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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A Canadian Samizdata reader alerted Samizdata to a story in Canada’s National Post. The Post reports that costs for Canada’s gun registry have overrun by a factor of 500. No, that’s not an overrun of 500% (which would be bad enough) but a final cost of five hundred times the original estimate. Did I say final? I meant cost so far; it’s not final yet.
Well, at least Canadians are safe now. Only they’re not. He adds:
“Herewith is another example of why gun registration programs don’t work. Canada has a history different from the US with respect to firearms (which explains, in large part, why this became law in the first place). I think that violent, gun-related crime in Canada’s urban centers has probably increased since 1995 (but I don’t have any hard evidence to support this assertion). I can say that, in Toronto, there was a series of gang related shooting in October where every weekend (for a month) different gang members ended up dead in different parts of the city. Further to this, the gun control law has had no impact on the Hell’s Angels in Montreal.”
As chance would have it I had posted earlier today about how Simon Jenkins of the Times should not believe all that Michael Moore says about Canada being a paradise of trust. Moore is right about one thing. America does have an anomalously high murder rate. But all the strategies put in place by countries who boast that their lower murder rate is the result of gun control, and that they therefore need more of it, keep on failing. Expensively.
That would have been a good sign-off line, but I’ve one more thing to say. I was struck by the sentiments of Allan Rock, a Liberal Party bigshot who the opposition attacked for keeping mum about the spiralling costs of the gun registry. The report said:
Mr. Rock defended the registry, saying it has “saved lives” and reinforced “Canadian values” by distinguishing Canada from the United States on the issue of gun control.
Were his actual words as thin and shabby as this paraphrase implies? Does he really see mere difference to the United States as a merit in itself?
A columnist for the Telegraph has been arrested and held in a cell for saying that the rural minority should have “the same rights as blacks, Muslims and gays.”
…you fat (alliterative expletive deleted)?
No, not you, dear reader. I refer only to a few words quoted in Jim Bennett’s latest column. The opening sentences might be of particular interest to Samizdata readers. If the line quoted sounds slightly different from the way you remember it, bear in mind that they are a pure-minded lot at UPI. Not like us lot who will print anything.
Oh, and just as an aside, Jim Bennett touches on two subjects that I’d like him to explore further: tort law reform and Ireland.
In this report the New-York based organization Human Rights Watch unequivocally describes suicide bombers, and those who send them, as war criminals.
UPDATE: There are some comments below disagreeing with the term “suicide bomber” and suggesting various alternatives that better get across the idea that these are evil people. While I certainly do think they are evil I prefer to stick with the term “suicide bomber”, as it accurately describes the factor that makes them striking and newsworthy. Any terrorist bombers – the Basque separatists ETA, for instance – can be described as homicide bombers. In our present world, when you say “suicide bombers” everyone knows in a second who’s killing who and where and why. This is an aid to efficient transmission of information, if nothing else. If the trend spreads we may need to particularize further.
However, I quite agree that the suicide angle is irrelevant to their status as terrorists and war criminals. Morally, suicide affects only themselves. I also agree that their suicide is used to glamourize and excuse their evil. This needs to be debunked. However I think the debunking can be done as well or better by argument as by changing a generally accepted and efficient term.
So let me rephrase my original post to bring all this out more clearly: “…Human Rights Watch unequivocally describes those who kill Israeli civilians, and those who send them to kill, as war criminals. It does not go along with the idea that suicide somehow legitimizes this.”
May I add that I think this report is quite big news. HRW’s website gives the impression that they are generally within the same mildly-lefty tradition as Amnesty International, Oxfam and so on. The record of this tradition in speaking out against the recent murders of Israelis by suicide bombers is not that impressive. It is therefore slightly surprising and very welcome to see HRW speaking out so clearly. Hence my title, “Breaking the Silence.”
Iain Murray has scared the **** out of me.
If the Blogger bug strikes, as it might well (some bug has certainly prevented me from posting at all on my own blog today), go to The Edge of England’s Sword and scroll down until you reach the words “The end of Habeus Corpus in Britain.” The thing I’m talking about was posted on Tuesday October 15th at 9.19 am.
Don’t give me any of your excuses, either. Whatever the difficulty, go there.
“I don’t mind keeping the bunny-huggers happy so long as it doesn’t cost me a penny.”
– Brian Aldridge, the Sage of Ambridge. Pity he’s such a John Major.
You remember the DMCA? It’s that Digital Millenium Copyright Act that Americans concerned with freedom are getting so steamed up about. As usual the EU are not far behind in providing an equivalent for us over here to have bad dreams about. Chris Bertram of Junius has linked to an article by Julian Midgely which claims that:
…university lecturers or school teachers will need to appeal to the Secretary of State on each and every occasion that they need to make a copy of part of a copy-protected CD for teaching or research. Librarians, archivists, private individuals, and the disabled can expect to be similarly encumbered.
