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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No, Marie Claire is not my supermodel younger sister. She’s a British woman’s magazine, and a lady writing a piece for Marie Claire rang today asking about the libertarian line on incest (which she knew, either from the Libertarian Alliance website or via that from Sean Gabb’s Freelife website, that Sean had done a piece about, many years ago).
I told her (a) that you need to distinguish between morality and legality (legitimacy of social pressure, etc.), (b) that it ought to be legal if both parties consent, (c) that the consent principle meshes nicely with the fact that the police are powerless to catch people if no one is complaining – and thus telling them – about whatever it is, but that (d) the consent principle comes under severe strain as soon as a weaker party is on the receiving end of an inescapable power relationship, as is almost invariably the case where children are involved. It’s tricky to get things like this right, but she seemed sympathetic. Consent lead us on to the mass of consenting relationships (e.g. between the “Metric Martyrs” and their customers, all happy to trade in feet and inches) that are now being busily illegalised by our pathologically meddlesome government.
A nice illustration of how the willingness to assert libertarian principles, even (especially) when what follows from them is deeply disreputable, leads directly to mainstream media attention, and not just in the men’s pages.
She said she’d ring back if a piece does materialise in Marie Claire which refers to any of the above, and I’ll keep you posted.
Computer World has recently warned us about a German research student who found out that by measuring the light reflected from a user’s face information on a computer screen can be reconstructed. As if we have not enough surveillance in the UK already.
The Cambridge whizz-kid explains: “Even if I can’t see your screen surface, as long as your face is illuminated from a distance of 50 meters I can collect the photons from your face into a sensor and I will have a very good chance of turning it into a readable text”… While his research on information leakage from monitor reflections shouldn’t worry the general population of computer users, government agencies and corporations dealing with top secret or confidential materials would probably want to take precautions, he said.
I find this information interesting for two reasons. First, having grown up the other side of the Iron Curtain, this is the first time I felt a stab of regret that the Cold War is over as such technology has its obvious and spectacular uses. Secondly, being a woman I have already thought of an ‘improvement’ to its application – a light absorbent or, better yet, information distorting make up.
It also demonstrates, at least to me, that one should not attempt to control or regulate the consequences of human inventiveness. Individuals will always find a way around such measures using unforeseen and exotic approaches. The only way to counter negative results of such creativity is to let other individuals’ twisted minds match it…
I just spotted this splendid article on the ‘Grauniad’/Observer website which actually have the bravery to call for the complete abolition of Britain’s third rate socialist healthcare system. The sooner the better.
UPI reported recently in an article titled Big brother is big business that the UK is the most remotely surveilled state in the world.
Advocates point to its efficacy at the same time as national crime rates are soaring. A study by the Scottish Center for Criminology suggested that “spy” cameras had little or no effect on crime. It concluded that “reductions were noted in certain categories, but there was no evidence to suggest that the cameras had reduced crime overall.”
Yet more and more CCTV cameras appear on our streets every day as companies vie for state contracts to bring Orwell’s vision of a Britain under all pervasive observation to reality. Authorities invariably claim that they are to discourage violent crimes and burglary, yet increasingly they are used to prosecute people for transgressing traffic and litter regulations. Nightmarish.
When the state watches you,
dare to stare back
There is an ever-so-slight ‘1962’ feeling in the air now that the Pentagon has issued (or ‘leaked’ depending on the news source) its Nuclear Hit-List which includes Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Russia and China. It must be just a little unsettling to know that somewhere in a mountain silo is a thermonuclear device with your name on it.
And I’ll bet that drawing up that list was a tough one (“No, no. Mr. President, please, there is just no strategic justification for adding France to the list!”).
But Washington has breached the taboo and I see no reason why I should not gleefully jump on the bandwagon. So I have drawn my own ‘Nuclear Hit-List’ and it reads as follows:
1. Brussels
2. Noam Chomsky
3. The Guardian
4. Brussels
5. The BBC
6. Jack Straw
7. Brussels
Oh and Brussels.
I wish to make it clear that I maintain an official ‘no-first strike’ policy
John Weidner‘s Random Jottings is a rambling, strangely structured blog that reminds me of wandering through an antique shop. It is a place filled with peculiar and fascinating artifacts, some clearly desirable and collectable and others curious but of unclear purpose like a button hook or silver chatelaine.
You are as likely to find information about a resurgence in skilled oriental rug making in Turkey as you are to see commentary on the war in Afghanistan. It may be the only blog I would describe as ‘charming’. Visit daily because who knows what you might find?
