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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Just a reminder that no matter how bad things get, this too shall pass
My first piggy bank was in the shape of a globe. After I’d found out what a globe was my first question was “Where is Britain?” and I got the rather disappointing reply familiar to all Britons. My second question – to which there was an similarly disappointing answer – was “Where is Vietnam?” I asked because I had heard the word over and over again on the radio.
In 1975, South Vietnam was defeated by the communist North. I remember the TV pictures. I was particularly saddened by the sight of a helicopter being thrown off the deck of an American aircraft carrier. I knew then that this was a catastrophe although it took me a lot longer to find out just how much of a catastrophe.
People often talk about how bloody the Vietnam War was. Perhaps 500,000 deaths. What they rarely talk about is how bloody the Vietnam Peace was. Two million dead by some estimates. Once the South Vietnamese Army had collapsed the South Vietnamese had nothing to protect them from communist tyranny, red in tooth and claw.
It didn’t have to be this way. The big secret about Vietnam – apart from the peace being bloodier than the war – was that South Vietnam would have been just fine had the US public not got bored of the thing and the US Congress not voted to end combat air patrols over the country.
I can’t imagine what brought that to mind.
I did not see this coming: “South Korea’s president declares emergency martial law”, reports the BBC.
Yoon Suk Yeol, the South Korean president, is quoted as saying, “Our National Assembly has become a haven for criminals, a den of legislative dictatorship that seeks to paralyse the judicial and administrative systems and overturn our liberal democratic order.”
Sounds like projection to me.
Can anyone explain what is going on? Is there really any more of a threat from North Korea than there always is, or is it all to do with domestic politics?
Update: Lawmakers in South Korea vote to lift the martial law decree. The Guardian link says,
South Korea’s parliament, with 190 of its 300 members present, just passed a motion requiring the martial law declared by President Yoon Suk Yeol to be lifted.
All 190 lawmakers present voted to lift the measure, according to CNN.
Much depends on which 190 lawmakers were present. If the very fact that they were still in the parliament building after martial law was declared was because they they were from the opposition, President Yoon will dismiss it – although the 190 being an absolute majority of South Korea’s MPs does give their vote moral weight.
If it was a broad spread of MPs from several parties, this vote might mean the end of the coup. Either way, it is troubling to realise that a country that everyone thought was a stable democracy isn’t.
Did democracy stop being cool or something?
My lack of current knowledge on the area means I felt no need to weigh in, but it seems astonishing how little reportage there is regarding what’s been happening in Bangladesh for the last few weeks, very much a side issue it seems.
“In the Singaporean case, economic growth has proved to be an upshot of cultural values; it requires a critical mass of the population to hold a certain moral and political psychology, and a particular set of dispositions about enterprise and industry, risk, and change. Cultural values are sticky, and to change them, some moment of acute crisis, when it appears that the costs of continuing down a certain path are greater than shifting course, is required. Yet while crises are necessary for cultural change, they are not sufficient: they represent moments of maximal opportunity, though they must be exploited. And for this, skilled politicians with judgement and a strategy are required.”
– James Vitali
The Observer is editorially independent from the Guardian, and sometimes it demonstrates that fact to good effect. Today’s edition included this article: “‘A catastrophe’: Greenpeace blocks planting of ‘lifesaving’ Golden Rice”.
Scientists have warned that a court decision to block the growing of the genetically modified (GM) crop golden rice in the Philippines could have catastrophic consequences. Tens of thousands of children could die in the wake of the ruling, they argue.
The Philippines had become the first country – in 2021 – to approve the commercial cultivation of golden rice, which was developed to combat vitamin-A deficiency, a major cause of disability and death among children in many parts of the world.
But campaigns by Greenpeace and local farmers last month persuaded the country’s court of appeal to overturn that approval and to revoke this. The groups had argued that golden rice had not been shown to be safe and the claim was backed by the court, a decision that was hailed as “a monumental win” by Greenpeace.
“‘In a lot of the world, the clock has hit midnight’: China is calling in loans to dozens of countries from Pakistan to Kenya”
– Bernard Condon and the Associated Press in a major article for Fortune magazine.
Here are some excerpts from the article that struck me:
In the past under such circumstances [debtor countries being unable to make interest payments], big government lenders such as the U.S., Japan and France would work out deals to forgive some debt, with each lender disclosing clearly what they were owed and on what terms so no one would feel cheated.
But China didn’t play by those rules. It refused at first to even join in multinational talks, negotiating separately with Zambia and insisting on confidentiality that barred the country from telling non-Chinese lenders the terms of the loans and whether China had devised a way of muscling to the front of the repayment line.
And
Along with the usual mix of government mismanagement and corruption are two unexpected and devastating events: the war in Ukraine, which has sent prices of grain and oil soaring, and the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates 10 times in a row, the latest this month. That has made variable rate loans to countries suddenly much more expensive.
All of it is roiling domestic politics and upending strategic alliances.
In March, heavily indebted Honduras cited “financial pressures” in its decision to establish formal diplomatic ties to China and sever those with Taiwan.
