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.
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Arts & Letters Daily links to two articles, both protesting against the absurdities and cruelties of political correctness.
David Mamet writes in the Guardian in connection with the forthcoming London production of his play Oleanna, the central character of which is a young woman who falsely accuses a man of raping her:
The play’s first audience was a group of undergraduates from Brown University. They came to a dress rehearsal. The play ended and I asked the folks what they thought. “Don’t you think it’s politically questionable,” one said, “to have the girl make a false accusation of rape?”
I, in my ignorance, was stunned. I didn’t realise it was my job to be politically acceptable. I’d always thought society employed me to be dramatic; further, I wondered what force had so perverted the young that they would think that increasing political enfranchisement of a group rendered a member of that group incapable of error – in effect, rendered her other-than-human. For if the subject of art is not our maculate, fragile and often pathetic humanity, what is the point of the exercise? And if the writer is capable, why enquire, let alone obsess about his sex? No one ever said of a comedy, “I laughed myself sick until I discovered the sex of the writer.”
But as Theodore Dalrymple makes clear, there are limits to the notion that a woman can do no wrong. If the wrong is done to her by her own ethnic minority, and even in particular by a male member of it (her father), then it is all her fault. → Continue reading: She can do no wrong – but it is all her fault
Remember that scene in that dreadful movie The Phantom Menace where Anakin’s mother explains that slaves have tracking devices implanted to prevent them escaping?
An American company has developed such technology, and they have more then just slaves in mind.
The process is oh so easy:
Once implanted just under the skin, via a quick, simple and painless outpatient procedure (much like getting a shot), the VeriChip can be scanned when necessary with a proprietary VeriChip scanner. A small amount of radio frequency energy passes from the scanner energizing the dormant VeriChip, which then emits a radio frequency signal transmitting the individual’s unique personal verification (VeriChip ID) number. The VeriChip Subscriber Number then provides instant access to the Global VeriChip Subscriber (GVS) Registry – through secure, password-protected web access to subscriber-supplied information. This data is maintained by state-of-the-art GVS Registry operations centers in Riverside, California and Owings, Maryland.
And the implications are oh so scary….
The news just goes from bad to worse on the RFID front. Trevor Mendham quoted Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy as saying that RFID tracks products, not people, but American tech company Applied Digital Solutions, through it’s subsidiary Verichip Corporation, has already broken through that barrier.
They have developed a RFID product that is implanted in the victim.
The VeriChip minaturized Radio Freqency Identifcation (RFID) Device is the core of all VeriChip applications. About the size of a grain of rice, each VeriChip contains a unique verification number, which can be used to access a subscriber-supplied database providing personal related information. And unlike conventional forms of identification, VeriChip cannot be lost, stolen, misplaced or counterfeited.
Once implanted just under the skin, via a quick, painless outpatient procedure (much like getting a shot), the VeriChip can be scanned when necessary with a proprietary VeriChip scanner. A small amount of Radio Freqency Energy passes from the scanner energizing the dormant VeriChip, which then emits a radio frequency signal transmitting the individuals unique verification (VeriChipID) number. The VeriChip Subscriber Number then provides instant access to the Global VeriChip Subscriber (GVS) Registry – through secure, password protected web access to subscriber-supplied information. This data is maintained by state-of-the-art GVS Registry Operations Centers located in Riverside, California and Owings, Maryland.
It’s a password protected website- anyone with knowlege of the internet knows that password protected websites are not that secure; anyone that says that they can guarantee the security of such a webserver is whistling in the wind.
It’s rather like that dreadful George Lucas film, The Phantom Menace, where the slaves are fitted with a tracking device. Verichip Corp. doesn’t have slaves in their sights as a target market- they have a wider target market in mind.
VeriChip products are being actively developed for a variety of security, defense, homeland security and secure-access applications, such as authorized access control to government and private sector facilities, research
laboratories, and sensitive transportation resources, including the area of airport security.
