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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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!
Under comment pressure from the deeply annoying A_t, and before he says it for me, I realise that “witchfinding” or “witchhunting” are no more appropriate as descriptions of what happened to Harry Stein than they are of what happened during the 1950s when McCarthy was chasing communists. Communists existed. Witches did not exist. But racists also exist. It’s merely that Harry Stein isn’t one. Oh well.
I don’t know – I really do not know – how much clout little old limey Samizdata has in the big wide world out there, by which I mean the USA, but I hope it has some, and that if we flag up this article in City Journal (Autumn 2002), then it will count for a little something, or at any rate an extra little something to set beside the fact that Instapundit has already flagged it up a few hours ago. Maybe it will influence these particular PC witchfinders that they are now getting themselves detectably, internet searchably, despised all over the world (by which I mean in Britain).
The author of the article is a new name to me, Harry Stein. Stein is the author of the book How I Accidentally Joined the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (and Found Inner Peace), and the article is about his trials and tribulations on the road selling his book, and specifically about a speech he gave in Dallas and its gutter-journalistic aftermath.
Perry likes quotes so that this will make sense even if the link one day goes dead, so let me see. Well, here’s quite a lot of the piece, but it’s a good piece, so …: → Continue reading: Witchfinding in Dallas
Perry has gone and got my creative juices flowing. I’ve already drafted the copy for the advertisement that I intend to place in all the Singles Columns:
“Practice safe sex! If you’ve arranged a date this morning, call me this afternoon.”
You can hardly blame me for wanting to cash in on (yet another) government ‘crackdown’. I’m getting too old to chase ambulances and voyeurism sounds like a far more appealing way to make a living.
‘Crackdown’. HMG just loves that word. They crackdown on this, they crackdown on that. Whenever they suspect that the British tax cattle have forgotten why exactly it is they need all these overpaid suits in Whitehall, out they come with another ‘crackdown’, straight from the Must-Be-Seen-To-Be-Doing-Something School of Political Science. HMG has become like an angry man who can no longer communicate with his children so he just takes his belt to them every now and then to keep them from asking so many stupid questions.
However, the thing about ‘crackdowns’ is that, very often, they never actually materialise. They’re announced, trumpeted by a compliant media for a while and, by the time the news-wagon has rolled on to the next terrorist atrocity or Boy Band break-up, it’s all been forgotten about.
This ‘crackdown’ on the sex laws has that familiar ring to it. They’ll probably knock it around at committee stage for a while, draft some new laws, put them before their own laywers for advice, be told that their ideas are insane, unworkable and likely to lead to chaos and then the whole thing will be quietly filed away. However, in the meantime, sufficient kerfuffle has been made to keep some radical marxoid feminist wing of the Labour Party quiet until after the next election.
I’m just speculating of course and I could (Lord help us) be wrong. So I shall maintain a watching brief in the meantime; one that I shall not actually be able to charge for. Damn!
David Blunkett, Britain’s blind Home Secretary proved his blindness extends far beyond mere eyes.
New sex offence laws to be unveiled by the Government next month could include a crackdown on date rape.
Under the proposed law, reportedly being introduced by Home Secretary David Blunkett, men accused of rape will have to prove they made efforts to ensure their sexual partners gave agreement.
They will no longer be able to rely on the defence of “honest belief”, a legal loophole where suspects can be acquitted if they genuinely believed the alleged victim wanted sex.
What happened to the presumption of innocence? This is utter madness. Rape is an appalling crime, but how exactly can a guy who “genuinely believed the alleged victim wanted sex” somehow prove it to be a justified believe? Is he expected to get a second opinion from some third party before continuing at each stage? Perhaps lawyers like David Carr will find an new lucrative source of business as ‘dating lawyers’, sitting at the bottom of the bed and witnessing each declaration of consent.
Him: May I touch you there, my dear?
Her: Oooo, yes please!
Lawyer: Consent recorded.
Him: Oh yeah, baby…
Her: Ahhhhhh….
Lawyer: Umm, is that ‘Ahhhh yes’ or ‘Ahhhhh no’?
