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]
|
Nancy Pelosi was on fine form on Friday – denouncing the people who made certain documents (now withdrawn) available on a United States government website.
As the New York Times (and, surprise surprise, a United Nations agency) reported the story it was all about wicked Republicans publishing documents that could help people build atomic bombs. Of course, what Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the left really objected to was that the documents came from the government of Saddam Hussain and show that he WAS planning to build atomic bombs right up to the invasion of Iraq (information the left has been trying to sit on for years).
The Economist (a journal that has often been very critical of President Bush and other Republicans) also published an interesting article (subscription required) on Nancy Pelosi in its present issue.
It is well know that Nancy Pelosi represents (and reflects) the extreme left San Francisco area, but her money raising activities (at least one hundred million Dollars over the last few years) are less well known, as is her history.
It is not just that Nancy Pelosi’s father was a leftist Congressman and then Mayor of the corrupt city of Baltimore (no one can help who their father is), it is the fact that Nancy Pelosi personally “kept the book” for him – i.e. the record of favours received and delivered. I do not know how the lady can keep a straight face when she talks about the “culture of corruption” in Washington DC Nancy Pelosi has been involved in corruption her whole life – but I doubt that one voter in ten knows this.
The Republicans are at least partly to blame for people not knowing what they are getting. I can guess the sort of talk that justifies just making token attacks rather than full attacks – “Nancy Pelosi is a women, we can not attack her all out as we would look like beasts” and “we can not say what Nancy Pelosi is as it would look like an ethnic slur and we do not want to upset Italian-American voters”.
So the ‘attack dog’ Republicans (or at least the Republican leadership) do not really fight – and thus help give the United States a Speaker Pelosi.
Another point that the Economist article makes is the iron discipline that Nancy Pelosi has imposed on the Democratic party. Whoever the voters think they are being presented with (“the Democrat is very nice and they went to Iraq”) the fact remains that these people will vote the big government way that Nancy Pelosi tells them to (the Republicans may have been soft on spending, but the Democrats want to spend hundreds of billions more – and it is a similar story on regulations).
Almost needless to say, the Democratic party leadership supports Nancy Pelosi – including the people set to head the key committees in the House. Barney Frank is already boasting (for example to the British Financial Times newspaper) of the world government financial services regulator he intends to help create.
There will also be lots of ‘investigations’ – designed to tie the Administration up in knots (in order to bash Bush) and, thus, lose the war (both in Iraq, and in Afghanistan – and everywhere else).
Radical Islam (of both Shia and Sunni types) will win and moderate Muslims (and the West) will lose.
I very much doubt that Nancy Pelosi actually wants this result, but she does not really care – at least not enough for the Democrats not to do it anyway.
Tom Wright of wrightwing.net wrote the following as a comment but it is simply too splendid to languish in the comment section…
I have said this before and in other venues:
I will support public [CCTV] cameras only if they are first placed in those areas where the worst and most egregious crimes occur:
In every room and every hallway of every police station in every nation.
In every room and every hallway of every legislative body in every nation.
In every room and every hallway of every executive and judicial branch of every nation.
And, as a condition of employment, upon taking the oath of office, permanently bolted to the head of every elected official, every appointed official, and every official authorized to carry arms in the course of duty.
Turned on, broadcasting, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in a manner I, and every one else, can monitor and record.
Then I will support cameras on me.
Not before.
Mark Edwards lays out some arguments against the Panopticon State
Yesterday I spent rather more time than I should have reading and commenting on the BBC ‘Have Your Say’ discussion about the surveillance society. Faced with the predictable response from the obedient serfs that “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” I tried to make three main points.
The first was that you have nothing to fear only if the authorities are perfect, all the time and every time. Imperfections could be mistaken identity, linking you with some criminal activity; if the bloke who asked me for the time as I bought my paper this morning went on to rob the newsagent after I left, might I be an accomplice? There is also the risk of blatant corruption, where a government employee abuses the data they collect as part of their job to identify you as being worth burgling, or to watch through your teenage daughters’ bedroom windows.
