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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The conjunction of dreaming and ruling generates tyranny.
– Michael Oakeshott
Next Sunday I expect to be headed with a crowd of French libertarians, from the place de la Bastille towards the headquarters of the French finance ministry at Bercy in the eastern districts of Paris.
Interest in the event seems to be building up, with emails buzzing around asking for a lift from places like Pau (almost in Spain), or has anyone got a couple of flag poles? The Gadsden and the Culpepper flag should be flying.
Meanwhile, in London, not a sausage.
Paul Marks laments attitudes in Britain to anti-tax protests.
Those people who know me will know that I like family owned enterprises (more common in Germany than in Britain these days) and that I like the people who are at the top of manufacturing companies to be trained in such things as engineering rather than such things as law (I sometimes feel that many British managers think a “machine tool” is something to do with kinky sex). But, have no fear, I will say no more about my personal prejudices – and I fully accept that Germany has higher government spending and (in some ways) more government regulations than Britain.
However, something has caught my attention recently. In Germany a pop song denouncing the German government’s tax increases has reached the top of the charts.
In Britain taxes are increasing much faster than in Germany (government spending and regulations are increasing at a faster rate also) and, sure enough, a pop song has been written that attacks this increase in taxation – and the song was mentioned on B.B.C. Radio 4’s “Today Programme”.
But in Britain the anti tax protest song is not being treated seriously even, it appears, by the man who wrote it. Nobody expects this song to get to the top of anything – even though the British government have also told lies about tax and are increasing taxes more than the German government is.
Is the basic culture of Britain so collectivist that a protest against statism is automatically a joke?
Paul Marks
I have felt for some time the Internet is bringing the “Two Cultures” together, and this poetry reading (1 MB mp3) by British poet Fred Turner is a case in point.
A tree house to the stars! What a gloriously Carrollian idea!
Alice Bachini has been out shopping, for her aunties:
What I can afford is Marks and Spencer room spray, or Woolworths scented cushions for putting in your wardrobe. But it seems to me that if aunties wanted that kind of thing, they would buy it for themselves already.
If they wanted a normal sort of thing, they’d buy it themselves.
Because so many people can now afford to get normal things, there are now special places called gift shops, and special mail order catalogues called gift catalogues, to enable you to buy abnormal things to give to people at Christmas. This is a recently encountered abnormal thing selling operation, the dead-tree catalogue for which came with the Sunday Times of about a fortnight ago. My favourite abnormality here is the hat you put on to catch incoming ping pong balls.
Rich people used to love this kind of nonsense, when they were the only ones who could afford it. But now they are above such stuff, and live in places which are ostentatiously full of empty space. → Continue reading: Stuff
Does anybody else recall reading this rather doom-laden analysis written by John Derbyshire?.
I seem to remember that Mr.Derbyshire was treated to something of a rotten tomato-splattering from much of Blogland in response to his heretical pessimism. Whilst I must admit that it makes for a sobering read (to say the least) there was one prediction which struck me as all too plausible:
“Actual crime — murder, rape, robbery, burglary, and assault — will skyrocket, but it will be illegal to talk about it.”
That plausibility began to look like distinct possibility when I read this:
“An editor whose newspapers print lists of local crimes has claimed the police are trying to gag him.”
Now that’s not quite the same as making it illegal, but the impulse is apparent.
“Andy Jackson of Avon and Somerset Police said: “We do not want a blanket list of crimes because we don’t benefit from that.”
No, I’m sure you don’t benefit from that, Mr.Jackson. After all, if the tax-cattle are exposed to the reality they might begin to wonder what the hell they’re paying you for.
“We wanted to present it in a responsible way so readers weren’t alarmed by large volumes of crime.”
Note: no denial that there are ‘large volumes’ of crime, merely a plea for the statistics to be presented in a responsible manner (whatever that means).
And so it begins. And Mr.Derbyshire, if he ever reads this, might feel just a little vindicated.
[My thanks to Chris Tame of the Libertarian Alliance for the link to the BBC story above]
In response to rioting by Muslims in Nigeria which has left over a 100 people dead, the organisers of Miss World have hastily arranged for the whole competition to be moved to Britain.
Rumour has it that the international beauty pageant will resume in Finsbury Park
Samizdata, despite Antoine’s admonitions, has been getting very depressed and depressing lately, so time for some more sports news. It’s only a game, it doesn’t matter, no dead bodies or territory changing hands, good way to let off fascist steam, blah blah blah.
Too bad the English news isn’t that good there either. Oh well.