Harry Browne’s LibertyWire recently posted a letter from Rob Kampia, the Executive Director of the DC based Marijuana Policy Project (mpp@mpp.org) that many of you will find interesting.
Here’s the text from Rob Kampia’s letter:
On Tuesday of this week, three more members of Congress added their names to H.R. 2592, the Ron Paul / Barney Frank medical marijuana bill currently pending in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill now has 29 congressional sponsors.
These new House members are signing on to the bill largely because people on the Marijuana Policy Project’s e-mail list have used http://www.mpp.org/usa to fax 7,483 letters to their U.S. House members in support of this bill.
Thanks to the American Liberty Foundation, I am being permitted here to reach out to you, too.
Would you please visit http://www.mpp.org/usa to fax a personalized, pre-written letter asking your three members of Congress to pass the medical marijuana bill? This Web page provides a list of the 89 U.S. House members and 4 U.S. senators who have taken at least one positive action in support of medical marijuana.
If enacted, H.R. 2592 would allow states to determine their own medical marijuana policies without federal interference. Our goal is to persuade dozens of additional House members to co-sponsor H.R. 2592 and — at the same time — we are trying to persuade one U.S. senator to introduce a companion bill in the Senate.
The need for this legislation has never been greater. Medical marijuana is now legal in eight states — Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington — yet the DEA has conducted raids on a series of medical marijuana distribution centers in California since October.
In response to the October raid, a U.S. Justice Department spokesperson said, “The recent enforcement is indicative that we have not lost our priorities in other areas since Sept. 11.” This is an outrageous statement, and it’s time for us to fight back.
Please visit http://www.mpp.org/usa right away to add your voice to our campaign to stop the federal government’s war on medical marijuana patients and — really — the federal government’s war on states’ rights.
As a fellow libertarian, I can tell you there is nothing in H.R. 2592 that you won’t like. After all, the bill is good enough for Congressman Ron Paul to sponsor!
To further escalate the campaign to change federal policy, we are running a full-page ad in The New York Times today! It lists Walter Cronkite, Hugh Downs, a host of other celebrities and opinion leaders, various health and medical organizations, and more than 300 state legislators who are calling upon President Bush to change the federal policy. (See http://www.CompassionateAccess.org )
Would you please visit http://www.mpp.org/usa today? Thank you in advance for your help.
For those of you who are relative newcomers to the scene, Ron Paul is a Libertarian in Republican clothing. In 1988 he ran as the Libertarian Presidential candidate. I worked with he and his committee on a number of occasions and even wrote his domestic and international Space policy. I also sat and briefed him before he spoke in front of a crowd at an International Space Development Conference in Denver in May 1988, the first time a Presidential candidate had ever done so.
In other words, Ron Paul is solid and if he introduced the bill, I’ll take it as given it is at least born libertarian.
Perry de Havilland, David Carr, Christian Michel and I all attended a meeting last Friday night. David Carr has a car (naturally), and drove us all back home, and the first stop was Chateau Perry where we paused for coffee. We covered a lot of conversational ground most agreeably, part of which was about what if? … some particular bit of history had gone differently, and radically changed the next bit of history?
One of the most interesting books I read during the year 2001 was called exactly this, What If?, and was about exactly that. (What if?: Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been, edited by Robert Cowley, first published by Putnam, New York, 1999; my paperback edition, Pan, London, 2001.)
For instance, did you know that in 1931, a New York taxicab injured and might easily have killed Winston Churchill? No, nor did I. It’s the kind of event that gets left out of the regular history books, because what might have happened didn’t.
Better know to specialists (such as Perry – he finished the story for me on Friday night) is that in 1241 a Mongol army was just about to trash Vienna and probably then move south and abort the Italian Renaissance. But then, the Mongol Supreme Boss of Bosses (one of Ghenghis Khan’s sons) died and his successor had to be picked. Since the Mongol army was always deeply involved in this particular decision (a wise procedure if you think about it), it had to go back to Mongolia at once. It never returned.
Or what of the Assyrian army that was just about to obliterate Jerusalem and strangle the Jewish religion at birth, in 701 BC? It caught a plague and died. The Jews, instead of ceasing to exist as a coherent people, regarded themselves from then on as chosen ones whose God had made a particular point of saving, unlike all the other gods in the area who had proved useless against the Assyrians. Take away that plague, and western civilisation turns out just a bit different, doesn’t it?