My second point was that all of this surveillance does not make us any safer; the least implausible case for it suggests that evidence may be obtained that makes conviction of those committing crimes easier. This however is not proven beyond doubt. What is well established is that the constant surveillance creates an atmosphere of paranoia, in which we are convinced there is a greater threat to each of us than is actually the case. I have found no evidence that crime has fallen where cameras have been installed (I have seen reference to situations where crime fell when cameras were installed and police activity on the ground increased, but that is by no means the same thing).
Thirdly, I tried to explain that the level of surveillance in Britain had radically changed the relationship between government and governed, and between people and the law. There is no longer any presumption of innocence, because we are all suspects. Worse than that, we are suspected of crimes that we may not have committed yet. I feel we have moved from having a Civil Service that was motivated to serve the public (even if they were often misguided), to government employees who now see themselves as ‘the authorities’.
Later in the evening I thought back over the day and realised that I had tried to justify, on purely utilitarian grounds, something that should need no justification; why should I have to justify my desire to protect my privacy? And why are so many people so careless of theirs?
You may be asking why I would want to spend my time posting to what is actually an authoritarian left wing site (the BBC), when I regard myself as libertarian right wing. My reason is simple, and, frankly, arrogant. I kid myself that my arguments may be so persuasive that someone will read my comment, and understand it enough for me to have sown a seed of doubt. I suspect this is so unlikely as be a delusion, but I keep trying. I fear I am not even nearly as persuasive as I like to think I am, and my arguments are doomed to failure, so I am wasting my time but I continue anyway.
To end on a positive note, I counted the most recommended comments at 16:00, and found the first pro camera comment was number 70. None of my contributions were in the preceding 69 but at least the forces of common sense seemed to be carrying the argument.
It is, I suspect, no accident that it is in Europe that climate change absolutism has found the most fertile soil. For it is Europe that has become the most secular society in the world, where the traditional religions have the weakest popular hold. Yet people still feel the need for the comfort and higher values that religion can provide; and it is the quasi-religion of Green alarmism and what has been termed global salvationism – of which the climate change issue is the most striking example, but by no means the only one – which has filled the vacuum, with reasoned questioning of its mantras regarded as a form of blasphemy.
– Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, quoted today by Guido Fawkes
This reports states that Britain’s armed forces are considered to be below strength for the tasks they have been ordered to perform. Nothing very surprising about that, given that although Blair has been almost indecently keen to deploy troops, sailors and airmen to various theatres of operations, he has not backed this up with a corresponding deployment of resources.
As a minimal statist rather than an anarcho-capitalist libertarian, I accept that providing for the defence of this country is a basic task of the state, but that of course leaves wide open how exactly that task is carried out, by whom, and at what cost. Does it mean things like standing armies, or navies, or large airforces, or anti-missile batteries dotting the coasts? Does it mean an armed citizenry called upon to defend the nation at short notice? Does it mean getting into alliances with other powers to share this role, or focusing entirely on one’s own resources?
It is Friday and we like a good debate ahead of the weekend. Let the comments fly! Try not to get hurt.
There has been some interesting discussion on Peaktalk in the subject of freedom of expression, marking the second anniversary of the murder of Theo van Gogh. As there are several relevant articles, I have not linked to any in particular.
Tim Blair links to a critique of the ubiquitous Stern Report, written by Bjørn Lomborg. Perhaps his most damning (and least surprising) criticism of the Report is that it is “unrealistically pessimistic”, and considering its wholesale adoption by the Green lobby, I have no doubt that this is true. The article is well worth a read as an antidote to all the hand-wringing the Stern Report’s tabling has inspired. However, Lomborg’s rejoinder only receives two cheers from me.
Whilst Lomborg’s most famous publication – The Skeptical Environmentalist – was enormously refreshing, I found many of his remedies to the world’s problems uncomfortable. He really seems to believe that solving these crises is as simple as throwing a pre-determined mega-amount of cash at them – x billion dollars here will provide clean drinking water for those who currently have no access to it, x billion dollars there will defeat malaria. In this latest article of Lomborg’s, he ambitiously declares that all of the major problems of the poverty-stricken world can be solved by spending x billion dollars per year, claiming:
Spending just a fraction of this figure [$450 billion p.a. to cut carbon emissions, as recommended by Stern – JW] – $75 billion – the U.N. estimates that we could solve all the world’s major basic problems. We could give everyone clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education right now.
