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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Fritz Werner is my all time favourite conductor of Bach choral music, bar none, and yesterday I got this CD set of (get this): the St John Passion, the St Matthew Passion, the Christmas Oratorio, the B Minor Mass, plus a Motet, plus a Cantata (the one with Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring). Ten brand new CDs for £22 the lot.
Is capitalism great or what? � asks JP in the previous post. I reply that capitalism is definitely not in the Or What? category. (Trivia digression: In what movie did actor Clu Gulager say that he was in the Or What? category?)
People who say that money cannot buy happiness are just no good at shopping.
“It is outrageous, and amazing, that the first free and general elections in the history of the Arab nation are to take place in January: in Iraq, under the auspices of American occupation, and in Palestine, under the auspices of the Israeli occupation. . . .”
– Salameh Nematt
Washington bureau chief for the London-based daily Al Hayat November 25
Quoted by Bill Kristol in the Weekly Standard,
[Thanks to Instapundit for the pointer]
Walking past a newsstand near my office yesterday, I saw the banner headline “Tube Bosses Buy Parts on eBay”. The accompanying story told us, in faintly mocking tones, how engineers working on the London Underground system have resorted to using the online auction firm because the parts they need are so old that they cannot get the pieces they need from regular stock.
Now it may at first appear a terrible thing that our metro systems are so old that the folk running them have to resort to an online auction set up by those vulgar American geeks from their Silicon Valley offices to get the stuff they need. But (drums roll!) I have a certain admiration for the Tube staff who had the entrepreneurial savvy to make use of the amazingly successful eBay platform. If the power of the internet can make my journey to work a bit smoother, I ain’t complaining.
It makes me wonder how many other major businesses are resorting to services like eBay to solve their inventory supply needs. I think it is still not yet possible for an airline to buy jet engines that way, though you never know. Is capitalism great or what?
Roll up, roll up ladies and gentlemen! Book your tickets for a day or two in the verdant British countryside where you will find thrills, spills, adventures, games, rides, puzzles, jokes, wheezes, teases, conundrums and wonders to behold:
The new law banning hunting with dogs is “so poorly drafted” no-one can define the offence, pro-hunt MPs say.
The accusation came after it emerged a Devon man had been told he could use his four dogs to “chase away unwanted animals” from his farm.
Because he did not intend to kill deer or foxes it was not hunting…..
Tory MP Peter Luff, another co-chairman of Middle Way, said that the legislation was “so poorly drafted nobody appears able to properly define the offence”.
“It is no wonder the government desperately wants to move on from this disastrous law. However, I seriously doubt the countryside will be that accommodating.”
Guaranteed fun for all the family.
Wired reports that huge spending bill signed into law by President Bush on Wednesday could create a new hot job-growth sector: chief privacy officers.
Every federal agency, regardless of size or function, will have to hire a chief privacy officer and employ an outside auditing firm biennially to ensure compliance with the nation’s privacy laws, according to a little-noticed provision.
The officers will be charged with making sure new technologies do not impinge on civil liberties and that federal databases comply with fair information practices.
Once 1989 had passed, the West assumed that communism had lost its power and would trouble vast areas of the globe. Its effects were confined to a few reactionary holdouts such as Cuba or Corin Redgrave and within a few years Soviet symbols had moved from shock to chic. Even the last of the totalitarian movements, the Sendero Luminoso of Peru, had been smashed.
Yet, despite this process of forgetting, it appears that the twenty-first century may witness self-styled revolutionary movements establishing dictatorships of the proletariat and peasants. The most vulnerable country is Nepal and it is disheartening to read of peasants rising up against their communist oppressors.
However, the Maoists have also received several setbacks in recent weeks. People living in 12 village development committee areas in the Dullu region – a heavily Maoist affected villages 600 kilometers west of capital – revolted against the rebels. The uprising began after the Maoists started forcibly recruiting full-time cadres. More than 20,000 people spontaneously organized a rally in the areas denouncing Maoist atrocities.
The Nepalese Maoists, masking their plans behind a demand for a constituent assembly, pose as would-be democrats whilst terrorising the areas of the country that they control. Recalling the fate of the Socialist Revolutionaries in 1918, one would hold out little hope of a Nepalese ‘Constituent Assembly’ holding power.
