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… in October of last year and nothing happened. So obviously it took a while for the people who wanted to blow this up some time to get all those highly inflammable Danish flags made and organise the outrage. Maybe we are looking in all the wrong places for the people behind this. Radical Islamic clerics? Nah, it was all a conspiracy by Middle Eastern flag makers. February 8th, 2006 | 37 comments - (Comments are closed)
 “Almost every young libertarian I come in contact with these days is equally opposed not just to the sort of new copyright protections that the content providers seek, but even to traditional copyright laws and rules that pre-date the 76 Act. And not all of these people are wacko libertarian-anarchist types. Many respected young libertarian minds are turning against copyright. I don’t believe that the best strategy is to ignore them. You guys should engage them in debate and defend your views before this extreme anti-IP position becomes more mainstream.” – Adam Thierer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation (many years ago, he worked at the Adam Smith Institute), quoted here. February 8th, 2006 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
The above passage relates to when one of the central figures in Stephenson’s marvellous Baroque Trilogy enters the-then famous Leipzig fair. What struck me about this section of the book was Stephenson’s brilliant description of the sheer fun that markets can involve. (Yes, the curmudgeons out there will start muttering about the triviality of reducing market economics to fun, good heavens). His description even reminded me of a more modern market: the futures exchange in London’s Cannon Street. I used to visit the LIFFE building and would look down from the gallery to look at the sea of men – not many women – trading odd-sounding things like short-sterling futures and options, gesticulating at each other in small groups, more often resembling folk on the verge of a pub brawl than a place where gazillions of pounds, dollars and euros were being transacted. We are so used to critiques of capitalism from people who decry the supposed coldness and soulnessness of markets, unlike the supposedly warmer and more fulfilling communal lifestyles they claim to favour. And yet as Stephenson has reminded me, the market is that supreme example of social interaction and co-operation, often gaudy and loud, alarming even, but never dull. February 8th, 2006 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
The main thing that the Jyllands-Posten incident was intended to do was to assert the right of freedom of expression as a way of defending that right, and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Given the climate of abridgement regarding freedom of expression and civil rights generally in Britain and elsewhere, I can only offer my heartfelt thanks to not just Flemming Rose of Jyllands-Posten for publishing those aesthetically unremarkable cartoons and forcing this issue onto the front page where it belongs, but to everyone involved in this drama. In other words I would like to thank not just those august Danes but also offer a hat-tip to the millions of screaming Muslim activists and blood curdling placard bearing demonstrators who underlined and put into bold what those Danes did, giving them publicity but above all proving their point. If you guys had not taken the bait hook, line and sinker, this would have been a non-event. Yet now only the most gibbering purblind Chomskyite will claim that Muslim activists have not created a climate of fear and intimidation regarding what people can and cannot say about them, or that is it all about Israel (sorry, Palestine) and BushMcHitler. Without the help and support of all those guys in Kabul, London, Beirut, Cairo, Copenhagen and Damascus, this incident would have been a foot note rather than a global headline. As I have said before, with enemies like them, who needs friends? We now have a powerful set of memes to use against the enemies of liberty, both domestic and foreign. I suggest we use them for all they are worth and assert our rights, continually pushing the boundaries just to defend what we have. Someone wants to curtail what you can say? Point out they are appeasing the guys with the signs reading “WE WILL BEHEAD ANY WHO INSULT ISLAM”. We must also refuse to tolerate the intolerance that wraps itself in worlds like ‘respect’ and ‘acceptance’ because whilst we must tolerate our enemies provided they do not threaten us with force, we should feel no obligation to respect them or to accept their views any more than they must respect or accept us. Tolerance for us however is non-negotiable and methinks it is time to stop being polite when we make that point . Update: this is something these guys understand. February 8th, 2006 | 46 comments - (Comments are closed)
Even Homer J. Simpson is affected. February 8th, 2006 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
I get the impression that somewhere in France, a middle finger is being raised. Update: It has been suggested that this be printed on a tee-shirt with the following caption… 
My Imam went to Mecca and all he got me was this lousy Tee-shirt Sorry, I just had to share that February 7th, 2006 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Cardiff University newspaper Gair Rhydd [link down as of late 7 Feb] reprinted one of the Jyllands-Posten ‘Satanic Cartoons’ and as a result, the edition was recalled and pulped by the university authorities. Now as the paper is no doubt the property of the university, I do not contest their right to do as they please with their property. However the statements from them make no sence whatsoever