Theodore F. Cook Jr. begins his piece about Midway thus: “There is a story, no doubt apocryphal, that gamers at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, have many times replayed the 1942 Battle of Midway … but have never been able to produce an American victory.” Had Japan won Midway, America would still have beaten them in WW2, but it would have taken longer, and the consequences of that would have been …
Of all the history books I’ve ever read, this one brought the past most vividly to life for me, and connected me to it most strongly.
For us now, the next bit of history is fraught with alternatives. Is America about to attack Iraq, and if so how will that play out? What if a Muslim terrorist does manage to contrive a nuclear explosion in some American city? Or in a European city? (Which of those two would make quite a difference.) What will happen to China? Smooth ascent to superpower? Bloody break-up? Ditto India, much in the news now. A week or so ago I posted a speculation about the future of Japan, and let’s just say that not all the resulting e-mails were in agreement, with me or with each other. Speaking locally, will Britain subside into a mere EU province, or will it shake itself free of the EU and continue to make an independent difference to the world?
What If? showed me a past that was likewise fraught with portentous alternatives. To be alive in the past, just as now, was not to be looking at just the one next bit of history, the one that with hindsight we know actually happened. Then as now, they faced many futures, not just the one. Then as now, individual accidents, and also of course individual efforts could make a huge difference.
I love Grand Theories of history, and this is the grandest Grand Theory of them all: Things Could Have Turned Out Quite Differently.
As is obvious from the previous article, we have a new gun in town… by the name of Adriana Cronin. You will quickly discover she is blogosphere’s very own Lara Croft, complete with serious motorbike and a need for speed.
It is a strange twist of fate that I should make my debut on the blog defending a French film that was found too offensive to be advertised on the London Underground (known locally as ‘The Tube’). This caring attitude of the tube authorities to French sensitivities and tourists has been noted and reported by Reuters. The picture accompanying the article made me think of the aesthetically minded among us bloggers (no names, Perry)…and I must admit the hand gun looks quite impressive.
 I do not know whether this sudden respect for French etatism is a good or bad sign. A bad sign because the male population of London will not be perked up every morning by a sight that could actually compete with the latest Dolce & Gabbana underwear advertising campaign – and as we know competition is good. A good sign because more people may realise how pointless such bans are. It may also highlight the fact that the film was not banned in the UK despite the opposition it faces in France. So much for European harmonisation. Vive raunchy French films!
Steven Green has modestly put himself forward for consideration as the next Pope. However John-Paul II has given the Vodka Pundit some sound ex cathedra advice about the wisdom of taking his job.
Following hot on the heels on people like Jorg Haider in Austria and Umberto Bossi in Italy, the newest kid on the Nationalist block appears to be Pim Fortuyn who is causing more than a stir in the normally sedate fabric of the Dutch political landscape.
The rise of Mr.Fortuyn and his anti-immigrant message is notable if only because of Holland’s legendary tradition of moderation and tolerance. Maybe this is curiously reflected by the fact that I cannot think of any other Nationalist candidate who is overtly homosexual. It’s probably a ‘Dutch thing’.
Mercifully, the article stops short of describing him as ‘charismatic’ but it pulls no punches otherwise:
“Nearly one half of 18-30 year-olds recently polled want to see zero Muslim immigration, and said they would be voting for Mr Fortuyn in May’s ballots.”
And it looks like those 18-30 year olds were good to their word because Mr.Fortuyn has just trounced his opposition in the municipal elections in his native Rotterdam and, for better or worse, he is now clearly a man to be reckoned with:
“However, the Dutch political establishment is at a loss when it comes to countering the Fortuyn phenomenon. They say he has no party manifesto – which is true, Fortuyn has promised to present one later this month – and accuse him of pandering to ultra rightwing sentiments with his controversial statements about asylum seekers and Muslims. Still, Mr Fortuyn appears to draw voters from both the left and right sides of the political spectrum”
Time will tell if the ‘Fortuyn Factor’ has legs. It could just be a flash in the proverbial pan; a protest vote that rear-ends the complacent political establishment into action.
But I have the feeling that the phenomenon is not merely transitory. These guys are popping up all over Europe and making a whole lot of people very uncomfortable. Of course, to suggest that immigrants are the source of Europe’s problems is simplistic drivel but it is equally simplistic to suggest that men like Fortuyn are merely exploiting resentment for their advantage. Europe has been governed for decades by a consensual Centrist/Social Democratic porridge that long ago ran out of ideas. It is the Randian ‘stagnant swamp’ which exudes nothing but choking miasma from its fetid pools.
Some people are praying for rain.
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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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