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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I met Stephen Pollard in the queue at Heathrow yesterday. This was not my first encounter with Spectator’s own as we had exchanged a few pleasantries at one of the Adam Smith Institute’s forums on blogging a long time ago. One would not expect face recognition from a brief conversation, but one wished to exchange pleasantries.
My brief and polite inquiry was transformed by the Spectator’s star blogger:
I have a good memory for faces and names and was certain I had never set eyes on him before. It turns out that he has read articles by me, and recognised me.
‘What are you doing here?’, he asked. Hmmm. Bag drop queue. Heathrow. It’s a tough one to work out.
Now the question, “What are you doing here” would usually be interpreted as a general inquiry on whether you are going on holiday, visiting relatives, or undertaking one the many activities that channel cattle into Heathrow for flights. Why would anyone take such a question literally?
One of the more interesting additions to the invasion narrative, that school of imagination which dreams a world of Britain conquered, invaded and changed, has been D C Alden’s self-published book, Invasion. The interest lies in the confused concoction that forms a fictionalisation of the Eurabian nightmare, the creation of a West Islam. As the blurb indicates, the imagined consequences are radical:
Britain is no more, reduced to a mere satellite state at the far western fringes of the Arabian empire, a vast domain that stretches from the dark borders of Scotland to the Chinese frontier where war still rages. London is a walled city again, its war-damaged historical buildings demolished and replaced with bronze statues, marbled mosques and landscaped memorial gardens, all celebrating the overthrow of western civilization in Europe. The city is a hub of Islamic power, a power that enslaves the British people to a life of servitude and confines them to crumbling, weed-choked suburbs outside the city.
The author acknowledges in his foreword that the script was originally written for film, and the novelisation is kitted out for adaptation to the screen. We have all of the props of the disaster novel but not of the disaster movie: an ensemble caste, cut and paste following different characters, and no protagonist to focus upon. The rag-bag conceptualisation, the overwhelming infodumps, the lack of an editor (weighing in at 641 pages) detract from the interesting kernel of a better novel. Alden can write and he can probably write better than this.
The major problem of the novel is the lack of plausibility. Whereas the invasion narrative is described as the juxtaposition of an ideologically unified Islam, politically united in a militarised and jihadist Arabia following its imperialist path, invading a supine, decadent and pacifistic Europe, the development of such a power would have caused some geopolitical concern, and downplays the Shi’a Sunni division. The United States gains energy security through the use of alien technology from Roswell. Hence, the thriller enters the realm of the unreal.
Such implausibility may reflect the sources of this cultural anxiety, of which Eurabia is a political extension. If we consider the stories told about Islamic invasion, the two most recent examples stem from chiliastic Christian fundamentalism or representations of other prophecies such as Nostradamus. These have often pictured a united Islam invading Europe with the final Pope dying in France, fulfilling Malachy’s prophecy, another fateful addition to the brew.
In the wake of Pakistan going nuclear in May, 1998, Muslim countries have, now, an easy access to the “Islamic Bomb”. And the communist China’s support to Pakistan is no secret. Could it, therefore, be that China, and a group of Muslim countries would pact up to launch an attack on Europe the next year, some time before the month of July? According to quatrain 72, Century X, “the war shall reign before and after that month”.
Mercifully, however, there is no mention of India to be involved in the nuclear conflagration, as per the prophecies of Nostradamus.
The political, the cultural and the prophetic representations of the Islamic invasion narrative all play a part in Alden’s novel. No doubt, this will eventually become a more fruitful vein of fictional endeavour, as thriller writers respond to the changes taking place around them in Europe. Thankfully, the future is more complex, more fractured and more optimistic than Alden’s take portrays.
There is demand. There is supply. There is planned ‘diversity’. If anyone told the teachers that multi-culturalism was dead, they forgot to listen. For they have come up with latest revision in government plans to revive language teaching: teach them gypsy. Since English Romanies talk in English or an Anglicised version of Romany (Romanglish?), will they teach the pure version which has very few speakers in this country.
In a move designed to promote tolerance towards gipsy communities, schools will be encouraged to teach the language, culture and traditions practised by about 45,000 people in Britain.
