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.
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The Council of the European Union is pushing to introduce measures that would force internet service providers and phone companies to keep records of all communications for many years. The Internet bill is supposed to aim at protecting the confidentiality of electronic communication to boost confidence in e-commerce. But it also contains provisions to allow police access to phone, fax and email records, something that governments view as a useful tool to fight crime and terrorism in the wake of the 11 September attacks in the United States.The information recorded and archived would consists of URLs of web pages visited, news groups and numbers dialled. It would then be made available for the police and other security agencies in gathering criminal intelligence.
Despite strong opposition from civil liberty groups and the industry, the bill is likely to include the data retention rules because of support from the European Socialist Party and the European People’s Party, the assembly’s main political groups. Also, documents leaked to civil liberties groups, reveal that powerful lobbying is taking place on behalf of power-grabbing thugs law enforcement agencies to try to destroy existing data protection and privacy laws in member states.
“These proposals would allow fishing expeditions into the only activity, browsing habits, and internet associations of every citizen in the EU for up to seven years. They could do this without any warrant or court order.”
Civil liberties groups such as Statewatch and the Foundation for Information Policy Research warn that this would give police and other security forces the powers normally expected of an oppressive regime:
“Authoritarian and totalitarian states would be condemned for violating human rights and civil liberties if they initiated such practices. The fact that it is being proposed in the ‘democratic’ EU does not make it any less authoritarian.”
This is all rather standard and predictable given what we know about the EU and its practices. However, there is a rather worrying twist to the story. Instead of the usual heavy-handed, freedom-quashing bill drafting by the EU, the latest version of the bill has been made more oppressive at the request of none other than the good HM Government! Originally, the EU Parliament had drafted the law to limit access to electronic data by public authorities to the strict minimum. But this move was criticised by member states, notably Britain, which wanted greater power to monitor the Internet. US officials also criticised the bill, fearing that the request to erase data would hinder prosecution of criminals. Fearing that this legislative clash would ultimately kill the bill, the two biggest parliamentary groups have now aligned themselves with the member states.
What is going on here?!
Well, nothing much, actually, just the usual state stuff. The fact that the system of government in the member states is democratic does nothing to stop them from abusing an undemocratic institution such as the EU. In fact, they are being democratic, using the powers of the EU to reduce the liberties of their citizens, just like the majority of their citizens use domestic institutions to do the same to individuals.
So predictably, for me, democracy – the rule of the majority – has negative connotations as it has for Perry de Havilland. Democracy is far from the political and social panacea it is made out to be. It does not bring about the kind of fluffy bunny utopia socialists would like us believe in. Although the un-democratic EU together with its democratic member states are doing their best to have the bunnies stuffed… And just like Mr Franklin, I do want to see the bunny (or the lamb) well armed.
Paul Marks read David Carr‘s article and points out that one can regard the remarks being made by the leaders of the EU…rather differently!
The honesty of Mr Prodi and Mr Chris Patten should be welcomed.
It saves a lot of time if, instead of going through a big debate on whether the E.U. is aiming at setting up a superstate and crushing as much liberty as it can, leaders of this organization stand up and boast of their ambitions.
If the only the Chancellor in the latest Star Wars film and been so honest. Picture the scene – he stands before the Senate and says “I am a Lord of the Dark Side of the Force – I am behind both sides in this new war. I plan to use the war to place the whole galaxy under my heel and grind it into the dirt”.
Real life is often odder than fantasy.
Paul Marks
According to the BBC website, 11,990 people have voted on whether Roy Keane, the captain of the Republic of Ireland team at the soccer world cup in Japan (who can’t play England unless both sides win or lose in the semi-finals) should have been dropped by his manager or not.
Last week about 3,000 voted on whether Britain is ready to join the euro and 55 per cent said yes. If England are knocked out playing badly, by a EU country, I predict a swing to the euro. If England win, then Mr Blair can bamboozle us in during the celebrations (he’ll have about three years if the last time is anything to go by). Go the Eurosceptic should hope for dignified defeat at the hands of Brazil in the semi-final.
Anglosphere writer Jim Bennett weighs in with another fine salvo against EU Commissioner Chris (oh no, not him again!) Patten. Rather than repeat my earlier comments last week about the wretched Commissioner, just take a look at what Mr Bennett has to say. What impresses me so much about Bennett’s writing is that he manages to maintain a civil, pleasant tone even when trashing ideas he regards as dumb.
