The Daily Telegraph asks:
“Just what do chalet girls get up to?”
I have been skiing several times and judging by the partying I er, saw (honest, guv), quite a good deal. As for the chaps, well…
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January 14th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Ron Paul is the least objectionable Republican. The second-least objectionable Republican is Fred Thompson, and if he were likely to win the nomination I might be persuaded to switch my support. All the ones who are likely to win are indistinguishable from Democrats (and some of them are Democrats on Fire for Jesus which is just all kinds of not a good idea). January 14th, 2008 | 59 comments - (Comments are closed)
Apparently, the reason Senator Hillary Clinton (New York) won the recent New Hampshire Democratic party US presidential primary was as follows:
I wonder what we should call “single women and women with less than a college degree”? Not “Soccer Moms” obviously. I have a horrible feeling I know what Chris Rock would call them… BTW, I note there are no Samizdata category sections for “witchcraft” or “elections”. This might be a case for either or both. January 13th, 2008 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
I, Perry Anthony de Havilland, hereby declare that in the event I die and my body comes into the possession of the State, under no circumstances whatsoever may the State, in the form of the National Health Service or any other component of the State, harvest my organs on the grounds of implied consent. I explicitly and absolutely refuse consent for my organs to be harvested. This is because the State’s plan to assume default ownership of my mortal remains is wholly and monstrously unacceptable. I reject the claim of the State to own my body just as I reject the legitimacy of its various claims to own my person whilst I am alive. Consent to harvest my organs for medical purposes may, however, be granted (or refused) by my designated next of kin, and no one else. January 13th, 2008 | 92 comments - (Comments are closed)
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has been in Tehran talking to the regime there about it’s nuclear program. He asked a few questions about Iran’s intentions. The response? We’ll get back to you- see you next month.
If Iran’s intentions are within the parameters set by the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, why will it take Iran a month to answer the IAEA’s questions? January 13th, 2008 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
The decision to go nuclear has exposed the whole environmental cause for what it is: not a well intentioned drive for clean power but a spiteful, mean-spirited drive for less power. Because less power hits richer countries and richer people the hardest. I’ve argued time and again that the old trade unionists and CND lesbians didn’t go away. They just morphed into environmentalists. The red’s become green but the goals remain the same. And there’s no better way of achieving those goals than turning the lights out and therefore winding the clock back to the Stone Age. Only when we’re all eating leaves under a hammer and sickle will they be happy. I’m serious. All the harebrained schemes for renewable energy are popular among Britain’s beardies only because they don’t work. January 13th, 2008 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have written before of the nationalisation of politics in Great Britain. In short, I think Peter Oborne’s thesis in the the Political Class is almost right, but back to front. We are much closer to the authoritarian “no-party state” advocated by Brian Crozier, realised, however by Djilas’ New Class sucking up consumerism and the New Left rather than through caudillo-corporatism. But I did not realise it had gone so far: how much the constitution has changed in that particular respect the last decade; how much in public discourse the government and the governing party are now identified. Peter Hain MP is in trouble. His inexplicably luxuriantly financed campaign for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, turns out not to have counted over £100,000 in donations. It is all over the newspaper and the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and the Electoral Commission are both investigating. I’m sorry? Apparently the failure to account is a criminal offence. It what? Now maybe it couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke, Mr Hain (an African by birth) having moved from being the leader of the Anti-Apartheid Campaign in the UK in his twenties to one of the leading advocates of a new pass-law system for his adopted country. But I am outraged on his behalf in this case. Someone has to be. All Mr Hain has done is to say he was too busy to notice the alleged offences being carried out in his name, not challenge, as the younger man would have done, the ludicrousness of the context. All the media has done is have vapours about the wickedness of using money to send leaflets and not reporting it to officials, and ridicule the poor man’s “orange” complexion in a way they would think disgusting and itself borderline criminal if he were an ethnically darker African. Maybe I have not been paying enough attention, but I have not read anywhere yet the obvious point. … → Continue reading: Party = state? January 13th, 2008 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
