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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You know there are some downsides to this otherwise wonderful transatlantic relationship. I cannot help but suspect that the decision to ban smoking in restaurants by the Mayor of New York has, in turn, inspired some of own moral entrepreneurs:
A bill to make lighting up in restaurants and cafes illegal, cutting the number of deaths from passive smoking, is to appear before parliament.
MP for Harrow West Gareth Thomas says he hopes MPs will back the legislation on Monday to “protect both children and adults from a very serious health threat”.
Ah yes, Children. They’re doing it for the Children! Bless Mr.Thomas for he is the Guardian and Saviour of Our Children.
“Breathing other people’s tobacco smoke actually presents more of a risk than living or working in a building containing asbestos,” he said.
Yes but nowhere near the risk of living or working in a building containing busybodies with legislative powers.
Meanwhile a gaggle of the usual suspects are lining up eager to lend their support.
“[Restaurants] need to take action now if they’re not to lose customers fed up with breathing in the toxic fumes from other people’s cigarettes. Going smoke-free will almost certainly increase their trade,” said Judith Watt of SmokeFree London.
Well, then a legal prohibition is not necessary, is it. If smoking bans will improve trade then any restaurant owner left to his or her own devices would be mad not to ban smoking from their own premises.
At least 165 bar workers die each year from inhaling customers’ smoke, estimates a United States-based passive smoking expert James Repace.
More than 600 office workers and 145 manufacturing workers are also killed annually from passive smoking.
The total number of deaths exceeds those who died during the Great London smog in 1952.
We all know the old saying; there’s lies, then there’s damnable lies and then there’s completey bogus statistics fabricated in order to advance a political agenda.
But Simon Clark, the non-smoking director of Forest, the “voice and friend of the smoker”, says the decision to ban smoking should be made by restaurant owners and not by law.
He described the bill as the work of a “small group of fanatical anti-smokers – and I would put Gareth Thomas in that group – who basically want to interfere, not just with people’s lives, but people’s businesses”.
Brave resistance from a brave few but probably to no avail. After all this is Tony Blair’s shiny, new Britain and we must all be re-made in His image.
My thoughts turn to the British soldiers in the Gulf who have displayed their customary elan and professionalism in freeing the Iraqis from tyrrany. Perhaps they could come home now and perform a similar service for their increasingly beleaguered countrymen.
Another one you didn’t see in the media.
“The demonstration comprised about a hundred protestors demonstrating against the arrest of Vietnamese pro-democracy campaigners. This action was organised by the ‘Alliance Vietnam Liberté’ (Vietnam Freedom Alliance) and various Ngos were invited. A representative of Amnesty International was present as well as Françoise Hostalier, former Human Rights Minister [yes we have one of those in occupied France!] and president of ‘Action Droits de l’Homme’ (Action Human Rights), as well as myself Laurent Muller, president of the ‘Association Européene Cuba Libre’ (European Association for a Free Cuba). The demonstration ended at 17 hours outside the Republic of Vietnam embassy [in Paris].”
It continues with the following:
“I take this opportunity to remind you that tomorrow, 8 April 2003, the AECL is holding a press conference about the latest wave of repression in Cuba. Some 80 non-violent dissidents are currently being tried for ‘treason’ and ‘supplying information to an enemy state’ (the USA). Prison sentences from 10 years to life have been requested [by prosecutors]. It appears that one death sentence has been requested against one dissident.”
The press conference will be held at 15 hours at the aid centre for the Foreign Press, maison de la Radio, 116 avenue du Président Kennedy, 75016 Paris. The best contact I have is Prégentil (Americans will really like the graphics on his front page). Sad note: repression is operating worldwide whilst the eyes of the world are focused on the liberation of Iraq.
Instapundit links to this stirring piece in the Mirror by Tony Parsons, with which I almost wholly agree. Wow, says Instapundit. Indeed. But here’s the one bit I have a problem with.
Yes, there have been deeply disturbing images of dead and burned Iraqi children. But do we honestly imagine that Allied forces, fighting a war unrestrained by political concerns, didn’t kill and maim countless numbers of innocent French, Dutch and Belgian children in the Second World War, never mind the babies we burned alive in Japan and Germany.
We just didn’t see pictures of them.
But I haven’t seen any pictures of dead Iraqis either. Not at any rate on television, which is the news source I’ve been relying on.