Her: Yes! Yes!
Lawyer: Consent recorded.
Him: Lean back a bit…Oooooo!
Her: Mmmmm… a little lower darling.
Lawyer: Hold it! As your lawyer I must advise you that if you proceed, it could be construed as potentially non-consensual as she has clearly stated you are not touching her exactly where she wishes to be touched! Whilst not admitting anything to the generality of the foregoing on behalf of my client, I must advise my client to, er, withdrawn and seek written confirmation before continuing…
Taking a bus to Brixton from Streatham this afternoon, I saw the Big Brother posters which assured me I was safe. Considering I was in one of London’s three murder hotspots, the posters seemed appropriate. In Coldharbour Lane the new multimedia telephone kiosks were empty yet there were queues outside them. These were the drugs hustlers who called out “Grass”, “Charlie” and “Horse” as I walked past.
Directly beneath a bus lane camera a car blocked the bus lane. I was reminded that when the security cameras were installed in Coldharbour Lane one of them didn’t work. Any guesses where a murder was committed? Yup, directly beneath the faulty camera.
In Kingston-upon-Thames a few years ago a jeweller’s shop was discovered to be the only shop in the street which couldn’t be seen from the array of cameras. A nice dark alleyway running alongside was also unaccountably off-screen. Any guesses how this was discovered? Yup, when a gang burgled the shop.
At least there is no suggestion that inside information could possibly have contributed to these crimes.
I finally found the right Microsoft compatible audio codec for Linux and have watched the video of Netanyahu’s press conference which I discussed yesterday.
I must admit I am impressed. I’d never before got the measure of the man. If your opinions of him, like mine, were formed by watching the BBC or other evening news, I highly recommend you take the time to listen. He is a very strong defender of Freedom of Speech.
I think he should get his own blog. He’d fit in nicely with the rest of us.
I have been reading my morning dose of news when I came across ZDNet reporting that a new law against gambling was passed in Greece. Law Number 3037, enacted at the end of July, explicitly forbids electronic games with ‘electronic mechanisms and software’ from public and private places, and people have already been fined tens of thousands of euros for playing or owning games.
It also transpires that the true meaning of the wording of the law means that anybody carrying an electronic game – even if it is just on a mobile phone – could face a hefty fine or lengthy jail sentence! According to the Greek newspaper Kathimerini,
“The police will be responsible for catching offenders, who will face fines of 5,000 to 75,000 euros (US$4,967 to US$74,506) and imprisonment of one to 12 months. The blanket ban was decided in February after the government admitted it was incapable of distinguishing innocuous video games from illegal gambling machines.”
One online report said that even watching a film on DVD – many of which contain promotional games linked to the movie – had resulted in an arrest and a 10,000-euro (US$9,934) fine.
Internet cafes are allowed to continue to operate, providing all gaming is prohibited: if a client is found to be running any sort of game, including online chess, the café owner will be fined and the place closed. The law applies equally to visitors from abroad:
“If you know these things are banned, you should not bring them in”
said the commercial attaché at the Greek Embassy in London – who declined to give her name.
Now, so many words spring to mind – most of them not suitable for a ‘family’ blog. I will restrain myself and focus my disbelief and fury on one point – the government imposes a blanket ban on games (electronic in this case presumably because it has already banned the other kind) because it is incapable of distinguishing innocuous video games from illegal gambling machines! Not only have governments been preventing people from all sort of activities, now they can’t even be bothered to find out what exactly it is they don’t want us to do! Somebody wake me up, please, I must be having a nightmare…
I’ve just listened to Lawrence Lessig’s lecture on Free Culture and highly recommend it. Larry describes how much liberty we have lost in the last fifty years. A small number of giant media Corps have used their lobbying power to criminalize more and more of what was once unregulated behavior.
Government acting alone is not the only threat to liberty. The self interest of exceedingly greedy corporations in conjunction with exceedingly greedy lawmakers is a formula for the destruction of civil society. Think how close the world of William Gibson’s Corp ruled dystopia is. The combination of latent totalitarians such as Jack Valenti and outright crooked politicians – Sen Hollings (D Disney) comes to mind – is a deadly one for everything we as libertarians stand for. It is also an attack on the core of everything the Left and the Right believe in as well.
