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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This article is from nearly a week ago, but it is of interest still, I think:
Newspaper owners responsible for publishing racist or xenophobic articles in Britain are to be protected from being sent for trials abroad under government plans to soften the impact of the new Extradition Bill.
Ministers will introduce amendments today to tough European-wide laws that allow courts to extradite EU citizens accused of committing one of 32 generic criminal offences.
Concerns raised by the media that they could fall foul of the new law when it comes into force in January have prompted the Government to act to remove the threat of prosecution.
The Bill makes “xenophobia and racism” one of 32 crimes for which a British citizen can be sent for trial in another EU country – such as Germany or Austria, where it is illegal – although there is no such standalone offence in this country.
But because British newspapers are sold abroad and their articles are published on the internet, editors and their proprietors could face prosecution for racist offences committed in this country.
I can’t say I understand the full ramification of this, but my brain is abuzz with questions.
For instance. Will these amendments apply only to newspaper proprietors, or will, for example, the proprietors of group blogs be exempt also, in similar circumstances? If one of us junior contributors here did a White Rose posting that the government of Austria deemed to be xenophobic or racist, would Gabriel and Perry, the named organisers of White Rose, then still be in the firing line? Or do these amendments apply to them as well?
Looking at the larger picture here, the stink of this piece is that “Europe” is a place where what seems to matter is not what you have done but who you are.
What’s so special about these newspaper proprietors, other than that they have the power to affect the fortunes of major politicians? Are they like the drivers of fire engines needing to exceed the regular speed limits? I suppose they would argue that, metaphorically speaking, this is indeed what they are, sort of. They are our protectors, and therefore they themselves need special protection.
But one fears, on the contrary, that maybe these big media newspapers may ease off on their concern-raising about the other 31 of those 32 generic criminal offences – and about, you know, things in general – just so long as they themselves are not directly threatened by the new arrangements. One fears, in other words, that in exchange for their own protection, they’ll relax about protecting the rest of us.
Still, at least the Indy gave these other 31 criminal offences a passing mention. Can anyone say, or point to a place which does say, what they all are?
Today being the date that it is, here are two pictures, which I took today, of two of the statues in Parliament Square, which is a walk away from my home. As you can see, I have much to learn about photography, and these images are weak on detail, especially Lincoln. Plus, ever since I had it ‘mended’ about a year ago, my camera has imparted a pinkish hue to any bright light that it sees, of a sort that my knowledge of Photoshop is insufficient completely to remove. The sky over Lincoln started out bright pink, I kid you not, and the blossoms behind Churchill likewise. My camera sees the world through a rose tinted lense. (Helpful Photoshop comments would be welcome.) Nevertheless, I hope that the thought will count for something.
 
These two personages are both commonly regarded as that grandest variety of politician, known as statesmen, and what is more they were neither of them exactly shrinking violets when it came to expanding and strengthening their respective state apparatuses. So, given how we feel about the state and all its works here, maybe they aren’t perfect for all the nuances of the sentiments being expressed. But they’ll do.
How cool is this, says Alan Forrester without any question mark.
The United States is planning to build an unmanned hypersonic aircraft capable of striking any target in the world within two hours.
I know what he means, but I would prefer a question mark in there somewhere. Talk about power projection.
It appears that the philosophy is a development of the “shock and awe” tactics developed for the Iraq war.
According to Darpa: “The intent is to hold adversary vital interests at risk at all times, counter anti-access threats, serve as a halt-phase shock force and conduct suppression of enemy air-defence and lethal strike missions as part of integrated strategic campaigns in the 21st Century.”
In other words the United States will be able, using aircraft based on its own territory, to strike at individual targets without warning and without the need for foreign bases.
The whole project goes under the acronym Falcon – Force Application and Launch from the Continental United States.
The military journal Jane’s Defence Weekly, which broke the story in its latest edition, says that as well as this futuristic plan, the research agency also proposes a shorter term (by 2010) weapons system.
