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On behalf of the Samizdata Team, it gives me great pride and pleasure to announce a major change to our readers.
For some days now we have been working feverishly behind the scenes to smooth the path of the imminent merger between Samizdata and the Noam Chomsky Blog.
As I am sure you can all appreciate, this is not just a time of thrilling change but it is also a supremely fitting culmination of all the hard work and endeavour we have put in to this blog. That someone as august, as visionary and brilliant as Professor Chomsky should see fit to share a platform with us, honours us all in a way to profound and moving for me to express with mere words.
This is not merely a collaborative effort. It is a great coming together of like hearts and like minds in a grand joint push to change the world. We know that you, our readers, must be every bit as excited by the prospect as we are.
The newly-merged blog, called Noamizdata will be launched very shortly, so get ready to update your ‘Favourites’ list. We regret that this site will be down for a short period while the changeover is effected but we are working tirelessly to ensure that the interruption to your regular service is kept to a bare minimum.
Samizdata and Chomsky together will be a unstoppable force. The future starts now.
Gloomy prognostications about the future of Europe seem to be flying thick and fast these days. It seems that everybody who is anybody, especially on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, is quite convinced that the whole European continent is riding on a one-way ticket to Palookaville.
Speaking for myself, I am not entirely persuaded. Certainly the combination of demographic decline and economic and political sclerosis means that Europeans have some very difficult choices galloping over the horizon towards them. But that is not the same as saying that they are all doomed and done for. Who is to say that they will not make the right choices?
Well, British historian Niall Ferguson for one. In his reading of the entrails, choice does not even come into it:
The fundamental problem that Europe faces, more serious than anything I’ve mentioned so far, is senescence. It’s a problem that we all face as individuals to varying degrees, but from society to society the problem of senescence, of growing old, varies hugely. In the year 2050, which is less remote than it may at first sound, current projections by the United Nations suggest that the median age of the European Union countries, the EU 15, will rise from 38 to 49.
There is only one way out for this continent, and that is immigration. There is an obvious source of youthful workers who aspire to a better standard of living. All around Europe there are countries whose birth rate is more than twice the European average, indeed, significantly more than twice. The trouble is that nearly all these countries are predominantly Muslim.
So far, so what? There is nothing here that is not being editorialised about in much of the press. But Ferguson takes matters a little further. → Continue reading: Faith is the key?
Jack Vettriano may sound like a Sicilian mobster but, in fact, he is this country’s most popular and successful artist.
Born in Scotland, he started out his working life as a mining engineer before a girlfriend bought him a set of watercolour paints for twenty-first birthday. He taught himself to paint and embarked upon a career as an artist. Today, reproductions and prints of his work massively outsell those of Monet and Van Goch and originals hang in the collections of the wealthy and famous (making Vettriano pretty wealthy and famous himself).
Only the Deepest Red Vettriano’s deeply evokative work is rich in art deco erotica noir: elegant, sexy and (in this day and age) subversive. While many artists use a canvas to tell a story, Vettriano uses his to write a seductive novel full of unambigiously masculine and feminine characters. → Continue reading: He’s alright, Jack
Ladies and Gentlemen, courtesy of the Guardian, the Ahmed Yassin we barely knew:
In truth, neither Arafat nor Yassin had Mandela’s special greatness. But of the two, it was Yassin, the founder-leader of the militant Islamist organisation Hamas, who came closer.
Yassin the wise, Yassin the benevolent, Yassin the humanitarian. He was a gift to mankind. It was said of Yassin that he could light up a room, though he generally preferred lighting up buses and cafes.
Yassin had personal glory largely thrust upon him.
Which ‘personal glory’ was so tragically snuffed out by an Israeli missile that was very largely thrust upon him.
Meanwhile, in the shadow of his formal career, he was laying the foundations of his future eminence as both a religious and political seer. He founded al-Mujamma’ al-Islami, the Islamic Centre, which soon came to control virtually all religious organisations – including the Islamic University – in Gaza.
What a wellspring of entrepreneurial endeavour. Yassin the man, the wit, the raconteur and the bon vivant will be sadly missed by his army of adoring fans (at the Guardian).
I am beginning to seriously whether our Home Secretary, David Blunkett, is having some sort of breakdown:
David Blunkett, the increasingly angry home secretary, is calling for “lifestyle punishments” to shape Britain into a less violent society. He wants the power to confiscate mobile phones and ban people from football matches. He is also wants to counter the “increasing portrayal of violence” on television. Which sounds like censorship.
No, that does not sound like censorship, it is censorship though given the degree of regulation to which TV broadcasting is subject anyway, further measures are redundant.
