We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Fungible: Etymology: New Latin fungibilis, from Latin fungi to perform
: being something (as money or a commodity) one part or quantity of which can be substituted for another of equal value in paying a debt or settling an account – oil, wheat, and lumber are fungible commodities.
Hugo Chavez, the paleo-socialist who is working tirelessly to turn Caracas into Pyongyang, has threatened to cut off oil sales to the United States due to actions brought against the Venezuelan government in British, Dutch and US courts by ExxonMobil. Following the freezing of $12 billion in assets by a British court, Chavez said:
“If you end up freezing (Venezuelan assets) and it harms us, we’re going to harm you,” Chavez said during his weekly radio and television program, “Hello, President.” “Do you know how? We aren’t going to send oil to the United States. Take note, Mr. Bush, Mr. Danger.”
Chavez has repeatedly threatened to cut off oil shipments to the United States, which is Venezuela’s No. 1 client, if Washington tries to oust him. Chavez’s warnings on Sunday appeared to extend that threat to attempts by oil companies to challenge his government’s nationalization drive through lawsuits.
And your word for the day, Mister Chavez, is ‘fungible’.
If his intention is to sell Venezuelan oil to no one, he will push up the price to everyone, that much is true. And of course that also means he is cutting off the cash flow being used to finance the Glorious Bolivarian Revolution. Your call, El Presidente.
If on the other hand he intends to sell Venezuelan oil to anyone except the USA (and presumably the UK and Netherlands as well as they have also been crossed off his Christmas Card list), then… who cares? As oil is fungible, it just goes into a big global market and what does it matter if Venezuelan oil goes to China instead of the USA when all it means is that someone else’s oil will take its place?
Vladimir Putin has announced that if NATO does not act in a manner more to his taste in future negotiations, he will take action to let them know he is not to be trifled with by unleashing an arms race.
So Russia (GDP $2.08 trillion) is threatening the EU (GDP $14.44 trillion) and USA (GDP $13.86 trillion) with an arms race?
Who says Russians do not have a great sense of humour? They are famous for it, in fact and this is a case in point. In effect Vladimir Putin is saying “if you do not start respecting me, I will bankrupt my country by producing large quantities of the same weapons that the Israelis consistently turn into confetti using western military technology.” Oh saints preserve us! It is rather like a petulant child threatening to hold his breath until they turn blue unless they are given what they want… except I cannot see why anyone should give a shit if Russia goes blue in the face and keels over due to self-inflicted stupidity.
Modern Russia is rapidly turning into a vile police state, so why pander to this unrepentant KGB scumbag with delusions of grandeur?
If you do not read Michael Totten’s blog regularly (and why the hell don’t you? It is one of the best damn things on the internet!) then you may have missed this treasure.
And this comment is pretty good too:
This video proves that the surge has failed miserably. The Iraqis are running wild with their scissors and refuse to drink milk and wear seat belt. The pitiful American forces can’t even muster the courage to summon insurgents to a shootout themselves. Instead, they have to order random drivers on the road as “human invitation cards”. This is sickening.
Heh indeed.
Now that the rather dismal Romney has bowed out, it looks like absent a brokered deal by genuine conservatives, the truly dismal John McCain will get the Republican nomination.
My hope is that he asks Fred Thompson to run as his veep… and that Thompson tell him to go fuck himself (and if he accepts, then Thompson was not the man some folks thought he was).
Although I am rarely in enthusiastic agreement with Ann Coulter, I agree with her basic premiss regarding John McCain. Better to have the statist poison introduced by the Hildebeeste or Obrama than a Republican, because if McCain gets into the White House, that is the end of the Republican Party as anyone in the Goldwater or Reagan tradition will abandon them, quite possibly forever. The Republicans will be dead and gawd knows it will be a well deserved death.
Of course the upside of a seismic shift style Republican collapse is maybe a new political grouping is indeed what is needed, one that can also appeal to the deeply civil libertarian elements on the so-called left (yes, they really do exist). I have met many Democrats who would never consider supporting Republicans for tribal/cultural reasons and yet quite frankly are deeply uneasy bedfellows with the intolerant authoritarian ‘Daily Kos’ style left that so loves Hillary Clinton. Every cloud has a silver lining.
…Good.
It is also insensitive to Catholic feelings, Nazi feelings, Buddhist feelings, Communist feelings, Capitalist feelings, Manchester United Supporter feelings, Surrealist baboon trousers, Scientologist feelings, Creationist feelings, Darwinist feelings…
“Since Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia with the goal of representing all topics from a neutral point of view, Wikipedia is not censored for the benefit of any particular group.”
The whole point of a reference book or reference wiki, is to present information regardless of anyone’s ‘feelings’. And if some Muslims do not like that… tough shit, here is a link to the ‘Mohammed Cartoons‘ for you because to my mind it is not enough to just ignore them, intolerant Islam must be confronted and loudly defied. I could not care less whose ‘feelings’ get hurt by publishing something and thankfully to their credit neither could Wikipedia.
