There is an interesting article about a meeting of libertarian science fiction writers over on Hollywood Investigator. The splits between libertarian thought (and libertarian ‘thought’) are made very clear by the views on parade at this dinner.
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This is the first time I have noticed one of the 2001 pattern two pound coins (£2 = US $3). I think the tails side is far nicer than the messy modern art confusion of the previous pattern, which looked like a circuit board that had been stamped on by an elephant.   March 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed
 Please applaud Dan Gillmor for spelling out that security and privacy are not incompatible in his article Don’t Deny Privacy for Security’s Sake in Computerworld. He mourns the fact that despite their supposed libertarian principles, Silicon Valley companies and their competitors around the world are racing to help the snoops. An example of technology that promotes both security and privacy is encryption and if we want a safe economy in the Digital Age, strong cryptography – with its positive and negative uses – isn’t an option but a requirement. His challenge is to the IT industry:
Please read and rejoice that someone has stood up to the post-September 11th tendency to compromise liberty in the supposed interest of security. March 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed
 March 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed
In this report in the Times of India, US reduces reward on Bin Laden, we see the strangest manifestation of the backward bending demand curve I have ever seen!
Example 1: A high price designer ‘name label’ dress is offered at a reduced price… still out of reach of the ‘woman in the street’ buyer. Paradoxically the high end target market buy less of the dresses, presumably because the reduced price indicates it is probably ‘last years design’ (even if not true, the price is used as the primary source of information by the potential purchaser as to ‘what is hot’). Example 2: Soviet made wristwatches, made to uncharacteristically high quality and standards were marketed in Britain in the early 1970’s. They were every bit as good as other high quality wristwatches available at the time but were almost half the price. Even though Soviet products were a relative rarity in the UK, British buyers stayed away in droves, presumably taking the view that any watch that cheap had to be complete rubbish. The Soviets were baffled but on advice from a British consultant raised the price to just below the typical UK price and they stared to sell. Thus, the US is lowering the price on the head on Osama bin Laden in the hope the new level of reward is something rural Afghans can actually relate to in the real world. In each case the specifics are different but price is just a form of information and sometimes if the price of something is unexpectedly high or low, the effects is the opposite of what one might normally expect. That is what I mean by a ‘backward bending demand curve’! Also on reflection, I was thinking of this in terms of the US doing the ‘selling’ of an outsourced service here (terrorist removal)… but I suppose one could argue that this is a backward bending supply curve: the US is offering money in the hope some impoverished Afghan will ‘supply’ a dead or bound-hand-and-foot Osama bin Laden March 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed
Andrea Harris is the Fox News guest blogger and showcases former US Libertarian Party candidate Harry Browne‘s wit and wisdom. So will people please just read this and then stop asking me why I keep saying that Browne and his Libertarian Party do not define libertarianism in the USA. Guys, face facts… as long as you have a barking moonbat like Browne who thinks a libertarian society could survive contact with reality in the manner he advocates, the vast majority of US libertarians will continue to either vote Republican or if they cannot stand that, just not vote at all. There are a lot of great people in the US Libertarian Party. Unfortunately those folks are not the ones running it.
Nevertheless, some LP remarks ‘from the top’ since September 11th have indeed fallen into the tinfoil hat and black helicopter category of barking moonbat mating calls… and this is rather a problem for me. Getting rid of Browne is certainly a start but his whole associated idiotarian meme stream is going to be decisively flushed down the toilet as a minimum pre-requisite for getting many pukka libertarians to even touch the LP with a barge pole. March 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed
Is there some sort of pathological term for people who simply cannot resist the overwhelming desire to fiddle with and meddle with and corrupt everything around them? If not, we need to invent one and fast. Another draft Directive is formenting in the cesspit of Brussels and this time it’s pensions< that they are pawing at with their oily little hands.
British pension funds typically invest some 70% of their funds in equities and, if this law passes (Did I say ‘if’? I mean ‘when’) they would have to drastically reduce this figure to bring Britain into line with many European countries where such investment in strictly limited by national law. But this is not madness, it is cold, hard method. The main alternative to equities in funded pension scheme portfolios are long-term financial instruments such as government bonds and, by a simple extension, EU bonds. Thus the desire of Eurocrats to control constituents’ economies by means of Frankfurt interest rates and fiscal harmonisation can be consolidated: Euro-peons will be forced to tie their destinies in retirement directly to the success or failure of EU-wide economic hegemony. The law will have the effect of making it impractical for most employers to run their own schemes and will therefore channel billions of funds into the hands of a few crypto-statist financial institutions which are easier for Brussels to push around (behind the fig-leaf of ‘co-operation’). After a working life governed by EU regulations about hours, conditions, pay rates, vacation entitlements, coffee-temperature, leisure time and just about every other aspect of human interaction imaginable, our descent into a longed-for tranquility of old-age will be managed (and mangled) by those same ubiquitous, inescapable Eurocrats. I am beginning to hope that there is no such thing as a life beyond death otherwise the buggers will find a way to torment us there as well. 