In these markets, VeriChip is able to function as standalone
personal verification technology or it is able to operate in conjunction with other security devices such as ID badges and advanced biometrics.
In the financial arena, VeriChip has enormous potential as a personal verification technology that could help curb identity theft and prevent fraudulent access to banking and credit card accounts.
In other words, they are after a world where everyone is fitted with these devices. Does Big Blunkett own shares in this company? At the moment, they are working with gun manufacturers. Who will be next?
A good many of the Australian bloggerati (including Scott Wickstein and myself) attended a fine blogger bash in Melbourne over the weekend. A splendid evening was had by all, and photos have been put up in various other places, but there was just one additional thing I have to share with the world.
This is Tim Blair.
Notice the glass of the pale coloured yellowy stuff in his hand. Tim spent the whole evening drinking chardonnay. He made some feeble excuse about how is is trying to reclaim chardonnay for capitalism, but I was not entirely convinced about his protestations. He did, after all drink a lot of chardonnay. In fact he couldn’t stop.
Could the whole Right Wing Death Beast thing be an act, when Tim has such an extreme characteristic of the enemy? I am fearful.
Tuscan Tony Millard is very unhappy that Britain’s civil servants are on strike. No, not really
I for one was relieved that 110,000 civil servants went on strike today claiming the urgent need for more taxpayers money, presumably to spend down the pub during their 37 days annual paid leave. I calculated that, assuming their refusal to honour their employment contracts results in the withholding of a day’s pay, this little exercise alone has saved us the grand total of £7,403,846 (US$ 13,549,843) without us even having to put down the TV remote/let go of the mouse/whatever.
I assume that you civil ‘servants’ are all now sufficiently dissatisfied with your lot to seek employment elsewhere, preferably not funded by my tax receipts. Viva il mercato, as we say in Tuscany! Well done, lads, and thanks.
Tony Millard
This editorial by Electronic security expert Bruce Schneier that was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune does a pretty good job of demolishing the case against compulsory ID cards. The case is a pretty familiar one to readers of this site, but the main points are there: it’s not about the card itself, it is about the people who use it and check for it. And the question really is does the card help or hinder them in improving security, and does it help or hinder them if they wish to break the rules themselves, and in any event, knowing someone’s identity doesn generally greatly help in knowing their intentions.
In fact, everything I’ve learned about security over the last 20 years tells me that once it is put in place, a national ID card program will actually make us less secure.
My argument may not be obvious, but it’s not hard to follow, either. It centers around the notion that security must be evaluated not based on how it works, but on how it fails.
It doesn’t really matter how well an ID card works when used by the hundreds of millions of honest people that would carry it. What matters is how the system might fail when used by someone intent on subverting that system: how it fails naturally, how it can be made to fail, and how failures might be exploited.
The first problem is the card itself. No matter how unforgeable we make it, it will be forged. And even worse, people will get legitimate cards in fraudulent names.
Two of the 9/11 terrorists had valid Virginia driver’s licenses in fake names. And even if we could guarantee that everyone who issued national ID cards couldn’t be bribed, initial cardholder identity would be determined by other identity documents … all of which would be easier to forge.
Not that there would ever be such thing as a single ID card. Currently about 20 percent of all identity documents are lost per year. An entirely separate security system would have to be developed for people who lost their card, a system that itself is capable of abuse.
Additionally, any ID system involves people… people who regularly make mistakes. We all have stories of bartenders falling for obviously fake IDs, or sloppy ID checks at airports and government buildings. It’s not simply a matter of training; checking IDs is a mind-numbingly boring task, one that is guaranteed to have failures. Biometrics such as thumbprints show some promise here, but bring with them their own set of exploitable failure modes.
But the main problem with any ID system is that it requires the existence of a database. In this case it would have to be an immense database of private and sensitive information on every American — one widely and instantaneously accessible from airline check-in stations, police cars, schools, and so on.
The security risks are enormous.
