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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Just as I finished posting the previous, I noticed flashing lights outside. Northern Ireland Fire Department was in the parking lot… someone tried to burn down the small building next to where I live, where the laundry room is.
Fortunately I finished my laundry several hours ago.
Arson. It has to be because one of the flatmates caught an attempt last night and put it out before it caused much damage. Two nights in a row just are not accidents. And that’s not to mention a bin fire a couple weeks ago and a car torched while I was away.
Ah, the joys of living not far enough away from a bad area. There are definitely some kids up the road who need an introduction to rock salt… Hmmm. Can’t do that here. Have to give the poor dears money instead.
Oh yeah. the second floor is usually occupied by a young family. It’s empty at the moment, but…
I’ve heard and read some media pundits who after looking at the photos of the Hussein lads suggested one may have committed suicide. I cannot make a definitive judgement from a single angle and a not terribly good photograph… but I think not.
A bullet makes a small entry wound and a large exit wound. The photo shows a large hole in the right side of the head. If this were due to a bullet, the entry wound would be on the left. If it was a suicide, he held the pistol in his left hand.
Since I’ve never heard either of the two was a left hander, I will presume this was not the case. I’d bet on shrapnel from one of the missiles as the source of the wound.
Through the good graces of the Libertarian Alliance forum, I can bring Samizdata readers some remarkable chunks from an article by Amanda Platell in the Telegraph of last Tuesday, which I think will explain rather well to baffled Americans just why some of us Brits are so much less enamoured of our Prime Minister than they are. (I can’t find this piece at the telegraph.co.uk site. I think it was only a paper piece. Anyone who can – please correct me if that’s wrong.)
The start of the piece sets the scene, which of course is the death of Dr David Kelly, and then we get to the heart of the drama:
I was a journalist of nearly 20 years, editor of a national newspaper, when I decided to run a story about Peter Mandelson’s Brazilian boyfriend. My belief then, as now, was that the identity of a gay minister’s partner was as legitimate a public interest as that of Robin Cook’s mistress. Mandelson was then one of the most powerful men in government.
Before the story was even published, my executives and I underwent a barrage of calls from the Press Complaints Commission, the proprietor Lord Hollick (a New Labour peer who took the Labour whip) and from Mandelson himself.
Most chilling was the warning relayed to me by one of my executives from a senior Blairite that if I printed I would be damned – he would destroy my life, my career, my family and my children.
It was a threat made in desperate anger but one I have subsequently learned had been used before. Even then I suspected it was a “one threat fits all”, as I have no children, but the effect was no less shocking. I was sacked weeks later.
→ Continue reading: Blair as Nixon
My boredom with eating sandwiches or salad for lunch encouraged me to visit the ready-meal section of Tesco today. The result was lasagne. As it cooked at work, one of my colleages commented on how good it smelt. I realised there was a positive externality created by cooking the meal, so I suggested to the office that they should pay me for the pleasure they were receiving.
I had no takers. Had I pushed them, they might have argued that, while the smell was enjoyable, they had not consented to it and therefore had no obligation to pay for it. They might also have pointed out that although the smell was nice, I would be getting the real benefit (the eating part).
In this example, it can be seen that charging people to receive a positive externality is unfair and absurd. Yet this is exactly the argument many people use in favour of taxpayer-funded university courses. This argument, out of all the arguments for scrapping tuition fees, is the worst.
I’ve no time (but someone here should definitely try to make the time) for a longer response to this article by Stephen Robinson in the Telegraph.
Its title – “Identity cards won’t stop the terrorists: they’re only a fig leaf ” – will do for starters.
Angelina Jolie, curvaceous star of the latest movie based on mega-hit computer game, Tomb Raider, reckons that the busty, heavily-armed heroine is a role model for women. Hmmm. An interesting thought. Croft knows how to handle guns, is mighty tough in a fight, and is rather easy on the eye (as Ms Jolie assuredly is). The ultimate libertarian heroine, perhaps?
A feature of popular culture in these past few years has been the ascent of the kick-ass female movie/tv star. Think of Buffy, for example; the character Trinity in the Matrix films, or the ladies on Charlies’ Angels. I think the whole thing got started with the likes of Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg in the old Avengers television series, and in some of the better James Bond movies.
One thing all these women have in common is that they are a million miles away from the ‘victim culture’. Nothing passive or helpless about them. It seems that popular culture is diverging increasingly from the political and legal realm. On the one hand, you have superheroes and heroines on the Big Screen. On the other, you have twerps suing fast-food joints for ‘making’ them fat.
I wonder what explains this divide?
