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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This Guardian headline is terrifying, coming, as it most definitely does, under the “never believe it until it is officially denied” heading:
UK ‘will not bail out EU pensions crisis’.
This denial, on the other hand, might be quite good news:
Mr Brown insisted: “There is no intention of having a European health care system that replaces national health care systems.
My understanding is that, healthwise, they do things rather better on the Continent than we do here, so the fact that we absolutely, definitely, I deny that completely, no truth in that notion whatsoever, are not repeat not going to have a European health system here in Britain, i.e. we very possibly are going to have such a system, is quite cheering. (See the comment 4 on this posting if you doubt the ghastliness of Britain’s current arrangements.)
And then there is this:
He reiterated the government’s determination to resist any moves towards EU tax harmonisation. “Tax competition makes for a more efficient single market,” he stressed.
Things like this are never said until the contrary claim is presented in the form of a question. And that contrary claim is at least as likely to be true as any denial of it.
The EUro-ratchet effect means that it only needs one British politician to relax on any particular issue, usually as part of an attempt to hold back the inevitable on some other front, for the deal to be done.
The Australian government has long desired to force ISP’s and Internet content Hosts to take responsibility for the activities of their clients. An attempt to do this in 1999 was defeated, but the authorites are back for more.
The draft bill states that ISPs are required to determine whether their services are used for “illegal conduct or speech.”
Paragraph 152 of the Explanatory Notes to the draft bill says that “Possible action that could be taken by ISPs and Internet Content Hosts (ICHs) so as not to facilitate use of a carriage service by another person that breaches proposed subsection 474.16(1) includes an ISP ceasing to provide Internet services to that person or an ICH ceasing to host a particular Website containing content that breaches the proposed offence.”
Obviously, the implication is clear- should this measure get up, ISP’s will be legally required to be much more aggressive in their surveillance of their customers; a gross breach of their privacy.
(Via Whirlpool.net.au)
Yes, I know, picking on the Guardian is just so easy that it is verging on bad form. It is rather like challenging a small child to a boxing match.
And speaking of small children, I hear the sound of the petulant stamping of little feet:
In our country, in our culture, at this time, any referendum on Europe is a pre-emptive cringe towards the Murdoch press and the tabloids. Forget any idea that the referendum debate will be Plato’s Republic in action. It will inescapably be a contest fought on terms dictated by the unelected media rather than by the elected politicians.
This is where the European Union referendum really will be a defining moment. It will mark the extraordinary watershed at which this country’s debased, biased and unaccountable media formally take control of the political process. The British media has often claimed that it has greater popular legitimacy than politicians – “It’s the Sun Wot Won it”, for example. Blair’s concession of the referendum marks the moment when politics formally bowed the knee and accepted that claim.
I can visualise Martin Kettle’s bottom lip trembling as bashes out every embittered word. For Mr. Kettle and his colleagues, the mere existance of anti-EU opinion is such a towering and monstrous inequity that advance tantrums are required to highlight the plight of the beleaguered federast to the caring world. He will probably start hijacking aeroplanes shortly and demand to be flown to Brussels.
And what is all this guff about ‘debased, biased and unaccountable media’, as if the Guardian is something other than a national newspaper and, ergo, part of the media? But then thwarted and sulky children often do retreat into consoling fantasy by claiming that their families are not really their families because their real families would not treat them so despicably.
Still, given the perenially low circulation (and their reliance on public subsidy) maybe there is a kernel of truth in the analogy. Nobody likes them, everbody hates them. I think they should go and eat worms.
A battle is brewing in Japan between education authorities and liberal minded teachers over the place of national symbols in the Japanese school system, reports Aussie expat Cameron Weston, for Australian news website Crikey.com.au:
Most countries have no law in place that compels its citizens to stand, put their hands on their hearts or do anything else when the national symbols are displayed. Most people do it because they want to, and this is the way it should be. Patriotism is something felt, not imposed. Forcing such action impinges on the basic tenets of democracy and freedom, and democracies have laws that enshrine this principle.
But what if the symbols of your nation had a deeper historical meaning, if they spoke to a past that some were ashamed of, of policies and deeds which some considered criminal?
And what if you felt strongly enough about this that you refused to stand and sing the anthem or to gaze upon the flag of your nation? In a democracy, you would be allowed to do so.
