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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Global bloggers go green with envy

· Antics & Parties

Double bugger! If Ken Layne is to be believed (and of course he should), it sounds like we missed one hell of a party in Los Angeles, hosted by our pet pinko and true gentleman, Brian Linse.

Perhaps we need to organize a London (and environs) Blogger Bash along similar lines. Sounds like a damn fine idea to me!

January 27th, 2002 | Comments are closed

US forces face disaster in Philippines

· Asian affairs · Military affairs

It appears that US soldiers being sent to the Philippines to fight against Islamic Abu Sayyaf guerillas are welcome to clean up that nation’s mess and possibly get killed doing so, but only if they are kept away from local ‘sex workers’ (remember when they were called prostitutes?). As the commanding officer of the US troops must look after his men’s morale, he should march up to Philippines President Gloria Arroyo, hand her a packet of condoms and a Koran, followed by the single word: “Choose”.

Like so many nation states, it appears the Philippines thinks it actually owns the bodies of its subject-citizens and who they may freely associate with.

January 27th, 2002 | Comments are closed

The EU nationalises bacteria

· European Union · Science & Technology

The European ‘Kommisariat’ is deeply concerned about Europe’s lack of progress in the field of biotechnology

Apparently, Europe is light years behind the USA in development and commercial application (snigger). The solution? A brand new ‘Policy Initiative’ (read ‘Five-Year Plan’) which will involve all of Europe’s biotech companies being made answerable to the suits in the European Commission for the ‘Great Leap Forward’ which is now required of them and the Commission, for its part, will ‘assist’ by means of various ‘initiatives and proposals as appropriate’

Having been ordered to compete with the USA one wonders what fate awaits European bio-engineers should they fail? Exile in Siberia? I wonder if the European Commissioners have stopped for even a second to ask themselves why companies in the USA are so far ahead? Probably not. The idea that central plans don’t work is unknown to the Eurocrats; the reality that innovation and enterprise are smothered by ‘initiatives and policies’ is offensive to them. It is as if the Soviet Union is still the blueprint for them (while being an object lesson for everybody else)

Anyway, the American biotech companies shouldn’t bother losing any sleep. If this is the way that their European counterparts are going to be forced to play their hand, then the existing gap will only grow wider

January 27th, 2002 | Comments are closed

Chickens are people too, you know

· Opinions on liberty

Unfortunately, this is not a hoax

[Editor: this story is totally fowl]

January 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed

Thai’d into the Eurozone

· European Union

I am quite convinced that the only law that will never, ever be broken is the law of ‘Unintended Consequences’

Who ever imagined that the Thai 10-Baht coin would be indistinguishable from the 2-Euro coin?

Be wary when shopping for European prostitutes: they may be ‘ladyboys’

January 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed

The danger of Social Democrats

· Irish affairs

There may be better libertarian think-tanks around in Europe than the Irish Open Republic but if so I haven’t come across them yet. I don’t know if the editor, Paul McDonnell wrote the piece appearing below but, regardless of the authorship, it cuts through all the cant and recrimination to remind us who the real enemies are.

“Post ‘peace process’ Northern Ireland is like SimCity – a computer simulation game where you get to build and run a city – played by Social Democrats. During the peace process and its aftermath political life in the Province was immersed in a warm, enervating, bath of ‘reconciliation’, ‘mutual recognition’, ‘sharing of feelings’ and general ‘feeling’ of ‘pain’ all around. The politicians, think-tanks, civil servants, peace volunteers, community action groups, women’s groups, freed murderers of the innocent and, yes, even the White House all hunkered down in a general peace and love fest where a direct question was about as welcome as a swastika flag at Woodstock.

Of course before the whole thing got going no one thought to set conditions that Sinn Fein and their tattooed counterparts on the ‘Protestant’ side must both respect and actively support the enforcement of the rule of law. Any 12 year old playing SimCity realises that the police need to be able to uphold the rule of law or anarchy reigns and then it’s game over.

Not in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland today is what happens when Social Democrats do what they are best at. And what they are best at is Showing Concern Whilst Selling Out To Tyranny. Think of David Owen, Douglas Hurd, the British Foreign Office and the Bosnian Serbs. ‘Bombing the Serbs will make things worse’ etc. etc… Meanwhile thousands of innocents die. Likewise Northern Ireland is a product of the Social Democrat school of thought. Another name for it is fudge. Social Democrats are too influenced by the ideology that only groups, and not individuals, have real rights.Hence the ‘appeals’ to the gang who murdered the young postal worker – as if the murder of the young man was a genuine corporate act and not a conspiracy to, and commission of, murder. The ‘community leaders’ don’t want to insult anyone. If you are a murdering gang then you must be granted ‘parity of esteem’ with other groups.

Northern Ireland has been moulded into the Social Democrat narrative whose defining characteristics are mob rule and capitulation to mob rule – aka ‘achieving gender balance’, ‘equality’ and ‘parity of esteem’. The Social Democrat plan is to expand the public sector and use it as a vehicle to provide jobs for their friends and, as is the case in Northern Ireland, those whom they are afraid to confront. They pretend that they are ensuring ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’. This they do by making sure that if it employs thousands of people it doesn’t need at tax payers’ expense then at least the public sector must hire the right quotas of unneeded Catholics, Protestants, women and murderers.

The Social Democrats who sold the pass in Northern Ireland are the Irish political parties, the SDLP, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the British Government and former US President, Bill Clinton. The OUP cannot really be blamed. They were outgunned (literally) and they knew it. So when a postal worker is murdered, trades unionists take to the streets, political leaders ‘call for the violence to stop’. Sinn Fein blames the Protestants but nobody seems interested in catching and punishing the criminals.”