Anyway, cricket. (That’s the one of which an American once said to Brit interviewer and sports journo Michael Parkinson: “And they do all that on horseback?”) I wish I’d told you earlier in the year what I thought of the England batting, which is that it is a collective Graham Hick. Graham Hick was the Zimbabwean who never quite did as well as he should have as an England batsman, and who got lumbered with the soubriquet of “flat track bully”, that is, good against bad bowling, but bad against good bowling. During the last couple of years, England have been racking up big scores against second-rate test bowling attacks, with very few flops, and it was being said that this time, this time, the Ashes series in Australian this winter just might be different. I thought then that this was folly. How you murder second-raters says very little about how you’ll fare against the likes of McGrath, Gillespie and Warne.
As Warne said before the first test in Brisbane, England will hold their own if they are at their absolute best, but if they slip up Australia will be all over them and they’ll crumple. Too right mate. England had one good day at Brisbane, but in the end were humiliated. And now at Adelaide they started with a good batting day and duly held their own, but then they had two bad days and are heading for another crushing defeat.
I saw this coming half a year ago. I did. But how can I prove it? I can’t. I said it to Antoine, I think, but will he back me? Antoine? I doubt it. Maybe I imagined that I even said it.
So? What of it? Well, I can now see another disappointment being cobbled together by over-optimistic English sports commentators. England have just defeated New Zealand, Australia and now this afternoon South Africa at rugby, all at Twickenham (which incidentally is the town-stroke-suburb where Patrick Crozier lives), the English national stadium. The first two they only just squeaked past by the narrowest of margins. South Africa they did slaughter, but the South Africans played for an hour with only fourteen men. All three visiting teams were manifestly using these more than somewhat insignificant fixtures to test new men and new moves and new combinations. But never mind all that. Hurrah!! England are going to win the World Cup!!
I don’t believe a word of it. England always peak between World Cups. And someone in the Southern Hemisphere, usually Australia, peaks at the World Cup. France play badly but not badly enough in the early games, then play one dazzling game, then get knocked out, and a Southern Hemisphere team wins it. England always contrive to look tired at the World Cup, presumably because they always are tired. All that peaking when it doesn’t matter takes it out of you, I guess.
You read it here first.
I guess I’ll have to cheer myself up with some more politics.
Nobody should be surprised. Nobody. We all know that if you keep picking at a scab it will eventually turn septic. You can only torment even the most good-natured of dogs before it turns on you and takes a chunk out of your leg.
Despite the ridicule and loathing that has been directed at them (much of it justified I hasten to add), the British National Party has scored another election success in the North of England, this time taking a local authority ward in Blackburn, the parliamentary constituency of the current Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw who has responded by issuing a desperate-sounding public plea for ‘more tolerance’ in our society.
He’s worried. He is right to be worried. And I’m worried too because, despite strenous efforts to market themselves as decent and patriotic, the BNP remains a viscerally nationalist organisation who pose as big a threat to liberty as their counterparts on the left.
However, panic is not yet due; this was merely a council by-election and the BNP are not about to take their seat at the top table of power. But, taken together with their other recent successes at local level, it has to be admitted that they are enjoying a growing popularity as well as building a plausible grassroots movement.
→ Continue reading: Ignore no more
This news in from my alma mater, CMU, on the NSF Million Books Project:
The NSF’s Information Technology Research Program has also awarded a $3 million, three-year grant to the Million Books Project to support digitization of core academic materials, technical reports, government documents and cultural treasures.
I made the prediction to friends in 1980 that by 2010 one would be able to sit on a beach in the South Pacific and access any reference work or data on Earth, whether it be 15th century bills of laiding from the Library of Lisbon or the contents of the Library of Congress.
I think we’re still on schedule.
Jacob Resler wonders what would have happend to Britain in World War II if the United States had taken an ‘even handed’ approach between the UK and Nazi Germany.
The British Government has imposed a de facto embargo on the supply of defence related items to Israel. A spokesman of the Israeli Defence Ministry by the name of Mr. Kuti Mor confirmed this in an interview. There were 130 items that the Ministry of Defence whished to purchase from British suppliers, but an export permit has been denied by Britain. British officials said it was their policy not to send military supplies to zones of conflict though they never openly declared an embargo. Most of the items were spare parts, and two of them have been cited as examples: one is a pyrotechnic charge needed to eject the pilot from Phantom fighter planes in emergencies; the other is a small engine used in unmanned aircraft (drones).
It seems Britain’s government idea is that the best way to fight terrorism is to punish its victims. In this Britain fits very well in the EU, it behaves exactely like France, Belgium or Germany. (I could not think of a worse curse). Interesting what would have happened in both World Wars if the US had adopted a policy of not sending supplies to zones of conflict. I think this piece of idiocy needs to be more exposed to the public.
Jacob Resler
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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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