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The Stern report on climate change is being published and has been seized upon by the government to continue its alarmist campaign for government expansion. Stern lists the usual disasters and argues that humanity must take action now to avoid impoverishment, although it was commissioned for an international audience. In Britain, the main impact is taxation, with the media concentrating on new charges and levies.
As the electorate are already sceptical about further tax increases, the self-appointed prophets are latching onto the paradigm of climate change to justify their onerous theft. Taxes on cars, aviation and other carbon generating activities will weigh more heavily upon the poor and lead to lower living standards now rather than the hypothetical poverty projected for the future.
The Letter from David Miliband, the appointment of the political failure Al Gore and the report by Stern are all designed to provide the intellectual ballast for continued government expansion. These taxes are politically unpalatable and would be rejected by the electorate, if levied without green cover. Therefore, climate change and catastrophism are the reasons for a ‘greener than thou’ ratchet effect, where politicians use Britain and our money to puff themselves up as a moral example for others.
Since the science and the scenarios are still so uncertain, climate change has been adopted as the vanguard for further taxation and a curb on British consumerism. Using the expansion of the state and taxes, rather than market mechanisms, our politicians will dampen our economic growth, steal our wealth, and wrap us in their parasitical hairshirt. The only light in this gloom is that the British electorate may reject such alarmism and the example of our political stupidity will lead India and other natiosn to seek technological and free-market solutions that do not curb their march away from poverty.
Who would you not allow to participate in a parliamentary delegation to Israel? An MEP linked to far right anti-Semitism and holocaust denial. That seems a fairly straightforward rule of thumb. Do not take such figures along as your hosts might get a trifle jumpy.
Welcome to the pomposity of the European Parliament, the post-democrats who represent us. They decided to include Marine Le Pen in their ranks, and the Israelis thereupon refused to meet any of the delegation. The visit was promptly cancelled for “technical reasons“, or, as one official noted, rather pointless.
The cancellation was not met with universal acclaim. Some think that a foreign power should not dictate the membership of a parliamentary delegation:
On the other hand, according to the official, there was concern on the parliament’s side that a national government should not be allowed to dictate the composition of the group.
Others were miffed that they did not go, as they thought had a contribution to make, and the Israelis should have been willing to put the Holocaust behind them:
Speaking before Thursday’s decision was announced, Irish centre-right MEP Simon Coveney, on the delegation list, told EUobserver that he believed the trip should go ahead.
“I don’t think we should be cancelling the event … personally I am going because I am interested [in the issue].”
He added that any members of a parliament delegation have to remember that they are representing the views of the EU assembly and not their own personal view points.
Jose Manual Barroso, President of the European Commission, and grand panjamdrum of Brussels has kindly deigned to share a few words with those of us who do not understand the contribution of the European Union to world peace. Who would have thought that the peacekeeping exercise in Darfur, Sudan, was a success. Barroso has opened my eyes.
I was in Darfur last week, on my way to co-chair the first ever meeting of the European Commission outside Europe, in Addis Ababa – the home of the Commission of the Africa Union. I am amazed at what I have seen in these young people that travel so far to help the people of Africa. I am proud of this Europe, I feel proud to feel European.
Let us look at security. There is a rising demand for a European role in external crises. And the EU is responding. It has doubled the number of peace and security missions in recent years. It is playing a central role in conflict prevention and resolution from Darfur to Palestine, from the Congo to Lebanon.
It is an effective actor because of the range of instruments at its disposal. In Darfur, for example, it is the biggest contributor to humanitarian aid, the main supporter of the African peacekeepers there, and playing a political role in pushing the Sudanese government to avoid another humanitarian catastrophe.
The BBC notes that the number of deaths is “not less than 200,000”, in the latest study from Science although this does not differentiate between deaths by violence and deaths by starvation. This is what happens when the European Union acts to prevent a ‘humanitarian catastrophe’. What man can stand up and parrot success for political gain from the genocide in Darfur?
The man who knows what institutional reform is needed to ensure further European ‘success’.
