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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Occasionally, one stumbles across actions of the regulatory state that masquerade as market policies. Irish health insurance falls into this category.
Health insurance is always a tricky subject as it falls into the wider issues of how private sector medicine can be established. In Europe, with its wide diversity of state driven medical practices, plus voluntary health insurance and complentary health insurance as a tolerated private sector, it is difficult to envisage how one would wean the populace off these systems, even with impending bankruptcy looming. The ‘Big Bang’ approach of deregulation would not work as the infrastructure and skillset to develop an entrepreneurial model does not exist and this is one area where the gradual replacement of state structures by the private sector and/or civil society may be more appropriate. Complex and difficult issues to grasp with few answers. → Continue reading: Irish Health Insurance
For those who missed it, this morning, there was a fascinating article in the Daily Telegraph about the increasing failure of the British state to perform its most basic activity, that of providing personal security to its tax-paying citizens. It seems more and more people are simply withdrawing any hope they may have once held in the British police and are taking their own personal security matters directly into their own hands, with impressive crime reduction results to boot, through the creation and adoption of private police forces.
It seems the Individualist Revolution really is creeping up on us, unawares, as street by street, in Britain, the enfeebled state withers away and people take an ever-increasing amount of private control over their own private lives.
This is not what the state intended. But it is what is happening. Long may this withering process continue.
The Jews are behind materialism, animal sexuality, the destruction of the family and the dissolution of society. Principal among them are Marx, Freud, Durkheim and the Jew Jean-Paul Sartre.
Sayid Qutb, former leader Muslim Brotherhood, quoted by Barbara Amiel.
Well I disagree with the conclusion, but I must admit that the pantheon of evil is pretty exhaustive.
Marx: the inspiration for all the best serial killers
Freud: the apologist for all the best serial killers
Durkheim: serial killer of brain cells
Sartre: creep
Hmm…
What seems to be developing into an open revolt in Iraq by Shi’a Islamists could be a Godsend to the coalition and secular elements of Iraqi society in the long run… in openly taking up arms against the coalition and its Iraqi supporters, radical leader Muqtadar al-Sadr has changed the equation: what could have been a long term intractable political problem has been turned onto a military problem with a fairly obvious and direct solution.
The other night I finally got around to watching the DVD of Love Actually. And I believe that netiquette demands that I now flag up a “spoilers” warning, for all those millions of Samizdata readers who have not see this movie yet but fully intend to, so that these people read no further and have some of the various plots spoiled for them.
I liked it, on the whole, although I preferred Four Weddings, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones’ Diary, all of which I thought were quite special. I will probably have another look at Love Actually some time soon, but my first impression of it is that it was just forgettable fun by comparison. In regular romantic comedies, you have a gorgeous hero and gorgeous heroine, but reality is nodded to in the form of a cast of not so gorgeous other people. Not so in Love Actually. Here almost everyone was gorgeous, and almost everyone was indulging in a happy-ending romance. Which meant that reality could not ever be suspended and you could never, even as a pretend Friday night self deception, forget that this was just made up fantasy entertainment nonsense. And that is not so entertaining.
A further source of non-entertainment, for me, was that, wearing my political glasses, I could not help noticing that Love Actually contained a characteristic type of movie political propaganda. Not for the first time in the movies (and that is putting it very mildly) we were presented with a fantasy version of the President of the United States, and what is more a fantasy version which reflects little credit on either its creators or on the audience at whom it was aimed. → Continue reading: Not the American President actually
Last month, I did a short post noting an assassination attempt on the President and Vice President of Taiwan, just before polling.
The plot, however, continues to thicken. The election happened, and President Chen was re-elected by a wafer thin margin, with the use of tactics that you wouldn’t get away with at the greyhounds, as we say ‘Down Under’.
Defeated KMT candidate Lian Chan and his supporters aren’t taking it lying down. They have demanded that there be a recount, and President Chen has agreed to this. Moreover, he has also agreed to a team of US investigators coming over to investigate his shooting.
I cannot claim to be an authority on assassination attempts, but this case does bewilder me. He was shot at close range, yet the shooter seemed unable or unwilling to aim at the head; the shooter was surrounded by the President’s supporters, yet he managed to evade capture, and remains a mystery to this day who it actually was. The responsible Minister and the police chief have resigned.
Can it really be that the President staged an assassination attempt and took a bullet in order to get re-elected? It sounds insane, but the circumstances are suspicious! It’s not quite The Final Cut, but Michael Dobbs would surely be impressed!
There is an intensely irritating advertising campaign showing currently on British TV, its cumbersome catchphrase: “If you don’t do politics, there’s not much you do do“. It is run by the Electoral Commission and goes one step beyond explaining to people how to exercise their democratic franchise by promoting “political” interference into almost every aspect of quotidian life.
The animated advert features two men in a pub. The first’s gauche attempt to bring up some tedious manoeuvring in the European parliament is deftly dismissed by the second’s sensible rejoinder that he “doesn’t do politics”. Our statist ‘hero’ is not so easily assuaged however, as each subsequent time the second man complains about various items from pub closing time to sporting achievements, he is pointedly reminded by his friend that he “doesn’t do politics” and thus implicitly isn’t entitled to an opinion on such things. The assumption behind this campaign is that everything that matters – “not much you do do” – ought to be subject to political mediation. In reality, the only reason the pub landlord closes at that specific time is because “politics” forces him to do so. If he “didn’t do politics” so much he might close at a time of his own choosing which may suit him and his customers better.
