There is a controversy brewing over pornographic television channels. One of the two South African satellite television providers, TopTV, takes their signal from the Astra 4 satellite. Another broadcaster, PSat, uses the same satellite, although they are not licensed to broadcast into South Africa, so their signal is not sold here. All this hard core porn raining down unperceived upon the innocent citizenry has tweaked an entrepreneurial nerve. African Satellite Installations wants to sell us smartcards and decoders so, for the trivial sum of R99 (~$12 US) a month we can immerse ourselves in “pull-no-cumshots” content featuring “guy-on-girl, girl-on-girl and monstrous group orgies, all with the heterosexual viewer in mind”. So far, so good, but some snags have come up.
The first is that because the same satellite is used for the TopTV signal, people with existing TopTV satellite dishes will be able to use the same dish for the new channel; but they will have to get a new decoder and smart card. Well, so what? ASI said so, that’s what, so TopTV are litigating to get ASI to stop saying that which is true, i.e. that subscribers can use their existing TopTV antenna to receive the new signal. This is why I’m not a lawyer; anyone who can spend months in the High Court debating this utterly unimportant point must have a view of the minuscule that surely precludes them from seeing anything approaching the big picture, whether that picture is pornographic or not.
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Sex, Videotape and Lies
December 7, 2011
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Libertarian, Morality, religion | Tagged: African Satellite Installations, errol naidoo, family policy institute, porn, PSat, todd kendall, TopTV | 
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Posted by Mark Widdicombe
Loose Scrum
November 17, 2011There’s a brouhaha going on in Cape Town at the moment over the venue for a game of rugby between an English club, Saracens, and the French club Biarritz. Saracens, who are organising the game, have decided that they would like it to be held at the Cape Town stadium. The City are happy with that, as are Biarritz, as are the fans. The Western Province Rugby Union, however, are not happy because they want the match played at their own stadium, Newlands.
Cape Town Stadium By Night
This is where my understanding breaks down. Let’s try an analogy. you and your girlfriend or boyfriend have decided to go on a date to a certain restaurant. A third party, who just happens to be dating someone else and who also owns a restaurant cries foul, and tries to insist that you go to his restaurant. I know what I’d do if that occurred. I’d want to know who rattled the third party’s chain, and what the hell has our night out got to do with him?
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1 Comment | Libertarian | Tagged: biarritz, cape town stadium, city of cape town, newlands stadium, patricia de lille, saracens, saru, western province rugby | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
Mr Hitchens Rests His Case
August 4, 2011Peter Hitchens recently set forth in his blog his arguments against the legalisation of drugs in general and cannabis in particular. These are so hare-brained, so monumentally stupid, so hideously wrong and so asininely arrogant that I’m unable to resist countering them. Here are a few quotes from his rant.
Peter Hitchens
…my fear that the general legalisation of mind-altering drugs produces passive and easily manipulated citizens.
37 Comments | Libertarian, Morality | Tagged: cannabis, drugs, peter hitchens, prohibition | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
Drugs
June 6, 2011The boarding school I attended when I was a small boy employed a Scottish matron to look after our medical welfare. She was rectangular, about four feet tall, had a broad lowland Scots accent, a face like a haggis and a loving heart, not that she would ever own up to that. Whenever we went to see her she would listen to our sad stories, then give us a large, round, blue pill. I always felt much better after this, and attributed the improvement to the pill. With hindsight, I’m sure the pill was nothing more than a multivitamin, and the talk conspired with the placebo effect to produce the improvement in mood. This is only tangentially relevant to my topic for today, which is illegal drugs and the relationship between their users and governments.
Judi Dench
Last week luminaries such as Judi Dench, Sting and Richard Branson expressed their view that the so-called war on drugs was a failure, and that use of illegal drugs should be decriminalised. Well, guys, thanks for pointing out the obvious–obvious to everyone, that is, apart from those legislators who persist in the delusion that they can legislate human nature.