Yet even graver is the rapid spread of the Maoist ‘Naxalite’ insurgency in India which has spread to nearly half of the country under the apathetic eyes of the government. These Maoists are linked to the Nepalese party and, by employing the same tactics, hope to enjoy similar success. This increase in political risk threatens the future of India since investment shies away from countries threatened by war or terrorism.
When the state’s representatives does something truly egregious, like shoot someone dead for no good reason or seize someone’s property because they want it to be owned by someone who can pay more tax to them, it is pretty easy to get folks angry by recounting such tales and get them to nod solemnly and intone “The state is not your friend”.
Yet maybe the proverbial straw that will break the political camel’s back may be one of the seemingly endless encroachment of the state into the little stuff of everyday life:
I tell her about that infamous legal text, and the insane requirements it places on all of us who break our own windows, in our own homes, in the course of a loving affray, and how we are compelled, if we wish to replace that window, to become members of the Society of Window Replacers, called FENSA, provided we can stump up the fee and pass the exam; and if we cannot pass the FENSA exam, how we must go to the council and deposit a plan showing how we propose to replace our own windows, in OUR OWN HOMES, in line with Britain’s commitments under the Kyoto protocol on climate change, and having replaced the window how we must then go back to the council and get a COUNCIL APPOINTED WINDOW INSPECTOR to come out and verify that whatever we have done is in line with those international commitments. And is that not mad, ladies and gentlemen, I demand. Is that not the height of insanity?
And it is via this sort of thing that the state gets businesses to eagerly sign up to ever more regulation. I mean if you in the window replacement business, the last thing you want is ‘laymen’ getting the idea that they do not actually need you.
Yet there comes a time when even the post-Thatcher strategy of regulatory gradualism used by socialists of both left and right accumulates to the point it cannot escape the notice of any but the most obtuse Daily Mail reader or wilfully blind Guardianista. As it gradually dawns on people how few things they can do with their own land, labours and capital without navigating a labyrinth of regulations and permissions, maybe the already palpable uneasy I detect will turn into something which is actually politically useful for attacking the whole system.
And when might that point be reached? Good question.
There are two big China stories doing the rounds today. In no particular order, there is the one about IBM selling its personal computer operation to a Chinese corporation, and there is the one about how the EU is planning to end its arms embargo on China.
Concerning the ending of the EU arms embargo, the EU Referendum blog (linking to this Times Online story today) has this to say:
As we have pointed out many times on this Blog (see for instance, here),the embargo has become one of the most sensitive geo-political issues, with the United States worried that its European allies will be arming a country that it sees as a potential military rival.
And, as we have also reported, China is spending billions of dollars upgrading its military capability and is rapidly becoming an economic superpower. Now The Times notes that Washington is concerned that East Asia remains militarily unstable, with China threatening Taiwan and North Korea threatening South Korea.
The US is worried that Europe will sell China advanced technology, such as over-the-horizon-targeting systems (guided by Galileo GPS signals) that would enable the Chinese military to strike American ships hundreds of miles out in the Pacific.
The Times also notes that Congress already is planning legislation that would ban the Pentagon from trading with any country that makes military sales to China and, as we have observed (here) is already making technology transfers difficult.
At the moment, the War on Terror is going well in this sense, that no mega-horror stories of the sort feared immediately after 9/11 have actually materialised. (Whether that is because the War on Terror has been conducted from our side with dazzling brilliance, or because it was superfluous, I leave the reader to decide. A bit of both would be my guess.) There have been some horrible killings, but no mega-death bomb explosions or plagues of the kind that we all have feared. Which means, unless the Islamofascists prove to have more life (by which I mean death) in them than now seems likely, that the world, and the people of the USA in particular, now have some attention to spare for what is surely going to be the big confrontation of the next few years, namely the rivalry for the global number one spot between the USA and China. China now has semi-sane economic policies, and a billion odd people semi-thriving under them. And America is … America. Quite a confrontation, I am sure we would all agree.
No doubt the EUrocrats will argue, if they have not started arguing already, that this IBM deal proves what hypocrites those silly Americans are for fussing about them doing business with the Chinese too. But cheap computers that China already perfectly well knows how to make are one thing; such things as hi-tech guidance systems for Chinese rockets are quite another.
