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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David Brooks has written an article for the New York Times called The Solitary Leaker that contains so many grotesque notions I will just point out one and leave the rest for you, gentle reader, to wade through yourself…
If you live a life unshaped by the mediating institutions of civil society, perhaps it makes sense to see the world a certain way: Life is not embedded in a series of gently gradated authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world. Instead, it’s just the solitary naked individual and the gigantic and menacing state.
State… nation… are not ‘mediating institutions of civil society’, they are mediating political institutions and the observation these are materially different things is hardly a new one. They are violence backed imposers of laws, the means of collective coercion… and the process for deciding who gets the guns pointed at them is what we call ‘politics’, which is quite quite different to how elective things like ‘family’, ‘neighbourhood’, ‘religious group’ (unless it happens to be Islam) and ‘world’ work as these are collections of people you can invite to mind their own damn business and turn your back on them, with all the good and bad things that might come of that… or embrace them wholeheartedly, as you see fit and as they deserve, generally without the cops kicking down your door one way or the other.
But of course to a statist like David Brooks, the realm of the voluntary, the elective give and take of the civil, the marketplace of not just things but customs and affinity, the realm of personal moral judgement, is subordinate to The Tribe, The Collective, The Institutional. Duty is not to moral truth or decency or charity, it is to The Hierarchy of your Betters and knowing your place in it. David Brooks’ world view is that which rejects the moral courage to say “No, to hell with your orders, this is wrong”. His is the view that does not care if something is ‘moral’, just so long as it is ‘lawful’.
Libertarian Home is hosting an evening lecture next week with Dr Steve Davies called ‘the History of Individualism’ in London.
Most libertarians would agree that to build a free society “we wouldn’t start from here”, but we here we are. Dr Davies will put the present rise of libertarian politics into context and show how the progress of liberty, and the words used to describe it, have changed through the ages. Dr Steve Davies is a historian, a PhD, and Education Director at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
This inaugural lecture takes place in the Griffin Room above the Counting House pub, a first class meeting space in The City.
The event will be catered for with a buffet of pub fare sponsored by the Pro Liberty Party.
Formality begins at 8 and will be concluded by 9. Please RSVP.
7:00 pm, Monday June 17th
The Counting House
50 Cornhill, London EC3V 3PD (map)
This event is highly recommended if you are in the London area. Several Samizdatistas will be there to hear the lecture.
If you doubted that the €uropocalyse was at hand…
French President Francois Hollande has declared an end to the eurozone debt crisis, which has gripped the region for the past four years.
… well everything is going to be okay after all then! Thank goodness for that!
Facebook, Google etc are falling over themselves to deny that they have given the US espionage organisation the NSA direct access to their servers and customer information.
And to put it bluntly, there is simply nothing they can say that would make me believe them.
Why? Three reasons:
Firstly, it is very much in their commercial interest for customers not to take the view that their personal information can be browsed pretty much at will by American civil servants for whatever reason they can contrive.
Secondly, very few people within Facebook and Google would actually be privy to any involvement with PRISM, so much of the shock being expressed will no doubt be genuine (I know some quite highly placed technical people within both Google and Facebook and I would totally believe them if they told me to my face they found this all hard to believe, but then none of them are at board level, so unless they needed to know…).
Thirdly and most importantly, the court orders giving blanket access include threats if they reveal they are cooperating with the court order. In short, they are required by law to lie about their cooperation if asked.
IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that no person shall disclose to any other person that the FBI or NSA has sought or obtained tangible things under this Order, other than to: (a) those persons to whom disclosure is necessary to comply with such Order; (b) an attorney to obtain legal advice or assistance with respect to the production of things in response to the Order; or (c) other persons as permitted by the Director of the FBI or the Director’s designee.
So it really does not matter what Facebook and Google et al says, does it?
UPDATE: This is a very interesting suggestion… in short, once they got Verizon (i.e Tier One) they actually did not need much cooperation from the people downstream. Fascinating stuff. I wonder to what extent that is actually true.
When I read this…
US spy chief James Clapper has strongly defended government surveillance programmes after revelations of phone records being collected and internet servers being tapped. He said disclosure of a secret court document on phone record collection threatened “irreversible harm”.
… my first reaction was “Irreversible? I certainly hope so”.
The flood of revelations about the sheer scale of NSA information theft… direct server access without an individual court order whenever the NSA wants something from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Skype*, PalTalk, YouTube, AOL and Apple… has made me wonder if savvy non-US based business might not be able to market their services as explicitly non-US.
Just imagine the possible tag lines:
“Don’t worry, the NSA does not have easy assess to your data as we are not a US based or owned company”
…or tapping into a bit of anti-Americanism never hurt the bottom line…
“We are not located in the ‘Land of the Free, Home of the Brave’, so your data cannot be browsed at will by unaccountable NSA spies!”
… which is not to say such services cannot be marketed to Americans…
“Non-US nationals across the world are not protected by the US constitution, come to think of it, neither are Americans in America, so your data is safer with us as we are a NON-US owned and NON-US based company!”
The creative possibilities are endless and anyone who cannot leverage this into internet gold is not trying hard enough! Capitalism for the win!
*= Skype, originally a Luxembourg based company, was purchased by eBay in 2005 and then Microsoft in 2011.
The media and blogosphere are abuzz with the astonishing info-grab by the US government…
The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
I assume the Guardian got this information because someone inside Verizon said “fuck this” and leaked it. I also hope the Guardian has the ghoolies to well and truly protect their source.
How to tell when a politician is lying about freedom of expression: the key is the use of the word ‘but‘…
Newport city councillor, Majid Rahman said: “I believe in freedom of speech and defend his rights to say what he wants, but once it starts offending people then it’s a police matter and it’s up to them whether they think it’s broken any laws.”