So they recalled the edition, destroyed all the copies, suspended the editor and are ‘investigating’ three of their journalists but the editorial team enjoy the normal freedoms and independence associated with the press in the UK. As we say on the internet, WTF? Several newspapers in Europe and elsewhere (and I do not mean student newspapers) have reprinted the cartoons, so this is hardly an act of unprofessional behaviour seeing as several editors who actually do this for a living decided it was in the interests of their readers to publish the damn things. Had they said “it is our paper and we will pulp anything that bucks the party line”, well fine, but please, I will thank Cardiff University to not declaim as if they were on the moral high ground when all they are doing is covering their politically correct arses. February 7th, 2006 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
On the Adam Smith Institute blog, Eamonn Butler points out that millions of people in the USA who vote Republican and Democrat nevertheless subscribe to values which are broadly ‘libertarian’. And of course when you add in the millions who decline to vote at all not (just) because of apathy but because there is no party which really reflects their world view (and that may well include the US Libertarian Party), it does make you wonder at the disconnect between those numbers and what you see reflected in the media and political system. I am often asked why so many libertarians/classical liberals/minarchists are averse to pursuing careers in politics and I usually reply that the question is like asking why so many honest people do not pursue careers in mugging and armed robbery. This is why we are at an inherent disadvantage against statists when playing by their rules and why I have long suspected that the idea of small-state parties may be a waste of time*. The type of people who are attracted to politics are almost always psychologically predisposed to solutions which are force based as a preference to some social solution, particular as it is rare for force to be effectively directed back at them personally in a non-abstract way. As I have said before, people who go into politics generally have more in common with members of street gangs (although with less need for personal fortitude) both psychologically and morally than with most of the people who vote for them. Do Tory or Republican politicians really want to wield significantly less power over the nation when it is their turn in power compared to their Labour or Democrat counter-parts? It is very hard indeed to be a genuinely decent person and a politician. * = I would be more than happy to be convinced I am wrong on this February 7th, 2006 | 47 comments - (Comments are closed)
– Andrew Miller MP (Lab, Ellesmere Port and Neston) of the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill which gets its second reading of Thursday. The Bill would permit ministers to change the law by order for the purpose of : “(a) reforming legislation; [and/or] (b) implementing recommendations of any one or more of the United Kingdom Law Commissions, with or without changes.” And they get to nominate the parliamentary procedure for the statutory instrument embodying the order, too. There are safeguards. Criminal offences and powers of entry, search or seizure, may not be created, or penalties increased above a certain level, unless a Law Commission (an appointed body, remember) has recommended it or it is as a restatement of existing law. An order may not impose or increase taxation, except as a restatement of existing law. Which rather begs the question: how, exactly, can a change in the law be “mere restatement”? February 7th, 2006 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
This call [original link removed] for a rally in Trafalgar Square next Saturday is interesting. Does anyone know any more details of who is behind it? I would like to know more before leaping to any conclusions. update: question answered – not worth supporting one group of (white) fascists protesting against another group of (Islamic) fascists February 6th, 2006 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
In all the acres of commentary in the press and elsewhere on those cartoons (death toll at time of writing, five, which is getting beyond a joke), I have not seen anyone mention this point, so I will get it in before I get bored of the whole affair. There are two distinct reasons given in hadith why an image of Muhammad might be forbidden. First, there is a general ban on images of living things as an attempt to rival God’s creative power. That can not be what is at issue here, since it is generally ignored outside mosques, even in Saudi Arabia (though the Taliban appear to have gone more or less the whole hog, to use about the least appropriate possible metaphor). Second, reinforced by the prophet’s deathbed injunction not to set up a shrine or mosque over his grave, there’s the idea that religious worship through icons of saints, in the manner of the christian churches familiar to the early Muslims, constitutes an idolatry, or worship of the saint rather than God directly. So images of the prophet are banned in Islam because they may be revered idolatrously. So the objection to the cartoons cannot really be founded in the Islamic image-ban. They are clearly neither idolatry nor invitations to it. On the contrary, the insistance that a mocking representation amounts to a gross insult to the prophet is much more like idolatry in that sense: a demand that the man be revered as incapable of representation as God. Is what is really happening that the ‘insult’ is actually felt by individual Muslims (either at first hand, or in reaction to hearsay)? Those who feel themselves outraged are themselves threatened by the mockery, but wrap themselves in religiosity as a defence. In effect they are setting themselves up in the prophet’s shoes, attributing to him either primitive notions of honour that his disavowal of a shrine rather suggests he had surpassed, or God-like equivalence with the religion itself. Now, remind me, who was insulting Islam? February 6th, 2006 | 66 comments - (Comments are closed)
February 6th, 2006 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
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