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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There are times when I suffer an acute sense of embarrassment when I tell people that I am a lawyer. The discomfort is usually at its worst when stories like this emerge:
New York’s attorney general Eliot Spitzer has demanded changes to the way Wal-Mart sells toy guns in its New York stores.
Mr Spitzer says the guns don’t carry a number of distinctive markings required by state law, meaning they could be confused with real firearms putting people at risk of being shot by police officers.
When I first read this, my immediate response was to wonder who exactly the Plaintiff is until I realised that, as Attorney General, his client is the the City or State of New York (I believe that is right but I am happy to stand open to correction).
Okay, fair enough. Mr.Spitzer would probably respond by arguing that he is only doing his job. However, leaving aside the rather comical image of Mr.Spitzer traipsing around his local Wal-Mart examining the toys for regulatory compliance, would the good burghers of New York not be entirely reasonable in asking whether their Attorney General has anything better to do?
I suppose of most significance is the threat of legal action against this retailer based not on what they have done or even allowed to happen or failed to prevent happening but on what Mr.Spitzer claims could happen. This is an unfortunate trend. State enforcement procedures are a big enough nightmare for most merchants without introducing a precautionary element driven by febrile imaginations.
Defences of US marines raising the US flag in Baghdad may have been missing the point. Before that statue fell, the topic was war. As soon as it hit the ground, the question is “What next?”
There are some pretty major fights going on behind closed doors in Washington at the moment, it seems pretty clear. Tony Blair seems keen to side with American doves – and the views of France, Russia et al are even more predictable than they are irrelevant.
The question is this: whose flag shall fly over the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance? At the moment US troops have that special diplomatic immunity that comes from firing big guns. But when things settle down a little, will they be subject to Iraqi law? Will there be a semi-permanent US forces base established in Iraq, under US jurisdiction? Will General Garner, the designated head of ORHA, be answerable to the Iraqi head of an Iraqi Interim Authority, or will it be the other way around? Most of all, will ORHA have a free reign to root out Ba’athists and stamp on ongoing corruption? → Continue reading: Flying the Flag, Part 2
The Iraqi Minister of Information, whose ability to defy reality has made him something of a cult figure in the West, has had a website dedicated to his pronouncements which is already drawing massive numbers of hits.
His ability to work for a doomed cause and show fortitude in the midst of great strain is already triggering commentators to wonder about where his talents may be most usefully employed in future. Here are some of my suggestions:
- Manager of Sunderland Football Club (with apologies to Iain Murray)
- Tory Party campaign manager (no explanation really required)
- The manager of George Galloway’s campaign to be known as a great British patriot
- Tony Blair’s humility counsellor
- Spin doctor for the Democrat’s presidential candidate (that’s my top choice)
- George W. Bush’s elocution coach (sorry Dubya, I could not resist)
- Robert Fisk’s psychiatrist (a tough assignment, admittedly)
- Michael Moore’s obesity counsellor (another tough one)
- Chief coach to the English cricket team
And finally,
- Management consultant to the BBC’s news service.
The estimable Stephen Pollard writes that the sheer shamelessness of parts of the anti-war crowd means they are unlikely to learn a good lesson from the fall of Saddam’s regime. Hence we (by which I assume he means pro-war types) should be prepared to get nasty against our opponents, launching personal attacks, emplying savage ridicule, and the like.
This is mighty tempting, but it causes me problems. Yes, taking the p**s out of thugs like Michael Moore, Ted Rall or the latest Hollywood lame-brain is good fun and occasionally worth the effort, but I am not sure that simply using the very same tactics used by our opponents (such as character assassination, etc) is really going to work. Others may disagree (please comment below) but I think that part of the reason why our libertarian meme is spreading is because of clear-cut events like the collapse of the Berlin Wall, globalisation, etc, as well as decades of hard intellectual slog by folk with weird surnames like von Mises or Rand. I also think that being decent human beings actually helps, although by “decent” I certainly don’t mean we should be meek or not jump to anger in the face of obvious idiocy.
