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 notorious right-wing, Reaganite, propoganda machine of Hollywood is crushing the dissent of Michael Moore:
Walt Disney on Wednesday found itself the focus of a controversy over its refusal to allow the group’s Miramax studio to release the latest film by Michael Moore, the gadfly Oscar-winning director.
Mr Moore, director of the anti-gun Bowling for Columbine, proclaimed himself a victim of censorship in an open letter on his website on Wednesday that said Disney had this week “officially decided to prohibit our producer, Miramax, from distributing my new film, Fahrenheit 9/11.”
According to Disney, the subsidiary’s independent-minded managers Harvey and Bob Weinstein were told a year ago that the production, exploring alleged links between the family and government of president George W. Bush and Saudi Arabians, including relatives of Osama bin Laden – would not be allowed into cinemas under a group brand.
A sobering day indeed when even the ‘limousine-liberals’ of Hollywood decide that Mr. Moore’s recipes of fabrication and manipulative agit-prop are too much even for them to stomach.
In his website posting Mr Moore indicated that he intended to keep the controversy simmering. “The whole story behind this (and other attempts) to kill our movie will be told in more detail as the days and weeks go on”.
And right there is Mr. Moore’s next best-selling book (“Stupid Movie Moguls”).
It is almost enough to make me feel sorry for them:
European leaders will meet with intellectuals and business leaders to discuss Europe’s core values in a high-level conference later this year.
EU heads of state and government will be invited to attend a special conference on European values at the beginning of December- an event organised at the personal initiative of the Dutch prime minister, Jan Peter Balkenende.
It is hoped the conference – to be held in the Netherlands – will be the culmination of a half-year long EU-wide debate on the meaning and political relevance of the European idea, initiated by the upcoming Dutch presidency which takes office in July.
Writers, artists, policy-makers and business leaders from all over the world are set to be present at the public event, where up to 1000 people will be able to attend.
If they are harvesting “intallekchools” from all over the world to come to Europe to tell Europeans (a) who they are, (b) what they are supposed to be doing and (c) why they are supposed to be doing it, then said Europeans have, shall we say, some issues with self-esteem.
Mr Balkenende hopes the event will provide an ideological underpinning for Europe.
The only thing the event will produce is several hundred pages of repetative cant and nauseating PC pieties, liberally sprinkled with terms like ‘respect’ and ‘solidarity’.
He recently remarked that embarking on a European discussion on values such as respect, freedom, integration and solidarity would give a “new dynamism” to the reunified Europe.
See, it’s started already and if ever anyone tells you that that are seeking a “new dynamism” you can be cast-iron sure that their get-up-and-go has got-up-and-gone. Probably never to return.
What does it say about the great ‘European Project’ if its political leaders are prepared to prostrate themselves before a gathering of the global great-and-good and admit that they do not have single moral imperative on which to hang their hats?
Today, May 1st, is a big day for the European Union because today is ‘Accession Day’ whereupon 10 new countries will be officially enjoined into the Union:
Leaders from the EU’s 25 member states are taking part in celebrations, after a night of festivities heralded its historic expansion.
The 15 old members welcomed in Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia at midnight.
Yes, it is celebration time. The ‘family’ of 15 countries becomes the even bigger ‘family’ of 25 countries as hands are clasped in firm handshakes across once-inpenetrable borders in a new spirit of continent-wide brotherhood, sisterhood and transgenderhood. Ring out the bells, sound the trumpets and let the cliches flow like a swollen river.
Chief among the consequences that is causing excitement, even outside the usual Europhile circles, is the prospect of droves of fresh-faced and energetic young Slavs who will pour into the cities of Western Europe eager to programme computers, brew coffee and deliver hot pizza to Western Euopeans, most of whom will be quietly relieved that they are being served and waited upon by people who are unlikely to be donating any portion of their wage packets to Al-Qaeda.
I can sympathise with this enthusiasm for I, too, hope that this scenario will come about and, if it does, I expect that it will largely prove to be a very good thing for all concerned. → Continue reading: Misery loves company
As a rule (well, more of a ‘guideline’ really) I do not fisk the ‘readers letters’ section of media organs.
