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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As a break from the usual tread-mill of Libertarian Principles, here is a story that best reflects the ‘quagmire’ Britain got itself into by having anything to do with the EU and the countries using its institutions to their advantage. Despite the ravenous inclusiveness of the European Union, the one thing there is no room left for is common sense.
The European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that Italian Parma ham must be packed and sliced in Parma itself to be marketed with its name of origin. The Asda supermarket chain has lost its legal battle to carry on selling Italian Parma ham, because it is packed and sliced in Britain.
Asda’s Parma ham comes from Parma, but it is sliced and packaged near Chippenham in Wiltshire. Its delicatessen Parma ham also comes from Parma – but is sliced in its stores, in front of the customer. European judges have ruled that this is not enough under EU law to justify using the name.
Maintaining the quality and reputation of Parma ham justifies the rule that the product must be sliced and packaged in the region of production.
According to The Daily Telegraph Asda claimed the Italian law was not part of EU law and could not be applied in the UK, but ham from Parma was registered under a 1992 EU rule protecting the use of geographical names on some products. The battle went to London’s High Court, which passed the matter to the Luxembourg judges for a ruling on the EU’s Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) law.
The Parma ham producers’ association, which owns the trademark Prosciutto di Parma, has been seeking an injunction against Asda since 1997. Consorzio del Prosciutto di Parma won the battle despite judge’s recommendation to overturn the relevant European regulation and the advice the European Court of Justice received by one of its own members to invalidate the European Union rule.
As Asda representative said last year:
No one doubts that Scotch beef remains Scottish if sliced in Southampton; Jersey potatoes are still Jerseys when boiled in Blackpool; and cheddar cheese is still cheddar if grated in Gretna.
In most cases the court follows such advice, for example, the European court’s advocate general delivered a similar opinion in a case brought against a company that grates the hard Italian cheese Grana Padana in France.
Not this time though. When you next eat your Parma, you can rejoice in the knowledge that it has been subjected to the traditionally tough quality control by its Italian producer. I suppose there is a first for everything…
Once upon a time, there was a group of states within a larger nation who did something terrible…they allowed slavery. Eventually there was a dreadful civil war between those states and some other states who did not approve of slavery. Although the war was only incidentally about slavery and rather more about centralised versus decentralised power, it did at least have the happy effects of ending slavery.
The National Flag of The Bad Guys: The Stars and Bars!
The flag which The Bad Guys flew in battles
How do we know they were ‘The Bad Guys’? Because of slavery, of course, but mostly we know this because they lost and the winners get to write the history books.
So much later, after the war was over, one state used a flag which harked back to the old battle flag. They argued that most of the people who fought in that war from their state were just fighting for hearth and home and very few of them actually owned slaves anyway. Regardless, those days were part of their history and they rather liked their old flags.
Oh no…Echos of The Bad Guys!
This upset some people mightily and they threatened economic boycotts and all manner of other nastiness if the state did not change their flag to remove the symbolism of The Bad Guys of Old.
So the governor said people could vote on this, but then decided that no, actually, they couldn’t, or maybe they could… but in the mean time, here is a splendid new flag and will you leave me alone now?
The Flag Spangled Banner?
So folks stopped for a moment, looked at this new flag and agreed that it was just about the dumbest, ugliest dish-rag to flap over the state capitol ever. “Screw that!” they all cried, and so the arguments continued to rage.
Eventually however, they agreed to another splendid brand new flag and everyone was happy because this new flag does not look anything like the flag used by The Bad Guys of Old, right?
The State Flag of the Good Guys: The…er, um, ah…Stars and Bars
Those Americans… who says they have no concept of ironic humour? You just gotta love ’em.
A United States federal judge has ruled that Iraq provided material support to Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group al-Qaeda for the September 11, 2001, attack and is liable to pay $US104 million ($163 million) in damages to two victims’ families. The ruling, by Manhattan District Judge Harold Baer, is the first court decision stemming from the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Where does one begin? Cretinous? Idiotic? Ludicrous? Laughable?
