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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The European Commission has drawn up a list of 35 food and drink brand names including Champagne, Bordeaux wine, Roquefort cheese and Parma ham that it wants to reserve for EU producers. A Commission official explains:
We’re trying to recuperate the exclusive use of such names in the WTO. We’ve been usurped of the names and we want them back.
Please note the use of the majestic plural.
The agriculture negotiations are one of the sticking points in the wide-ranging trade talks, pitting the EU variously against the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina. Those countries accuse Europe of trying to introduce trade protection on farm goods through the back door: As the Deputy Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Jon Dudas puts it:
It appears that the EU is asking the U.S. government, U.S. producers and U.S. consumers to subsidise EU producers…so that EU producers can charge monopoly prices for their products.
No element of surprise there as the EU needs to find new ways to pay for the newly ‘reformed’ Common Agricultural Policy…
EU member states are currently chewing over the list. Greece has demanded the inclusion of feta cheese while France wants an extra seven products added including Beaujolais wine and Calvados brandy. Member state trade officials must agree the list by the middle of August.
Well, there is always hope as EUcrats are not known for agreement and ability to meet deadlines…
Statewatch has a good exposition of the issues surrounding ID cards in the UK historically. At least in those days MPs put up some fight for “our freedom from being challenged on every occasion to produce something to prove that we are certain persons”
Aneurin Bevan MP, 1947, from the government benches in the House of Commons:
I believe that the requirement of an internal passport is more objectionable than an external passport, and that citizens ought to be allowed to move about freely without running the risk of being accosted by a policeman or anyone else, and asked to produce proof of identity.
The US Justice Department’s internal watchdog said on Monday that it had demanded investigations into nearly three dozen credible complaints of abuses committed in the implementation of the controversial USA Patriot Act.
The alleged abuses, committed mostly against Muslim suspects rounded up as part of the war on terrorism, ranged from beatings to threats, as well as one allegation that FBI agents planted evidence. The inspector-general’s office said that it had received more than 1,000 complaints of civil rights violations under the Patriot Act in the six months ending June 15; 34 cases were deemed serious and credible enough to warrant investigations.
34 out of 1000. That’s not bad. But that’s only the complaints. How many other cases has the Patriot Act played a part in? Regardless, we are left with 34 cases of abuse of civil rights. It is easy to say that 1 case is too many, but that only leads to anarchy. Mistakes will be made because humans are involved, so we must accept 1 case or abandon laws all together. I’m not ready to do that just yet.
So the question becomes, are 34 cases worth it? To answer that, we must determine the benefits. What are we getting out of the Patriot act? 34 cases worth of protection? I don’t know. It is the inherent flaw of laws. When they’re working, we don’t see the benefits. Is terrorism down? It seems like it. Is it because of the Patriot Act? I somehow doubt it.
So what benefits have we gotten from the Patriot Act? It would seem very few. So are the 34 cases worth it? If the benefits are small, it would seem not. However, the fact that we have an watchdog groups aimed directy at this gives some hope. The fact that this report was issued proves that things aren’t nearly as bad as some would have us believe. We need to keep an eye on the Patriot Act and push to end it when it expires, but remember that we do need laws. Finding the balance between safety and liberty is a never ending task but the Patriot Act is on the wrong side of it.
Blogger Jim Henley of Unqualified Offerings looks into the issue of American football teams whose names have sparked controversy, such as teams calling themselves the Redskins, and so on. Now I don’t want to enter the swamps of that particular controversy, which Jim negotiates with customary dexterity. No what struck me is this – why don’t European sports teams have such names at all?
For example, consider the Premiership football (soccer to you barbarians in the colonies) league. The teams are called Manchester United, Liverpool FC, Tottenham Hotspur, etc. Not many references to ethnic groups there (though of course football does have its ethnic issues, as any Glasgow Rangers or Celtic fan would point out). The nomaclature of football is pretty tame, even while the makeup of the teams and the fans is not.
Look elsewhere. English cricket teams are named after counties of England. All very staid. Of course when you go outside the field of professional sports, it can get a bit more interesting. I occasionally play cricket for a side called The Pretenders. (My favourite cricket team was called The Corridor of Uncertainty!). But at the professional level at least, British teams sound about as exciting as a German movie without the subtitles.
