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July 6th, 2005 | 85 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I am glad they caught this guy.
How much high explosive would you have to let off to do as much damage as this little monster unleashed? And before you say that explosives kill people and all he did was screw around with a zillion computers, my guess is that actually, one way or anther, he did kill quite a few people. That much stress and grief must have ended a few lives. I find myself thinking along these lines. And failing that, onwards and outwards to all those planets out there, so people like this can be transported to them, like in Alien 3. July 6th, 2005 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Flying swans are the logo of the UK’s presidency of the EU over the next six months. Apparently, the UK officials are proud to point out that it is the first time an EU presidency has had an animated logo. I mean, how amazing is that? Watch out Jacques!
What a load of bollocks! We are talking about a bunch of bureaucrats and appratchiks desparately (at least I can hope) trying to recover their footing which was temporarily disrupted by the recent referenda on the EU constitution. But not everyone thinks the logo is ridiculous, for example the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds likes it:
I am having trouble keeping a straight face here. But seriously, how about streching the metaphor a bit and hope it might be the EU swan song…? July 6th, 2005 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Overheard on Newsnight last night, from the anchor-lady person, presiding over a discussion of the recent travails of the US mainstream media. It was in connection with the Valerie Plame story, whatever exactly that is. I have not been following that, and I missed the beginning of the Newsnight report about it. Anyway, here is what Ms. Paxman said about the US mainstream media, word for word:
This is what I love about the BBC. They have their biases, of course they do. But they also genuinely try to report the truth. Their biases mostly impinge by determining which truths they go after in the first place, and who they then have commenting on them (to discuss this matter they had Daniel Ellsberg balanced by a guy from the New York Times), rather than in the form of pure lying. After all, when the BBC features some grotesque report put out by some grotesque gang of health fascists, or some such, rather than proper news, it is true that the health fascists did indeed say whatever it was they said. It was stupid and repellent, but they did say it, just as the BBC said they said it. The BBC prejudice is that the mainstream US media are indeed the reputable media, and that all those pyjama-clad right wing nasties sitting at their nasty computers agreeing with President Bush are disreputable. Yet these same pyjama wearers are the ones who have caused the reputation of those same reputable media to sink to a new low. That was the story here. So, that is what popped out of her mouth. This is definitely different to living in the USSR and I greatly prefer it to that, not least because it is so much more entertaining. July 6th, 2005 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Surprise surprise. Today, the headline above this story, on the front page of the Guardian caused me to actually buy the thing. But I learned little I did not already know.
Or, as I remember a visiting American policeman saying, in some argument about drugs that I took part in about a quarter of a century ago: These guys don’t count their money, they weigh it. The trouble is that our political class has persuaded itself that it simply cannot legalise this trade. People might kill themselves by taking too many drugs. (The perfect punishment, I would say.) The politicians already ban lots of other things because they are unsafe. (Stop. Let people take their own risks and their own chances.) “Middle England” would not stand for it. (Middle England stands for lots of other things it dislikes.) But, but, but, we just can’t. (Why not?) Well, why not indeed? What is going on here? Maybe the root cause, if there is such a thing, of the utter refusal of the present generation of politicians to legalise drugs is that they have got it into their heads, as have an appalling proportion of their voters, that it is the job of politicians to look after the voters, in the manner of parents looking after their children. To legalise drugs would be to send out a message that the politicians simply cannot bear to send out, namely: We don’t care about you! Look after yourselves! If all you can think of to do with your lives is take drugs, you will get no money from us to pay for them. And if you wreck your lives with them, and find yourselves ill and starving, tough. The only way you will get our attention is if you commit crimes under the influence of drugs, or because you can think of no other way to make a living, in which case we catch you and punish you some more. Meanwhile, the rest of us can help by discriminating against people who damage themselves with drugs, by denying them employment, friendship, romantic attachments, respectability. That way drug abusers, if abusers they be, will have the necessary incentive to pull themselves together. Drugs are dangerous, although it is clear that lots of people manage to use drugs regularly while nevertheless keeping these dangers at arm’s length. As this report makes clear, the stuff is pouring in, yet our civilisation trundles on, and when it comes to civilisational collapse, alcohol surely now does far more damage than (the other) drugs. Nevertheless, there are dangers attached to these drugs, and I for