January 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed

News from the front lines of capitalism

· Opinions on liberty

It is not just about huge multinational mergers or collapsing energy conglomerates… it is also about small entrepreneurs struggling to make a deal here and develop a property there. Tonight I am delighted to be able to take my good friend Nikki Brandt out to dinner in order to welcome her back to London after an extended stint in Jamaica. She has been trying to breathe some life into a holiday resort development out there in these difficult post-September 11th times. Londoner Nikki is a partner in a small and rather lovely hotel in Negril, on the western tip of Jamacia.

Clear proof that entrepreneurial activity leads to great legs

January 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed

Johnny has done it now!

· Opinions on liberty

Andrew Ian Dodge has feelings of déjà vu when he reads Johnny Student’s Samizdata article.

Johnny Student‘s latest post (Thursday, Jan 24th 2002) is no surprise to me, having been on the front-line of the PC wars in the 80s. I was at Colby College in Waterville, ME at political correctness’ flowering.

It does amaze me now, to see how much Republicans in the US complain about political correctness in higher education. They were given the chance to help fight it in the 80s and they ran away. Those of us on the front line were left by ourselves to face the onslaught.

Just like Johnny Student, I routinely got in trouble with the administrators and professors for expressing my right-of-centre opinions, both verbally and in written word. Let us hope that JS does not suffer the academic abuse I endured. I fear his anonymous postings may not fully protect him. In a bizarre episode, I managed to get called to the Dean’s office for smoking a cigar in a designated area. I was let off, and the next year they changed the rules to exclude cigars and pipes, but not cigarettes (of any kind).

For even more depressing reading on the subject, I recommend The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses by Alan Charles Kors and Harvey A. Silverglate. You can read more about my experiences in my book Statism Sucks! Ver 2.0

January 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed

Robert Nozick: influential libertarian philosopher

· Philosophical

From each as they chose, to each as they are chosen.

As one of the most influential libertarian thinkers of the 20th century, Robert Nozick certainly deserves a tip of the hat from Libertarian Samizdata. His book Anarchy, State and Utopia is an excellent debunking of coercive statism generally and John Rawls’ book Theory of Justice in particular. Although I must confess I have never been a fan of Nozick’s essentially intuitive approach to rights theory, it would nevertheless be churlish not to recognize his enormous influence in stemming the intellectual tide of statism. He had a key role in widely propagating libertarian memes and adding hugely to the developing libertarian meta-context.

Robert Nozick, philosopher, born November 16 1938; died January 23 2002

January 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed

Samizdata slogan of the day

· Slogans & Quotations

Pat Buchanan is making a stir again. In his new book he claims homosexuality is addictive – apparently, so are intolerance and stupidity.
– Jay Leno

January 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed

Go go g-word!

· Opinions on liberty

Johnny Student’s post has left me stunned. Let me just restate the facts as I understand them.

Johnny was in a college, the place you go to be exposed to different ideas and thereby expand your horizons. Specifically, he was in a philosophy class, the quintessential place to discuss varying points of view. Instead of debating a philosophical issue, the “instructor” sent him to the Dean to explain his actions before calling the police.

Johnny’s supposed crime was not parroting the “all guns are bad” line.

What can you say? That’s not a college. It’s a farce.

Three cheers and hats off to Johnny for sticking to his guns. It’s gonna be a long semester. I’d say invite the professor along on your next range session, but he would doubtless be convinced you were planning his demise. Pathetic scared little man.

As for your classmates; yeah, the second amendment supports terrorism like the first amendment supports hate groups and the fourth amendment supports perversion. (sigh).

As John Stuart Mill, a real philosopher once said:

One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.

Maybe that’s the trouble. Today’s professors can’t bear the thought of people with belief expressing themselves. It might make other people think, and then where would we be?

January 25th, 2002 | Comments are closed

Is the honeymoon over?

· UK affairs

Interesting story in the January 25th 2002 Times, front page and rightly so in my opinion. It begins:

“The Office for National Statistics announced yesterday that it would stop collating data on the number of days lost to industrial action, as further strikes loomed in the already hard-hit rail industry.”

Something big may now be happening in British politics. The New Labour dictat against big increases in government spending may now be expiring. Perhaps they think their reputation for financial rectitude is now fireproof. In reality, if they abandon financial rectitude, their political supremacy – their public support is “wide but shallow”, as many a commentator has noted – could vanish like the morning dew.

Strikes are caused by, among other things, financial uncertainty, and the biggest creator of such uncertainty is the State. By hinting that blank cheques may be available for keeping “public services” going (on account of them being essential, too important to be left to the private sector, etc. etc.) but by explicitly claiming (e.g. to railway managements) that, actually, State funding is strictly limited, each side is primed for a fight. Management insists it can pay only so much. The workers now think they smell a different atmosphere. The feeling in the country is now: time for something to be “done” about “public services”, and to many “done” sounds like “spent”.

It doesn’t have to mean this, which is what privatisation is all about. The government should now “re-privatise” the railways, probably on the basis of the old regional companies, with track and trains being combined again.

Will they be smart enough to do this? If they do, will the new Conservative leadership finally have the sense to split Labour by agreeing with the policy? Only if the answers are Yes and No can New Labour sail on unmolested.

Maybe the government will get a grip on things. But then I thought they’d get a grip on the Dome and they never did. The Conservative opposition under its new leader is showing distinct glimmerings of adequacy and the media are finally getting nasty with New Labour, hence the above story, among many others. (There’s also a huge ruckus now going on in our newspapers about just how bad the National Health Service is and whose fault it is.)

There’s lots more one could say about this. I will content myself with noting that the phrase “the honeymoon is finally over” is being much used in Britain nowadays.

January 25th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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