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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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There is a new film called 28 Days Later, which to summarize extremely briefly, involves Britain in the very near future laid waste by a bio-engineered plague released by animal ‘rights’ activists. This plague, called The Rage, turns people into feral zombie-like killers.
Although the film has gained some rather good reviews, why bother shelling out your hard earned and heavily taxed money to see zombies up on the big screen?
Britain is already full of zombies tramping somnambulantly under the CCTV cameras, past the voting booths in which they can meaninglessly vote for ‘worst choice one’ or ‘worst choice two’ and only moving at all due to the sensory stimuli provided by the carcinogenic stench of greasy fast food dispensaries and the flickering light cast by sub-moronic Pavlovian response inducing game shows.
So why bother going to see a film about them when all you have to do to see zombies is look out your well barred and burglar alarmed window?
I am not usually this bleak-of-view, but to see the protections of both habeas corpus and double jeopardy doomed by a currently unassailable government… and yet to then see this greeted not with rioting on the streets but for the most part with a collective ovine shrug, does rather lead anyone who values liberty to dark sentiments.
This meme hack was brought to you by Alan K. Henderson. See here for the inspiration.
Last night I attended a discussion evening in an upstairs room of the King George IV pub in Portugal Street, hosted by the London School of Economics Hayek Society. Very good. Very high quality talk, very smart group of people, from many different countries, Americans, Scandinavians, an Italian, and enough Brits for it not to be a completely non-local event, about twenty people in all. There was no set speaker, we just took it in turns, but as Mr Visiting Libertarian I was given extra pontificating rights, which I trust I did not abuse too annoyingly. They asked me to come again so I must have behaved reasonably well.
The topic was along the lines of “Does libertarianism imply an optimistic view of human nature?” I voted no, but not with any huge confidence and with less after the discussion than I had before. It made me think, in other words, as all good meetings do. For what it may signify, the vote went about two-to-one for no. But that was just a fun way to wind up the discussion, it wasn’t the point of the thing. This wasn’t one of those ghastly Oxford Union type debates where everyone is training to be or pretending already to be a cabinet minister. We just sat around in a circle and talked, gently but firmly chaired by one of the Americans.
The Hayek Society has been chugging along for some years, and in general it is fascinating how university groups, once founded, often seem to stick around, even after two or three complete personnel recycles. The significance of the Hayek Society is thus hard to overstate. I don’t know exactly where in the British university pecking order the LSE comes but it’s not far from the top. In the past, it has made a lot of mischief all around the world, and was I think started to spread collectivist economics. Like France, it is often deeply annoying but it remains a great institution and is a great intellectual prize, a great meme machine. So for us to be getting our memes into it in a big and quality way is, well, big.
The person who invited me to this meeting was Nick Spurrell, and last night he mentioned something about “setting up a website” for the Hayek Society. Either I misheard him (in which case grovelling apologies) or he doesn’t know that there already is one, which was last updated on April 3rd 2001. He must know this. I must have got that wrong. Anyway, I’ll clarify all that soonest, and link to whatever new operation gets going as and when, giving any new material they produce the push here which I’m sure it will deserve.
Meanwhile, email Nick Spurrell to signify that you’re interested in meetings like this, if you are. There doesn’t seem to be any problem about non-LSE folks joining in but sort that out with him. At the moment the meetings happen every Thursday evening, and there’s also a bigger set-piece meeting happening next Wednesday afternoon (1pm – 3pm), which I may also go to.
I got to know Nick Spurrell through him coming to a couple of my last-Friday-of-the-month meetings. As usual, meatspace continues to matter.
For the last few days various people have been asking me what I thought of the big LA/LI conference last weekend that several of us have been going on about, here and in other Britblogs. How good was it? (Lowered voice: What was wrong that should be better next time?)
What I think is that these things are hard to organise, and especially so if you also have a life you’re fighting with full time. Since I have little in the way of a life to fight but did little to help, I’m not entitled to criticise. LA Director Chris Tame (who has a very aggressive life to contend with but who nevertheless did the bulk of the organising) deserves all the credit going for what went well, and none of the blame for any defects.
Nevertheless in this posting, I want to focus first on my one big regret about this event. Things happen the way they happen and all that. Some speakers let you down and others have to be juggled, and so on. But, I wish that Richard Miniter‘s speech at the final dinner, so well described here by David Carr, had instead been one of the conference talks that it was originally intended to be. First, if it had been there would have been a chance for questions. And second, if there had been questions I believe it would have become clear that although this man undoubtedly spoke very eloquently and interestingly, he did not really speak for the libertarian movement as a whole, and in particular, not for the European libertarian movement, which is just as split about US policy towards Iraq as libertarians are in the USA.