Oh, and changing the subject, another excellent article, if one has the time, is Andrew Sullivan‘s Sunday Times column on the vast wealth of what he calls the Western world’s “overclass”. Sullivan makes the point – obvious to we libertarians if not to collectivists – that the tremendous wealth of Bill Gates and the like is not made at the expense of we humbler mortals, but is part of an ever-increasing pie. However, Sullivan frets that the growth of such an overclass” is a problem, since society can become fragmented if the very rich are seen as detached from the mores and concerns of the middle class. A sort of mirror-problem of the “underclass”. I am not entirely sure he is right, but agree this is worth thinking about. It is also instructive to look at what Sullivan says about the proportion of tax paid by rich Americans. Completely undermines the idea that supply-side tax cuts are unfair. If anything, the rich were entitled to a bigger cut than that which Bush gave them last year.
However, Sullivan backs away from the obvious conclusion – the moral tax rate is Nil!
Romano Prodi wants tax harmonisation in the EU and a single foreign policy. Does it mean we will all have to surrender simultaneously?
Meanwhile Chris Petain calls for all Europeans to discard their national identities and learn to love the EU and the Blair government is busying itself with it’s plans to ‘regionalise’ England (both matters liberally linked to in the ‘sphere).
All of a sudden, the EU looks like a project in a big hurry; sort of like campers desperately trying to get their tent erected in double-quick time ‘neath brooding storm clouds.
Perhaps, with one big puff, we can blow their house down.
The world is a complex and confusing place oftentimes. It can be so hard to know for sure whether or not one is doing the right thing. There are, though, some yardsticks and one of them is the ‘European street’ which has risen up in protest at a visit to Germany by George Bush.
I’m not entirely sure what track Mr.Bush is on, but when he induces rent-a-mob to take to the streets with slogans like ‘Nature Before Profits’ we can all be pretty sure that he’s on the right one.
Personally, I’d like to see him rub some salt into the wounds while he’s about it. Perhaps he could play up the ‘cowboy’ image? (Is this Germany? Where are all them folks wearing them leather pants?). Better still he could echo Reagan in the 80’s but instead of calling for the end of the Berlin Wall, he could call for the end of the Welfare State. Then he could fly back to the US, chuckling to himself, while watching Berlin explode in his rear-view mirror.
EU Commissioner Chris Patten, who has famously chided George W. Bush for his stance on the war on terror and who stated the September 11th attacked were ‘the result of globalization’, turns his attention to matters closer to home in The Spectator, namely how to forge a common European political identity where none now exists.
Patten is no doubt troubled by the rise of various anti-establishment political forces in EU member states, notably that of the National Front in France and that of murdered libertarian Dutch nationalist Pym Fortuyn. But Patten, in his usual delusional way, misses the essential point that one cannot impose a national or supranational identity where none previously exists. For a man who once was chairman of the Conservative Party, Patten seems curiously ignorant of the insights of such conservative thinkers like Edmund Burke and Michael Oakshott that national feeling is something that grows from below and takes organic form rather than be imposed from above. Patten thinks of national or supranational identity like a technocratic engineer. In this sense, then, he is heir to that strain of thinking which has been a key part of the French political system since the 1789 Revolution.
And there, of course, is the problem. The EU creates undemocratic institutions with considerable power like the European Central Bank and the European Commission, but then once problems present themselves, the likes of Patten scramble to figure out how to generate some kind of popular legitimacy for these bodies. That is surely putting the cart before the horse.
In his final paragraph, Patten writes: “A healthy European democracy will develop only when people begin to feel an emotional commitment to their European identity.”
But Mr Patten, people don’t WANT to be part of a European nation, hence they feel no need to create a common European polity. Until the elite political class of which Patten is a classic specimen grasp this obvious point, European countries will continue to be roiled by characters such as the ghastly Le Pen.
It seems British Prime Minister Tony Blair can hide his love for the European single currency no longer. On Tuesday’s Newsnight television programme on the BBC channel, Blair claimed it would be a ‘betrayal of national interests’ for Britain to stay out of the €uro for political reasons and said he would persuade voters to join.
Well, it looks like the grinning insurance salesman/trendy vicar character who has been our Prime Minister these last five years has decided to plunge Britain into the €uro at a time when developments in Euroland make it even less attractive as an idea. The rise of the Far Right in France, the murder of Dutch leader Pim Fortuyn in Holland, high unemployment and worries about massive unfunded pension obligations make the idea of shackling ourselves to the euro mighty unattractive.