First it was Tony Martin the farmer. Then it was Tony Martin the Political Prisoner. Next, Tony Martin the author:
Tony Martin, the farmer jailed for shooting dead a teenage burglar is planning to write an autobiography called My Right To Kill, it was claimed yesterday.
John McVicar, the former armed robber turned author, said he would be editing the book that Martin will write after his release from prison next week.
Is he accepting advance orders? If so, mark me down for a copy right now.
The farmer’s Tory MP, Henry Bellingham, who has consulted him over legislation he wants to frame to give householders greater rights to protect their property, called for the book to be called something “more tactful”.
Alright, how about ‘I Love The Smell of Dead Burglars In The Morning’?
Tony Joynes, the uncle of Fred Barras, said it was “absolutely ridiculous” for Martin to stand to profit from his nephew’s killing. “This autobiography is making money from death,” he said.
Unlike making money from burglary which appears to be perfectly acceptable.
What’s this about?
Meanwhile, mobile-phone services were mysteriously available in Baghdad yesterday, bringing cellular service – banned under Saddam Hussein – to ordinary people in the Iraqi capital for the first time.
Officially, a tender for the three mobile-phone licences the US-led administration plans to offer across Iraq has yet to take place.
A US military spokesman could not explain why the lines turned on or what that meant for the tender.
Users of foreign mobile phones were able to make and receive calls and send text messages. Currently, few Iraqis have suitable phones. Foreign workers in Baghdad, who have widely relied on expensive satellite telephones to stay in touch, were greeted with the words: “MTC-Vodafone wishes you a pleasant stay in Kuwait.”
Those are the concluding paragraphs of a Scotsman story, a story that is mostly about happy reactions in Baghdad to the Uday/Qusay killings.
David Masten of Catallarchy, to whom thanks for spotting this twist at the end of this story, thinks it’s the free society doing its thing.
In other words while occupation forces are trying to set up the new addition to their mercantilist empire, some people are just doing what is necessary to make life and society better, without any centralized direction or even permission. In a land where landwire communications infrastructure has been little more than rubble for over a decade, cell phones are a quick and easy way to build up communications networks.
If licensing and nationalized services are the US government’s idea of ‘freedom and democracy’ for Iraq, bring our boys and girls back home.
Well that could be the story. But couldn’t it merely be that one bit of the new administration (the bit that was setting up this auction) was operating in ignorance of what another bit (a bit that was just setting a system up regardless) was doing? Much as I’d love to praise this as free market anarchy in action, I have my doubts. It could surely just as easily be the other anarchy, state anarchy. Anyone who has ever worked for a state will know that anarchy never goes away.
Michael Jennings knows everything about portable phones, but he’s in Provence right now, and so may not comment as quickly as he would normally. But eventually he’ll clarify everything for us.
Meanwhile, the general point that portable phones are great news for the poorer and less stable parts of the world is reinforced once again. In that sense this is definitely yet another for the Samizdata Triumphs of Capitalism collection.
Regular phones depend on wires. And not just on any old wires – on wires that have to stay connected throughout their entire length. Portable phones rely on only a few fixed installations, which can be defended against marauders and can therefore stay in business. They are also, even in a totally law-abiding place, quicker to get started. I recall how they were able to crack ahead fast with the reconstruction of East Berlin, immediately after the Wall came down, thanks to the magic of the portable phone.
I do love a good technical fix. Just who presided over this one I for one am not clear about, but a technical fix this nevertheless is.
A fascinating story. John Gilmore is incensed about the requirement of showing identification to fly. And he is furious about something that happened to him recently, when a lapel button landed him and his travelling companion on the tarmac.
My sweetheart Annie and I tried to fly to London today (Friday) on British Airways. We started at SFO, showed our passports and got through all the rigamarole, and were seated on the plane while it taxied out toward takeoff. Suddenly a flight steward, Cabin Service Director Khaleel Miyan, loomed in front of me and demanded that I remove a small 1″ button pinned to my left lapel. I declined, saying that it was a political statement and that he had no right to censor passengers’ political speech. The button, which was created by political activist Emi Koyama, says “Suspected Terrorist”. Large images of the button and I appear in the cover story of Reason Magazine this month, and the story is entitled “Suspected Terrorist”.
The narrative is good and the point made brilliantly. You can just picture the Station Manager who had to deal with the ‘unruly’ individuals, we all met her type at one time or another. The truth is that it is people at the ground level, so to speak, that help to impose the rules of a potential police state in the name of convenience and other peoples’ well-being. Without them even the most oppressive government would not last long…
Via Cassel: Civil Liberties Watch
Today is ‘Asylum Day’, at least on the BBC which is devoting a whole series of programmes to analysis and discussion of immigration.
