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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Poor, beleagured France! All they’re trying to do in West Africa is to keep the peace and impose some semblance of order.
“A rebel group in the Ivory Coast has accused France of waging war after a battle with French troops who are trying to maintain a truce in the country’s civil war.”
Meanwhile, the EU Commission in Brussels has denounced French unilateralism. The country’s ‘intellectuals’ are doing nothing except sneer at their leaders ‘simplisme’ foreign policy. The UN has passed a resolution condemning French aggression. Church leaders are urging the French to be more tolerant and understanding. Thousands of left-wing academics and celebrities have launched a ‘Not In My Name’ Petition. African leaders are calling upon the rest of the world to resist French militarism and both the Guardian and the Independent are running editorial columns focussing on France’s right-wing, red-necked President, their dangerous and uncivilised obsession with gun-culture and the danger that their blind, one-sided foreign policy represents to the rest of the world community.
Okay, none of those things have actually happened yet. But I’m quite sure they will. Any day now. You mark my words. Just wait and see.
Such is the quality of the balkanisation nostrum that it can, simultaneously, be a cornerstone of establishment thinking and also packaged up as new, different and ‘radical’. As evidence, please see the case of ‘Ms.Dynamite’, a 21 year-old British recording artist who has proclaimed that her future lies in the political realm:
“There is not anyone in the Cabinet who can relate to me or that I can relate to.”
Welcome to the club, Ms.Dynamite.
“The connotations that come with the word politics are basically middle-class, rich white men who don’t give a damn about what we think. That’s not me speaking as a black person but as a young person.”
It’s the Rocky Hip-Hop Picture Show. Ms.Dynamite is doing the ‘Time-Warp’ and we’re back in the 1960’s.
“I feel that Britain is still an extremely racist country.”
Sounds like she’s been tuning in to that middle-class, rich white man Jack Straw. That’s precisely what he’s been telling us for years.
“It’s important to learn about everybody’s history. I think the only way to overcome racism and discrimination is to learn where we’ve all come from.”
Ah yes, that must explain what the British National Party are trying to do.
Still, all things being equal I expect that Ms.Dynamite will embark upon a successful career in politics sooner or later. She will slide effortlessly into the NuLabour machine.
The Banned Wagon is rolling into town again and, this time, a herb called ‘Kava-Kava’ has been tossed unceremoniously onto the back of the wagon and driven into the wilderness:
“Remedies containing the herb Kava-kava have been banned after it was linked to four deaths.”
Well, four deaths is four too many, that’s for sure. But how is Kava-Kava ‘linked’ exactly? What does ‘linked’ mean? Does it mean that the herb caused symptoms which led to an illnesss, or what?
Questions enough, but the report gets even more obtuse and vague:
“The MCA said investigations had been unable to say what might put people at risk of adverse reactions to Kava-kava.
How the remedy damages the liver is also unknown.”
But that doesn’t matter because:
“Given the expert advice from the CSM and Medicines Commission following the recent public consultation it is clear that this ban is necessary.”
This may have something to do with the way the journalist has written the article or it may that there’s something we’re not being told but, in the absence of those two possibilities, then the case for prohibition is anything but ‘clear’. In fact, it is quite opaque. It is the diametric opposite of ‘clear’. This is ‘Newspeak’; producing no evidence of guilt results in a ‘clear’ case having been made.
Well, that’s about as much ranting as I’m entitled to, I reckon. I have never bought kava-kava and now, I daresay, I never will. Not unless I’m prepared to go to a shady, kava-kava pusher. But, I do detect that we’ve just witnessed another example of the ‘Precautionary Principle’; this is the public policy mandate that all risk must be avoided and which usually manifests itself as an avoidance of all critical inquiry as well.
I have no medical or scientific training but I presume that the people who staff the Medicines Control Agency have oodles of both. Is it too much to expect them to approach matters a bit more…well, scientifically?
China is a country that appears to be attracting increasing interest from the blogosphere and elsewhere and not without good reason. We all sense the potential lurking in this Asian giant. Depending upon one’s point of view this is either worrying or exciting or, possibly, both.
Only yesterday I took delivery of a new dining table and set of chairs and couldn’t help the raised eyebrow upon noticing the legend ‘Made in China’ stamped on the box. Jolly smart it is too.
I admit to being lured into the ranks of the China-watchers, so I tend to regard throwaway news items like this to be noteworthy:
“China has allowed its citizens to buy gold bullion for the first time since the Communist Party took power in 1949.
Shoppers queued on Thursday to look at gold bars on sale in department stores in Beijing and the southern city of Nanjing
Other moves to develop the gold market include plans for Chinas big four commercial banks to offer gold-related investment products to individual investors next year.”
How ironic that, despite the unarguable ghastliness of their ruling regime, the Chinese are constantly embracing new ideas of enterprise and weath-creation whilst the ruling elites of the West are searching for ever-more elaborate ways of suffocating both.
