It’s a rare day when we get much good news emanating from Afghanistan. We’ve had a continuation of a brutal twenty-year-long civil war, a reversion of large swathes of the countryside to the control of bandits, and little progress in finding the elusive Osama bin Laden, with what little goods news being interspersed with the odd assassination, terrorist attack, or earthquake.

However, today was most certainly a good news day. Afghanistan’s opium production is now at an all-time high. That’s right, Afghanistan now has more land under drug cultivation than Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia have between them.

“Huh. That’s a… novel… spin. I’m sure the BBC wasn’t quite as positive.”

No, of course they weren’t. Besides the BBC being possibly the most incompetent media outlet in the world (this is what they do), it, along with all the other major players, buys into the statist consensus on drugs far too easily. The fact is that taking drugs affects oneself and oneself only, and is therefore one’s own choice. The state really has no right, never mind a responsibility, to tell the people what they can and can’t do to themselves.

So, let’s look at that BBC story again, in the context of drugs not being bad.

Opium production in Afghanistan has soared to record levels, with an increase on last year of more than a third…

If you replaced the word ‘opium’ with something nice and wholesome - like steel, maybe - you’d get a very nice boast indeed. Imagine it’s the 19th century, and all that matters to the British government is the steel production figures (or, imagine it’s the 19th century and all that matters to the British East Indian government is the opium production figures). Doesn’t that make for a good headline? If I ran a company that increased production by one-third, I’d be looking for a slice of those record bonuses I’ve been hearing about.

… Helmand province is now the biggest single drug-producing area in the world, surpassing whole countries such as Colombia.

Helmand is becoming a competently horizontally-integrated production centre, benefiting from mass economies of scale. What they need to do now is focus on the verticality, preferably looking to get some of the jobs refining the opium from the UK. Isn’t that just called offshoring?

Afghanistan now accounts for more than 93% of the world’s opiates.

OK, that part doesn’t sound good. That sounds like a monopoly to me, which could lead to artificially-raised prices. We’ll have to break up Afghanistan into little pieces to promote competition. Fortunately, I think the warlords have done that for us.

Despite billions of dollars of aid and tens of thousands of international troops, the report says 193,000 hectares of opium poppies are being grown in Afghanistan.

Who said foreign aid doesn’t achieve anything? At several hectares of poppies per soldier, that sounds like a bargain.

“The results are very bad, terrifyingly bad, because cultivation has increased by 17% to an historic level, said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the Office on Drugs and Crime, “No other country beside China in the 19th Century ever had such a large amount of land dedicated to illegal activities.”

Thank you, Signor Costa, for that here is the crux. Does it matter if it’s illegal? What matters is if it’s immoral. Stalin devoted tens of millions of hectares of prime Siberian real estate to promoting rural development. It used mostly political dissidents as labour, but it was legal, so it was OK, right? So implies Signor Costa.

What we need to do is ask ourselves whether our resources are best deployed in Afghanistan fighting farmers, when they could be fighting terrorists. Worse than that, by hunting down farmers that engage in entirely moral business, we are turning them into terrorists by depriving them of their means of sustenance and survival. That’s why the Taliban has turned Helmand into a fortress, and that’s why British servicemen are dying on an increasingly regular basis. To quote the campaign of the man that presided over half of the so-called ‘War on Drugs’, it’s the economy, stupid. And that’s why, if we want to win the War on Terror, we have to put an end to the War on Drugs.

Oppressive dictators like to put on a show. Whether it’s as complicated as building the world’s largest stadium to host choreographed propaganda events, or as simple erecting a statue of himself made out of solid gold that revolves to always face the Sun, it’s always nice for the Leader to let people know he’s also the Man.

Robert Mugabe is no different, and what better way to prove that famine-striven Zimbabwe is doing A-OK under Mugabe than to hold an agricultural show?

But, if the pro-Mugabe Harare Herald is to be believed, not only is an agricultural show is the logical step, but it’s been an unbridled success! An ‘annual exhibition extravaganza‘, it writes, as ‘hundreds of people from all walks of life’ gawp at what moderately-acceptably-sized carrots are on show. And what’s even better, apparently:

Children could also be seen enjoying ice-cream, chips, sweets and other goodies as they visited the stands of various companies.

And isn’t that what Robert Mugabe’s all about? Not famine, but children enjoying ice cream. And that’s the beauty of being the Man.

Libertarians occupy an awkward position in the political landscape. A lot of my friends try to pass themselves off as libertarians, bragging about their belief in low taxation, only to trail off and leave an unnerving silence when it comes to social issues. However, to be a libertarian, one must unite both creeds, under the one intellectually consistent ideology. One must believe that not only does the state not have any role to play in the boardroom, but in the bedroom, too.

