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A no fly zone is actually pretty similar to zero covid. A nice “feel good” solution & very easy to demonise anyone who disagrees with it. But as soon as you consider the practicalities, it becomes clear that both are entirely unrealistic without huge negative consequences. March 6th, 2022 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
 I have lost loads of followers over my comments on Ukraine. Victory to Ukraine! A sentiment I strongly share. March 4th, 2022 | 50 comments - (Comments are closed)
February 27th, 2022 | 32 comments - (Comments are closed)
George Orwell, Animal Farm:
(Credit to, um, www.marxists.org actually, for providing the link.) The Times yesterday, “Donald Trump praises Vladimir Putin’s ‘genius’ move on Ukraine”. The headline worked; there are more than a thousand outraged comments about how Trump is “supporting Putin”. I knew before I read the first line that the point he was actually making would be something along the lines of this:
The BBC, this morning: February 24th, 2022 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
BBC News 17:16 BST: Taliban take over Presidential Palace – reports Conveniently, Afghanistan has had its own Samizdata tag for nearly twenty years. It is interesting, if depressing, to look at the old entries. August 15th, 2021 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
As soon as I saw it I thought of psychohistory. I was not alone, judging from the most recommended comment to this fascinating Guardian article: ‘At first I thought, this is crazy’: the real-life plan to use novels to predict the next war An extract:
June 26th, 2021 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
April 22nd, 2021 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
BBC On This Day: 1951: Communist forces to re-take 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. January 4th, 2021 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
October 7th, 2020 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just to give a light tap to a small drum, which nobody else will tap if neither of us does, and just to say: fellow Samizdatista Patrick Crozier and I recently did one of our recorded-and-internetted conversations, this time about that strange event called in these parts: The Falklands War, which happened in early 1982. Listen to this by going here. Further thoughts about this historical event and this conversation from me here. (See also an earlier posting I did, about a very strange British public personality who emerged onto British TV during that war.) Somewhat inconveniently, for many, our conversation does rather go on a bit, for over an hour. But I have recently been finding myself spending what used to be my television time instead listening to things not unlike these conversations that Patrick and I have taken to doing – podcasts, YouTubery and so forth (many of these things involving Dave Rubin (a recent discovery of mine)). So I thought it worth mentioning our effort(s) here. February 27th, 2020 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a kerfuffle here in the UK over 5G. I can’t in all honesty say that I have the slightest idea what 5G is but I surmise that it is one better than 4G. The issue is around whether the Chinese company, Huawei, should be allowed to supply some of the equipment. Lots of people, including James Delingpole say, “no”. And very few people say, “yes”. The first question that springs to (my) mind is, what has this got to do with the government? Which I suppose is bound up with the question of what is the threat? Assuming that there is a threat and that government should be “doing something about it”, what is that something? About the only thing I know about China and telephony is that you should never take your phone to China. Oh, and one other thing. Guido Fawkes observed that the real scandal is that Chinese technology should prove to be better than western technology. Is this true and is it a portent? January 29th, 2020 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
It’s now that time of the year between Christmas and the New Year, when we here sometimes do big postings with lots of photos. Usually, these have been retrospective looks back at the year nearly concluded. I did photo-postings like this in 2013, in 2015, and in 2017. And see also other such photo-postings here in the past, like this one in 2014, and this one way back in 2006. We’re not the only ones doing these retro-postings about the nearly-gone year. A few days back an email incame from David Thompson, flagging up the posting he did summarising his 2019, which will already have been much read on account of Instapundit already having linked to it. And one of Thompson’s commenters mentioned a similar posting by Christopher Snowdon, mostly about politicians wanting to tell us what not to eat, drink or smoke. So, here’s another 2019 retrospective. But it’s not a look back at the whole of 2019, merely a look back at a walk I took in London, on Christmas Day 2019. I like to photo-walk in London on Christmas Day, especially if the weather is as great as it was that Day. I began my walk by going to Victoria Street and turning right, towards Westminster Abbey, where I did what I often do around Westminster Abbey. I photoed my fellow digital photographers, who were photoing Westminster Abbey:
The lady on the left as we look is using one of those small but dedicated digital cameras, of the sort that nobody buys now and hardly anyone even uses now, because the logical thing, unless you want something like 25x zoom like I do, or really great photos that you could blow up and hang in an art gallery, is to use a mobile phone. But she is still using her tiny camera from about a decade ago. Odd. Next some giant purple Christmas tree balls, outside the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre. December 30th, 2019 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
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