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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Often, we expect curbs on civil liberties to be the desired goal of our own left-wing authoritarians or the unfortunate consequence of some EU directive. It is rare that the demands of the United States may result in one more step towards the “surveillance state”.
EU passports will soon have to incorporate a radio frequency identification (RFID) chip, including biometric data, that would be machine-readable for entering the US. This is a consequence of the US Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act of 2002 that demands all visa-free entrants incorporate biometric information on their passports from October 2004. (Hint: you may want to change your passport if you wish to visit the United States after this date).
In the tension between liberty and security, the demands of this Act appear a prudent measure to curb the use of false passports for perpetrating acts of terrorism. However, the biometric identifiers used will be standardised according to workgroups meeting for the International Civil Aviation Organisation and International Organization for Standardisation.
Their work will be co-opted by the European Union. A European biometric identification strategy was announced in June at the summit in Greece. The European Biometric Forum was established, with major players and strong links to their counterparts in the United States, to ensure that there would a single standard for applications of this technology, pursued by all member states of the EU.
The EBF will be launched on the 21st July in Dublin and the technology is being promoted as an additional protection for the privacy of individuals, although the growth is driven by state institutions and telecom/security companies.
It is often argued that the Conservative Party must move to the Left to win. It must tone down the tax-cutting agenda, and take the centre ground.
Sounds plausible, but reality is different. At a recent dinner of the Imperial College Conservatives, David Davis revealed that the all-important swing voters are more free-market than normal Tory supporters. According to a Conservative Central Office survey, 87% of swing voters think taxes are too high, compared with only 80% of loyal Tories.
So if you hear the nonsense about “gaining the centre”, tell The Enemy Within to go to hell.
This morning as I was reading the Daily Heap of Newspapers for some blogging inspiration but I could not get past the front page news about the WMD dossier and the tragic end of the alleged MoD ‘mole’. Dr Kelly has been ruthelessly used as a pawn in the game far less civilised than chess between Downing Street and the BBC. By the way, I agree with this analysis of the situation.
The reason I cannot get excited or outraged about the ‘sexed up’ dossier containting evidence about Saddam’s threat to the Western world and his WMD capabilities is that I expect that of anything that comes out of the many-mouthed hydra called Government. Do you really believe all those statistics about the economy, crime, schoolsandhospitals? I sure don’t and never have. True, the spin has acceralated under the Labour government and not only because of Alistair Campell, who is merely an embodiment of the New Labour cavalier attitude to reality. I am not stranger to the public relations techniques, however, I expect that even I would be taken aback by how calculating, manipulating and truth-spinning the whole exercise has become.
This is because the current set of politicians regards such practises as the very business of ‘professional’ government. Keeping the media ‘on-message’ has become far more important than the facts underlying the message itself.
Therefore, paradoxically, I think if anything the WMD dossier has been spun less than the usual stream of propaganda from Downing Street. This is because the tension before the conflict had been so high, that even the spin-doctors at No 10 would have appreciated the hightened exposure they were facing. I bet you that they actually took care not to spin too much and stay with ‘just the facts’.
That they failed so miserably is not evidence that they needed to exaggerate the threat Saddam posed to the Western world. It shows that, under scrutiny, even when the government tries to be honest and credible,their routine lies and disregard for the truth leave them looking like used car salesmen.
Governments lie because that is what governments do
To expect otherwise is to expect a government
not to act like a government.
Colour me cynical but whenever I hear the word ‘campaign’ these days I generally assume the worst. If it isn’t a bleat for some more state nannying then it’s a demand for some godawful prohibition or other. I realise how jaundiced I sound but I am confident that an examination of the record of these things over the last two decades or so would bear me out.
However, there are always exceptions:
Tony Martin, the farmer jailed for the manslaughter of a burglar, will campaign after his release this month for better legal protection for householders who defend themselves against intruders, his MP said yesterday.