Why are our teams sporting such dull names compared to our American cousins? I need enlightenment on this subject.
Although this article was published a week ago, I doubt it is out of date. Andrew Osborn speaks of his and other Belgians’ encounters with the country’s small army of fonctionnaires.
Armed with a battery of Dickensian stamps, a rulebook as obtuse as it is thick and the mindset of Cruella De Vil, they do their best to make the life of the ordinary citizen a special Belgian form of hell.
Apparently, in Brussels, you can end up in court for taking your rubbish out a day early.
Put it out on the wrong day or in the wrong type of bag and you are likely to bring down the entire weight of the Belgian establishment on you. A friend recently received a letter saying she had been fined 80 euros (£57) for putting her bin bags out a day early.
But how did they know it was her rubbish? The “rubbish police” of course: enclosed with the demand for 80 euros were grubby photocopies the police had made of letters addressed to her which they had scrupulously recovered from the offending bin bag. Big Brother, it seems, is alive and living in a suburb of Brussels. In order to contest the fine she had to appear before a special “bin bag” tribunal and explain that a neighbour had erroneously put it out for her.
Failure to sort your rubbish into a choice of three different coloured bin bags is also a serious offence. In normal circumstances, that would be understandable, highly laudable, and a real fillip for Belgium’s environmental credentials. But it isn’t: all the bags are thrown in the back of the same truck and then thrown onto the same dump. The Belgians, it is explained, are merely trying to get people into good habits before they start properly recycling the rubbish themselves.
The Belgians are taxed on the most ludicrous items. Who works out which ones they should be?
The issue on which Belgian officials outdo themselves is tax. Own a car radio? You had better make sure you’re paying the special car radio tax, and don’t try to pretend that you haven’t got one. They know.
Want to open an office in Brussels? Then make sure you’re paying your computer screen tax. Just count up the screens and tell the authorities and they’ll send you a bill.
The most poignant example of the kind of mentality that is threatening to engulf Britain is the depressing lack of humanity of the rule and those who enforce them. A long-term resident gloomily describes his trip to a Belgian police station to complain about being woken up by builders illegally starting work at 6.30am:
“Do you have your identity card Monsieur?” (mandatory in Belgium).
“Well, no, it’s 7am and I’ve forgotten it. I’ve just woken up. Sorry.”
“Monsieur, that’s an infraction of the penal code. You’re breaking the law.”
We often complain that the British officials are robotic, impersonal and inefficient. And yes, they are. But they cannot compete with the spawn of the Belgian officialdom.
Steve Sailer is a name I hear now and again, every few weeks, but I know very little about the guy. Someone commented on this, which I wrote last night (about men wearing their shirts outside their trousers), to the effect that Sailer had something to say about this, about a week ago, that was relevant. I couldn’t find it, but I did find this 1995 piece about the nuances of why race relations in the US army are so much better than race relations in US colleges.
It’s no surprise to me that treating people in a totally meritocratic way, regardless of race, makes for better inter-ethnic relations, or that armies can’t allow inter-ethnic rivalries to build up in the ranks, so they don’t. So it was another less than completely obvious idea that I found striking in this piece, which is that the way for an unpopular racial or ethnic group to make an admired impact on the wider society is for it to concentrate and conquer niches rather than disperse and try to do well across the board. Sailer’s point is that academic racial preference policies undermine (to name but one of their many drawbacks) this benign process, by over-dispersing the group supposedly being helped. → Continue reading: Niche achievement versus dispersed failure – Steve Sailer (and me) on race relations
Just as I finished posting the previous, I noticed flashing lights outside. Northern Ireland Fire Department was in the parking lot… someone tried to burn down the small building next to where I live, where the laundry room is.
Fortunately I finished my laundry several hours ago.
Arson. It has to be because one of the flatmates caught an attempt last night and put it out before it caused much damage. Two nights in a row just are not accidents. And that’s not to mention a bin fire a couple weeks ago and a car torched while I was away.