Just say NO to superstatism! March 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed
At long last, true progress can be seen breaking through the glass ceiling of yet another reactionary institution as Lloyds List, the world’s oldest shipping industry newspaper, announces that it intends to drop the demeaning practice of referring to ships as she and will, from now on, use the the more gender-neutral and inoffensive word ‘it’.
A very welcome, if overdue, recognition of the diversity and multi-navigational reality of modern shipping and another sign of the imminent demise of the white male hetero-sailist orthodoxy which has always sought to marginalise and persecute differently-ruddered ships and hold them back with the anchors of oppressive language. Not all ships are TransAtlantic; some are TransGendered, cruising the lonely sea-lanes at night to find solace and company in a world which refuses to even acknowledge their existence! The first faltering steps to their liberation have been taken as ships everywhere find the courage to shout: “I’m coming out of dry-dock. I’m Tran-Sport and I’m Prow(d)” March 20th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Finally I have found a way to mention a subject related to what I try to do for living, in a way relevant to libertarians and like-minded netwarriors. I have been interested in networks and their security for some time but only recently I have begun to notice articles and books attempting to analyse the implications of technology and information age on networks at a more strategic level. (I am not saying that they did not exist, simply that I haven’t been able to reach them despite my continuous searches). Perhaps it is a result of the very network effect that the topic is attracting more attention as it spreads into more industries, areas and levels of society. And so I have come across a book titled Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy published by RAND (a contraction of the term Research and Development), the first organisation to be called a “think tank”. The authors take as a given that the fight for the future is not between the armies of leading states, nor are its weapons those of conventional armed forces. What today’s combatants – whether it be terrorist groups like Al Qaeda, drug smuggling cartels of Columbia and Mexico, or non-violent, civil-society activists for environment, human rights or liberty – have in common is that they operate in small, dispersed units that can deploy anytime, anywhere. They all feature network forms of organisation, doctrine, strategy and technology attuned to the information age. This gives rise to a new spectrum of conflict that has been termed netwars. Netwar is the lower-intensity, society rather than state based counterpart to the mostly military concept of cyberwar and its distinguishing features are: a) a dual nature – conflicts waged, on the one hand, by terrorists, criminals and ethno-nationalist extremists; and by civil-society activists on the other. The framework for assessing such networks looks at five levels: the technological, social, narrative, organisational and doctrinal. All five must be right for the network to be fully effective. (Perry, I hope you are taking notes. The technological sophistication is not the only thing that matters. The other levels have as much, if not more, effect on the potential power of the group. The social basis for co-operation is important for establishing trust and identity, for example among the members of ethnically based terror and crime groups. Among civil-society netwarriors, in the absence of the ethnic or social ties the narrative level matters most as sharing and projecting a common story empowers them and attracts audiences. Finally, the defining level of a netwar actor is the kind of network and the sort of doctrine he uses. To confront and cope with networked adversary, the same framework must be used to assess his strengths and weaknesses. The most serious opponents are highly networked and flexible, backed by social ties, secure communications and a common story about why they are together and what they need to do. The network form of organisation is a serious challenge to nation states because it strains their ability to cope with the threats posed by such non-state actors, especially if used for criminal or terrorist objectives. Strategists and policy makers in Washington and elsewhere have already noted this dark side of the netwar phenomenon. The book recommends that whilst they continue to keep an eye on the perils posed by the ‘bad guys’, they must form coalitions between states and civil society’s networked actors. I imagine if they follow this suggestion, there will perhaps be a link, in the appropriate category, to the U.S. Department of Defense on the side bar. Or vice versa. March 20th, 2002 | Comments are closed
I have a friend called Don Riley, who originates from New Zealand. He is a property developer. He owns – lucky man – property next to London’s new Jubilee Line. The Jubilee Line, as everyone in the Anglosphere surely knows, is the latest addition to the tube, that is to say to the London Underground railway system. Don is also an International Man of Mystery. He’ll tell you all kinds of stories about how he sold computers to the Russians in the seventies, and he still has numerous deeply mysterioso friends from behind the ex-Iron Curtain. He occasionally goes on “birdwatching” expeditions to places like Morocco. So if he isn’t a spook of some ex- or pensioned or maybe even current variety, he has a lot of fun pretending to be. Last year Don wrote a book, about “public” transport and how to finance it without the government crawling all over everything. Book. You remember those? A pile of paper joined together at the side. Paper? Well, it’s flat and usually white, about the same size as the average screen but you generally point it upwards rather than sideways, and it’s very user friendly but for the time being rather hard to update … oh never mind … Anyway the point is, unlike the usual drivel perpetrated by businessmen who fancy themselves as political stirrers without troubling to learn the trade, Don’s book is actually quite good. I haven’t read it properly, despite Don’s telephone nagging, but Patrick Crozier over at UK Transport has, and I commend his review to your attention, and the book itself. March 20th, 2002 | Comments are closed
