If it was ribald.
I would devour
Where others merely nibbled.
As the judge remarked the day that he acquitted my Aunt Hortense,
“To be smut
It must be ut-
Terly without redeeming social importance.”
Por-
Nographic pictures I adore.
Indecent magazines galore,
I like them more
If they’re hard core.
Bring on the obscene movies, murals, postcards, neckties, samplers, stained
glass windows, tattoos, anything!
More, more, I’m still not satisfied!
Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers
Lurid, licentious and vile
Make me smile.
Novels that pander
To my taste for candor
Give me a pleasure sublime.
Let’s face it I love slime!
All books can be indecent books,
Though recent books are bolder.
For filth, I’m glad to say,
Is in the mind of the beholder.
When correctly viewed,
Everything is lewd.
I could tell you things about Peter Pan
And the Wizard of Oz — there’s a dirty old man!
I thrill
To any book like Fanny Hill,
And I suppose I always will
If it is swill
And really fil–thy.
Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately?
I’ve got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley.
But now they’re trying to take it all away from us unless
We take a stand, and hand in hand we fight for freedom of the press.
In other words: Smut! I love it.
Ah, the adventures of a slut.
Oh, I’m a market they can’t glut.
I don’t know what
Compares with smut.
Hip, hip, hooray!
Let’s hear it for the Supreme Court!
Don’t let them take it away!
For those who are unfamiliar with Mr.Lehrer’s work, the preceeding is from the CD “That Was The Week That Was”. He was a solo piano/vocalist performer of his own biting and hilarious satirical songs; wrote music for the TV series “That Was The Week That Was” (Tee Dubhu Three); and who could ever forget his stunning songs for Sesame Street like “Ly”?
If you aren’t familiar with him, you should be. Go forth and purchase.
Erratum: a reader points out it was “The Electric Company” and not “Sesame Street” for which the “Ly” was written.
Natalija and Kathy’s point that two women are on the ‘pro-porn’ side while two men are on the ‘anti-porn’ side has interesting connotations.
Forty or fifty years ago it would have been different. Nice girls were prim and proper and never thought of such things so guys read Playboy… or so guys were brainwashed. But then came the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, Tom Lehrer, Supreme Court Decisions, Free Love and Feminism.
Radical Left Feminists have always been basically anti-pornography. Because of it, they have often found themselves in bed with the Extremist Right Christians. This has caused a role reversal. Women were liberated from old stereotypes and seem to have promptly used their new liberty in the pursuit of happiness. Meanwhile, Left men were brainwashed by the feminazi’s that porn is demeaning to women and should not be allowed. Right men were just beaten even harder with the same Old Testament whip.
This time around the girls get to lead the charge against the establishment.
I think our lasses have already started rolling up the left flank…
Well if the boys can have Inter-blog Gun Wars, why not Inter-blog Porn Wars? And contrary to what one e-mail said, I do not write these things just to wind people up…
 …well, I must confess I do rather enjoy seeing Kevin leap up and down every time the subject comes up again.
But in truth I do think the issue lies on the edge of some very fundamental questions about human society and what makes it work, or not. Kathy Kinsley has joined the battle, giving William Sulik a forceful handbagging. I agree with Kathy and digging out my Oxford dictionary find a much more straightforward definition of pornography:
pornography n. 1 the explicit description or exhibition of sexual activity in literature, films, etc., intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings. 2 literature etc. characterised by this. [Gk pornographos writing of harlots f. porne prostitute + graphos write]
As Kathy also mentions, it is interesting to find that women seem to be the ones who tend to the ‘pro-porn’ side of this argument. Last time I wrote about this issue and, as has also been the case this time, generated a big spike in e-mails, women overwhelmingly agreed with me whereas men were more evenly divided.
Also I do address the matter of the more extreme forms of porn in my latest pro-porn frolic. Like many others I have poked around the Internet and seen some of the more alarming stuff but I cannot help thinking that it is much less significant that many seem to insist. It is a fact that people are capable of astonishing brutality and cruelty, but having seen that first hand on a large scale, I cannot see how people can then conclude when the same things happen on a small scale elsewhere, it must be due to pornography. Why not vodka or anything else you care to think up?
I will try to make some time later to answer more of the e-mails and bloggings on the subject that have sprung up overnight. I have a feeling these issues are going to have a long shelf life.