I must admit – and I share the frustration of Perry de Havilland, Stephen Pollard and others – to being annoyed by the moral and intellectual bankruptcy and sheer brass neck of those who even now decry what the Americans and British forces have achieved in Iraq. But I am keeping my cool (well most of the time!). We are better than our opponents, and I suspect, deep down, they know it.
And I also think it worth pointing out that although many of those who opposed the military campaign in Iraq are motivated by hatred of the West and its freedoms, many inside the libertarian parish had doubts or opposed it outright for good and honorable reasons (fears about civil liberties, public spending, deaths of innocent civilians, etc). Let’s not forget that.
The war is winding down into its “this war isn’t over yet – there are still pockets of resistance” phase, and now, I feel, is the time to be talking about soya sauce, and its various occidental rivals. In connection with soya sauce, my blog-enthusiasm of the week, Dave Barry, is right when he says that you need to experience this. This is a catchy tune full of fun, cleverly illustrated by a team of top graphic designers. This illustrated tune both promotes a Japanese brand of soya sauce, and criticises non-Japanese rivals, such as “Worcestershire” Sauce (which I prefer to think of as Worcester sauce but that may just be me).
Is this one of the futures of advertising on the Internet? It’s no good just putting up a sign saying “buy our soya sauce – it’s very nice”, although I’ve seen far stupider slogans. No, you need a bit of wit, fun, pep, fizz, and Dave Barry appeal. That way your stupid advert will stop being a mere advert and become an Internet Meme.
And could it also be one of the futures of pop music? There was a time when advertising jingles were strictly poor cousins to regular non-promotional pop songs. But could the economics of the music business be about to change this? After all, these people want you to listen to this tune for free, and to circulate it to all your friends and internet contacts. They make their money when everyone reveals their increased awareness of the brand to market researchers and when they buy the sauce.
On the subject of non-Japanese rivals, I was at school with a chap called Perrins, whose family were involved with Lea & Perrins Sauce, which is a particular variety of Worcester Sauce. Perrins had unlimited supplies, but we would have preferred it if he had been called Rowntree (like the gruesome Senior Prefect in Lindsay Anderson’s movie If), or perhaps Mars, or maybe Cadbury. The Lea & Perrins website calls its product “Worcestershire” sauce too, I notice. And this site also elaborates on the Worcester sauce theme, although this one calls it “Worcherstershire” sauce, which is definitely wrong. Personally I don’t much like Worcester Sauce, although I quite like Worcester Sauce flavoured crisps. However, I prefer these Marmite flavoured crisps, which are truly excellent, and also greatly to be preferred to Bovril flavoured crisps, in my opinion.
Best of all, saucewise, is surely Hellmann’s Mayonnaise. Who can forget the product placement of this mighty mayo in Woody Allen’s movie Hannah and Her Sisters? Not me, I can tell you that for nothing.
Aaaaahhhh … braaaaaaands.
I attended a conference on business ethics today. Interesting experience. The world’s big investment houses, like the U.S. giant pension fund Calpers, are increasingly using their muscle to force firms to stop certain activities which they deem wrong – such as using child labour or wrecking the environment – and do more in other areas, such as cleaning up their accounting standards.
This is a big and growing area of business reporting and activity. I have mixed views about all this. On the one hand, I question some of the arguments used by folk to decry certain businesses as unethical, such as those which use child labour, for instance. If a shoe manufacturer hires 13-year-olds in Malaysia, for example, we rise up in horror. But the question that should be asked is, what else would these youngsters be doing if no such jobs existed? Would they be in school? In fact, when investors boycott firms which employ such youngsters, they may unwittingly be making life worse, not better.
Yet clearly, if people feel strongly about certain issues, such as preserving wetlands, avoiding pollution or boycotting the arms trade, for instance, there is nothing wrong at all in them using their economic power to do so. So long as they do not at the same time demand government coercion, one can have no complaints.