→ Continue reading: Bruce Schneier on why ID cards will not make us safer
It is not often I quote Nikita Khrushchev in any context, but Al Qaeda is quite correct that western civilization poses a clear and present danger to their cherished notions of a universal social life centred on submission to God. An economically successful western civilisation underpinned by severalty and free intellectual enquiry is caustic to a civilisation based on the submission to non-rational ideas which are propagated by force. To put it bluntly, we will enervate them and eventually destroy them by gradual assimilation.
The best and brightest muslims are already hard pressed to not see the glaring practical and intellectual flaws in their societies and want better for themselves, and as a result there is already a small but fairly well integrated middle class of secularized American and Euro-Muslims who can be observed in the markets, cinemas, offices, pubs and bars of the west. But far more dangerous to the broader Islamist project is the example not of western thought but of western affluence and the ease and secular self-direction it yields.
The sheer material wealth of the more advanced west is almost guaranteed to subvert the broad masses who come in contact with it. The current difficulties in assimilating the lower parts of the socio-economic western muslim population should not blind us to the fact that western culture’s corrosive effects on the Islamic world view really counts far more when they are felt in Peshawar, Ankara and Cairo than in Marseilles, London and Chicago. In that theatre of the war of civilisations our truly effective weapons are not the gunship helicopters, laser guided bombs and 5.56mm small arms being used in Iraq right now, but rather our cheap DVD players, Internet connections, music/porn/action videos and smorgasbord of good, accessible but inexpensive Tex-Mex, Thai, Italian and Lebanese foods that globalisation has brought us, etc. etc. I have made this point before but as we concentrate on the more local and violent issues being resolved in the streets of Iraq, it does not hurt to put it all in the broader context within which our enemies certainly see things.
It is the horror of this viral characteristic of western consumer culture which really lies at the heart of the antipathy of the Islamists to the west: as secular society and severalty is the true heart of our civilisation, by our very nature we cannot and will not just ‘leave them alone’. It is not a matter of what western governments want to do, because western businesses and cultural influences will go wherever there are receptive markets and audiences. It is not a western ‘conspiracy’ to subvert Islam, merely the very nature of western civilisation at work. Short of turning the entire Islamic world into a hermit empire like North Korea writ large, the mullahs and ayatollahs cannot avoid their flocks hearing our siren songs.
Our weapons are varied and effective
Just who are these people going around saying that a decadent, post-historic, senescent Europe is no longer capable of galvanising in response to dangerous threats?
Nothing could be further from the truth:
Jelly mini-cup sweets have been banned by the European Commission because of a risk of children choking.
The sweets are packaged in plastic cups and designed to be swallowed in one.
The commission said they were a risk because of their “consistency, shape and form” and that warnings alone were not enough to protect children.
Though I do think that diplomacy and negotiation should have been tried before embarking on such unilateralist and aggressive actions.
The Guardian, dubbed The Grauniad for its typos, seems to be in a world of its own. Its articles are full of polytoines. The Britain it describes seems not to have anything to do with the one here on Earth, but on some distant land – the Planet Guardianopolis perhaps. The paper’s spin rarely gets corrected but, in the face of undisputable facts, corrections and clarifications do get published. Here is one example:
In our report, Life after Living Marxism, page 10, July 8, we referred to the Reason Foundation and said its “leading writer, the syndicated columnist Sandra Postrel, is author of the libertarian book The Enemies Of Freedom and frequently talks at the Hudson Institute”. The Reason Foundation points out that no one of that name works at the Foundation or for Reason Magazine. The editor-at-large and former editor of the magazine is called Virginia Postrel. She is a columnist for Forbes and the New York Times but not a “syndicated” columnist. Her book is not called The Enemies Of Freedom. It is called The Future And Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress (Free Press). The Reason Foundation says Ms Postrel has never been to the Hudson Institute and has no connection with the organisation.
Good work, chaps.
Plenty of people around the world by now know of the allegations of philandering made against the English footballer David Beckham, based on claims made to the media, and also on transcripts of SMS phone messages that are said to have been sent between Beckham and one Rebecca Loos.
