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]
|
Today, I was at a small conference called Turning the Tables on the State held by an organisation called A World To Win. I had been asked to give a presentation on the British government’s plans for Identity Cards and a National Identity Register, which I duly did, and got a few laughs. I’m glad they are supportive of NO2ID, I really am. But I also attended the rest of the conference, which was a strange, strange experience.
Here were all these fairly pleasant, not obviously mad or stupid, people, saying things I wholly agree with about threats to civil liberties. But at the same time most did not leave it there. The presentations were larded with nonsensical quotations from Marx yanked out of historical context and treated as eternal wisdom. The threat to liberty and the constitution could not be anything so mundane as the lust for power and institutional convenience. It must be driven by transnational capitalism’s need to increase its exploitation rate by invading the public sector.
And the ‘rights’ to be defended against monolithic global finance are apparently mostly not of the “first generation rights” – the liberties (correlative of no-right of others to interfere) that most readers and writers of this blog exalt. They are prescriptive rights, to free education, to work, to fair remuneration for that work, etc., etc. And that is what most astonished me.
While rightly distressed by the power of the state being used to impose expressible views and appropriate ways to live on the citizen, these kindly people see no irony in seeking institutions to force their values onto others, in the name of the people. Wish-lists abounded, their real implications for personal lives unconsidered. But the most startling positive right I’ve ever heard suggested was from the report of a discussion group:
We need a right to a rich interior life.
First off, as if it is not entirely obvious, I am not the least bit unbiased about the album and people who made it as I have known most of them for fifteen years. Some of them are amongst my closest friends. With that said… if you like Irish traditional music, watch this space for information on how to buy “Tripswitch” the new album by Johnny McSherry, Donal O’Connor and friends.
The tripswitch, by the way, was in a country town recording studio I know well. A ‘to remain un-named’ member of the band attempted to light a cigarette from the toaster and somehow managed to trip the main breaker. I have been led to believe the eponymous tune was composed in the dark whilst efforts were made to figure out what had happened.
While I am on the subject of album release parties, if you are in New York City, another very dear friend, NIamh Parsons, has a release show for her new CD ‘The Old Simplicity,’ on Tuesday March 14 7:30PM at the Cutting Room, 19 W.24th St.
But now back to Belfast on on with the fun and festivities! → Continue reading: Tripswitch album release party
SpaceX has been working towards the first launch of its Falcon since late last summer. First they were delayed by a blacksat launch window which caused them to shift operations from Vandenberg to Kwajalein Island. This winter they had the pressurization test accident that caused a fuel tank to crumple.
Everything I have been hearing says this month could finally be it. Best wishes and godspeed to Elon and his crew.
You can download their information pack (just published yesterday) on the upcoming maiden flight from here.
No doubt Harold Pinter will be sad that his favourite masss murderer and communist/national socialist despot has snuffed it but my guess is that they will be celebrating in the streets in Croatia, much of Bosnia and in more the rational circles in Serbia.
Good riddence to bad rubbish.
We are still wresting with configuring the anti-spam defences and some other work on the blog will be continuing for a few days yet in all likelihood, so apologies in advance if things are a bit slow or if the comment system is a bit tetchy at times. We will have things running more smoothly as soon as we can.
Because of all the processes going on (such as batch republishing 108,000 comments and over 7,000 articles), the site may run rather slow today.
It has it all – from aeroplanes that look like they are crashing to exciting political rallies – wouldn’t YOU rather go to North Korea?
Update: The official DPRK website hates our links for some obscure reason. So, in the interests of spreading the happy holiday message, please copy and paste this URL into the appropriate spot…
http://www.korea-dpr.com/kfa2006/kfadelegation05.wmv
“We have paid dearly for idealizing the state. There is no virtue in denying the law of gravity, and there should be no virtue in denying the limitations of government. Good intentions are no excuse for perpetual failure and growing oppression. The more we glorify government, the more liberties we will lose. Freedom is largely a choice between allowing people to follow their own interests or forcing them to follow the interests of politicians, bureaucrats, politicians and campaign contributors.”
James Bovard, “Lost Rights”, cataloguing the destruction of liberties in the USA during the Clinton years. The message applies everywhere and at any time, of course.
There are moves afoot to ban the burqa in the Netherlands on the basis that they are oppressive to women and in the words of Geert Wilders, a Dutch member of parliament…
an insult to everyone who believes in equal rights
Which is quite curious logic because if he believes in equal rights, does that not include the right to wear what you damn well please without it having to be politically approved by the state? Will other forms of clothing be banned in order to make this an ‘equal right’? Moreover it sets a horrific president: does that mean ‘offensive’ clothing can be banned, such as, say, a mini-skirt that some Muslims with sexual hang-ups find offensive?
This proposal is a dreadful idea with only one thing to recommend it, and that with proviso is does not actually pass into law. The notion of making Muslim fundamentalists (and I would argue that anyone wearing a burqa is a fundamentalist) feel that they are not accepted and that even toleration of them is hanging in the balance is not such a bad message to send. Yet this is nevertheless an appalling notion for the state to decide what people can wear. A vastly better idea would be to just scale back the welfare state which brough many of these people to Europe and most importantly return the abridged property rights and freedom of association and dis-association to individuals to deal with who they please and freely (but peaceably) express themselves without fear of prosecution for ‘discrimination’.
That way, if enough individuals decide that not make people who wear burqas welcome into their places of business, the problem of state supported non-assimilation would quickly disappear. If people really do not care, then that too is the ‘voice of the people’. Either way, the state has no business enforcing dress codes. Provide some real social motivation to assimilate and adopt western norms of behaviour. If some un-assimilated Muslims find that notion offensive and choose to leave for some nation which is more accepting of dark ages mores. Either way the problem is reduced.
As our regular readers will have noticed, we have been ‘off the air’ whilst we under went a major site upgrade under the hood. There still may be a few bugs to stamp on but things will soon return to normal.
The urge to save humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to rule it.
– H.L. Mencken
There is a lot of stuff about Dubai at the moment. The issue of Dubai Ports’ purchase of P&O and the reaction by certain American Democrat and Republican politicians is a massive story Stateside, though it has not registered much in the UK, unless you are a reader of the business sections. There is a smell of protectionism in the air in Europe too, with a number of European states scratching each other’s eyes out about merger and acquisitions involving banks and utilities. Plus ca change..
Dubai is now a major story on a number of fronts. The BBC recently ran a series of programmes about the incredible amount of construction happening there and the local magnates and immigrants who are driving the economy forward. A vast artificial archipelago of homes and estates has been built into the Gulf. Dubai is also a major business and media centre, a place where a lot of sporting and cultural events goes on. Dubai is also becoming one of the major venues for business conferences in areas such as finance.
So it seems to me that even with all the reservations one might have about that part of the world and the islamist threats not far away, Dubai’s vibrancy is a sort of Good Thing. The place has, potentially, the capacity to exert the same impact on parts of the Middle East as Hong Kong did on mainland China. Perhaps it is all a bubble and will go up in smoke, as the Eyeores out there might think, but on the whole I am optimistic. Let’s face it, pessimism is a sort of cop-out.
May the meme of liberty spread out from its borders and confound the naysayers. Meanwhile, this man is doing something highly admirable.
There may be light posting due to some server related technical problems today.
|
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.
|
Recent Comments