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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Jonathan Hanson has spotted some interesting parallels between Tinseltown and Downing Street
In ruminating over the current government in England, an analogy occurred to me that I hoped you might find worthy of publishing and/or commenting on.
It hit me that there are rather creepy similarities between the Blair left liberal machine and Hollywood’s current marketing strategy.
Hollywood is no longer interested in quality, only in what sells. The producers and directors strive to appeal to the lowest common denominator of moviegoer (constituent?), in a bald-faced effort to bring in the most money (votes). The content of the message is unimportant, as to whether or not it has a moral, a germ of spiritual inspiration, or the slightest connection to reality. Hollywood is happy to exploit minorities, the poor, violence in society, and numerous other causes, not in the name of justice, but in the name of profit. The result is millions of moviegoers sitting slack-jawed while being spoon-fed pablum.
Am I missing anything?
Jonathan Hanson, Tucson, Arizona
[Editor: No Jonathan, you are not missing a damn thing]
After the world cup, Wimbledon, the ‘presidential miscarriage‘ by Cherie Blair, the Prime Minister’s wife.
What is the protocol for such occasions I wonder? Street parties or condolence cards would probably seem vindictive or tacky. Perhaps we should ask if the ‘presidential’ family medical records can be accessed by the Westminster Council’s social services department under one of the pretexts offered under the Regulation of Investigative Powers Act.
Then it would be fairly straightforward to ensure that we could be treated to photostats of ultra-sound scans and blood test results in foreign newspapers if not British ones.
As I’ve just eaten, I’d rather not pursue this line of thought any further.
[Editor: Given that some responses have rather missed the point Antoine was making, let me point out that Tony Blair wanted to give mere local authorities the power under the Regulation of Investigative Powers Act the ability to access the private medical records of pretty much anyone. As a result, some lowly council functionary might have got hold of hapless Cherie Blair’s medical records involving her miscarriage and given how insecure local authorities are, they could have ended up in the press. Of course Tony Blair would not want that, but then why should anyone be subject to the state prying into such private matters? That is the point Antoine was making, not some vindictive jab at Cherie Blair]
Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.
– Alan Corenk
It is nice to think that the lure of filthy lucre might help spread the capitalist bug around the planet to even the most inhospitable regions. In a story which caught my eye, Reuters reports that a host of western banks are gearing up to cash in on growing demand in Islamic countries for bank services.
Ok, the banks will have to negotiate their way around the thicket of prohibitions on interest payments and so forth, but even so, if commercial ties spread, I think that is a good thing. And over time customers may even get to realise that interest – damned as wicked usury in the Islamic credo – is in fact no more than the price attached to deferring current spending over future gain. It is another chink in the armour of ignorance about business, another step in that great and glorious thing – globalisation. Who knows, one day Muslim investment bankers will be holding conferences on “how to spread business to backward statist economies in Europe”? You read it here first.
‘Animal rights’ campaigners of the RSPCA were themselves the target of protests by rural activists who are having their entire way of life criminalised.
But the fact is, the establishment will not take any notice of well mannered protests by people from the leafy shires. Of course there is indeed an established template for a minority-within-a-minority group in the British Isles to successfully defeat a majoritarian tyranny, provided you are willing to fight your corner for many years.
Sadly that template is Sinn Fein, the ‘political wing’ of the Provisional IRA: if the deck is stacked against you, play the game by different rules, a fact that has not been lost on some of the members of the Countryside Alliance’s splinter factions… and those ‘splinters’ are rather larger than many care to admit.
Yes, that is right. Regardless of the facts presented about how nationalised industries fail in every other sector, the moral (it is funded by theft) and intellectual (it makes no economic sense) arguments against a socialist health service that is based on force backed appropriation has fallen on deaf ears in Britain.
So how about a purely utilitarian analysis based on life and death? The NHS is institutionally incapable of not perpetrating horrors like this. If you pay taxes in the UK, that is what you are paying for. On nothing other than utilitarian grounds based on self-preservation, do you still want the NHS to survive?
I occasionally use the NHS myself under the logic as as the state forces me to contribute to it regardless of alternate arrangements I might make, I may as well use it to recoup at least some of my own money. In fact I am going to submit to its ‘tender cares’ tomorrow. Wish me luck!
Calling all you former anti-Apartheid protesters of years gone by: do you miss the comradery of old days standing in front of the South African embassies in London or Washington DC or Paris in protest at a regime that treated people not as individuals but just as a collective racial category? Have you not been able to bring yourself to throw out the old placards and tee-shirts? Well have I got some great news for you! Britain is introducing overt political Apartheid and so your time has come again!
Huh? You’re not interested? Oh, I see… it is only so called right wing collectivist racial discrimination you were against, not collectivist racial discrimination itself.
Sorry to have bothered you.
It seems Britain’s Labour government is quite keen to confer honorary knighthoods on men not usually regarded as being on the left from the United States. Earlier this year former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani was so honoured, and now it’s the turn of Federal Reserve Chairman no less.
Greenspan has come in for some stick of late for perhaps allowing the money supply to grow too fast during the helter-skelter stock market of the late 1990s, though as with all these things, hindsight is easy. But surely it’s ironic that the jazz-loving central banker, a former acolyte of Ayn Rand and one-time supporter of gold-backed money should receive a gong from a left-wing British government.
Blogger Alan K. Henderson has a rather flattering idea for protests at the Beijing Olympics.
