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On the pipe again!
I can’t wait to get back on the pipe again.
I’ve got some mushrooms for my friends
But I just can’t wait to get back on the pipe again.
On the surface the story that veteran country singer Willie Nelson has been arrested for marijuana possession is nothing more then a bit of comic relief. Especially when you read that his sister Bobbie was arrested as well. One visualises these people, well into their 70’s in age, sitting round the camp fire, having a puff, tripping out on a few pharmaceutical mushrooms, and polishing their ‘geriatrics for grass’ buttons.
It is all rather ludicrous. However, even though I care little for country music and even less for marijuana, my own feeling is, well, good on them; people that get to their ‘Golden Years’ are entitled to as much enjoyment in life as the rest of us, after all.
However, we are not talking about your everyday geriatrics here. This is not your Aunt Mabel pottering around her back yard, but a popular entertainer who has a history of political causes behind him, and is by no means inactive in politics even at this late stage of his career.
Before the bust, the Farm Aid founder and his band were in his native Texas to headline Saturday’s Austin City Limits Music Festival. Nelson gave an interview there in which he urged politicians to scrap criminal penalties for pot possession.
Those sentiments echoed the platform of his pal Friedman, a singer-songwriter turned politician who’s mounting an independent bid for Texas governor and has called on the decriminalization of marijuana to help clear clogged state prisons of nonviolent offenders. Nelson has actively supported Friedman’s candidacy, hosting a $1,000-per-plate fundraising dinner and signing a petition to get Friedman on the ballot.
“The hundred times that Kinky and I have talked during his campaign – we talked about energy, health, biodiesel, immigration, war – and the pot thing has never come up. Of course, I felt always that I knew where Kinky stood on that, and he knew where I stood, but I also knew that it was very risky to bring that out politically, but what’s Kinky got to lose?” Nelson said.
Louisiana police will deny that they are in any way trying to ‘send a message’ but in their latest arrest of the country music legend, they have done nothing but highlight the utter uselessness of drug laws. That these laws are useless is as well known as the fact that the sky is blue and the sun rises in the east. Yet to get anywhere in reforming them, Nelson has to throw what prestige he has behind an oddball candidate like ‘Kinky’ Friedman.
What is wrong with this picture?
London calling! London calling! Reports are coming in of growing resistance to the brutal occupation of the Food Nazis:
Pupils at a South Yorkshire school are being fed fish and chips through the gates by parents who say the canteen is not providing what their children want…
The move is being seen as a backlash against TV chef Jamie Oliver’s campaign for healthy school dinners..
“We aim to provide good quality food which is within government healthy eating guidelines and helps the children’s learning in the afternoon “…
“The food that these parents are handing out is not part of a healthy eating diet and on top of that I have to question the morality of delivering it from the grounds of a cemetery.”
Smuggling food into prisoners is a time-honoured practice but I have to admit that the cemetery angle is cool. They may need to start digging tunnels though.
Hopefully, this is a ‘line in the sand’; a message from the public to the ruling class paternalists and busybodies that their food fascism is an intervention too far.
I was distracted this morning by Mr Blair’s predictable difficulties with the TUC, and nearly everyone else seems to have missed it too. There was nothing in The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph or the early edition of The Evening Standard about this. But this is the important UK story today. Congratulations to the Financial Times on actually reporting the plan to abolish privacy.
It was trailed a little way back by a selective leak to The Guardian, but now seems forgotten. The Information Commissioner is playing dead. Or perhaps he has been reduced to a depressive paralysis by the tedious presentation and appalling implications of HM Government’s Data sharing vision statement [pdf].
This Government wants to deliver the best possible support to people in need. We can only do this with the right information about people’s circumstances […] That is why Government is committed to more information sharing between public sector organisations and service providers. […] We recognise that he more we share information, the more important it is that people are confident that their personal data is kept safe and secure. The Data Protection and Human Rights Acts offer a robust statutory framework to maintain those rights whilst sharing information to deliver better services.”
I’m really not much reassured by assurances about “proper respect for the individual’s privacy […] supported by ensuring the security and integrity of personal information both before and after it has been shared”. How about not sharing it?
If you actually have privacy, you don’t need government Codes of Practice to tell bureaucrats how to ‘respect’ it. If you actually have privacy, then the private sphere is beyond regulatory intervention and ‘support’. If you actually have privacy, you actually have freedom.
The press has covered the walkouts by the brothers, and where friendly to the government has characterised it as ‘brave’. But Tony Blair’s advertised last speech to the Trades Union Congress was fascinating in itself, calculated in a cartoonish way. Who was it for?
Who would be entranced by the sententious, treacly opening, claiming some sort of credit for sympathy with the victims of terrorism and war?
