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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According to Fox News, the FBI has released a new list of “things that can be used as weapons”. Airport security personnel are being briefed on how to spot the new no-no’s. I am certain we are all pleased the FBI are on their toes. In a mere two years they have discovered hidden knives and other weapons are available in martial arts catalogues. I’m sure we will all breathe easier knowing we are now completely safe.
I am of course being facetious. The list is inadequate and will always be so. They could perhaps force us to check everything at the ticket counter and fly naked. That certainly would limit the possibilities for smuggling knives on board. While the idea does have its’ charms and would certainly ease the boredom of long transoceanic flights, it would be insufficient. There is an old adage: “There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous people.” In the hands of a trained warrior virtually anything is a deadly weapon quite capable of intimidation of the cowardly. One can do terrible things with bare hands.
So let’s get real guys. You are wasting your time and ours at the gate. You will fail to spot the terrorists or their weapons. They will do something you have not thought of. They will get on board a number of airliners again one day. They will imagine they can intimidate an airliner full of Americans into submission again… and we, the flying public will then tear them into pieces too small for burial.
There is a field in Western Pennsylvania that shows who the truly dangerous people are.
Andy Duncan, in his rather, umm, shall we say, idiosyncratic post Ode to the future, made a very good point. He noted that we tend to obsess over the bad news here at Samizdata.
As a political professional, I can assure you that nothing turns off your audience more quickly than an unremitting diet of negativity, and nothing harms an advocate more than having only complaints without solutions. I happen to believe that, in the very big picture and the very long view, a lot of trends are running our way. Now, I enjoy complaining about the cult of the state as much as the next fellow, but I will be making a conscious effort to bring some good news to the fore. With that in mind, I give you the retirement of Senator Fritz Hollings.
This is good news, in small part, because it his seat in the US Senate will likely go from the Democratic Party to the Republican next year. As odious as the Republicans frequently are, I find that I can tolerate around 15% of their platform, as opposed to perhaps 2% of the Democratic platform, so this counts as a small plus.
The major reason that this is good news is that ol’ Fritz was perhaps the single most committed protectionist in the Senate.
“Later, in a telephone interview, Hollings said he plans to redouble his efforts before his term ends on issues ranging from budget discipline to protecting textile and other domestic industries, which were among his leading interests for years.”
He recently became known as the ‘Senator from Disney,’ after campaign contributions from that source revealed a previously unsuspected interest in extending intellectual property protections to unprecedented lengths, allowing Disney to retain income streams from Mickey Mouse far into the future.
(For the uninitiated, when a Democrat talks about “budget discipline,” they are referring to increased taxes, not reduced spending.)
David Bernstein, posting on the Volokh Conspiracy, notes that:
The political views of Latinos are troubling for advocates of limited government, who also tend to be advocates of liberal immigration policies. As the New York Times reported yesterday, and has been well-known for some time by those who follow such things, Latinos, like prior waves of immigrants from poor Catholic countries, tend to be socially conservative and in favor of big government in the economic realm. In the famous Nolan Chart, Latino voters are disproportionately in the “authoritarian” quadrant, the opposite quadrant from limited government-oriented libertarians.
Given that Latinos are already considered a very important swing vote, and will become ever more important as they become a larger percentage of voters, the current volume of Latino immigration can’t be good news in the short to medium term for fans of limited government.
This is depressing news, given that Latinos are such a large and rapidly growing ethnic group in the US, and have been identified by both parties as a critical consituency to court. Identifying Latinos are social conservatives likely to, say, oppose gay marriage could go a long way toward explaining the apparent ease with which leading Democrats and Republicans have come out in opposition to the idea. The pursuit of the Latino vote, while it may lead to pandering/sensitivity (take your pick) on immigration issues that is congenial to at least some libertarians, may also lead both parties further into the swamps of government-enforced morality.
One wonders if there are any ethnic groups that are culturally predisposed to liberty. One also wonders whether the fabled ‘self-selection’ of the immigration ordeal skews the immigrant profile toward those who want more freedom than they have at home, or toward those who are inured to enduring the immigration and naturalization bureaucracy.