What I have in mind is the Antoine Clarke question. Imagine the button for this gadget on the desk of your least favourite President of the United States of, say, the last twenty years. Think Bill Clinton, wanting to divert attention from his latest sordid and very public grilling about his sex life, with the power to make big (but cheap) bangs anywhere on earth with a guarantee of no American body bags and timed to the second.
I’m starting to feel about Bush the way I now feel about Thatcher. She massively strengthened the British state, and its general habit of doing what it likes despite all criticism, for purposes (getting the state a bit more out of the British economy than it had been) that I approved of, and was then ousted and replaced by a very different political tendency. Now Bush is doing the same with the US state, to do other things I approve of.
And Bush too will eventually be toppled, if only by the inexorable force of the US Constitution that will only allow him eight years at the wheel. In a decade from now, when the Democrats have got their act together and when they get to own the White House for another decade, the world will be ruled by armed social workers for whom global gun control will be only the start. (Show us your banking records or bangs in two hours.) Bush will never get to play with this new toy. His successors will.
That’s “how cool” this is.
This site, MagnaCartaPlus, looks like it could be very useful to the sort of people who read this, and for that matter who write for this.
Mission statement
The purpose of this site is to promote civil liberties and to provide information in pursuit of that objective. It is a watch on any attempts by governments to reduce or interfere with civil liberties and freedoms.
Objectives
1. To make British citizens and the international community aware factually of the content of recent repressive legislation passed by the British Parliament and the effect it is having or will have on the lives, businesses and rights of British citizens and those of their descendents using every legally available means of publicity, including, inter alia, the Internet, international, national and local newspapers and periodicals, television networks and radio stations.
2. To illustrate through the use of history and the identification of patterns the effect that repressive legislation developed in Britain (and other pioneering countries) is having or could have globally and to welcome and publish comments and observations from interested people worldwide.
I’m one of life’s intellectual butterflies; not one of its worker ants. So I’m not going to trawl chew through this site and then tell you whether I think it is really as good as it says it is trying to be. Suffice it to say that this page, entitled An overview of Civil Liberties legislation since 1900, which was the page I first got to (by typing “UK” “Civil Liberties” into Google) certainly seems to live up to the promises. Students of British civil-liberties-hostile legislation will find a blow-by-blow account of all the recent legislation, together with links to more detailed analysis of each Act. It’s not a blog. Sorry. This man is not chattering away three times a day, he’s carving his truths into stone tablets.
The only criticism of Matthew Robb I can come up with in twenty minutes – he seems to be the guy doing most of this – is that despite his best efforts he sometimes muddles the subject of “Civil Liberties” with that of “Civil Liberties in the UK”. That trifling complaint aside, this looks like an excellent resource.
But as I said, I’m only a butterfly, and if some of our worker ant contributors and/or commenters were to take a look … If it looks the part, then maybe a permanent mention of and link to it could be put here, somewhere.
More surveillance, straight from the school locker room to the internet.
More on vehicle tracking, linked to by A Small Victory:
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is developing an urban surveillance system (search) that would use computers and thousands of cameras to track, record and analyze the movement of every vehicle in a foreign city.
Dubbed “Combat Zones That See,” the project is designed to help the U.S. military protect troops and fight in cities overseas.
Police, scientists and privacy experts say the unclassified technology could easily be adapted to spy on Americans.
The project’s centerpiece is groundbreaking computer software that is capable of automatically identifying vehicles by size, color, shape and license tag, or drivers and passengers by face.
With reservations, I supported the invasion of Iraq, and can see the point also of rescuing other places. But this is exactly the sort of thing that the opponents of such escapades abroad have in mind as the reason why they are opposed, and why I also have reservations.
Governments acquire the habits of despotism in faraway places where it seems to make sense, or maybe just not to matter. Then they do it everywhere. Surveillance is indivisible, you might say.