Of course the creation of the euro has made it easier for big firms to tap into a pan-European bond and equity market and made prices of goods and services on the Continent more transparent, which are benefits not to be sneered at. But I very much doubt whether Blair is going to flog this risky venture to the public on the grounds that it makes it easier for his Big Business chums to tap the world’s capital markets. Not very touchy-feely, is it? In an age of Visa and Mastercard, instant cash withdrawals and sophisticated derivative markets, it no longer is much of a hassle to operate in a multi-currency world as €uro-protagonists claim.
All in all the case for the €uro is weak and Blair is going to have a fight on his hands. Blair wants his place in history. But by staking his future on the €uro, he could become history.
Hello again. I’ve had a long day. I had to get up early this morning to welcome The Man Who Was Coming To Mend My Computer, but as it turned out he overslept and only got here two hours later than he said – although to be fair, when he did get here he did mend the computer or you wouldn’t be reading this masterpiece of the blogger’s art. But he took all day and as soon as he’d finished I had to depart for a Putney Debate. These are the second Friday of the month events run by Tim Evans. This turned out very good. I’ve just now got back, and would in the normal course of things be going straight to bed. But Samizdata’s Big Cat Perry is away, and he gave strict e-mailed orders that we mice must play a lot in his absence.
I was going to do something about how the new Euroflag is a big mistake, but I fear that this is wishful thinking. True, the new flag won’t be as easy for school-children to draw (which was going to be my heading for this), what with all the different coloured pencils they’ll now need, but I don’t suppose that will stop them and they might even like that. And in general I think the new design could prove very clever. You can imagine all kinds of variants. Sticky tape. The Union Jack done with strips of the thing. All sorts of Euro-objects dancing about in front, with the stripes as a background. No, I think it could work very well, more’s the pity. And it will adapt very prettily as more nations are engulfed.
Adriana, please could you add some links from this to the two previous flag articles, i.e. this one and that one. Thanks. If she hasn’t done it yet, they were, I don’t know, whenever they were. Scroll down and find them.
This is better, although a complete change of subject. The Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen’s husband, is famed in these islands for saying something offensive every time he opens his mouth in public. But I came across this item of dialogue from the Queen Husband which I thought genuinely amusing. It was from a book I was reading (while waiting for the Man Who Was Going Eventually To … etc.).
The D of E has just got home from an airplane journey, and one of his flunkeys asks him obsequiously:
“And how was your flight, Your Royal Highness?”
The Duke sighs. You know how it is when you’re really tired. Everything seems harder to deal with. Even the simplest question can only be answered with a great effort. Finally HRH says:
“Have you ever been on an airplane journey?”
“Why yes, Your Royal Highness, many times.”
“Well it was like that.”
The European Union continues its march into self parody with the planned introduction of a giant barcode as the new flag of the would-be superstate.
Suddenly one of my favourite shows of the moment, Dark Angel, starts to take on a whole new symbolic meaning… for those of you who do not watch this excellent series, the heroine named Max (played by the lithe Jessica Alba) is a transgenic transhuman on the run from a clandestine US government genetic engineering operation called Project Manticore. Max is assisted by a streaming video samizdata called ‘Eyes Only’. Significantly, all the escaped transgenics like Max have an identifying barcode tattooed on the backs of their necks.
Are the grey suited faceless ones in Brussels sending us all a message?
Yes, the EU does indeed look different depending on where you look at it from. Daniel Antal and his Greek friend sees a source of a more ‘liberal’ order, seeing Brussels as a fountain of civil rights to refresh the stagnant pools of Greek and Hungarian polity.
Well I certainly understand that. Croatian politics and aspects of civil society are just as ghastly for many of the same reasons. And thus many people in Croatia also look west to the EU and see something hopeful, something better, something more prosperous. Croatian businesses, like Hungarian businesses, salivate at the idea of getting access to the huge EU market… and like our friends in Budapest, they are just as wrong.
Just ask your Greek friend to point out how the Greek economy is going from strength to strength now that it is a member of the EU. Only it isn’t. Greece is stuck on the lower tier of the EU and is going to stay there. Countries like Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, have large ‘welfare’ states but they do so by parasitically drawing wealth out of their large wealth creating capitalist economies… Hungary and Greece do not have proper modern economies and by joining the EU they will never develop them.
Hungary will never develop a dynamic wealth generating capitalist economy because Brussels will have thrown a smothering blanket of EU regulations over it, regulations which will be welcomed with open arms by the half-wit socialists which pervade Hungarian polity. Hungarian labour costs will rapidly loose any advantage over French or German ones and even high levels of unemployment will not move them downwards because of the regulatory cost floor that will be put underneath the price of employing someone. This will have the effect of keeping the playing field tilted towards existing producers and economic structures… and the reality is those economic producers and structures are overwhelmingly in the west.
