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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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I have just read an article here (with thanks to Glenn Reynolds) which reports some really good news:
FURTHER UPDATE: The New York State law has now gone national. A House bill declares that foreign libel judgments are unenforceable in the United States. And Arlen Specter, Joe Lieberman and Chuck Schumer want to go further still:
Indeed, the ACLU, the American Library Association, the Association of American Publishers, the PEN American Center, the Families of the 9/11 victims, and many others support the Free Speech Protection Act, 2008 (S. 2977) sponsored by Senators Arlen Specter, Joseph Lieberman and Chuck Schumer. Their legislation would allow U.S. writers to bring a federal cause of action against those who bring libel suits against them, in foreign jurisdiction for writing that does not constitute defamation under U.S. law . The Specter bill, like King’s (H.R. 5814) would also bar enforcement of foreign libel judgments and provide other appropriate injunctive relief and damages by U.S. Courts.
This has been done to put a total stop on efforts of individuals who, just to invent a hypothetical case mind you, travel from Saudi Arabia to the United Kingdom to sue a publisher in the United States. I can not imagine anyone doing something like that of course…
Congress notes that the Government proposes to require workers in aviation to enrol in the National Identity Scheme in 2009. Congress has deep concerns about the implications of the National Identity Scheme in general and the coercion of aviation workers into the scheme in particular. Congress sees absolutely no value in the scheme or in improvements to security that might flow from this exercise and feels that aviation workers are being used as pawns in a politically led process which might lead to individuals being denied the right to work because they are not registered or chose not to register in the scheme.
Congress pledges to resist this scheme with all means at its disposal, including consideration of legal action to uphold civil liberties.
Overwhelmingly carried by the TUC. Coming not very long after the British Air Transport Association (the association of airlines and airports) expressed its “joint and determined opposition to the proposal” [pdf], this suggests the current scheduling of the UK National Identity Scheme may have some problems.
Expect yet another repositioning shortly. (My guess: it’ll be about “immigration control”.)
On a spring day in Beijing almost a decade ago, tens of thousands of people gathered on the pavement surrounding the high-walled Zhongnanhai compound, the Chinese equivalent of the Kremlin. They were protesting, but there was barely a murmur to be heard from the enormous crowd. There were no banners, no megaphones noisily chanting demands, no unruly behaviour. It was not a typical demonstration – the participants were seated and meditating. They stayed for around twelve hours. These people were members of the rapidly expanding Falun Gong sect, and they were asking for recognition, legitimacy and an end to perceived mistreatment from the Chinese central government. The then-Chinese premier met with the group’s leaders, following which they all left as quietly as they had arrived.
Shortly after this protest, the Chinese government declared the sect a dire ideological threat to the People’s Republic of China, and a huge and rigorous nationwide crackdown followed. Practitioners in powerful positions saw their careers ended abruptly. Thousands were ‘re-educated’. Several, according to numerous human rights advocates, did not survive their enlightenment at the hands of the Chinese state. The sect’s leader was demonised, its teachings subjected to the harshest denunciations. In response, many Falun Gong practitioners held silent protests all over China. A few caught the world’s attention by self-immolating in Tiananmen Square, which explains why each of the numerous military personnel guarding the square have a fire extinguisher placed within arm’s length of their positions.
Unsurprisingly, these protests failed. Falun Gong in mainland China is a massively diminished, illegal underground movement. It is still an extremely politically sensitive topic in China. It is carefully referred to as ‘FG’ when written about on-line, in the (probably vain) hope that such abbreviations will avoid the notice of China’s vigilant internet police (who probably do not care all that much about 99% of these references, but the fact that Chinese internet users go to such lengths is revealing in itself). The government has successfully and widely propagated the idea that Falun Gong is a degenerate cult. → Continue reading: A fork in the road
I vote for the fifth option, which is “There should not be a drinking age”, on the basis that it is none of the government’s damn business.
I could not help but be struck by the nice, polite, and almost friendly manner of the police officer making violence-backed threats in the video below (“If you refuse this [random] search, you will be arrested.”). It may not be news to you that the face of the police state is often a perfectly pleasant one, but I think it is worth spreading the word.
(Full disclosure: I work for Qik, and it was one of our users who live streamed the above video from his mobile phone to the web using our software.)
I am more than usually depressed by the report of the parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights that is published today. A Bill of Rights for the UK? is a reaction to the present administration’s kite flying for a “British Bill of Rights and Duties“, and goes to confirm my suspicion that human-rights lawyers are equipped with a tin ear for political discourse as part of their education.