Maybe this will be the moment when Americans finally decide in large numbers what an anti-American operation the EU is – as opposed to just a bunch of loser countries that count for nothing, whether they get together or whether they stay separate. Time was when the USA saw the EU as a bastion against the USSR. But imagine what Americans will make of people whom they regard as helping their enemies. What a change it would make (is making?) if everyday Americans were to take against (are taking against) the EU, and decide that they would like it, shall we say, crumbled.
Unless, of course, the EU is just dangling the ending of the arms embargo in front of everybody, prior to doing a deal with the USA that will leave everyone smiling and shaking hands, and the EU (having agreed to perpetuate the arms embargo indefinitely) suddenly being the USA’s good buddy again.
As a libertarian, I expect to be told (again) by other libertarians that I am not a libertarian, this time for not condeming all embargoes absolutely, regardless of who against and of what. Which I can live with. I might even be persuaded that the world would be improved if the Chinese government could now buy all the weapons it wanted from anyone it wanted. I doubt it, but give it a try if you want to. But one thing I do know. I absolutely do not want to find myself a citizen of a nation state (EUrope) which the USA decides is its enemy. Whatever ends up happening with this embargo, today I felt that possibility move a little closer.
The Court of the Caliphs
Hugh Kennedy
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 2004
There were 37 Abbasid Caliphs, in a succession that lasted from 749 to 1258, when the last of them was rolled up in a carpet and suffocated by the Mongols after the surrender of Baghdad. Why Hugh Kennedy should sub-title his fine, interesting and rather horrifying book The Rise and Fall of Islam’s Greatest Dynasty is a bit of a mystery. The last effective Caliph was assassinated by his Turkish guards in 861 and although the Family Tree dribbles down to the bottom of its page until 1031, perhaps just to fill it up, Kennedy continues his history only as far as 935, by which time the Caliphate had fragmented into independent entities in Spain, Africa, Egypt, Persia and Khurasan. According to Hitti’s History of the Arabs, from 945 the Caliphs were puppets of the Persian Shia Buwahids (“who made and unmade Caliphs at will”), ruling Iraq (and Baghdad) from distant Shiraz until in 1055 they were replaced by the Seljuk Turks (“a new and more benevolent tutelage”). As the Seljuk supremacy petered out around 1200, the Caliphate regained some power and prestige, only to be extinguished by the Mongol Hulagu in 1258.
Thus the effective rule of the Abbasid Caliphs was quite short and any ‘golden age’ during it even shorter. It began when discontented elements in the north-eastern borderland province of Khurasan rebelled against the Umayyad Caliph in Damascus. Despite their considerable resources, the Umayyads were unable to resist the forces organised against them by the able, ruthless, fanatical (and pseudonymous) Abu Muslim. Too obscure in origin to be a claimant himself, he perforce backed a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle al-Abbas (who had never actually become a Muslim himself and was assumed to have gone to hell). This first Caliph was sickly and died after a five year reign, being succeeded by his brother, called, after his accession, Mansur (Victorious), “the most remarkable individual in the whole story of the Abbasids” whose twenty year reign set the dynasty on its feet, and probably ensured it survived at all.
Although Mansur had been appointed heir by his brother, whose sons were too young to be contenders, he had to dispose of a threat by an uncle, who claimed to have done as much as anyone to defeat the Umayyads. With the aid of Abu Muslim, Mansur brought about the break-up of the uncle’s army, and then lured Abu Muslim to his tent and had him murdered, behaviour often repeated in the history of the dynasty. As far as the legitimacy behind the claim for the Succession (the Caliphate) to the Prophet was concerned, suffice it to say that, in terms of relationship, that of the Abbasids was not indisputable. Descendants of the Prophet’s daughter Fatima and her husband Ali were plentiful but poorly organized. Ali himself had been assassinated in 661 and both his sons had died, one in battle, the other possibly poisoned, which made all three martyrs to give rise to the Shia branch of Islam. Mansur had to destroy one outright claimant who made the mistake of starting his rebellion in Medina, which, howerever sacred, was “a place where there is no money, no men, no weapons and no fodder” and, in the end, no support. Other “Alids” were watched and confined to Baghdad, the new capital, founded in 762. There is a sinister tale that on Mansur’s death, his heir found a whole room with their neatly laid out and ticketed corpses, of all ages. The Alids were invariable losers, and misfortune seems to have dogged their followers, the Shia, who have done either the right or the wrong thing at the wrong or the right time, down to the present day. → Continue reading: The First Islamic Empire – Its Decline and Fall
Well, well, well. A famous showbusiness celebrity is making a big fuss about the crushing of dissent and the stifling of free speech.