Ah, the joys of living not far enough away from a bad area. There are definitely some kids up the road who need an introduction to rock salt… Hmmm. Can’t do that here. Have to give the poor dears money instead.
Oh yeah. the second floor is usually occupied by a young family. It’s empty at the moment, but…
I’ve heard and read some media pundits who after looking at the photos of the Hussein lads suggested one may have committed suicide. I cannot make a definitive judgement from a single angle and a not terribly good photograph… but I think not.
A bullet makes a small entry wound and a large exit wound. The photo shows a large hole in the right side of the head. If this were due to a bullet, the entry wound would be on the left. If it was a suicide, he held the pistol in his left hand.
Since I’ve never heard either of the two was a left hander, I will presume this was not the case. I’d bet on shrapnel from one of the missiles as the source of the wound.
Through the good graces of the Libertarian Alliance forum, I can bring Samizdata readers some remarkable chunks from an article by Amanda Platell in the Telegraph of last Tuesday, which I think will explain rather well to baffled Americans just why some of us Brits are so much less enamoured of our Prime Minister than they are. (I can’t find this piece at the telegraph.co.uk site. I think it was only a paper piece. Anyone who can – please correct me if that’s wrong.)
The start of the piece sets the scene, which of course is the death of Dr David Kelly, and then we get to the heart of the drama:
I was a journalist of nearly 20 years, editor of a national newspaper, when I decided to run a story about Peter Mandelson’s Brazilian boyfriend. My belief then, as now, was that the identity of a gay minister’s partner was as legitimate a public interest as that of Robin Cook’s mistress. Mandelson was then one of the most powerful men in government.
Before the story was even published, my executives and I underwent a barrage of calls from the Press Complaints Commission, the proprietor Lord Hollick (a New Labour peer who took the Labour whip) and from Mandelson himself.
Most chilling was the warning relayed to me by one of my executives from a senior Blairite that if I printed I would be damned – he would destroy my life, my career, my family and my children.
It was a threat made in desperate anger but one I have subsequently learned had been used before. Even then I suspected it was a “one threat fits all”, as I have no children, but the effect was no less shocking. I was sacked weeks later.
→ Continue reading: Blair as Nixon
My boredom with eating sandwiches or salad for lunch encouraged me to visit the ready-meal section of Tesco today. The result was lasagne. As it cooked at work, one of my colleages commented on how good it smelt. I realised there was a positive externality created by cooking the meal, so I suggested to the office that they should pay me for the pleasure they were receiving.
I had no takers. Had I pushed them, they might have argued that, while the smell was enjoyable, they had not consented to it and therefore had no obligation to pay for it. They might also have pointed out that although the smell was nice, I would be getting the real benefit (the eating part).
In this example, it can be seen that charging people to receive a positive externality is unfair and absurd. Yet this is exactly the argument many people use in favour of taxpayer-funded university courses. This argument, out of all the arguments for scrapping tuition fees, is the worst.
I’ve no time (but someone here should definitely try to make the time) for a longer response to this article by Stephen Robinson in the Telegraph.
Its title – “Identity cards won’t stop the terrorists: they’re only a fig leaf ” – will do for starters.
Angelina Jolie, curvaceous star of the latest movie based on mega-hit computer game, Tomb Raider, reckons that the busty, heavily-armed heroine is a role model for women. Hmmm. An interesting thought. Croft knows how to handle guns, is mighty tough in a fight, and is rather easy on the eye (as Ms Jolie assuredly is). The ultimate libertarian heroine, perhaps?
A feature of popular culture in these past few years has been the ascent of the kick-ass female movie/tv star. Think of Buffy, for example; the character Trinity in the Matrix films, or the ladies on Charlies’ Angels. I think the whole thing got started with the likes of Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg in the old Avengers television series, and in some of the better James Bond movies.
One thing all these women have in common is that they are a million miles away from the ‘victim culture’. Nothing passive or helpless about them. It seems that popular culture is diverging increasingly from the political and legal realm. On the one hand, you have superheroes and heroines on the Big Screen. On the other, you have twerps suing fast-food joints for ‘making’ them fat.
I wonder what explains this divide?
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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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