There is no objectively good reason for me to refrain from doing so except that I regard it as bad form; rather too close to bullying for comfort. After all, the whole point of ‘readers letters’ sections is for the public to let off some steam and drawing attention to the wild and woolly nature of the some of the contributions hardly makes me a clever dick.
Still, this particular missive in the ‘Feedback’ section of the Spectator is so extravagantly barking that I am going to grant myself a (temporary) exemption:
It is an indictment of the pitiful state of our ‘democracy’ that Britain’s future role in Europe should depend on the whim of one egregious Australian-born businessman (‘The man who calls the shots’, 24 April).
I did not realise that Prime Minister Blair was an Australian-born businessman.
How to stop similar circumstances arising again? Our broadcast media — i.e. the BBC — is the envy of the world.
If that is true, then all I can say is that the world must be in a piss-poor state.
The solution is obvious: we need a British Press Corporation, an equivalent of the BBC for print media. The ‘Beep’ could run a small stable of publications from tabloids to broadsheets (and even perhaps weeklies too).
Of course!! (meaty slap to the forehead). The solution is so obvious. Damn my eyes for not thinking of it sooner!
It could be part-subsidised out of general taxation, and would therefore be more independent of the business interests whose ownership deforms the content of so much of our press.
It would have to be subsidised out of taxation. Nobody is going to voluntarily hand over hard-earned money for that crap.
Drawing as it would on the existing structure of news-gathering available to the BBC, the BPC would be cost-effective as well as provide an intelligent and informative source of news. Its competition would surely have the effect of undercutting the worst at least of the present tabloid excesses and the dominance of a handful of private individuals over the British polity.
Listen, buster, if any ‘handful of private individuals’ are going to have dominance over the British polity, then it is the Samizdatistas. Got it?
Is there simply no end to all the bad news?
Diplomats and leading experts are warning that the “chaotic” European Union is ill-equipped to cope with the biggest expansion in its history.
Shame, shame. A pox on humanity and all its works.
Finnish ambassador to the UK Pertti Salolainen, who said he was speaking in a personal capacity, said: “The EU is chaotic, it has no vision, no leadership and it seems it will have no constitution.”
Is there no justice in this wicked world? I do not know how I will sleep at night (speaking in a personal capacity).
Looking for trouble? Well, you’ve come to the right place:
People who refuse to register for the government’s planned ID card scheme could face a “civil financial penalty” of up to £2,500, it has emerged.
David Blunkett said not making registering a criminal issue would avoid “clever people” becoming martyrs.
Got that, dickhead? That is what happens to people who try to be ‘clever’. We do not like clever bastards going around being all….clever. So just pack it in, right, otherwise you will be cruisin’ for a bruisin’. Are we clear, pissant? Because if not, its two-and-a-half grand and a punch in the face.
Now just piss off, mind your own bleedin’ business and do you as you are fucking well told.
So we are going to given a referendum on whether or not to sign up to the EU Constitution. Or not. Or maybe. Possibly. Not yet, but soon. In principle. In theory. For certain, provided conditions are right.
Lord knows! Like everything else concerning Britain’s relationship with Brussels this whole referendum issue is buried deep within a fog of obfuscation, misinformation, confusion and misdirection.
What is certain is that the government/media lie-factory is being cranked up to over-production mode forging weapon-grade children for deployment in the propoganda war ahead [“I think we should be a part of Europe so that we can all live together in peace”, said Heidi, aged 10. Yes, it really will be that fatuous and buttock-clenchingly embarrassing.]
So now is to the time for the forces of truth and light to step up to the crease, ready to hit the opposition for six. Among the fearless volunteers are the team behind a new blog called, simply, EU Referendum.
These guys have got the real skinny on the fetid labrynth of EU politics and they tell it exactly like it is. Pay them lots of visits to read, learn, grow and become a better human being.
The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, has once again pledged to introduce a compulsory national ID card scheme saying that ID cards were an essential tool in the fight against global warming.
Speaking to the BBC today, Mr. Blunkett denied that ID cards were merely a fetish and emphasised that they were a much-needed response to a fast changing world:
“Everbody understands the need to take serious steps to tackle the growing menace of global warming but we cannot even begin to do this without a proper national ID card system”.