On 26 August 1969, the Canadian Criminal Law Amendment Act came into effect, changing forever how much the Canadian state would involve itself in affairs in the bedroom. It decriminalised homosexuality, the contraceptive pill, and abortion. So great an impact did it have that, when passing through the House of Commons, it was known as the ‘Omnibus Bill’, although still bearing the more dour name of Bill C-150.

The bill was proposed by Pierre Trudeau in 1967. Trudeau was then the Justice Minister, and responsible for sweeping away all the outdated and outmoded laws of state. In this capacity, he made it quite clear that laws that impinged upon sexual rights would be first to go, declaring, “There is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” As it happens, Trudeau was elected leader of the Liberal Party, and therefore Prime Minister, at the marathon 1968 party convention, allowing him to get his bill passed and to dominate Canadian politics for the next two decades.

To claim that Trudeau as a libertarian idol would be just as false as my conservative friends to claim their own libertarian credentials. Trudeau never understood economic liberalism, and, as time went on, his sence of righteous justice, his intolerance of intolerance, declined. In 1970, he even declared war on Canada (really, he did). However, thanks to his force of character, on this day 38 years ago, the face of Canada changed, and the frontiers of the state rolled back, so that they could never threaten the bedroom again.

This morning, former French Prime Minister Raymond Barre passed away, at the age of 83, after almost five months of hospitalisation. Barre was Prime Minister between 1976 and 1981, under President Valéry Giscaird d’Estaing, and was responsible for attempting to reconstruct the French economy along market lines after the collapse of Les Trente Glorieuses in the early 1970s.

Barre was an economist by training, and used his pedigree and reputation as “the best economist in France” to effect real economic change at a time when France needed it most. He fought, courageously and successfully, to control it at a time when the UK’s Labour government was flailing and failing. He slashed bureaucracy, cut government waste, ended subsidies to unproductive industries, and fought the all-powerful trade unions that sought to bring down the government with the rule of the mob.

The result was falling inflation, a return to economic growth, a trade deficit cut in half, a rise in the value of the franc, and a smaller rise in unemployment than anywhere else in Europe. His economic policies were a sign of things to come on our side of the Channel, and were a valiant vindication of the monetarist ideas sown by Milton Friedman in the previous decade.

But Barre went further. He combated statism wherever he found it. Attacked by the reactionary Gaullists, Barre defended the victories of his predecessor, a young Jacques Chirac, in securing the decriminalisation of abortion, divorce by choice, and the reduction of the voting age to 18. In doing so, he and d’Estaing shaped a new right-wing, free from the shadow of De Gaulle, in the form of the Union for French Democracy.

When in government, Barre refused to be a member of a political party, remaining steadfastly above the internal politicking that destroyed the French right in the lead-up to François Mitterand’s election victory in 1981. Not a professional politician, he was allowed to be blunter and more honest than anyone else, frequently interrupting and yelling at interviewers when they fell into economic fallacies.

When, in 1988, confronted by a supporter despairing at falling opinion polls that demanded he change his politics and policies, Barre replied, “It doesn’t stop me sleeping.” Later on, he said, “The French people must understand that my policies were right. It’s not up to me to change.” By elevating himself above internecine strife, and holding his principles sacrosanct, he proved his heroism in the most tangible way.

In Barre, France came its closest to having their Thatcher, and even before the United Kingdom had its own. The legacy of Barre was the end of Gaullist dirigisme and the defence of liberties denied for so long by both the left and the right. The defeat of the d’Estaing-Barre partnership in the 1981 election ranks as one of France’s more shameful moments, brought about by a refusal of the right wing to ally itself to a man that promised France freedom and hope. Les Trente Horribles have been the result. We can only hope that, with the passing of an old hero, France can find a new one, inspired by his memory.

The BBC Russian Service radio station, which has been designated one of the BBC’s top global priorities in the years ahead, has been ordered off the FM airwaves by the country’s regulators. The last of the Russian Service’s three local distribution partners, Bolshoye Radio, was ordered to remove the BBC from its programming or face being shut down itself.

This, by itself, is a gross abuse of state power. The Russian state has ordered the BBC out of business to prevent the propagation of foreign and free ideas that might prove dangerous to the neo-Soviet Kremlin. This abuse of state power is done under the pretext of defending local producers (itself an despicable act of protectionism), which makes it even harder to fathom.

But there’s another side to the argument, and one that hasn’t been lost on the Russians. In defending the removal of the BBC from its station’s programming, Bolshoye Radio spokesperson Igor Ermachenkov said:

Any media which is government-financed is propaganda. It’s a fact - it’s not negative.