In fact, using the forces of the market to bring about outcomes which we favour is surely a good way for us gung-ho capitalists to show those often traditionally hostile to capitalism about how the market can be a force for good. A useful meme to spread, I’d have thought.
A lot of focus on corporate behaviour, of course, centres on how to avoid repeats of the collapse of firms like Enron and WorldCom. Avoiding fraud is, as several speakers at today’s conference suggested, incredibly difficult. What is clear, however, is that in today’s increasingly service-orientated economy, one of the most valuable things a firm has is its reputation. Reputations take a long time to build but can be destroyed in days. Take the collapse of accountancy giant Arthur Anderson, which fell soon after its involvement with Enron’s accounting scams was disclosed.
And this surely rams home another good meme from the libertarian side – if you want to pursue self interest and achieve wealth, then being ethical about it is not a luxury which only the rich can afford – it is a brute necessity.
Maybe we all need the occasional Enron event to remind us of that fact.
The news that Kirkuk, centre of the northern Iraqi oil industry, has fallen not to the coalition, but to US backed Kurdish Peshmerga has electrified the Kurds and horrified the Turks. I suspect that the Jash (pro-Saddam Kurds) are going to be cut to pieces unless they manage to find the few coalition troops in that part of Iraq to surrender to.
The Turkish foreign ministry has said any attempt by Kurdish forces to take permanent control of Kirkuk would be unacceptable to them. They are claiming on domestic Turkish TV that the US has promised remove the Peshmerga from Kirkuk once order has been restored, and that Turkish military observers will be going there to make sure this happens.
Firstly I do not for one minute believe a word the Turks are saying: I would be astonished if the USA was idiotic enough to make such a rash promise to the Turks, who frankly do not have all that much political capital to call on in Washington D.C. at the moment. The US would be insane to alienate the highly motivated Peshmerga, who it must be remembered have made great efforts to assist the lightly armed US forces in the north. What possible motivation does the US have to get in the middle of this?
Secondly, what Turkey finds ‘unacceptable’ in the Iraqi part of Kurdistan is unlikely to impress or intimidate the Kurds any more. The usual internal Kurdish squabbles have been replaced by the PDK and PUK actually fighting along side each other in displays of uncharacteristic unity (yesterday on TV I saw a veteran BBC reporter marvel to see soldiers from the two groups coming out of the same bus!).
The Peshmerga are not only better situated politically than any time in the last 25 years, they are also better armed, better organised and thanks to the US Special Forces, better trained. Once the Ba’athists are gone, the Kurds will be able to turn their undivided attention towards any Turkish incursions into Iraq and no prize for guessing who is scooping up all the heavy weapons and ammunition abandoned by the defeated Iraqi forces around Kirkuk. The facts on the ground are strongly in the Kurds’ favour.
This problem was entirely predictable and is entirely of the Turkish state’s own making. As I have written before, I have no sympathy for them and it is hard to see how it would be in the interests of the US or UK to try and crush the legitimate desires of Kurds for self determination.
Egged on by their BBC interviewers, a number of pundits and Iraqi exiles have been criticising the use of the American flag as an “execution hood” over the statute of Saddam. It was “inappropriate” and it “should not have been done”. Voiceover commentary on News 24, as I type this article, added “Better judgement prevailed and the flag was removed”.
To me, there seem to be three immediately obvious polite answers to such criticism:
- The Iraqi crowd cheered when the US flag was raised. Rageh Omah, BBC reporter on the spot, could not hear the sonorous commentary in the studio, and made the possibly career-limiting mistake of answering the question “How is the crowd reacting to the American flag?” with the simple truth. This answer has obviously not been repeated in evening bulletins.
- The U.S. flag was raised by an over-exuberant marine, and removed within minutes when seen by a commanding officer. This was no indicator of imperialist policy, quite the opposite. Conquering armies rape and pillage, the Americans leant the use of their M-88 Armored Recovery Vehicle to a celebrating crowd.
- The flag was not raised over a public building or other centre of power. It was attached to a symbol of the old regime that was about to be destroyed. If you insist on reading undue symbolism into this, then the message would be not “America rules the roost now” but “America delivered you from the tyrant whose statue you are destroying”.
