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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British soldiers currently stationed in Kuwait have broken with military tradition in order to deliver what they believe is a powerful message to the world.
Stripping off their desert khakis the men of the 7th Armoured Brigade laid down in a sand dune and spelled out the phrase, ‘SADDAM IS TOAST’ by arranging their own naked bodies to form the letters.
Lance-Corporal Steven Rowsley said afterwards:
“We were a bit embarrassed at first. And doing the ‘S’ was a bit tricky. But we think it was worth it in the end. My whole unit was really up for it.”
The officer in charge of the demonstration, Captain Roger Hackwood said:
“We realise that it’s a bit unorthodox and we know that some people will be shocked. But we couldn’t think of any better way to get the strength of our feelings across to the anti-war movement back home”
The Ministry of Defence has declined to comment.
Apologies are due for my short sabbatical away from the Samizdata but I’m afraid the prosaic concerns of keeping a roof over my head required attendance.
Having returned this evening, I have had an opportunity to scroll through the items posted since my last visit and, also, the comments appended thereto. It is among the latter efforts that I discovered this outpouring of hysterical claptrap:
“You are evading the fact that the United States Government is the foremost terrorist organisation in the world at the current time and its war plans are not designed to protect yours and my liberties but rather to extend its own power at the expense of me and you in terms of our money, liberty and increased risk of attack and at the expense of the lives of the innocents in Iraq who are about to be bombed.
For a moment, I thought we had been honoured with a visit from Noam Chomsky, but the actual author turned out to be Paul Coulam who I had, until now, credited with a bit more common sense. I won’t go as far as to say that I am shocked but I am disappointed; not because Paul is clearly against any attack on Iraq but because he has elected to employ the ludicrous rhetoric of the far-left in order to express that opposition.
If Paul honestly believes the things he has written then there is probably nothing I can do or say that will serve to change his mind but I am inspired enough to conduct a little Q&A session in which Paul and everybody else is invited to participate.
- America is indeed on the warpath. Is this because:
- They just decided that they want to dominate everybody in the whole world and enslave them for ever and steal all their resources?
OR
- They might just be trying to prevent another 9/11 type terrorist attack on their country?
- Paul is quite right to be outraged at the erosion of his civil liberties and the plundering of his wealth but are these processes occuring because of:
- American warmongering and ‘bloodlust’ for power?:
OR
- Because the majority of his (and my) fellow Brits keep electing socialist kleptocrats into Westminster and they, in turn, are only answerable to even bigger kleptocrats in the EU?
- Thousands of Saddam’s ‘Republican Guards’ will be deliberately targetted by allied forces in any attack on Iraq. These are the men who have tortured, murdered and terrorised a nation at the behest of their tyrant boss. Should they be regarded as:
- ‘Innocent’ Iraqi victims of the American terror machine?
OR
- About as deserving of our sympathy as the Waffen SS?
→ Continue reading: If this is Rothbard, count me out
The government’s ‘consultation exercise’ on the introduction of ID cards and which we flagged up last month officially ended yesterday.
A lot of people who hold strong views on this subject, including the Samizdata team, have made those objections known to the Home Office but I rather doubt that that will stymie the determination of HMG to press ahead with their introduction. The governments wants an ID card scheme and, if opinion surveys on the matter are to be believed, so does much of the British public. It is only a matter of time.
A trifling relief though, is that the Independent has decided to live up to its name for a change:
“Initially the state bureaucracy made showing one’s card a precondition for dealing with it. Today, it is business that increases the reach of identity cards. Spaniards have long needed them to open bank accounts; now they are vital for any credit-card purchase, and bureaux de change won’t serve you without them. It’s also impossible to buy a mobile telephone without theDNI, for the network will log its number with that of the phone. I guess the police can see such records: they are certainly told who is checking into Spanish hotels, since Spaniards must show their DNI. The hotel passes its number straight to the police.
Employers love identity cards. They photocopy the DNIs of new staff, whose payslips then carry the number for tax purposes. This, linked to bank records, allows the authorities to track individuals all through Spain’s financial system. What really amazes me is the way Spain’s card is needed for such harmless activities as renting a car or flat – or getting married. Our church did not read the banns but instead asked for DNI numbers. Even the nursery school expected to see it before taking our child.