From what I can gather, these programmes will include a discussion on the plight (or otherwise) or real-life immigration cases and members of the public will be invited to join in with their views (which, knowing the BBC, will be carefully edited).
I do not believe that the timing of these broadcasts is accidental. For several years now, the debate about immigration has been growing more intense and widespread, despite (but maybe because of) the entire issue being kept scrupulously off the mainstream political agenda. The last few years, in particular, have witnessed a cavalier and wholly dishonest wielding of the ‘R’ word whenever any public figure has tried to get the matter on the agenda.
Even this attempt by the BBC at public discussion is being frowned upon by the Home Office:
“Asylum raises many complex and emotive issues and we always welcome debate on them – it is important, however, that the debate is rational and measured,” she said.
“The BBC has often covered these issues in considered manner, but we have some serious concerns about some of the content of the BBC’s ‘asylum day’.”
I get the feeling that by claiming that ‘we always welcome debate’, Ms.Hughes is really saying that she doesn’t want any debate at all. Just what is she so frightened of? I hardly think the BBC are going to turn this media event into a platform for extreme nationalism. Does she think that any public airing of these issues is going to open the floodgates to an atavistic army of potential ‘ethnic cleansers’? If so, it betrays just how little confidence our public officials have in the public they preside over.
I take the view that slamming the lid on this issue does not help matters. It has resulted in the fomentation of surly resentment and widespread hostility without such things being countered by intelligent or rational argument. It is another example of why free speech is, in fact, so less harmful than paranoid attempts to prohibit so-called ‘hate speech’.
However, it is because the existance of this resentment is no longer deniable that, I suspect, the BBC feels it is time to grasp some sort of nettle and open up the debate but I equally suspect that they will generate more heat than light. There is an immigration problem in Britain but it is a problem caused by the fact that the regulation is based on the entirely wrong-headed premise that we should only permit ‘political refugees’ to settle here but keep ‘economic migrants’ out (hence ‘immigrants’ are now referred to as ‘asylum-seekers’). Critics of the current system claim that, despite alleged controls, economic migrants are still getting in and that we must ‘tighten up’ the system so that only ‘genuine’ political refugees are offered a home in Britain.
To my mind this is fluorescent absurdity. What we are really saying is that we must shut the door in the face of people like Charles Forte but extend a big, warm welcome to people like Abu Hamza. Surely this should work precisely the other way around?
Of course the idea of letting in only political refugees is intimately related to the welfarist principle which, in my view, is the root of the poison. It is almost an article of faith among the ‘chattering classes’ that native British opposition to immigrants is driven by ‘xenophobia’ and ‘racism’ and is, therefore, all bad. However I disagree with this. I think a lot (maybe most) of the animus towards immigrants is in fact motivated by a wholly justified resentment of foreigners benefitting from a welfare system to which they have never contributed.
The British are not, by nature, an insular or tribal people but they do possess a profound sense of fairness which is currently being sorely tested by an unfair arrangement; an arrangement which wrongly turns away bright, talented contributors and actively encourages dependent, tax-consuming burdens.
It is a high time that there was a more open public debate about immigration because the current system does not need ‘reform’ it needs to be turned on its head. I am not at all confident that the attempts by the BBC to manage this debate will go any way to achieving a desirable and workable outcome.
Most of academic economics is polluted by the dangerous notion of ‘perfect competition’. It is dangerous because it is so utterly unlike the real world. Capitalism’s great duty is the taking of risks. Success is measured not so much by the virtues of the product but its place in a subtle flux of prices and alternatives. Perfect competition, with its associated poetry of ‘equilibrium’ is a romantic folly.
– John Blundell, Institute of Economic Affairs
Two comments have appeared on a long ago posting of mine here about the menace to Western Civilisation posed by people dropping chewing gum all over the damn place.
Comment 1:
i like chewing on gum^^ It should have neva been banned!!! I feel sooooo sorry for the singaporeans….owell beta get on wiv my english assignment nowz…byebye 🙂
Lana
Comment 2:
Hi its me again (Lana) if anyone noes any interesting facts about Singapore then can u plz email me qt_mashi@hotmail.com, bcuz this is for my english assignment and its very important THANK YOU 🙂
Lana
You know what? Lana likes chewing gum, and I like her. She has her own individual take on English spelling, although maybe it’s her whole generation and they all spell because bcuz. But, she seems to be able to spell in the regular manner when she wants to (“any interesting facts about Singapore”) or when she is forgetting not to, plus she has a nice ingratiating manner and understands the value of a smile. I think she should be encouraged.
So, if anyone has any interesting facts about Singapore, please email them to her.
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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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