→ Continue reading: That conference – I salute Our Great Leader Tame
I have been of the opinion that Saddam Hussein will say ‘yes’ to the latest UN resolution, based on his opportunity to simply buy time and to exploit the rifts in Western opinion and short-and-shallow attention span of the Western public. I was not surprised by the Iraqi parliament’s ‘defiance’ since Saddam is the top man anyway. But Salam has more to say about it all: Nobody inside Iraq even bothered to tune in to hear what the parliamentarians had to say, while Al-Jazeera thought it was worth live coverage. But the Iraqi government did make it worth while for them. Who would have thought that they would reject the resolution? My money was on the Iraqi Parliament accepting the resolution and Saddam reluctantly giving the OK because that was the “will of his people”. Now I am very interested in the speech he will make to “justify” the acceptance of the UN resolution despite the recommendation of the Iraqi Parliament. (not that he has to justify anything or listen to recommendations, but since the whole thing was public he will make his views known, he likes to give speeches).
I may share Salam’s opinion but I can only imagine what it is like to be there:
As much as I find the resolution unfair, provocative, unrealistic in it’s demands and timeline, vague enough to allow for all sorts of traps I hope saddam does accept the resolution. Only to buy us time. It is a lose-lose situation for the Iraqi people no matter how you look at it. The USA is still talking of regime change, I think Iraq will not go past the first 30 days before the USA shouts “foul”. And in a case of war I do believe that if saddam has any biological or chemical weapons he is very likely to use them on his own people to give the CNN and Jazeera the bloody images everyone doesn’t want to see.
It’s not just a question of whether it is right or wrong to fight war with Saddam. The blogosphere has been throbbing with arguments for and against. On this blog we know which course of action to defend. So far the Big Picture, that we are used to seeing both in current affairs and history, rarely includes the individual (usually he is the one driving it, often by means of oppression and violence). Salam’s lone voice reminds me of millions of human tragedies that do not get played out on the world stage.
The blogosphere may be one way of redressing the balance. Reading Salam’s interpretation of events has had a tremendous impact on my understanding of reality of the war on Iraq. I cannot conceive of such information originating from the traditional media. Not only because I do not have faith in their abilities and motivation, but simply because they have not been designed to fulfil such role. They correspond to the Big Picture view of the world, together with historical analyses, diplomatic discourse and political decisions. The media claims of unbiased reporting and enlightenment through controversy ring hollow as there is a mismatch between their explicit role and understanding of their own limitations.
So Salam’s blog is important, not only in the context of the current international events. For now, I just hope that individual voices will become audible more and more.
Brian Micklethwait once engaged me with an interesting, pet theory of his. It goes something like this: you can always tell when an organisation or institution is about to die because, just before they expire, they spend gargantuan sums of money on a big, swanky, impressive, dedicated headquarters.
Brian has a bagful of interesting theories which may or may not hold water but it is the one above which flagged up for me when I read this:
“On September 30, the U.N. unveiled plans for a billion-dollar, top-to-bottom renovation of its New York headquarters. The plan also includes the construction of a new 30-story office tower, which will displace a public playground next door.
Brian, you’d better be right.
I spent yesterday (this is the small hours of Sunday morning) at day one of the conference referred to below, and for my money the star of the show so far has been Terence Kealey, Vice Chancellor of Buckingham University and author of this. Kealey’s performance was terrific, both in terms of content and because the man is blessed with such a clear and mellifluous speaking voice – which was a great asset in what proved to be a tricky accoustic given that no microphones were in use.
Having forced myself up at such a vile hour in the morning to get there in time for the start, I’m too knackered to say more now. I hope to report further and less superficially after tomorrow’s proceedings, and there’s a good chance that one or some of David Carr, Patrick Crozier, Alice Bachini, David Farrer, Paul Marks and Antoine Clarke, also all present, will also have things to say, here and/or elsewhere.
For more of my first thoughts about this conference, I have posted some reactions to another of the speakers, Professor Christie Davies (author of a book called The Mirth of Nations) over on my recently started Education Blog.
Whilst I am far from a reflexive fan of Victor Davis Hanson, who seems to me to alternate between astute commentary and tedious conservative cranio-rectal insertions, it must be said that when he is on target, he is very on target. In his latest article on NRO The End of An Era: The bankruptcy of the anti-Americanists, Hanson is spot on this time.
Face it: Slobodan Milosevic, Mullah Omar, Yasser Arafat, and Saddam Hussein — not the ghosts of the thousands of their innocent dead — all prefer Ramsey Clark to George Bush. We are seeing nothing less than quite literally the end of an era — witnessed by the intellectual suicide of an entire generation, who in their last gasps are proving they have been not very moral people all along.
Absolutely!
Whig interventionist is a term one could use to describe a partisan of limited government who supports war against tyranny. The problem is deciding on the right target.
UK versus USA
The unilateral decision to impose tariffs on steel by the US president in 2002 was an action which in the nineteenth century might have triggered a war. In this case the UK would unquestionably be the forces of enlightenment and the US the agent of darkness. As far as I have been able to establish, Iraq has no import tariffs.