Really? Who is going to disperse this cash, and how? Lomborg does not say, but such a project has the State’s fingerprints all over it. Where else could Lomborg expect to get this sort of sustained funding from? Only an entity with the coercive power to extract resources from countless others would be able to volunteer a sum like 75 billion dollars year in, year out. Are we talking about government – or a coalition of governments? Of course we are! Surely only governments (or an intergovernmental body like the U.N.) are trustworthy enough to distribute such a volume of resources fairly and efficiently. Only governments would utilise these resources in the single-minded purpose of lightening the burden of the world’s poor, unadulterated by the agenda of other forces. An organic, non-governmental response is simply not organised; not holistic enough. Consider how well large-scale state planning has served us this past century or so.
Not buying it?
Well, I think we can all agree that the record of government and the U.N. in the field of aid distribution and poverty alleviation is really quite something. So whilst Lomborg is a useful resource if one is hosing down the wilder claims of the Global Climate Change mullahs, his obvious faith in government action should remind all liberals that he is not one of us. His solutions to the world’s problems are ultimately as futile as those proposed by the environmental industry, although Mr Lomborg’s are admittedly rather less demanding on the wallets of long-suffering taxpayers.
Labour MP Tom Watson is undecided as to whether or not vein scanning and other biometric technology being forced on Britain’s schoolchildren is a good or a bad thing. Perhaps you can share your views on the matter with him. Please note that Watson told me a couple of years ago that his view on ID cards was actually changed by the persuasive arguments he read on various blogs, so this is a man who is willing to listen to reason.
In today’s news, media channels bring Samizdata readers this stunning, shocking announcement:
The UK is becoming a “surveillance society” where technology is used to track people’s lives, a report has warned.
CCTV, analysis of buying habits and recording travel movements are among the techniques already used, and the Report on the Surveillance Society predicts surveillance will further increase over the next decade.
Information Commissioner Richard Thomas – who commissioned the report – warned that excessive surveillance could create a “climate of suspicion”.
One of the many justifications for creating this all-seeing, all-knowing state is that it will help reduce crime. Well, it does not appear to be having much impact on Britain’s lovely teenagers, at least according to a new report. Of course, one wonders how much of the worries about crime are partly a moral panic and partly based on hard, ugly reality (a bit of both, probably). Even so, Britain’s approach to crime, which involves massive use of surveillance technology to catch offenders, appears not to be all that much of a deterrent to certain forms of crime, although arguably it does mean that there is a slightly greater chance of catching people once a crime has been carried out (not much consolation for the victims of said, obviously).
I recently got this book on the whole issue of crime, state powers, surveillance and terrorism, by Bruce Schneier, who confronts the whole idea that we face an inescapable trade-off, a zero sum game, between liberty and security. Recommended.
Surprise, surprise:
London’s 2012 Olympic dream suffered a huge setback last night amid fears that the entire project will fall prey to soaring costs and interfering politicians.
You mean there are people who only worked that out last night. Olympic costs soar. Politicians interfere. These are fundamental natural forces. Everybody knows that. It is merely that lots of people do not care, because they will not – or think that they will not – be paying.
Jack Lemley, the American engineer drafted in to oversee the gigantic building project, quit suddenly two weeks ago saying that he wanted to spend more time on his construction business.
Makes a refreshing change from spending more time with his family. No doubt his construction company still loves him very much.
But last night, Mr Lemley, 71, the boss of an international engineering and consulting company, revealed that politics had driven him out and warned of soaring costs for the Olympic project.
In a body blow to hopes of a successful games, Mr Lemley told Idaho Statesman newspaper: “I went there to build things, not to sit and talk about it, so I felt it best to leave the post and come home.”
Very wise.
He said the London construction projects seemed likely to come in late and cost more than expected due to politics, and he feared that would ruin his reputation of delivering projects on time and on budget.
Which makes you wonder how much it will cost to replace the guy. And what kind of a jerk he will be.
The remarks have enraged Olympic organisers who privately say that Mr Lemley had left partly because of ill health and had agreed not to comment more about the project.
Privately as in don’t-say-I-said-it-but-do-say-it. Mr Lemley owes these people nothing, and certainly not his silence.
If only …
Via NewsMax: the troops respond to John Kerry’s ‘joke’.
 Photo: US soldiers, via News Max.
|
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.
|
