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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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’?
Patrick Crozier has seen a round in the ongoing debate regarding state imposed ID cards… and he did not like what he saw.
Please don’t ask me why I was watching Richard and Judy (a sort of British ‘Oprah’) the other day but I was. They were having a discussion on ID cards with Tony Blair’s Big Buddy Lord Falconer on the pro-ID card side and Mark Littlewood of the pressure group Liberty putting the case against… and Littlewood lost.
I had better explain the way the argument went. Falconer said that it was all about cutting down on social security fraud and immigrants working without work permits. Falconer made a mistake in insisting on calling it an Entitlement Card (shades of the Community Charge) but otherwise he did fine. “Nothing to worry about” was the message.
Littlewood made two points. The first was that it didn’t work – there was plenty of experience on the Continent to show that was the case. The second was that it would be used by the police to harrass and intimidate members of racial minorities.
I have to say I didn’t find this particularly convincing. There is a rather odd belief in Britain that Continentals do everything so much better than we do. This is allied to the even odder belief that to criticize anything the French or Germans do is tantamount to xenophobia. To any “progressive” the argument simply won’t wash.
And as for the harrassment argument I am sure any self-respecting policeman can find ways to harrass people ID cards or not.
Which got me thinking – how would I make the case against ID cards? Well, for starters, I wouldn’t make it by making appeals to abstract notions like freedom and liberty. From what I can work out the vast majority of the British public simply have no concept of the term let alone a desire to see it preserved or extended.
The problem is that if you abandon abstracts you have to start talking in practicalities. You could mention that it is expensive, maybe a billion or so, but frankly in government spending terms that’s peanuts. And anyway, it does kind of miss the point. We are trying to make the claim that ID cards are a bad thing not merely an expensive thing which might do some good but that the costs outweigh the benefits.
You could say that it will prove very useful to future dictators and tyrants. But no one in Britain (outside libertarian circles) believes that will ever happen. “Goose-stepping Nazis here? Don’t be daft!” would be the attitude.
So, what on earth should we say? I think it is best to consider where the drive for ID cards comes from. Falconer himself said it: social security fraud ie the state and immigration ie the state again. This is a state policy to patch over the failures of previous state policies.
I think this is the line of attack that is likely to work best. Something along the lines of: “Isn’t it amazing. For a thousand years we Britons have been amongst the freest and most prosperous peoples of the world. In all that time not once outside a grave national emergency has our government ever forced us to possess identity cards. Even Bloody Mary had no use for them but this government does. What does that say about this government? I’ll tell you what. It tells us that it is uniquely incompetent…”
Well, that’s my stab.
Patrick Crozier
Few weeks ago I blogged about China’s pressure on Hong Kong to pass an anti-subversion law. According to the law, people found guilty of acts of treason, sedition, secession from, or subversion of, the mainland government could be imprisoned for life under the new law. Also, concepts like “state secrets” and “national security” in the law are too vague, leaving them open to abuse.This may be – and I’d certainly argue that it will be – exploited by authorities in Beijing and Hong Kong against anyone they dislike in the former British colony, promised a high degree of autonomy when it was handed back to China in 1997.
Tens of thousands of Hong Kong people (march organisers say 50,000) have taken part in one of the territory’s biggest marches in years, denouncing the plans they fear will erode freedom and civil liberties. As many as 100 civil and religious groups joined in the march, including the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China.
Mr Wong, a marcher says: “This law will threaten the rights of many, many people in Hong Kong, how can I not protest?”
Quite. I wonder what John Smith or Joe Bloggs would say…
Frank Sensenbrenner sees the triumph of subjectivism in the British legal system. The victim’s perception of the nature of a crime now replaces analysis of the objective facts.
It seems that in David Blunkett’s Britain, it has become a greater crime to offend the opinions of a select class than to infringe upon their rights. Natalie Solent recently reported on Robin Page’s arrest. Mr Page, a reporter for the Daily Telegraph, was arrested for inciting racial hatred after stating that rural individuals should have the same rights to legal protection for traditional events as other minorities, such as blacks, Muslims, and gays.