Neither has James Lileks. → Continue reading: Where are the dead Iraqis to be seen?
This is quite a story:
A Muslim cleric who urged followers to kill non-believers, Americans, Hindus and Jews has been jailed for nine years.
Jamaican-born Sheik Abdullah el-Faisal, 39, was told he had “fanned the flames of hostility”, as Old Bailey judge Peter Beaumont delivered the sentence.
The judge recommended that el-Faisal, from Stratford in east London, should serve at least half of the sentence and then be deported.
El-Faisal – who said it is permissible to use chemical weapons to kill unbelievers – stretched out an arm to a group of around 12 shocked-looking supporters as he was led away.
I’ve spent many minutes of my life opposing jail sentences like this. Clearly there is a point where words and actions can’t be separated, but I’m not convinced that this man crossed it. On the other hand, if we are to take these people at their various words over the years, they are at war with us, and the usual punishment for being at war against my country and having the misfortune to get captured is imprisonment for the duration, even if you actually did nothing except wear an enemy uniform. So you won’t see me at any demonstrations on this guy’s behalf.
Two further quotes from the BBC story caught my attention. There was this …
Defence lawyer Jerome Lynch QC, said it was unfair that people such as controversial cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri had been seen by police and not brought to court like el-Faisal.
… which sounds right to me! And then comes this gem:
Mr Lynch said of el-Faisal: “This was a man who, although misguided, was not malicious.”
I love that. He wanted all infidels murdered, but he wasn’t being nasty about it or anything. → Continue reading: On hate-speaking and law-making
Melanie McDonagh, ever the dependable voice of anti-idiotarianism and reason, has pointed out the ludicrous thinking behind the latest changes planned regarding laws on domestic violence. The intention is to remove the defence of provocation, whilst at the same time introducing a plea of self-defence for women who kill after years of being abused… or as Melanie sums it up:
a killing that is premeditated for a long time will be treated more lightly; in another, a killing that was not premeditated at all will be treated with the maximum severity.
As one would expect from a socialist collectivist like Solicitor General Harriet Harman, because men tend to kill out of anger and women out of fear, the law will be skewed to in fact make that a presumption. This is not really English law so much as feminist law, treating men and women according to their category rather than as individuals judged on the basis of facts.
But murder, like romance, is unique to the couple concerned. And it doesn’t take much reflection to see that a blanket extenuation of self-defence is quite as likely to lead to miscarriages of justice as the blanket extenuation of provocation.
Quite so! This is a charter for murdering partners with whom a woman has a volatile (but not necessarily violent) relationship. The statue on top of the Old Bailey is ‘blind justice’, but no longer if you are male, it seems.
Martin Taylor works within the British legal system. He is deeply troubled by the latest round of anti-money laundering laws.
During the course of this past month the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 has come into force. This is the legislative instrument which has introduced US-style asset forfeiture into UK law. But the Act goes much further than that. It also consolidates and widens the existing anti-money laundering laws and places a quite terrifying onus on those who are charged with enforcing them.
Prior to this Act the UK already had an anti-money laundering regime in place. It was aimed at the proceeds of drug trafficking and potential terrorist funding. The regime established a ‘regulated sector’ which consists of people such as bankers, accountants, lawyers, financial advisers, stockbrokers and anybody else who is broadly engaged in the business of money management.
The laws imposed an obligation on professionals working in that sector to establish and maintain procedures for obtaining and then keeping personal and business information about their own clients so that this could be used to assess whether or not, at any later time, there are unusual or unexpected patterns of spending or behaviour which may indicate money-laundering activity.
But that is not all, for it is professional advisers who are required to police their own clients. If the professional adviser suspects, for any reason, that his or client may be engaging in money-laundering then he or she is required their client and the circumstances of the transaction in question to a special police agency. Once a report has been made the professional adviser can take no further action on behalf of the client until they have been given express permission to do so by the police.
Penalties for non-compliance can be severe. In the case of non-disclosure of a suspicion of money-laundering, the maximum penalty is 14 years in prison. → Continue reading: The British government declares war on Britain
Arguments are getting quite heated among libertarians about the claim that the US is a potential threat to freedom versus the view that the US is the best guarantor of freedom in the world today. I happen to agree with both statements.
