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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I just do not understand it. When Spain capitulated to attacks from Islamic fascists and elected a socialist government who promptly pulled its troops out of coalition operations… a policy we have been told by many that the USA and UK should follow in order to stop provoking the Islamists… that should have been the end of Spain’s non-Basque terrorist problems. Presumably the nice people from the Al Qaeda Global Franchise were utterly delighted by the developments in Spain and were certain to fulsomely reward this behaviour. After all, we are often assured by writers in both the mainstream media and paleo-conservative/paleo-libertarian circles that this is what governments in the West must do if we are ever to sooth Islamic sensibilities: we leave them alone and they will leave us alone, right?
Yet strangely, far from redirecting their efforts and assets to ply their ‘trade’ against the more active members of the coalition, Islamic militants continue to get arrested in ever so repentant Spain.
Gosh, one might almost think that leaving them alone is not enough! Surely some misunderstanding?
Human desire is insatiable. Now, some think this is a bad thing, blaming it on greed and consumerism. But think about Mother Theresa – a saint if ever there was one. Was she greedy? Insatiable? Well, yes, she was. If she could have helped one more person, she would have.
– Russ Nelson, The Angry Economist
The Dissident Frogman brings us some of the highlights in our broadening understanding of our good friends across the English Channel…
I would not normally be moved to link to a ‘product listing’ page for a chain of Dutch department stores called HEMA, but that is exactly what I am doing now.
Why? Because it is cool and for no other reason than that. Click and just wait a few seconds to see what happens (and no, I assure you it is not another video ‘screamer’).
Thank you for trying to offer us high quality, low cost agricultural products. However I am sorry but we would prefer it if you remain dependent on tax funded handouts from First World governments and their anointed NGOs. And speaking of NGOs, if you People of Colour start getting involved in horrid global trade, what will happen to the people who work for NGOs? We need NGOs so that our children can go work for them in that pesky gap year, helping you poor ignorant dark people with your Third Worldie Problems, and thereby allowing our kiddies to develop self-esteem and feel good about themselves.
Also we prefer to see you living in photogenic eco-friendly low carbon footprint mud huts, so please stop trying to pull yourself out of poverty via icky capitalist global trade in the one area you should have a comparative advantage. I say ‘should’ because actually we prefer to buy our food from tax subsidised local farmers, for the good of the planet, you understand.
Peace and love,
Janet Guardianista
Bobby Fischer, chess genius and generally unpleasant wacko, has died in Iceland. Perhaps he will play Beelzebub for his soul?
Update: noted by commenter Walter Boswell: “I just realised he died at the age of 64. The same number of squares on the chess board. Bobby, spooky moves right up until the end.”
When I read things like this:
Police in San Mateo County, California apparently first spent months investigating the small-stakes poker game. From this firsthand account, it looks like a couple of the officers were playing regularly for several weeks before sending in the SWAT team, guns drawn, last week.
It just amazes me that so many people in the USA are complacent about the state of their civil liberties. Quite a few people in Blighty seem to have belatedly grasped what deep shit we are in on this side of the Atlantic, and when we run some article lamenting the latest outrage by the British state here on Samizdata, invariably we get some comments from The Cousins across the Water telling us how screwed we are. Indeed, but back at yah, guys.
They send in para-military assault police to arrest people for playing poker? Jeez. There is much to be said for the Second Amendment but clearly the whole ‘keep and bear arms’ thing does not go nearly far enough if that sort of behaviour by the state is regarded as ‘normal’. How about ringing your house with a goddamn minefield? I guess they do not have any real crimes in the People’s Republic of California for the police to worry about.
Seeing as we have been talking about Tom Cruise and Scientology earlier today, there is an interesting ruckus brewing on Gawker, who have posted a rather interesting (in a ‘huh?’ kind of way) video of Tom Cruise talking about Scientology. The Church of Scientology’s lawyers have demanded they take the video down and in response fearless Gawker VP Gaby Darbyshire politely invited them to go rotate, citing ‘fair use’ (Gaby is delightful and rather hot, by the way. I met her at Les Blogs in Paris a few years ago).
I take no conclusive view of the legal merits of the case (certainly if extracts of a proprietary video are used, it is a ‘fair use’ slam dunk… not so sure about using the whole thing), but I am much taken by Gawker’s sheer bravery going up against the deep pocketed Scientologists, who are prone on the slightest pretext to sue people who cast aspersions on, or even reveal the details of, their religion. Does that remind you of someone else?