Looking at another country from afar is rather like viewing it through a spyglass. In the case of Britain, with its huge on-line media presence, with the wave of a mouse you see what UK media writes about in detail without seeing what lies around the issue. Then you see what the media in one’s own country says about things going on in the UK, and finally you base your emergent views within the meta-contextual references of your own culture, as we all do. But a little learning is a dangerous thing. If I were to read the LA Times and NY Times from afar day after day without having lived in the US for many years, I might conclude I have a shrewd idea as to the undercurrents of US society and reasonably deduce that the United States was a very different place than the one it in fact is. A great deal of wildly generalised commentary has been written about anti-Semitism and racism in ‘Europe’ recently. John Braue, who is not an unreasonable commentator much of the time, discusses Euro-racism in terms which are correct to an extent but also very misleading as he makes sweeping assumptions that tell us as much about his meta-contextual frames of reference as about the subject at hand:
From my discussions with French friends, there is some truth to that. Likewise one only has to read the nominally libertarian Hans-Herman Hoppe‘s works to realise how different German and Anglosphere views of the nature of society are. Every nation has its intolerant elements, but to think German and French racism on one hand, and English racism on the other have a common root is to fail to understand that ‘England’ (John does not say ‘Britain’) is not Europe. To suggest that at its core, English culture has a blood and soil volk ethos is to fundamentally misread the often repeated messages of English history. By that logic we should still have Huguenot ghettos in London. How can the enormous number of Jews who have been senior government ministers over the last 50 years be explained away? The Jews of Britain have been the masters of successful assimilation precisely because being a Jew does not make a person less British or even English, any more than being a Catholic makes me less British or English. As a splendid example, when one reads David Carr’s articles to this blog, one is struck not by his jewishness but by his effortlessly pugnacious Englishness. I am sure John and other commentators of similar generalised views reads the on-line Times, Telegraph, Guardian, Reuters etc. and are therefore very up on current events as reported in the UK media but I wonder if John also knows that there are more members of ethnic minorities in local government in the UK than in any other single country in Europe. To be British is much like being ‘American’. It is a meta-context to which one subscribes, rather than be born into. Britain, and in particular England, in fact is no less integrated than the United States and probably more so (and with far less heavy handed intrusions by the state to make that happen) and far, far more so than mainland Europe. Mixed marriages are endemic, which is far and away the best measure of social assimilation. The proof of the sheer extent of miscegenation in Britain can be seen walking hand in hand down the high streets of Britain in glorious and damning rebuke to those who believe free choice without the direction of state leads to social separation. Is there racism and anti-Semitism in Britain? Yes of course. In a few areas it is very serious but it is hard to escape the view that race relations in the UK overall are almost a case study in socially driven (rather than state driven) assimilation. For another splendid example of the reality of the ‘English Volk’, I recommend you check out the site of fellow British blogger, Adil Farooq of MuslimPundit and see Islam interpreted in ways which spring from a truly British meta-context. March 20th, 2002 | Comments are closed
The problem with Islamic religious fanaticism is it is unable to apply realpolitik when necessary for it’s goals. To the True Believer, America is the evil fortress blocking the way of the Righteous in bringing the world to the Glory of Allah. They can not see their only one way to “defeat” America: make the cause so boring and of so little value to American interests that the taxpayers turn on it. An enemy must jujitsu like, use America to defeat America while not actually threatening Americans at home. This is what happened in Vietnam. North Vietnam never attempted to threaten American civilians. On the contrary, they played to the American public. They pictured themselves as victims of a foreign imperial venture who magnanimously did not blame the people of their tormenter. They set out to split the people from the government policy and they succeeded. They could do so because total victory for North Vietnam posed little threat to Americans or their way of life. The fall of Saigon made for a few good pictures in Life Magazine. Then it was forgotten about. Ho Chi Minh succeeded because there was a grain of truth to it. North Vietnam’s defeat of South Vietnam had hardly any affect whatever on the life of the average American. Regional Geopolitics may play well inside the Beltway (the Washington DC ringroad), but it does not hold the interest of normal folk for very long. But this is not the case with the al Qaeda and their ilk. The attack with which they opened the War was a direct strike on Americans in America. People know they cannot just pull out of the fight. People know in their guts the enemy victory conditions are not just a state for Palestine. They are not even met by the destruction of Israel and the mass murder of everyone there, although that would have a far greater impact than Vietnam since many of those people have relations in America. It is our entire way of life and our core values they hate. So long as we exist they cannot re-make the world into a Moslem theocracy as their mullahs tell them is right. Since it is god’s work, they are free to do anything. They will do whatever is necessary to prevent Palestine from being sorted out. It is too valuable an excuse for what they intend to do any way. Remember the answer of the alien to the President in science fiction movie Independance Day?