It is telling that this latest promotion of a society based on political mediation to replace that based on voluntary interaction is not by a political party or a pressure group but by a supposedly independent body. This surely demonstrates the folly of assuming independence as to the proper role and size of government in any body funded by the government.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is examining the use of RFID-tagged airline boarding passes that could allow passenger tracking within airports, a proposal some privacy advocates called a potentially “outrageous” violation of civil liberties.
Anthony “Buzz” Cerino, communications security technology lead at the TSA, said the agency believes the use of boarding passes with radio frequency identification (RFID) chips could speed up the movement of passengers who sign on to the agency’s “registered traveler” program. This would permit them to pass through a secure “special lane” during the boarding process.
Under the registered traveler program, frequent fliers would provide the TSA with detailed personal information that would be correlated by a background check. Privacy advocates said they believe the RFID boarding pass would then serve as an automatic link to the registered traveler database. Details about how the system might work haven’t been released by the TSA, and Cerino couldn’t be reached today for further comment.
Cerino didn’t say when or if the TSA would push for introduction of the RFID boarding passes or how such a project – likely to require a massive, networked infrastructure – would be funded.
The TSA has already started to work on deploying RFID boarding passes in Africa under the Federal Aviation Administration’s Safe Skies for Africa Initiative – the initiative identifies Angola, Cameroon, Cape Verde, the Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mali, Namibia, Tanzania and Zimbabwe as member countries.
Katherine Albrecht, founder and director of Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN), a privacy group that has fought the use of RFID tags by retailers and other organizations, called the idea a potentially “shocking and outrageous” violation of civil liberties.
London Underground is set to roll out high-tech CCTV surveillance software that will automatically alert operators to suspicious behaviour, unattended packages and potential suicide attempts on the capital’s Tube system. The move comes as London remains on a high state of alert against a possible terrorist attack following the bombs in Madrid earlier this month.
LU has been trialling the technology at Liverpool Street station during the past two months and is now evaluating the results with a network-wide rollout tipped to follow across the Tube’s 6,000 CCTV cameras, which cover 95 per cent of stations.
The Intelligent Pedestrian Surveillance system from Ipsotek compares CCTV footage against pictures of the empty station and alerts operators to strange behaviour such as people loitering or bags that have been left on the platform.
Sergio Velastin, director of research and founder of Ipsotek, said that it cuts down on operator time and costs related to blanket monitoring of all CCTV screens by alerting staff only when there is a potential problem. Privacy groups are concerned about the increasing coverage of monitoring technology such as CCTV. Velastin dismissed privacy concerns over IPS and said the software monitors only behavioural patterns and not the individual.
We have tried very consciously to stay away from facial recognition issues. None of our system is capable of recognising an individual – just behaviour. Then the police can come in and say ‘we need to find out who that person is’. It is a balance between being free to do what we wish and being protected.
The Independent reports that ID Cards could be compulsory within less than five years. This is much sooner than the ten year cooling off period originally agreed by Cabinet. Blunkett’s scheme apparently has Tony Blair’s personal support.
A draft Bill will be introduced next month with legislation proper in the November 2005 session (assuming Labour are still in power). The “fast track” Bill will allow compulsion to be introduced without further legislation being necessary, probably by 2008.
The Independent also reports an unnamed Minister repeating Blair’s line that “The argument has moved on from concern about civil liberties”.
It hasn’t.
The civil liberties issues with ID cards are just as strong today as they were fifty years ago. If the Government doesn’t want to talk about them then we must do so, loudly and publicly. We need to make this an election issue.
If we give up our civil liberties then the terrorists will have won.
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe
Fifteen suspected Islamic extremists linked to the Casablanca bombings of 16 May 2003 have been arrested this morning, according to the Europe 1 radio station which broke the news.
The bomb attacks last year killed 45 people, including 3 French citizens.
The arrests were made by the DST (French equivalent of MI5) and the RAID (elite Police unit) in two Paris suburbs, Aulay-sous-Bois and Mantes-la-Jolie. They come as Queen Elizabeth II makes an official visit to Paris, to coincide with the centenary of the ‘Entente Cordiale’ between the United Kingdom and France.
Over the week-end French police made a number of arrests of Basque ETA terrorists, including Felix Ignacio Esparza Luri, alias “Navarro”, at Saint-Paul-lès-Dax in the Landes département.
One of the very many arguments in which I was embroiled while I was a student in the 1980’s involved one of my house-mates who steadfastly held that the government should pay students a handsome monthly salary in return for all the hard studying they did. Now this was at a time when, in fact, the government did pay most students an annual grant which covered the costs of their education and left them with a bit of spending money to boot.
But that was not enough for my protagonist. As far as he was concerned this was ‘mere crumbs’; a demeaning insult from a skinflint Tory government. No, students were so precious and valuable that they deserved an ‘executive’ style pay package so that they would not be subjected to the indignities of having to buy second-hand clothes from charity shops. → Continue reading: “Down with Reality”
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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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