But the overwhelmingly obvious response is not so polite: I’m just glad the Iraqi people in the street aren’t such ungrateful SOBs!
As mentioned by Perry, British Chancellor Gordon Brown set out his wealth-grabbing agenda for the next fiscal year in today’s budget.
As well as all the usual predations, he has also decided to increase government borrowing from £20 billion to £27 billion. Guess who has to repay that (plus interest)?
Oh but what’s another £7 billion or so when it’s other people’s money? Besides we productive workers have got far more money than we strictly need and never forget that Diversity Development Executives..er, I mean ‘poor underprivileged children’…need as much money as they can possibly get.
For some temporary (albeit ultimately futile) relief, my thanks are due to Samizdata.net reader Simon Austin who sent me this link to a deliciously naughty ‘swear-a-tron’ where a few of us monstrously overburdened Brits can take out some of our frustrations.
Since I usually make a point of balancing jubilation with caution, and being somewhat cynical by nature, I cannot resist the temptation of drawing attention to the depressing synchronicity between British anti-gun phobia as it is practised at home and British anti-gun phobia as it is about to be practised in Iraq:
Residents are being urged to dump their guns in an “amnesty pit” close to one British military compounds.
“Iraq has a culture of weapons. There are a lot of them around, most held quite legally,” said Captain Cliff Dare, of 3 Commando Brigade Engineer Group.
“If we want to give the new Iraq a chance these weapons have to be taken out of circulation.”
I concede that the very real risk of people taking pot-shots at British troops does cast a different light on the situation but I do hope Iraqis don’t finish up going to prison just for defending themselves.
And, as an aside, ‘Captain Cliff Dare’! Is that a comic-book action hero name or what?
But the author, General Mirza Aslam Beg, the former Chief of Army Staff of Pakistan, did not realise it at the time. I particularly liked:
The Iraqi nation has shown its resolve and resilience, to stand up against the over-powering superiority of the aggressor, who has been forced to recoil back, for replenishment and re-enforcement. It is the coalition forces, which suffer from “shock and awe” due to the stiff resistance and the remarkable display of courage and capability, to fight according to a well thought-out war plan, which is holistic in conception, embracing all tenets of operational strategy.
Read and laugh 
Oi, Robert Fisk, John Pilger, Will Self, Clare Short, Robin Cook, Tony Benn, Margo Kingston, Michael Moore, Sean Penn, Noam Chomsky, the Dixie Chicks, Susan Sontag, Maureen Dowd, Susan Sarandon, Martin Sheen, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder, Robin Williams, Harold Pinter, Vanessa Redgrave, Clare Short, the entire BBC and all the rest of the ‘Not In My Name’ mob, would you kindly cop an eyeful of this:
Just how many messages can be gleaned from this glorious photograph? Loads I imagine but three that readily spring to mind are the fall of a murderous thug regime, the utter contempt of its victims for the moral cripples, dunderheads and sixties re-treads that tried so hard to prevent it and, strangely no less stirring to me, the hilarious and highly appropriate public appearance of the ‘W’ word.
Seems that we did not just British soldiers to Iraq, we also sent British expletives and, to their credit, the Iraqis have wasted no time whatsoever in adopting it and employing to maximum effect. The image proves that not only have the Iraqis learned the word but they also know exactly what it means.
I like to think that we Brits have now added yet another component to the rich tapestry of Middle-Eastern culture and it reinforces my belief that the pithy, seductive quality of this word will continue to fuel its steady but relentless conquest of the Anglosphere, the Middle-East, the World and, who knows, maybe even beyond.
It is at times like this that all the speculation about possible encounters with alien species from other planets comes to mind. I am not sure that such an event will ever come to pass and I am quite positive that I will no longer be around to witness it even if it does. But I am willing to bet green money in the here and now that, within weeks of that first, portentious, epoch-making encounter, said aliens will be calling each other ‘wanker’.
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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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