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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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Any regular reader of newspapers will be familiar with the phenomenon of the newspaper article which says one thing, but with a headline above it, written by someone completely different, saying something completely different. Yesterday’s Telegraph piece written by Bruno Waterfield, entitled Brussels admits defeat in EU blog wars is, I think, a good example. I read the headline and rejoiced, but then I read the article.
What Waterfield’s piece actually says is not that the EU has admitted defeat in the face of blogs, but that the EU commission does not like blogs. Blogs have enabled those who think ‘No’ to say ‘No’. Blogs are too cheap to be bought off or controlled, too easy to set up to be silenced. Blogs are bad news. Blogs have been especially bad news in Ireland, where Irish bloggers saying No lead directly to Irish voters voting No. But nowhere in Bruno Waterfield’s report did I read any suggestion that the EU commission is ready to give up in its struggle with this new media menace to its power, and just to lie back and allow people to put whatever they think up on the internet. On the contrary, this ‘secret’ report that Waterfield quotes from sounds to me not like a surrender at all, more like a declaration of war.
The assault on liberty could be worse than it is in the United Kingdom. We are nothing like Zimbabwe, say – or Jersey.
Jersey? Yes. And I don’t mean the partly imaginary lawless land of the Sopranos and Frank Sinatra. The supposedly sleepy tax-haven and holiday resort a few miles off the Normandy coast, the oldest possession of the English Crown still in hand*, has entirely astonishingly, and almost secretly, converted itself a police state in the last fortnight:
The report in the Jersey Evening Telegraph is so concise it can only be quoted in full:
The Home Affairs Minister has sent shock waves through the legal profession by authorising the indefinite detention of suspects without charge.
On 5 June, Senator Wendy Kinnard amended the criminal code that had limited pre-charge detention to 36 hours.
She did so under delegated powers enjoyed by the minister under the terms of the Police Procedures and Criminal Evidence (Jersey) Law.
However, that same law states that before such changes to codes are made, the minister is required to publish a draft of the changes and consult interested parties. She did neither of these things – a failure that has left the Island’s criminal lawyers stunned.
The new code came into force on Thursday, but no statement was released to either the media or the legal profession.
Why? What crisis of state is afflicting the Channel Islands?
Suspicious British readers may note that Jersey ministers are accustomed to do what they are told by the UK government. The facts that this peremptory administrative action shortly preceded the House of Commons debate on police detention powers, and that the resistance to HMG’s policies had had some effect by pointing out there are other jurisdictions, where the gutters do not run with human blood, in which long detention without charge is unknown, may be entirely unrelated.
* Pedant’s corner: the dukes of Normandy held the Channel Islands for more than a century before they took possession of the English Crown.
The always-solid Belmont Club, pondering the newly segregated Sarajevo, captures my unease with multiculturalism:
Maybe the real threat to multiculturalism are the demagogues who see identity politics as the road to power, even if that process involves the destruction of the larger polity. Under the color of multiculturalism, the ship of separatism steams majestically on.
Although I think it might be better phrased as “the real threat to tolerance“.
I can’t recall anyone claiming to push multiculturalism who wasn’t, at the end of the day, really pushing some kind of identity politics. Inevitably, identity politics is nothing more than collectivism with a grudge. I think its no coincidence that the cities I’ve lived in where race relations were the most civil (Richmond, Virginia and San Angelo, Texas) had very little in the way of vocal multiculturalism/identity politics/race hustlers, while the cities that had the worst race relations (Boston and Dallas) tended to be well populated with the breed. It reminds me of the way cities with the strictest gun control have the highest crime.
In my experience, genuinely civil multi-cultural communities tend to be somewhat segregated. The key, I think, is mutual respect, not to be confused with the naive and purblind cultural relativism of the multicultural pious.
The Financial Times carries a report – if we can dignify this rather biased piece of journalism as a report – stating that European business leaders are becoming embarrassed at the size of paychecks that are being paid out to the heads of some companies. Oh dear. The story’s underlying assumption that equality of outcome, as opposed to equality before the law, is a good thing, is unquestioned. Of course, if the economic pie is of fixed size, then the fact that Fat Capitalist Bastard X has a larger slice of it than Poor Oppressed Worker does become an issue of justice. But therin lies the rub.