When I ask Spaniards “Why?”, they seem surprised. Then I remember that at 14 they all had to visit their local police station to be fingerprinted and photographed before receiving their first DNI card. It’s a rite of passage that makes young Spaniards feel grown up, yet the first time they use their card is to sit school exams. Many will argue that such obsessive bureaucracy is cultural and could never come to Britain, but I predict it will. In Spain, British giants such as Barclaycard and Vodafone already ask to see customers’ identity cards and will do so here.”
A salutory reminder of not just the way that compulsory ID cards turn a society into an open-air prison but also of the profound difference between Anglo-Saxon ethos and that of Continental Europe. In Britain sadly, the former has been discarded in favour of the latter. Madness, utter madness.
“Continental experience shows that identity cards will dramatically change life in Britain. It also reveals why Whitehall really wants them. The daily logging of their unique card numbers will create audit trails that lead to that Blairite dream, joined-up government! This already exists in Europe because entire populations dutifully troop along to acquire identity cards, just because they always did. I wonder how Mr Blunkett will force 50 million-odd Britons to do likewise.”
All true enough but, unlike the author, I do not expect either Mr.Blunkett or any of his successors to be thwarted to any significant degree by the public. Due to the enactment of anti-money laundering laws, it is already impossible to open a bank account, transact money or buy a property in Britain without being required to produce a passport or driving licence. These impositions were introduced by stealth in the 1990’s without either a word of dissent or murmer of complaint. Moving to a universal ID card of the continental variety is but another few steps, especially in a few years when the principle of a government audit trail will have become widely accepted as a part of the social landscape.
I daresay the introduction of the cards will prove to be fraught with bungling and bureaucratic horrors but if anyone expects the British people not to stand for it, then they are heading for a crashing disappointment.
It is a hallmark of all sinister government programmes that they are never advertised in advance as being sinister. Some might argue that this kind of deception is only to be expected, given the old ‘gently-boiling-frog’ theory. My own view is that the architects of these schemes genuinely don’t see them as the slightest bit sinister. In fact, quite the opposite.
For example, I have no doubt that the Whitehall mandarins behind this proposal regard it as a laudable exercise in sound administration:
“The Office for National Statistics has told the BBC it is planning the first official national wealth survey.
The new survey could include collecting data on a range of wealth indicators, from secured loans, investments, possessions and pensions take-up to house prices – and is aimed at getting a better picture of the country’s and individual wealth.”
A modern ‘domesday book’ listing who has got what and how much of it; a one-stop reference resource that will prove indispensable to the next generation of public sector wealth-grabbers.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps this is just another sterile technocratic exercise formulated for the purpose of providing lots of bureaucrats with years-worth of statistic fiddling, an exercise which they appear to love for its own sake. I certainly hope so but I can’t seem to get the word ‘sinister’ out of my mind, especially when the proposal is expressed in terms like this:
“It is believed the data could be used to formulate fiscal and social policies and to link the government’s policies closer to people’s real wealth.”
Management-speak or polite euphamism?
Having spent half-a-lifetime confronting, facing down and baiting my left-wing compatriots, I have the benefit of knowing exactly what words, names and phrases to use in order to elicit a dramatic response.
For example, the very name of George Bush has become the etymological equivalent of a nerve agent. One only has to drop it into a conversation and then watch the lefties convulsing themselves in spasms of bug-eyed hatred-cum-delirium. At the moment there is no antidote.
Robust political partisanship of this kind is nothing new nor is it confined to the left; the name of Tony Blair will turn the face of most Conservatives into a rictus of horror. For most of the time, this kind of mutual baiting is fun and, in many ways, indicative of a healthy society.
However, I have found evidence of something a little darker in this quite awful cartoon in the Guardian.
The two figures are supposed to be those of Messrs Bush and Blair but it is the image of George Bush, portrayed as a sort of cross between a pointy-eared alien and an ape, which I find just a little disturbing. Presumably the cartoonist is trying to convince his audience that George Bush is less than human.
The art of caricature is a time-honoured British tradition which I particularly enjoy and it is right that all political figures should be regarded as fair game. But this is not just caricature, it is deliberate dehumanisation; a process with a very unfortunate provenance.