The arguments for decriminalisation are practical: a huge amount law enforcement resources are diverted from fighting other crimes; outrageous profits on illegal drugs mean that the market is perfectly suited to exploitation by organised crime; the trade in illegal drugs cannot be regulated, so their consumers risk injury or death from poor quality merchandise; users are cast out of mainstream society and live dangerously, sharing needles and other kinds of risky behaviour.
In my view Dench et al don’t go far enough. Illegal drugs should not be decriminalised, they should be legalised. Apart from all the reasons given above for decriminalisation, there are compelling moral arguments for legalisation. The first is the lack of consistency in the law. There are no logical reasons why some drugs, such as alcohol and tobacco should be freely available to adults when less harmful substances such as cannabis are illegal. Secondly, there is the question of freedom: if you wish to have a free society, then adults should have freedom over their own bodies, which means the freedom to ingest any substance they like without being dictated to by the state. The function of government is to protect citizens’ rights against other people, not themselves. Free people must have autonomy over their own lives, and suffer government interference only when they infringe the rights of others.
Cannabis grow room (with rozzerette)
“But the the health system won’t be able to cope with millions of addicts!” critics will cry. This is simply untrue–the national fiscus takes in much more from taxes on the sale of alcohol than they expend on treating the fairly small proportion of drinkers who descend into alcoholism. Any drugs can be taxed in the same way as are tobacco and alcohol now, and the profits go to government (disorganised crime) instead of to the criminal cartels. Cynics or conspiracy theorists might make the point that government allows the sale of alcohol and tobacco because it saves a considerable amount of money; the best outcome for government is everyone dropping dead at their retirement parties, saving a fortune in pensions and geriatric care. A legal market in drugs can be regulated by health authorities, ensuring suppliers perform adequate quality control, and that users can be confident of the doses they are purchasing.
I’m sure that somewhere in the back of Richard Branson’s mind is the outline of the advertising campaign he will run upon the launch of Virgin Psychedelic, and the profits he will make out of marketing cheap, high quality product to an appreciative public.
Grumpy Old Man by Mark Widdicombe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License
2 Comments | Law, Libertarian, Morality | Tagged: cannabis, drugs, judi dench, law, richard branson, sting | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
Stokes Croft Riots
May 26, 2011A small branch of the supermarket Tesco opened in Stokes Croft, a neighbourhood in Bristol in April. This was not a giant hypermarket, it was a Tesco Express, something like Apu’s Quik-E-Mart in The Simpsons.
Riot damaged Tesco Express
Some residents in the area were horrified. They claimed that the new store would destroy existing small businesses, and that “big capitalism” was being imposed on them. Their opinions were not taken seriously, and the opening of the new store went ahead.
Those opposed to the store have this to say:
Within a week of Tesco opening its doors Stokes Croft has found itself the focal point of serious violence and confrontation. Over the last few years our beloved community has undergone an amazing home grown resurgence. We are therefore devastated that Tesco’s refusal to listen to what the majority of local people want has resulted in our vibrant, peaceful community being subject to such a sad state of affairs.
This “majority” decided that violence was the best method of enforcing their wishes, so they took to the streets. Their website goes on:
We are also deeply saddened to witness the reality that we live in society in which young people feel the only way to see justice done is to throw rocks. The reality is the government / corporations / media have created this society and are now trying to blame young people for the mess they have created. What future can we hope for if corporations are allowed to continue to dictate governments? If their insatiable appetite for profit is allowed to reign supreme?
Clashes between protesters and police left many injured and extensive damage to property, including to the disputed store.
What bothers me about this is that the protesters are either lying about their motives or they show an almost unbelievable ignorance of economic forces.
If they are truly in the majority, they could easily close the store down simply by not shopping there. The store would lose money, and Tesco, with its “insatiable appetite for profit” would close its doors and try again elsewhere.
But I suspect that they are not in any sort of majority and they wish to impose their political agenda on everyone else through the use of force. There may well be a silent majority of residents in the area who would appreciate the convenience of being able to buy reasonably priced goods at the new store, and the protesters are well aware of this fact.
