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]
|
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.
A landlord no longer feels suprised at being compelled to keep a tenant; an employer is no less used to having to raise the wages of his employees in virtue of the decrees of Power. Nowadays it is understood that our subjective rights are precarious and at the good pleasure of authority
– Bertrand de Jouvenel Sovereignty
The latest (April) edition of British society magazine Tatler (no link to article) has a short piece by leading British Playwright and signatory to the Free Slobodan Milosevic Petition, the wonderful Harold Pinter. As a result, perhaps readers might like to e-mail the editors of that respected publication to request another nice Harold Pinter article in the next issue called:
- What the in-people are wearing to the society war-crime trials in the Hague this year
Or maybe…
- Waxed Barbour Jackets and green wellies, the perfect fashion accessory for the well heeled ethnic cleanser and soooo easy to wash the blood off.
Yes, it is good to see the journal for the elite of Britain wanting to branch out from covering the parties of polo players, models, actors, actresses, stock brokers, society gardeners, designers, minor royals and bankers, and now also showcasing apologists for mass murdering ethnic cleansers as well. Rupert and Camilla will be pleased!
David Carr in a post below seeks to reassure us Brits that the US steel tariffs do not matter because they will help rather than harm our economy. That’s like being reassured that it is the house next door burning down, not one’s own, and with a kindly additional word pointing out that all this nice warm air wafting over from the conflagration will reduce one’s heating bills.
The tarriffs will (a) directly harm the economies of many other countries, to whom I am not indifferent; (b) allow the European Union the excuse they’ve been praying for to put tarriffs on the South Korean and Chinese steel you mention – so no, the British consumer will not benefit; (c) give strength to the yelps of half a hundred other US lobbies; (d) start another round of retaliation with all the effects above applied to some other randomly chosen commodity, thus screwing up another bunch of people’s prosperity.
And they make Bush look weak and hypocritical, which the world could do without right now.
|
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.
|
