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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Infoworld reports that the European Commission announced plans to combat spam yesterday, promising “concrete action” by October.
Research commissioned by the European Commission shows that by the end of this summer more than half of all the e-mails in the union will be spam. Erkki Liikanen, European Commissioner for Enterprise and the Information Society announced confidently:
Combatting spam has become a matter for us all, and has become one of the most significant issues facing the Internet today.
Yes, spam is annoying but let’s get things into perspective… In the typical bureaucrat fashion, you first build up a problem and then you solve it and bask in the glory of central control…
The EC promised that the concrete action would focus on effective enforcement based on international cooperation among different countries. It would also include technical measures for countering spam, and raising consumer awareness of the issue.
I wonder how this will be achieved. More monitoring, more data pooling and generally more interference with ISPs and private companies.
The Commission’s plans are designed to coincide with a new law on data protection that forbids unsolicited e-mailing. This directive is due to be transposed into the statute books of the 15 European Union member states in October.
Great. What we need is another directive forbidding this or that. And pray, do tell how will they enforce that…?
Under the data protection law, e-mail marketing will only be allowed with prior consent from the recipient. This “opt-in” approach does, however, permit marketing companies to target their existing customers.
Yes, a good idea, but why does it have to be regulated from the top? How gracious of the EC to permit marketing companies to target their existing customers. Arguably there is a widespread ‘conning’ of customers by many Web firms promising that they will not share private information and then selling or renting their customer lists anyway. But as this article indicates customers and markets are a much better way of handling this kind of issue than a bunch of bureaucrats in Brussels.
They ask why we don’t get rid of Mugabe, why not the Burmese lot? Yes, let’s get rid of them all. I don’t because I can’t, but when you can, you should.
– Tony Blair in Sir Peter Stothard’s book about Downing Street during the war
Deepest thanks to David Farrer for linking to this fascinating article by Dr Raj Persaud in the Scotsman.
Could your political beliefs determine how long you live? New research from sociologist Dr William Cockerham and colleagues from the University of Alabama in the United States has found that differences in attitudes to looking after your body and your health are predicted by your political allegiances.
It seems those who believe the state should take responsibility for most aspects of life also tend to eschew personal responsibility for taking care of themselves. As a result, they are more likely to engage in lifestyles hazardous to their health, including drinking to excess and not exercising.
The just-published research was conducted among Russians, comparing those who longed for a to return to the old-style Soviet system with those who preferred the free-market approach to the economy.
Personal interviews with almost 9,000 Russians found significant differences in how much they looked after their own health depending on where they placed themselves on the political spectrum.
David says that this reminds him of Glasgow, another great bastion of socialist intellectual self-abuse, and bodily self-abuse by other more enjoyable but equally destructive means. But Dr Raj Persaud doesn’t seem to have heard about Glasgow. → Continue reading: The moral hazards of healthcare
When was the last time you heard anything about neutral particle beam technology? It seems like it almost vanished from the vocabulary after the 1980’s “Star Wars” program. From the information released by defense sources over the last few years one would conclude there isn’t much happening in that field. One might have concluded it was found to be a dead end.
But… why is everything to do with neutral particle beam technology included in the State Department’s ITAR Munitions List? In the most recent revision I’ve looked at (Sept 19, 2002) energy weapons technology has been promoted to an even higher profile. Neutral particle beams are included.
I wonder what’s going on out in the desert that I don’t know about?
While post-modern lefties and ultra-nationalists tend to regard each other as polar opposites they are, in fact, afflicted with an identical inability to see non-white people as actual human beings. In the case of the latter they are an amorphous bloc of exotic invaders to be feared and in the case of the former they are an amorphous bloc of exotic clients to be fawned over.
It is precisely this fawning tendency that informs organisations such as the BBC and it results in painfully facile attempts to ‘attract more viewers from ethnic minorities’; as if this outcome is dependent on doing something other than simply making good TV shows.