Last month, Pakistan was so desperate to prevent more blackouts that it struck a deal to buy discounted oil from Russia, breaking ranks with the U.S.-led effort to shut off Vladimir Putin’s funds.
And, which I did not expect, → Continue reading: China calls in the loans
“The irony of Xi’s Ahab Quest is that Taiwan has never been a part of China. ‘China’ today is a recapitulation of the old Qing Empire (which, to add irony to irony, was not Chinese but Manchurian). Tibet, East Turkestan, Mongolia, and Manchuria are in no historical sense remotely ‘Chinese’. Ditto for Taiwan, in which Qing officialdom evinced only desultory interest until 1854, when American Commodore Matthew C. Perry, fresh from his gunboat-treaty journey to Japan, showed interest of his own.”
– Jason Morgan, Spectator. Morgan says a Chinese attempted conquest of Taiwan, and war with neighbours, such as Japan, and the US, is inevitable.
Reported a few minutes ago by the Times of India: Breaking News Live: Sri Lanka President Gotabaya Rajapaksa flees as protesters storm residence
The mob breaking into his palace does not necessarily mean that a president becomes an ex-president. But that’s the way to bet. Other leaders might like to note how this came about:
What a difference a year makes: the green dream dies in Sri Lanka
UPDATE: Some reports say that (now almost certainly ex-) president Rajapaksa has been seen at Colombo airport. Meanwhile, fancy a dip in the presidential pool?
April 2021:
“Sri Lanka will become first country to be free of chemical fertilizer”, the Sri Lankan news website News First reported:
COLOMBO (News 1st); President Gotabhaya Rajapaksa has stated that he will take up the challenge in making Sri Lanka the first country in the world to eliminate the use of chemical fertilizers without reversing any of the steps that have been taken.
The absence of any country in the world that has eliminated the use of chemical fertilizers is not an obstacle to achieving the goal, President Rajapaksa noted.
The President urged all to unite to educate the farmer and create a healthy generation at a discussion held at the Presidential Secretariat on Thursday (29) to raise awareness on the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides and the ban on such imports.
“The government must guarantee the right of the people to a non-toxic diet to produce a healthy and productive citizen,” said the President.
April 2022:
“How Sri Lanka’s shift to organic farming left it in the manure,” reports the Times:
What turned Sri Lanka’s economic situation from difficult to catastrophic was the decision by the Rajapaksa government to implement a nationwide ban on synthetic fertiliser. It was made not at the behest of neoliberal economists doing the bidding of global capital, but rather on the advice of environmentalists in the name of sustainable agriculture.
[…]
But that strategy backfired in spectacular fashion. Domestic rice production fell by 14 per cent from 2021 to 2022, forcing the nation, long self-sufficient in rice production, to import hundreds of millions of dollars of rice and more than eroding all of the savings from ceasing fertiliser imports. On top of that, the ban decimated tea production, leading to a $425 million economic loss to the industry in its first six months of implementation. Tea, one of the nation’s primary crops, is a key source of its total export income, making a bad foreign exchange situation far worse.
Little noticed in the UK media, reports from a financial vlogger Joe Blogs (that is his handle) on Turkey tells us that the government is ‘asking’ citizens to hand over their gold and foreign currency, at a time of 50% inflation, but citizens will get Lira in return. There are 30,000 gold shops in Turkey and five major refineries. Do not worry that Erdogan is a (not so) covert Islamist, he is first and foremost a Keynesian.
The Turkish government is not simply standing by and watching as the Lira inflates away, the government has cut tax on food from 8% to 1%, and this in the context of a currency crisis, the lira falling 44% in 2021 against foreign currencies. So they know that cutting taxes eases burdens on people. Unfortunately, Atatürk’s doctrine of ‘statism‘ lingers, with lots of Turks employed by the State.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Finance Minister has been in the UK and reported had a ‘fantastic‘ meeting with potential investors. And the goverment is determined to keep on down this path, telling the private banks to step up their efforts to help by handing over foreign currency deposits. (Doubtless this is all voluntary).
Here is a graph of recent Turkish inflation rates. Are we going to be seeing a ‘crack-up boom’ in real time any week now? Turkey is reportedly informally dollarising, with over 50% of transactions in Turkey in dollars (Why not the Euro?).
I can’t help thinking that in the UK, the government is looking at Turkey with envious eyes, dreaming of taking steps to inflate away what remains of our prosperity and to seize our assets.
And it is not all bad from the Turkish government, they have changed the name of the country in a re-branding exercise, changing it from ‘Turkey’ to ‘Türkiye’, apparently to avoid confusion with the bird of the same name.
Joe Blogs also has some interesting coverage on the Chinese property conglomerate Evergrande, and the efforts of a US Hedge Fund to take ownership of collateral in Hong Kong.
BBC On This Day: 1951: Communist forces to re-take Seoul
The Third Battle of Seoul
We in the West seem to have entirely forgotten the Korean War. President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China is keeping the memory alive, in his own fashion.
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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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