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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A few weeks ago when we culled the so-called race realists (neo-fascist racists) that were camping in Samizdata.net’s comment section, it became clear to me that if you let ill mannered loud mouths use your venue to try and shout down discourse and endlessly turn unrelated topics to their pet thesis, all you do is attract more ill mannered loud mouths who will do the same.
Everyone has their techy days in the comment section but when a person makes a habit of being obnoxious and immune to rational argument, I see no reason to indulge them or tolerate them. This is not a forum and this is not a chat room, it is a blog, which is quite different. Many blogs do not even have comment sections.
When you open your house to visitors, you do not give up the right to kick people out if they start insulting other guests and spray painting their opinions on the wall. Of course some people would say, “Oh but that is censorship if you stop them”. Er, no, it is just maintaining control over what is and is not acceptable on your private property… but of course some people, the sort that I am now far quicker to ban, do not actually believe in private property (not when you pin them down), and often cannot see that censorship by the state of private media channels and editorial control over a private media channel (such as a blog, for example) are materially different things. But then to someone who thinks all interaction should be political (the usual term used is ‘democratic’ these days), such distinctions make little difference to them. I am not referring here to specific people but rather the general class from which our ‘problem commenters’ tend to spring.
Some cannot see that they are not being ‘censored’ because of whatever their views are, any more than a man who gets on a table in a restaurant, drops his draws and starts calling for the darkies to be thrown out of Britain or for the middle class to have their homes confiscated is being ‘censored’ when he gets thrown out by a bouncer for being an jackass.
If I have any regrets it is that I have been too indulgent of endlessly poorly argued and often off topic drivel posted by a small minority of serial commenters in the past. I have no objection to vocal dissent from the ‘Samizdata.net world view’ (whatever that is), I just object to a constant stream of unsupported contentions delivered by megaphone that makes no attempt to actually engage in discourse. We have lots of dissenters who comment here regularly that I would not dream of banning.
So yes, there is a new hard line. Trolls and blogroaches will not be indulged and will be ejected rather swifter in future.
In Saudi Arabia the government’s response to attacks on foreign workers is to allow them to carry firearms. Any chance of that happening in London? I can get a foreign passport if necessary.
However, foreign contractors for the Saudi government will not be allowed to carry weapons because they are under the protection of the State. Good luck to them.
On balance, I think I would swap the British Home Secretary for his Saudi counterpart: less fascism, less victim disarmament, more effective law enforcement, and slightly less political correctness.
A couple of interesting stories caught my eye.
First, the Queen is working hard to use legal means to include privacy clauses in the employment contracts with palace employees, in an effort to prevent leaks and protect the privacy of the Royal Family.
The new contracts cover more than 300 staff from gardeners and cleaners to the lord chamberlain, but will also affect those working for other leading members of the royal family such as the Prince of Wales whose accounts are published separately.
The move forms part of a broader royal strategy, including the appointment of a director responsible for internal security and vetting, aimed at halting the spate of damaging leaks in recent years.
It is a sign of the times that the palace requires a Director for Internal Security to provide them with a modicum of privacy.
Meanwhile, in another sign of the times, US airlines and the US government are under fire for privacy breaches during background checks.
Four airlines — including Continental, Delta, America West and Frontier — and at least two reservation systems provided the information to the government or its contractors, the acting head of the Transportation Security Administration, David Stone, told a Senate committee. Some of the companies denied that.
The agency previously had said only two airlines had done so.
Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, top Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said the agency ”may have violated” the Privacy Act, which says the government must notify the public if it intends to collect records on people.
An agency spokeswoman, Yolanda Clark, said the Homeland Security Department’s privacy officer is investigating the agency’s involvement in the data-sharing from airlines. The information, known as passenger name records, includes credit card numbers, travel reservation details, address and telephone number. It also could mean meal requests, which can indicate a passenger’s religion or ethnicity.
The potential for abuse here seems clear, and I hope that firm action is taken to prevent a reoccurance.