He will also work for changes in the law to stop burglars obtaining legal aid to sue homeowners for compensation if they are injured during a break-in.
There is an old Japanese saying that time is a slow but fair judge. How sweet it would be if Mr.Martin were to finally triumph over those who have wronged him.
In regards to a proposed change in the law it is my view that while the letter of the law should be examined the weight of the problem lies with its application and the assumptions of both the police and the judiciary. It is well past time that those assumptions were challenged and I cannot imagine a more worthy champion than Tony Martin who, as the saying goes, has been there, done that and got the T-shirt (prison issue).
We at the Samizdata will be keeping a close eye on this campaign.
Now, we have to be doing something right! The Guardian has written many articles about blogs – arguably they are the most clued up newspaper in the UK on the subject, however much it pains me to admit it – and so far not once they mentioned Samizdata.net. The latest omission occurred in their article on political blogs, a day after the VoxPolitics seminar in the House of Commons. We were there, in force, and made ourselves heard. To our surprise, we learnt that many people who are not our natural fellow-travellers (to put it mildly) apparently read us quite regularly. So it can hardly be said that we are unknown among the statist left and right.
- The Guardian have heard of us, in fact, maybe even read us but given our dislike for their ideology cannot bring themselves to mention us. Perhaps, the Guardian blog crew who have studiously been ignoring our existence hope that if they shut their eyes long enough we will have disappeared like a bad vision. Ain’t gonna happen, guys. If this is the case, the Guardian is biased and their reporting is poor.
- It is just possible they have never heard of us – stranger things have happened. However, we do get around and it is no mean feat to miss us in the blogosphere… Out of eighteen bloggers they mention in the article we know personally, in the flesh, seven of them and further three certainly know about us. So, if it is the case of the Guardian missing us, well, they did not do their homework right and their reporting is poor.
It’s a win-win situation.
The Guardian do not need to like us or our writing, agree with us or even rate us particularly highly. But to write about the British blogosphere as if we do not exist, means that they really do not understand what they are writing about as we are almost certainly the most visited British political blog. We know from our comments and emails that a goodly chunk of our readers do not always agree with us. We take their custom as a compliment since they obviously find us interesting enough to return regardless.
Another letter from the source in the British Army stationed in Basra.
I am sorry about the handwriting but I am very tired, haven’t slept much for a couple of days. I keep getting woken up in the night to reach to events because they want my input on what I know and I work long hours to begin with. But it is absolutely fascinating. I love the work out here. The patrolling is interesting although I do not get to do much of that, but the work I am doing now is great.
I am ‘interviewing’ people to find things out, using as much knowledge of Arabic culture as possible and in the long term cases ‘getting inside their heads’. With each one, it is like a performance in which you try to build a connection, a friendship, so you must find the things you agree on. At the same time you must keep a core that is remote and calculating, wondering why is he telling me this, what is his motivation?…
A lot of the rest of the time I am analysing information, explaining it to others and briefing, dealing with ‘specialist agencies’. Sometimes I get to go find some things out myself, ‘discreetly’. And I also work out what we should do to catch the enemy, and recommend it. Yesterday afternoon we carried out an op [ed. operation] based on a suggestion from me to hurt the oil smugglers. Normally, we catch at very best a tanker. Yesterday we caught four and two ships. A team effort, but my idea, so satisfying. The idea is now being continued. Prison sentences last one day so don’t deter these people but losing that much stuff will hurt!
I was called in to co-ordinate the actual capture (or rather what to do once we got them). I made the decisions, ‘interviewed’ people through my interpreter, made the plan and even kept the smugglers reasonably co-operative. That is what I call a good day’s work.
With the whole world apparently in a state of flux and a preponderance of gloomy prognoses, it gives me joy to be able to report just a smidgeon of good news:
Feminists and environmentalists, social pressure groups which usually see eye to eye, have clashed over a shock poster campaign on the streets of Paris and other French cities.