Reason’s Hit and Run blog links to this article in the Washington Post about companies who promise not to sell information about you. And they keep their promise. They don’t. They rent it instead.
Original link here.
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For as long as I can remember I have been an enthusiastic supporter of the principle of road pricing, for much the same reasons that I favour the pricing of any other scarce and desirable product or service. Reduce queueing caused by underpricing. Encourage the construction of better roads, more suited to the desires of drivers, more creatively designed. Pricing will enable road ownership, and that will enable better environmental policies, because owners will then be responsible for environmental impact. Etc.
However, there are two different ways of doing road pricing, both of which have big advantages and big disadvantages.
One. Anonymous Charging. Charge each vehicle to go past certain barriers, physical or electrical. Either the man at the wheel chucks some coins down a shute, or the place has a machine which debits the vehicle as it goes by, by debiting a box on the vehicle which has been filled up with money, gas meter style.
Advantage: Anonymity! The vehicle user is no more spied on than he is when he buys a pair of socks in a shop. If the vehicle user consents to the transaction tracking inherent in the use of a credit card, fair enough. But money remains an option, and money is freedom, because money is anonymous. (I remember once a trader in a street market shouting at me: “You don’t ask me where I got the stuff I’m selling, and I won’t ask you where you got your money.”)
Disadvantage: Cumbersomeness. Every barrier becomes a huge Thames Flood Barrier for cars. Installing machines in cars is complicated and expensive, and what if different cities use different systems? A different box for each system? Until the same system wins a battle of the gauges, it’s a nightmare either of delay or of incompatible equipment. → Continue reading: Total Surveillance versus Anonymous Charging: the road pricing dilemma
Here’s some good news, in the form, for me, of an email from the newly launched Molinari Institute’s Director, Cécile Philippe:
I am delighted to announce the arrival a major new French-speaking free market think tank, the Molinari Institute, and the launch of its website www.institutmolinari.org
Named after the great nineteenth century French-speaking classical libertarian Gustave de Molinari, the institute aims to create an environment in which both individuals and businesses can thrive and be free without the ties of regulation and vested interest.
Through its website and conferences “Les soirées Molinari,” it will help the rediscovery of the work of Gustave de Molinari as well as other French and European liberal thinkers such as Frédéric Bastiat, Charles Coquelin and Bruno Leoni. It will focus on public policy issues such as competition, healthcare, retirement and education.
To launch the website today there is an interview with José Pinera, former secretary of labor and social security in Chile, who radically and successfully implemented in the market-oriented 80’s the pension reform.
The Molinari Institute is a non-profit organization. It accepts voluntary contributions from foundations, corporations, and individuals. No government funding or endowments are received.
I should say not. I know Cecile Philippe to be both a fearless and uncompromising libertarian activist, and a thoroughly charming and civilised person, two things which don’t always go together. The ideal combination of qualities for someone running an institute like this, in other words. I wish her every possible success, as will many others.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Does Cécile Philippe have a sister? Yes she does
Remember, France counts twice, at least. Whatever opinions, good or bad, sensible or stupid, those French intellectuals may happen to hold, they are, it must be admitted, totally brilliant at spreading them far and wide. Imagine the impact on mankind and its affairs if we could turn the bien pensants of France around, from statists and collectivists into the opposite. That might be a bit incroyable, but wouldn’t it be formidable?
Usually when we feature pictures of posters in the London Underground the news is bad. But here is some good news, in the form of a poster advertising Steven Pinker‘s The Blank Slate.
The book itself probably doesn’t need much plugging here, but I’ll plug it anyway. It’s about true and false (as in the “Blank Slate” of the title) views of human nature, and about how they affect politics, education, aesthetics, and so on. Summarising brutally, if you think that human nature is something that a political system can simply shape at will, you’ll tend to say that your preferred political system should shape away, sometimes with murderous consequences.