Very interesting appraisal of Bill Clinton. I confess I loathe the man and his wife, who strike me as distilling the worst elements of their generation and of the New Ruling Class in America into two near-sociopathic personalities.
Also apropos Clinton and the current President, one of the mysteries of their terms:
The mystery of Clinton is that he was an essentially conservative president — perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the White House since Grover Cleveland — and yet he was loathed by conservatives… I’m not sure I can explain it either — any more than I can explain why George W. Bush has inspired such antipathy from the Al Franken wing of the Democratic Party even while so abjectly pandering to them with his Medicare expansion, No Child Left Behind Act, campaign finance reform and budget-busting spending increases. Here’s Dubya expanding the Great Society, and yet he gets accused of dismantling the New Deal. Go figure” — columnist Max Boot, writing in the Los Angeles Times. (link not provided due to odious registration process, which pissed me off).
Clinton (despite his tax increase and failed nationalization of health care) has a domestic policy legacy that most Republicans would be proud of, and Bush’s domestic policy has been largely scripted to satisfy his Democratic opponents. Yet both are vilified by the very people whose policy positions they advanced. Something to ponder.
Of course, neither has done much to increase liberty within the four corners of the US of A.
The eight British sailors arrested by Iran have been paraded on television and forced to make public confessions. It just occurred to me that these are both violations of the Geneva Convention, which I believe applies in this case because the British sailors were in uniform, etc.
So why have I not heard any screams of outrage from the Usual Suspects? There are, after all, interest groups out there so enamored of the Convention that they want it followed in cases (illegal combatants, nonstate actors, etc.) where its provisions clearly do not apply. You would think they would be double-extra hot to have it followed where its provisions do apply, but apparently not. I guess we can file their complaints under Outrage, Manufactured Selective Partisan, Discount and Dispose of Soonest.
The Barclay brothers have won the fight for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph (the leading Conservative newspapers in Britain), I welcome this victory as the leading counter bidder (at least the one that made the most noise) was the company behind the Daily Mail – a fanatically anti-American newspaper.
My attitude towards the victory of the Barclay brothers (or rather the defeat of the Daily Mail) may suprise those people who think that my doubts about the policy of war and my dislike of President Bush indicate anti-Americanism. However, a good look at the Daily Mail would show such people what real anti-Americanism is like.
By the way, the Daily Mail is not a socialist newspaper (at least not in the way the word ‘socialist’ is normally understood) it is part of a different tradition of statism.
One last thought: Fahrenheit 9/11 is many things, but for pity’s sake let’s not call it a documentary.
– Ty Burr, Boston Globe
Canada’s Conservative Party has some new blood. Belinda Stronach recently left a $10 million/year job as CEO of international auto parts manufacturer Magna International. Belinda is 38, single, brilliant, gorgeous, an experienced senior manager and capitalist to her DNA base pairs.
Some other Conservative Party members expect she will be a part of any Conservative government elected in Canada and eventually be Prime Minister.
From the look of things, Canadian Conservatives are on the winning side of history.
The reason why academic politics are so vicious is because the stakes are so low.
This quote from Henry Kissinger could easily be applied to Australian federal politics. And, with a Federal election in the offing, the stakes are getting lower and lower. Australian politics, more then ever, resemble drug-gang warfare- there are two gangs, both eager to secure the lucrative cash flows that come with the commanding heights of the Treasury Benches.
This may surprise the casual observer of the political scene. On the surface Australian public life seems to have a frantic flurry of debate, on foreign policy, on health, and on values. But a closer inspection reveals that this is just surface froth, designed to sate the appetites of the media machine and the political junkies. Beneath the scenes, one sees that the purpose of all these debates are simply designed to enjoy the power and perquisites of office.
In Australia the time and date of the election is at the choosing of the Prime Minister, and he studies the signs, looking for the opportune moment to strike. The opinion polls suggest that the ALP has a slight lead over the governing Coalition, but the bookmakers, who have the edge in accuracy in predicting Australian elections, have the Government as firm favorites to retain office (for what it is worth, Bush is just ahead of Kerry, although prices vary from firm to firm).