This is morally indefensible and I hope the Avon and Somerset constabulary stand firm in their commitment to uphold the law.
What future can we hope for if a few malcontents are allowed to dictate, by violence and coercion, to corporations and governments?
Grumpy Old Man by Mark Widdicombe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License
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Posted by Mark Widdicombe
Smoke and Microsoft
March 9, 2011Ms Charl Everton, Microsoft’s anti-piracy manager, says that running a pirated copy of Windows is tantamount to gun running, human trafficking and drug dealing. The same was said recently in a series of radio advertisements by British American Tobacco with regards to buying smuggled cigarettes.
Let’s examine these statements with a jaundiced, sceptical eye.
Microsoft is a mega-corporation that has been found guilty in both the European Union and the USA of anti-competitive behaviour, but this doesn’t mean it’s OK to buy counterfeit MS products. It doesn’t mean that those who pirate their products are rapists or genocidal megalomaniacs, either. We won’t go into the argument of whether or not the pirating of a software product is stealing; we’ll just accept for the purposes of argument that it is in some sense wrong, like copyright infringement.
The same can be said of smoking smuggled cigarettes—the smoker is depriving the national fiscus of the tax revenue that would have accrued had the cigarettes been legally imported.
So why do Microsoft and BAT make these absurd statements? What do they have in common?
Well, both Microsoft and BAT have a terrible public image. Microsoft is perceived in many quarters to purvey an inferior product that consumers are forced to buy because of Microsoft’s stranglehold on the PC software market. If you don’t believe me, just try to purchase a laptop computer without some version of MS Windows infesting its hard drive.
The cigarette companies sell a product that is known to be harmful to all who partake of it, and is fatal to a significant proportion of them, yet most of their customers are powerless to cease purchasing the product because one of its constituents, nicotine, is one of the most addictive substances known to man.
So, in order to divert attention from their own moral shortcomings, the companies must paint those who trespass upon their intellectual property as worse than they themselves are. They don’t want people to think, “Gosh, I know pirating software or buying smuggled cigarettes is wrong, but these guys are scumbags; ripping them off is a actually a public service, so I’ll go ahead and do it, anyway.” They want you to equate intellectual property infringements or petty smuggling as somehow akin to child rape—unthinkable.
There are perfectly legal alternatives, though. I stopped smoking, thereby saving my health and a stack of money to boot. I decided I would rather write with a quill and calculate with an abacus rather than buy another Microsoft product; I discovered Linux, which is superior to MS Windows in every respect and that there is a free office suite, OpenOffice, which is just as good as MS office.
Don’t pirate Microsoft’s rubbish and don’t smoke BAT’s rubbish, smuggled or not. But don’t buy the crap they purvey, either, or the crap they say.
Grumpy Old Man by Mark Widdicombe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License
3 Comments | Computer, Libertarian, Morality | Tagged: computer, law, linux, microsoft | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
Euthanasia
October 12, 2010Put yourself in the shoes of Dr Sean Davison. His 85 year-old mother, Patricia, was dying in agony from cancer. She was so desperate to put an end to her suffering that she had attempted suicide by means of starvation. Her son allegedly gave her a solution of crushed morphine tablets, telling her that if she drank it it would end her life. She drank and died, and now Sean Davison faces a charge of attempted murder for doing what most loving sons would do in similar circumstances.
Dr Sean Davison
I find it puzzling that the charge should be attempted murder rather than murder—his mother did, after all, die. But that isn’t really the point. The point is whether or not the state should intervene at all in cases such as this one.