A ‘Bear Of Very Little Brain’ such as I does not quite follow every twist and turn of the A-Level scandal, but the story goes something like this: the government wants more students in higher education for good reasons and bad. So the government puts direct and indirect pressure on the exam boards to make the exams easier by changing their mark schemes and structures. This manouevre is kept secret; they would like us to think that they have made students cleverer by good magic. The ruse does not work. As grades go up and up people start to talk about “dumbing down.” Finally the jump in the number of A grades is so embarrassing that the exam board start secretly moving the goalposts. This is a betrayal of trust: even if the level of achievement necessary for a good grade is objectively set too low, once the board has publicly stated the criteria it is bound to stick to them as part of its contract. To secretly mark students down is close to libel.
What a mess, hey? What’s a poor Education Minister to do? In an article called Estelle, here is your way out of this mess the Telegraph’s John Clare puts forward his advice to the beleaguered Estelle Morris.
But I’ve got some even better advice. I know a breathtakingly simple way for Estelle to get out of this mess entirely. It’s this: Get out of this mess entirely, Estelle! Yes! It’s that easy! Kick over your ministerial desk, make a barbecue of all your papers, hurl your dispatch box over the balustrade of the magnificent interior balcony of Sanctuary Buildings, and be gone and free within the hour. I don’t just mean resign. I mean make your last act the complete and inalienable renunciation of government interference in A Levels, AS Levels, right through to X, Y and Z Levels, with every record so much as touching upon the subject shredded or electronically wiped to make sure your courageous decision sticks. Because government interference is the only cause of all this mess and government butting out is the only cure.
You lucky kids! Those cool people at the BBC don’t just know what’s good for you, they even know what you want. All of you. Despite anything you might say to the contrary. If you have forgotten what you want and need to be reminded, just check out this website from children’s news programme “Newsround”. See, it’s telling you: “Kids Want Tougher Air Rifle Laws.”
Adult readers seeking a more detailed rundown on this topic, including details of which of the BBC’s own guidelines are being ignored, might like to see my post at Biased BBC.
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a gun”
(With apologies to Arthur C. Clarke. This one came up on a computer newsgroup discussing open-source projects that would let anyone bypass censorship limitations such as Yahoo has imposed in China.)
Remember my July 10 post, “Tell me about special reading”? Well, you can all stop thinking I’m just another middle class mama boasting about my wonderful offspring. I am and I do, but not today. The purpose of this post is to downplay my kid and up-play, if the term is allowable, the system that taught him to read so quickly. Evidence that this might be a group rather than an individual effect was provided by a little sign posted up on his classroom door at the end of term. It said that 95% of the children in his year were ahead of the national average in literacy, and 54% of them were more than a year ahead. In case you are wondering, the school is an ordinary state school in an area that is mostly middle and respectable working class but includes some children from welfare enclaves.
So what’s this post doing on Samizdata? Early Reading Research (ERR) certainly is not a system designed to appeal to libertarians. The teacher is boss. The kids listen and participate as a group, in unison. Scientific it may be, but in spirit it is a throwback to systems the Victorians would have recognized.
But that doesn’t matter. The libertarian morals to be drawn are (a) it’s taken thirty freaking years or more to overthrow the fraudulent orthodoxy that monolithic state education enthroned, and the job ain’t done yet; (b) that when you next hear statists moan on about how horrifically complicated, interconnected and hard to solve social problems are, mentally add the words “so long as you refuse to admit that you were wrong”; (c) watch the buggers in the educational establishment. Watch them with the eyes of a hawk. Sure, they are by now in their heart of hearts convinced that phonics is the system that works. But a little matter like the interests of actual children won’t override the fact that the last thing the Special Needs “community” want is sudden, clear improvement in children’s literacy. It would make them look bad. Worse, it would make them look unecessary. Expect them to obfuscate, distort and delay reform in every way imaginable. They’ll tell themselves that gradual change and a “mixed approach” are the best thing all round, which is true when the best thing is defined as covering their tails.
One final point. I can talk “mixed approach” too. I’m not saying ERR is the best and only system for all time, just that it knocks the National Literacy Strategy into a cocked hat. I’m not saying that there are no children with real special needs, just that there are much fewer of them than will keep all today’s legion of special needs teachers in their jobs. And I have no idea of what Jonathan Solity’s political opinions are. If he ever reads this and finds himself agreeing with me, I suggest that he keep very, very quiet about it.
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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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