It would be absurd to claim that the US is a worse place to live than peacetime Iraq, unless one happened to enjoy being part of a quasi-fascist police state. It is reasonable to worry about the potential threat to freedom posed by the world’s only superpower: there is no one to overthrow that state if it should go rotten.
I am disappointed in the complacency of some US libertarians and conservatives who ought to remember that wartime is the time when most encroachments on freedom can be justified. I have been accused of hype for using Hillary Clinton as an example of what a horrible US could be. Surely there can’t be anyone who thinks that none of Presidents Lincoln, Wilson, Hoover, F.D.Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Bush senior and Clinton were ever a threat to freedom? Or that no one will ever be elected to the US presidency who is a bad person?
I certainly wish the US forces in the Middle East a speedy and successful trip. I equally hope that the plan is to remove the tyrant with no or low civilian casualties, both for humanitarian reasons, but also because a post-Saddam Iraq will be less resentful of US troops if there hasn’t been carpet-bombing, or bad target intelligence.
I remain convinced that the British forces will either be as symbolic or ineffective as the Piedmont-Sardinian contingent during the Crimean War, or worse that they are headed for a repeat of Isandlwana, Majuba Hill, or Dunkirk. Bluntly the best troops in the world are cannon fodder when they run out of ammunition, the comms equipment doesn’t work and their boots have melted in the sun.
As for ID cards for use against terrorism. Yes they can help. Yes they are also a violation of personal liberty. But I would be rather more convinced if the British government weren’t providing safe havens for terrorists whether leftist, Islamist or Irish.
As a dual national I have a French national identity card. As a British national who doesn’t have a driving licence and whose passport expired in December of last year, I have no state approved form of identifying myself.
Naturally I have never been asked to produce a form of identification in France by a state official except when crossing a border. Equally naturally I have been asked numerous times by police officers in the United Kingdom to identify myself (despite this being illegal without some probable cause, but then I suppose I have a shifty look).
Therefore I fear that a British identity card will become the pretext of even more bullying of white middle-class people by the low-life pigs that pass for law-enforcement officers in the UK today.
During the Second World War, I am told that a well known local dignitary in Ulster was chatting to a police officer at a railway station whilst waiting for a relative to arrive from Belfast. After twenty minutes the police officer said to the local businessman he’d known for years: “Mr Smith, please show me your identity card.” He then proceeded to arrest Mr Smith for failing to carry proper documentation. I suspect that a Gestapo officer would have shown more common-sense.
The chances are that the present loutish types will not behave better than the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s treatment of a Protestant businessman in 1942. Unfortunately, there is a genuine security advantage to identity cards (even when they can be forged). They provide an audit trail for car hire, bank accounts etc.
But of course in France, of course no self-respecting hotelier would dream of asking a single male for identification, unless they wished to cash a cheque…
I have long known that the world is essentially a madhouse with no locks on the doors, but when I read that a former Taliban soldier who fought against British and US forces in Afghanistan will be given asylum in Britain because the pro-western government in Kabul is ‘persecuting’ him, I start to really wonder at what the word ‘asylum’ really means. Did rational people object to former members of the National German Socialist Workers Party being ‘persecuted’ in the aftermath of World War Two?
A few days ago, American bloggers Andrew and Sasha arrived in Britain, neither of whom have ever fought against British soldiers, or called for the death of Christians and Jews, or joined any organisations like Al-Muhajirun which aims to make Britain a muslim caliphate…
…and yet they were nevertheless detained at the airport upon arrival in the UK on Thursday and grilled for nine hours before being provisionally allowed into the country. In fact Sasha’s blog was examined by the Immigration agents and its content used as the excuse to initially deny her entry. It is strange that the content of Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad’s website does not seem to get him kicked out of the country.
The state is not your friend.
I have never been to Illinois, where the decision has been taken by an out-going State Governor to pardon four convicted murderers and commute the sentences of all “death row” inmates to life prison sentences. Unlike some libertarians, I see nothing especially wrong in a court sentencing a person to death for a crime. I would prefer the court not to be an instrument of the state. But more important than who pays the hangman’s wage is the question of due process and presumption of innocence.
