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There’s a market for “date rape” drugs and now a market for “anti-date rape drug” devices. Drink Safe Technology is producing ‘smart coasters’ which sniff chemical interference with drinks.
October 6th, 2002 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Now at some risk of provoking an adverse response, I am going to have to raise a point regarding what is and is not a reasonable view regarding violence. Although we have written many articles about the subject on Samizdata, I am not talking about self defence this time, which to most libertarians is a ‘no brainer’… if you are threatened with violence, you may defend yourself. Nor was I talking about the legitimacy of war against Iraq, which though more contentious is, I think, also a legitimate use of violence. No, I am discussing the use of violence in everyday life. Now this is still a subject many have written about on this blog, usually with regard to violence and coercion directed at children as one of our contributors is the redoubtable Sarah Lawrence of Taking Children Seriously fame, and two of our frequent guest writers are supporters of TCS. But I am not really talking about whether or not a child should be hit by their parents specifically but rather whether it is ever justified to use force outside the context of self-defense. When discussing the use of coercion against children, I was once asked if I would ever use force against an adult just because I disapproved of their behaviour in non-self defense situations. My answer was that whilst I would agree that as a general principle I am indeed against the use of force, there are indeed situations in the real world in which violence in the only way to communicate meaningfully. About 18 months ago, I was crossing a street in Battersea with my 81 year old grandmother. A driver recklessly rounded a corner and only just managed to slam on the brakes in time to avoid running my grandmother down. Far from apologising for his reckless driving and the fact he nearly killed her, he blew his horn and abused her. There were no witnesses to hand, meaning a formal complaint would just be our word against his, and as he was clearly about to drive off, I was faced with either doing nothing or expressing my displeasure forcefully. I reached in the open window, dragged him out of his car by his collar and punched him in the face. Although we did not discourse at great length, I can say with some confidence that I am sure he understood the causal links which had lead to his face and my fist coming into close proximity. Do I recommend this as method of communication? Generally no, but the choice I had was simply to allow him to drive away after having nearly killed my grandmother or use force to demonstrate that such behaviour in entirely unacceptable. If there had been witnesses to hand I suspect I would have noted his licence plate and called the police but that was not so… I chose to react forcefully and would do so again in similar circumstances. It may not have been the legal thing to do but I would contend it was the correct thing to do. The point I am trying to make is that in the real world, sometimes people act entirely unreasonably and thus to try and reason with them is unlikely to achieve much more or less by definition: they are unreasonable. 99 times out of 100 violence is not the answer. On that 100th time however, some level of violence is the only meaningful reaction. The world is a messy place. October 6th, 2002 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some time ago I sent in a blog claiming two things – first that many of the doctrines of Keynesianism were nonsense, and secondly that one did not need to be an Austrian economics person to see this. I have had some replies to what I wrote. No one has claimed that one needs to be an Austrian school person to see there is something very wrong with Keynesianism (that no one claimed this surprised me – but then I am an Austrian school person myself). Some people opposed my opinion that Keynesianism is nonsense (and opposed my strong language with strong language of their own). However, no one has produced any evidence in favour of Keynesianism – either directly or via the books they have suggested I read. Such concepts as the ‘multiplier’ (presented in almost all basic economics text books) remain without argument in their defence. The idea that government can help the economy by (for example) issuing money and using this money to buy sand and hire people to shovel this sand into the sea, is absurd. To teach such doctrines someone must either be a knave (someone who teaches something he does not believe), or a fool (someone who believes nonsense). Of course even if one insisted that government ‘investment’ actually be about buying capital goods (rather than ‘investment’ simply being another word for government spending) the idea would still make no sense – investment must be based on real saving (not credit money games). It is tragic that fallacies refuted by such men as Bastiat almost two centuries ago (such as the fallacy of the broken window) are treated as ‘scientific’ by the vast majority of basic economics text books (often with lots of formulas and pseudo scientific language shoved in to try and hide the basic absurdities). Even as I type this many nations in the world are undergoing rapidly rising prices (and prices rising at an increasing rate) whilst at the same time these nations have falling output and rising unemployment. If Keynesianism means anything the above should not be possible. An Austrian economics person does not rely on empirical examples, but such examples are noteworthy. When one sees the rising inflation, falling output and rising unemployment of such nations as Venezuela and Argentina the concepts of Keynesianism fall apart. As some of these nations export oil and some import oil the idea that ‘oil shocks’ are a magic way out for the Keynesianism falls apart also. When I see that most undergraduate textbooks that do not have concepts such as the various ‘multiplier’ in them (or treat such concepts with the contempt they deserve) then I will apologise for being too hard on the economics profession. I would apologise if even ONE textbook recommended at a British state university exposed such concepts as nonsense. As far as I am aware no apology is in order at this time. Paul Marks October 6th, 2002 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is an article from the Guardian:
Alright, I lied. This article did not appear in the Guardian. But it probably will at some point. Who knows, maybe I’ll send it in as copy. October 6th, 2002 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is a new generation coming up through the ranks of the US Air force, one with a steely eyed resolve much like their grandparents back in the days of WWII. The main article is here. October 6th, 2002 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own. October 5th, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
LIBERTY 2002: the European conference of The Libertarian International and Libertarian Alliance Saturday 9 November – Sunday 10 November, 2002 Speakers:
The £75 conference fee covers conference attendance, morning and afternoon tea and coffee, and the closing Banquet (but not accommodation – see below for a suggestion on this). Are you going to attend the LIBERTY 2002 conference? Several members of the Samizdata Team will be there, so ask around and I am sure you will be able to find us. → Continue reading: More on the LIBERTY 2002 Conference October 5th, 2002 | Comments are closed
