That essential source for civil liberties issues, vigilant.tv is showing signs of life again after a long absence from the blogosphere. That can only be a good thing.
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There has been a disturbing development in which PayPal seems to be threatening to withdrawn its services from blogs which violate their acceptable use policy. Fair enough on the face of it, as it is certainly PayPal’s right to offer to do business on whatever terms they wish. But then take a look at what those terms are:
So… write about or show pictures of the victims of a terrorist atrocity, or show pictures of Osama bin Laden and suddenly no more PayPal for you, as Bill Quick of Daily Pundit has found out. They do not want to do business with Bill Quick? Well I am not so sure I want to continue to do business with PayPal then. Clearly Samizdata.net is going to have to review whether or not we will continue to have those PayPal buttons you see at the moment in our sidebar. September 25th, 2004 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Christy Davies has an interesting article on the Social Affairs Unit blog which looks critically at one of the educational ‘given’ of our age:
Interesting stuff. Read the whole thing. September 24th, 2004 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
The socialist charity and political lobbying group Christian Aid, has a new campaign called Vote for Trade Justice.
Ok, so let me get this straight… Western farmers, their operations subsidised with other western taxpayer’s money and their own domestic markets distorted by ‘protective’ tariff barriers which increase the price of imports, sell to African countries and that is… Free trade? FREE TRADE? What the hell is free about it? Western agricultural producers are a nightmarish mix of tax subsidy and production quotas, with bizarrely priced surpluses that are occasionally and erratically dumped on Third World markets… and at the same time western consumers are denied access to both First and Third World products at their true economic cost by a vast raft of arcane state and super-state imposed regulations. Please explain who exactly is engaging in laissez faire here. The only intelligent bit is calling it “so called” free trade. The problem is that vested economic interests (big business and big labour) have zero interest in free trade. They do not give a damn about the Third World, all they see is the extremely low labour costs in the developing countries and what that implies for their own narrow sectional interests… and they have the state to protect those interests with laws. So is Christian ‘Aid’ screaming “Remove all tariffs to imports NOW”? Of course not. They are calling for an end to “Free Trade”. What is needed is not democratically sanctified politically managed trade (which we have now) but real, genuine, non-government regulated free trade. The fact that Kenya actually does manage to sell significant quantities of very high quality green beans in Britain is a testament to how some people will succeed in spite of western regulatory systems which would rather their producers just lived in abject poverty and that westerners pay more for their food than they need to. If Christian Aid really cared about people in the Third World rather than just posturing for their own self-important gratification, they would be demanding true laissez faire free trade in which low labour cost agricultural nations could take on the western open air industrial chemical factories, sorry I mean farms, without having the state/super-state controlling access to the target market tilt the scales against them. Demand for more ‘organic’ produce increases by the year and many Third World countries are well suited to serve that premium high margin market. That is where the foolish self-appointed Paladins of the Oppressed should be directing their attention rather than calling for mere tinkering with the statist system of trade controls that is so integral to the problem in the first place. With friends like Christian Aid, people in the developing world do not need enemies.  September 23rd, 2004 | 43 comments - (Comments are closed)
Constrained democracy can be a splendid check on state power but unconstrained democracy just shifts the locus for where the seat of tyranny lies. September 22nd, 2004 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
The stunt pulled by pro-hunting protestors of intruding into the inner sanctum of the House of Commons has produced a large number of very predictable responses. MPs and other establishment figures harrumphed that “Parliament’s privileges have been infringed!” and “This is an attack on democracy itself!” and “We must protect this most important of our institutions!” and “The protestors must not alienate people by acting so despicably!”