However, I am pleased to note that this drive to establish a TV Ghetto appears to have fallen flat on its face:
The BBC’s attempts to attract more viewers and listeners from ethnic minorities have been “disappointing” with audiences actually falling, the corporation’s governors admitted today.
Despite the launch of two new national digital radio stations aimed at ethnic minorities and increased representation on mainstream TV and radio, there was “little evidence” the drive has worked at all, the governors concluded in the BBC annual report for 2002-2003.
Good. I was tempted to add something along the lines of a hope that the BBC producers have learned a lesson but they probably haven’t. Since their revenue is guaranteed by the taxpayer they are immune from the harsh market discipline that other broadcasters have to endure when their audiences plummet. In fact, they may even conclude that the audience decline stems from a failure to pursue ‘ethnic minorities’ with sufficient zeal.
I have not seen any of the shows supposedly aimed at ‘ethnics’ but I am willing to wager that they were uniformly dreadful. No wonder viewers of all races are staying away in droves. People, whatever their racial origin, watch television to be entertained not patronised and humiliated.
When you type “Surveillance” into google, some of the more interesting stuff is the adverts on the right. The top one in the list today was this. The one with the creepiest name was this.
A commenter (“Grace”) on a previous surveillance related post of mine here said that governments will always be more powerful users of this stuff than the general run of surveillance-inclined people:
We’re deluding ourselves if we think there’s ever going to be any degree of equality in information collection between the government and the (no-longer) private citizen. 1) The government has the money, the power, the inclination and – increasingly – the ability to carpet the nation with surveillance. 2) Forms of counter-surveillance proving to be effective will be declared illegal – in the interest of public security, of course – and forced underground. (That’ll be interesting.)
We’re fighting a rear-guard action.
And then she recommends a book.
But she’s missing my point. I’m not saying that all these regular punters are going to try to spy only on the government and thereby to hold it at bay, although no doubt that will be part of the story, in the form of spying on lesser government officials and the like. My point is that people concerned about surveillance don’t just have the government to worry about. They’ll also have the amateurs spying and spooking all over them. These amateurs may not have mainframe computers and super-intelligent software, but they are awfully numerous, compared to the government.
And the kit that the amateurs need is now getting very cheap, and very easy to use, and to hide. As these adverts prove.
According to the Independent, Robert Mugabe is being bought out of office by President Bush.
Robert Mugabe will relinquish his leadership of Zimbabwe’s ruling party by December, paving the way for his exit as President and new elections by June 2004, the South African President Thabo Mbeki has told George Bush.
The Independent has established that Mr Bush has pledged a reconstruction package for Zimbabwe worth up to $10bn (£6.2bn) over an unspecified timeframe, if a new leader takes over.
Unwrapping the delicate wordage of the Independent story, Mbeki told Mugabe to go, and now he’s going (which obviously has something to do with this). But why? What’s in it for Mbeki?
Privately Mr Bush is said to have exerted pressure on the South African President by indicating that South African companies would benefit from the aid package for Zimbabwe, since many of them would be well placed to bid for contracts. South African firms are owed huge amounts of money by Zimbabwe, mainly for fuel and electricity supplies.
Ah.
Oh well. Better than nothing being done at all. I think. I hope.
I second Brian’s post on the same topic. The Evening Standard reports that one in 30 Britons now has their DNA stored on a national database of genetic fingerprints. The database reached the two million mark today, and is one of the world’s largest. It is used to help solve an average of 15 murders and 31 rapes each month.
The government is trying to make it easier to add DNA entries to the database. A law before Parliament would allow samples to be stored from people when they are arrested and retained regardless of whether they are convicted or not… Have a brush with the law and you are on file for life. Currently a sample can be stored only if a person is charged.
The move is expected to dramatically increase the number of samples stored but has led to claims from civil liberties groups and the Liberal Democrats that the system is being abused by the government.
Home Office Minister Hazel Blears said that only criminals should be worried by the scale of the database.
Law-abiding citizens have nothing to fear from the retention of DNA samples.
Yes, we do.