The ins and outs of the affair are none of our concern, but what did concern me was this explainatory article in The Advertiser:
He apparently even has offered to produce his mobile phone records to prove his innocence. It may surprise some mobile phone users that some carriers retain details of text messages.
In Australia, Telstra keeps SMS messages for up to 28 days and Optus keeps theirs for three days.
I have three questions here. First, why are telephone companies keeping records of these things at all, and second, why is there such a large difference between Telstra, the dominant company that is still half owned by the government, and Optus (which is now owned by Singtel, the phone arm of the Singaporean government.) And thirdly, why are these messages apparently so insecure?
Australian Libertarian blogger Tex waxes lyrical on free markets:
For me, nothing – nothing – in recent years has confirmed my faith in the wonders of markets and competition more than one humble little sector of our economy: the pizza industry.
I’m a pizza addict. Ten years ago, I would have to part with the best part of twenty bucks to get one large pizza delivered. Suppliers in my area were limited and it sometimes arrived cold. When in Sydney a few years ago – in an area not well serviced by the Pizza men – I shelled out nearly fifty bucks for two delivered pizzas + a drink. Nowdays, I can get two large pizzas – easily enough to feed three people – for less than $15. It arrives quickly, is great quality, and there are a far greater variety of pizzas to choose from.
So in ten years, pizza prices have more than halved, the quality has gone up, the delivery times are quicker, and there’s a greater menu to choose from. And it’s 100% the result of competition. As a couple more suppliers moved into the area, the “coupon wars” began. Maybe a couple of coupons per month would arrive in the mail, offering a few bucks off per pizza. Then other companies started to price-match. Nowdays, my letterbox is flooded with pizza coupons, each subsequent one outmatching the last.
As another example of the benefits of free markets, I was in Melbourne on the weekend. Melbourne is justifiably proud of it’s food- I’m not a well travelled man by any means but it does seem to be one of the world’s leading cities for fine dining.
In the restaurant strip in Lygon Street, for example, you will find that the establishments there actually have hired people to stand outside and make offers to passers-by, to entice them in, and in this way you can get yourself, for example, a free bottle of wine. Australians don’t haggle much, but the visitor who has this skill can make good use of it there.
In Melbourne’s Chinatown on Little Bourke Street, the same practice has come into vogue.
This hot-house atmosphere of competition isn’t just a boon from the point of view of the diner’s wallet either. Restaurants don’t just compete on price- they compete on quality as well, and reputation is as important as price in these markets. For they are dealing with a clientele that is, on the whole, very well educated in dining.
And this also encourages risk-taking, to provide new and innovative ways of presenting and preparing food. Bon apetite!
It was said that El Sado’s (or whatever the man’s name is) newspaper in Iraq was closed down because it was “inciting violence”. I think that is true – I do not have to read the newspaper to guess what sort of things it was printing “mutilate, kill, feed what is left to the dogs” (and so on) or therefore understand why it was closed down. However, hearing of this did make me think of the following.
One does not have to be a libertarian to think the government of the United States has treated the Constitution of the United States as a bit of toilet paper for at least the last 71 years. And, of course, President Bush far from fulfilling his Oath of Office to “Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States” has added new unconstitutional programs (the ‘no child left behind’ thing, the extension of Medicare, and so) in addition to all the existing unconstitutional programmes.
Whilst I am not drawing a direct analogue to what is going on in Iraq (for obvious reasons), I wonder what the Founding Fathers would be writing if they were around today – I think they might well be inciting violence (although, I accept, they would not be writing about mutilating or feeding to dogs).
Please no comments about how “time changes how a text should be interpreted” or “the Supreme Court says X is O.K., so X must be O.K.”
The Constitution of the United States is not some strange mystical text written in an ancient language – any person of average intelligence (who bothers to read it) would know that most of what the United States government now does is unconstitutional.
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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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