The Government-backed initiative comes just days after ministers told schools they had a legal duty to promote greater race relations by celebrating cultural diversity across the curriculum.
Since race and culture are not synonymous, and multiculturalism has promoted actions described as racist to increase, we can look on at another “legal duty” achieving the opposite outcome to that intended.
Ginny Harrison White, the president of the National Association of Teachers of Travellers, said the project would “go some way to increasing knowledge of gipsy communities and help break down barriers of prejudice”.
Gypsies will have the teaching of their language taken over by the state. Parents, interested in their children’s education, will choose more economically useful options. So Somali, the language of a failed state, will not be taken up with fervour either. And those who do partially learn, the blighted, will understand that they can insult gypsies better.
If you wanted to escape the crap system by educating your children yourself, the baleful eye of the state has turned your way.
The guidance says that education must be suitable for a child’s age, ability and any special needs. Resources and materials should be provided. In a further development, adults must play an active role in children’s education, rather than leaving them to complete work-sheets all day.
The guidance says that councils should intervene if they have concerns over standards of education. They can then ask parents to submit projects, assessment, books and field trip diaries to satisfy local authority inspectors.
Parents failing to meet official requirements may be taken to court and issued with a school attendance order – forcing children to attend a state school.
The draft proposals, which are out to consultation until the end of July, have been broadly welcomed by home education groups, who hailed the decision not to make registration compulsory.
With the thin end, home education will become a postcode lottery, and the level of intrusion will be dependent upon the attitude of the local authority inspectors. One can imagine that Departments of Education, which are ignorant or unsympathetic of home-schooling, will use their powers to ‘discover’ failures, force parents to send their children back to state sinkholes and stamp out a practice that they deem an ideological competitor. This is the road that could lead to registration and prohibition.
There is a class of drugs called ‘cognitive enhancers’ that could potentially raise the intelligence, skills and productivity of users. Pharmocological enhancement is an anticipated bonus of the information revolution, and has been welcomed by many in the transhumanist community. These issues are now cognitive blips on the unenhanced specialist offices that civil services establish to monitor that horrible outcome of progress known as the Future.
When governments begin to understand that people could use a new set of drugs for improvement, they grasp for an improper P word, Prohibition. Their Puritanical wish to maintain a level playing field between themselves and the Populace demands that these substances be controlled, classified, prescribed, monitored and hopefully banned. Enhancement is a dirty word, but if these drugs have to be accepted, then they will make sure that we will use them on their terms:
Foresight, a Government think-tank, believes that “cognitive enhancers” could be “as common as coffee” within a couple of decades to help a person think faster, relax and sleep more efficiently….
The Department of Health has become so concerned about these drugs that it has asked the Academy of Medical Sciences (AMS) to assess the potential impact of the substances, some of which are licensed in Britain to treat narcolepsy or acute tiredness.
They are already being bought illegally over the internet in the US by people who think they will enhance their performance in the classroom and in the office.
Government attention in these drugs is unwelcome, since the report of Foresight or the Academy of Medical Sciences speculate about social problems as an excuse for regulation. One argument raised is that the pharmaceutical industry could abandon research into mental health and switch to ‘cognitive enhancers’ because of greater demand.
All of the evidence indicates that civil servants, politicians, and public sector professionals would not benefit from ‘cognitive enhancers’, since their increased intelligence would be expressed in greater fiscal and regulatory complexity. These classes should be prohibited from employing cognitive enhancement.
The Edmonton Aging Symposium was held at the University of Alberta last weekend, and a number of important anti-aging scientists attended , such as Aubrey de Grey and Gregory Stock. The Symposium discussed the prospect of developing and implementing many anti-aging technologies, with the Methuselah Foundation and the Supercentenarian Research Foundation providing positive positions on the technology.
The Symposium featured a debate between Gregory Stock and Daniel Callahan, a bioethicist from the Hastings Centre for Bioethics, on the virtues and vices of anti-aging technology. Callahan’s bioethics appears to be a code for denying individuals choice on the grounds that society has more urgent goals:
Dr Daniel Callahan, a renowned bioethicist from the Hastings Centre for bioethics, argues that focusing economic resources on aging science would be negligent for a society that’s faced with so many other pressing problems.