Mr. Blunkett was also dismissive of the scheme’s critics:
“These so-called civil libertarians who try to suggest that there is no link between ID cards and global warming are simply dangerous and deluded. They are terrorists in all but name.”
According to a recent opinion poll, every single person in the UK has pledged that they will murder their own children and then kill themselves horribly unless the government issues them with a biometric ID card immediately.
According to super-rich, property magnate Will Hutton, we are all Europeans now:
There are strong reasons for Britain to want more than a common market like the rest of Europe, and to try, in the process, to create the European public realm we currently lack. We share, despite a multiplicity of languages and histories, the same core values – a belief in the social contract, an adherence to the idea of the importance of the public realm and shared views that capitalism must be fairly run.
Hutton’s Europe: a land of permanent paternalism.
I wonder if Mr. Hutton’s tenants have to tug their forelocks and call him ‘sir’?
A team from the EU Commission is hotfooting it off to North Korea in the wake of that ‘minor-train-incident-which-never-happened-and-anyway-even-if-it-did-it-was-caused-by-reactionaries‘:
Development spokesperson Jean-Charles Ellermann-Kingombe said on Friday that a representative from the EU’s humanitarian assistance team in North Korea will visit the site late tonight (early morning local time) to assess the situation.
They may have to fly in some emergency directives. But, on to the truly pant-wettingly, hilarious, quote-of-the-week bit:
Asked whether the EU representative would be allowed to get a clear picture of the situation on the ground given the secrecy of the Pyongyang regime and the time elapsed since the accident occurred, Mr Ellermann-Kingombe pointed out that they had been invited by the authorities to visit the site.
“We have no reason to question their intentions”, he said.
And probably no motive either.
Every single incident and accident on the UK rail network in recent years has prompted a torrent of bug-eyed wailing about the ‘disastrous effects of privatisation’ and the iniqiuties of those ‘greedy’ shareholders who insist on putting their squalid demands for profit ahead of safety concerns.
The answer (say the established media, the transport unions, the sundry activists, lawyers, Uncle Tom Cobley and all) is to take the network back into public control. Only when the ‘distorting’ private profit-motive has been eliminated, they say, will it be safe to travel by rail.
As safe as this?
Up to 3,000 people have been killed or injured in a huge explosion after two fuel trains collided in North Korea, reports say.
The blast happened at Ryongchon station, 50km north of Pyongyang, South Korea’s YTN television said.
Nationalisation kills! Privatisation now! Put profits before people!
I have heard it said that war is politics by other means and, similarly, that politics is war by other means.
However, it appears that some people in the USA are not really much interested in pursuing ‘the other means‘:
It’s hard to imagine a greater clash of cultures within America than that between George Bush’s Republican party and the New York left.
Ever since the announcement, in January last year, that for the first time in convention history the Republicans would be coming to Manhattan, a multi-layered conflict has been looming…..
This example, from the grassroots conservative site FreeRepublic.com, indicates that animosity is flowing freely on both sides.
“Frankly, I wouldn’t be shocked to see real street battles,” the piece says.
“The extreme left is angry. Angrier than I’ve ever seen them. And they will be made angrier still by the harsh security measures which will be required to protect the dignitaries in New York. But the right is angry too, and there will be a lot of conservatives converging in New York City for the event. If the left wants to fight, expect the right to fight back……
Sitting on a sofa, dressed like a Manhattan bike messenger, one student who identified himself simply as William said he was spending the week attending a raft of different group meetings on the protest.
After he was arrested in Miami during the recent Free Trade Area talks while simply walking down the street, he said he was looking for a more meaningful encounter in August with the NYPD:
“If you are going to get arrested, it might as well be for something rather than nothing,” he said, with a disturbing cheeriness.
Yes, well, it all looks very strange from this side of the pond where partisan politics is still a remarkably genteel business. The occasional caustic comment is about as confrontational as it gets over here. The very idea of Tory matrons from the Shires fighting pitched battles with delegates from the Teachers Union on the ‘mean streets’ of Bournemouth is just too hilarious and far-fetched to even contemplate.
Is this a reflection of something very different about the nature of the British polity? Is it because there is much more of a polite consensus over here? Or is simply because there is so much less at stake in the British electoral process?
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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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