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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Nothing any political body says can be taken at face value. On that point I doubt many would demur. In days gone by when the state had a large measure of control over information flows, this was only to be expected and was easier to do. In modern times, this is a bit harder to pull off and requires ‘spin’ and other psycho-media exercises in obfuscation to muddy waters, confuse issues, bamboozle and generally misdirect people from politically inconvenient facts. Nevertheless, in this information rich interconnected world in which we now live, one can but marvel that some political creatures seem to act as if they operate in a universe in which the official pronouncements carry the same weight they did in, say, the 1920’s.
A remarkable and even bizarre example of this is the summary which has been attached to the factual European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia‘s report on anti-semitism in Europe. This EU publication comes out against the screamingly obvious backdrop of Islamic youths running rampant in some communities in many countries. And the summary of this report states what exactly?
The largest group of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic activities appears to be young, disaffected white Europeans
Huh? I mean, did they expect that no one would actually read the actual main text? The report clearly says that by far the major source of ‘anti-semitic’ (meaning anti-Jewish) violence is other semites… Muslim ones. → Continue reading: The wellspring of lies
More Tsarism, this time of the Euro variety:
European Union leaders agreed yesterday to rush forward a clutch of EU-wide surveillance measures and created an anti-terror “Tsar” in response to the Madrid bombings.
The list of counter-terrorism measures pushed by Britain, France and Spain at a Union summit in Brussels include plans to retain mobile telephone records, e-mail and internet data indicating the time and address of all websites visited.
White Rose has further EUro-reportage and links about similar EUro-stuff, here and here.
This report also illustrates the point that EUrope is not just a machine to enable foreigners to muck the British around, it is also a machine to enable to British to muck the foreigners around: a sort of universal substitute empire for all the old European imperialists. Having been made to stop tyrannising over their previous imperial possessions, the tyrannising classes have switched instead to tyrannising over each other’s nations. Bad luck on the rest of us, but there it is, these people have to have someone to tyrannise over.
Meanwhile, proof that when the Euro elite wants something, it just beavers away until it gets it:
A new summer deadline for agreement on the EU constitution has been agreed by European leaders, putting renewed pressure on Tony Blair and his non-negotiable “red lines”.
Mr Blair had seemed content for the troubled constitution to slip off the agenda after December’s summit ended in deadlock. But a new deadline for agreement on the document has been set.
Although, when the time comes that the people who want EUrope to fall to bits are finally in the ascendancy, they will have the perfect precedent for saying: “We are going to keep on destroying this thing until we succeed, and will ignore all counter-opinions, of, e.g. voters, because these opinions are anti-historical and do not matter. We are doing what we know to be best. Our opponents are deluded. That’s what the founders of this thing did when they started it, and we are merely following their inspiring example.”
Trouble is, by the time that happens, those people may be even nastier.
I will read this piece by David Carr to cheer myself up.
Good news from today’s Guardian, which just goes to show that big news can sometimes come in the form of something bad just very quietly not happening:
Tacit confirmation that joining the single currency is off the political radar until after the next election came today as the “No” campaign confirmed it was ceasing to campaign actively.
The group insists that a “steering committee” will monitor the government’s plans on the euro, but that last week’s budget now means that a referendum would not be before spring 2008 at “the absolute earliest”.
In his budget statement last Wednesday, Gordon Brown announced a “rolling assessment” of the case for euro – but last June told MPs that only one of his “five tests” had been met.
The sixth test – can they get us damn voters to agree to it? – was always the test that mattered. I don’t know anyone who believes that any of the other five matter as much as that one. (Come to think of it, I doubt if I know anyone who knows what all these tests are.) And because those New Labour people didn’t take all the chips they won in 1997 and throw them straight back onto the table and bet them all on the abolition of the pound Sterling, right then, there is a very good chance that Britain will retain its national independence indefinitely, with its separation from the ‘eurozone’ eventually mutating into separation from ‘Europe’ itself. I can hope.
As a libertarian I wish we Brits could cherry pick. I wish we could welcome all these Eastern European immigrants who are about to flood in and who want to work, but not take all the idiotic and mean-minded regulations and ‘harmonisations’. (And maybe history will cherry pick exactly that arrangement for me, eventually.) Which might explain why in other parts of Europe the libertarians are all gung-ho not only for ‘Europe’ but for the very Euro itself. In Brussels last week, I heard tell of a Swedish libertarian who voted ‘No’ in the Swedish referendum and who was damn near ostracised by the rest of her tribe. In Sweden, ‘Europe’ is what is going to dismantle their over-bloated welfare state. ‘Europe’ is Thatcherism.