After reading about Yahoo’s complicity with the Chicoms, I started thinking about the Beijing Olympics. Maybe everyday American spectators could sneak in a little protest here and there. The only idea I have right off the bat is strategically chosen wardrobe. Shirts emblazoned with the Taiwanese flag or that famous photo of the guy standing in front of the Tianenmen tanks might not get past customs (American inspectors might seize them, for all we know – don’t want to upset our partners in peace ). But Samizdata T-shirts are another matter; inspectors won’t think twice about them, and even though Chinese locals won’t know what the eye-in-the-pyramid logo means, they’ll probably ask…
Alan K. Henderson
[Editor: of course if they look at the back of the T-shirts and see the slogan ‘When the state watches you, dare to stare back’ they might have a teeny inkling that these shirts might not be indicative of enthusiasm for the collectivist world view]
Absolutely, Perry, I couldn’t agree more though moral (un)ambiguity of collaborating (via commerce or otherwise) with a repressive regime was not in question at all. My point was either you condemn Yahoo! for doing business with China in the first place or boycott them all, not just Yahoo! as other global companies are guilty of the association with or assistance to the Chinese government.
The argument that Yahoo!’s measures are “analogous to Coca Cola agreeing to embed a recording device in each bottle so that the state can hear what each person is talking about whilst they sip their drink” does not fairly capture the moral charge of the comparison. Yahoo!’s business is communication, mediation and information and these are not intrinsic to Coca Cola’s business. That is, Yahoo! by the very nature of its business has to comply with the Chinese government requirements or not do any business at all. If Coca Cola company installed listening devices into its bottles, it would amount to a step beyond the one Yahoo has taken in agreeing to allow monitoring of its services de jure, so to speak, (which the Chinese officials can carry out de facto anyway).
As with Coca Cola, it is communism’s hapless victim for the most part who are able to surf the internet even in its truncated form. And they know very well (or should) what their government is capable of and will not (or should not) be using it in a way that will expose them or get them into trouble. For example, in the Cold War days dissidents knew that phones were not reliable and tried to use them ‘safely’, i.e. in a way difficult for authorities to decypher.
Again, I agree that it was wrong for Yahoo! to take that step and do prefer Microsoft’s hard headed approach (there is a first for everything!). So, boycott Yahoo! alongside those companies who in dealing with China help its officials to repress their victims instead of treating Yahoo! as the only big business without a back-bone.
Adriana, who knows a thing or two about the reality of living in a repressive regime, points out that doing business in a place in China is not a morally unambiguous matter and asked
[D]id anyone call for a boycott of Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola companies during the Cold War? I remember the drinks in their distinctive bottles that put some fizz into my rather gloomy childhood under communism.
I guess my answer is that I have no problem with selling Coca Cola to communist states, after all it is communism’s hapless victim for the most part who will be drinking it. Also trade itself can be wonderfully subversive… but what Yahoo is doing is analogous to Coca Cola agreeing to embed a recording device in each bottle so that the state can hear what each person is talking about whilst they sip their drink…ie, not just trading with tyrants but actually collaborating with the repression of their subject peoples. That is what Yahoo (and Cisco, Oracle and their ilk) are indeed doing.
And that I rather do have a problem with.
However please do not think I want just Yahoo singled out. As Adriana said, Cisco thought nothing of installing the telecom architecture to enable the Chinese Panopticon approach to the Internet. Whenever companies do business with those who would abridge our liberties, they rarely do so for reasons of sheer malevolence but rather due to the cost-benefit to shareholders of working in such regions of the world (though Oracle chief Larry Elison does like to hold up pro-fascist Napoleon as a paragon of virtue so in his case who knows).
My view is that not just Yahoo but Cisco, Oracle and anyone else who wants to get rich selling the apparatus of repression should be given to understand when they make their utilitarian business decisions that part of the cost will be people who see the world in more moral terms taking their business elsewhere. Do not underestimate the value to a company of its corporate image:
‘Cisco and Yahoo, Big Satan and Little Satan: international partners in repression’
…is not the sort of meme these guys want in circulation as it is just not good for business, and that is why I support noisy boycotts which involve saying things that people in boardrooms do not want to hear.
Far left statist Christian peace campaigners Pax Christi have issued a declaration on the impending war to depose Iraqi despot Saddam Hussain. It makes for a fascinating insight into the meta-context of the organization’s members, which include former KGB favourite cleric, Bruce Kent:
The so-called ‘war on terrorism’ is an act of political rhetoric that must be distinguished from a military campaign against a sovereign state. It cannot be used to justify an attack on Iraq, and any offensive planned to counteract the perceived threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction should not be represented as a war against terrorists.
What the hell is morally enabling about a sovereign state as opposed to a bunch of trans-national terrorists? How does an act by a state or against a state somehow take on a different moral quality simply by virtue of the fact it is carried out by or against a collective? Are there no objective moral qualities? Because Saddam Hussain presides over a sovereign nation and Osama bin Laden did not, what is the difference morally how they may be attacked? Surely an attacks is objectively just (or not) regardless of the fact a nation state is (is not) involved.
We are pleased to note that Prime Minister Tony Blair has assured Parliament that Britain will not support any military action against Iraq without the authority of the United Nations.
As I mentioned yesterday when I attacked the next Archbishop of Canterbury, what possible moral authority can spring from a ghastly cabal of benighted states like the UN? To get approval from the UN for something is not a moral matter but rather a political matter… the calculus is ‘We’ll vote to lift restrictions on ivory sales if The Peoples Republic of Kleptostan votes for x in the general assembly’. Why the hell do these people hold up UN authority as having any validating moral quality whatsoever? As our resident Reuters wonk Tom Burroughes said yesterday, people like the excellent Jim Henley have made all manner of rational arguments against going to war with Saddam Hussain, but people like Pax Christi are incoherence incarnate and with a sense of their own moral superiority to boot which is insufferable and laughable equal measure.
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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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