Before speaking to you today, I want to remember all those who died, including the many British people, repeat our sympathy and condolences for the loss of their loved ones and rededicate ourselves to complete and total opposition to terrorism anywhere, for whatever reason.
Who would be persuaded by the windy pseudo-rhetoric, the clichés set in shattered sentences, and exhibition of truism as valuable policy insight?
We have to escape the tyranny of the “or” and develop the inclusive nature of the “and”.
The answer to economic globalisation is open markets and strong welfare and public service systems, particularly those like education, which equip people for change.
The answer to terrorism is measures on security and tackling its underlying causes.
What, addressed to trades unions, was the point in half the time to international affairs, and Mr Blair’s role on the world stage?
Peace which threatens its security is no peace. But on the right terms it must be done.
Yesterday’s announcement of a government of national unity in Palestine is precisely what I hoped for. On the basis it is faithful to the conditions spelled out by the quartet – the UN, EU, US and Russia – we should lift the economic sanctions on the Palestinian Authority and be prepared to deal with the government, the whole government.
Then, piece by piece, step by step, we must put a process of peace back together again.
Is this really carefully scripted? Is it aimed at an English-speaking audience? What on earth does it have to do with congress?
And who could miss, or be fooled by, the manipulative slide from lachrymose anectote about exploited foreign workers to the hint (immmediately contradicted) that they might be stopped from coming here at all (and thus from competing for work with union members… er, being exploited…) by magic biometric border controls?
I know this answer isn’t popular, at least in some quarters. But I tell you, without secure ID, controlled migration just isn’t possible.
You can have armies of inspectors, police and bureaucrats trying to track down illegals but without a proper system of ID – and biometric technology now allows this – it is a hopeless task.
And as identity abuse grows – and it is a huge problem now across parts of the private as well as public sector – so the gains for consumers and companies will grow through a secure ID database.
And we all want effective armies of inspectors, police, and bureaucrats, don’t we, children? The whole thing (offered by The Guardian here) is extraordinary. The relevant bits – attacks on protectionism, allusions to Labour’s success in enacting union-friendly legislation – would be a perfectly good TUC speech. Short, but to the point. One might not agree with it, but one could see it as a piece of working political machinery. But that speech is suspended in a mush of late-Blair messianism that is much more instructive.
He’s going to fix all the world’s problems. All it requires is for all the great powers to come to a final lasting peace agreement in which he is playing a vital role, defusing the grievances that (alone?) drive global conflict(s), and monitoring all activities of everybody who lives in or visits Britain using a big database.
So who was the speech for? It was the calling-card of a War Leader for the lecture-circuit, some cynics may say. But this cynic suspects the speech was mainly for Mr Blair himself – that this is how he sees the world, and how he wants us all to see it too. It is a preamble to rants to come.
The Cato Institute’s invaluable index of liberty, compiled along with another free-market think tank, the Fraser Institute, says that liberty, as measured across a variety of fronts, is advancing. It uses a sort of numeric to calculate the overall impact of government rules, and puts Hong Kong at the top, with Ireland and Britain tied at sixth place:
Nations that have made substantial gains in economic freedom since 1985 are Hungary, Iceland, El Salvador, Zambia, Poland, Bolivia, Israel, Ghana, Uganda, Peru, and Nicaragua. Nations that have registered significant losses in economic freedom since 1985 are Myanmar, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. The bottom ten nations were the Central African Republic, Rwanda, Burundi, Algeria, Guinea-Bissau, Venezuela, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Myanmar, and Zimbabwe.
Of course, libertarians would argue that the right to dispose of one’s labour and property is indivisible from other non-economic liberties, which is why I tend to view such exercises as having indicative value only. A country like Singapore, for example, ranks high on the charts for entrepreneurship but operates an-often stifling regulatory regime on personal behaviours, while other countries may allow more freedom in things like drugs, porn or gambling but also have weightier taxes and regulations on activities such as saving and investment.
Even so, it is pretty clear, as the Cato press release states, that places that are economically free and open to entrepreneurial vigor tend to be richer, and also nicer, places to live, while those that seek to freeze the economic status quo are also not just poorer, but tend also to be less pleasant, less tolerant towards minorities, harsher towards women, and generally crappier in the quality-of-life stakes.
Benjamin Friedman, hardly a fire-breathing free marketeer, also points out that wealth begets niceness in his recent book.
A British evangelical Christian, Stephen Green, has been charged with using ‘threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour’ after he handed out leaflet contained Biblical quotes critical of homosexuality at a homosexual event in Wales. The article indicates neither he nor his leaflets were abusive or threatening, just that they pointed out that the Bible states that homosexuality is a sin and so it urged homosexuals to ‘repent’ and stop sinning.
