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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‘Les 4 Vérités’ is a French libertarian/economic liberal magazine published weekly with 10,000 subscribers in paper format and also available online. The title comes from the French expression: «dire ces quatre vérités à quelqu’un» (“to speak home truths to someone”), in this case to a complacently statist France. Archived editions (about a month old) are available free and one can subscribe (paper or pdf) for the first month free.
In the current issue: Various denunciations of Iraq; Guy Millère’s piece on ‘France’s Debt to America’ and a review of Pierre Kohler’s ‘L’imposture verte’ (the Green Scam): a scientist’s attack on the various eco-scares.
One of the two things I also like on the site are the cartoons – almost every French site seems to have a cracking cartoonist: this week’s has Saddam welcoming the arrival of puppets on strings saying “At last! The return of the useful idiots!”.
The other is the box which advertises the (street) demonstration of the week and offers two recommended web links. Plugged this week are a new current affairs site called ‘Choc-info’ and a pompously witty ‘libertarian bureaucrat’ with the outlandish name, even in French of Aristophane Triboulet.
I now have over 120 links for French libertarian groups, publications, blogs and online forums. ‘Les 4 Vérités’ may not have the most polished web site, but it provides the free market view unashamedly, in a country that needs it badly.
On tonight’s TV show ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ a contestant was asked “Who in 2002 became known as ‘The Quiet Man’ of British Politics?”
The contestant – an attractive if not terribly bright brunette – was offered four choices:
- John Prescott
- Kenneth Baker
- Edward Heath
- Ian Duncan Smith
She had no idea. She used her 50/50 lifeline which left her with Baker and Duncan Smith. She slightly guessed the latter but felt she needed to call her father. He promptly said: “IDS”.
Last year a programme on the same game show asked a father and son who the leader of the Conservative Party was. The programme was recorded the day after Ian Duncan Smith made his first speech as leader of the Conservative Party at the Party Conference. The son said “I haven’t a clue”, the father thought it might be Kenneth Clarke. They asked the audience. A minority knew the answer. Finally they called a friend and got the correct response, although on that occasion the friend wasn’t so sure.
One of these blokes is the leader of the Conservative Party… apparently.
An article in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph Sports section speculates as to why the bid for the Olympic Games in London for 2012 might fail. Apparently the expected losses for hosting the games will be a massive £2,600 millions.
However, as no one has actually published what the toal budget would be, I can only assume that normal public sector project costs will apply: i.e. the original sum multiplied by ten. It is easy to see why the government is apparently unconvinced by the urgency of commiting to such a scheme.
My critics may argue that this sum of money spent on promoting the Olympic Games will do a lot less harm than if allocated to almost any other public programme. This is true. One shudders at the thought of what dregs passing themselves off as doctors would be employed in state hospitals if this sort of money got awarded the National Health Service.
Oh dear, I just realised, the NHS has been given that extra sum over the next two years. Perhaps we should have persuaded the government to spend vast amounts of money on hopeless attempts to bring the football World Cup to Staines, or the Winter Olympics to Blackpool, or even finance half a dozen Americas Cup challenges.
When I was ten years old, I was informed that:
- The National Health Service is the finest in the World
- The Comprehensive School system was the envy of the World
- The Welfare State was the envy of the World
- The Royal Navy was the finest in the World
- The British Army was the finest in the World
When I was twenty, some British politicians still asserted each of these statements, although none seemed to believe all of them anymore. There seemed to be an equal number of politicians claiming that each of these thing was ‘a National disgrace’, which given this was the public sector, was no doubt true.
The elite forces of the British Army are no doubt excellent. Some bits of British military design are excellent. But this does not mean that the British armed forces are fit for combat. In May 1940 the French Army had as many tanks as the Germans. The French Air Force in aerial battle shot down more German planes than the Germans did of theirs. The French tanks were certainly good enough for use by the Germans in other parts of Europe… but even good equipment can be misused, and the finest army in the world can be run into the ground by bad management.