European economies, certainly in the more mature economies of Germany, France, Italy and the Low Countries, have grown at barely more than 2 per cent per annum in recent years, with Germany among the better ones, at 2.6 per cent last year. Take a look at this grid of growth rates, with European ones often at the bottom. After an extremely painful period of restructuring inside the straitjacket of the single currency, Germany has become more prosperous, or at least its blue chip companies like BMW and Siemens have. France is still floundering: President Sarkozy has not proven much of a reformer. So it is unsurprising that Europe’s economic “pie” has not expanded much. In such an environment, where you have some global companies based in Europe which are doing well, their CEOs get paid a fortune, but among the mass of the public who work for small and medium-sized firms dependent on domestic markets, the picture is far less rosy. Throw in the impact of rising commodity prices like oil and wheat, and no wonder the income gap is expanding relatively.
Of course, the FT, a faithfully centrist publcation in its political complexion, does not point out that this inequality does rather undermine the idea that the social-democrat, or “Rhine” model of “managed capitalism” is so much better than the anarchic, Anglo-Saxon sort. And remember than in France, for example, the country has a relatively steep, progressive tax code, plus a wealth tax on the super-rich. It has an absurd 35-hour work-week rule and some of the most protected labour markets in the world. And yet inequality is, according to the FT, increasing.
One of the few positive things in the article, however, is the point that some large institutional investors, like pension funds, are using their market clout as shareholders to vote against massive payouts to CEOs in firms that do not perform well. This is the sort of pressure I support. As an investor, if I hold a stake in a company run by a chump who demands a 10 per cent pay rise, for example, it is only right that I should say no. Of course, the other option is to sell that firm’s shares. Sooner or later, companies run by over-paid idiots tend to lose money for their investors. As for CEOs that run strong firms and are paid big bucks, well, if their shareholders are relatively better off in terms of the returns on their investment, than the headline-grabbing paychecks of a CEO are easy to defend. After all, if being a CEO was easy, there would be more of them around, and hence, they would be less well paid on average. The question that the FT does not ask is why the supply of CEOs and other senior managers is not greater than it is.
“Everyday life is as important to understanding of what happens as are historical milestones. It might help people realise how little it takes for the society to find itself in a grasp of a toxic ideology and how gradual the decline can be, how unnoticed the erosion of freedom, dignity and moral strength.”
From this blog’s Adriana Lukas, in her moving and chilling account of an exhibition in Hungary, yesterday. Scroll down and read it all.
I rather like this story about one of the smallest islands in the Channel Islands group being up for sale, or at least its lease is.
I like this detail:
Herm is the first Channel Island to go on sale for years. The asking price for the 40-year lease includes a manor house, 13th century chapel, 80 acres of farmland complete with a dairy herd and what is thought to be the world’s smallest jail.
And this:
Buyers could in effect have their own tax haven, paying 20% on income and avoiding death duties and capital gains, in common with other Channel Islands residents.
The only catch is that the price tag is £15 million.
As to whether the new owner of the property would be in a position to declare self-government and become an independent state, I am not sure. It would be a nice idea, though. Here’s a book on the subject.
As a Pimlico resident, I naturally would be amused to see if we could ever follow the example of a brilliant 1940s movie.
The monster who locked up relatives in his Austrian home for many years – at god knows what cost to their psychological state or physical health – is trying to defend himself by blaming it on Adolf Hitler.
Oh well, makes a change from blaming it all on video games, globalisation or George Bush, I suppose.
Via this blog, comes this awesomely silly story:
The Greek Isle of Lesbos is suing the group Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece to stop using the term Lesbian. Seems they are tired of having the term for people from their isle be synonymous with the followers of Sappho. “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos,” said Dimitris Lambrou, one of the plaintiffs.
Fantastic. Just imagine how one could play with this. Suppose the town council of Dorking, southern England, sues anyone who is referred to, or uses the pejorative term, “Dork”.
Greece: did not that country once come up with clever chaps like Aristotle or something?
As ever, those interested in silly lawsuits should keep an eye on Overlawyered, an invaluable blog.
I previously reported on the saga of Mikko Ellilä. Here is the trial (in English) and now the state has spoken its verdict: guilty.
So it has happened: thoughtcrime is now officially a crime in Finland. Stating your opinion, moreover stating your opinions based of government statistics, is illegal. Finns may now only express a politically sanctioned range of opinions subject to supervision by official Gauleiters like Mikko Puumalainen. The fine is small but so what? The message is clear. Dissent will not be tolerated by the Finnish state. It should not matter a damn if you agree with what Mikko Ellilä says, it is outrageous that he is not being allowed to say what he thinks.
The thing I find so nauseating is these sanctimonious pathological control freaks act as those they are not repressive government thugs using force to prevent dissent. The freedom to only state popular opinions is no freedom at all because freedom of speech is the right to say what some other people do not want to hear. It is the right to express opinions that may offend because if you cannot do that, you do not have freedom of speech.
People like Finnish bureaucrat Mikko Puumalainen exist everywhere (see the Ezra Levant case in Canada) and they must be resisted by any means necessary.