Here’s a quick quiz for you… I’ll post the answers later on.
1) Whose idea was the Department of Homeland Security?
2) Who suggested the US use pre-emptive action against States harbouring WMD?
Answer: Well, one person got very close, Gary Hart was indeed involved with both of these.
These two items and a whole bunch of others are part of the final report “Road Map For National Security: Imperative For Change, PhaseIII”. This was a bipartisan two year commission which completed its’ draft final report (from which I am working) Jan 31, 2001. President Bush and his team had barely moved into their offices at the time.
The commission was co-chaired by Hart and Rudman and was tasked with a total systemic review of US National Security.
The Pentagon funded research agency DARPA are launching something called the Policy Analysis Market (PAM) which is in its own words…
A Market in the Futures of the Middle East..
and will provide…
insight into the interactions among Middle Eastern and U.S. interests and policy decisions.
This is done by letting you trade…
on data indices that track economic health, civil stability, military disposition, and U.S. economic & military involvement in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Turkey.
…as well as other contracts. There has been some opposition to the idea. Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota have urged the Pentagon to drop the idea stating that…
The idea of a federal betting parlour on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it’s grotesque.
and …
useless, offensive and unbelievably stupid.
Trading begins October 1st
Given its intimate association with brutal and murderous ‘ethnic cleansing’ it is entirely understandable that the term ‘population transfer’ raises more than a few hackles.
But it need not necessarily be something to fear. Provided it is thought of in terms of free trade, then I can see a peaceful and voluntary process of population transfer as a beneficial thing.
Indeed, the process already appears to be underway:
A husband and wife in Minnesota, a college student in Georgia, a young executive in New York. Though each has distinct motives for packing up, they agree the United States is growing too conservative and believe Canada offers a more inclusive, less selfish society.
“For me, it’s a no-brainer,” said Mollie Ingebrand, a puppeteer from Minneapolis who plans to go to Vancouver with her lawyer husband and 2-year-old son.
Nor are these itchy feet to be found exclusively in the USA. There are people in Britain too, like this correspondent to the Guardian (concerning the death of Dr.David Kelly), who see Canada as the ‘Golden Medina’:
I think he HAD TO BE RUBBED OUT. He knew too much, where the bodies were buried, so his had to be buried as well. Maybe you’re more honest than we are: the media and the government are co=conspirators here. So good luck. I”m moving to Canada, land of the free.
Some may see this as a tragedy but I see it as an indirect means of slashing public spending. Surely it is preferable for all these guardianistas and tax-consumers to converge upon one country where they can stew in each other’s misery rather than staying where they are, demanding entitlements and whining interminably about the unfairness of it all. Together, they can truly build the kind of society they want to live in.
Of course this process need not, and should not, be a one-way street. Canada has no shortage of ambitious, hard-working people who might see their futures as somewhat sullen in the Land of the Puppeteers. The easiest solution is for them to pack their bags and head off to less stultifying climes where their talent and energy will be both appreciated and rewarded.
In fact, that is what loads of Canadians have been doing:
But every year since 1977, more Canadians have emigrated to the United States than vice versa — the 2001 figures were 5,894 Americans moving north, 30,203 Canadians moving south.
Quite what this means for Canada in the long run I dare not even imagine but for the rest of us it can only be good news. Carry on, I say.
[My thanks to the Brothers Judd for the link and to Peter Cuthbertson for the Guardian letter.]
This week New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed into law a provision that transfers liability for personal injuries on public sidewalks from the city to the adjacent building owner. In addition, a companion bill the mayor signed will require property owners to carry liability insurance that provides coverage for sidewalk injuries.
This legislation transfers liability for sidewalk accidents from the city to the property owners who already have the duty to keep the sidewalks in good repair.
So let me get this right. You do not own the bit of the pavement in front of your house/flat. Nevertheless, you are responsible for keeping in it good repair, clean it of snow, ice and other obstructions to pedestrians. At your own cost. For the Public Good. And you are also liable for anything that happens to your accident-prone, trigger-suing compatriots.