You might still reasonably be called a patriot by some, a person of conscience by others, ignorant and a traitor by others still but it would all be a matter of opinion, and hopefully then of discussion and debate. In 1999, amid some controversy, the Japanese LDP government passed legislation making the rising sun flag (‘Hinomaru’) and the national anthem (‘Kimigayo’) official, legal symbols of this nation. In a country where voluntary adherence to tradition and fixed social rites underpin the very fabric of society and daily life, it is ironic that the government felt that these forces were insufficient to ensure the flag and anthem remained venerated national symbols – they deemed that a law needed to be passed….
However, in the last few months, as the new school year begins, the debate has been taken to a new level. Teachers across Tokyo have been issued with a directive from the Tokyo Metropolitan Board of Education, compelling them to stand and sing the national anthem and for them to in turn compel their students to do the same. No debate, no discussion; this is a direct order.
If the teacher refuses to do so, he will be open to public censure and criticism from his superiors, further warnings and potential expulsion. So far this year, over 200 teachers have refused to stand and many have received written warnings as a result. Miwako Sato, a music teacher who received one such warning when the law was first enacted in 1999 sums up the problem for many teachers perfectly, “Many people in other Asian countries do not want to look at the flag, the symbol of Japanese occupation of their lands, even 60 years after World War II, and I believe its coercive display at school ceremonies is against our Constitution,” she said.
Ah, the Japanese constitution. What I tend to get out of Mr. Weston’s article is a feeling that although Japan has lived under that constitution for over 50 years, it has never really embraced the spirit of the document (which is a bizzare mixture of the liberal and the statist).
But the fact that the more reactionary elements in authority in Japan feel the need to legislate nationalism, and to make it compulsary, gives me heart; I doubt they would have felt the need to do it if people were embracing the nationalistic message willingly.
And the resistance of teachers and the media is a good sign too. Anyway, read the whole thing.
There will be much muttering in their beards in the caves of Tora Bora. There will be much gnashing of teeth and gnawing of livers in the ghettos of the Democratic National Committee.
A new front has opened in the struggle for freedom.
Age 25, single, 5 foot 11 inches: the new Miss America describes herself as “a Republican” and says that she will use her influence to explain America’s involvement in Iraq. Miss Shandi Finnessey is a statuesque blonde from St Louis, Missouri and replaces last year’s winner from Massachusetts. [Thanks to Pejmanesque.com for the link.]
Note: Missouri voted Republican last presidential election. Any bets this time?
I am about to be on Talk Sport Radio, at about 1 am tomorrow morning, they said. I have just done an interview about President Bush’s crackdown on porn, with a guy called Duncan Barkes. I tried to make sense, and probably made some sense. The purpose of this post is to tell you this, not to spend the next three quarters of an hour telling you what I think about it all.
But I will summarise it:
Duncan Barkes: Should porn be illegal?
Me: No.
Often libertarians (and pro freedom folk in general) cite writers who are not libertarians at all – a good example being the number of times I have heard the name of Tom Paine being cited as a great defender of freedom (Tom Paine the ardent welfare statist and defender of confiscatory taxes on landowners, who [like so many of his kind] used the words “freedom” and “liberty” endlessly).
However, sometimes libertarians (and other folk) will cite a something that is a great work – but a work that is full of danger for the reader.
Such a work is Jose Ortega Y Gasset‘s Revolt of the Masses. This is great work and such people as M.J. Oakeshott and F.A. Hayek were right to praise it – particularly for the examination of the origin and nature of the “mass man” that one finds within the work and for its examination of the importance of the mass man in the modern world.
Few people (thankfully) read a great work and assume that all the opinions in it must be true, but a lot of people read what they (rightly) consider a great work and assume that the factual information in it must be true.
This was the danger I was reminded of when I recently reread this work – I came upon very many errors of fact. I do not know whether I was too ignorant to recognise these errors when I read this work as a child, or whether my memory has so far decayed that I can not remember reading the errors – but be that as it may, my purpose here is to warn readers to trust no piece of information they find in this work. → Continue reading: The Revolt of the Masses
Dave Barry links to this:
Phil Henry said he went to Helen Ellis Hospital in Tarpon Springs and was admitted for abdominal pain. A few days into his stay, his I-V malfunctioned causing his right arm to swell.
“On Tuesday night my right arm started hurting. I rung for a nurse. I didn’t get anyone and my arm got swollen up about the size of two golf balls and started bleeding,” Henry said.
After ringing for a nurse several times, he decided to take matters into his own hands.
“I took my urinal can and threw it out in the hallway, still got nobody. I hollered two or three times. Nobody came so I picked up the telephone and dialed 911.”
He said he told the dispatcher his name, where he was and described the problem with the I-V.
He then asked the dispatcher to call the hospital.