“Are there any present problems in society that would be helped by longer life? Global warming? Terrorism?” he urges, adding that “individual desire [for a longer life] is not legitimate.”
Callahan further speculates that although we may be able to extend life, we are unable to predict what the quality of that longer life would be. He suggests that there are other means to pursuing health in old age, and that pouring money into radical life-extending science might not be the answer.
“Most of the improvement in the health of the elderly is coming from the background socio-economic conditions …. something like 60 per cent of the improvements have come from that directive, rather than from medical care or medical research. It seems to me that there would be a fundamentally greater value of putting money into improving our understanding of prevention, lifestyle and behaviour issues,” he asserts.
Gregory Stock provided a reported response that did not reject the bioethicist’s assertion that research funds, usually paid for by us, be redirected to societal goals:
His opponent, Dr Greg Stock, director of the program Medicine Technology and Society at UCLA, predicts exactly the opposite economic situation. He contends that the economic gains achieved by eliminating the diseases and detriments of aging would outweigh the costs of research.
“The savings in [medicare and social security] of extending the human health-span would be … so immense that that they would justify the rather modest amount of money that would be spent on research,” Stock states.
These incidental benefits would be byproducts of the research. Yet, we should be grateful that anti-aging research is tarred as immoral by bioethicists. Research into lifestyles and prevention is a code for science that justifies directed diet and behaviour. This will ensure that controls are placed on those behaviours, foods and enjoyable activities which conflict with the list of societal goals, as decided by the state.
Supporting anti-aging research is a private and public good.
I think this whole episode proves that – as usual – Noam Chomsky is correct: The West will lie about everything. These marines were not patrolling, they were probably planting WMDs on board Arab vessels on behalf of “Hallel”burton. Mr. Ajehhijihad, Ajamaamadad, Arimenmejood, well, however what’s-his-name’s name is pronounced (we arrogant Westerners rarely take the time to learn the names of foreign dignitaries), is the true Nobel prize candidate here. He treated these ‘sovereignty violators’ with courtesy and decency, even giving what’s-her-name (the non-male, Fay something) her own Islamic scarf … because Her Royal Navy is presumably too racist to supply one. Anyhow, I’m glad this is all over, and that it ended in a way that proves my theory that if you are sufficiently patient and obsequious, the so-called tyrants of the world will see the light of reason, if you give them enough apologies
– tkehler on the Guardian’s Commentisfree, responding to the article by Abbas Edalat, the founder of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has increasingly wielded its regulatory powers in recent years, as infertility treatments have become more common and diverse. Some of the regulator’s decisions have been criticised as arbitrary or inappropriate, using an ethical calculus to coerce parental choice when it is not required. Their latest intervention is controversial, though based upon clinical outcomes.
At present, multiple embryos are implanted in the womb to increase the probability of a successful birth. This has potentially undesirable consequences if the health of the mother or the children is impaired. Studies have monitored infertility treatments and demonstrated these drawbacks.
Half of the mothers of IVF twins give birth prematurely and the babies are below the minimum ideal birth weight of 5lb. They run a much higher risk of dying, lung and heart problems, having cerebral palsy or developmental difficulties and facing chronic conditions as adults. Many spend time in special neonatal care units in hospitals. Mothers who conceive more than one baby after IVF are far likelier to suffer a miscarriage or dangerously high blood pressure than women who have one child naturally.
This should be viewed as additional information that clinicians would take into account when advising their patients and making a diagnosis or a recommendation. If the regulator had drawn attention to these studies and noted that inspectors would wish to see these taken into account during diagnosis, no observer could criticise such diligence. However, we live in New Labour Britain, home of targets and micromanagement:
Shirley Harrison, the HFEA’s chair, will this week defend the decision to put medical safety above the rights of childless women to choose how many embryos are transferred. She will cite research showing that having just one embryo implanted does not reduce a woman’s chance of conceiving.
Doctors will retain the freedom to use their clinical judgment to decide if a woman rated a ‘poor responder’ to fertility treatment should still get two embryos. Clinics will be told to reduce the number of multiple births through IVF over time from 25 per cent to somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent.