In both the United States and Britain home education is on the increase. Roland Meighan, formerly special professor of education at Nottingham university estimates that at least 1% of school aged children are home educated in Britain. In the United States the figure is 5% with a growth rate of 20% each year and rising. In both the United States and Britain home education is increasingly a step taken by families disillusioned by the provision of mainstream education. However, the content of this disillusionment seems to vary enormously. In the States, despite a growing number of secular home educators, the religious reason continues to dominate. In a society that separates religion and state, religious parents, especially those on the fundamentalist right are likely to withdraw their children from schooling. In contrast, Britain has no such separation of religion and state. Religious education and a daily act of worship are mandatory in state schools and the government is set to forge ahead with plans to increase the number of state funded schools with an explicitly religious foundation despite the protests of the National Secular Society. Of course, for some religious families this weak inoculation of school based religion is insufficient, especially when evolution is taught routinely in biology classes, but those who withdraw their children for religious reasons are very much in the minority of British home educators. In the United States, Ronald Presitto1 tells us that the right of parents to raise their children according to their religious convictions is at the heart of the divergence between ‘home schooling’ and the educational establishment. In contrast, most British home educators begin with pragmatic concerns – children are withdrawn when severe bullying incidents fail to be resolved, when they are too bored to tolerate the standardised national curriculum, when their special needs are not taken into account or when the only school place offered is at some dismal, failing institution where you wouldn’t leave a dog. Some do start out with convictions about individualised education or religion, but these are the minority. What American home schoolers and British home educators have in common is the reaction of their ‘authorities’ to their presence. From local officials to policy makers to government ministers there is a swathe of opinion that believes that parents are not to be trusted with their children and that the State, whether it is secular, socialist or broadly Judaeo-Christian, represents safer hands and inculcates more objective values. Recently in Britain the host of a prestigious legal radio programme (Radio 4 ‘Law in Action’) opined exactly that in his weekly Guardian column – teachers are trained, accredited and hand down the official package to children, but heaven (or not) only knows what parents might be doing to their children. → Continue reading: Behind the scenes in home education October 5th, 2002 | Comments are closed
They’ve never caught a rabbit, but they’re eagerly sniffing around for some children to harvest. According to these Tranzi bloodsuckers, HM Government has not been sufficiently zealous in nationalising children in order to better protect them from their venal, barbaric and untrustworthy parents.
‘Very large number’!!??? How many is that exactly? 43,598? 2 million? Half a billion? Don’t they realise that every one of the very large number of very bad laws starts with a completely fabricated statistic? Don’t smack me on the bottom, Lady Walmsley, just kiss my arse. The real reason HM Government won’t enact these stupid laws is because they know that there is widespread public opposition to them; thus proving that it is not the world which is going mad, just the people who think they run it. And the people who think they run it have an agenda which necessitates the eradication of the family as an impediment to the building of New Global Man. I’m not as angry as I should be about this because I actually think that the UN is lighting its own way to dusty death. I am reminded of that story of a meek little housewife who turned into a rage-beast and lifted up a truck to save her trapped child. It is probably nothing more than an urban legend but even if it is, it serves a useful function for it is an expression of the universal folk-knowledge about the lengths a parent will go to to protect to their children. The UN will now have made itself that little bit less popular in Britain and, as their agenda creeps forward, the mask of purported benevolence will begin to slip, the sinister purpose will be seen for what it is and little folk the world over will turn on them like Viking beserkers. As for me, I have a little disposable capital that I might just invest in the double-headed axe business. After all, the UN, they ain’t no friends of mine. October 5th, 2002 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
According to last week’s Independent on Sunday a new mental health campaign sparked off by the fear that parents may face jail over compulsory drug orders for their children if a new Bill becomes law. Not content with collecting personal and private data on parents and children via the Orwellian Connexions scheme, the Blairite regime is now proposing to parent our children for us still further by accusing parents who do not favour drugging their children of being negligent and denying their children medical treatment. The use of the ADHD drug, Ritalin, continues to rocket – 208,000 in 2001 compared to 2,000 a decade earlier. Compulsory treatment orders are a symptom of a culture which treats children as products and an adjunct of administering a brutal, centralised ‘free’ education system. Those who do not conform to this ‘one size fits all’ educational machine are ‘bad’ and/or ‘dysfunctional’ and can be diagnosed and treated. The more the system feels threatened, the more aggressive the intervention. In a collapsing state education system so-called hyperactivity disorders such as ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are popular tools of control and neatly shift the focus of failure away from the non-individually responsive institution and onto the child. There are an increasing number of doctors and psychiatrists who consider that there is no objective difference in the behaviours of so called ‘normal’ and ADHD children. There are even some, like Thomas Szasz, who put these objections vigorously, pointing out that feeding children what is effectively ‘speed’ in order to curb what is not a disease, but a ‘catch all’ for troublesome behaviour, is a matter of adult convenience and control, not of medicine.
When big brother is threatening to drug your children so that they can be more suited to the homogenised environments of state schools perhaps its time not only to fight back, but to ensure that more and more people are aware that they can opt out of the system entirely and choose the freedom of home education. The hidden costs of so called ‘free’; state education are on the increase – not only through massive taxation, but also via services delivered with increasing menaces to civil liberties. Dr. Jan Fortune-Wood 1 = Chemical Straitjackets for Children by Thomas S. Szasz October 4th, 2002 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Samizdata.net editors were out searching the streets of London for a new HQ… when they suddenly spotted the perfect address! October 4th, 2002 | Comments are closed
1. noun. One who reads many blogs but leaves no evidence of themselves such as comments behind; a silent observer of blogs. 2. noun. One who reads many blogs but has no blog of their own; a blog-watcher or blog voyeur. Usage: “But, Mikey, I can’t have a blog of my own! I’m a blurker!” October 4th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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