However, the fact that ‘Europe’ may be a better bet than Sweden for Sweden doesn’t make it a better bet than Britain for Britain, so I am still pleased about the indefinitely postponement of the Euro in these parts.
This article by young Freddie Sayers in the latest Spectator can be simply summarised. The EU is boring, and it is especially boring to Youth.
The youthfulness of Freddie Sayers is not something I am pointing out gratuitously. He makes much of it himself, when he writes things like this:
Sooner or later, the EU institutions will realise that they cannot shape trends, but are in fact subject to them. I believe the European Union will gradually become less relevant: the lack of interest in my generation practically guarantees it. The passion that the romantic vision of a united Europe once provoked was the result of a world-view which we cannot understand. When Michael Howard spoke in Berlin in February, he recalled how in 1963 he had been ‘one of the half million people who thronged in front of the Rathaus Schoneberg to hear President Kennedy give his famous address’; Sìle de Valera also told me how influenced she had been by General de Gaulle’s vision of Europe.
But these memories mean nothing to us. The old view of Europe, formed by a memory of intra-European war and the prospect of a new power block to counterbalance the US and Soviet Russia, is simply no longer relevant. I can’t remember the Berlin Wall falling down; the second world war seems ancient history. Sìle de Valera pondered why it is that young people feel ‘active and engaged in global politics, but it is harder to engage them at a more local level’. Perhaps we feel more like citizens of the world than citizens of Europe? The European Union has had useful and constructive results — freer travel and trade, cultural exchange programmes — but there is no reason for young people to get excited about it. We see these as the quite normal modern activities of any friendly civilised states, whether America or Italy. The whole idea of a particularly European vision is out of date, passé.
The trouble with Sayers saying all this, but not saying any more than this, is that however much the EUropean Union becomes less “relevant” in the eyes of its younger victims, it is still in fact in business. The EU boring? Well, so is a steamroller. But if the steamroller is steamrolling all over you, merely calling it boring is hardly the response that will actually stop it, now is it?
What is needed is a generation who have become sufficiently excited about the EUropean Union, to the point where they choose to stop it, and perhaps even reverse it.
Of course the EUro-enthusiasts would rather that the youth of EUrope shared their EUro-enthusiasm. But in the absence of support, they can proceed with their project in the absence of enthusiastic opposition.
I am not accusing Freddie Sayers of having foolish feelings, still less of reporting on the feelings of others inaccurately. On the contrary, that he is interested enough in the EU to write this piece about it, even – as he most entertainingly reports – travelling to a fatuous EUro-junket in Ireland that nobody else gave the slightest attention to, suggests that he at least is not indifferent to the progress of the steamroller.
So on the contrary, I think we should keep our eyes open for what else this young man writes.
And I wonder, is he the same Freddie Sayers as the one in this?
In what is a splendid testament to the sense and wisdom of Irish youth, when the EU held a conference for young people in Ireland (free registration required)… how many young Irish people turned up?
None.
Clearly they had better things to do. How very, very, very, splendid. 
Slowjoe has spotted something calculated to start teeth grinding here on Samizdata.net
The Register talks about an attempt by the EU to railroad through the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive.
It appears to give the ‘rights holder’ carte blanche… almost the right to set up a private police force.
The interesting thing is that the rapporteur did an end-run around any debate. She also happens to be the wife of the head of Vivendi Universal.
Slowjoe
It will come as no surprise to anyone with a 100+ IQ and a modicum of knowledge about how the world works that Robert Mugabe and his murderous kleptocrats have appropriated more that £100 million (US $190 million) in aid sent to Zimbabwe by Britain and the EU.
As that was only to be expected, I cannot say it adds significantly to my loathing of the Mugabe regime. What does fill me with utter contempt is that the people responsible for this utterly predictable outcome still allowed the money to be sent in the first place.
As I have previously argued many times before about foreign aid, to send money for ostensibly humanitarian aims to a nation governed by a tyranny is to become the logistic support arm of that tyranny: insulating the regime from the economic (and hence political) consequences of its actions and thereby indirectly, but in a very real sense, making the regime more likely to survive than would otherwise be the case. That is true even if the humanitarian aid does indeed reach the people and projects it is targeted at.