But, this time, the claim has merit:
Blackadder star Rowan Atkinson has launched a comedians’ campaign against a government bill to outlaw inciting religious hatred.
The Mr Bean actor says parts of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill are “wholly inappropriate” and could stifle freedom of speech….
The main thrust of the bill creates a new Serious and Organised Crime Agency to tackle drug trafficking, people smuggling and criminal gangs.
Quite what religious ‘hatred’ has to do with drug trafficking and criminal gangs is quite beyond me but this appears to be another example of the government bundling up huge sheafs of seen-to-be-doing-something new laws and stuffing them altogether into one big, deliverable package. Perhaps they are trying to cut down on their printing costs.
Anyway, to the meat of the matter. I applaud Mr Atkinson for his taking a stand notwithstanding that it may be motivated by self-interest. That is still better than nothing. However, I expect that his pleadings will fall on wilfully deaf ears. HMG was rattling its sabre about new ‘hate speech’ laws even while the cement dust was still drfiting over New York. It was, near as dammit, their first response.
I have not yet read the Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill but, in due course, I will. I do not expect that it will materially differ, either in theme or content, from similar recent legislative atrocities. That is to say, it will endow the state with sweeping new powers, give birth to lavishly funded and unaccountable agencies and usher in a whole raft of new laws that will be so widely and vaguely drafted as to make them dangerously open to interpretation and judicial activism.
Following the now familiar pattern of previous legislation, widespread enforcement will prove impossible. So enforcement will be selective, politically-motivated and high-profile with a handful of unlucky short-straw drawers nailed to the wall pour encourages les autres.
If that was the only outcome then it would be bad enough. That alone would be sufficiently capricious and despotic. But that is only the intended outcome. The unintended outcome could be a great deal worse.
A climate of cowed silence doth not a happy-clappy country make. The worst of it is not knowing where the boundaries are. What can we say? What can’t we say? The majority with something to lose will opt for saying nothing at all as the safest policy (and who can blame them?). Thus, there will be a Potemkin appearance of normality and what we have learned to refer to as ‘tolerance’.
But, underneath, the true picture will be much darker. The only way to successfully challenge bad ideas is to challenge them with good ideas but that is not possible to do if the bad ideas cannot be expressed in the first place. Similarly, resentments left unspoken do not simply whither on the vine and grievances (however irrational and baseless they may be) will not conveniently decay into half-lives like radioactive materials.
Instead these unstable elements will foment and fester and bubble away quietly in the dark until the solution has been transformed into a toxic and explosive substance. It will remain inert only so long as the lid can be kept firmly screwed down.
A full recount of Ohio’s votes in the recent presidential election has been ordered by a federal court, following lobbying by the Libertarian and the Green presidential candidates. I have covered the story here. There is no way a full recount could be completed by December 13, when the Electoral College has to formally cast its votes.
It occurs to me that it is a very strange way of promoting the Libertarian message to waste $1.5 million of Ohio taxpayers’ money. The recount is not going to change the overall result and could only conceivably cause the Libertarian candidate to finish behind the Constitutional Party or the Greens finish behind a local independent.
The real purpose is exposed by Badnarik’s musings about TV exit polls. He appears to be the only person not taking medication in the US to believe that the exit polls were right (Kerry win) and the ballot counting wrong (Bush win). This beats Dan Rather anyday:
From what I can see, there’s no reason to believe the exit polls were wrong, and fairly good reasons to believe that it was the election process that was faulty.
I can see some benefit to the Democratic Party in all this. Without spending any money, or attracting the tag of “Sore Loserman” from the 2000 election, the Kerry camp gets all the benefit of the Libertarian and Green lawyers trying to put their guy in the White House.
A friendship founded on business is a good deal better than a business founded on friendship.
– John D. Rockefeller
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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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