Since 1991, the British Army has recruited according to the whims of political correctness. The rifle only works if assembled in a tent and cleaned before and after each use. The boots melt in the Middle East. The troops have not enough sleeping bags, clothes, soap, tents or fuel for their vehicles. Their communications equipment does not work, last time they saw action in Europe they were able to use their mobile phones, this time these are unlikely to work. The new British tank breaks down. The British Army version of the Apache apears to be less reliable than the version used by the US in 1991. There is not enough ammunition for any of the weapons. There is no medical service worth talking about to save money and because of staff shortages: casualties will queue and die on trolleys in the National Health Service if they are unfortunate enough to be flown home. Obviously the best scenario for a British wounded soldier is to be picked up and treated by one of the other allies (except perhaps Turkey). This may sound like the Crimea in 1854-56. On that occasion the Times decribed the British Army as it left as ‘the finest army that has ever left these shores’. Less than ten per cent of the British casualties of the Crimean War came from combat.
It may be that the US is capable of defeating Iraq rapidly and without considerable losses. But the British Army is not properly equipped, the logistics are very poor and the medical facilities inadequate. I would rather air these points now, than wait for a report from a modern Scutari.
On Sunday (2nd March) a demonstration will be held in Paris outside the U.S. embassy. The assembly point will be the place de la Concorde. The rally has an English name: “Friends and Freedom”, which in itself is unique.
It aims to promote: “Friendship and confidence between the French and American peoples” and “Friendship and solidarity between France and the United States of America”. The slogans are French. More details can be found here.
Among French libertarians there is the same division as in the US, with minarchists tending to support a war of liberation and both the anarcho-capitalists and the conservatives against. The Catholic liberals (almost the exact opposite of the socialist ‘liberal Catholics’) are opposed to war both for the damage it could cause (some French people remember the ‘collateral damage’ of Caen in 1944), and the fear that a successor government might be less religiously tolerant than Saddam. An example of this view can be found here.
I regard the different cases being forward (in public by Messrs Bush and Blair) for war with Iraq as poor because they are either wrong (the Iraqi dictator probably has fewer ‘weapons of mass destruction’ than either Kim Jong Il or General Musharraf) or contradictory (is Saddam an ally of Bin Laden Yes or No?). Tyranncide is good enough and UNESCO can go and get stuffed.
I also consider the British forces almost entirely incapable of offering any worthwhile help to the Americans for reasons I’ve mentioned here before. Lend-Lease the air tankers and the SAS to the US and that’s all. ‘The Borrowers’ are probably going to get in the way of a US air strike or hold up the advance when the British made tanks break down in “the wrong kind of sand”.
Despite these misgivings, I would certainly go to the place de la Concorde this Sunday if I could afford the fare. The nasty game being played by French and German political leaders is as much a threat to world peace and the prosperity of this corner of the planet as any gang of terrorists.
The ‘Anglo-Saxon’ nations are free, the European ‘continentals’ have no concept of individual freedom. As gross generalisations go, this one is approximately believed by many libertarians both in the Anglosphere and outside it.
Yet I hear that “Spain is a nation of anarchists”. Or about France: “How can one govern a country with over 300 kinds of cheese?”
I can only offer a tentative answer, but maybe there is an uncomfortable grain of truth in it.
The Anglosphere is actually a lot less free than its propagandists would have us believe. For a start welfare and taxation is not noticeably lower in Canada, Australia and New Zealand than in some European continental states. In fact healthcare is more Sovietized in Canada and the UK than in any continental European country I can think of. Maybe the Ukraine is worse. Parts of the US are as heavily taxed as the UK (New York City for example), and the UK is far from the best in the European Union, let alone in comparison with the little tax havens of Monaco, Liechstenstein, Luxembourg.
One reason that the French state is so overbearing could be precisely that French people are generally NOT inclined to obey authority. You need millions of bureaucrats to a) have enough supporters for government and b) harrass the rest of the the public. Whereas the lighter touch of British rule (until recently) was a reflection on the bovine docility of the British people with such weird notions as ‘rule of law’.
Certainly my experience of British and French libertarians suggests that the British ones are far more inclined to support a minimal state, whereas the French ones tend to trust no government at all.
“The government which governs best, governs least. And the government which governs least, governs not at all.”
Taking my life into my hands the other day, I squeezed around the London Underground and found myself pressed up against an advertisement on the Piccadilly Line for that manufacturer of jobs, I meant ‘first-rate military equipment’ British Aerospace or BAe as it would now prefer to be known.
I discovered that Royal Air Force pilots enjoy the delights of an ‘assertive’ and ‘calm’ woman’s voice, produced by electronic circuitry, telling them ‘Missile locked onto you’, ‘Pull up! Pull up’ and ‘You fool! You’re going to die’… I made that last one up, I hope.
