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 tabloid Dallas Observer bangs another one out of the park with its ongoing coverage of the corruption and incompetence of the Dallas police force. What’s fascinating in this rendition of the age-old story of extortion and protection rackets is the way this one operates out in the open, in the light of day.
Dallas has quite a crime problem in some of its neighborhoods – enormous amounts of violent crime orbiting the black market drug trade. Because people in the drug trade don’t give a crap about laws making it illegal, such laws are understandably less than efficacious in getting rid of the black market and its ills. Thus, with impeccable legislative logic, since criminals aren’t deterred by the law, our betters decided that laws imposing penalties on law-abiding people, such as the owners of property where the criminals live or hang-out, might have some effect. The so-called “nuisance law” was born, and one of the more astonishing tales of unintended consequences of the law began. → Continue reading: Public nuisance
European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso says:
Europe must avoid an ideological war between free-market capitalism and the welfare state after the rejection of the EU’s constitution, [he] said on Saturday
Wrong. An ideological war is exactly what we need and it is long overdue. Pick up your spanners then go find some gears to throw them into.
As a young kid I remember all those old war films portraying the various RAF air raids on Nazi-held targets like the Ruhr dams or the Norwegian heavy-water plants. The daring achievements of 617 squadron (The Dambusters, as they became known) are part of the folklore of military aviation history. I wonder how many people, however, have heard of a raid that probably helped save the world, at least temporarily, from a serious nuclear threat? I am talking about the bombing of Saddam’s nuclear facility at Osirak in 1981 by the Israeli Air Force.
In a recently published book, Roger W. Claire recounts the tale of how an elite group of pilots trained for the raid that hit the nuclear plant, recording along the way Saddam’s massive programme to build a facility able to produce the materials for nukes. Even though the F-16 planes used in the raid are a light-year away in sophistication from the Lancaster or Mosquito bombers employed in WW2 raids, the pilots still endured terrific strains on mind and body in carrying out the missions deep inside hostile territory, knowing they faced a high chance of not returning.
Israel’s bombing of the nuclear facility drew worldwide condemnation at the time from governments including that of Ronald Reagan, which seems monumentally ironic now. Indeed vice president Dick Cheney was later to thank the Israeli government during the 1991 Gulf War for the raid.
What does this story say about pre-emption as a doctrine? Strict supporters of international law might argue that what the IAF did was illegal, that a sovereign nation like Iraq was entitled to develop weapons and unless there was demonstrable proof of malign intent, no such action would be justified. It remains a point of debate among libertarians, including scribes for this blog.
But it is clear to me, in my view, from reading this and other accounts, that Saddam, both from his actions and his own rhetoric, intended to use nukes to intimidate his neighbours into surrendering territory and the threat posed to Israel from a man fancying himself as a pan-Arab leader was no myth. It was real.
The actions of the Israeli Air Force have not gotten the praise they deserve, in my view. In considering what might have been, it is worth quoting at length from the following influential book by Kenneth M. Pollack:
Although the alternatives are considerably more costly, deterrence is the riskiest of all the policy options available to the United States. We would be betting that we could deter a man who has proven to be hard (at times impossible) to deter and who seems to believe that if he possessed nuclear weapons, it is the United States that would be deterred… The use of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world would be terrible. Their use on the Persian Gulf oil fields; against Tel Aviv, Ankara, Riyadh, or another regional city; or against U.S. military forces in the region is unimaginable… Beyond this, Saddam Hussein with nuclear weapons has the potential to push the world into a second Great Depression while killing millions of people.
The Threatening Storm, 2002
The above quotation helped turn yours truly, a formerly fairly isolationist type of libertarian, into a reluctant supporter of the pre-emption doctrine embraced by George W. Bush. Although the failure to find WMDs in Iraq has shown that Saddam’s threat was not imminent – though possibly inevitable – there can be no doubt that the monster harboured a long desire to get and develop a substantial nuclear weapons programme which would have had incalculable consequences.
For me, this was the biggest news yesterday. Synthetic phonics is now thoroughly established as a serious educational policy option.
“Synthetic phonics” is a somewhat jargonic way of saying the sensible teaching of reading, based on the idea that despite all the deviations (in English especially) from the rules, letters stand for noises, and the way to read is to work out what the noise must be from the letters. To say that this is how to learn reading is to miss the point. The point is: this is reading. Seeing the letters “e l e p h a n t” next to a picture of an elephant (which is precisely what I did see this morning when channel hopping – in a TV show supposedly helping children to read) and guessing that therefore this assemblage of baffling squiggles must mean elephant is not reading. Reading means seeing those letters on their own, and knowing that they mean elephant.
A good way to get to grips with the background to this story is to read the latest newsletter from the Reading Reform Foundation, who have been agitating on behalf of synthetic phonics for many years now.
At the heart of this argument is not the value of phonics as such. Even the most diehard look-and-say people now concede that phonics is part of the story. But, say the RRF people, too many teachers – teachers who have only been following or agreeing with the guidance they have been getting from the government – believe in a mixed approach. In other words, says the RRF, they confuse children by urging them to combine reading with guessing. Should some version of phonics merely be included in the government’s literacy strategy (it already is), in among picture books, stuff about “word shape”, and so on, or should literacy be based entirely on phonics, properly done? The latter, says the RRF. Personally I find the RRF argument thoroughly convincing.
At lot of what is happening here is not really an argument about what works best (synthetic phonics has been proved to work best), so much as an elaborate exercise in giving a whole generation of fools a soft landing. Too sudden a switch from the wrong methods to the right ones would reveal at once how bad the wrong methods were, and make an awful lot of experts look very inexpert indeed. So, although they must surely now know that they are losing, these people are still digging their heals in and fighting every inch of the way.