To me the encouraging thing about this book is that here is a mainstream publishing event, so to speak, which is full almost to the point of saturation with references to the literature of liberty, of classical liberalism and of anti-collectivism. If you were a regular reader of the publications of, say, the Libertarian Alliance, or of the Reason Foundation, or of the Cato Institute, you’d find references to any number of debates and discussions and personalities which would ring bells with you. Among the many names, for example, listed in the References section are: Friedrich Hayek, Thomas Sowell, Robert Nozick, Kenneth Minogue, Ferdinand Mount, Wendy McElroy and Tom Wolfe, to name just a very few such. I suspect that the Reason foundation may deserve particular kudos for helping Pinker’s thinking along these lines.
When I first spotted this poster, there must have been quite a few of them around, but when, digital camera in hand, I went looking for it again yesterday, I had nearly given up when I found one still on view. Presumably this campaign was timed to coincide with this competition, for which The Blank Slate was shortlisted. (Pinker has been shortlisted for this prize three times, but has yet to win it.)
Since this is Samizdata, let me also mention that the lady in the poster to the left of the Pinker poster as we look at it is Eliza Dushku, star of the movie Wrong Turn. “A brutally exciting, savage shocker. Shriek, jump, enjoy!”
Ah, human nature.
Some further evidence for that buzz I thought I detected a while ago in favour of re-conquering Africa.
A consortium of mercenary groups has made the UN a deceptively simple proposal: give us $200 million, and we’ll help bring an end to the war in the Congo.
Tribal militias are running rampant in the eastern part of the central African nation, slaughtering hundreds of villagers at a time. Since 1998, the violence there has claimed 3.3 million lives.
The world’s response has been, to say the least, underwhelming. A few thousand UN peacekeeping troops have been stationed there since 2001. But these brave souls watched helplessly last month as the militias murdered 430 innocents in the provincial capital of Bunia.
The killings shamed the European Union into sending 1,400 French and British soldiers into the area. But they’ll operate only in Bunia — no matter how bloody things turn in the countryside. And on September 1, the troops are going home. End of story.
What happens then? The UN Security Council is trying to decide that now. …
Personally I would be amazed if anything as sensible and humane as this were actually to happen in the near future. → Continue reading: Regime Change inc.
Johnathan Pierce did a piece on Tuesday about this book by Tyler Cowen. And if you follow that link to amazon.co.uk you find that paragraph one of review number one goes like this:
A Frenchman rents a Hollywood movie. A Thai schoolgirl mimics Madonna. Saddam Hussein chooses Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” as the theme song for his fifty-fourth birthday. It is a commonplace that globalization is subverting local culture. But is it helping as much as it hurts? In this strikingly original treatment of a fiercely debated issue, Tyler Cowen makes a bold new case for a more sympathetic understanding of cross-cultural trade. Creative Destruction brings not stale suppositions but an economist’s eye to bear on an age-old question: Are market exchange and aesthetic quality friends or foes? On the whole, argues Cowen in clear and vigorous prose, they are friends. Cultural “destruction” breeds not artistic demise but diversity.
So globalisation is good, culturally as well as economically. But the Saddam Hussein reference does rather make me want to rethink my attitude to My Way. This song may indeed be a hymn of praise to individualism and individual liberty, but Saddam Hussein wasn’t (and still isn’t?) averse to individualism and individual liberty – he was/is after all an extremely liberated individual – provided that it’s his individualism and individual liberty he’s singing about rather then anyone else’s. The “My Way” critics would appear to be vindicated.
But although bad news for anyone who thinks that only Hayekian liberals sing this song, this is not exactly good news for collectivists either, for when someone like Saddam sings this song, he is ramming home the lesson that collectivism, rather than installing any sort of collective virtue into power, merely ensures the triumph of all the vices of one vicious individual, who ends up doing everyone in, and doing it “my way”. You have to admit that the world’s nastiest despotisms devise their own uniquely ghastly ways of killing and torturing people.
And now, the end is near;
And so I face the final curtain. …
Concerning Saddam, let’s hope so.
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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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