The Constitution would have helped. But perhaps the grand finality of the word ‘constitution’ set it up as a hostage to fortune, both to intergovernmentalists who felt it went too far, and to federalists, who felt it did not go far enough. Let us be clear about the label which should be attached to further institutional reform. What Europe needs is a Capacity to Act.
Oh masters, if I were disposed to stir your hearts and minds to mutiny and rage, I should do Brutus wrong, and Cassius wrong — who, you all know, are honourable men. I will not do them wrong. I rather choose to wrong the dead, to wrong myself and you, than I will wrong such honourable men.
Who would not sympathise with injured soldiers, forced to endure poor conditions and MRSA at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham. Now one has been threatened by a local Muslim:
On one occasion a member of the Parachute Regiment, still dressed in his combat uniform after being evacuated from Afghanistan, was accosted by a Muslim over the British involvement in the country.
Soldiers are concerned about their safety. In such matters, one expects the usual response from government: a statement that refuses to acknowledge the problem and masks neglect:
The Ministry of Defence, which said that it had no record of threatening incidents, indicated that there was a military security presence at the hospital and it co-operated closely with local police.
A MoD spokesman said there was “appropriate security” at Selly Oak for the 11 servicemen currently being treated.
We know where they would like to end up:
Soldiers on operations say they would rather receive a more serious injury and go to the top American military hospital in Ramstein, Germany, than end up in a NHS hospital.
They now half jokingly refer to getting “a Boche rather than a Blighty” in reference to the wounds that would send them home. Ramstein has an outstanding unit for brain surgery, and neurological intensive care beds in Britain are in short supply. “The blokes see it that if you are unlucky you get wounded and go to the UK at the mercy of the NHS, but if you get a head wound you get sent to Ramstein in Germany where the US has an outstanding medical facility,” said an officer serving in Afghanistan.
“It also does not do morale much good knowing that within 18 hours of being wounded you could wake up in a NHS hospital with a mental health patient on one side and an incontinent geriatric on the other.”
The black humour of the British Tommy! No wonder New Labour hates them.
Whilst travelling down towards the station in Brussels with some friends, one could not help noticing one street full of coffee bars, frequented solely by the male of the species, replicating a corner of Algiers or Tunis. Whilst new to me, this is not an infrequent encounter for the traveller in the Low Countries or France.
As vast portions of the urban geography continue to be recast in the Maghreb mould, and the demographics of immigration and indigenous wind down play out, I asked myself: which European Union Member State is most likely to join the Arab League (perhaps the Maghreb subset) or Organisation of Islamic Conferences in the next few years? Albania, Uganda and Guyana are members of the latter. This would be the predictable ‘next step’ for democratic structures with a large minority Arab electorate.
Reading the cyberpunks in the 1980s or watching Cronenburg’s eXistenZ, provided visions of a noir future where brain computer interfaces were commonplace and you could jack into cyberspace, virtual reality, or whatever hyped up term was collecting reputation dust. In the current world of information chop suey, it is hard to detect truly important developments. Here is one.
Harvard scientists have moved closer to an effective neural interface with engineered silicon nanowires “that detect, simulate and and inhibit nerve signals along the axons and dendrites of live mammalian neurons.” They are able to attach a non-invasive wire to a single nerve cell as a hybrid synapse and allow signals to travel between wire and cell. The next step in the research programme is the development of larger scale contacts between wires and nerve cells. As Charles Lieber, Professor of Chemistry at Harvard speculates:
This work could have a revolutionary impact on science and technology,” Lieber says. “It provides a powerful new approach for neuroscience to study and manipulate signal propagation in neuronal networks at a level unmatched by other techniques; it provides a new paradigm for building sophisticated interfaces between the brain and external neural prosthetics; it represents a new, powerful, and flexible approach for real-time cellular assays useful for drug discovery and other applications; and it opens the possibility for hybrid circuits that couple the strengths of digital nanoelectronic and biological computing components.”