Nor can this be simply dismissed as the work of an ‘unrepresentative fringe’ as the Guardian is undoubtedly the most important organ of the British left. Given their alleged commitment to ‘humanitarian’ policies, depictions of human beings as apes is the kind of thing I though they would go to any lengths to avoid. As it is, they have provided us with a window into the kind of psychosis which lies at the heart of at least some portions of the ideological left.
When George Orwell wanted to warn us all of the horrors of communism he did so by portraying animals as human beings. My feeling is that those who portray human beings as animals have a far less worthy agenda.
It must have been about a year ago when a gentleman describing himself as a ‘real socialist’ fetched up on the Libertarian Alliance Forum and threw himself headlong into stinging denunciations of the state and its coercive methods. He was delighted to be amongst those of what he believed to be a like mind. But he wasn’t just against government coercion, no. He was against all coercion which included the ‘tyranny’ of capitalism, commerce, money and property (which he regarded as theft).
Upon further prompting (and it didn’t take much) he advised that his goal was a pure society where all government, money, trade, property and personal gain had been abolished. Intrigued (and heartily amused by this stage) we asked him how he intended to prevent people from creating currencies, establishing property rights and trading as they please without coercion.
In response he was both affronted and bemused. Why couldn’t we understand that when all the above-mentioned iniquities had been abolished, a spontaneous order of cooperation would arise, self-interest would be dispensed with, and there will be no need for coercion because nobody will want things like property and money.
After the delivery of a few well aimed logic incendiaries, he disappeared taking his one-man crusade for utopia with him. He simply could not understand why people would want money or property in a world where everything was free. I daresay that he still has the hoots of our derisive laughter ringing in his head.
I am reminded of this gentleman and his utopian vision because of something posted by one of our commentators recently:
“As I’ve mentioned before, the US Libertarian Party has a concept called the non-aggression principle which states that you will not initiate force, or advocate its initiation. Anyone who joins the LP signs a statement saying that they will abide by that.”
On the face of it, the non-aggression principle (NAP) sounds like a very noble and enlightened thing. Indeed, it is a principle to which I once subscribed myself. However, further reflection (and not just recent events or by way of any reference to the possible impending assault on Iraq) has led me to quite a different opinion. → Continue reading: The best form of defence
I want to know what happened to ‘going overland to India’ to seek spiritual fulfilment and alternative lifestyles? Perhaps the Indians have decided to put a stop to all that. Can’t say as I blame them.
However, that means that the Anti-Everything Brigade has been unleashed in droves all over the rest of the planet like deranged locusts. The Swarm du jour has now descended upon Porto Alegre in Brazil where this hotch-potch of losers, whiners, nutjobs and assorted marxoids, and which now dubs itself the (snigger) ‘World Social Forum’ is in a gigantic snit about not being taken seriously.
Mercifully, they are not taken seriously. Except by the BBC (sorry, the ‘World Media Forum’) which has published a glowing full-page tribute:
“As soon as you arrive your senses are overloaded with colourful causes and campaigns all competing for attention.”
Especially your sense of smell.
“It does not aim to promote one view but celebrate diversity.”
Great can we come along to sing the praises of capitalism, then?
“If the businessmen and political heavyweights from Davos were transported to Porto Alegre – slogan “another world is possible” – they really would believe they were on a different planet.”
Yup.
“Where else would a gay rights march be followed moments afterwards by a pro-Palestinian protest?”
Not in Palestine that’s for sure.
“Or landless people’s movements from Latin American, Asia and Africa be able to sit round a table and compare notes?”
Landless but not flightless apparently. Exactly where do these starving peons get their travel money? And precisely what ‘notes’ do they compare?
“Hey, Miguel, do you have any land”?
“No”
“Neither do I. Okay, meeting adjourned.”
“Of course, conflict and disagreement are inevitable but that is half the fun.”
What’s the other half of the fun?
“On the first day of the Forum the people took to the streets for an anti-war march.
As Brazilian government ministers walked with protesters there was an air of great hope spreading to campaigners from all across the globe.”
Another feature of the reporting of all these events is this kind of semi-messianic euphoria. They’re forever telling the world how excited and happy they are. Is it jet-lag, I wonder?
I can’t help believing that it was the British decision to abolish and thereafter actively campaign against the slave trade that first introduced moral concepts into foreign policy.