At the heart of the subject is the definition of inciting racial hatred. A libertarian perspective would conclude that inciting racial hatred would be advocacy for direct action to deny liberties and rights to a certain race or group, as opposed to merely voicing bigoted opinions. No matter how repellent one’s opinions are, if one is only disparaging certain groups, as opposed to suggesting criminal action against them, it is free speech. After all, no one is forcing anyone who might be offended by free speech to listen to it. Most of history’s famous human rights campaigners such as Martin Luther King, Steve Biko, and Mahatma Gandhi used the same construct as Mr Page. They did not advocate hostilities against their oppressors, but demanded equal rights. Today, suggesting similar ideas is racial hatred.
There is deep hypocrisy in the enforcement of the Public Order Act in this context. While Mr Page stewed in prison for advocating equality, Sheik Abu Hamza and his cohorts preach the slaughter of infidels on the streets of London and by main landmarks. Surely proposing murder is a greater crime than proposing equality? Just a look at Al Muhajiroun is bad enough. While Mr Omar Bakri Muhammad is certainly free to preach whatever he likes behind closed doors, to allow him to advocate crime in public is too far.
In addition, the Public Order Act may go too far. According to an official government website, racial hatred is defined as threatening, abusive, or merely insulting behaviour. Also, was looking at what laws enshrine hate crimes against gays, and it looks even worse in that respect. According to Rainbow Network the perception of anyone that a crime was a homophobic or racially motivated attack is enough for it to be deemed so.
Therefore, Samizdatistas de Havilland, Carr, Cronin, Micklethwait & Amon, I look forward to seeing you as a fellow defendant versus The Crown when they get around to prosecuting the Samizdata Team for hate speech, as I’m sure there’s some idiot in Islington who’d deem Samizdata ‘hate speech’.
Frank Sensenbrenner
Yesterday, chewing gum was in the Eye of the Beholder who quoted from this story, about some US-Singapore trade negotiations:
Negotiators from both countries said they hoped to resolve the issue of capital controls quickly, clearing the way for a final deal.
But Mr. Zoellick apparently did not break down Singapore’s resistance on another issue: its longtime ban on chewing gum, a prohibition ordered to keep the nation’s streets and sidewalks cleaner.
I know how the Singaporeans feel. The relentless disfiguring of London’s public spaces with chewing gum deposits is one of the things that most often makes me wish that “public” spaces were more frequently privately owned than they are. Occasionally a fresh deposit actually sticks to your shoe, which is horrible. You later have to scrape it off with a knife. Usually the deposit has dried and just remains there, a black blob on the floor.
It’s the sneakiness of it that gets me. The chewing gum droppers know that in the grand scheme of things their petty little misdemeanour doesn’t rate very high on the wickedness scale. And it is exactly this that they exploit. In a world of terrorist outrages, ever rising crime of the more usual sort, ghastly new laws that won’t do anything about crime but will be ghastly, ghastly new … well, just read every second posting on Samizdata (which seems to be going through a rather grim phase just now, for some reason), … in such a world, who has time to moan about chewing gum? Only me and the government of Singapore it would seem.
If the chewing gum miscreants don’t drop their chewing gum on the floor, they stick it on a strategically chosen spot in an advert. The first few times you see this it can be funny, but for me this joke stopped being funny years ago.
What’s going on here? No doubt a lot of chewing gum misbehaviour is sheer thoughtlessness, perpetrated by otherwise blameless and worthy people, but not nearly all, I surmise. I think what we may also have here is a particular example of the pathetic-person-making-an-impact syndrome. Another example of this is people who make a point of crossing roads just in front of motorists who they know will slow up and be inconvenienced, because that way the regular (car-owning) world is forced to pay attention to their otherwise meaningless existence, if only for a moment. Take that! I’m not so insignificant now, am I? Chewing gum misbehaviour is even sneakier, because it is anonymous. Ha! That was me, but you’ll never know, will you, hee hee hee! Chewing gum as clandestine self-expression, a subculture of secret Jackson Pollocking.
And why are there so many pathetic people who can only make an impact on the world by annoying it anonymously with chewing gum? The answer to that would be a bigger and grimmer Samizdata posting. I merely flag up the problem.
Other gum scum (I like that – that’s my heading for this) scatter their chewing gum as part of a more general pattern of nastiness and parasitism and not-so-petty aggressions. Presumably what the Singaporeans also feel, in addition to simply not liking gum dropped everywhere, is that if it’s chewing gum droppings today, it may be bricks through windows tomorrow and robbing old ladies for small or not so small change the next day. This is the “zero tolerance” theory, which I think is also right.