One unhappy source at the Home Office told the paper: “These proposals are disproportionate, unenforceable and criminalising and do not go to the heart of the cause of these problems. But Blunkett will not be deterred.”
Lest anyone forget, the Home Office (in common with the rest of our political superstructure) is staffed by people who earnestly believe that rates of finger-nail growth can be brought under control with the appropriate set of regulations. So if even they think that Big Blunkett’s ideas are ‘unenforceable’, then I reckon some pretty deep cracks are beginning to open in the edifice of British government.
Brace yourselves for a truly shocking prediction:
Tax rises are inevitable if Labour wins the next election, according to an influential group of economists.
Just think, if it were not for this ‘influential group of economists’ none of us would have had even the merest inkling that increased taxes were even remotely possible.
By every standard that can be measured, participation and interest in electoral politics in this country is in precipitous decline. With every year that passes the figures for voter turnout, party membership and financial donations drop a few more points down the graph.
The process is slow but apparently inexorable and (for obvious reasons) it is sending an adenalin-rush of panic coursing through the veins of the political classes:
Democracy needs strong political parties. And for them to be representative and effective, they need to be properly funded. In the past 50 years, parties have seen their income and membership decline dramatically while expectations of what they should do have increased.
Says Leader of the Commons and Secretary of State for Wales, Peter Hain, who appears to be far less concerned with political bankruptcy than with the very real threat of financial bankruptcy:
In return for public funding, parties should be obliged to direct a certain amount of their work to community organisation and to educational material for voters. We might, for example, borrow the idea from Germany of creating party-linked, publicly funded foundations which could take on this education and policy formation work.
This relates to the third principle: extending public funding will create a more bottom-up style of politics, with political parties better embedded in local communities, for example by financing youth organisers in major towns or population centres, so reaching young people disturbingly turned off politics.
Public funds could be earmarked for salaries to employ general party organisers at national, regional and local level, as happens in Sweden, Germany and other European countries. Public funds could also pay for training and political education schemes and international contacts between parties.
So Mr. Hain is proposing that the funding that he and his colleagues have signally failed to amass through voluntary donation should now be taken by force. In return for this ‘generosity’, civil society will be merged with ‘the party’ to become a single living, breathing, sweating, symbiotic creature of state.
More public funding could help all parties extend their work beyond the world of political activists, creating a politics that serves the people and not just politicians.
Some people will believe that. But then some people will believe anything.
Trafalgar Square is located at the geographical centre of London and, next to ‘Big Ben’ and the Houses of Parliament, it is probably this country’s most famous landmark.
Named after the 1805 battle, the Square is dominated by a 200 foot column on top of which is perched a bust of the Horatio Nelson, the Admiral who let the Royal Navy to victory over the French and thereby saved Britain from Napoleonic invasion. The column that bears his name and image was built from donations offered up in tribute by a grateful nation.
In the four corners of the Square there are four plinths. Three of them are occupied by statues of King George IV, General Charles Napier and Major General Sir Henry Havelock. The fourth plinth is empty and has been since around the middle of the 19th Century.
A few years ago I became vaguely aware that there was something of a campaign to find an appropriate monument to place on the fourth plinth. I say ‘vaguely’ because I paid little attention to this campaign, partly because I have better things to do with my time and partly because I learned that the process was to be decided by means of a competition under the auspices of the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. I anticipated that I would most likely disapprove of the outcome.
My instincts proved trustworthy yet again for, this last week, the winner was unveiled.
As you may already have guessed from the image, Ms. Lapper has never led anyone into battle nor has she ruled a kingdom. Instead, she has managed to bear a child despite being quite severely disabled. → Continue reading: We are the masters now
A mercifully uneventful journey for me on the London Underground this morning. Nonetheless, I reached my destination feeling ever-so-slightly disturbed.
No, I did not see anyone holding a Koran and muttering incantations while trying to wire two batteries together. Worse still, what I noticed was quite a few teenagers (who boarded and alighted separately so unlikley to be a group) dressed entirely in full-on, recreation 60’s hippy gear. Yes, I do mean the Indian scarfs, the bell-bottom jeans, flowers-in-hair, tie-dye T-shirts and white lipstick. And the girls were dressed exactly the same.
I was shocked, I tell you, shocked. Is this the latest trend? Is this what is ‘hot and happening’ among the ‘yoof’? Has anybody else observed this elsewhere? In America? Europe? Australia? Israel? Japan? Anywhere? Or is just the UK? Or perhaps just London?
I assure you this was not a mirage. These youngsters were genuine retro-hippies but what I want to know is whether this is the burgeoning new fashion or merely some isolated cases of severe mental disturbance that happened, by pure coincidence, to be travelling on the same train as me?