Read the small print. Unless you are an existing large business located in the west and who wants regulatory barriers to reduce the chance of new market entrants competing with you, or are a Trade Unionist working in cahoots with such a company, then the EU is not your friend. The EU is stasis incarnate. For Christ’s sake WAKE UP!
If you go to the home page of Talk Sport Radio you’ll find lots of stuff about sport, and only non-sport news if it’s sport related. Someone let off a bomb in Spain yesterday and the Talk Sport Radio homepage notices, because it happened near a football ground. Interesting priorities. On the radio show itself, however, non-sport news does get regularly mentioned, and even talked about a bit.
I never listen to Talk Sport unless I’m on it, but I will be listening to it just after 10 am this morning because I will be on it. I’m to discuss the fact that according to some insane new law it is now, according to the researcher who’s just rung me, illegal to have a compost heap within 270 yards of your house. My memory is surely playing games with me. Our government would never dream of making a law like that. It has to be 270 metres, surely. Either way, we’re in barking fruitbat territory here, with every suburban gardener with a compost heap now breaking yet another idiot law.
The chances are that this particular item of fruitbattery is the result of the idiot collision between the separately sane – but when combined in Britain fruitbatarian – legal traditions of Britain and of Continental Europe. Some Euro grandee says, in some directive or proclamation or fatwa or whatever, that people shouldn’t have violently smelly compost heaps too near their kitchens. Fair enough. Why taxpayers need to pay someone to say things like this isn’t clear, but that’s the price of living in Europe, which by and large is a very fine place as places on this planet go. You nod your head, and get on with your life. You continue to keep your compost heap, if you have one, in the same place as before. All is serene. The big Euro-fromage continues to collect his salary, and God’s in his heaven.
Except in Britain. When Brussels says something, it becomes in Britain the basis of the law. This vague piece of Brussels sermonising is taken away and “clarified”. How smelly? An answer is made up. 94 smelibels. How far away? 270 yds/metres. (Not 250, by the way, which was the number the radio researcher originally supplied to me. 250 would be too round a number. That would sound like they just made it up.) Never mind that about a quarter the suburbanites of Britain have compost heaps stinking to the tune of at least 300 smelibels, and within about 10 yards of their back doors. The point is to abide by our European treaty obligations. And so this law is duly composed, with no more thought given to it than Talk Sport gives to non-sport news, in fact a lot less. Nobody thinks about it. Nobody can be held individually responsible for it. Not the twat who made it up, not his superior (who had 412 new laws to think about that morning alone), certainly not the Undersecretary of State at the Fruitbat and Related Creatures Office who is supposedly in charge of this process. So, the new law of compost heaps, together with all the other laws made up that day, is driven over to the House of Commons in a convoy of articulated lorries, and a few months later the Queen signs something and it’s the law for real.
Members of Parliament? Aren’t they supposed to have “readings” of these things? Yes, but that doesn’t mean that anyone actually reads the stuff. Laws in Britain nowadays are like academic papers in America. The overwhelming majority of them are not actually read by anybody except the drones who write them. Nobody at all.
The remarkable thing about this law is not that it passed, but that someone did eventually read it, pointed out that it was insane, and turned it into a media ruckus and an excuse for me to be on the radio.
There goes the phone. Excuse me while I dazzle the nation …
It turns out that it is illegal to have a compost heap within 270 yards (it is yards) of your house without a license. This is actually just as insane, but a bit more subtle. The insanity will only get seriously under way when the Compost Heap Office opens, and gets swallowed up in financial scandal, and when people with bona fide Compost Heap Licenses, which they just went and got, for seventeen quid, start keeping totally unregulated compost heaps in their kitchens (which used to be sort of illegal). Why has the Minister for Fruitbats not taken immediate action to curb this malpractice? … Why have more resources not been set aside? (That’s spent, to you and me.) Why? … Why? … Why? …
Another radio call. Busy day. Next up: I’m on BBC Radio Scotland at lunchtime, on whether Britain needs twenty three new laws to curb the British National Party. Here’s my plan. Keep a few of the laws we already have against being seriously nasty. Punish people if they break them. Apply them vigorously to the BNP, and to everyone else.
Another call. LBC Radio. Cannabis march on Saturday, you’ve heard about that? (No, being a libertarian these days means that you miss things.) Okay. 2 pm tomorrow.
All this chat radio excitement probably results from Sean Gabb being on BBC Radio 4‘s Today Programme, yesterday morning. Unlike most of the stuff I do, that’s a big one.
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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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