Whether or not that is the case, it is the popular expectation that all foreign policy will be at least partly based on moral imperatives as opposed to the uncomfortably amoral calculations of national interest.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Europe where the various heads of state are forever delivering nauseatingly self-righteous lectures to the rest of the world from their bully pulpit in Brussels. Aside from switching off whenever I am so able I have also taken refuge in the suspicion that M’lady doth protesteth too loudly, a view which has been in some small sense vindicated by news of the French extending a hand of welcome to Robert Mugabe.
“France has confirmed that it is inviting Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to take part in a summit of African Heads of State next month.
Mr Mugabe is currently banned from entering the European Union because of doubts about the legitimacy of his re-election last year.”
I suppose it would be bad form to have ‘doubts’ about his democidal marxist policies. And that is rather the point, for whilst I do not expect the enarques in Paris to rain down ‘Les JDAM’s du Francais’ on the former Rhodesia, it is nonetheless a reasonable expectation that the foreign policy decisions they make should reflect the ‘humanitarian’ principles they claim to live by.
Instead the French continue to do what the French have always done and pursue their own national interests in Africa under a cloak of Sartrean altruism:
“But French President Jacques Chirac was convinced that the Zimbabwean leader’s presence at the summit would help promote justice, human rights and democracy in his country, foreign ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau told journalists.”
When the language of ‘human rights’ can be employed with such spectacular mendacity in an attempt to mask a nefariously machiavellian agenda then we know that it is a coin which has become irredeemably debased.
But this move by the French tells us that the mask is beginning to slip and, whilst I daresay the language of Brussels (which is not synoymous with France but heavily influenced by it) will not change in the short term or even the medium term, the polite fictions which underpin that language are close to being unsustainable.
The ugly, old ogre of national interest is being prodded awake from its slumber and invoked to stalk the world again. To accompany it on its travels we will need not just a whole slew of new ideas but a whole new language in which to express them.
It is a rare thing indeed when I trawl through the pages of the Subservient only to emerge with a smile and a jaunty spring in my step but today is just such an occasion.
Since the credentials of both the author of the article, a Liberal Democrat MP, and the organ in which the article appears, are impeccably federast I think it is safe to say that dire warnings of a split between the UK and Europe is not merely a product of wishful thinking.
“But there are two more profound reasons for the plunge in Britain’s status within the EU that should give Tony Blair real cause for concern. First, there is the euro. Last month, the Portuguese Prime Minister, Jose Durao Barroso, voiced in public what EU heads of government have long whispered in private – why should the UK be granted a leadership role as long as it is unwilling to sign up to one of the central tenets of EU membership? As long as EU leaders believed Tony Blair was merely biding his time before putting the issue to a referendum, there was sufficient goodwill to forgive Britain’s procrastination. But, as the Continent looks on with perplexity at the gridlock between the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, fears have deepened that Mr Blair has missed his chance.
And then, most important of all, there is Britain’s special relationship with the United States. It is difficult to capture the conflicting reactions which Blair’s ostentatious loyalty to George Bush’s foreign policy elicits within the rest of the EU.”
As I have indicated previously, our strategic alliance with the USA is something which the EU cannot tolerate alongside it’s new-found ethos of being a rival to the US and not an ally. The day of British liberation is not at hand and may not even be close but it is just a little bit closer than it was a year ago.
Tony Blair has turned out to be a love-rat; forever declaring his affections for Europe while flaunting his high-profile affair with George Bush. The question is how long he can go on two-timing them both? Surely one of these girls is going to put her foot down and demand Tony’s fidelity before much longer and who can resist the heady romance of being a war-time bride?
I didn’t vote for Blair and I do not count myself among his fans but I find myself being forced to concede that he is doing more to pave the way for British independence than any number of phoney, careerist Tories.
According to this report in the UK Times (not linked as subscription required for non-UK readers), President Bush is forging ahead in his confrontation with American trial lawyers:
“President Bush opened an assault on America’s litigious culture yesterday, saying that a deepening healthcare crisis could be solved only by curbs on patient lawsuits.
Calling for caps on jury awards to patients injured by doctors, Mr Bush said that the American instinct to sue was breaking the system.
“There are too many lawsuits in America, and there are too many lawsuits filed against doctors and hospitals without merit,” he said.”
From what I understand, trial lawyers in America are only marginally more popular than the Taliban so Mr.Bush should have ample public support in his showdown with them.