So what is this government that is, if you believe the bookmakers, about to be elected for a fourth term? → Continue reading: Commentary on politics Down Under
Indeed, according to this survey, Ronald McDonald House is twice as trusted as Amnesty International and more than twice as trusted as the Australian Conservation Foundation and Greenpeace.
– The Australian news site Crikey.com.au, reporting on a survey of Australian opinions on the trustworthiness of various charities that was conducted by the Australian edition of Reader’s Digest.
Given that Ireland is almost a poster boy for ‘before-and-after’ for what liberalising an economy can do, it is a pity that the people who argue for continuing that process have to couch their words in defensive language. Nevertheless, the Progressive Democrats seems to be making a far better case in Ireland for freeing markets than the pointless British Tories are.
Progressive Democrats president, Mr McDowell, last night issued a rallying call to fellow Ministers to hold to the Government’s liberal economic policy agenda, saying tax-cutting and deregulation have helped transform the State.
[…]
He rejected the accusation that supporters of this way believed in the unleashing of unbridled market forces. “It is the essence of the liberal, republican tradition that the market is the servant and not the master of the people. No one I know argues that Ireland is or should be an economy rather than a society.”
“Market is the servant and not the master of the people”… but what does that actually mean? It seems to me that an economy can be social, but only when it is not political… and Ireland can only ‘be an economy, rather than a society’ if politics (i.e, manipulation of the state) has so much control over what is done as to make the economy simply an adjunct of the state and its political processes, wiping out the economic underpinnings of society and the social underpinnings of markets.
So yes, I am all in favour of people in Ireland living in a society, and the only way to do that is to have a free social market rather than a politically regulated economy.
The big news in the London architecture scene just now is the fact that Ken Shuttleworth has left Norman Foster and is branching out on his own, with a new practice called simply: Make. And Make are making a huge public splash already, with this:
The Vortex, it is already being called.
“Ken Shuttleworth”, I realise, sounds like one of the barmier characters in The League of Gentlemen – but believe me, if you know who this guy is you soon forget that. He was the creative brain behind the Erotic Gherkin. He was also the creative brain behind the Millenium Bridge, the one which so famously wobbled when it was first opened. But the wobbles have been long fixed, and that, like the Gherkin, is now an instant London landmark, with the view of it from Tate Modern with St Pauls in the background now being a favourite London picture postcard.
Just as the Gherkin could have, the Vortex could end up looking horribly kitsch, like a giant lamp fit only for a car boot sale. But I hope and trust that, if Shuttleworth does get it built, he executes it as well as he executed the Gherkin, which all of London (that I know of) reckons is superb.
The design rationale of The Vortex is twofold. First, although the shape is beautifully curvy, it is a shape made entirely out of straight lines, which makes it a whole lot easier to build than it looks. Not easy mind, just easier. And second, the big rents in buildings like this are charged at the bottom and at the top, apparently, so the logical shape for such a beast to be is thick and bottom, thick and the top and thinner in the middle. The Vortex obliges perfectly, and as an intrinsic result of its shape.
But the most interesting thing of all about this building, to my way of thinking, is the fact that Shuttleworth has designed it, and announced it, before he knows where it will go.
This is fascinating. Design the building, in rough outline. Then advertise it. Then get the money together and get the politicians excited, and sort out where to put the thing. This makes perfect sense. It also flies in the face of much architectural orthodoxy about how the building has to blend into its surroundings, which I rather like. Because this thing will, if done well (Shuttleworth style), blend in with anything.
No doubt there will be Americans commenting here to the effect that edifices like this spoil Disneyland-London, which exists entirely for their amusement by being the opposite of New York and Chicago. They should know that I vehemently disagree. The business of London is business and it always has been, and you can’t do business only in cutesy little historical type buildings. London is a living city, and plans like this are all part of why it is living particularly vivaciously just now.
The idea is, of course, that the Vortex should be built in London. But since they haven’t fixed on a particular place for it yet, there is no reason why it couldn’t be built in Shanghai instead, or in Shanghai as well, and bigger. I could live with that.
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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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