The music industry is a wonderful example of how established players in any market often feel they have a vested interest in stasis rather than dynamic change. Rather than see new technical innovations as potential boons, the industry has spent a fortune trying to use the state to defend its existing business models with an army of lobbyists and lawyers, attempting to un-invent the technologies that they (rightly) see as shattering the current structure of its multi-billion dollar industry. Steven Den Beste has a good article on the subject and makes an excellent point regarding the self-defeating culture in the boardrooms of the music industry majors:
As long as the industry doesn’t see it from that point of view, they will continue to try to fight the future. No industry can ultimately survive if it thinks of its customers as enemies; ultimately the industry has to adopt the point of view of its customers and cater to their desires. You cannot sell someone what you want them to have. You have to sell them what they want to buy.
A classic case of this syndrome of ‘customer-as-enemy’ was provided by Steve Heckler a VP from Sony Pictures Entertainment in August 2000 who said:
The [music] industry will take whatever steps it needs to protect itself and protect its revenue streams,” Heckler said. “It will not lose that revenue stream, no matter what. […] Sony is going to take aggressive steps to stop this. We will develop technology that transcends the individual user. We will firewall Napster at source – we will block it at your cable company, we will block it at your phone company, we will block it at your [ISP]. We will firewall it at your PC.
Although Sony tried to apply some damage limitation spin to Heckler’s remarks soon afterwards, this is clearly delusions of grandeur on a spectacular scale and is exactly the mentality to which Den Beste has alluded. The major players think they can translate their wealth into political muscle and use the state to crush would-be new entrants that seek to undermine their businesses. taking out Napster has only encouraged this flawed thinking. Additionally yet more money is being spent on technological fixes which are also doomed to fail due to the ‘Swiss Watch Effect’ (it is cheaper and easier to smash a Swiss Watch than it is to make one): they spend millions on copy protection that will be broken within months or weeks by the worldwide army of Internet linked 15 year old crackers who work for free.
Another indication of the scale of ‘wrong-think’ going on in boardrooms is that they do not seem to realise that many people’s CD player is their computer. I might have purchase the new Natalie Imbruglia CD White Lilies Island but I have read that most computers gag on some of the tracks due to copy protection and I do tend to play a CD in my computer whilst I surf the Net. As a result I have not bought the CD. Well I suppose if the company strategy is to make it hard for me to rip any tracks into MP3s, one way of doing that is to discourage me from buying their products all together. Somehow I don’t think that was quite the effect they were hoping for but that is the one they have got.
[Update: article amended with Steve Heckler of Sony’s exact remarks thanks to the excellent input of readers Tino D’Amico and Joachim Klehe]
Patrick Crozier is happy to see the old lags of British terrestrial television being given a run for their money
UK Channel 5 has been dismissed by the elite as being a non-stop orgy of sex and violence. Such statements in themselves lay bare the warped priorities of our ‘leaders’ but there is one other problem: it isn’t true. Channel 5 is simply the most dynamic and innovative British terrestrial channel around.
It has the best reality TV programme: The Mole
It has the best two animations: The Powerpuff Girls and Tintin
And it has some of the best history documentaries around. My favourite has to be Hitler’s Henchmen. Not least because an inspired piece of scheduling led to biographies of Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler being interspersed with shows covering the life and works of John Prescott and Pete Waterman.
In fact, Channel 5’s documentaries seem to be giving BBC2 and Channel 4 something of a headache. For many years these stuck up elito-vision channels have been pumping out nothing but revisionist pap. You know, ‘Churchill was a drunken child molestor’, that sort of thing. But then Channel 5 started broadcasting things like “British Heroes of World War 2” (the title says it all). And then “Secrets of World War 2”. In the hands of the elite this would have been all about how Churchill contributed to the slaughter of Russians on the Eastern Front but from Channel 5 it a set of stories about the daring exploits of our ancestors.
I do not know if Channel 5’s documentaries are particularly popular. But the reaction (especially from Channel 4) has been revealing. To “Secrets of WW2” Channel 4 countered with “Battle Stations”. To “Heroes” they countered with “Commando”. And to a fine 3-parter on the Falklands they dusted off a 10-year old documentary of their own and put it out as a spoiler.
But the really interesting thing about this is the way the content has changed. Quite simply, Channel 4 has sobered up, smelt the coffee and dumped the revisionism. Commando was an hour long show but contained little more than half an hour’s actual information. Could it be that the missing half an hour was the revisionism they had to axe to get the ratings?
Patrick Crozier
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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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