(Hat tip: Betterhumans)
Kevin Lafferty, a United States Geological Survey scientist at UC Santa Barbara has recently published a speculative article in ‘Proceedings of the Royal Society Biology’. Lafferty draws attention to a small parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, that reproduces in cats and alters the behaviour of small rodents as part of its life cycle.
The typical journey of the parasite involves a cat and its prey, starting as eggs shed in an infected cat’s feces, inadvertently eaten by a warm-blooded animal, such as a rat. The infected rat’s behavior alters so that it becomes more active, less cautious and more likely to be eaten by a cat, where the parasite completes its life cycle. Many other warm-blooded vertebrates may be infected by this pathogen. After producing usually mild flu-like symptoms in humans, the parasite tends to remain in a dormant state in the brain and other tissues.
Once the parasite has entered the human host, there could be a tendency towards mass neurosis if a large proportion of the population is infected. This is a fascinating theory, though one remains daunted by the experimental hurdles that the speculation would have to conquer, in shifting from observed psychological effect to becoming a statistical cause in cultural patterns across large population samples.
If this is true, then Freud may never have invented psychoanalysis, if the neurotics that he studied had not loved cats.
The Europeans mess up once again. We look at them playing power politics without a powerful hand or a sense of bluff. It takes some level of incompetence to have the Chinese do to you what you tried to do to the Americans:
Today, the Chinese are attempting to do to the Galileo system the same thing that Europe tried, and failed, to do to the US. China has registered with the ITU its intent to use frequencies that are as close to Galileo’s as Galileo’s were planned to be to GPS 3. The speculation is that this is the Chinese response to the European refusal to allow China into the charmed circle of senior Galileo management.
I mustn’t gloat.
Angloslavia was originally a term coined by Ken MacLeod in his science fictions series about The Fall Revolution. If you have not picked these four books up, you should do so, now! The term is utilised here as a playful reference to the current flow of immigration from East Central Europe into the United Kingdom. This flow has serious consequences due to the interplay between immigration and public services. East European workers naturally respond to the market incentives provided by New Labour’s decision to open up Britain’s employment market. This improving migration is combined with an inflexible public sector which is not geared towards dealing with such a large increase in local populations. This inflexibility is due to the incompetence of New Labour’s administration, since they appear to have undermined, indeed destroyed, the Northcote-Trevelyan ethos of the mid-Victorian civil service, that ensured Britain’s civil service was more competent than most for a while.
A massive rise in immigration next year could trigger a devastating crisis in Britain’s schools, housing and welfare services, according to a secret Government report leaked to The Mail on Sunday.
The document reveals that every Government department has been ordered to draw up multi-million-pound emergency plans after being told public services face catastrophe as a result of the hundreds of thousands of Eastern Europeans pouring into Britain.
The government faces disaster if the courts, applying European law, conclude that all East European immigrants are eligible for the same benefits as United Kingdom subjects. A large influx will either force up taxes to pay for the extra services and benefits required, rewrite the rules to ensure that public services remain remain viable through radical reform, or do nothing.
One of her [Home Office Minister Joan Ryan] biggest fears is that the courts may force the Government to scrap its restrictions on East European immigrants applying for council houses or benefits. At present, they receive some benefits only if they register for work – which one in three don’t do – and earn full benefit rights after they have worked for a year.
Ms Ryan says: “The legal basis for this is precarious and there is a strong risk of a successful challenge. This is a concern.”
Benefits will provide an additional incentive for immigration from Eastern Europe. The pressures that this will place on the welfare state may provide a force for accelerated reform, since the free market will provide services cheaply and more efficiently, if given free rein.
So far, the addition of cheap flights to Eastern Europe, the added mix of Slavic tongues to polyglot London and the chance to taste more beers from exotic climes, has proved an exciting experience. Let us give the same chance to Sofia and Bucharest.
The government is now proscribing two successor organisations of Al-Mujahiroun. These are Al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect, two cloaks for the continued radicalisation and recruitment of Muslims on British soil. However, they are not being banned because they pose a threat to our security, but for the glorification of terror.
