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So… megacorporate musicland wants to attack people’s computers, with state sanction, to stop them doing things they dislike. This could be interpreted by the vast army of hackers and script kiddies out there as a declaration of war that is tantamount to painting a bullseye on the side of the RIAA servers. Of course I would hate for anyone to construe these remarks as actually encouraging people to do to the RIAA what they are planning to do to millions of other people. No, that would be….bad.  May 7th, 2003 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
 A commenter called Johan from Sweden got me thinking about memes and their uses. Next time you hear of a new tax or a new abridgement of civil liberties such as surveillance or free speech or conscriptive ‘education’ or an increase in regulation of what you do even on private property or any of the host of democratically sanctified violence backed imposition on civil society, the meme to start trumpeting should be clear:
The socialist left and statist right are both big on majoritarianism whilst paying lip service to the right of minorities… well I have news for you, we are all a minority of one in the final analysis. Just because someone votes for the state to help itself to your money, remember to protest loud and long and give lie to the myth that democracy empowers anyone except the political factions able to manipulate the system.
It may not stop them but every little bit that de-legitimizes the politicization of civil society under the blanket of democracy is a step in the right direction. April 18th, 2003 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
Another one you didn’t see in the media.
It continues with the following:
The press conference will be held at 15 hours at the aid centre for the Foreign Press, maison de la Radio, 116 avenue du Président Kennedy, 75016 Paris. The best contact I have is Prégentil (Americans will really like the graphics on his front page). Sad note: repression is operating worldwide whilst the eyes of the world are focused on the liberation of Iraq. April 8th, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Forgive this interruption to your scheduled programme of dark forebodings, war worries, terrorist threats, police state and impending civilisational collapse but I am taking a short break in order to bring you some good news. It would appear that the political landscape of Britain is not quite as barren as I had hitherto imagined it to be. Indeed, little oases of life-giving sanity are starting to spring up amidst the arid desert of top-down, tax-and-spend socialism. Case in point being Reform Britain, a campaign group consisting of loads of big-brained luminaries who describe themselves thus:
As I reflect upon the lowly and squalid state of public debate in this country over the last few years, the above words wash over me with all the fragrant and orgasmic tingle of a cool spring zephyr. And, as if that was not enough, these wonderful people have launched a related website called ‘Down the Drain’, a perfectly appropriate domain name for a site which is devoted to disclosing just how much money HMG syphons off of its productive citizens every day and, more pointedly, where it all ends up. Broadcast your seeds with gusto, you Great Sowers of Hope, and may those seeds be nurtured, fed, watered, grow and cover all the land with a golden harvest. Your normal service of doom, gloom, despair, gnashing of teeth, wailing and general despondency will now be resumed. Thank you. [My thanks to Stephen Pollard for the links.] April 3rd, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Today I got an e-mail from Alex Singleton. I asked him if I could put it up here, and had no objection. I asked this because, as I said to him, it reflects very well on the Liberty Club and its activities up there in Saint Andrews University.
There’s no report on the Liberty Log as yet, but there may be something soon. Meanwhile I’ve nothing to add to Alex’s report, except to say that this is just what intellectual activism and indeed life at a University is, or should be, all about. My congratulations to all concerned. March 13th, 2003 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
As a dissent-crusher of some repute, I think I have found a truly inspired means by which this noble art may be perfected. Perversely, my inspiration was provided by the insistent bleatings of one of our commenters offering his tale of purported woe in response to this posting by Perry. According to the commenter, Mr.Briant, Hollywood celebrities who have engaged in anti-war activism are now being subjected to ‘McCarthyite’ persecution. It has to be said that Mr.Briant is not alone in this view:
To all normal people this is, of course, rubbish on stilts. Anti-war campaigners are not being hauled before tribunals or thrown into gulags. All performers trade on their popularity and their worth is measured by the extent to which the public will pay good money to watch them perform. If the public are unwilling to pay as aforesaid, then it is only natural for producers to re-evaluate said performers contract. It isn’t called ‘showbusiness‘ for nothing. I would expect similar consequences to befall any film-star who spoke out in favour of, say, the Apartheid regime in South Africa. Fame has its price. But I daresay that neither Mr.Briant nor Ms.Jackson will be the slightest bit moved by these distinctions. Neither will anybody else for whom ‘disapproval’ constitutes ‘repression’ and I wholly expect the cry of ‘witchhunt’ to be ringing around the corridors of the Western leftist pantheon for the foreseeable future. That being the case, I am prompted to propose that we bring back McCarthyism for real. I don’t just mean the regular anti-idiot fisking with