The ballot initiative to end the income tax in Massachusetts has survived the challenges of some of the State’s worst tax whores and will be on the ballot this fall. If you live there, brace yourself for a cacophony of awesomely silly claims. You will soon be hearing the schools will close, your children will grow up to be heroin addicts, your pets will die of Ebola and the Atlantic Ocean will rise and smite thy town should you have the temerity to vote ‘yes’ in spite of the warnings of your betters. Do you think I am kidding? The Governor of that State has already tried to relate tax repeal and Darfur. I kid you not. According to Jeff Jacoby:
You have loads of time to tell your friends and neighbors about this Initiative. Get out the vote and give the Statists their head on a platter this November. January 13th, 2008 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ezra Levant is not someone I had heard of before but I already take my hat off to the man. He has been summoned before a kangaroo court in Alberta to answer for daring to publish the Mohammed Cartoons in 2006. His opening remarks to the absurdly named ‘Alberta Human Rights Commission’ are, quite simply, pure uncompromising brilliance. Read the whole article yourself as no mere snippet can do them justice. Update: go to the root Ezra Levant site and watch the videos. Oh. My. God. The man is simply magnificent. Watch and learn. It is a master class in confronting the enemies of liberty. Head on. I invite people to do what I just did… if you feel Ezra Levant speaks for you too, go to his site and drop your mouse on the button ‘Donate to fight the HRC’ to help defray his legal costs. Put your money where Ezra’s mouth is. January 13th, 2008 | 60 comments - (Comments are closed)
For, despite the warnings of the accursed health and safety apparatchiks, who enjoy nothing more than closing paths of self-discovery, the human spirit will not be tamed. That is the important lesson of Hillary’s life, a lesson that is worth passing on to children growing up in a world where everything must be measured and known. – Michael Henderson, talking about the late Sir Edmund Hillary, who died last week: January 12th, 2008 | Comments are closed
Cato have written about why they are not real keen on Ron Paul and although I pretty much agree with the generality of what causes them such discomfort, I do not actually end up with the same set of conclusions. The money quote for me is:
Please, gentlemen, take a deep breath. I realise racism is the cardinal sin of our time and that it carries the automatic penalty of public abomination and auto da fe, followed by burning at the stake (it even gets you banned from commenting at Samizdata, although probably not for the reasons most people think), but the notion that the cause of liberty is inextricably tied up with Ron Paul’s campaign is excessive hyperventilating, both from Ron Paul’s supporters and his detractors. I never felt he was the dream candidate, just the only one serious about shrinking the size of the state and frankly if he wanted to do that in order to preserve the purity of his precious bodily fluids rather than to increase the general sum of liberty, well so be it, just so long as he really is serious about shrinking the state. Just as I am (still) quite willing to support him in spite of, rather than because of, his view of foreign affairs as foreign affairs just ain’t the most important issue at the moment in my view, similarly this admitted lapse of judgement by Ron Paul regarding these dismal newsletters does not really change much in my opinion. He is a politician, for Christ’s sake, what did you expect? January 12th, 2008 | 79 comments - (Comments are closed)
I was talking to a friend this evening who noted that a bank had sent him a letter promoting a loan; confounding the pessimists who think that the days of easy credit are completely dead. He observed that the letter contained the phrase “The mill that produced this paper supports sustainable forestation”. It is hard to believe that the bank really cared that much about the source of their paper, but banks, being creatures of the market, are sensitive to their customers, and make efforts to please them. The small but noisy minority of ‘environmentally friendly’ customers that would have approved of the bank’s effort to be eco-friendly would be appeased, and the rest of the client base would care not a jot. But we are seeing more and more of these nods to the environment being enforced with the power of national governments. It is rather like what happened to ancient Rome in the Fourth Century. The first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, lifted restrictions on Christianity in 312, and Christianity backed by the power of the state made slow but steady gains at the expense of the old pagan faiths before the Vestal Virgins were disbanded by Imperial order in 394. I am not sure what will really qualify as comparable milestones in the rise of environmentalism as the official faith of the West, but for those of us of a skeptical nature, I think it does rather have a feel of being like a Pagan in 4th Century Rome. January 12th, 2008 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
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