What caught my eye about this case was…
Several thousand people attended the event, which included a gay rugby tournament and a ‘top gayer motor show’, and which was addressed on the importance of tolerance by Liberal Democrat council chief Rodney Berman.
So as Rodney Berman is such a strong supporter of tolerance, presumably he will soon also be arguing for Mr. Green’s right to be tolerated for his views and behaviour. After all, tolerance does not imply acceptance or approval and so even if Mr. Green calls for gays to stop being gay (i.e. he does not approve of their sexual behaviour and wishes to convince them to act differently), unless there is more to this story unreported, there seems no evidence Mr. Green does not tolerate gays. Yet some homosexuals who disapprove of Mr. Green’s views of their behaviour are clearly unwilling to return the favour and tolerate him. They called for the law (i.e. force) to be used to prevent him peaceably expressing himself.
As the LibDems pride themselves on supporting (non-economic) liberty, will they come to Mr. Green’s defence and demand tolerance for everyone? I wonder what Mr. Berman has to say on this matter.
Keith Richards to Manager: “Hey, man, I want a bathtub full of tequila, a bevy of teenage groupie nymphos, a month’s supply of uncut Turkish smack and….no, better leave it at that“.
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards may have flouted Scotland’s smoking ban when he played to thousands of fans at Glasgow’s Hampden Park.
The city council confirmed it was investigating reports that he smoked on stage throughout the gig on Friday.
Neil Rafferty, from the Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco (Forest), said: “This is yet another way in which the smoking ban makes Scotland look ridiculous”.
A spokesman for the Scottish Parliament strongly refuted claims that Scotland was looking ridiculous but did announce that, henceforth, Scottish smoked salmon would have to be sold as Scottish ‘treated’ salmon in order to avoid sending out the wrong message.
Artur Boruc, a Polish goalkeeper playing for with Celtic, has received a police caution for “a breach of the peace” after he made the sign of the cross during a game. I can only marvel at how Muslims can march through London carrying signs threatening death against people who do not share their beliefs can get a police escort, whereas a devout Christian making the sign of the cross in public can get a police caution. The Polish player was not making rude gestures at a hostile crowd [see update & link below – perhaps he was] or trying to threaten anyone, he was just making a personal gesture indicating a set of beliefs.
I may be a godless rationalist myself but I sincerely hope Artur Boruc not just ignores the police caution but robustly reject it and continues to demonstrate his beliefs as he sees fit. If some Rangers fans cannot stand that and become violent, then perhaps that is where the police’s attention should be more properly focused. Moreover I hope his club supports him regarding this matter and if it does not then I hope he takes his talents elsewhere.
However I am rather bemused that the dismal Ruth Kelly is ‘surprised’ at this development seeing as how she is a leading member of the political class which put the legal infrastructure in place so that exactly this can happen.
Britain has nothing even vaguely resembling the First Amendment or the US Bill of Rights generally, instead relying on common law that springs from a highly imperfect cultural tradition of liberty. As this culture has been in effect ‘nationalised’ and largely replaced by fifty years of highly malleable legislation, there are now few legal tools left to secure individual rights against the state in the UK. Consequently we are left with just hoping for the state to act in a restrained manner as there so now so many laws that can be used to suppress freedom of expression (including not just social but also political speech) that the state can prohibit almost any action it wishes if it really wants to. Moreover public bodies have now been given so much discretion to exercise power ‘in the public interest’ that almost any petty-fogging official can seriously mess with your life if he or she is so inclined. And we can thank the likes of Ruth Kelly in both of the main political parties for this.
 Update: Although I stand by my general contention regarding the state of the law and freedom of expression in the UK, there may be a bit more to this specific story than the Telegraph article suggested.
The reliably entertaining, if not reliably sane, Ann Coulter pens a column this week with a pretty high libertarian quotient:
Last week marked the first official admission that everything government airport screeners have been doing until now is completely pointless — unless you’re an airport security guard with a thing for women’s undergarments, in which case it’s been highly effective.
As we now know, all the ingredients necessary to blow up an airplane can be carried in small liquid containers. Airport security has not even been looking for small liquid containers. Judging from my personal experience, they seem to have been focusing on finding explosive devices inside women’s brassieres.
After five years of submissively complying with bag checks, shoe checks and underwire bra checks, Americans have now been informed that the hell we’ve been going through at the airports (but which the president and members of Congress do not go through because they refuse to fly commercial air) has been a useless Kabuki theater.
Hard to argue with any of that. Her views on ethnic profiling (you get one guess whether she is pro or con) are likely to be more controversial.
Roy Bacon has spotted a shocking and indecent source of ‘child pornography’ that our political masters seem to have left us completely unprotected from
The criminal law has apparently caught up with thoughtcrimes associated with digital manipulation of imagery; but if the legislators want real headlines, and more celebrated scalps, perhaps they should look at more traditional means of picture-making.
