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I have always strenuously supported the Right of every Man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies to another this right, makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it. – Thomas Paine, from The Age of Reason September 13th, 2008 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
 On a spring day in Beijing almost a decade ago, tens of thousands of people gathered on the pavement surrounding the high-walled Zhongnanhai compound, the Chinese equivalent of the Kremlin. They were protesting, but there was barely a murmur to be heard from the enormous crowd. There were no banners, no megaphones noisily chanting demands, no unruly behaviour. It was not a typical demonstration – the participants were seated and meditating. They stayed for around twelve hours. These people were members of the rapidly expanding Falun Gong sect, and they were asking for recognition, legitimacy and an end to perceived mistreatment from the Chinese central government. The then-Chinese premier met with the group’s leaders, following which they all left as quietly as they had arrived. Shortly after this protest, the Chinese government declared the sect a dire ideological threat to the People’s Republic of China, and a huge and rigorous nationwide crackdown followed. Practitioners in powerful positions saw their careers ended abruptly. Thousands were ‘re-educated’. Several, according to numerous human rights advocates, did not survive their enlightenment at the hands of the Chinese state. The sect’s leader was demonised, its teachings subjected to the harshest denunciations. In response, many Falun Gong practitioners held silent protests all over China. A few caught the world’s attention by self-immolating in Tiananmen Square, which explains why each of the numerous military personnel guarding the square have a fire extinguisher placed within arm’s length of their positions. Unsurprisingly, these protests failed. Falun Gong in mainland China is a massively diminished, illegal underground movement. It is still an extremely politically sensitive topic in China. It is carefully referred to as ‘FG’ when written about on-line, in the (probably vain) hope that such abbreviations will avoid the notice of China’s vigilant internet police (who probably do not care all that much about 99% of these references, but the fact that Chinese internet users go to such lengths is revealing in itself). The government has successfully and widely propagated the idea that Falun Gong is a degenerate cult. → Continue reading: A fork in the road September 6th, 2008 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
September 4th, 2008 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
So there are many women voters who do indeed want to vote for a women. Just as there are many black voters who want to vote for a black person. After all Senator Obama does not get 90%+ of the black vote because most of these people say to themselves “I really like Barack’s interpretation of Karl Marx via Saul Alinsky and Bill Ayers, it is much better than the interpretation of …” I doubt that one voter in a hundred even knows that Senator Obama is a Marxist – certainly the mainstream media have not informed of this. September 1st, 2008 | 67 comments - (Comments are closed)
As a current resident of Beijing, my social life is already being affected by the slew of new rules and bylaws raining down upon the citizens of this city to best ensure that the upcoming Olympic Games is “safe” and – more importantly – free of episodes that might embarrass the notoriously thin-skinned government of China. Consequently, less easily controlled events in celebration of the Olympics such as street parties, spontaneous parades and other assorted manifestations of public revelry have all been banned. According to a BOCOG website, restaurants, bars and clubs will be subject to a 2am curfew. Even establishments that usually set up tables and chairs on footpaths for patrons to enjoy their food and drink in the balmy evenings have been forbidden from doing so this summer. Considering the above, I can reasonably confidently predict that if the Olympics goes off without a hitch, this colossally expensive event will be the most boring in living memory. Still, at least the fun-deprived foreign visitors will have something to snigger at:  Dinky little machine guns: check. Shiny gold targets on helmets to give opponents something to aim at: check. Segways: check, baby, and welcome to the future. Look out, bad guys – here comes the recently unveiled and Segway-straddled Chinese anti-terror/crowd control unit, charged with protecting the Olympic Games from universally acknowledged threats, as well as those that keep only CCP apparatchiks awake at night. Judging by the way China’s finest are handling their weapons in this photo, however, they look to be more of a danger to each other than to anyone not behaving. July 5th, 2008 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just to avoid any possible confusion, I should probably point out here that the Samizdata Illuminatus is a collective pseudonym used when any of the regular writers of this site wants to publish something anonymously. The author of this post is actually in London, not Massachusetts Dale posted below about the idiotic rules he encountered when attempting to buy asprin in (I presume) Northern Ireland. I cannot answer the question as to whether the situation with asprin is really as absurd as his pharmacy said it was, but in answer to the question of whether it could be that absurd, I can assure him that the answer is very definitely yes. In this regard I have a little story of my own. I have a hiatus hernia, which causes acid reflex in my oesophagus, which is intensely painful and uncomfortable, makes it difficult to eat certain kinds of food (anything at all acidic), and if untreated could lead to longer term problems that are even more serious (In the worst case cancer of the oesophagus). There is a class of drugs called proton-pump inhibitors that are used to treat this condition, and they are simply wonderful. You take one pill a day, and all your symptoms go away. They are really this good. The best known of these drugs is omeprazole, sold under the brand name “Losec” in Europe and “Prilosec” in the US. To get this drung, I could get a