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Glenn Reynolds is off to see the Granny today but left behind this bombshell from an article in the Tennessean written by a former boss of his:
The statement is by Judge Gilbert S. Merritt of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. He is currently with an ABA judicial-assistance mission in Iraq. July 12th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Clare Short, who resigned as international development secretary in the aftermath of the Iraq war, said Mr Blair should pass on the leadership before things got “even nastier”. Christopher Lee must have died and gone to heaven, when Peter Jackson offered him the role of Saruman, in Jackson’s stupendous Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Having read the book, many times, Lee will have appreciated every single nuance, every single eyebrow movement, and every single evil grin, of the grotesque Saruman character, as this Maian angel descended into a Sauronian hell, within the mortal clutches of Middle-Earth. Like many other sad people, sexually unfulfilled in the desperate years of teenage, I also wade through the pages of the masterly Lord of the Rings, every year, to try to cure myself from the terrible memories of all those laughing girls, who walked away from the spot-ridden boy. Or at least, every other year; I now alternate it with the Silmarillion. → Continue reading: Clare gets nasty July 12th, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Conservative party does not want Britain to leave the European Union. We want to make it work. Anyone who says differently is telling a lie. July 12th, 2003 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Bush administration may be in the process of revolutionising America’s foreign policy but, on the domestic front, it seems like business as usual:
And, of course, his predecessor was no better:
Proof that, regardless of who is sitting in the hot-seat, the absurd and insane ‘war on drugs’ just has to go on and on and on. [My thanks to Dr.Chris Tame who posted this article to the Libertarian Alliance Forum.] July 12th, 2003 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Our Glorious Leader has been setting out his vision for the future:
Even Mr.Blair now has to admit that the fabian socialist dream of services being free at point of supply is now unsustainable and new arrangements have to be made. In future, people have are going to have the buy the services and commodities that, hitherto, they believed were going to be supplied by the ‘gubbament’. Well good. That is as it should be. Provided, of course, it is matched by a commensurate and hefty decrease in taxation. But it won’t be and that is the big catch. Instead taxation levels will continue to rise in order to fund a ballooning state bureaucracy. In other words, everybody (but especially the middle classes) is going to be forced to pay twice. The British keep voting for politics and now they are going to have to pay the bill. July 12th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
— mysterious but always enjoyable Australian blogger Professor Bunyip. He’s quite right, but if he writes an anonymous letter to the tax office suggesting I be investigated, he ain’t my friend by any stretch of the imagination either. (Link via Scott Wickstein). July 12th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
It has been claimed that French President Jacques Chirac negotiated de facto immunity from prosecution for the second greatest post-WWII war criminal in Europe west of the former Soviet border, Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, in return for the Bosnian Serb military releasing two captured French pilots.
If this is true, then Chirac is nothing less than an accessory after the fact to mass murder. The fact that both General Mladic and the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic have both remained at large does rather suggest this report is true. Oh… and where are these two indicted mass murderers at large? In the French controlled sector of Bosnia, of course. Britain has its own amoral creatures like Douglas Hurd who disgracefully equated murder victims with their murderers in the Balkans, so it would be fair to say that this particular shit sandwich is large enough for much of the political class on both sides of the English Channel to take a bite… but next time your hear a member of the French establishment lecture anyone about anything on ‘moral grounds’, tell them to drop dead, preferably in Srebrenica. July 12th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is Friday evening and blogging about British politics and the Conservative Party was the last thing on my mind. However, this post appearing on Samizdata.net below cannot be left without a calm, measured and reasoned response it deserves. What the f***?! Conservatives?! Libertarian?! A viable alternative?! After checking the post for any undercurrents of sarcasm, I am still confused. This is due to the words Conservatives and libertarian appearing in the same context. The Tory party is a bunch of stale, narrow-minded and arrogant statists who believe that if everyone was a good chap…there, there…things would go just swimmingly and they would not have to try too hard and use their brains. Libertarianism is a dirty word to them, diversity means more illegal immigrants, freedom is predicated on the fact that everyone just comes round to their point of view and their confidence is based on arrogance. In case you missed it, I do not rate the Tory party highly. There is very little difference between them and the New Labour, apart from the latter being much better at public relations and spin. Philosophically, the Tories are as libertarian and exciting as a schoolmaster on valium. Their position on Europe is still confused, their views about taxation not very inspiring, what with NHS and education still being considered bottomless pits for taxpayers’ money, the BBC would be untouchable if it was not biased against them and individualism is something that does not happen to most people. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as fixed political competency, i.e. if one political party goes bad, the other improves. And so, as the Labour party is stumbling into a disaster of its own making, the Tories are certainly not meeting them on the way up. I do not know what the alternative to Labour is in the current political layout, but the Conservatives are certainly not it. And for all those concerned, Samizdata.net shall never be a slave to any adjectives. July 11th, 2003 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Some good news for once: The House of Lords has supported repeal of Clause 28 of the local Government Act. An amendment seen by many as an attempt to preserve Clause 28 was defeated by 50 votes. In theory Clause 28 doesn’t discriminate against homosexuals, merely against using public money to “promote” homosexuality. In practice this wide ranging and ill-defined prohibition has resulted in a climate where low-level institutional discrimination has become commonplace. Decent people have been forced to discriminate through fear of breaching Clause 28. Clause 28 was introduced by the Thatcher government in 1988. It was a massive attack on the civil liberties of a significant minority of British citizens and has been the jewel in the crown of British homophobes. The fact that a single group was specifically targeted in this way meant that apart from anything else it was simply bad legislation. Good riddance. Cross-posted from The Chestnut Tree Cafe July 11th, 2003 | Comments are closed
Brian Micklethwait is right to say that the government is falling apart. It has faced revolts from its own party on foxhunting, Iraq and foundation hospitals. It is seen by many as having misled the people about the reasons for the Iraq war. Hospitals and schools are in crisis despite having more money than ever. National Rail is a bottomless pit. The payment of Tax Credits has been a disaster. Now the government is lurching even more to the Left, introducing draconian employment laws to appease its backbenchers. As for Europe, the government has completely failed to get a grip: it keeps on saying that it will not give in on items in European treaties, but each time it does exactly that. The reality is that government is not just incompetent, it is a walking disaster. John Major’s Conservative Party might have had its problems, but it was never this bad. The Third Way is rarely heard of these days. Like a drunk, Labour’s Way involves stumbling all over the road. Yet there is an alternative. There is one major party that broadly promotes libertarian ideas. It vocally states that we are overtaxed and over-regulated; that the European Constitution and Euro are wrong for Britain; that government-control of healthcare and education does not work; that the BBC’s business model needs “examining”; and that individuals should be free to make their own choices about their lives. What is the name of this libertarian party? Conservative. July 11th, 2003 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
For better or for worse the war against terrorism is Britain’s war too: we sent a few thousand soldiers to Afghanistan and made our political support for President Bush quite clear. Now it has come back to haunt us: nine of our citizens are held incommunicado in Guantanamo Bay, together with several more from the Commonwealth. We do at least know who and where they are, even if we do not know why they are being held. Their families cannot visit them and they cannot speak to outside lawyers. Their status has been determined by the US Secretary of Defence and the only lawyers they will be allowed are US military officers: it has been suggested that their conversations even with these will be overheard. The same camp holds children as young as 13, while 16-year olds are mixed in with the adult detainees. Imagine that Argentina’s Junta of the 1980’s or today’s Iran were holding these 680-odd detainees, including nine Britons. The outcry would be phenomenal. There would be talk of sanctions at the very least. Yet these are actually the ‘lucky few’ among the hundreds detained by the USA. Many many more have disappeared. Let’s look at that word – reminiscent of the dictatorships of the 1960’s and 70’s. Do I mean that they have been murdered? No, probably not. Do I mean that they have been tortured? Yes – whether outright physical pressure or just being held in a steel container at Bagram airbase in the blazing sun. Do I mean that they have vanished, held in some solitary hell-hole? Most certainly. → Continue reading: The disappeared July 11th, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
At present I am not in the market for a longer penis, or for more energy when my mind turns to the sexual as opposed to urinary use of the penis that I already have, so most junk emails are for me just that: junk. Delete. However, I got one this morning, and I’m sure millions of others did too, which interested me, White Rose wise, and (although in the years to come I will probably mark this moment as the one when my life stopped working and went to hell, my identity stolen, my bank account emptied, my hard disc and that of all my friends virused, etc.) I pressed this link. For the benefit of those wiser or more cautious or more internet savvy than me, the link leads to a website devoted to a computer programme which enables you to learn everything there is to learn about all of your friends and all of your enemies.
The democratisation of joined-up government, you might say. Everyone can be a member of the surveilling class. (And by the way I think “surveilling class” or maybe “surveilling classes” is a meme with a future.) As with current strength surveillance cameras, the actual effectiveness of this particular programme as of now – it sounds to me a lot like an old fashioned search engine (but what do I know?) – is not really the big point here, or not the point that interests me. What I think is the big point is that, sooner or later, such programmes surely will do what this one promises to do. Not surprisingly, the same web site also pushes another programme called “Privacy Protector”, which, I guess, enables you to defend yourself against Internet Investigator. Maybe Privacy Protector is the real product, and Internet Investigator only exists to scare up business for Privacy Protector. Whatever. It all has the smell of the new battles that people are going to be fighting in this brave new twenty first century. And they won’t just be government-people or people-government battles, they’ll be people-people battles. July 11th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
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