Surprisingly enough, this Russkie gets it. The state has no role to play in the media - broadcast, printed, online, or otherwise - and that applies to state broadcasting as it does to state censorship. Two months ago, the BBC admitted that it’s institutionally biased: that it abuses its remit of ‘public-interest’ broadcasting to propagate the civil service’s left-wing ideas. And since the BBC extracts its revenue by taxing its rivals’ services, its bias is funded by what (in the economic short-term) amounts to monopoly power.

The sad thing is that both Russia and the United Kingdom fail to apply the principle of non-involvement with any consistency or morality, with any respect for the underlying reason for our opposition. It’s fashionable for everyone - left and right - to oppose Vladimir Putin’s tyrannical government, and, as it is fast becoming one of the most unfree countries this side of Zimbabwe, that criticism is justified. Just as justified is criticism of the BBC, which applies Putin’s principles with a smug smile on its face, confident that neither this country’s people nor government understand why it must be shut down, just as it has been in Russia.

The Conservative policy group set up by David Cameron has recommended that the next Tory manifesto support the abolition of the death tax. The tax, officially known as the ‘inheritance tax’, places a crippling burden upon many individuals and families, and is rightly despised as one of the most unfair, unprincipled, and unpractical taxes currently pushed upon the people of this country.

That it’s taken so long for a major party to propose ridding us of this relic is astounding. Although the forebear of the tax dates back to the French Revolutionary Wars, the modern death tax was introduced in 1894. Back then, the government called it what it was: Death duty. It underwent some rebranding, under both Labour and Conservative governments (although the Tories, to their credit, slashed the rate).

There are many lists of criteria of what makes a supposedly ‘good’ tax. However, one criterion is so obvious that it is never even mentioned: no individual ought to be taxed due to his or her own loss. If a man loses his watch, he shouldn’t be ‘punished’ by receiving a bill from HMRC for his neighbours’ kids school fees. But that’s exactly what happens with death tax; if a man dies, he is made to pay for all the extravagances of other people. As if death weren’t enough of a deterrent to popping one’s clogs…

The death tax is the arch-statist devise, entrenching the socialist belief that the state has a right on everything, and that nothing is the realm of the individual. It ranks alongside expropriation - like the death tax, known under euphemism (as ‘compulsory purchase’ or ‘eminent domain’) - as one of the grossest abuses of state power, and therefore the grossest embarrassment to state authority.

Tax at the best of times is a bad thing. Even those most enamoured to it consider it a ‘necessary evil’ (although how ‘necessary’ it is is open to debate), which is hardly the greatest compliment.  Death tax is the most unnecessary and most evil methods of extracting it.  The fact that the Conservative policy group is bold enough to propose its abolition it is a good sign. We can only wait to see if David Cameron is bold enough to finally make the death tax an ex-tax.

Prometheus stole fire, the basis of all human achievement and industry, from the gods, and presented it to humanity, borne by a Torch of fennel. Prometheus had no undue respect for the gods, and openly defied their false logic. When a sacrificial gift was demanded of man against his wishes, Prometheus tricked Zeus, for which mankind was punished by the deprivation of fire. By recovering that which was unjustly lost, the Torch is the weapon by which Prometheus and humanity fight back against the unreasoned tyranny of above.

To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope ’til Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.
- Percy Shelley: Prometheus Unbound (1820)

Fresh on the gloriously statist prohibition of smoking in private places comes yet another threat from so-called paternalistic authoritarians: this time, in the form of an attack on alcohol. Blaring out from the front page of Wednesday’s Times is a stark warning that a high-ranking police officer wants to increase the drinking age to 21.

Peter Fahy, the Chief Constable of Cheshire (condolences to students from Cheshire), yesterday advocated the change, citing the murder of a man in Warrington (condolences to anyone from Warrington) as proof that society is going to hell in a hand basket. Apparently, some small-brained big-wig in the Home Office agrees ‘with the substance’ of Fahy’s proposals.

But we expect that from this government (or should that be just ‘government’?). More depressing is the fact that the Times, supposedly a newspaper of record and historically a classical liberal outlet, seems to be whole-heartedly in favour, and doesn’t pull any punches in its front-page would-be editorial. It doesn’t even bother to present any alternative opinions: reams of statistics will do. And what statistics they are.

Apparently,

Among 35 European countries, the UK has the third-highest proportion of 15-year-olds — 24 per cent — who have been drunk ten times or more in the past year.

But 15-year olds are already prohibited from buying alcohol, and wouldn’t be affected by the move; the only people affected are those over 18, i.e. adults that are old enough to get married without parental permission, vote, and give their lives at war.

Alcohol also now costs 54 per cent less in real terms than it did in 1980. Doctors and campaigners have called on the Government to drive up prices, while voicing growing concern at the increase in the strength of beer and wine.

What immoral and heartless monster dares argue with doctors and campaigners (read: ‘concerned mothers’, but actually randomers that sign e-petitions)?