“Then I got a nurse. After that they took good care of me.”
Warning to British people: Do not try this with the NHS.
Via b3ta.com, I came across a nice piece of White Rose Relevant graphics, here.
Since I don’t know what the policy is here about pictures, and in any case do not have picture posting privileges, but since b3ta.com is such a Niagara of pictorial diversions, here today and gone tomorrow, I nailed down the relevant image here, amidst appropriately educational commentary.
“Money grabbing gits!” is what b3ta said. Would that our money was the only thing in danger here.
In many ways I would not get so put out by the machinations of the French political class if they were just more upfront about what motivates them. If they just came out and said “we could not care less about the fact the Iraqi people are ruled by a mass murderous tyrant, we are just interested in protecting our economic sweetheart deals”, I would still think that was appalling, but at least one could hardly help but admire their brazen pursuit of self-interest at the expense of others. What is another 20 years of Ba’athism when a sweet below-market oil deal is at stake? No (Ba’athist) blood for (French) oil, please?
But no, Dominique de Villepin and Jaques Chirac actually have the bare faced effrontery to claim the moral high ground when anyone with a passing knowledge of French economics and a ‘who’s who’ of French interests has been able to see what is really going on from day one. It is a measure of the web of corruption that lies over the French media and chattering classes that ‘The Big Lie’ is accepted so widely in France. Perhaps Colin Powell should have just responded to one of de Villepin ambushes in the UN during the lead up to the recent Gulf War by simply reading out a list of the names of the great and good in France and their interests in Iraq, without further comment.
Not that the French political class are alone of course, not by any means… they are just the most cynically sanctimonious about it.
There is a fuss going on in the USA over something called Air America Radio, a pro-Democrat talk-radio project. The shows have been taken off the air in Chicago and Los Angeles last week amidst a row over payments arrears.
This review published before the furore of Air America Radio is from Press Action, a bunch of US libertarians of the leftist sort. It had me in stitches.
It seems that the predominently white radio presenters have shoved off the air the black presenters in New York, when the majority of the audience is black. As a result the cricket scores and news from the Caribbean are being shunted off to slots between midnight and 5am, to the dismay of many Jamaican listeners.
Also one show involved the presenter screaming and ranting at Ralph Nader, who promptly dubbed the radio station “Hot Air America Radio”. Great job of unifying the comrades, Comrade.
I also noted that the Press Action crowd would elect Noam Chomsky for president on their site poll. The funny bit is that Bush gets 13 per cent and Kerry gets 19 per cent. If Bush gets 13 per cent of the goofy left vote, I must call my bookie.
As I recall, Air America was the name of a CIA spook job in South East Asia during the Viewnam War. Anyone thinking what I’m thinking?
The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue.
– Mao Tse Tung
The recent offer of truces by both Al Quaeda and Muqtada al Sadr’s followers in Iraq suggests an incompetence for guerrilla warfare, or that they are losing.
There are two dangers in the weeks ahead. The first is that since the 1960s, a different sort of guerrilla warfare has emerged, which consists of sacrificing cannon-fodder until your opponent can no longer morally take it.
The first historical case of this that I can find comes from the First World War, on the second day of the Battle of Loos. It was an accident. Ten thousand British troops were lined up in ten ranks and marched slowly across muddy open terrain with range markers placed by the Germans. The German machine gunners simply mowed down rank after rank of the British, without taking any casualties themselves. The British came up to the barbed wire that was supposed to have been cut by the artillery bombardment, only it had not been. None of the British troops was equipped with wire cutters (this bit has not changed). So groups of British soldiers ran up and down the barbed wire looking for a way through. The result was virtually 100 per cent casualties on the British side.
Now it is not true that this battle left the Germans unscathed. About a dozen German machine gunners were so traumatised by the massacre that they suffered nervous breakdowns and needed to be hospitalized (the British would have shot them for cowardice).
Since the Vietnam War, it has become a deliberate tactic of the weaker combattant to make a point of losing hundreds or thousands of casualties in the belief that the West does not have the stomach for slaughtering poorly armed enemies. To return to the Mao quote, now is the time to press even more firmly with military force: “enemy tires, we attack”. Failure to do so merely confuses by-standers who consider compassion to be effeminate weakness, and encourages the enemy.
The second threat is the ‘compromise’ with the UN. Letting the UN organise the hand-over of power to an Iraqi government (which will surely be different from the one the US wants) is rather like inviting the USSR to decide who governs Germany and Japan in 1945. Except that the USSR was an ally.
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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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