This however is even worse than that. To send aid to Zimbabwe is to underwrite the tyrannical Mugabe regime directly as according to the latest report, 89% ends up in the pockets of Zimbabwe’s rulers rather than being spent on the humanitarian objectives for which it is intended. Thus not only can the people who sent the money not bask in their delusions that they have at least done good for those who benefit from the worthy projects, they might as well be buying weapons for Mugabe’s police and paramilitaries, not to mention making the bankers and shopkeepers in Zürich rather happy. They are directly supporting the tyrants with large cash injections.
As I disinclined to believe that the people in charge of the governments and agencies in question do not know full well where the money is going to end up, that makes them knowingly supporters of the regime. Which means they are supporting this:
Hilary Andersson, of the BBC’s Panorama programme, reveals how thousands of youths are being taught to rape, maim, torture and kill in Zimbabwe’s terror training camps – and now Robert Mugabe intends to make the camps compulsory for all the country’s young men and women
[…]
A former official with the Ministry of Youth, Gender and Employment Creation that oversees the camps, explained the government’s thinking. “You are moulding somebody to listen to you, so if it means rapes have to take place in order for that person to take instructions from you, then it’s OK,” he said. He was so horrified that he left his job with the ministry in disgust. Rape is just one of the ways camp commanders are able to turn their charges into unquestioning automata. The training methods vary from camp to camp, but the pattern is consistent.
If all that was happening was that the Guardian reading classes were getting a warm fuzzy glow because they were supporting British tax money going to ‘help stamp out poverty in the third world’, then that would be bad enough, given the reality of what this distorting flow of cash really does. But as Zimbabwe slowly morphs into an inept ‘North Korea Lite’, the platitudes and wilful ignorance of some are now directly funding truly monstrous horrors and misery because they are too damn lazy to think the whole issue through.
Of course if our political masters did not know this was going to happen when they decided to send huge chunks cash to a place like Zimbabwe, then they are naive to the point of idiocy and have no business being in charge of vast amounts of other people’s money to begin with.
So which is it?
You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind (or read nothing but the Guardian) to have failed to notice that there is rather a large constituency in Britain whose feelings regarding the European Union lie somewhere between dislike and loathing.
As a consequence this would presumably lead the leader of the opposition Tory Party to firmly align his troops with the Euro-sceptics, correct? I mean, there is no way in hell that he would sign up the Tory Party to be a member of a group within the European ‘parliament’ who had a charter objective that included “the realisation of a United States of Europe”, right?
Anyone who sees the Tory Party the solution to Labour marching Britain into a bureaucratised regulatory pan-European dystopia is deluding themselves. There is opposition to the EU within the Tory Party but they are not the people in charge, and the LibDems are even worse than Labour.
But of course the Tory Party can talk a fine Euro-sceptic game when it suits them, but then they can also talk a fine ‘we are the party of low taxation’ game when it suits them. It is a delight to hear someone making the moral case against high taxation.
Except of course, ‘white man speak with forked tongue’…he does not actually mean it. The Tories talk about the importance of civil society and yet you will look in vain for a list of state functions that the Tory party intends to amputate to actually stop the regulatory gangrene killing off civil society.
Don’t support the Tory Party… you will only be encouraging more of the same. And of course if you like the state of civil liberties under ‘Big Blunkett’, you will just love them under Michael ‘a touch of the night’ Howard.
Until there is a meaningful choice, do not vote for anyone or you will be deluding yourself that you are making any significant difference.
Amidst the voluminous analysis and comment about the Middle East, the part it played in the Cold War seems seldom mentioned of late. But, from the 1950’s right through to the end of the 1980’s, the Israeli-Arab conflict was, at least in part, an important Cold War battlefront, fought out between two proxy antagonists.
But, everything old is new again:
The primary goal of the EU is the internationalisation of the conflict in order to underline the need for its own mediating role. Here is the prevailing European view: The longer the conflict continues and the deeper it gets, the more evident is the incapability of the US to moderate a peace process. The EU thus concludes that both sides are in need of – ironically speaking – the good uncle from Europe to resolve this conflict with European democratic and ecological values, its welfare state and civil society. How good for both sides that there is Europe and how bad for the world that one side, and this is Israel, is affording a wild west type of policy in the style of the US.
The need for a solution only exists as long as the war continues. This is why the EU does not want the conflict to end before it gains a major role. And this is why the EU does not wish the PA to give up too early and why the EU is strengthening the PA. The EU is getting up to the cynicism of stirring up a conflict that it supposedly wants to see resolved by financing one side. This is the inherently inhuman purpose of EU humanitarian aid in the region. The Palestinians are playing the ugly role of being the cannon fodder for Europe’s hidden war against the US. It can be noted on the sidethat this is not considered an anti-Arab policy by those who otherwise easily use this word.