Samizdata is also fairly insensitive to Muslim feelings
…All the wonderful tools of liberty. But… but… I see not a single example of that German-Swiss engineering marvel, the SIG-226, as featured on this blog’s masthead!
It seems thespian Wesley Snipes has been duking it out with vampires the IRS based on the rather reasonable notion he should not have to pay them his hard earned lucre.
Wesley Snipes’ attorneys admitted his ideas were crazy – that Americans have no obligation to pay taxes and the IRS cannot legally collect them. […] Co-defendants Eddie Ray Kahn, the founder of a known tax protest group, and Douglas P. Rosile, a delicensed accountant, were convicted Friday by the same jury of tax fraud and conspiracy. Both face up to 10 years in prison.
Oh yes, the notion the state has no right to your money is… crazy. If there is one thing the state will not tolerate, it is choking off the kleptocratic basis of all its power. So is Wesley destined to become the poster boy for anti-statist tax protesters? I am far too cynical to think a Hollywood actor could have coherent anti-statist views, but he would cut a dashing figure for ‘our side’ if it were true.
William Hague is on the money and bloody hilarious…
I am more and more coming to the conclusion that National Greatness Conservatism, like all quasi-fascist movements, is based on a weird romantic teenager’s fantasies about what it means to be a grown up. The fundamental moral decency of liberal individualism seems, to the unserious mind that thinks itself serious, completely insipid next to very exciting big boy ideas about shared struggle, sacrifice, duty, glory, virtue, and (most of all) power. And reading Aristotle in Greek.
– Will Wilkinson
However I must disagree with Will elsewhere in his article. I see individualism as magnificently and floridly Art Deco.
On the face of it, who could object to a company deciding to do more to help the world’s poor? Reuters has a story titled Gates calls for “creative capitalism” (which is a bit like saying ‘Gates calls for agriculture that creates food’).
Gates said the self-interest behind capitalism had driven multiple innovations but to harness it to the benefit of all required the system be refined. Greater focus on recognition for improving the lives of others could provide a spur for companies to focus more on making money out of providing valuable products at affordable prices to the world’s poor. He urged multinationals to pledge the services of their top people to the work.
Ah, I get it. White man speak with forked tongue… “but to harness it to the benefit of all required the system be refined”. Bill Gates is not in fact calling for voluntary anything, he is calling for The System to be ‘refined’, which means he wants to make capitalism less capitalist and more politically directed by our caring masters. Could the fact he hangs out with show biz types and politicos who are all solidly statist give us a clue to decoding his words here?
So is Billy Boy just another dissembling corporate stuffed shirt looking for more ‘feel good’ photo opportunities with such deep thinkers as Bono or that Guy Who Thinks He Invented the Internet?
It is interesting how companies are so keen to get swept up in whatever profoundly illiberal fashions define the mainstream. Prêt a Manger, a high quality sandwich chain, proudly says they do not use air freighted produce. They are a major purchaser and they are refusing to buy from a great many Third World producers whose products depend on air freight. No doubt this is seen as a positive thing, hence the fact they go out of their way to let you know.
 Prêt founder Julian Metcalf is a fine entrepreneur and his company does make great lunch food. Moreover I approve of them giving their leftover food to homeless shelters, all enlightened stuff. From a business point of view I can see their thinking as a much higher percentage of their clientele are likely to be middle class Guardian readers with an eco-fetish than impoverished Kenyan farmers desperately trying to get the European trading system to let them sell their damn products and really not needing a meme infecting the private sector that makes it even harder for them than it already is.
I have no idea if the directors of Prêt actually believe the eco-bollocks or if it is just a marketing exercise. However as I am not saying Prêt a Manger should not have the right, for whatever reason they wish, to buy from who they wish, it does not make any difference to my argument because either way I would criticise them for it. I eat there in spite of the greener-that-thou crap, not because of it. But the thing that really gets up my nose and motivates me to look elsewhere is… → Continue reading: Prêt a Manger and fighting the Culture War
How’s this for a title and opening for an article:
Gender or race: White male voters face tough choices in S.C.
For these men, a unique, and most unexpected dilemma, presents itself: Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender?
The howls of outrage that framing an article in such terms would cause is easy (and rather fun) to imagine. If ever there were two things that should not have have an impact on whom a person votes for, it should be the genetic characteristics of skin colour and gender. Dare I suggest that ideology and honesty might trump those two non-factors every time?
And yet this article will most likely pass without the slightest murmur from a great many people.
Gender or race: Black women voters face tough choices in S.C.
But if it is reasonable for black women in South Carolina to vote on the basis that someone is black or female, presumably they cannot object if other people decide to vote for candidates on the basis they are white or male. After all, it does appear that framing the choice on whom to support on the basis of racism or sexism is perfectly acceptable to the mainstream media. And there I was mistakenly thinking that those things were the cardinal politically incorrect sins of our day! Who knew?
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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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