There are two aspects that need to be considered: legal and moral. The state has a duty of protection towards its citizens, most especially the poor or the weak who are not able adequately to protect themselves, so the law cannot just shrug its shoulders and say, OK, then, your Mum’s got a tummy ache so feel free to blow her head off. But that isn’t what happened here. His mother took the morphine herself, voluntarily, after having had it pointed out to her explicitly that it would cause her death. (It should be stated at this juncture that Patricia Davison was herself a medical doctor.) A distinction is made between active and passive euthanasia; passive euthanasia being the withholding of treatment in the knowledge that that might result in death, and active euthanasia being a deliberate act, such as the administration of a poison, that results in death. In my view this case was neither because Sean Davison did not administer the morphine, he merely provided it.
I don’t think any sane person would argue that it is moral to force a person to endure suffering unnecessarily; there aren’t any rational reasons for taking that position. Before you cry that religious leaders take precisely that position, I urge you to reread the preceding sentence. I said sane and rational; priests, rabbis, imams and the other assorted riff-raff of the mystical realms are neither sane nor rational, and they know nothing of morality; they slavishly follow the dogma set out centuries ago by uneducated peasants even more ignorant than they are themselves. Indeed, if a pet animal contracts a dread disease we say it is “humane” to put an end to its suffering, but a human is supposed to linger for as long as possible and die in agony without any dignity whatsoever. The reason underlying the religious opposition to euthanasia is that they believe that people do not own their own lives; they are the property of some supernatural slave-master in the sky.
I take the opposite view, that we are each the ultimate arbiters of what is best for us, and we may do with our lives whatever we wish, and that includes choosing to end our lives if they become unbearable. The right to life is topmost in the hierarchy of rights enshrined in the constitutions of all enlightened states, which means the state should go to extraordinary lengths to prevent a person’s life being taken against their will (murder), but the other side of that coin is that a person’s right to take his own life should be as defended with equal vigour.
These events took place in New Zealand which is rumoured to be fairly civilized, the barbaric antics of its rugby players notwithstanding. (I don’t actually believe it exists, I’ve thought of it as a place like Lilliput: misty, charming, but wholly imagined.) The judge in this case should take into account the defendant’s motive in providing the poison to his mother. If he decides that it was to put an end to unbearable suffering, and was done in accordance with the wishes of the deceased, then he must acquit Davison because a moral act should not be punished even if it is against the law; instead the law should be amended to bring it into line with morality.
In that case Sean Davison should be released to return to his family as soon as possible.
Grumpy Old Man by Mark Widdicombe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License
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Posted by Mark Widdicombe
Book Burning
September 13, 2010
Why do we feel such an instinctive abhorrence for the act of burning a book? Last week the Reverend Jones, a fundamentalist preacher in Florida, USA, declared that he was going to burn copies of the Koran, allegedly in protest against “fundamentalist Islam.” (As though that is in some ways worse than fundamentalist Christianity.)
He joins the ranks of other noted book-burners down the ages: fine, upstanding folk like Adolf Hitler, Uncle Joe Stalin, and of course we can’t forget Mao Tse Tung and his “cultural revolution” which attempted to destroy Chinese culture in its entirety. Burning books goes back to the third century BC when books were burned by the Qin dynasty in China, and scholars buried alive for dissent. The practice is a long standing Christian tradition—the Spanish Inquisition burned the Koran wherever it was found.
Many people have commented on the Rev. Jones’s planned idiocy, but I haven’t read or heard anyone who actually gets the point. It is generally agreed that whilst burning the Koran is legal, it isn’t desirable for a host of reasons, such as: it will inflame Muslims and increase radicalism; it will be a recruitment wet dream for Islamic terrorist organisations; it will trigger retaliatory action by even moderate Muslims, and so on.
What they miss is the fundamental stupidity of the notion that you can destroy an idea by burning a book that contains it.
I think that what Messrs Hitler, Stalin et al had in common was a shared delusion that by burning a book they could make the ideas contained therein somehow vanish. This, of course, is not what happens. The physical book may be destroyed, but the burning (or banning) draws attention to the ideas rather than destroying them, and those ideas often go on to destroy the book-burners (which is what they were afraid of in the first place.)