Kudos to the government, for, better late than never, taking all this on board, to use an unlovely Blairite phrase. For this is classic Blairism. Once again, New Labour (this kind of thing being the New bit) are cherry picking one of the better things that some Conservatives have been saying, and ramming it down the throats of their own natural (Old Labour) supporters, who will put up with anything rather than have too serious a fight with their own front bench and thus let the Conservatives back in.
My favourite moment in all the media reportage yesterday about all this came when a newsreader (I think BBC but am not sure) was reading the phrase “synthetic phonics” out. Exhausted by the effort of reading “synthetic”, she then stumbled over “phonics”, and had to stop, and try it again. Eventually she got it right. Maybe it would have helped if she had had a picture to help her.
Well, no, it would not. She should simply have read it better.
To kill one baby may be accounted carelessness, but to kill four . . .
Here is a classic gruesome shock horror well-I-never what’s-the-world-coming-to? story from timesonline. The headline says it all:
Mother hid dead babies in the freezer
Who says they don’t write headlines like that any more? They wrote that one today. No wonder Europe has a demographic crisis on its hands. These people really do not like to have children, do they?
To be more geographically selective, what is Austria coming to? To me Austria has long been a rather sinister place. It is one of the two national bits at the heart of Nazism, but unlike the other bit, Germany, it has never properly apologised. (Germany has never stopped apologising.) Very pretty waltzes, I agree. Nevertheless, Austria is, you might say, Japan on the Danube. Hitler, remember, was Austrian, and he incubated a lot of his worst ideas when living in Vienna. If only he had been frozen at birth. More recently we have had to share our planet with the creepy Kurt Waldheim.
On the other hand, I have only occasionally been to Austria, and have little first hand experience of its people. No doubt many of them are quite nice, and I do not just mean the Austrian economists.
This frozen baby thing happened in Graz.
Graz, a picturesque city of 250,000 lies 120 miles south of Vienna and is the birthplace of film actor turned California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
They do not spell it out, but the implication is clear. The baby freezing was Arnold’s fault! Along with most of the other Samizdatistas, I think Arnold is a good Austrian. However, according to this, Arnold invited Waldheim to his wedding, which I did not know until now. (Waldheim did not attend.) Nor do I know whether this means that Arnold is worse than I thought, or Waldheim better. Maybe it just shows that you get all sorts at weddings.
Jonathan Wilde of the admirable libertarian group blog, Catallarchy, argues that poverty, rather than wealth, is “unnatural”, in as much as it is the stupidity of governments, rather than some ineradicable feature of our world, that prevents humans from attaining the opulence (to use that lovely 18th Century word) that we are capable of attaining in co-operation with our fellows.
I am not so sure that Wilde is entirely right. Is it only the state that has in the past blocked the path to wealth? Surely the lack of scientific knowledge, limited division of labour and so forth played a part in poverty.
Don’t misunderstand me – I think that Wilde makes a good point, but to say that wealth and happiness is the natural state of mankind begs as many questions as it may answer. All the more reason, of course, to ram home the fact that our capitalist civilisation should be regarded as a marvel to be celebrated and defended.
An attempt by two men from northern Minnesota to cross the Arctic Ocean to call attention to global warming ended this morning because of poor weather conditions.
Lonnie Dupre, 43, and Eric Larsen, 33, were forced to abandon their planned 100-day, 1,200-mile trek after encountering unexpectedly heavy snow storms, strong winds and unusual ice conditions, according to Jane Kochersperger, a media officer with the environmental group Greenpeace, which co-sponsored the trip.
Some things just speak for themselves.
As soon as the ‘unthinkable’ becomes thinkable it also, and immediately, becomes sayable as well:
Italy’s labor minister called for a referendum to see if Italians want to temporarily bring back the lira after widespread popular discontent over high prices that many blame on the introduction of the euro.
Temporarily?
Meanwhile, rumours that the German government is looking to distance itself from the Euro are being ‘officially denied’.
Of course, none of this means that the Euro is going anywhere anytime soon or possibly at all but it would be fun to start a sweepstake on which Eurozone country will be the first to cut and run. For what it’s worth, my guess is France.
A French blog (well, sort of a blog) which fisked the EU Constitution is one of a new wave of European political blogs which are going to make it a lot harder for the technocrats in Brussels and the various European capitals to just double talk their way past the issues with the connivance or at least indifference of much of the mainstream media.
Hopefully this sort of thing will become more and more common as tools for penetrating the dense fog of half-truths and outright lies thrown up around so many political issues by people who want as little informed choice as possible.
It is strange how English seems so often to be the ‘language of graffiti’
Samizdatista Paul Marks lets rip in the comment section of the new Tory leadership blog at Conservative Home on the topic of that Orwellian doublespeak term ‘social justice’. Check it out.
The Turner Prize competition has become a byword for everything that is, in the opinion of some, trashy, superficial, capricious, and utterly vacuous in today’s art world. Amazingly, it is considered a news event that an artist working in the representational tradition has actually been shortlisted to win the prize named after one of the greatest, if not the greatest, painter that Britain has ever produced.
In the meantime, for those that wonder about what has gone wrong in the art world, may I recommend this fine book about art and the theories thereon by the late Ayn Rand. I highly recommend it even to those who are not Rand fans like yours truly.
Of course, I would love it if this man won the Turner Prize, but I guess he probably does not care a hoot anyway.
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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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