Therein lies our hope.
As Ben Franklin said: “We must indeed all hang together, or assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
Ace blogger John Weidner of Random Jottings has written about a truly shocking decision by Yahoo to help the Chinese government censor the Internet for the 1 billion people living in China (and of course that open air prison camp called Tibet).
There is only one way to deal with a company like Yahoo and that is to made them pay a price in the market for their collaboration with the brutal regime in Peking: Boycott Yahoo!
I have always believed that the political classes have one project and one project only: maintaining power. All other considerations are dispensible; smoke and mirrors for the voters come election time.
The political class that we are lumbered with in Britain wish to tighten their grip somewhat by removing the obstacle of an 800 year-old Common Law right known as Double Jeopardy i.e. a person cannot be tried twice for the same crime.
This was not a defence mechanism fabricated on some altruistic frolic. It was seen as essential if a citizen was to maintain their liberty against an all-powerful state which had the resources to pursue them at will if so desired. It was a mechanism which maintained the rule of law not the rule of whim.
Home Secretary David Blunkett has announced plans to ‘modernise’ our legal system by abolishing this hard-won right. He wants to make it easier for the State to pursue serious criminals who are seen to ‘get away with it’. It sounds like a noble impulse but the truth is far darker. Of course, the government has been at pains to stress that it will only abolished in so far as it relates to very serious matters e.g. murder but I’m afraid that we’ve heard this one before. Once the principle is established it is only a matter of time before mission creep drives it forward to cover all and any offences (including, possibly, EU-mandated offences such as ‘xenophobia’ or the deliberately vague ‘computer-related crime’).
The ability to prosecute by instalments will manifest itself as a tool of control in politically-sensitive cases with any risk of the ‘wrong’ result. The State will simply be able to drag a defendant back into Court time after time until it gets the result it wants. Sooner or later, with its ability to write a blank cheque, the State will win and everybody will know it.
There are few more pointed weapons of political control than this. There mere threat of it is enough to silence or cow difficult or even unpopular people into quiessence. With the endless threat of constant prosecution hanging over their heads, normal life becomes all but impossible. Keep quiet and do as you are told or your life will simply become unbearable.
Like my now defunct hard-drive, our collective memories are no longer accessible. If they were, the polity would rise up in revolt at the merest hint of the government arrogating this kind of power unto itself, but by the time iron rule has replaced rule of law, nobody will be able to remember a time when it was any different.
It’s bad therefore it should be banned. No hesitation, no intervening punctuation. Just add -nne- to bad and you’re there. That’s the meme we have to hack to death.
An article in yesterday’s Sunday Times (News Review, 5.7) spreads this same poisonous little idea, far more poisonous than anything in junk food itself. Junk food, says Medicine Today editor Jerome Burne, is bad for you. It contains too much sugar and screws around with the way your brain cells operate. People who have given groups of children non-junk-food diets have seen remarkable improvements in their behaviour. Ergo corporation chasing American lawyers are launching class actions against junk food makers, and Congress is considering taxing junk food.
That is the kind of legislation Alan Simpson, MP for Nottingham South and chair of the reform group Food Justice, would like to see in this country. “It is time the government took the side of society rather than the food industry,” he says. “I would support a tax on junk food, on sugar or on snack food advertising. That could then fudn effective campaigns to promote healthy eating.”
But what is wrong with simply saying that you think junk food is bad, and saying why, as publicly as you can, if that is what you think? Why do you need government money to say something? Why should people who like junk food and don’t misbehave as a result be hit by the law and by the tax man merely to sort out all those kids who eat badly? I read the article. It had me convinced about everything except the need for the lawmakers to get involved. What’s wrong with that as a general strategy?
Next to this junk article about junk food there’s another one about why sleep is a good thing. (I know. There we all were thinking we didn’t need any.) Presumably they couldn’t think of any laws to pass to make us sleep better. So they just had some advice: sleep better. That’s the way to do these things.
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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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