The way to destroy an idea is to show that it is not true in matters of fact and its arguments are not logically valid. This is extremely difficult in the case of religious works because they are supposed to be the word of an infallible supernatural being. Pointing out that some of the “facts” revealed by the deity are provably wrong doesn’t phase the faithful in the slightest. They merely move the goalposts and assert that the questioned passages are allegorical and not to be taken literally, and logical inconsistency is an artifact of our poor human brains that are not able to understand the grandeur of God’s plan.
The only way to combat this sort of psychosis is to repeat the obvious to the faithful calmly and often. Perhaps, once in a thousand times, the seed of doubt will sprout and you can convert someone to sanity. I know this works because I was once a devout Christian (at about the age of 13) and now am not. Faith was defeated by critical thinking.
Perhaps we should inundate the moron Jones with emails explaining that snakes can’t talk, the dead can’t walk, and water cannot be turned into wine without the added ingredients of sunshine and a grapevine.
“Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings.” – Heinrich Heine
Grumpy Old Man by Mark Widdicombe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License
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Posted by Mark Widdicombe
Drug Laws
January 29, 2010
Scallywag (who lights my darkness) enjoys the occasional herbal cigarette which she smokes in the evening. Then, with slavering jaws and flashing teeth, she mows a great swathe through our household economy, necessitating an emergency midweek visit to the supermarket to replenish stocks of bread, eggs and dog pellets. But, apart from giving her an appetite that would be the envy of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, her habit does no harm whatsoever to anyone except perhaps herself.
Yet if it reached the ears of the authorities that she she was partaking of this harmless substance she could be siezed by the rozzers and hurled, with the lowest thieves, perverts and murderers into the darkest dungeons Pollsmoor has to offer. As sceptics we (rightly) rail against the absurdities of religion, quackery and pseudoscience wherever we encounter them; should we not also shine the light of reason onto the absurdities that make their home in the statute books of our country?
I challenge anyone to give me a rational reason why the mere possession of cannabis should be a criminal act, but alcohol and tobacco, which are arguably more harmful substances, are legally available everywhere.
But the point is not the harmfulness of the substance—there is a more important principle to consider. Governments are constituted to protect the individual’s rights from being infringed by others; that is the social contract. It is a principal that no law should be passed that protects an individual against himself, because that is the foundation of the “nanny state” under which individual freedom is impossible. If an individual wishes to smoke whacky weed, snort cocaine or shoot his veins full of heroin he should be permitted to do so, provided he does no harm to others by so doing. Having dealt with the principle let’s move on to practicalities.
“But Mark,” you say, “what about the medical bills we the taxpayers have to foot when these junkies destroy their health?” If the drugs were legal they could be taxed as are alcohol and tobacco now, and the taxes thus collected would be more than sufficient to offset any additional public health expenditure.
The illegal drug market is demand driven, and prices bear almost no relation to the amount it costs to produce and distribute them. There is a huge risk premium built in because the distributers (criminals) risk imprisonment if they are caught. Legalizing drugs would take the market out of the hands of gangsters and place it in the hands of entrepeneurs where it can be easily regulated. Drug users would be able to rely on consistent quality and acurate doses at a far lower price than they are currently paying.
Which brings us to the question of crime. The entire industry is controlled by organised criminal networks and the users themselves are often forced to indulge in crime in order to pay the exorbitant prices demanded by the gangs. Were the products to be legalized, one of the props supporting organised crime would be be neatly amputated, and an all-round reduction in crime could be expected. Government (disorganised crime) would receive a revenue boost that would be of benefit to ordinary taxpayers whether or not they are drug users. Over 1,5 million people are arrested in the USA every year for drug offenses, most of which are trivial. Imagine the reduction in crime that would be possible if the resources wasted on drug enforcement were to be diverted to combatting real crime.
Grumpy Old Man by Mark Widdicombe is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 License.
2 Comments | Libertarian | Tagged: cannabis, crime, drugs, legalization | Permalink
Posted by Mark Widdicombe
Grumpy Old Man 