How did it come to this? I can see three equally reasonable ways. Scenario 1: Saudi Arabia as a conspirator. The Saudi camel herders cum princes come to the realization oil money gaves them great power. They decide to use it over a period of decades to bring the decadent West under Islam. They fund a global 5th column. They use whatever tactics are necessary to infiltrate and take over Mosques in the West: education, grants… and bribery, extortion, threats and murder when necessary. Through plausibly deniable intermediaries they fund uprisings and the facilities to train armies of Orcs… I mean the faithful. They secretly do anything possible to assist in the creation of nuclear weapons under Islamic control. All the while they execute their Byzantine game they play the West for a fool and feign friendship. Scenario 2: Son of Cold War. Much of the environment for what has come is due to the short term moves made in the global chess match of the Cold War. The propaganda, the stirring up of trouble behind the other guys lines, the money and weapons to clients, supporting friendly rulers who are kept in power by violence on their own people (The Shah of Iran for example)… all of these fertilized and created the environment now filled by the fundamentalist. Scenario 3: It’s all their fault. The population growth in some of these Arab countries has been immense. It has turned relatively unpopulous desert into crowded slums. The combination of ignorance, poverty, crowding and incompetent government set the stage. The refusal to accept blame for their own condition made the populace an easy target for the worst sort of religious nuts. I would personally say each of the above is partly responsible for the situation we have today. I must admit I do not think the Saudi’s actually sat back and seriously planned things that long ago. They aren’t Sauron, they’re simply opportunists with religion. However I would not be surprised to find some radical mullahs spoke with a Prince or two about such grand ideas for conquering the West from within and received a tithing of a few hundred million to just go away – but to be sure to say what fine Islamic Princes they were. Meanwhile back in America… Americans don’t really see any way out. The Mideast crazies will commit mass murder on us if we fight; they’ll commit mass murder on us if we try to ignore them; they’ll destroy our civilization in a century or two if we try to appease them… and in the mean time they’ll commit mass murder on us just because we’re still here. This is why there aren’t a lot of Americans out calling for “peace”. If people are going to kill us, we are not the sort to go down meekly. We’re far more likely to be every bit as vicious and a damn site more ruthlessly calculating than the mad mullahs worst nightmares can concieve. They really have no choice but to come to terms with a pluralist, live and let live world. Because that is the world which is coming. Even if we have to kill them all to get there. March 20th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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Taking the tube (London’s underground rapid transit system) last night was a nightmare. A delay on one line meant no trains at a rush-hour period for more than 20 minutes. Chaos. Angry crowds. A scene sticks in my mind. A young London Underground staffer, dressed in usual garb of garish blue jacket and hat, was shouting at a vexed young man in a suit, telling him to wait at a certain point. She was using the manner of a particularly authortarian school-marm. Ask yourselves, gentle reader, could such a thing occur in a privately run business, like a food store? I think I know the answer to that one.
Update: As a couple people have ask me to simply explain what a ‘backward bending demand curve’ is, it is a strange and counter intuitive phenomenon in which sometimes as a product gets cheaper, people buy less of it or if a product gets more expensive, they buy more of it. This does not seem to make sense but it does occasionally happen. 
Update: As many e-mails have pointed out (and indeed as I alluded to on my final line above), many LP members both take a very rational view regarding the current war and do not think either Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan were ‘provoked’ by the mean old USA and Britain into World War II and if we had only been nicer to nice Mr. Hitler all that nastiness could all have been avoided. After all, our own Dale Amon has LP ties and he is extremely ‘sound of mind and sharp of sabre’ on all such issues.
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