However, The Times has learnt that ministers have ruled out including the question of higher taxation in a review…

Ah, so a petulant government minister does. Fortunately, he’s in good company. As a 20-year old with an exhorbitantly high drinks bill as it is, I find myself on that side of supposedly indefensibility. But I’m not alone, and, for the past century and a half, have found myself sipping cognac with my friend Frédéric Bastiat, who wrote in my bank account’s defence:

Which is preferable for man and for society, abundance or scarcity? … How can there be any question about it? Has anyone ever suggested, or is it possible to maintain, that scarcity is the basis of man’s well-being?

And it can’t be. But, here, we have the government doing just that. Telling people, adults, what they can and can’t spend their money on, when it has no effect on anyone else. The state has a track record of doing this, but this is different, in that it is part of a march against what Home Secretary and Health Secretary Dr John Reid describes as ‘working class pleasures‘. Drop the Marxism dripping from that phrase (Reid did his PhD in Marxian economic history, although we’ll still call him a ‘doctor’ for the same reason the Times invokes that word), and you get to the point. They are not just ‘working class’ pleasures, but pleasures - period.

The intention of the Times, and its muse Peter Fahy, is highlighted by the use of the phrase ‘drive up prices’. This isn’t about raising revenue. This isn’t even a Pigouvian response to an externality. This is about punishing people’s choices by driving up prices, and how it’s done, or even why it’s done, is neither here nor there.

Such an action by the state is inexcusable, and betrays a bewildering lack of faith that the government has in the individual, and hence in humanity itself. By continuing its persecution of drinkers, smokers, and people that have fingerprints, the body politic is distancing itself from the liberalism on which this country, and all civilisation, is based. It may only be the beginning, but we should all be angry enough at time being called on every student’s favourite pastime.

After weeks of waiting, Polish President Lech Kaczyński has finally dismissed four ministers from the two smaller partners in the three-party governing coalition. It leaves the larger Law and Justice Party - led by Kaczyński’s brother Jaroslaw - governing on its own, and, without the support of a majority of the national legislature, the Sejm, requires them to go back to the polls.

All very uninteresting so far. However, Law and Justice (PiS) has long been mooted as a potential partner for David Cameron’s new European endeavour outside the European People’s Party (EPP), and, as such, their fortunes matter an awful lot to the New Tories’ approach to European issues.

Unlike the Czech Civic Democrats, who have already signed up to the new grouping, the PiS are not liberal in any sense, and their social attitudes are highly authoritarian: hardening Poland’s already strictly anti-choice abortion laws, prohibiting all recognition of homosexual relationships, banning trading on Sundays, and reintroducing the death penalty.

However, this streak was not enough to appease its coalition partners, who are even more authoritarian: the homophobic Catholic nationalists of the League of Polish Families and the back-to-the-Earth agrarian revanchist socialists of Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland (who, indicative of the unifying ideology of oppression practised by both left and right, are merging!). The PiS itself lost seven MPs earlier this year that thought the government’s position on abortion was too soft on rape victims. Charming.

There are a range of palatable options, though. The largest is the Civic Platform (the sister party of the Czech Civic Democrats), who are encouragingly liberal on both economic and a number of social issues. Their support is concentrated in the less agrarian west of Poland, and amongst the wealthier and better-educated, which, with the Polish economy booming, puts it in a strong position. Another classically liberally-inclined group is the Real Politics Union, which sometimes describes itself as ‘libertarian’. Sadly, it is a damning indictment of Polish political bias that even these ‘libertarians’ deny women their right to an abortion.

If David Cameron is interested in even trying to reform the Conservatives, he has to stay well clear of the rabidly vitriolic fascists that he has threatened to jump into bed with. Moreover, when Poland goes to the poll to elect the new Sejm and its government, the people will determine not just the course taken by their own country, but by the rest of central Europe, which is dominated by Poland. If freedom is to flourish in that part of the world, it is essential that Law and Justice be defeated. For the Tories to give them the time of day is indefensible.

The Times reported today that a Polish university is opening a branch in Shepherd’s Bush, in west London. This is a marvellous development, allowing young Polish people to develop skills that will get them off the bottom of the wage ladder and encouraging them to settle down here. It is also another step forward in the emergence of a truly globalised education system.

However, I did also notice this, too:

The Academy of Humanities and Economics in Lodz [sic.] has about 20,000 students, many of whom study part-time.  It is one of about 300 private universities and was ranked 15th by Newsweek Poland last year.

300 private universities!? And that’s after just 15 years of them being legal. The United Kingdom has one. It just goes to show that, despite five decades of oppression at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviet Union, the Polish people’s individualism and entrepreneurism was only incubated, and has flourished since the fall of the Iron Curtain. If that’s the way Poles do it, we need more, not fewer, Poles over here.