prescription from a doctor, but I would rather not have to deal with the NHS, as I find doing so to be too soul destroying. However, the drug is available in the UK without a prescription, so no problem. Well, not exactly. Omeprazole is a “behind the counter” drug in the UK, meaning that it is only available in pharmacies and you cannot simply pick it up off a shelf and then take it to the cashier and pay for it, but you have to actually walk up to the pharmacy counter and ask for it, supposedly so that you can receive proper advice. However, the nasty sting is that pharmacies tend not to display the price of such drugs in clear view, so you don’t usually find out the price until after you ask for the drug. They are relying on people being too embarassed to say that the drug is too expensive after having asked a pharmacist for it, so “behind the counter” drugs tend to be priced much higher then they would be if they were on the regular shelves. To make things worse, the law states that the over the counter version of omeprazole must be sold in 10mg pills (the standard for the prescription version is 20mg) and in packets containing no more than 14 pills. There is nothing stopping you from buying a larger number of pills to obtain a larger dose, other than the fact that the way the drug is regulated and sold makes it expensive to do this. I am charged about £8 for such a pack of 14 pills, but as they are half dose pills, this is only a week’s supply. (This is almost entirely profit for the pharmacy, as the patent on the drug has expired). So, although the drug is very effective for people with certain ailments, not prone to any kind of abuse, pretty much completely harmless, out of patent and very cheap to manufacture without any intellectual property issues, I cannot buy it without vast numbers of rent seekers in the medical and related professions profiteering from doing so (either by charging me directly or charging the government via the NHS) and the price being pushed up to a level I find annoying. The US lacks this “behind the counter” racket, and omeprazole is also available over the counter in the US in large packets of proper 20mg pills, so there is nothing preventing me from buying it in large quantities at Wal-Mart when I am in the US, for about a quarter of what I pay for it in the UK. However, the Americans have lots of other rackets and the situation with this drug is sadly not typical, as American regulators (under pressure from doctors groups) are extremely reluctant to reclassify other prescription drugs as over the counter. Sadly, though, I visit the US only once a year, if that, and my supplies seldom last until the next trip. Recently, I have found another solution, however, which is to buy the drug on eBay from people in Delhi. The price in this case is much less than I would pay even in the US, and less than a tenth what I would pay in the UK. It is possible to argue about the ethics of importing patented medicines from abroad, but in a situation in which the patent has expired, parallel imports are definitely something to be encouraged. It is probably not technically legal for me to conduct my own parallel imports from abroad, but I really do not care. And there is something supremely ironic about using India to get arount the permit-Raj of the developed world medical bureaucracy. June 30th, 2008 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here is a great new book to cheer libertarians as we draw close to the sixtieth anniversary of the National Health Service. Written by the director of Nurses for Reform, Dr. Helen Evans, and published by the Institute of Economic Affairs, ‘Sixty Years On: Who Cares for the NHS?’ not only shows that the country’s top 100 health opinion formers no longer actually believe in nationalised healthcare but, gloriously, this book fundamentally challenges the medical monopoly inherent in all health systems around the world. Citing a huge array of free marketeers the work is awash with glorious quotes like this one from David Friedman:
Quoting our own Brian Micklethwait we again read:
Powerfully, he concludes:
Evans’s book is a must read for libertarians. It is also a tonic for the period of NHS propaganda we will no doubt endure over the next couple of weeks. June 23rd, 2008 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Freedom is participation in power.” – Mike Gravell, on Thom Hartmann’s Air America show. “O, RLY?” – Commenter Sunfish, when he heard that. Yes, Sunfish, ‘Freedom’ is the freedom to join a gang and fight over who gets plundering rights on ‘your’ turf, I thought everyone knew that! June 18th, 2008 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
What it [the UK Libertarian Party] will do, like the Libertarian Party has done in the United States, is to tarnish the libertarian brand, allowing the crazier aspects of libertarian thinking to come to the fore, and achieving nothing of any merit. – Alex Singleton, ‘How Libertarians undermine liberty‘ May 30th, 2008 | 67 comments - (Comments are closed)
Just straying off the Samizdata reservation for a moment…a pointer for Nine Inch Nails fans: Trent Reznor is giving away his latest record The Slip, and it is 100% free… to download it, go here. Reznor has released it under Creative Commons, which is a very interesting development. May 6th, 2008 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Overheard this morning on Topsail Island, North Carolina, not far from USMC Camp Lejeune… Two Chinook helicopters flew down the coast at low level, almost directly over the beach: Male Person on Beach: Damn I hate it when they fly right down the coast like that, it’s inconsiderate. Female Person on Beach: Well I kinda like it, honey. That there is the sound of Freedom. April 20th, 2008 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
The more I think about it, the more I realise that the establishment of a formal, state-run empire was a mistake, both from the point of view of the conquered peoples and from that of Britain. The first phase of British expansion – our informal mercantile dominion – was much the more successful. It is at least arguable that the nationalisation of the East India Company marked the moment when things started to go badly wrong. April 19th, 2008 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
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