They do not see the fierce conditionality of Rights-and-Duties. They are in their eunoetic little universe of the kindly legislator not the populist fury. Rather than a reaction of horror at the transparent desire to entrench ergate slavery to a corporatist ‘civic republican’ state as a citizen’s lot, there’s a mild whinge that the Government isn’t speaking clearly enough – no grasp that there is a different language in use:
33. We regret that there is not greater clarity in the Government’s reasons for embarking on this potentially ambitious course of drawing up a Bill of Rights. A number of the Government’s reasons appear to be concerned with correcting public misperceptions about the current regime of human rights protection, under the HRA. We do not think that this is in itself a good reason for adopting a Bill of Rights. As we have consistently said in previous Reports, the Government should seek proactively to counter public misperceptions about human rights rather than encourage them by treating them as if they were true.
That I could support. And the discussion in the same section makes some sense of reframing the ECHR and the Human Rights Act to give better protection to individual liberty against the state. However, it doesn’t face up to the Government’s agenda, which is entirely opposite. It doesn’t, as any Bill of Rights worth the name would do, presuppose the implacable hostility of authority to the exercise of freedom.
The rest is horror. Chandler called the game of chess “as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency”. You would need to harness a gigantic advertising group – WPP, say – for a full year, to piss away as much brain and education as has been wasted in the construction of the Outline of a UK Bill of Rights and Freedoms. Given the task of criticism and reflection, they have been reflexively orthodox. Not just the committee, but most of their witnesses, have demonstrated that, if it contingently makes the owner deaf to political meanings, the purpose of the tin ear in human-rights legal education is to pour jurisprudential treacle directly into the brain.
→ Continue reading: Like your manifesto, comrade
Following Brian’s lead, I predict a legislative scorched earth as well as a financial one, when the UK parliament returns. It is not just that the present administration realises its days are numbered and will try to get more of The Project through, and to construct extra-parliamentary power structures as bunkers to occupy in opposition. All over Whitehall, departmental pet projects will be being dusted-off (e.g) and presented to weak ministers, the hope being to get them through before a new, critically-minded, Government takes office and crowds them out with plans of its own.
The question I have for Samizdata readers is this: what will the neo-puritans set out to regulate… suppress… ban next? Smoking is nearly fully suppressed. The work on alcohol has truly begun. Government intervention into our personal lives: what’s next?
* [This is an allusion, so I pray our editorial pantheon will let the contraction stand. I’m I am not about to write anyone an email like this one, however funny it might be. And I suspect they’d they would take my login away if I did]
As of July 15th, it is no longer possible for a European to fly in a vintage DC-3. Air Atlantique ran a very successful farewell tour around the UK and its flights were sold out.
Perhaps one continent’s loss is another’s gain and these passenger-worthy classics will find a home across the pond where they can continue to bring the joy of flying in the most marvelous working airplane every built.
Maybe we should start a tradition like that of the Muslims, but instead of bowing towards Brussels at a given hour each day, we could give them the other end to show the full depth of our respect for them.
Did you know DC v Heller was a Libertarian plot?
The case that became D.C. v. Heller was the brainchild of three lawyers at a pair of libertarian organizations, the Cato Institute and the Institute for Justice. All were busy with other matters, so they hired Mr. Gura. “Alan was willing to work for subsistence wages,” Cato’s Robert Levy tells me, “in return for which he got a commitment from me that if the case went anywhere, it would be his baby. It turned out that that commitment was very important.”
My hat is off to James Taranto for getting the story right. Perhaps one of these days my New York schedule (and that of one of our journalist readers) will fall out in such a way that we can toast our natural born right to carry a BFG.
Good article about the nonsense being proposed in the US about civilian “volunteering” programmes which are not in fact, voluntary. It is worth keeping an eye on this issue because I recall that David Cameron, Tory leader, might be keen on a sort of non-military version of national service as a way to deal with problems of teen crime and lack of personal responsibility. Bad move. See my post below for how it is working in a free market that is what is required. Treat people as free adults: it works
Glenn Reynolds links to a video interview of numerous Louisiana citizens whose property was stolen by the police and sometimes destroyed. It was a time when that property was most needed.
Just because you have a badge does not mean you are not a criminal. The New Orleans police are storm troopers in my book and cowardly ones to boot. What else can you call heavily armed men who beat up an old lady and steal her revolver?
Now that some people have recovered their stolen property, it is perhaps time to severely punish these warriors without a clue. Criminal prosecution could be possible in a few cases. As to the rest, perhaps there are grounds for a class action suit for cost plus and triple damages against the city. At the very least, these ‘officers’ should be told to their face that their actions were illegal, unconstitutional and not even close to being American.
They really need to be taught a lesson about who runs things in a free country. The fellow at the end of the video said it succinctly. It is not our country any more.
It is damn well time we took it back.
It may be disgustingly authoritarian, but it is risibly incompetent too. It appears the Home Office has just spent a very large amount of UK readers’ money making a vast online advertisement for NO2ID. We’d despaired of reaching ‘the youth’ ourselves, too expensive. I’m very glad they decided to do it for us.
With audience participation. Which embarrassingly for the Home Office shows ‘kids’ not to be quite the suckers they’d hoped. Enjoy.
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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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