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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“Why would someone attack this lovely elderly couple?” asks the front page headline in the Daily Telegraph. James and Joan Briton, both in their 80s were stabbed to death attempting to defend their home from a man believed to be Mark Hobson. Hobson, aged 34, is on the run, suspected of sexually assaulting and murdering twin sisters (one of whom was his girlfriend).
The question may be rhetorical but the answer is not.
Mr and Mrs Briton, of Strensall near York, were murdered because their attacker knew he could get away with it. Armed with a knife there was no possibility that the intruder could face anything more threatening than a lawyer offering him compensation for injury if his victims used household implements to defend themselves with.
Police advice is to “not approach Hobson”. I am puzzled as to quite how this advice is relevant to an intruder who bursts into one’s home.
Meanwhile two carjackers who killed a man are sentenced to seven and a half years each. With ‘good behaviour’ they will no doubt be released in three years, minus any time spent on remand.
I note that Hobson and the carjackers are all whites, in case anyone is imagining that ‘criminal underclass scum’ has any ethnic minority connotations.
One of the less trumpeted reforms of the European Union, brought about by the increase in the number of member states in May this year, is the reduction of British European Commissioners from two to one.
The news that arch-urophile Peter Mandelson is to replace both Neil Kinnock and Chris Patten gives me mixed feelings.
On the one hand there will be even less chance of dissent from the urophile orthodoxy. On the other hand one can hardly be too sad at the removal of Messrs Kinnock and Patten and their replacement by only one bureaucrat.
So what else is in the small print that somehow failed to get reported?
I followed a link from Mark Steyn‘s site to a sad story from Oklahoma.
TULSA – Blake Champlin, a Tulsa lawyer and environmental activist, died Monday at his home when a tree supporting a hammock fell and crushed him.
Obviously, hammocks must be prohibited and all trees within 500 yards of human inhabitation must be chopped down, on public safety grounds. Blake Champlin’s death must not be in vain!
Now where did that come from?
Japan’s economy is actually growing at more than a statistically obvious rate for the first time properly since the 1980s. The fact that a heatwave is being credited with boosting business leads to the obvious conclusion.
Global warming is Good for Capitalism. Light those brown coal fires now! Chop down those hedgerows! Hunt those whales! Bring back leaded gasoline!
Trade union members in France and Germany are becoming conscious of the need to break the law if they are to keep their jobs.
At present it is illegal to ask any worker in France to work more than a 35 hour week, except in special cases determined by political lobbying. Not surprisingly this has led to the closure of low-paid jobs at an accelerating rate with relocation to Eastern Europe the current favourite.
When I was last in Slovakia in May this year, a deal had recently been struck to move a Peugeot factory from France. On my previous visit in 1993, unemployment threatened to hit 80 per cent in some towns.
The power struggle between Finance Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and President Jacques Chirac now encompasses the scrapping of the 35 hour week. Chirac did not veto the measure when the Socialist government passed the law, no doubt under the influence of his then influential leftist political advisor – his daughter.
So now Chirac cannot face anything more than cosmetic reform of a job-destroying law, without looking the cretin that he his. Of course, leaving things as they are makes him look thick-headed, or a “veau” (calf) as we say in France.
So in the marketplace the obvious solution is emerging: factory workers are agreeing to work an extra hour a week without pay. How this is better for social justice than letting people work and get paid for the hours they want beats me, but if it makes them happy…
I swear I was not going to bash the Tories this week!
I was actually trawling the French news and looked forward to writing about some appalling corruption scandal. Well this [link in French] is close enough.
It seems that the European People’s Party (to which the British Conservatives belong) has done a deal with the European Socialist Party (to which the British Labour Party belongs) to ensure the election of a Socialist leader of the European Parliament: Josep Borrell Fontelles. In doing so they voted against the Polish former dissident Bronislav Geremek, who if this Communist denunciation is anything to go by, was obviously the right candidate to back.
So all the protestations that the Conservatives would defend British interests are a load of cobblers. These people are an insult to invertebrates.
It gets better, the French report says that the new President of the European Parliament (elected with the support of the European People’s Party) is a man who comes from the left-wing of the Spanish Socialist Party and who had to quit Spanish politics because of a series of unfortunate misunderstandings over large sums of stolen taxpayers’ money. I seem to recall that this was when the Governor of the Bank of Spain was filmed carrying suitcases of freshly printed bank notes to the Spanish Socialist Party Headquarters. The story was extensively covered at the time in El Mundo, the Spanish conservative daily newspaper. I forget if our new European Parliament President was personally involved (though the discreet shuffling of news reports suggests he may have been), but he certainly had to quit over that affair.