Raising issues like non-intervenionist foreign policy on a site like this is a bit like poking a bear with a stick: potentially hazardous. In my recent item on WW2, the issue surfaced again of whether a viable foreign policy for a nation is the “Swiss model” (no, not that kind). I personally doubt it works for all nations, certainly not the largest ones with long, porous borders. But as I have praised tax havens recently, I am reminded of how the Swiss seem to cope very well thankyou outside a surpranational organisation like the EU or a military alliance like NATO. But is that country what economists call a “free rider” – taking advantage of the fact that other, bigger nations have done the heavy lifting in standing up to tyrants, etc?
The toxic effects of collectivism rear its ugly Hydra-like heads in Finland, where the state wants to introduce a Chinese style ‘Internet Great Wall’ to stop people expressing political idea the state disapproves of. It also wants to prosecute Mikko Ellilä for the thought crime of expressing a dislike of multiculturalism.
It has been reported to me that Puumalainen said in a government press release in April that “racism” on the internet should be persecuted using the same methods as in the combat against child porn.Since all internet operators in Finland are required by law to block child porn websites, Puumalainen’s statement that “the same methods that have been successful in the combat against child porn should be implemented in weeding out racism on the internet as well” means that in Puumalainen’s opinion it ought to be possible for the government to establish a firewall that blocks all websites that Puumalainen accuses of racism.
In other words, Puumalainen says “racism” is a crime like child porn, and therefore “racist” websites such as blogs that mention crime statistics should be blocked by a governmental firewall.Mikko Puumalainen not only thinks that “racism” (such as data quoted from official crime statistics published by the Ministry of Justice, or by the Interpol, or by the United Nations) should be a crime, but that citizens should not even be able to access websites that Ayatollah Puumalainen has declared to be heretic
And what ‘racist act’ did Mikko Ellilä commit that enraged the state?
Quotes from official crime statistics published by the Ministry of Justice undoubtedly “help maintain an anti-immigrationist political climate” because they prove that e.g. the Somalis commit more than 100 times more (over one hundred times more, as in, over 10,000% more) robberies per capita than the Finns do.
Yup, he quoted official crime statistics. Given that Finland has one of the highest rates of internet usage in the world, I hope this provokes a powerful backlash against the control freaks who run the country.
A lot of elections at the moment. Besides the US elections, we have just had the Spanish elections and in my wife’s small country, Malta, the ruling Nationalist Party, a vaguely right-of-centre party that supported Malta’s entry into the EU and the euro, won by an incredibly slender margin (just over a thousand votes). As I have a vested interest in Malta remaining a broadly open country, I am glad that the party won, or at least relieved that Labour, the main opposition party with a vindictively regulatory streak, did not. But my views on Malta’s election are tinged with a bitter-sweet taste as the Nationalists, for all their generally pro-enterprise views, have made serious errors. The party took Malta into the EU. By staying out of the EU, Malta could have retained and expanded its status as an offshore tax haven, providing Monaco, the Swiss, Liechtenstein and Gibraltar with some useful competition as a friendly venue. Malta has quite a thriving IT and financial sector and English is widely spoken there, a priceless advantage. By keeping out of the EU, it could also have avoided becoming a conduit for tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who use the small island as an entry point for the EU. Malta, an island the size of the Isle of Wight with half a million people, is not a country that can easily absorb a large influx. But as my better half points out, Malta, a Catholic country, has long feared the shadow of its Muslim neighbour, Libya, just a hundred miles or so to the south, and sees EU membership as somehow tying it ever more closely to a non-Muslim population. The Maltese are quite a tolerant bunch but they are fiercely pro-western. The Archbishop of Canterbury would be thrown into Valetta’s Grand Harbour.
One reason for the closeness of the elections is that there is a lot of anger at the governing party, even among most moderate voters, at some of the crasser building developments in the densely populated island. Even the most ardent defender of free enterprise will sometimes struggle to defend the ugly high-rise developments in part of the island that have gone up next to the attractive, honey-coloured buildings along parts of the country (in the smaller neighbouring island of Gozo, such developments have been far fewer, thankfully). Tourism is a crucial source of income for Malta; its historic buildings are part of its appeal, so long-term tourist entrepreneurs should hopefully follow their self-interest and avoid damaging the very thing that makes Malta a nice place to visit. This is an interesting subject for economists: ugly developments make money for investors in the short run and arguably, are better than no development at all, but the long run costs can be in the form of less tourism overall as would-be visitors go elsewhere for somewhere prettier.
Anyway, back on topic: this has to have been one of the closest election results I have ever read about.
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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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