… the first fifteen words are negated by everything after the ‘but’, which is to say Newport city councillor Majid Rahman very explicitly does not believe in T-shirt printer Matthew Taylor’s freedom of speech and rights to say what he wants. No, he believes in state regulated speech enforced by the police and that he is only ‘free’ to say things that do not offend certain categories of people. And that is not freedom of speech.
Personally I would like to see Newport city councillor Majid Rahman arrested and thrown in jail, not because he offends me (although such view do indeed offend me) but because a politician threatening people with the police because of a T-shirt should be regarded as a crime. Do you think if I called up the Plod in Newport and complained that might happen? 😉
If I was Matthew Taylor I would say “Get stuffed you nasty little thug, it stays in the window and if you don’t like that, I suggest you arrest me and charge me so we can run this past a jury of my peers.” I know quite a few people who would be able to find a pro bono lawyer who would delighted to take such a case.
“That commons had become too tragic for me”
– Doc Searls, author, columnist and all round guru, was heard to utter this last night at the reception for speakers for The State of the Net conference in Trieste, as we devoured the last of the exquisite Italian antipasti laid out on one table and moved on to the next table of communal yummies.
Ian Bennett made an interesting comment on an article published the other day that is worth making a discussion point. It actually makes two points… firstly that politicians will say whatever they think they need to say to stay in power… I regard this as a truism and so not really worth discussing other than to say “indeed”. The second point however was more contentious:
Religion is unconditionally dangerous, simply because it is irrational; the distinction between “extreme” and “moderate” adherents is a false one, and is better regarded as “consistent” and “inconsistent”. The inconsistent moderates may not actually call publicly for the murder of non-believers (despite that being a core dogma of their faith), but they provide the context in which the consistent extremists operate, namely that adherence to a religion is a perfectly acceptable way of life. Eating only fish on a Friday “because God tells me to” is no different in its motivation from committing any other act “because God tells me to”. If we accept the performance of an act which has no rational underpinning simply because of its motivation (“God told me to”), we must accept the performance of all acts with that same motivation. This is what consistent, “extremist”, religious adherents do.
I sort of agree… which is to say, yes but no but…
I think the nature of what “God tells you to do” is a non-trivial distinction between religions and whilst even Buddhism has gone through militant phases, some religions default suppositions are broadly positive (i.e. if you are actually being ‘consistent’ you really cannot justify slaughtering the Cathars based on anything Jesus said), whilst others have clearly negative default suppositions (i.e. yes you really can justify slaughtering apostates based on what Mohammed said and there really is not a lot of wiggle room if you are being consistent).
As a atheist myself, I regard God as nothing more than a psychological artifice, but it also seems demonstrably true that many believers are nevertheless entirely capable of rational moral judgement that is not of any practical difference to my God-free moral theory based way of going about things. Indeed many of the writers for Samizdata are people with religious beliefs.
Is this simply what Ian describes as the difference between consistent versus inconsistent believers? Not so sure. If a religion can include “God says be rational because you are responsible for your actions due to having free will and are not merely God’s meat puppet” and also says “you will roast in eternal hellfire if you murder anyone, so put that gun down dude!”… well I think a ‘consistent’ follower of that particular God will find it rather harder to say “Kill ’em all for God will know his own”. Indeed it seems rather inconsistent even if slaughtering Cathars is very much The Done Thing these days.
So I think maybe religions are conditionally dangerous rather than unconditionally so. When following “the word of God”, it is fairly important what that particular God has to say… and clearly contrary to what many adherents claim, the God Jesus was referring to and the one Mohammed was referring to have about as much in common as Freyja and Shiva.
Discuss.
I read an article describing confrontations between the fascist EDL and ‘anti-fascist’ protesters in the aftermath of the recent Woolwich atrocity. Ok, Marxist collectivists confronting non-Marxist collectivists, very much a row-within-the-family it seems… “Yah Boo Sucks! Our identity politics are better than your identity politics!”
But I have a question… were these fine anti-fascists also out in force when Islamic fascists were marching in London calling for the imposition of Sharia law?
Just curious, does anyone actually know?
Yet another assault of freedom of expression by the forces of repression. Sometimes it comes from priggish intolerant ‘Daily Mail Right’ and sometimes from the thuggish and profoundly intolerant ‘Thought Police Left.
Shops could face legal action over ‘lads’ mags’. Magazines on shelves Campaigners say shops stocking lads’ mags could be in breach of the Equality Act 2010. Retailers are being warned they could face legal action if they continue to sell magazines showing naked and semi-naked images of women. Pressure groups and lawyers say displaying the magazines or requiring staff to handle them could amount to sexual harassment or discrimination […] UK Feminista director Kat Banyard said so-called lads’ mags fuelled sexist attitudes and behaviour by portraying women as “sex objects”. She told the BBC the images caused “real harm”.
Well I regard any attempt to threaten people from selling magazines as “real harm. So perhaps it is time to pass some laws that threaten people who do that with the violence backed hammer of law. Sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander and tolerance for people who wish to use force to impose their intolerance is both cowardice and ultimately suicidal.
And lets get rid of the Equality Act 2010 while we are at it.
Journalist Piers Hernu retorted:
“…no “right-minded individual” would consider the content of these magazines pornographic.
What we have here is a very deeply sinister and disturbing attempt by a group of fundamentalist, fanatical feminists trying to rope in some lawyers in order to bully the supermarkets into removing lads mags’ from the shelves by alerting both staff and customers that they may be able to win a court case”
Whilst I like his accurate characterisation of these thugs, he makes one very serious error. So what if the magazines are ‘pornographic’? Once you accept that as a legitimate reason to pass laws against a magazine, the enemies of liberty just start redefining what ‘pornography’ means until they get what they want.
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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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