For us fans of capitalism, watching China is a bit like watching a child develop, from the first utterance of ‘Mamma’ to taking the stabilisers off of their bikes.
Just wait until those hormones begin to kick in!
Last Wednesday evening, I had the pleasure of being wined and dined at the Chez de Havilland in the company of the man himself, Brian Micklethwait and a delegation of student bloggers responsible for the St.Andrews Liberty Log.
Spending an evening with these fine, upstanding examples of student life rather put my own persistant grumbles into perspective. Judging from what they have to say about their fellow students at that fine old institution, it has become a Seat of Unlearning. Our dinner companions, it would appear, constitute an oasis of sanity amid a vast, barren desert of addled brains.
One example that sticks in my mind, is a story related by one of the students, Alex Singleton. I believe I recall the details with reasonable accuracy but I’m sure I will hear smartly from Alex if this proves not to be the case.
It seems that St.Andrews University Student Union has its very own ‘Equal Opportunities’ Commission. Or, at least, it used to have one because our Alex managed to get himself elected to head it and then promptly proceeded to trash the entire operation and render it unusable. Chalk one up for the good guys. However, in the midst of performing this great service for mankind, Alex was approached by a diminutive fellow student who wanted Alex to take up her claim that she was a victim of discrimination because of her lack of height.
→ Continue reading: Apart-height
Just who is being protected here? Just what benefit is being bestowed upon our society? What good can possibly be derived from a ruling like this?
“A mother-of-two has been jailed for failing to prevent her daughters from playing truant from school.
The Brighton woman was sentenced to seven days in prison and is only the second parent in the country to be jailed because her children skipped lessons.”
Why incarcerate this woman for the ‘refusenik’ behaviour of her children? I presume it’s because the state takes the view that threatening the liberty of parents will oblige them to become more coercive and bullying towards their own offspring in order that they may toe the educational establishment line. How degraded and immoral is that? I am reminded of the late Philip Larkin’s injunction:
“Man hands on misery to man
It deepens like a coastal shelf
Get out, as early as you can
And don’t have any kids yourself”
The once misanthropically gloomy Larkin begins to sound more and more like a pragmatist.
This woman has been sent to jail because education for children is compulsory and the state is the monopoly provider. Sadly, this paradigm is now a fixture of just about all Western societies but has anybody thought to ask the children themselves if this process is something that they either want or need? Clearly, the two little girls in question were fed up with being forced to traipse day after day to a draughty, municipal building and sat at a desk while a low-grade public servant with halitosis and a short temper drones at them about the French Revolution. Or Algorithms. Or something.
I am at a loss to understand how these two children, or the society of which they are a part, have anything to gain from being forced back into a situation where they are likely to be nothing except sullen and resentful prisoners? Very few people take the view that forcing human beings to work in state-owned factories on government-mandated projects will be in any way beneficial yet nearly everybody is entrenched in the dogmatic belief that doing the very same thing to human beings under the age of 18 will be nothing but beneficial.
This is an orthodoxy to which I once held myself: education is good, but children don’t realise this. Therefore prescribed and generally agreed packages of learning must be forced on them for their own good. Is this true? I must confess that I have no ready alternatives available nor any glib answers on what parents should do instead. But I do know that I am increasingly unsettled by noxious enforcements of the kind reported above and by the quiet, persuasive ideas of people like Alice Bachini.
Compulsory education is about compulsion not education. It is a received wisdom to which I am finding it increasingly difficult to subscribe and which I believe should be revisited and re-examined at a systemic level.
I clearly recall that first time I attended a meeting of the Libertarian Alliance here in London. The guest speaker, a very earnest but rather monochromatic fellow (whose name, I must confess, I cannot now recall) was issuing forth on the subject of the purpose of the Libertarian Alliance and what its goals should be.
His conclusion was that those goals should, at the very least, include ‘the spreading of good ideas’. That sounded like a worthwhile project and, indeed, it is one in which I am engaged to this day.
But, how to do it? That’s the real trick. Marketing is dead simple when you’re peddling, say, luxury motor cars. But if you’re peddling the kind of ideas that make luxury motor cars both possible and widely available then you tend to find that you’re butting your head against a brick wall of indifference.
Perhaps we should take a leaf out of the book of those people who spread bad ideas because they seem to be enjoying no end of success, especially in Southern Africa:
“South Africa’s ruling African National Congress yesterday effectively gave its backing to President Robert Mugabe’s regime in Zimbabwe, cheering a speech by a Zanu-PF loyalist attacking “western imperialists”.
Now one would think that the experience of a lunatic marxist regime transforming a neighbouring country from a relatively prosperous bread-basket into a ‘Year Zero’-type hellhole would provide a pretty stark lesson in ‘How Not To Do Things’. But, such is the seductive power of those bad ideas, that they can trump even the most graphic and immediate realities.