The State is not your friend
The House of Lords has thrown out Big Blunkett’s proposals to limit the right to trial by jury. They voted 210 to 136 to reject the proposals in the government’s Criminal Justice Bill.
The government now has to decide whether to try and force their plans through, accept the Lords’ amendment or drop the entire Bill.
Downing Street had suggested earlier that the entire Bill might be dropped.
We can but hope.
Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe
White Rose readers will surely appreciate being told, if they don’t know it already, that a short posting by Gabriel Syme about compulsory ID cards, and about White Rose’s campaigning against them, was put up at Samizdata.net last Sunday.
The point is the comments, of which there have been 22 so far (Tuesday evening). The worst of the comments about anything on Samizdata are the usual abusive or incomprehensible nonsense (and the worst of them of all get deleted), but the average is good, and the best are often outstandingly interesting and informative, fully worthy to be postings in their own right on the average blog.
The ID card debate can get subtle, and lots of these subtleties are teased out in these particular comments.
It is getting mighty hot around here. For the last few days I have been saying a silent prayer to the inventor of modern office air conditioning. Without such technology, it is hard to imagine how much of our present-day economy could work at the pace it does. Large parts of the southern U.S., for example, as well as financial hubs like Singapore, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Frankfurt would be unworkable.
Come to think of it, air-conditioning is probably one of the most economically significant inventions of our time. It may even be more important than the internet, though I may be shot for even suggesting this.
Meanwhile, this report has some sizzling stats on how hot it is getting. I am a bit of a skeptic on the issue of the Greenhouse Effect, and naturally suspicious of the Green agenda thereon, but it is easy to see how this theory gains traction in such sweltering conditions as we have at the moment.
Right, time for an ice-cream.
For years I’ve been jabbering away on radio jabber-ins, in favour of the right of people to discriminate in the use of their property, and in particular of minorities to discriminate against majorities, and in particular of the right of gays to discriminate against straights. Are you in favour of such a right? Question mark, question mark. Because I am. And so on. Property rights. The right to fire people because you’ve taken a dislike to the colour of their eyes. It’s their property, it’s their money, etc. etc.
So this story gave me particular pleasure, even though it’s about something that shouldn’t be happening.
A manager of a gay bar was told to discriminate against heterosexuals and ordered to throw out a straight couple for kissing, an employment tribunal was told yesterday.
Nothing wrong with a gay bar discriminating, but they shouldn’t be hauled up in front of any tribunal.
Angelo Vigil, the assistant manager of G-A-Y bar in Soho, London, said the venue’s co-director and licensee, Jeremy Joseph, ordered him to deny entry to heterosexual couples as well as mixed groups of gay and straight revellers.
The nerve. Who does this Jeremy Joseph think he is? He’s behaving like he owns the place. Doesn’t he realise that he owns nothing? He is the delegate of the community, in the person of the employment tribunal. The G-A-Y bar in Soho is the property of All Of Us, and if All Of Us, as interpreted by the employment tribunal, say heteros can enter it, enter it they can.
Mr Vigil, of Barons Court, west London, started working at the club, which is owned by the Mean Fiddler Music Group, in September 2002. He resigned three months later and is claiming victimisation and harassment. He told the tribunal in Woburn Place that he understood the importance of preventing homophobia in the bar, but he believed the policy amounted to discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation.
Yes, that’s exactly what it amounted to. And if the law forbids this, the law is an ass. Chucking out all non-homos is a nice simple way of chucking out not just the reality of homophobia, but even the mistaken fear of it. Makes very good business sense.
He said when he raised concerns over the policy, he was told by Mr Joseph that he would “face the sack” if he “did not change his attitude”.
So. Angelo Vigil, “assistant manager”, didn’t want to assist the manager in enforcing the manager’s preferred policy of who comes in and who doesn’t, and how they behave when they’re there. So he got the boot. Sounds fair to me.
And even if it wasn’t fair, it is their property they wanted Angelo Vigil to help them administer, and it was their money they were paying him to do it.
Even if it wasn’t fair, it was still fair, and the employment tribunal should also get the boot.
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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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