The advertisement informed me that the pilots affectionately know this disembodied squawking harpy as ‘Nagging Nora’. Far be it from me to even hint that this nickname could be anything other than a cute moniker of endearment. However, the only person I have met in the last five years who worked in the R.A.F. was a woman, although she wasn’t a pilot. And I also know that gays are now allowed into the armed services. So this caused me to wonder… Has a pilot been sued for divorce yet, by a jealous wife, angry at her beloved calling out of ‘Nora, Nora’ in his sleep?
Can a female pilot sue the R.A.F. for refusing to provide her with a ‘Nagging Norman’ voice, perhaps modelled on the authoritarian tones of that former pilot Lord Tebbitt? Can a homosexual pilot demand the same (which would be funny given Lord Tebbitt’s known ‘enthusiasm’ for gay rights)? And if different voices are provided for women and gays, will it be considered ‘pressure’ on lesbians to reveal their sexuality to admit that actually, they rather preferred Nagging Nora’s soft and assertive tones, all along?
As we prepare for war, I hope that these vital issues for the nation’s defence are given the proper attention that they deserve. And never mind that the Tornado is hopelessly outclassed as a fighter by the Iraqi Mig 29s.
I was going to write about Les 4 Vérités a French free-market libertarian/liberal weekly magazine. However I came across a survey on pornography on the magazine’s site which produced the following results:
- 32.52 per cent – “The State must take strong restrictive measures”
- 23.40 per cent – “I’m against it, I try to persuade others, but it’s none of the State’s business”
- 2.13 per cent – “I’m a consumer and I would like politicians to stop me”
- 41.95 per cent – “It’s a pleasant past-time which should not be prohibited”
From these figures I assume that the number of British immigrants in France connected to the Internet is small.
Stephen Zunes, Chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco, writes:
It was the United States, through its Central Intelligence Agency, that overthrew Iran’s last democratic government, ousting Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. As his replacement, the U.S. brought in from exile the tyrannical Shah, who embarked upon a 26-year reign of terror. The United States armed and trained his brutal secret police – known as the SAVAK – which jailed, tortured and murdered tens of thousands of Iranians struggling for their freedom.
The Islamic revolution was a direct consequence of this U.S.-backed repression since the Shah successfully destroyed much of the democratic opposition. In addition, the repressive theocratic rulers that gained power following the Islamic Revolution that ousted the Shah were clandestinely given military support by the U.S. government during the height of their repression during the 1980s. As a result, there is serious question regarding the United States’ support for the freedom of the Iranian people.
I have two observations to make about this:
- There is no mention of the support given to Ayatollah Khomenei by the French government before 1979. No doubt French politicians including Valéry Giscard D’Estaing and Jacques Chirac had no thoughts whatsoever of obtaining oil concessions once the hated US puppet was ousted.
- To the extent that what Chair Zunes writes is at all plausible, outside the USA, the last sentence is undoubtedly true. However, I suspect that there really is a change of view in the US administration, to the effect that simply finding more efficient despots won’t do. If this is the case, I believe that saying so publicly and repeatedly, will be somewhat disarming.
My recent posting Can we agree? appears to have proved a point. No, we cannot. Consider this extract from Elliot Temple’s contributions to the discussion that flowed from my piece:
Also, I think it’s Perry’s position that government is a threat to our liberties. Whereas, I disagree again.
I think Mr Temple will find that the view that government is a threat to our liberties is more widely held than by Perry de Havilland. Every form of anarchist would agree. So, presumably would the 55,000,000 people killed in the Second World War. The 1,000,000 murdered by the Soviet occupiers in “liberated” Eastern Europe. The Jews (3,000,000? 6,000,000? 10,000,000?) murdered by the Nazi German government. In Communist China is it “only one hundred million”? I remember one government official once claiming that “only one per cent” of his country’s population died in labour camps.
Even where states are not deliberately violating freedom, governments are a threat simply by the scale of their power and the unintended consequences thereof. The US government in the 1960s did not set out to create a crime epidemic by offering welfare to single mothers, reducing prison sentences for juveniles, criminalizing drugs and introducing wage controls. Yet if the policy had been to force-feed children with crack cocaine, to napalm-bomb certain districts of major cities, to introduce the death penalty against men with low-incomes for staying with their pregnant girdfriends and to make it illegal for a shop-keeper to hire a student, the effect would have been pretty much the same by the mid-1970s.