So the British Conservatives are fighting our corner within the European People’s Party? Nice one Michael Howard, I know exactly where we stand on the Conservative Party’s policy on Europe.
Support hard-core Socialists! Give fraudsters a second chance! Support even more European regulations and taxes! Vote Conservative!
My last posting has provoked a storm of comment, which I hope relfects the controversy of the issue and not any inflammatory tone on my part. I tend to let the commentators discuss the issue, because frankly they do a very good job!
However, adam raises a very interesting point:
Isn’t this kind of argument fallacious, as you’re assuming the phrase “assumed consent” has the same moral status in all circumstances?
Compare with other phrases, eg “killed”. “I killed him cause he got in my way” – moral status = bad. But, “I killed the rabid dog because otherwise it would have eaten those poor babies” – moral status = good.
Now this could invalidate my argument if I had used euthanasia as an example of ‘presumed consent’, because then the motive for killing becomes central.
However, I was pointing out that someone having sexual intercourse with a minor or a person with diminished mental faculties would want to defend himself of herself of the charge of ‘rape’ by claiming ‘presumed consent’.
The point is that sexual intercourse is not a criminal offence, despite the attempts of puritans of both Left and Right to make it so. Therefore it is the question of consent that is central, and whether a person’s inability to give consent allows other people to take decisions for them. Because minors and persons with diminished mental faculties are generally unable to give their consent, we have a presumption that consent is not given in such cases, hence the notion of ‘statutory rape’.
The main moral issue about statutory rape is that an age of consent will not protect some immature adults whilst unreasonably assuming a lack of moral faculties for fast-devlopers.
To blur the distinction between a crime based on the lack of consent (rape) and an abhorrence of sex to create the concept of (sex crime) is something straight out of Orwell’s nineteen eighty four.
I find it fascinating that a commentator should jump from sex to murder. One is a crime. The other is not.
Candida Moss, writing in the Spectator, suggests that ‘presumed consent’ ought to apply for donating organs. On the basis that my comments my not appear in the magazine, here’s what I wrote:
Presumed consent is not consent. If it were, then minors or people suffering from dementia might not enjoy the protection from sexual assault that they do at present. Sexual predators could no doubt claim “presumed consent” for their crimes.
There is a difference between medical expedience and morality. There can be no doubt that there would be enormous medical benefits from performing vivisection on human beings, instead of on animals: dosages, differences in metabolic rates etc. would be far easier to calculate.
Rightly, we abhor this and consider controvertial using the results of Nazi experiments on Jews, because it can be considered the partial condoning of horrific actions.
Is it Candida Moss’s wish that the state (probably at EU level) ought to nationalize our bodies and redistribute organs according to need? At least Gordon Brown only wants my money.
I might add that the issue of designer babies giving their own consent to being used as experimental animals is another current topic. It seems pretty sick to me.
And now the important news of the summer: a record crop is expected of grapes in the Champagne region [French link]. The absence of frost last Winter and mild weather in Spring is a hopeful sign for a good vintage, although quantity and quality do not necessarily follow. Over the coming weeks vines will be pruned of some of the grape bunches to ensure a greater concentration of sugar and acidity.
So the next time some tree-hugging Greens moan about penguin habitats, they can console themselves with a nice bottle of Veuve Cliquot.
“Minister rejects Bush reliance on abstinence, and backs use of generic drugs”
If I did not know this was about treating AIDS in the Third World, this would be very funny. Spotted in Salon.com.
I suddenly find myself writing more and more about the Middle East.
Kidnappers demand less corruption.
Only in Palestine…
There is a tax strike in Lebanon against government levies on mobile phone charges.
This is pure supply-side economics coming from Zuheir Berro, the president of Consumers Lebanon:
Berro also refuted allegations that the government needed to charge high fees to insure more income. “This is a random policy which will get us nowhere,” he said. We still have a very high capacity for subscriptions and if they lower the fees, then subscriptions will multiply,” he added.
Lebanon has a 24 percent level of subscribers, compared to over 80 percent in industrialized countries, according to Berro.
The high subscription and communication fees, according to the group, are hindering the country’s development and investments.
Meanwhile British MPs are demanding extra local taxes, in addition to the existing local property and business taxes because it is the key to ‘democracy’.
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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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