I know what you’ll say, all you people who can only make an impact on the world by leaving clever little comments on blogs (which I do agree is better than gum dropping). There’s a difference between possessing chewing gum and chewing chewing gum, and dropping chewing gum. (Cue the great Gum Control debate of Christmas 2002: “The majority of gum users are in fact responsible people, and we should not allow a small anti-social minority to be the excuse for suppressing the harmless pleasures of the law-abiding majority …” blah blah blah.) True. But not my point here. Have a nice day.
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.”
China is pushing Hong Kong to enact the anti-subversion legislation, under which people found guilty of acts of treason, sedition, secession from, or subversion against the mainland government could be imprisoned for life. To you and me, any criticism of China or its leaders can be punished by being locked up for life. More importantly, Hong Kong’s constitution guarantees a wide range of civil liberties not granted in mainland China and the greatest danger of any anti-subversion law is the possibility that it would open a channel for mainland China’s laws to be applied in Hong Kong.
Britain has urged the government of Hong Kong to protect basic rights and freedoms as the former British colony prepares to pass the anti-subversion law based on the mainland’s broad notions of “national security” and “state secrets” demanded by the Chinese government.
Apparently, China is concerned that Hong Kong could be used as a base from which to subvert the mainland. What a splendid idea! But what is it that I read?! Hong Kong is required to pass some form of anti-subversion law under its constitution, which was agreed between Britain and China before the territory reverted to Chinese rule. The Hong Kong Basic Law is the miniconstitution that took effect July 1, 1997. The Article 23 prohibits foreign political organizations from conducting political activities in Hong Kong and forbids political organizations in Hong Kong from establishing ties with foreign political organizations.
For example, the proposed law could be taken to mean that as few as two Catholics who contact or sponsor a mainland Catholic community not recognized by the Chinese government could be charged with endangering national security.
China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman insisted the legislation would bring Hong Kong into accordance with general international practice. Although to us at Samizdata.net it often appears that general international practice is being brought into accordance with Chinese practices.
I have a better idea, why don’t they try a poster campaign instead?! 
I don’t smoke. I don’t like the whiff of a cigarette and frequently will come back from a certain pub, cursing the atmosphere in the boozer for making my clothing reek of ciggies. I think that so-called ‘passive smoking’, while it may not cause cancer or other health problems, is certainly unpleasant. I prefer to sit in the non-smoking bits of a restaurant if at all possible and ask people in my apartment not to smoke. So there it is.
And yet, and yet… I loathe the cultural jihad in the West that has been going on against smokers. The latest lunacy has been the decision by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg to ban smoking in all public places. All of them. So even if the owner of a private restaurant or bar (which are of course private property) says it is okay to smoke, and the customers are okay with that, the ban must be imposed nonetheless. Never mind that no one is forced to go into a bar or restaurant if they dislike the atmosphere. This is a clear violation of property rights. Of course with true public spaces which have been funded out of tax, the situation is a bit different and with subways, safety issues to do with fire can be used to justify a ban, or partial one.
But Bloomberg, owner of a some sort of news company  , is showing a total lack of proportion. Since September 11, 2001, New Yorkers have occasionally had many reasons to steady their nerves and enjoy the indulgences of this fleeting life. For some, it may be the taste of a delicious bagel, or a sip of a beer. But for many citizens of that great city, it has been about lighting up a cigarette.
Jack Bell makes a timeless point and leads many at Samizdata.net wonder if not just Iran but some Western societies are not well overdue for Jefferson’s prescription.
Reason has an editorial everyone should read. It discusses the story of Dr. Hashem Aghajari who is facing a death sentence in Iran because he called for secular and religious reform. He has turned down a negotiated appeal with the religious courts of Iran because, as Dr. Aghajari says
“… those who have issued this verdict have to implement it if they think it is right or else the Judiciary has to handle it.”
Basically he is willing to die to make his point.
In these days of jihad where our focus is on the religious fanatics and their facist fellow travellers, it is good for us to know that there are also those in the Middle East who share our belief in the rights and dignity of man and the liberty of the individual. In freedom from religous and secular tyranny. Share it strongly enough to pay the same ultimate price as was once paid here in America to secure those very rights for us.