This is an excerpt from a longish but thoroughly fascinating article written by German Green MEP, Ilke Schroder. If she is correct (and I must say that the facts on the ground do somewhat bear her out) then it appears as if the European Union has stepped into the role once played by the old Soviet Union.
Although the EU is expanding eastwards, clutching more of the nations of Eastern Europe to its regulating breast on May 1st, only Britain and Ireland will actually be welcoming the people of those countries as residents.
Britain and Ireland may soon be the only two states willing to open their doors entirely to the 73 million people joining the European Union in May. Countries such as Sweden, Holland, and Denmark, which initially pledged to let migrants from the 10 new states work freely in their countries from day one have changed their minds. They fear an influx will drive down wages and overload their welfare systems. Per capita incomes in the ex-Communist countries are just 40 per cent of EU levels.
And yet even officials at the benighted EU admit…
Privately, EU diplomats say the Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and others are ideal guest workers. Well-educated, they bring fresh blood and dynamism to an ageing Europe. If they stay, it is usually because they inter-marry. Their “migration profile” is starkly different from Muslim groups, who studies suggest are resistant to assimilation and who prohibit their children marrying into the host society.
On the purely non-scientific observational evidence of my own eyes, there do seem to be rather a lot of happy looking English blokes wandering around London with eye-widening tall blondes from east of the Oder-Neisse line, so that seems about right… which makes me wonder why the Netherlands is not welcoming the Eastern Europeans with open arms!
Well if the rest of western Europe cannot see past the ‘waves of gypsies’ scare stories and see the huge benefits of well educated, easy to assimilate Slovaks, Czechs and Poles, then their loss will be Britain and Ireland’s gain when the best and brightest (amongst other things) decamp from the east and move en-mass to London and Dublin. Excellent!
   Vitajte v Londyne!
I have been meaning for some days to add to this posting here about Denis O’Keeffe’s translation of Benjamin Constant’s Principles of Politics Applicable To All Governments the information that this book is not just available directly from its publisher but also, for a mere £15 from the Institute of Economic Affairs, where Denis O’Keeffe spoke briefly about the book last week. And while at the IEA website I also came across a recent IEA publication, entitled Friend or Foe? What Americans should know about the European Union, co-authored by IEA Director John Blundell and Gerry Frost.
The IEA is an important institution with a massive amount of momentum built up from five decades of publishing about and arguing for classical liberalism and the free market. What is says will definitely count for something. This particular publication is 44 pages in length and is downloadable in its entirety as a pdf file. The following is its conclusion:
Such are the huge disparities in economic, technological and military power and the prevailing trends that the ambition to create a unitary European state as a countervailing force to the United States is doomed, but its pursuit continues to the detriment of the economic and security interests of both North Americans and Europeans. Nevertheless, having endorsed the project for half a century, many Americans seem reluctant to withdraw their support. Some evidently believe that while their original expectations have been disappointed, the process of European integration is so well established that any reappraisal of US policy towards the EU would produce more problems than it would solve.
That approach fails to take into account both the influence that the US could still bring to bear and the fragility of the political project now approaching fruition. In our view, the attempt to bring about ‘ever closer union’ will ultimately have to be abandoned, either as the mounting economic and political price of integration becomes more widely grasped, or because Europe’s supra-national institutions break down.
Rather than wait for either to happen, the interests of the US would better served by a policy which sought to strengthen the position of those within Europe who recognise that the continent is proceeding down an historic blind-alley and wish to pursue other possibilities. It is surely time that American policymakers were more candid about the inevitable implications of particular EU measures. → Continue reading: Friend or Foe? What Americans should know about the European Union
A lovely interlude in the Telegraph yesterday:
Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, accused Britain and other member states yesterday of betraying the historic goal of EU expansion by depriving Brussels of the money needed to make enlargement work. Mr Prodi said he was mystified as to why some countries were proposing to reduce the ceiling on payments to the EU budget when the continent was about to unite “for the first time in history”.
First time in history? How about Charlemagne? Napoleon? Hitler?
Britain and five other EU nations have challenged the Commission to reduce the maximum share of national budgets that Brussels can spend from 1.24 per cent of GDP to one per cent. How revolutionary…
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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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