which the blogosphere has become so intimately associated. No, I mean a real actual honest-to-goodness UnAmerican Activities Committee complete with powers of subpoena and blackballing. We, in Britain, could have our own version aimed at clearing out the Augean mess of the BBC. We already have the historical precedents to go by so all we need to do is copy them: “CHAIRMAN: Mr.Sheen, are you now or have you ever been, an apologist for Saddam Hussein? SHEEN: Well…I…I.. just want to say… CHAIRMAN: Answer the question, Mr.Sheen SHEEN: But…but…my rights…. CHAIRMAN: Never mind your rights. Just answer the question. COMMITTEE MEMBER: Mr.Chairman, I believe Mr.Sheen is being deliberately evasive with this committee.” The vista is so easy to conjure; the cigar-chomping Chairman, the occasional thwack of the gavel, the murmuring from the public gallery, the flashes from the cameras of the photo-journalists. It isn’t just public affairs, it’s high drama! They could even televise it on pay-per-view thereby enabling the subject film-stars to continue earning a living from the all the legions of people who would tune it to watch them squirming for real. No ‘method’ required. I realise of course that a lot of solidly anti-idiotarian people might feel a little squeamish at the thought of a proposal such as this but I do urge them to give it serious consideration. Politics is, and always has been, a practical business and resurrecting the legacy of Joe McCarthy is, I submit, quite an elegant solution. Since the Hollywood activists and their supporters sincerely believe that they are being persecuted for their beliefs there is nothing to be lost politically or tactically by actually persecuting them for their beliefs. Breathing life into a new and serious McCarthyite revival gives the American conservatives a second run at clearing up Hollywood and leaves the radical-chic crowd no worse off than they currently perceive themselves to be anyway. It really is a win-win situation and I thoroughly commend it to the house. March 8th, 2003 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
‘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. March 2nd, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have a message for all British cigarette smokers and for those thinking of taking up smoking: when you next pop down to the supermarket or your local tobacconist for a packet of smokes, why not try Richmond Superking Lights for excellent quality and flavour at a very competitive price.  You may also be interested to note that, since I am not making this recommendation in the course of a business, I have not broken the law:
Like most other petty prohibitionist tyrranies this one has been foisted on us by Brussels. Inspired and enacted, I daresay, by people who think of themselves as the ‘great and the good’ and believe themselves to have been charged with the task of rescuing us from our own atavistic tendencies towards self-destruction.  I realise that I can do nothing to deflect them from their mission, but I can do my bit to help undermine them.  February 15th, 2003 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is the first occasion upon which I have picked out a comment for further comment, as it were, but this comment from Natalie Solent sharply claimed my attention:
The ‘miracle’ that Natalie is referring to is the appearance of a vigourously pro-gun essay by Professor Joyce Malcolm on the website of the BBC and which I have blogged about euphorically here. The part that Natalie might well have played in this moment of glory is set out in greater detail on Biased BBC:
Well, perhaps Professor Malcolm had already decided to write her essay and perhaps the BBC had decided, in any event, to make some concession to the other side of the argument. But I prefer to think that Natalie’s efforts did not go unrewarded. It gives me a delicious frisson of satisfaction to think that maybe one of us Lilliputians tied down the broadcasting Gulliver if only for a brief while. It also illustrates the importance of communicating ideas and weaving the gossamer fine networks between sane, intelligent people who, whilst still acting individually, can eventually set off an avalanche. From the BBC to Natalie to Joyce Malcolm and back to the BBC. Thanks to the net, those degrees of separation get smaller all the time. January 16th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Central London was the venue for another demonstration by the Countryside Alliance today, timed to co-incide with a parliamentary debate on the proposed regulation of fox-hunting.
Judging from the latest reports from the broadcast news, that ‘serious amount of trouble’ is upon us as some 1500-2000 countryside insurrectionists are locked in battles with police and traffic in and around Westminster has been brought to a standstill. December 16th, 2002 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
If, like me, you avidly devour everything this man ever writes, but get a little impatient trawling the blogosphere seeking out his hitherto-elusive brilliance, then get ready to be happy. Mark Steyn now has has his own website! Now that’s what I call progress. [My thanks to Tim Blair for the link] November 28th, 2002 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have been alerted to the existance of a new website called Conservative Liberty. For those of you who regard the words ‘Conservative’ and ‘Liberty’ as oxymoronic, I should add that it does appear to be genuinely ‘devoted to representing the under-represented voice of Libertarian Youth within the Conservative Party’, and is therefore worthy of a welcome. Looks like a blog, though, doesn’t it? [My thanks to Sean Gabb for the alert] November 25th, 2002 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
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