I wonder how many of us will be standing up for the count in a decade or so if (when) the apparatus of protection we are so busy erecting is used for darker purposes? Personally I think Thomas Jefferson said it best:
“What country before ever existed a century & a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
Jack Bell
The police in Britain have been busy smashing down doors and dragging people from their beds.
Yesterday it was wicked people who were connected to child porn (at least the police said they all were – even though hundreds of people have been arrested over the last few days).
Today however it will be people guilty of ‘hate crimes’ – after all, posters on the London Underground warn that to ‘verbally abuse’ people on grounds of race, gender or sexual orientation�is a crime and will be punished.
So who will defend people who have said nasty things? After all they must all be guilty – otherwise the police would not have dragged them into the street (with the other people who live in the street looking down from their bedroom windows).
Yesterday the Prime Minister made a speech (after the Queen’s opening of Parliament). The Prime Minister explained to us that Britain is stuck in the past with a silly devotion to 19th century concepts of civil liberties – such things as trial by jury obstruct the modern state and must be further ‘limited’.
As the Council of Europe grows more confident, the authoritarian future planned for all who live under the blue & gold stary crown of thorns is rapidly becoming an authoritarian present.
The venerable Eurocrats have decreed that, “‘racist and xenophobic material’ means any written material, any image or any other representation of ideas or theories, which advocates, promotes or incites hatred, discrimination or violence, against any individual or group of individuals, based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin, as well as religion if used as pretext for any of these factors.”
[…]
The actual criminal act is “making publicly available, through a computer system” any of the [Council of Europe]’s forbidden thoughts. And be warned; there’s a nice weasel clause for carriers — the CoE castrators are very smart. They know that if they held carriers liable the carriers would lobby this piece of bureaucratic abuse into the dust bin. You are on your own here, and by clever design. You will either take to the streets en masse and sternly warn your government that you will not be told what you can and cannot say, or you will be told what you can and cannot say.
We should like to think that this madness won’t stand long; but as Chesterton noted, it’s the business of Liberals to make imbecilic mistakes like these, and the business of Conservatives to ensure that they never get fixed.
Soon the fact that I regard the EU as a cabal of Transnational Socialist who will turn all Europe into a panoptic nightmare may well be considered ‘xenophobic material’ and thus could get me locked up if I wrote that on Samizdata.net from within the EU. Of course the more likely that looks like becoming a realty, the more you will see pseudonymous postings on Samizdata.net and possibly a change of hosting locale. The state is not your friend… and super-states even less so.
The time is coming for things to start getting nasty. Now that habeas corpus has been made meaningless in Britain, if one of Samizdata.net’s British contributors writing from London upsets a Greek politician by writing something like, say…
All PASOK politicians are a bunch of corrupt socialist bastards who allowed the ’17 November’ terrorist organisation to operate in Greece with impunity for decades because it is actually controlled by elements within PASOK. Recent ‘successes’ against N17 will of course uncover exactly nothing.
Well, merely expressing that view can result in a knock on a door in London by British police with a Greek arrest warrant that cites EU law, and next stop for the person who dared to express a dissenting view is some hell hole jail in the armpit of Europe that was once the cradle of Western civilisation.
This is not something that is the fevered products of wacko anti-EU conspiracy theorists, it is reality and it is well any truly upon Europeans and Britons alike. Transnational fascism of coming, in the guise of anti-fascism, and it is coming right now.
The BBC Protection Ministry (sometimes knowns as the ‘Independent’ Television Commission), has banned the US news program “The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board With Stuart Varney” and threatened CNBC with fines. As the Opinion Journal puts it:
“Let us see if we get this straight. The ITC thinks it is protecting viewers by refusing to let them hear the viewpoints of a roundtable of American newspaper editors? These same editors may state their views in a newspaper that bears the name of The Wall Street Journal, but if they utter them on a TV program that bears that newspaper’s name, their views are somehow tainted? That sure sounds like a free-speech issue to us.
Which leads to the question of what the case is really about. The answer–and we wish we could say this with the requisite plummy accent–is the BBC. The ITC’s actions against CNBC Europe and CNN amount to little more than the British government harassing private competitors of the publicly funded British Broadcasting Corp.”
I’ll be a bit less compromising than our friends across the water. What the bureaucracy really doesn’t like is the non-Tranzi slant of the WSJ. They don’t want the BBC to have to compete with ideas.
I hope our Russian ex-pat friend succeeds in taking the Beeb down a peg or two!
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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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