Today I visited a central London venue in which were publicly displayed dozens – perhaps hundreds – of indecent images of children, ranging in age from a few days old to puberty. One child in particular seemed to have a voyeuristic cult formed around him, frequently appearing with his breast-flaunting unmarried mother in the company of older men and (in the most barbarous scenes) farmyard animals.
Most of the perpetrators of these images were, at least to judge from their surnames, foreign (Angelo, Velazquez, Rubens, etc.), and the vast majority are long dead and presumably burning in hell for their perversions. However, the guardian and curator of this squalid collection is alive and well and living under British jurisdiction. He is, of course, Charles Saumarez Smith, the Director of the National Gallery.
Who is going to inform the authorities?
Try painting this today and see how long you stay out of jail
I’ve remarked here before on how the paedo-craze leads to possession of ordinary images of children being deemed indecent, and hence their possession a serious crime, depending on who has them. Now comes an example where there were no children (nor, as the facts suggest, any young adults) involved at all, except in the imagination of the court speculating about the imagination of the defendant.
The Times reported yesterday:-
A COMPUTER expert who altered indecent images of naked women to make them look like children has been warned that he faces a prison sentence.
Stafford Sven Tudor-Miles scanned photographs of adult porn stars into his computer and used sophisticated digital equipment to reduce the size of their breasts.
The images, which Tudor-Miles also manipulated with graphics software so that the women were partially dressed in school uniforms, appeared to be of girls aged under 18.
For those who have not been keeping up with the intricacies of UK sexual offences legislation: Possession of, or (more seriously) making, indecent (not defined) photographs of children (defined as being or appearing to be under 16) became illegal a while ago. But it was extended to pseudo-photographs, i.e. digitally edited images, in 1994. And the age criterion was raised to 18 just a couple of years ago. And the courts have in their wisdom decided that copying an image to or within a computer counts as ‘making’ it.
So photoshopping or downloading a picture (which also counts as ‘making’ it) that appears (to the court) to represent someone under 18 and is indecent (as it appears to the court after hearing the evidence of prosecution experts that may relate as much to the nature of the defendant and the context in which it was found as that of the picture itself) is a crime bearing a prison sentence and registration as a sex offender – even if the defendant made absolutely certain that no-one under 18 was in any way involved.
You can screw your sixteen-year old girlfriend or boyfriend however you both like*, but snap them with their top off, or even leering suggestively, and use it as a screensaver, and you are a manufacturer of child pornography who could easily, given bad luck and a zealous prosecution, end up unemployable and/or be locked up to be tortured by career criminals. I don’t know how unlucky Mr Tudor-Miles was, but The Times also quotes Ray Savage, one of the professional experts involved in the case:
“I’ve seen it in only two previous cases,” he said. “To create an image of a child by altering an image of an adult is just as serious as downloading child porn, and probably more worrying in terms of the time taken and work involved to produce such images.
“In general terms, these images can be as crude as someone having pasted a cut-out of a child’s head on to an adult’s photo.
“At the other end of the scale, someone will use sophisticated computer image manipulation equipment to alter the size of the breasts and genitalia to make a very realistic image.”
More worrying? Mr Savage worries me more than Mr Tudor-Miles.
If our protectors wish to stamp out people having sexual fantasies about schoolgirls, then police raids and mass arrests here and here are clearly called for. Better still, lets deal with the problem at source and stop women going to school. It worked for the Taliban. I have it on good authority that you still can not buy a stripy tie or a navy-blue mini-skirt in Kabul.
[* But not, under the new Sexual Offences Act, wherever you like.]
According to Scotland Yard a plot to blow up planes in flight from the UK to the US and commit “mass murder” on an unimaginable scale has been disrupted.
It is thought the plan was to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft. High security is causing delays at all UK airports. The threat level to the UK has been raised by MI5 to critical. Three US airlines are believed to have been targeted.
There are no more details about the plan available at the moment other than it revolved around liquids of some kind and that the explosives would have been sophisticated and extremely effective. Flights from Heathrow Airport and Gatwick are suspended until this afternoon at least. The security measures are pretty drastic:
Passengers are not allowed to take any hand luggage on to any flights in the UK, the department said. Only the barest essentials – including passports and wallets – will be allowed to be carried on board in transparent plastic bags.
Another article reports that intelligence is often fragmentary and partial, so the fear perhaps is that there is another, parallel group or other individuals who are also going to carry out similar attacks and that is why such security measures are being taken.
This is all very distrurbing, of course, both for the obvious threat to lives as well as the disruption it will bring to our everyday existence. Another disturbing fact is this kind of comments (a reader’s comment next to the BBC article I got the news from):
This disruption [security measures] is one of the short term limits on freedom that are needed. Tony Shield, Chorley
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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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