This is a decision that should rest between the doctor and the patient. If the patient is aware of the risks and responsibilities, they may then take the difficult decision required in this matter. It is not up to HFEA to usurp clinical practice and private judgement in this matter.
How should we assess Britain’s success in its diplomatic efforts to release the hostages? Iran, more bellicose and intransigent, is now determined to use them as predigree prisoners for propaganda purposes and possibly put them on show-trials. The key to success is acquiring more levers to influence Iranian behaviour and exact a price for their actions.
Britain cannot bring military force to bear, due to the underfunding of our armed forces. We are unable to acquire a united diplomatic front following the debacle at the United Nations. Our sailers’ plight will not be met with a range of new sanctions. At a meeting of foreign ministers in Europe, there was strong condemnation on the bogpaper press release that all such meetings issue. None of the Member States were willing to entertain the notion of real action: freezing export credit guarantees to Iran. Let us hear their reasons for turning their back on their ally:
EU foreign ministers meeting in Germany called for the sailors to be freed but ruled out any tightening of lucrative export credit rules. The EU is Iran’s biggest trading partner. British officials are understood to have taken soundings on economic sanctions before the meeting but found few takers.
France, Iran’s second-largest EU trading partner, cautioned that further confrontation should be avoided. The Dutch said it was important not to risk a breakdown in dialogue.
Republicans in DC have rightly branded the government’s dependence on international law and sanctions as “pathetic“. Rightly, in this instance. The government prefers to maintain its reputation for upholding international law and ruling out other strategies that could exert greater influence in Iran, such as interdicting their oil trade. Blair’s prissiness in holding the moral high ground is achieved by making all the right noises and going through the (bowel) motions. Yet, after the EU and the UN, the cupboard is bare. What next, Mr Blair?
There is a strong interaction between British ideas on security and those adopted by Europe, where New Labour dreams of authoritarian and democratic socialism can be writ large. The justification of a new database to hold fingerprints for every EU citizen is a larger white elephant than any yet conceived. Knowing the opposition that would arise if this project was publicised:
The proposal, which was buried in a lengthy European Commission document setting out policy goals for next year, managed the rare feat of uniting all sides in opposition. Euro-sceptics criticised them as the trappings of a super-state, while some of Europe’s most ardent supporters complained of a threat to civil liberties.
This is part of the extension of EU powers into the sphere of justice and security. The Commission has gained the power to prosecute certain crimes and wishes to extend these at a European level. The powers are descibed as “indispensable”. The project was initially based on a voluntary scheme between certain Continental countries and is now being extended through harmonisation and Member States’ agreement.
We will be less secure, crime will rise, and the databases portend further declines in civil liberties.
Gordon Brown or David Cameron was alarmed at the possibility of their rival stealing a march in the first media fistfight between both camps. The two politicians needed to punch their green credentials at the public. Cameron’s nonsense on aircraft taxes was launched on Sunday to derision and environmentalist applause. An early headline that can be reversed if the public’s tolerance for more tax withers: a likely outcome under Brown.
How did the Chancellor respond, now that he has appropriated Bambi’s teeth prior to his seat? He promised to phase out old-style lightbulbs and subsidise home insulation:
The Chancellor promised that grants will be available to have every home insulated in the next 10 years.
He also wants to phase out wasteful old-fashioned lightbulbs by 2011 and remove ‘standby’ functions from TVs and DVD players that use electricity when left on.
The prudent Chancellor, ever unwasteful of political manure, was recycling spin from Europe and Australia.
Following measures recently adopted by the Australian government to scrap incandescent light bulbs from Australian homes within three years the Spring Summit on 9 March urged the Commission to “rapidly submit proposals” on:
* Energy savings from office and street lighting “to be adopted by 2008”, and;
* “incandescent lamps and other forms of lighting in private households by 2009”.
Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern was quoted by Reuters as saying: “We are very impressed by the Australians and before we came to the summit, we had already been in touch with them and looking at the issue.”