The notion a US court would think it had any standing or authority to order Saddam Hussain’s Ba’ath Party, let alone the future post-Ba’athist government of Iraq, to do anything whatsoever is almost beyond belief. How divorced from reality is this? Judge Harold Baer and the people involved in this case must be suffering from serious metal delusions. I filed this article under the category ‘North American Affairs’ and ‘How very odd!’ because is sure has hell has nothing to do with ‘Middle East & Islamic’.
Looks like there’s an uprising in progress down in East Africa:
Baboons “protesting” at the killing of one of their group have disrupted traffic on the busy Tororo-Jinja highway in eastern Uganda.
The trouble began after a speeding lorry ran over a huge female baboon, who died instantly in the Busitema Forest Reserve, 15 kilometres from the Uganda-Kenya border.
According to eyewitnesses, the driver deliberately swerved across the road to hit the female who was eating white ants.
Soon afterwards, an infuriated group of baboons converged at the scene of the killing and surrounded her body.
They sat in the middle on the road for about 30 minutes causing a temporary traffic jam.
Baboons are as mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. A representative of the PLO (Primate Liberation Organisation) said:
Eating white ants is an important part of our culture and we are sick of the anti-baboonist attitudes of this illegitimate regime. This was no accident. It was a deliberate act of African imperialist aggression.
Despite the fiery rhetoric, the majority of baboons claim to be committed to finding a peaceful solution. But, clearly, there is a lot of anger down on the plains.
I threw a piece of sugarcane to the bereaved baboons, but none of them rushed to pick it up.
The PLO representative was dismissive:
Do they think we can be bought off with a bit of sugarcane? We will actively resist this neo-humanist attempt to subjugate our species and steal our resources.
The conflict rages on with no easy resolution in sight. Meanwhile, the Primate Liberation Organisation has denied any formal links with the French Government.
Reuters reports:
A bag of powdered garlic, not something that would normally offend the French, set alarm bells ringing when it was left on a plane at Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport and officials were unable to identify the substance.
The bag found on a US Airways plane which arrived from Orlando on Sunday sparked a security alert when police feared the whitish-grey powder inside could be a deadly toxin.
The abandoned hand luggage was taken away for laboratory analysis and several people who had approached it were taken to hospital for tests. However, the contents were found to be an innocuous stash of powdered garlic and other spices, which the owner later returned to collect.
The false alert came days after officials said an amount of powder found at a Paris train station and initially believed to be the lethal poison ricin appeared to be pulverised wheat and barley. France has been on high alert in recent months amid fears of attacks by Islamic radicals.
I was going to churn out another paean to blowing up tyrants just to cement my credentials as a dangerous heretic in certain libertarian circles, when macho testosterone crazed samizdatista extraordinare, Gabriel Syme burst in though a window and seized my keyboard, compelling me to ‘write something different’ instead. As one look at Gabriel’s bloodshot eyes made it clear that he has been mainlining granulated Hunter S. Thompson books, I though it prudent to play along, humour him and not make any sudden moves.
Seeing as Brian felt the need to link to a song on the best bonkers site on the internet, I feel I must link to this treasure on the same site as it was pointed out to me by the inimitable Syme.
Now as soon as he stops fiddling with that large Nepalese knife I keep on the wall, I will try and slip out unnoticed and contact my Samoan lawyer for advise.
I’m feeling guilty, because I’ve done nothing for Samizdata for three whole days, and I’m supposed to be one of the regulars. Like many bloggers I found that once that statue got taken down I couldn’t be bothered with the war, but going back from the war to the usual stuff we write about didn’t feel right either. Result: nothing.
The most annoyingly memorable thing I’ve seen on the web recently has been this rather terrible song called Hippo Girl, which, inevitably, comes to you via b3ta.co, who also link to this rather nice little massage robot.
Meanwhile Dave Barry guides us to this piece of grammatical advice, which all Samizdatista’s should read because its full of good advice. Nobody edit that last sentence until theyve checked the link.
Guess who owns Monica Lewinsky’s old flat at the Watergate?
Her former neighbors, the Doles, bought it to enlarge their own living space.