Call me old-fashioned but this is outrageous. The concept of being responsible for something you do not own and have no property right to is not only non-sensical but goes to the heart of your personal freedom. The New York City imposes a cost on you without any corresponding choice to dispose of that responsibility. They make you clean, repair and pay legal costs for the pavement whether you like it or not, in the name of Clean and Safe Pavements. You are made a slave to the passing pedestrians or rather the Public in general, which of course is a patriotic and public-spirited thing. That sounds familiar…
Oh, and now you are also forced to buy insurance to pay for the liability you have no choice in incurring. It seems that New York Mayor sees property rights his way.
The Bush administration may be in the process of revolutionising America’s foreign policy but, on the domestic front, it seems like business as usual:
The Bush administration, pressing its campaign against state medical marijuana laws, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let federal authorities punish California doctors who recommend pot to their patients.
The administration would revoke the federal prescription licenses of doctors who tell their patients marijuana would help them, a prerequisite for obtaining the drug under the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law.
And, of course, his predecessor was no better:
Contending that the drug has no medical value, the Clinton administration announced in January 1997 that doctors who recommended marijuana would lose their licenses to prescribe federally regulated narcotics. Doctors in many fields need federal licenses to remain in practice.
Proof that, regardless of who is sitting in the hot-seat, the absurd and insane ‘war on drugs’ just has to go on and on and on.
[My thanks to Dr.Chris Tame who posted this article to the Libertarian Alliance Forum.]
George W Bush has agreed to send up to 1,000 troops to Liberia. CNN reports that he took the decision after a meeting of his National Security Council. An announcement was expected, possibly today, that the US troops will head an international peacekeeping force.
Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary-general, had urged the UN Security Council to dispatch a force “to prevent a major humanitarian tragedy” in an upsurge in fighting between factions engaged in a 14-year conflict that has killed a tenth of Liberia’s population.
Apart from embassy protection detachments, the marines will be the first American soldiers deployed in Africa since the withdrawal from Somalia nearly a decade ago. Britain, France and some African countries had called on America to lead it because of its historical links with Liberia, founded in 1822 as a settlement for freed American slaves.
Comments by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer that Bush was considering sending troops provoked a nearly instantaneous reaction in Monrovia, where thousands of people gathered outside the U.S. Embassy to cheer a possible American presence. One man said:
We feel America can bring peace because they are the original founders of this nation, and secondly, they are the superpower of the world.
Strange, Liberians do not seem to have a problem with that…
I post this on Thursday afternoon, just ahead of the day when our American friends take a break from the office, farm and factory to commemorate the birthday of their country.
And may these words stand, forever, as the guiding principles of the greatest nation on this planet.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
PS. Could we have the tea back from Boston, please?
PPS. Could we borrow this when it comes time for Britain to leave the EU, please?
Last week I posted a scan of a rather tattered magazine picture of Strom Thurmond surrounded by marshmallows on the stage of the CMU Skibo Ballroom, circa 1970.
It seems the original student photographer is one of our readers. This blast from the past duly reminded him of this classic image and he has sold it to Reuters. You can see a much better copy of Jerry Siskind’s photo there.
This is likely to lead to a lengthy exchange of do-you-remembers betwixt us!
The Dissident Frogman has returned from his trip to Normandy, where he visited, among other things, the Musée Mémorial de la Bataille de Normandie (Memorial Museum of the Battle of Normandy) in Bayeux… He is, as always full of interesting observations and has a new game for his readers. It is called “Guess what’s missing at a museum dedicated to the Battle of Normandy, 1944?”
The game consists of three incredible pictures. My first reaction was – ‘surely, they could not go that far’. But alas, it is true. What’s more, he couldn’t get any lucid and convincing explanation for this “fortuitous” accrual.
Please go here to ‘play’ and perhaps engage in shooting off a few emails to the Mayor of Bayeux…
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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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