… Well I have a suggestion for the pro-hunt protestors: ignore all those remarks because the only way to win is to fight your battles on ground of your choosing. As David Carr pointed out earlier with regard to when one of the protestors in the Commons shouted “This isn’t democracy. You are overturning democracy.” – Wrong. This is democracy in action and you are on the receiving end of it. What they really, really need to understand is that the majority of people in Britain are urban folk who are at best utterly indifferent to the protestor’s concerns and frequently somewhat hostile to them. The hunters and their supporters cannot hope to convince a majority that hunting is something that is either important or even needs to be tolerated. Do not waste your time making arguments about ‘country livelihood’ or ‘managing pests’ because not only do most people not believe you (such as me, for example), most simply do not care because they feel no particular affinity with you. It is preposterous to argue that the only effective way to put down vermin is to chase them on horseback with hounds. It is simply not a matter for highly questionable utilitarian arguments but rather for arguing for free association to do what you will on private property. That is the only coherent and more importantly resonant argument to make. If gay men can congregate together in clubs to do things the majority of people find deeply distasteful, without having to worry about being raided by the fuzz, why cannot foxhunters congregate together to do things the majority find distasteful without worrying about the Boys in Blue showing up? Successfully point out to gay rights activists that making the prejudices of the majority the law of the land is not something they should be comfortable with… and suddenly the class warriors behind the hunting ban might find it much harder to ‘bash the toffs’ as the implications of where this is clearly heading starts to dawn on altogether different groups. In short, stop making invocations to the graven idol called ‘Democracy’ because it will not hear your prayers. Accept that you are a heretic and raise up an idol of your own. Call it, say, ‘Liberty’ and then challenge your enemies to denounce it. If you want to defend your liberty to do things in free association with likeminded folk on private property, you will have to come to some very sobering realisations. → Continue reading: Confronting reality September 18th, 2004 | 77 comments - (Comments are closed)
I frequently hear “Oh blogs, they don’t really have any influence” and “What real difference do blogs make?” – Individually it is certainly true that popular blogs like Samizdata.net or even Godzilla-blogs like Instapundit are dwarfed in numbers of eyeballs they attract by major newspapers and TV networks… but just as a single piranha is not so fearsome a beast, a large school of them is another thing all together. When you look at a blog, you are just looking at a single node: you need to stand back and look at the network. Tony Blankley over on Townhall.com has written an interesting article called A revolution in news:
This is the distributed intelligence that has been discussed here before. Blogs have in many ways been over-hyped but that is mostly because it is not blogs that are the revolutionary driver… it is the blogosphere. Old media is learning the hard way to be sure of their facts because somewhere out there, sitting in front of a computer in Biloxi or Berlin or Bombay, is someone knows the subject you claim to be an expert in a damn sight better than you do with a whole lot of bloggers looking over his shoulder.  September 15th, 2004 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
It seems that the same idea has indeed gone out like a clarion call from many watchtowers and mountain tops and it must be a great time to be in the gun store business in the good ol’ U.S. of A.  (joyous tip of the hat to Freedom Sight for the link) September 15th, 2004 | 78 comments - (Comments are closed)
…well, arms shops actually. The absurd ‘assault weapon’ ban which prohibited certain weapons on the basis of largely aesthetic criteria, has expired in the USA as of today. However as Dubya made it clear that if there had been enough support for extending the ban in Congress, he would have signed it into law rather than try and veto it, please resist the urge to feel much gratitude for his lukewarm support for the Second Amendment. However it was passed before and could certainly happen again. And so I urge all the redoubtable gun owning men and women of the USA to run, not walk, to their nearest gun shop and purchase nice Kalashnikov or AR-15 or Ruger Mini-14 or FAL or M-14 or whatever, plus a goodly selection of flash suppressors and high capacity magazines, thus ensuring that there are soooooo many of the damn things in circulation that any future ban will simply have no effect. Use the power of the Buycott, have fun at the range, arm yourself to the teeth and, best of all, absolutely enrage advocates of gun control in the process. I mean, how good it that? 
Good stance and correct breathing: now that is what I call gun control September 13th, 2004 | 65 comments - (Comments are closed)
I do not have a weight problem, I have a height problem September 12th, 2004 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
We are having a dinner party at Samizdata.net HQ and our recurring toast this evening (with excellent Polish flavoured vodka and apple juice) is:
 It just seemed the appropriate thing to say on September 11th. September 11th, 2004 | 80 comments - (Comments are closed)
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