The war is winding down into its “this war isn’t over yet – there are still pockets of resistance” phase, and now, I feel, is the time to be talking about soya sauce, and its various occidental rivals. In connection with soya sauce, my blog-enthusiasm of the week, Dave Barry, is right when he says that you need to experience this. This is a catchy tune full of fun, cleverly illustrated by a team of top graphic designers. This illustrated tune both promotes a Japanese brand of soya sauce, and criticises non-Japanese rivals, such as “Worcestershire” Sauce (which I prefer to think of as Worcester sauce but that may just be me).
Is this one of the futures of advertising on the Internet? It’s no good just putting up a sign saying “buy our soya sauce – it’s very nice”, although I’ve seen far stupider slogans. No, you need a bit of wit, fun, pep, fizz, and Dave Barry appeal. That way your stupid advert will stop being a mere advert and become an Internet Meme.
And could it also be one of the futures of pop music? There was a time when advertising jingles were strictly poor cousins to regular non-promotional pop songs. But could the economics of the music business be about to change this? After all, these people want you to listen to this tune for free, and to circulate it to all your friends and internet contacts. They make their money when everyone reveals their increased awareness of the brand to market researchers and when they buy the sauce.
On the subject of non-Japanese rivals, I was at school with a chap called Perrins, whose family were involved with Lea & Perrins Sauce, which is a particular variety of Worcester Sauce. Perrins had unlimited supplies, but we would have preferred it if he had been called Rowntree (like the gruesome Senior Prefect in Lindsay Anderson’s movie If), or perhaps Mars, or maybe Cadbury. The Lea & Perrins website calls its product “Worcestershire” sauce too, I notice. And this site also elaborates on the Worcester sauce theme, although this one calls it “Worcherstershire” sauce, which is definitely wrong. Personally I don’t much like Worcester Sauce, although I quite like Worcester Sauce flavoured crisps. However, I prefer these Marmite flavoured crisps, which are truly excellent, and also greatly to be preferred to Bovril flavoured crisps, in my opinion.
Best of all, saucewise, is surely Hellmann’s Mayonnaise. Who can forget the product placement of this mighty mayo in Woody Allen’s movie Hannah and Her Sisters? Not me, I can tell you that for nothing.
Aaaaahhhh … braaaaaaands.
Not everything at or linked to by b3ta.com is fun, but a lot of it is.
I liked their picture of the Dalek on a chairlift. As they say: problem solved. This is a reference, I believe, to a cartoon from years back, in which a Dalek confronts a staircase and says: “There goes our plan for dominating the universe.” And they had a good “What if Hitler had won?” graphics competition. (“Reich Crispies” packet, etc.) But I couldn’t find these any more so you’ll just have to take my word for them. I think part of the idea of b3ta.com may be to make money, or to help some people to make money, or something like that, hence the way things get switched off. Elucidating comment welcome.
But you can always dig back in their blog archives and find links to other things, links which don’t go away. I did, and found a link from this page (lower down) to these rather fine teddy bears. Knock them over and up they get again, every time.
Actually I suspect that children may prefer the teddy bears to adults. Let me try again. I suspect that children may like the teddy bears better than adults like the teddy bears. Of course children prefer teddy bears to adults.
I know what you’re thinking. What have jumping teddy bears (for they do indeed jump) got to do with The War? Well, The War has now got to the stage where irrelevant joking around now seems like an appropriate thing to be doing, along with noting the war’s progress with due solemnity, i.e. some. Well, I suppose there could be a Republican Guard version of these bears, where they march towards you with their paws up as soon as your mouse pointer gets anywhere near them. But then what? Ah, that is the big question. Time to end this post.
The British commander of troops in the Gulf admitted yesterday that he had been forced to borrow a pair of American desert boots because of a foot injury. Air Marshal Brian Burridge, asked how he had come by the injury, replied: “Kicking a journalist.”
According to Fox News Washington House of Representatives Capitol Hill cafeterias now only serve “freedom fries”.
So why don’t they just call them by their correct name instead?
Chips.
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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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