one have never doubted it, which is why I have refrained from ever using them, timid soul that I am. Even cannabis – much talked up as harmless by some of the people I went to university with – actually seems to have quite severe mental health risks if you use it too much. To put it bluntly, it is now quite widely believed by scientists and doctors that it can drive you mad – which is just what my recollections of the characters of some of the people recommending cannabis to me all those years ago have long caused me to suspect. But, however harmful – or harmless – all these drugs may be, there is no sensible future in the government treating their sale and use on a par with the kind of genuine crime where someone else is immediately hurt or attacked or has their property harmed or stolen, and is accordingly immediately ready to help the authorities with any inquiries they might be inclined to make. How is the government supposed to learn about the drug trade? Who is going to tell them about it? (Even when compiling reports about the drug trade, with no thought of arresting anyone, all they can do is “estimate” what is really going on.) But alas, such commonsensical questions are mere pinpricks when they come up against the entrenched mental positions of virtually all our current rulers. What is needed is more than a policy upheaval. A mental upheaval is required, and those are an order of magnitude harder to contrive. Meanwhile, it does not matter to our rulers – not enough to make any difference in how they behave – how much absurdity and expense they inflict on us in order to sustain their paternal illusions, and to sustain the corresponding illusions of all those of their voters who share them. July 5th, 2005 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Hundreds of thousands of tourists and New Yorkers headed for the extravaganza riverside fireworks display last night. I was not one of them. I have done it before and did not tonight feel a herring-like desire to join the tightly packed school of fellow hominids on the riverine Manhattan coast. What I did have a desire for was a quiet pint of well-pulled Guinness and some good music. I knew exactly where to find it on a Monday night: Mona’s. Mona’s is a small pub in the Lower East Side. It is a local in every sense of the word. There is no big flashing “Monas” sign outside. There is, in fact, no sign at all. Just a window through which you can see a very dark pub that is decidedly not ferns and chrome. No wimpy idiotic ‘theme’. Just a place that has grown organically around its central purpose of beer, music and pool for a neighborhood clientele. When I first lifted a pint here some eight years ago, it was in a neighborhood which had transitioned from broken glass and junkies in the doorways to one which was merely for the adventurous, a hangout for musicians and a hodgepodge of starving artists, writers, actresses, bikers and Irish expats. Since then the neighborhood has changed. It seems like almost the whole of Avenue B has gone way upscale. The tide of new bars has not yet reached 14th Street and the clientele is still neighborhood… but you are now more likely to run into a med student outside than a junkie. The session at Mona’s is a very informal and relaxed affair. There is usually a core of fine musicians, but anyone who loves the music can join in. Some of the better musicians take time over a long break to show newcomers a few tunes and techniques. As you can see, it is a very homey session:  A very traditional session at Mona’s Photo: D.Amon, all rights reserved.  Traditional music attracts classy fiddle players Photo: D.Amon, all rights reserved. July 5th, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
Two decades ago, Sir Bob was at least demanding we give him our own fokkin’ money. This time round, all he was asking was that we join him into bullying the G8 blokes to give us their taxpayers’ fokkin’ money. July 5th, 2005 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
The retirement of a Supreme Court justice is always big news in the USA. Coming on the heels of a ruling which made big business developers grasping municipalities across the United States rub their hands together with glee, it is vital that the mindset which produced one of the most monstrous anti-liberty trends in America today not be reinforced with yet another ultra-statist. To her credit, although Sandra Day O’Connor was neither a darling of the right nor consistently supporting of civil liberties, she did dissent quite strongly from the monstrous Kelo verdict. Perhaps now that more people are seeing past the simplistic left/right divide on the issue of eminent domain abuse, the importance of insisting on a judge who does revolt at the very idea of such a predator’s charter should become the main focus not just for George W. Bush but people of any party who think that being secure in your property is one of the very lynchpins of a free society. July 5th, 2005 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Even in this era of intense news management and political spin, a public figure will still occasionally (and often inadvertantly) let a few morsels of truth slip out. For the past two decades or so, and by every standard that can be accurately measured, participation in the established political process has been in steady decline. Voter turnout is consistently lower than it was in the 1970’s and membership of the main political parties is but a fraction of what it was in the 1950’s. Not surprisingly, this has resulted in a hubbub of worry among the political classes with attendant brow-furrowing and hand-wringing over what should be done about it. Some of the more foolishly optimistic (or perhaps just ill-advised) politicos have launched themselves into toe-curlingly embarrassing campaigns to ‘get down with the kidz’ only to hurtle smack, dab into a wall of indifference. The less exhibitionist among them have been uttering dark murmurings about ‘compulsory voting’. In the fullness of time, and as the disillusion spreads like sea-fog, I expect that those murmurings will become a demanding roar. In the meantime, the first member of the cabinet, former Defence Minister Geoff Hoon, has added his somewhat more audible murmur to the compulsion lobby. I am not going to use this article to examine the arguments about compulsory voting, except to say that I am against it. More interesting to me (for the moment at least) is Mr. Hoon’s choice of words:
Is that how Mr. Hoon thinks of voting? As a ‘habit’? As a ‘duty’? Where is the call to democratic arms? Where is the sizzle of enfranchised excitement? Where are the glamourous invocations of citizen empowerment? All long gone is the inescapable truth. Instead we are left with habit and duty. If I were being charitable, I might suggest that Mr. Hoon chose his words for convenience rather than accuracy and that it would be unfair to second guess him on this basis. But I actually think that Mr. Hoon was being honest. Furthermore, I am prepared to extend to him the rare honour of actually speaking for the nation, or at least that ‘significant’ chunk of it for whom voting has become a sullen and thankless obligation, rather like slopping out the bedpan of an infirm and elderly relative while trying not to succumb to the guilt upon contemplation of the unspoken resolution that it would be better for everyone if they would just quickly and peacefully die. Small wonder it is why young people don’t vote anymore. July 5th, 2005 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
The New York traditional music scene has been a home away from home for me for almost a decade. My familiarization with it began when I toured with a band and sang here in 1994; it expanded greatly when I worked on a series of internet webcasts and spent a good chunk of 1998 living in the East Village. During that hot summer of 1998 I had a weekly pub schedule to follow. The crowd of musicians I got to know so well floated in an eternal circuit from the Monday Session through to the Sunday Session. Many of the same people are still to be found on the same weekly rounds and only one of the Sessions has died off over the last seven years. So… Sunday night. That’s the Doc Watson’s night. For the hardcore musicans, the Sunday drinking actually starts in the afternoon at the Thady Con’s Session, but I had engineering notes to prepare. Doc Watsons is in the Upper East side and not the easiest place to get to from where I am staying in the Upper West. This business trip has been going well so I splurged on a taxi rather than the usual long A train and crosstown bus trip. The first taxi to stop was from a Car Service, not one of the metered Yellow ones. I have been around the city long enough to know to dicker the price before one goes anywhere. The ride is nicer but you could be in for a surprise if you have not got the price set first. If you are a stranger to the city you won’t know whether a price is reasonable or not so I would probably not recommend it without the advice of a local friend. The Yellow ones are safer for tourists. I have sung at Doc Watson’s myself, although not in many years. I have been too busy surviving as a consultant to keep any material up to what I would consider professional performance standards. Since I have been there and done that, I have more to lose making a complete fool of myself on stage than most. One never knows: perhaps the day will fall when I must survive at it. It is best I not leave bar owners and public with memories of blue notes and effed lyrics to replace older,better memories of mostly competent performance. Instead, I competently hold up the bar and drink Guinness. The pub has a Sunday anchor band that is usually John Redmond and Peter Rufli, fellows I know from years past. This Sunday John was not present and Peter had several other fine musicians with him.  Right to left: Davie Ryan, Banjo; Peter Rufli, flute & whistle; Dominic Cromie, guitar and vocals Photo: D.Amon, all rights reserved. In addition to the craic of old acquaintances, Doc Watson’s has very good food and pulls a decent Guinness. I particularly like their Buffalo Wings platter. If you have not spent time in New York, you are missing the real meaning of cross-cultural fertilization. The following photos show how Chinese culture has improved upon traditions long a part of the Irish music scene:  Traditional Irish beer balancing technique Photo: D.Amon, all rights reserved.  Chinese improvement Photo: D.Amon, all rights reserved. July 5th, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
It seems the entire editorial staff of Samizdata is travelling at the moment. I happen to at least have network access, although not much in the way of time to make use of it these last weeks. Nonetheless I seem to have been left the tiller to Samizdata with a small sign, “Back soon, Regards, Perry” on it. So I shall make do. Right now I am in Manhattan for a few days away from the intensity of an R&D effort for a small DC area company. I have some work to do in New York also, but at least I have some time to call my own. I will post an article or three to make up for the scarcity of one Dale Amon from these virtual pages over these three months on the road – not to mention the temporary absence of Perry and Adriana from the global Matrix. July 5th, 2005 | Comments are closed
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