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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That is in effect what President of the Convention on the Future of Europe, Giscard d’Estaing said last Tuesday when discussing the implications of another refusal of the Irish voters to sanction the enlargement of the EU:
“I do not want to go into the details. I am not a foreign minister and that is not my role. However, the question is: If there is a goal, you cannot ignore it. Enlargement is necessary. Then we have to take initiatives to make the legal basis for enlargement,” Mr Giscard said in Denmark.
The advocates of corporate statism are determined to have their way and piffle about ‘democracy’ is only used when it suits them. If Ireland vote ‘No’ again, regardless of Romano Prodi’s claim ‘there is no Plan B’, it is clear that the mere wishes of the Irish people will not be allowed to stand in the way of Europe’s ‘Manifest Destiny’. 
And I love this even more.
“Campaigners against the European single currency were accused on Tuesday of insulting the memories of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust by likening euro supporters to Adolf Hitler.
My, my how touchy these people are! I rather think the point of the advertising campaign is to illustrate (quite correctly) that the dream of a United Europe was among Hitler’s visions. Now I am always wary of reductio ad Hitlerum as a base emotional tool but, as it happens, this one is merited.
“The Commission was unreseved in its criticism of the campaign. Jean-Christophe Filori, acting commission spokesman, said on Wednesday that it was in “appalling bad taste” and “beneath contempt.” He added that such an act only pandered to “base xenophobic instincts.”
Since when has an aversion to Hitler consitituted ‘xenophobia’? Oh yes, silly me, ever since ‘xenophobia’ became another base, emotional tool.
“Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Euro”
Anti-euro campaigners have co-opted Adolf Hitler into their latest advertising campaign. Ageing rocker Sir Bob Geldof and restaurateur Gordon Ramsey are also among the celebrities, businessmen and politicians who feature in the advert to be shown in cinemas for three months from July 12. Campaigners said in the film they had tried to get across the idea that the euro is undemocratic and not inevitable.
Responding to the “No” campaign’s advert, Simon Buckby of the pro-euro “Britain in Europe” lobby said:
“We always knew the anti-Europeans were a joke and now they’ve turned into a bunch of comedians.”
Oh dear…
This is in essence what the ‘Visigrad Four’ (Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic) are telling the EU as they loudly protest at the prospect of not having their inefficient antiquated agricultural sectors subsidised by other sectors of the greater European economy when (if) they join the John Maynard Keynes Fan Club European Union in 2004.
Quite why anyone thinks farmer are entitled to protected status compared to, say, construction or pharmaceuticals or software or little plastic widget manufacture always seems to avoid coherent discussion, but I assume the logic is that if they are going to join the Swine Society, then they must be given a full place at the trough.
Actually if the poor fools are indeed successful at getting into the EU I hope they get their way, thus vastly increasing the strain on the monstrous Common Agricultural Policy and bringing the day of financial implosion of the entire EU a giant step closer.
Of course the preposterous Prince Charles could not care less if working people have to pay inflated prices for their food. No doubt next he will demand the EU and State put an end to the ‘obsession’ of common working people with cheap holidays and cheap motor transport… oh… I forgot, they already did that by taxing the hell out of petrol (75 percent of the cost in the UK) and propping up inefficient airlines with anti-competitive practices.
I wonder what it is that motivates politicians and bureaucrats to dream up new schemes to strangle free enterprise? That they are wrong goes without saying but are they driven by a genuine (if misguided) belief that they are helping to make the world a better place or are they spiteful and envious ghouls who pursue power so they they can wreak their vengeance on those who are manifestly better then them?
Increasingly, I take the latter view, reinforced by these kind of reports from the Spectator on the new European Pressure Equipment Directive:
“Under the directive, all companies which manufacture boilers will be obliged to nominate a ‘notified body’ —in practice, one of several insurance companies which have been licensed for the task — which will then have the power to conduct an initial inspection costing several thousand pounds, and unlimited follow-up inspections costing the company £700 per day.
Take that, you wealth-creating bastards!! And, for the little guys, a double-whammy. In fact, a death-whammy:
“Large engineering firms will be able to absorb the costs, but for the likes of Ian Stock, whose Carmarthen-based company Dragon Boilers Ltd makes copper boilers for model railway enthusiasts, it could spell ruin. ‘There is no limit to how often the notified body could come and inspect me,’ he says. ‘Any time it can say to itself, “We’re short of money, let’s make a trip to Dragon Boilers.”
Poor Mr.Stock. Still, at least he’s got the message in no uncertain terms. Let us hope he sees fit to spread it.
Our leaders have spoken:
European Union leaders have confidently declared the region’s economic slowdown is over.
So that’s it then. The economic downturn is officially over. It has ended. It has been abolished. Our leaders have said so and there can be no argument. A glorious new age is upon us when everyone will be prosperous and happy. It has been decreed and so it shall be. Rejoice, rejoice, rejoice!!
Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph carries contradictory signals about the €uro. Ignoring an interview of Gerhard Schroeder the German Chancellor, I notice a report – tucked away in the Business section – that the €uro “Stability Pact” is on the verge of collapse as four of the 12 euro members break ranks to run up public sector deficits beyond the 2.5 per cent of GDP limit. France, Italy and Portugal look set to copy Germany in this trend. This is flatly contradicted by the exchange rate evidence: the euro has risen sharply since March against both the US dollar and the pound sterling.
On the one hand I tend to look at the exchange rate: if it rises above 1 US dollar then the Eurozone is probably doing something right (or the rest of the world is going to pot faster). On the other hand the reporting of the euro money supply is noteable by its absence. If the Stability Pact fails, the orthodox view is that the €uro will break up.
Yet the orthodox view of the pound when it broke out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism in September 1992 was exactly the same as the orthodoxy on the €uro. The currency would dive, inflation would take off etc.
Brian Micklethwait asserts that Americans ought to be anti-EU then finds some Americans who are anti-America (you can see where ‘Un-American’ came from).
I’ve got news for you. Plenty of Europhiles love the institution of the USA. They wish to copy bits of it. In fact there is a love affair between the liberal vision of the US (‘liberal’ as in anti-gun, federal welfare programme, political correctness agenda) and the socialist vision of the EU (anti-gun, euro-welfare state and political correctness): hence Blair’s popularity in Washington when Clinton was in charge.
‘The EU’ doesn’t hate America anymore than the board of directors of Manchester United Football Club hates Real Madrid. The people who are trying to complete the creation of a European Unionist state see the USA as a competitor, a rival, a model and a partner, often all at the same time. The relationship is love-hate between the EU builders and the edifice that is the US federal government.
What does ‘anti’ mean? I don’t think that Schadenfreude over the short-comings of the US in trying to crack Islamic fundamentalist terrorism (nasty, spiteful and short-sighted as it might be) is the same thing as wishing Euro-fanatics had flown passenger jets into the World Trade Center. The most paranoid EUnionist probably doesn’t expect a gang of Montana militiamen to fly an Airbus into the Europol HQ, though I’ve heard some wonderfully wacky conspiracy theories about the US programme to destroy Western (European) civilisation. Do the Yanks really rig the EU Common Agricultural Policy to suit mid-west farmers? Did the Yanks really push Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait in 1990 in order to have an excuse for stopping the French armaments industry from selling kit to Iraq? Did the Yanks really bomb Serbia as part of a Zionist plot to create an Islamist state in the Balkans? They’d love the US anti-cold war stuff put out by isolationist Libertarians if they knew about it. I think the European parliament is the most vocal opponent of the Echelon mass surveillance project around (for a mixture of good and bad reasons).
In France I’ve heard several conservatives claim that the EU is a Yankee plot. I’ve also been assured by a social-democrat politician that the British opt-out from Maastricht and Tony Blair are CIA operations, but that the US will follow the EU and go completely metric by the end of 2002, and the UK adopt the €uro by 2004. He was very good at forecasting the weather in the mountains so I’m not completely confident that he’s wrong on all counts. You don’t have to be a Europhile American to prefer a European Union (as long as it can hold together), to a bigger version of the break-up of Yugoslavia, where the US ends up taking sides and making enemies.
I suspect that a European Unionist state would break-up, possibly in a major war. For this reason I am skeptical about the outcomes proposed by the Euro-unionists. The reason however that I am not affiliated to any Euro-sceptic organisations is that I see no automatic salvation in nation states. Cuba is a nation state. Unification in a NAFTA super-state (with USA, Mexico and Canada) wouldn’t obviously be worse for the Cuban population than independence under Castro and his successors. Germany was a real nation state in 1939: it would take some doing for the EU to be worse. The UK did badly enough as a nation state between 1945 and 1973, not just in the economic sphere.
A question I’m pondering is whether a global market creates a market for a “government standard” with a single currency, single police force, one body of contract law, single crime database, single language, etc. There is a problem of “no exit” from such a state without space travel. There is also the problem of lack of innovation in a monopoly. Absence of tax and regulation competition is another issue. My question is whether ‘government’ is a natural monopoly. If true, this suggests a pragmatic libertarian objection to economic globalisation. As I’m opposed to ‘anti-trust’ law and ‘perfect competition models’ which ‘justify’ state regulation of businesses, this makes my opposition to a world government weak, if this order emerges peacefully, consensually, and with a generally economic liberal agenda (i.e. by a market process).
Only the anarcho-capitalist option of voluntary exchange and contract seems capable of offering a peaceful alternative to a World State. I’m left with the choice of opposing all government, and making the best of the largest chunks of state possible (to reduce the number of border disputes).