Whilst putting a mandatory cap on jury awards (which is the proposal) perhaps Mr.Bush might do as well to look at the entire concept of ‘punitive damages’ which can be awarded against a Defendant in negligence claim on top of the actual compensation paid to the Plaintiff. As far as I can tell, punitive damages are a means of punishing a Defendant for the negligence and lead breathtakingly high jury awards in medical damages cases.
Genuine cases of negligence, be they medical or otherwise, should always be actionable but it is my view that the concept of punitive damages constitutes a zealous over-egging of the pudding. Negligence is not crime and should not be ‘punished’. Similarly, a Plaintiff who has suffered loss and damage should be rightfully compensated but not rewarded. Recourse to law should be a matter of both necessity and justice not a warped form of entrepreneurship for both claimants and their legal representatives.
In my view that situation in the UK preferable. Whilst it is true that the litigious culture has blossomed in this country over recent years, nonetheless damages awards are maintained at only a fraction of their US equivalents. This is because there is no recognition of ‘punitive damages’ in the UK system. The purpose of a claim here is to ‘make the Plaintiff whole’ i.e. to put the Plaintiff into the position he or she was in immediately before the negligence occurred. There is also a compensation element for pain and suffering as a result of medical or other negligent damage but these are awarded on the basis of the Plaintiff’s provable condition not as a means of penalising the Defendant.
The further advantage of the UK system is that there is no jury for civil trials (except Defamation cases) and therefore both the verdict and damages are decided upon by a Judge. This does not entirely remove the ‘sympathy’ element influential in many claims but does keep it in some sort of check as all Judges are bound by both guidelines and precedents. Judges can push at this envelope but not discard it altogether.
That said, I wish Mr.Bush the best of luck in his campaign. As a lawyer myself, I am concerned that the popular view of the legal system as a kind of ‘get-rich-quick’ lottery to be, at best, distasteful and, at worst, socially and economically damaging.
In some cases, it is a heavy price.
The Swordsman, Iain Murray, one of the brightest stars in the blogging firmament, has just been summarily dismissed from his job:
“My employment was terminated this morning, with this blog stated as the reason.
It sounds like he has been treated very shabbily indeed. He has a wife and a small child so, if you can, please make your way over to his blog and leave something in the tip-jar. If you unable to do that, then at least let him know that you care.
This is the first occasion upon which I have picked out a comment for further comment, as it were, but this comment from Natalie Solent sharply claimed my attention:
“Just possibly the miracle may have been helped along by the power of the blogosphere. Er, specifically, by me.”
The ‘miracle’ that Natalie is referring to is the appearance of a vigourously pro-gun essay by Professor Joyce Malcolm on the website of the BBC and which I have blogged about euphorically here.
The part that Natalie might well have played in this moment of glory is set out in greater detail on Biased BBC:
“Dare we at Biased BBC hope that we had some role in its appearance? It is possible! The BBC’s clutch of articles published on the subject last October were, in their utter failure to even consider why anyone might oppose gun control (other than through an idolatrous reverence for every word of the US constitution), a disgrace to the BBC Charter. I fisked them with all the brio I could muster, and quite a few blogs linked to the fisking. I then sent the url to Prof. Malcolm, whose e-mail address I found at the bottom of an article about British media perceptions of gun crime published about the same time. She was kind enough to reply, so we may have helped bring to her attention a specific and recent example of a point she has long made, that the British media ignore the case against gun control. On the BBC side of the equation, we do know by various small indications that the Beeb’s watchful eyes do occasionally fall upon this site, so perhaps someone was stung by the realisation that one significant strand of opinion had been very ill served.”
Well, perhaps Professor Malcolm had already decided to write her essay and perhaps the BBC had decided, in any event, to make some concession to the other side of the argument. But I prefer to think that Natalie’s efforts did not go unrewarded. It gives me a delicious frisson of satisfaction to think that maybe one of us Lilliputians tied down the broadcasting Gulliver if only for a brief while.
It also illustrates the importance of communicating ideas and weaving the gossamer fine networks between sane, intelligent people who, whilst still acting individually, can eventually set off an avalanche. From the BBC to Natalie to Joyce Malcolm and back to the BBC. Thanks to the net, those degrees of separation get smaller all the time.
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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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