France versus UK
I recently called for a British War on Chirac. Yet I would have to support a French war of liberation if the causus belli was alcohol prohibition. When taking a ferry to France, the bars and cheap alcohol shops are closed for the first 20 minutes, as long as the ferry is notionally in British territorial waters. Yet they stay open for the rest of the trip until the ship docks in a French port.
Coming back, the scenario is reversed. The shops open at once leaving France and close 20 minutes before landing in the UK. Considering that both countries supposedly operate identical European Union regulations on tax-free trade, this looks like the sort of provocation that China caused to trigger the Opium Wars.
Better still the French authorities do not care how much discounted alcohol and tobacco people carry, the British Gestapo consider 2,000 cigarettes to be organised crime.
In the UK it is illegal to sell alcohol after 11pm without a meal. In France it is illegal to sell a meal after 9pm unless alcohol is available.
French visitors to London now play spot the police camera.
I rest my case.
The Law of Unintended Consequences is a popular one with libertarians seeking to highlight how government rules and actions have perverse consequences. So it was interesting to watch British parliamentarians being reminded about the perverse side-effects of government rules at a committee hearing at the House of Commons this afternoon.
A government-appointed adviser, Alan Pickering, was pointing out to MPs that legislation such as the 1995 Pensions Act, introduced after the Robert Maxwell scandal in the early 1990s, has in fact simply encouraged many firms to shut down pension schemes for their workers. “This is a classic example of the law of unintended consequences,” he told MPs. Quite.
Interesting to watch as MPs listened to this point with expressions of blank incomprehension. You could imagine this thought going through their heads: “You mean that our desire to better Mankind might backfire? Who would have thought it?”
One of the many ways to spark a bickering row between conservatives and libertarians is to bring up the subject of Gay Rights. More particularly the idea of Gay Union or ‘Gay Marriage’ ( a term which, for reasons I shall explain below, is an oxymoron).
The proposition that same-sex unions be publicly recognised as legal and binding raises all sorts of hackles for all sorts of reasons. At the risk of generalisation, most conservatives (and a surprising number of socialists) regard such a move as potentially damaging to the accepted social convention of the nuclear family.
This line of argument is not entirely without merit, for customs and conventions often exist for good reason. Unfortunately, they very often become codified under state law thereby attracting the antipathy of libertarians who go on to chuck the baby out with the bathwater.
The problem lies is approaching the subject from an ‘all or nothing’ viewpoint which invariably boils down to one party or another badgering politicians to extend a government seal of approval to a particular version of marriage as a form of official validation.
State benedictions (with complimentary tax classification) are not required and I suggest that clarity can be brought to the debate not by warping and extending existing definitions to breaking point but by recognising and dealing with differences.
Marriage is a heterosexual institution arising from the need of a woman to secure a reliable provider for her babies and the need of a man for a trustworthy vehicle for the onward transmission of his genes. I realise that men and women get married for other reasons too but that does not alter or diminish the basic driver behind the custom.
When I hear of Gay Rights groups demanding the right for same-sex couples to marry my response is not one of discomfort but one of puzzlement. Why? Why do gay men or lesbian women feel the need to dress up as heterosexuals when, in all other respects, they have made it abundantly clear to the world that they are not? → Continue reading: Vegetables can never be meat
Alex Singleton has got the Liberty Log cranked up and running again, after a spell of very thin posting. (It’s not as if they had nothing to blog about up there, what with the Germaine Greer for University Vice Minister, or whatever it is, row.) Something to do with student lodgings, he said in a phone call to me just now – no internet connection, blah blah.
Anyway Alex has been thinking about coffee, and in particular “fair trade” coffee.
Several hours of research later, I found what I suspected: fair trade isn’t as fair as it seems. Most of the extra money charged fills the pockets of big business, not the coffee growers. Fair trade coffee is roughly 2.5p more expensive per cup. However, Costa charges 10p per cup extra. In other words 7.5p simply goes to Costa, or its first world suppliers, as profit.
World coffee prices have declined rapidly over the past ten years, and the reason is simple: since 1990, supply has increased by 15%. Much of the blame can be laid at organisations supposedly aiming to reduce poverty. The World Bank gave loans to Vietnam to set up coffee plantations. In Brazil and Columbia, producers were encouraged to switch from coca, used to make cocaine, to coffee. Oxfam and other charities have consistently encouraged existing farmers to increase production of coffee.
So there. My real reason for linking to Liberty Log is not coffee, nor even LL’s recent springing back to life. No, my main message is simply how good it is now starting to look. I particularly like the headings, but thank god also that the text (as here at Samizdata) is big enough to read. What is it with all the tiny lettering that lots of blogs use? Am I getting old? Is my screen too small and blurry? Anway, I can read Liberty Log.
More to the point, I still want to. As do others, or so Alex tells me. During the recent dry spell, LL was still getting plenty of hits, presumably from folks like me who were hoping that normal service – or what passes for normal service at a university – would soon be resumed.
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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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