The Scientologists deserve every brickbat they get for their strong arm tactics against detractors. However I do not really understand the intellectual animus directed at the Scientologists for their religious beliefs. Their key myths do not strike me as any more preposterous than those of other more mainstream religions. It seems to me that their only big mistake was going into too much detail, thus in their case it is harder to fog the issue with the ‘allegorical interpretations’ that help us avoid tears of mirth when reading the literal word of other holy texts, ones which were not written by L. Ron Hubbard but rather by his more time hallowed equivalents in antiquity.
There is a truly bizarre story on Reuters saying that the French car manufacturer Citroën has apologised for running an advertisement featuring a scowling Chairman Mao.
“As a Chinese, I felt greatly insulted when seeing this ad,” a posting on web portal Tianya (www.tianya.com) said. “It is not only insulting Chairman Mao, but the whole Chinese nation.” […] “Chairman Mao is the symbol of China, and what Citroen did lacks basic respect to China,” another posting said.
Astounding. The man who was probably the most prolific mass murderer in history, who murdered between 44.5 & 72 million mostly Chinese people and brought tyranny to almost one fifth of the world’s population, is regarded by some people in 2008 as “the symbol of China”? That is truly surreal.
Well, I suppose he is in the same sense that Jack the Ripper is the ‘symbol’ of Whitechapel. Yet somehow I cannot see the residents of Whitechapel taking umbrage at an advertisement by Citroen featuring Jack the Ripper being portrayed with a less than congenial expression.
Just how many people does a tyrant have to order killed before he becomes absolute anathema in China? How many lives does he have to ruin to stop being ‘the symbol of China’? What kind of moral derangement is required to take insult in this manner? Well people in China should indeed be insulted, but by the fact Citroën used the image of that vile psychopath to portray anything other than horror, death and misery. How dare someone trivialise suffering on such a colossal scale? How would people react if they had used Hitler instead? People would certainly protest but somehow I do not think all too many Germans would be saying “The Fuhrer is the symbol of Germany”.
A Chinese person I know described the Mao era as ‘The Long Nightmare’. It seems some people in China do not want to wake up.
So you have been smited, eh?
Yes, yes, we know… the correct term is ‘smote’ or ‘smitten’, not smited, but we say ‘smited’ because it makes us laugh and we are easily amused.
Chances are the reason you are here is when you posted a comment to Samizdata, you saw this appear…
Standby for Smite Control
Oyez, oyez:
Your comment has been held for approval by Samizdata’s editorial pantheon and if you are not some odious spammer, loony toon conspiracy theorist, raving racist buffoon or worthless troll, chances are your remarks will appear in due course.
Puzzled? Confused? Look here and all will be explained
So…
What does this mean? It means your comment has been chosen for moderation by the smitebot. Now smitebot is not a person, he is just a bot. A piece of code.
So please do not take it personally that smitebot has smited you because smitebot has no idea who you are. All it does, in its simple minded but quite effective way, is look at all the comments and try to figure out if they are spam or something else we do not want. And being a bot of little brain, sometimes it makes mistakes.
Is this smiting thing really necessary though?
The answer is yes.
The alternative is wading through three viagra adverts, mobile phone adverts, Russian kiddie porn site links & xxxBigTits site links, for every legitimate comment.. and we really hate spammers.
The fact is we have to put up with a number of false positives or comments will not be viable.
That is the down side of this blog being so popular, alas… Samizdata is a spam magnet in ways sites with lower readership and technorati rankings do not have to worry about. It sucks but there you have it.
97% of the spam gets intercepted by the smitebot and you never even see it, but it is there, trust us on that. Of the 3% that gets through, we delete it manually as quickly as possible and you probably never see it. False positives run maybe 1-5% per day of posted comments (some days are worse than others). It is annoying as hell to get smited, we know, but having smitebot around is unavoidable.
So now you know.
And so to cheer you up after the indignity of getting ‘smited’, we have posted some stupid cat pictures for your edification (we did tell you we are easily amused)…
What all neolibertarian hawks should be driving now
 
Sarah Lawrence’s taste in clothes would be best described as ‘eclectic’
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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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