If it is a case of the former then I have a message for any impressionable teenagers who might be reading this and feeling the temptation to abandon themselves to a re-heated Age of Aquarius: for chrissakes, get a grip!!
I realise that you are too young to have been psychologically scarred by the 60’s first time round but, for heaven’s sake, do you realise just how nauseatingly sanctimonious all this flower-power mummery can be? What the world needs now is not love, sweet love but a swift and well-aimed kick up the jacksy. The last thing we need is for heaps of you to start mooning around looking for your Shakra. Or growing organic lentils on a commune in Wales.
So just stop it. Now
Of course, today’s teenagers can hardly be blamed for the cultural stony-desert in which we presently dwell but since they are forced to go trawling through the archives of late 20th Century youth sub-cultures for inspiration then I sincerely hope that they have the good sense and common decency to revive the snarling, anarchic (and far better dressed) age of Punk Rock.
The Conservative government of Spain has conceded defeat to the opposition Socialists following today’s election:
Opposition Socialists have claimed victory in Spain’s general election as voters apparently punished the government over Madrid bombings that may have been retaliation by al Qaeda for the Iraq war.
“It’s a victory,” senior Socialist official Jose Blanco told cheering supporters in Madrid on Sunday. “The Spanish Socialist Working Party is ready to take charge of government in Spain.”
Official results showed the Socialists leading the ruling centre-right Popular Party by 43 percent to 37.5 percent with 85 percent of votes counted.
So disaster follows hot on the heels of tragedy. For Spain this probably means a reversal of some or maybe even all of the tentative reforms that the Aznar government managed to institute over the last few years and which enabled that country to enrich itself considerably.
But the implications are not just domestic:
The Socialists have pledged to withdraw Spain’s 1,300 troops from Iraq if the U.N. does not take control by June 30 when Washington plans to hand power back to Iraqis. Opinion polls showed as many as 90 percent of Spaniards opposed the Iraq war.
It sounds as if the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ is about to lose one of its members.
Having no knowledge whatsoever of the Spanish political landscape, I cannot say whether the result of this election was on the cards or whether it was influenced by the Madrid train bombing. Maybe the Socialists were on course for victory today regardless. Maybe it was all about domestic issues. Who knows?
But in one sense, it may not matter why Aznar and his centre-right government lost. If Al-Qaeda did orchestrate the Madrid attack (and it appears increasingly likely that they did) then they will chalk this up as a major success. In their own minds, they have successfully terrorised the Spanish electorate into installing a government that was more to Islamicist liking.
That may not actually be true, but the danger lies in these maniacs believing it to be true.
While the terrorists were busy in Spain, the ‘militants’ have been at work in Israel:
A double suicide bombing in the southern Israeli port area of Ashdod has killed at least 11 people.
A Palestinian militant had entered the port and asked for water – and the moment he was shown where there was a tap “he blew up” – an employee of the port quoted one of his injured colleagues as saying.
Well, there is no reason why the work of terrorists should disrupt the busy schedule of ‘militants’ is there? Mind you, these trade unionists agitating for better working conditions have got a very strange way of going about it.
There is something very Georgian and 18th Century about this but I suppose it qualifies as entrepreneurialism of sorts:
The final punch lands, exploding the fighter’s nose into the braying crowd, and the broken, unseeing, bare-knuckle boxer submits. The winner lifts his bleeding hands in celebration, knowing the victory won by his fists will line his pockets.
Welcome to the boxing underworld of bare-knuckle fighting, where the exhausted victor can hobble away with as much as £50,000 in cash.
Tax-free cash as well I should think.
These brutal confrontations have long been outlawed. But even now in country lanes, fields, barns and warehouses, grown men are pitting themselves against each other to settle old scores – and earn big money – at the risk of appalling injuries.
A reaction to the ‘risk aversion’ culture, perhaps?
Organisers say the police rarely break up a fight – it’s easier to let the contest finish naturally than risk a riot.
Also they might get the crap beaten out of them.
Ricky English, an unlicensed promoter, has signed up hundreds of fighters in the three years since he started in the fight promotion game. It is big business – he is organising fights up and down the country, charging spectators up to £50 a head.
“This is for the novices,” he said. “Fighters won’t go amateur any more. They’re sick of all the rules, the standing counts and the tap, tap, tapping. They want to have a fight and earn money. And they’re earning money.”
So is he trying to tell us that overregulation has spawned a thriving ‘underground’ industry?
“It’s great fun. I had one fighter with a glass eye who’d take it out before a fight. Crowds just love it,” said Rocky Rowe, who promoted unlicensed fights for many years. “It’s a bit like karaoke.”
Surely it cannot be that painful?
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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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