The old story of European projects repackaged for domestic consumption, as ignored by your mainstream media. The Chancellor was quite clear that his green policies were designed to set new regulations and taxes within a European framework, extending and affirming our regulatory state in verdant wrapping.
The World Cricket Cup is almost upon us, and innovative fans from the Antipodes, have found that the distances between the matches and the lack of hotel capacity in the Caribbean, warranted another solution. They can go on a cricket cruise. One of the most popular reasons for building ships these days is the popularity of cruises amongst many niche markets.
There are an astonishing number of cruise ships and they are built to hold an ever larger number of passengers. The 142,000 ton Royal Caribbean Voyager class cruise ship can accommodate 3,844 passengers. That is an astonishing size.
Even more breathtaking is the number of defunct proposals that entrepreneurs and business have put forward to build replicas or cruise ships named after the Titanic. The centenary of the loss is five years away and for the last decade has exerted an extraordinary hold over the mind of many dreamers. Louis Epstein has listed these proposals, often the fantasies of teenagers who confused website construction with raising capital, in the new economy of the 1990s. He discusses some of the prohibitions that render the Titanic’s design illegal in today’s world:
In any event, an exact replica of the Titanic could not legally operate, thanks to what happened to the Titanic. I’m not sure how much latitude has been envisioned in the Gigantic Project as a “sister” to the Olympic/Titanic/Britannic…the 48 full-size lifeboats Harland & Wolff recommended and planned building the ship with although White Star insisted little need be added to the legally required 16 would be alteration number one,followed by the other safety improvements on the (nonetheless quickly sunk) Britannic… from a practical standpoint, required changes would take the form of conformance to the Safety Of Life At Sea (SOLAS) Convention of the International Maritime Organization. This would cover numerous facets of design,construction, and operation.
For example, there would have to be massive fireproofing, cabin arrangements would have to be reorganized, stairways and doors would have to be added, lifeboats would have to be nearer the water…
However, this would really be just the beginning of differences between the Edwardian concept whose keel was laid in 1909 and a ship that could be constructed and operated today.The Titanic had coal-fired steam engines that took a crew of 329…which today would be an unbelievable expense, people do not work for 1912 wages! Recall that the Royal Yacht Britannia was retired because its 1980s-refitted 1950s technology was too inefficient for the 1990s (coal would run afoul of pollution regulations also).
This is one example of how symbols of the Victorian and Edwardian eras acquire a patina of attraction with the symbolic entwining of engineering prowess in the Harland & Wolff shupyards and the aristocratic luxury of the cruise ship. The Titanic had the very first swimming pool on a liner. To recreate this world would be an extraordinary feat. It is unlikely.
It has just recently been decided that the new ship will employ about the same number of people, as the original Titanic did. All in all, about 900 people will be employed by Thomas Andrews Trans-Atlantic Line, once the new ship has been completed. Included in that number will be an army of over 200 firemen, trimmers, and greasers, all necessary for the ship’s propulsion. The Ship will be steam powered, just as Titanic was, fuelled by coal.
If nothing else killed a reconstruction of the Titanic, the Greens would undoubtedly try.
The British Council announced that ten offices in Europe would shut so that funds could be diverted to the Middle East and Asia. Part of this diversion is admirable: an attempt to undermine the attraction of the Salafist ideology for impressionable youths. Scepticism rises over the small sums allocated in comparison to the rich charities that fund madressehs in all Muslim countries.
Martin Davidson, director general designate of the British Council, said it was “time to tackle the new challenges the world faces.”
These included “building trust with the Islamic states and China,” Davidson told the Press Association.
The council would scrap “traditional arts activities” in Europe, such as orchestral tours and artistic commissions, in favour of projects “designed to prevent Muslim youths from being indoctrinated by extremists sympathetic to al-Qaeda,” the Times said.
This project is coordinated by a new leader of the British Council, who also stated that they would be working with their European partners to promote common values. The British Council belongs to EUNIC, the European Union National Institutes for Culture, and this new organisation was launched on the 21st February 2007 (pdf file). Is it any coincidence that, as soon as the British Council is submerged within a pan-European body, its focus is aimed at the Middle East and China? Even the small details begin to back up Mark Steyn.
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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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