Al-Ghurabaa and the Saved Sect are the first two organisations to be banned under new laws outlawing the glorification of terrorism.
John Reid, the Home Secretary, laid an order in Parliament making it a criminal offence for a person to belong to or encourage support for either group.
It will also be illegal to arrange meetings in their support or to wear clothes or carry articles in public indicating support for either group.
One can oppose this ban on utilitarian grounds: the individuals who organise these groups will merely band together and continue their activities under a different guise. If the symbols or pickets are written in Urdu or Arabic, what policeman or member of the public could ever understand the acts that they were glorifying. Such a placard may as well state “Ronaldo forever”. The practicality of this ban is in grave doubt. At best, there is a slender chance that it may hinder the recruitment of those we should fear most: white Muslims who can walk unhindered and cause the greatest headache for the security services
But utilitarian arguments trade on the ground that the prohibitionists choose to stand upon. No matter how much we may oppose the precepts of these two groups, proscription is wrong. Liberty includes allowing the supporters of terrorist acts to stand up and air their views for all to witness. If they are not linked to acts of violence, and do not step beyond the boundaries of our traditional laws on incitement, who are we to gag and silence those we do not wish to hear. Security is not bought by stopping your ears or allowing the state to stop them for you. You cannot rely upon your own vigilance in identifying those who pose a threat to you, once the state has silenced them and you.
One of the science fiction predictions, that has not yet come to pass, is the ability to categorise individuals by measuring certain thoughts or actions, with implications for individual freedom and status. That time may have drawn slightly closer. A forthcoming study, “Dehumanizing the Lowest of the Low: Neuro-imaging responses to Extreme Outgroups” published in “Psychological Science”, the Journal for the Association of Psychological Science, claims that prejudicial states can be measured through the imaging of the brain.
Medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) brain imaging determined if the students accurately chose the correct emotion illustrated by the picture (according to pretest results in which a different group of students determined the emotion that best fit each photograph). The MPFC is only activated when a person thinks about him- or her-self or another human. When viewing a picture representing disgust, however, no significant MPFC brain activity was recorded, showing that students did not perceive members of social out-groups as human. The area was only activated when viewing photographs that elicited pride, envy, and pity. (However, other brain regions – the amygdala and insula – were activated when viewing photographs of “disgusting” people and nonhuman objects.)
Emotions themselves were not responsible for generating this brain activity. Rather, it was the actual image viewed that produced a response.
One article does not count as evidence that people viewed as “disgusting” are subjected to a process of dehumanisation, reinforced by social interaction. It is an interesting example of how neuroimaging can inform our understanding of the entanglement between emotion, perception and prejudice, although the study only reveals the complexities of this area. By implication, one must keep the broadest definition of humanity.
You know that this will result in less safety for the child, greater tyranny from ‘experts’ interfering in family life for any number of arbitrary reasons relating to targets ‘not met’ and could present the death-knell for home-schooling:
Changes being introduced since Victoria Climbie’s death from abuse include a £224 million database tracking all 12 million children in England and Wales from birth. The Government expects the programme to be operating within two years.
But critics say the electronic files will undermine family privacy and destroy the confidentiality of medical, social work and legal records.
Doctors, schools and the police will have to alert the database to a wide range of “concerns”. Two warning flags on a child’s record could start an investigation.
There will also be a system of targets and performance indicators for children’s development. Children’s services have been told to work together to make sure that targets are met.
This is the age of the database and the state loves them. Why does it love them? Because it reverses the roles of ruler and ruled in all matters. Dr. Eileen Munro of the London school of Economics begins to understand:
“They include consuming five portions of fruit and veg a day, which I am baffled how they will measure,” she said. “The country is moving from ‘parents are free to bring children up as they think best as long as they are not abusive or neglectful’ to a more coercive ‘parents must bring children up to conform to the state’s views of what is best’.”
How long before our children wear electronic tags for security and the monitoring of best practice, attendance at a state recognised school, and ironing out the anarchy that we used to call ‘play’?
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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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