And so British libertarians are left wrestling with the puzzle of how we capture that magic driver for impelling bad ideas and turn it to good use.
It is a thorny and will-sapping problem but one of far less magnitude than the one facing those South Africans of European or Asian descent. As far as they are concerned, all I can say is that I sincerely hope that they have an exit strategy because the day that they’re going to sorely need one appears to be getting closer.
Following on from yesterday’s fracas, first-hand reports are now on-line at the website of the Countryside Alliance.
Of particular note is the report from Parliament Square by Simon Hart:
“There isn’t a single person who was in Parliament Square today who has the slightest desire to do anything other than lead a life free from political interference and to respect the rule of law.”
That sentiment has a vaguely familiar ring to it. I’m sure I’ve heard it somewhere before.
Picture this: A CIA official in handcuffs, standing in the dock of the European Court at Strasbourg while a calcified, gravelly German judge hands down a life sentence.
Far-fetched? Yes, but theoretically possible by dint of the orders issued by the Whitehouse,
“US President George W Bush has authorised the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to kill about a dozen terrorist leaders named on a secret list prepared by the White House…”
which has made waves in Europe:
“EU legal and constitutional experts in Brussels said Monday that the killing in the European Union of suspected terrorist leaders on a list drawn up by the White House would be considered murder, even if the person had been authorised for such a liquidation by the law of his home country.”
So, let’s imagine that a CIA trigger-man clips Mahmoud Al-Nutjob on the steps of his student hostel in Berlin. Is said CIA man going to be arrested by the German police? If so, is he going to be prosecuted by the German state? Would the US government intervene? If so, what form would that intervention take?
I think that there could be a just a little friction here.
*Tip to any CIA agent who may find himself in the above situation: don’t try the old ‘I was only obeying orders’ defence. It won’t cut much ice with Germans.
Truly awesome video footage taken from an American AC-130 gunship. [Media Player required].
Presumably, the footage was taken in Afghanistan.
Everyone knows the old joke. Q.How can you tell when a lawyer is lying? A. His lips are moving.
It’s not true of course, but it is an accurate reflection of the popular antipathy towards lawyers in general; something which too many lawyers themselves have done much to foster.
Still, I hope enough of my fellow Brits will be able to cast aside their natural cynicism of the legal profession for just long enough to applaud Matthias Kelly, the Chairman of the Bar Council, who has announced that he intends to take on this ‘highly illiberal’ government:
“”There is something about the Home Office that brings out these really penal instincts in people. Mr Blunkett is profoundly illiberal. We have a system that is fair and I want to preserve fairness. I do not want to sacrifice it for short-term political expediency, which is what I think much of the language of the debate being run by the Government is about.”
Admirable sentiments from Mr.Kelly. He has hit upon the truth that the abolition of our liberties is, in some senses, a by-product of incompetence rather than a deliberate political ambition. It has everything to do with a government that is desperate to be seen to be doing something in response to the voters increasing concerns about spiralling crime rates (or, in any event, the general perception of greater crime and violence).
I wish Mr.Kelly every success with his campaign and I hope he will not be deterred by the inevitable response he will elicit from the government and its supporters, that he is motivated by greed and self-interest. It is no secret to anyone that barristers do very nicely from the system as it is and it is, therefore, all too easy to dismiss any genuine concerns they may have as fears for their own pocket.
Such allegations may or may not have any basis in fact but, truth be told, I don’t care. Self-interest is always a reliable motivator and I would be only too pleased to witness it being put to a good use for a change.
It is also pleasing to note that concerns about this illiberal government are now being publicly aired by the ‘great and the good’, a class to which Mr.Kelly assuredly belongs. Thus far, nobody of any public standing has been willing to rock the NuLabour boat. Let us hope that others follow his lead and begin to break their, hitherto, shameful silence.
As for Mr.Kelly, who knows, perhaps he has been reading the Samizdata.
I suppose it’s a bit too tin-foil hattish to suggest that this might have been timed to coincide with the official visit of Syria’s President to Britain by the police to recruit paid informants sounds like exactly the kind of thing said President might recognise from his own Ba’athist tradition.
“A £500 reward is being offered to people who tell the authorities about persistent drink-drivers over Christmas.”
Question: How will either the informant or the police know if the alleged ‘drink-driver’ is ‘persistent’? I suppose the informant could swear blind to the fact, provided they needed the money enough.
Of course, the Syrian regime has nothing to do with it at all, though it does have all the ring of ‘police-state’ snitch culture so sadly prevalent in that part of the world. No, the reality is that this is yet another back-door admission by the state that it has now passed more laws and regulations than it can possibly enforce and so has little choice but to co-opt the polity into acting as its eyes and ears.
What next, I ask myself? ‘Kids, report your parents for not paying their taxes’?
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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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