The poster shows a woman’s breast dribbling a dirty, oily fluid. There is no caption or explanation, other than the name of a private, ecological foundation, run by a celebrated television journalist and green campaigner, Nicolas Hulot.
No show-trials or North Korean-style denouncements yet but give it time.
More please and faster.
Image located via D Anghelone
In reverse order, they are:
10. You can trade an old .44 for two new .22s
9. You can keep one handgun at home and have another for when you’re
on the road.
8. If you admire a friend’s handgun, and tell him so, he will probably
let you try it out a few times.
7. Your primary handgun doesn’t mind if you have a backup.
6. Your handgun will stay with you even if you’re out of ammo.
5. A handgun doesn’t take up a lot of closet space.
4. Handguns function normally every day of the month.
3. A handgun doesn’t ask “Do these new grips make me look fat?”
2. A handgun doesn’t mind if you go to sleep after you use it.
AND…..THE NUMBER ONE REASON WHY A HANDGUN IS BETTER THAN A WOMAN….
1. You can buy a silencer for a handgun.
[My thanks to Dr.Chris Tame for posting this to the Libertarian Alliance Forum.]
The BBC reports that in a surprisingly positive move, the US Senate has voted to withdraw funding from the proposed Terrorism Information Awareness programme (TIA).
The TIA (previously called by the much more chilling name “Total Information Awareness”) was to have been the largest snooping system in the world. Its objective was to centrally co-ordinate and cross-reference every single piece of data available on every single person in America. The justification for this appalling idea was the phoney “war on terror”. As usual, supporters used the lie that “the innocent have nothing to fear”.
It now seems that with funding removed the TIA will be scrapped – publicly at least.
Now if only this country could remove funding from then scrap Big Blunkett.
Least you think all we talk about is politics here on Samizdata.net. I just got through watching a DVD of Dog Soldiers and it is proof positive that you do not need a famous cast of ‘Big Names’ or vast budget for special effects to make a rather good horror B-movie.
The script will not win any awards for originality but as anyone who knows British squaddies could tell you, the characters are well presented and credible: the slang and comportment are perfect. Also they react as one might expect when suddenly confronted with a seemingly unbelievable yet manifestly undeniable situation… which is to say they do not (initially) believe that they are being stalked by honest-to-goodness werewolves, but they do not deny the obvious either when they find themselves wading through gore and intestines.
Excellent stuff… if you are a connoisseur of B-movies, then your hard earned pounds/bucks/€uros could be far worse spent than renting or purchasing this dirty little gem of a movie. I have seen flicks ten times worse than this which cost one hundred times more to make.
Waahhhoooooooooooooooo!
Never mind the ‘luck of the Irish’, what about the luck of the lawyers? I ask you, has there ever been a group of people so consistently blessed by the fickle finger of fate? Somebody ‘up there’ must like them, that’s for sure.
‘Not so’, I hear you cry? Well, how’s this for proof? No sooner has the legal profession turned its formidable guns on the fast-food industry than, flash-bang-whallop-wham-as if by magic, some learned scientists turn up with a whole bunker full of ammunition:
Women with a high-fat diet may increase their risk of developing breast cancer later in life, say researchers.
A study of more than 13,000 women from Norfolk found that women who ate the most saturated fats – such as those found in chocolate snacks and fast food -were almost twice as likely to develop cancer, compared with those who ate the least.
I am sure it is nothing more than coincidental. Honestly. Really. But, you must surely concede, the timing could not be better.
And is that lucky or what?
The political storm over the government’s ‘Iraq dossier’ seems to have taken a rather macabre twist:
Police searching for the weapons expert suggested by the government as the possible source for a BBC story on Iraq say the body they have found matches Dr David Kelly’s appearance.
In fact, the TV news is now reporting that the recovered body is that of Dr.Kelly.
Let the conspiracy theories commence.
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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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