This letter not just to, but in, today’s Daily Telegraph is worth reproducing in full. Its relevance to earlier posts here about “joined up government” is obvious.
Re: Government assists sinister Euro plans
Date: 13 June 2002
SIR – The Government intends to give public sector bodies the capacity to find out what we access on the internet, who we e-mail and who we phone.
This is part of a broader drive by the European Union to give its fledgling police force, Europol, the capacity to accumulate information on all EU citizens. The Europol Convention gives that organisation the right to keep a database of information on any individual, including “sexual orientation, religion or politics”. Europol was also charged last August by the Council of Ministers with adding the names of “troublemakers” to the Schengen Information System, so they could be “tracked and identified” with a view to preventing them leaving their home countries shortly before major EU summits.
Under the existing EU Convention on Mutual Legal Assistance, Europol and any national police force can request information on any citizen living in another member country. The legislation being introduced by the Government will greatly assist this sinister process.
On May 30, the European Parliament voted for a new directive granting the police and others the powers referred to above. The Labour leadership instructed its MEPs to support a measure that, until recently, the group had rhetorically opposed. Only Arlene McCarthy abstained. The Tories also voted for it, with the honourable exception of Lord Stockton. To their credit, the Greens, the Lib Dems and UKIP voted against it.
From:
Marc Glendening, Democracy Movement, London SW6
Marc Glendening was one of the speakers at that Liberty Conference we’ve been going on about. According to what people said to Chris Tame, who was also a speaker but didn’t hear Marc’s talk, it was extremely good.
For as long as I can remember, every change of importance imposed upon Britain by its political rulers has been (a) something to do with European integration, but (b) announced without the European Union being so much as mentioned. This joined-up government crap seems to be no exception to that rule.
Pellerito wants more links from this to other blogs. Here’s a good one. It’s a better-late-than-never (I hope) link, culled from dodgeblog (dodgeblog June 5, sorry, couldn’t f**king get it to go straight to the dodgeblog reference and gave up in a rage), to a nice big dose of American anti-EUism.
All Americans should be anti-EU because the EU is anti-US.
As reported by The Brains Trust in their latest edition, hundreds of notes from across Europe are breaking through flimsy currency exchanges and fleeing across the Channel Tunnel into the UK. Two desperate refugees known only as ‘Frank’ and ‘Mark’ explained their plight:
“There was a time when we were welcome throughout our homelands. In every home in the country people would be delighted to let us in. Shops, restaurants, banks – even politicians – they couldn’t get enough of us. But then suddenly some sinister extremist forces began to take over in the heart of Europe.
At first it was a bit of a joke, no one thought it would ever happen. But then people began to talk about a single currency, a master race that would sweep throughout Europe. Then discriminatory laws began to appear. We could only meet each other at fixed exchange rates. There were maximum numbers of us that could work in government. Adverts appeared denouncing us and calling for people to hand us over to the authorities. I felt completely devalued.”
However, the currencies are also having a hard time finding solace in the UK. Many locals are handing them in to the authorities to be transported back to an unknown fate at home. They also face opposition from “nationalist currency activists”. One such hard currency supporter, known only as “Sterling”, explained his position:
“We’re being overtaken by a tide of foreigners. We should only allow in ones that look like us – ones with a Queen’s head on them. And they should be forced to swear allegiance to the Bank of England and leave their foreign markets at home. We should chuck all the rest back. Before you know it they’ll be taking over here.”
As the Government promised swift action against the “immigrants” Tony Blair declared that the UK need not fear for its own currency especially as it was going to get a nice, lovely, shiny new one “very, very soon.”
There are days, and today is one of them, when I think this is the only way to deal with the current affairs. For more ‘solutions’ to international and domestic problems visit The Brains Trust. I especially recommend their new peace plan offering Palestinians ‘virtual statehood’… 
It was bound to happen. Writers in Europe have woken up to the fact that Americans do not regard the European chattering classes with particular fondness and respect. Paul Gottfried in a singularly bad-tempered article in this week’s edition of The Spectator magazine, broadly tries to argue that there is a right-wing smear campaign in American intellectual and political circles to discredit Europe and to portray Europeans as anti-Semitic, cowardly, cynical, socialistic idiots.
Well, Gottfried makes a few decent points, and it is undoubtedly true that there has been a strain of hostility towards Europe in some of the commentary emanating from Jefferson’s Republic (den Beste at USS Clueless and some of the Weekly Standard writers are particular offenders). But Gottfried does not pause to consider why this hostility has arisen. It is not because Americans are jealous of Europe, why should they be? It is not fear of us…that’d be the day! It is a lack of patience with the sneering, dishonest rubbish coming out of the lips of the likes of Chris Patten and the rest. From what I read, I get the impression that all but the most bigoted paleo-conservative commentators appreciate that most European folk like and are sympathetic to the U.S., want it to beat terror, and will help in that cause.
God Save the Queen and God Bless America.
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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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