Assuming that a person cannot be charged without evidence having been presented to a magistrate or (better) a grand jury. Assuming that the charge is for a crime: murder, as opposed to not wearing a seat belt in the back of a taxicab, or having a cardboard cutter in the trunk of one’s car, or other bizarre regulations of the ‘welfare’ society. Assuming that the suspect is made aware of his rights: to silence, to legal counsel, that any statement made to police may be used. Assuming that the accused is presumed innocent until convicted, has the benefit of not having to assist the prosecution, or even presenting no evidence to the court if he so wishes. Assuming the right to trial by jury (although in France there is the oddity that murder suspects prefer to be tried by a panel of judges than face juries, who tend to convict killers and whose verdicts cannot be easily appealed against). Assuming the right of appeal in the grounds of error, mistrial, new evidence.
Despite all these safeguards, which certainly no longer exist in the United Kingdom, there will always be miscarriages of justice so long as there are incompetent, corrupt or simply mistaken criminal investigations. As a libertarian, I take the view that individual people are not to be used without their consent and in violation of their lives, liberty or property as the means to other people’s ends, unless they have forfeited such rights by initiating agression against other people. As far as criminals go, there is no problem, they have declared war on society: violating the rights of their victims. But a wrongly convicted person is the victim and the culprit is the legal process that resulted in the error of justice.
There is a defence from the charge of murder, where the accused believed that killing the victim was a necessary act, even if this belief was mistaken. But such a defence is dependent on being a able to sustain a credible plea that one wasn’t reckless: shooting at passers-by at random in the street because one of them might be a mugger is plainly not justifiable.
In the same way, I cannot support the application of the death penalty in any jurisdiction where there is evidence that a wrongful conviction may have taken place. Governor Ryan would have felt doubts about this when he reprieved a convicted killer who was exonerated within 48 hours of being executed. At least if a person serving a life sentence is found to be innocent, we can release him, say sorry, and negotiate some sort of compensation. This is – to say the least – difficult where the hangman’s noose has come into play.
The excellent folks at Stand.org.uk, who describe themselves as “a group of volunteers who originally came together in 1998 in a vain attempt to fix the worst aspects of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Act”, are mobilising efforts to oppose the imposition of ID cards in the UK. They enable you to contribute your comments to the ‘consultation’ process, which Downing Street is claiming shows Growing support for entitlement cards… We think you should go to Stand.org.uk website and let them show you how to tell the British government exactly how you feel about this. I did and left comments saying:
To put it bluntly, this is clear evidence, not that any more is needed, that the Labour government is as utterly inimical to civil liberties as the Tory party was. I shall never cooperate with what is clearly just a euphemism for a national ID card which will enhance the state’s ability to monitor and control its subjects. It is clear that any ‘voluntary’ system you offer up will just the thin end of the wedge for a mandatory system that will enable policemen to stop you on the street and demand “your papers”. I will never consent or cooperate with this.
Be polite but tell them what you think. Kudos to Stand.org.uk for their efforts to defend what is left of civil liberties in the United Kingdom.
The state is not your friend
A friend of mine insists that the Cato Institute is nothing more than a sell-out, obsessed with media coverage at the expense of intellectual integrity. This view seems to have been shaped by the jealousy of a less media-effective think-tank. In Britain, the Libertarian Alliance has the ambition of being/becoming the world’s second best libertarian website after Cato.
Having been sent a copy of a recent publication: “Cato Supreme Court Review 2001-2002” I admit that I’m impressed with the quality of the content, the actual book itself, and the fact that it is possible to produce a commentary on the performance of the Supreme Court.
I have not read the Supreme Court Review from cover to cover yet. But leafing through I learnt about the practice of “fast-track plea bargaining” and the conundrum posed by obscenity laws on the one hand and the provisions of the Bill of Rights on the other. I discovered that 90 per cent of criminal cases don’t go to trial by jury in the federal courts because of the “fast-track” system and that British law on defining “child pornography” would be thrown out, probably with a 7-2 majority, if attempted in the USA.
The contrast with the United Kingdom is stunning. No British think-tank has the intellectual quality to produce such an academic work. None produces this level of production quality. And our absence of a constitution makes such a project redundant. The so-called “unwritten constitution” is precisely worth the paper it’s not written on.
My only suggestion for future editions would be that it would be handy to have a listing of all Supreme Court cases over the period, with an indication as to which cases were covered in the various chapters.
Otherwise, I welcome the appearance of this tome which deserves to become both a tool for the academic study of the US Constitution in practice, and an essential campaign guide to the wins and losses of individual freedom in America.
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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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