If there is a reason why some states are less horrendous than others, it may just be that the better places are where more people are wary of the state as a vehicle for creating goodness, and in the worst, the state is busy “doing good”.
To be a libertarian does not necessarily imply that one favours anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-syndicalism or anarcho-communism. But it does imply a generally sceptical attitude towards any claim that the state is an institution to be entrusted with ever greater power.
On that point at least, we should all agree. On this basis, some libertarians can support a U.S. attack on Iraq – for a variety of reasons. But if they are not letting their emotions cloud their judgement (especially fear and the desire for revenge) they should look beyond the war and ask themselves how much damage to freedom in the US, and elsewhere, the war will cause.
To give but one example: the US has rejoined UNESCO in an attempt to buy votes from other states for their support in a war against Iraq. If this process doesn’t frighten you, ask yourself what governments wouldn’t trade. The US is also paying subscriptions back-dated to UNESCO. This means that an organisation which is dedicated to the destruction of free-market education worldwide is about to receive a massive financial windfall, plus the official blessing of the US government. Goodbye private education in India. Hello global permanently subsidized illiteracy.
Last weekend I watched some good tennis from some young British players. True they were hammered by the best male tennis player in the world, one of the fastest servers in the world, and one of the all-time great doubles players. But the Australian tennis team would have fancied their chances against any comers on a surface of their own choosing, in front of a partisan crowd.
An Australian paraded a banner which listed a series of sporting indignities heaped upon the British in the previous year: massacres in the cricket, rugby league etc. But neither football (soccer), nor rugby union were mentioned. Patrick Crozier, writes about the novel indignity of being beaten by the Australian soccer team: nicknamed the “Socceroos”, so what they call the England team I shudder to even think.
However, Patrick, like many British people goes from one extreme to the other. Just because the English invented soccer over one hundred and forty years ago, there is supposed to be something shameful about defeat to a newcomer. The same attitude exists in all areas of British endeavour since the mid-19th century. First it was an inferiority complex with Germany and the USA, later with Japan, then Germany and “Europe”. In most cases whether it is the navy, the health system, schools, food, beer, state television, industry, Britain is always assumed either to be “the finest in the world” or it ought to be.
If there were anything remotely approximating the amount of effort put into achieving these ideals as there is spent on moaning about failure, perhaps these delusions would at least be productive. Instead we get whingeing succeded by overbearing gloating, then back again. Little wonder that for any foreigner that regularly competes against the English, there is great pleasure in victory.
But this time things have got truly out of hand. The England rugby union team has been beating the supposedly superior New Zealand, South Africa and Australia teams for several years. The latest round of matches was a professional execution of southern hemisphere pride. So instead of bleating about a soccer match, English sports fans would do better to find out what the rugby team is doing right. England deserve to be favourites to win the rugby world cup this year.
Sadly [not!], the English rugby team faces a truly superior force tomorrow at Twickenham: the French national side, who I have no doubt, will rub snotty English noses into the cold Middlesex mud. I shall of course observe this with my usual detachment… and resist wrentching my phone and pestering every English rugby fan I know for at least two minutes.
Then you’ll have something to moan about!
The French libertarian movement is split over war with Iraq, though needless to say, not for the purely venal reasons of Chirac, the bespoke purveyor of nuclear technology to national-socialist dictators.
Most of the French libertarians I have been in touch with seem torn between a quasi-Randian view: “exterminate all practitioners of violent irrational beliefs” and the absolutist horror of any state violence. With a president like Jacques Chirac (imagine a cross between Richard Nixon, Walter Mondale, Bill Clinton and George Bush senior: with NONE of their redeeming features), such scepticism about the morality of one’s own government seems reasonable. My fear about America is that unlike most Americans, I assume that the next US president could be almost as bad. But that’s another issue.
A distinctive voice in France right now is Jacques Garello – a French Catholic economist of the Austrian school. Professor Garello has hosted the summer university of the “nouvelle économie” at Aix for twenty five years, probably the most significant event of it’s kind in Europe. Here M. Garello considers the case for a “just” war:
The error consists in talking of a war against Iraq, when it really is a war against terrorism, and a legitimate case of self-defense of universal civilisation against barbaric forces which happen to find support and encouragement in Iraq.
He goes on to suggest that the real purpose of French diplomacy in refusing to side publicly with the US is the fear of the millions of potential Islamic militants in France: they would rather ignore the problem than fight it.
*= The Other France
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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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