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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There is an article on Pajamas Media which, if largely true, would have certainly been enough to tip me over the edge into not supporting Ron Paul. Admittedly I have always been rather equivocal in my support of him, but if some the statements attributed to him are indeed what they seem when viewed in context, then I have even more difficulty lining up behind him.
However…
A lot of the ‘damning’ statement attributed to him are things I have no problem with in the slightest and to describe them as evidence of racism or conspiracy theories is unconvincing and in a few cases actually absurd.
So let us fisk the statements offered up as evidence of Ron Paul’s wickedness by Daniel Koffler, starting with the ones described as ‘Racists Pull Quotes’… → Continue reading: When Ron Paul is wrong… and when he is not
There is an outstanding article on the interesting new blog The Line is Here called I am no longer a child and I strongly commend it to everyone. It captures the essence of the New Totalitarianism in a very different way to my polemical approach to the subject and is perhaps all the more powerful for it.
The latest antics by the Iranian Pasdaran in the Strait of Hormuz doing their damnedest to get the USN to fire on them has me a tad baffled. In this era of near omnipresent video footage, the chance of this being a questionable ‘Tonkin Gulf’ incident is greatly reduced (so please, if you have Bush Derangement Syndrome, resist the urge to comment), therefore it does seem like this was a real action by the Iranians… so presumably they are doing this for a reason rather than some desire to get themselves shot full of holes just for the hell of it. But what reason is that exactly? Or even approximately?
So what is the upside for Iran in this in military or political terms? This is not a question I have an answer for. If they actually want to start a war, all that will take is a single Silkworm missile launch, so what is this idiocy setting out to achieve? Also whilst the USN clearly showed commendable restraint, I am astonished that they did not fire on the Pasdaran boats given the descriptions of what they did and given recent memories of what happened to the USS Cole.
I just heard that blogger and soldier Andrew Olmsted was killed in Iraq last Thursday. Very sad news indeed. I used to read him quite often back when he posted on his own blog, before DOD policy put a stop to that. I only knew him slightly (we exchanged a few e-mails) but he seemed like a great guy and he shared my long standing dislike of a certain left wing US blogger.
Heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.
There is a powerful strain of thought in the United States which sees the world as essentially capable of reduction to a series of legal processes, and more specifically American legal processes. Acts of war by foreigners are seen as ‘crimes’, legal infractions, rather than acts of war, and anything that happens anywhere can be a source of legal action (and income) for American lawyers.
A case in point is the strange Biom case. David Boim, a 17 year old American, was murdered in Israel by some Palestinian psychos associated with Hamas and this ends up as the subject of a civil lawsuit by his parents in Chicago.
The actual details of this case are not what concerns me and gawd knows I am far from sad to see bad things happen to Islamist groups in the United States or anywhere else, but the logic underpinning this sort of thing strikes me as being based on a great many questionable and downright dangerous assumptions.
David Boim was an American, but he chose to leave America and go to another country with its own laws and courts, so surely Israel is where any legal issues should be sorted out as that is where he was murdered. Moreover, as the case in Chicago seems to be based on suing people for their political support of Hamas, if those organisations in the USA are legal, is allowing them to be sued for their political views really acceptable? If however they are declared to be proscribed organisations by the American state, surely they should not exist at all within the USA and that would presumably be a criminal matter, not a civil one.
Would it be regarded as acceptable in the USA for American organisations in some third country with links to the Republican Party or just the US government generally, to be sued by people critical of US foreign policy? Can the relatives of people killed by US troops in Iraq sue US commercial or political interests in Europe based on their presumed support for US policies? It strikes me as a ludicrous notion much like the preposterous ‘libel tourism‘ used by the odious Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz to silence US author Rachel Ehrenfeld (amongst others) by using British court rulings.
Yet as long as people in the USA are sanguine about US courts being used to sue people for things that happen outside the USA, they can hardly complain if others use foreign courts against US citizens for things they do in the USA (such as publishing a book, for example).
It’s ultimately kind of sad that the controversial person in the race is Ron Paul rather than Huckabee.
– Jonah Goldberg, who is no fan of Ron Paul, discussing ‘Liberal Fascism’. Seeing as we, well I, have ‘diss’ed’ Jonah in the past on Samizdata, let me plug his new book.
All the best from Samizdata HQ and wishing all of liberty’s friends success and prosperity in the New Year! Champagne for our real friends, real pain for our sham friends.
In the networked world in which we live, right after New Years struck the ladies started a frenzy of sending greetings to all and sundry friends via…
…IM…
…and SMS…
…stopping only to ponder the moral issues involved in sending a compromising picture of a Tory MP to Guido Fawkes…
…resulting in David Carr giving us all his Serious Lawyer Look™ before eating the aforesaid image for the good of the team…
…whilst Adriana recorded everything with her new toy…
…and I went back to plotting the overthrow of The Evil Machine how to snaggle some more champagne…
…before everyone else drank the house dry.
I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us.
– Lauren Caitlin Upton, eloquently the making the case for home schooling.
I was channel surfing the other day when I came across a strange caption at the top of my television that caught my eye, causing a definite double take…
WH O RE 1
Anyone care to guess what I was watching?
I want to reproduce, in somewhat edited form, a comment I left on Adam’s blog on the political issue of evolution vs. creationism…
The only debate that should be had on the issue of evolution vs. creationism is “does the state have a role in ‘edukshun’?” I say no and I suspect Ron Paul agrees. I have no problem with people believing whatever wacko things they want (and for me that includes all religion), but the evolution vs. creationism debate should be a non political one and the only way that can ever be true is when the state is no longer involved in education.
I think creationism is nuts and it makes me think less of Ron Paul that he has a religious objection to the theory of evolution. But frankly this should not be a matter for political concern and he at least is highly unlikely to force state schools to teach it (or anything else for that matter). The fact that it is a political matter shows something it very wrong and the correct ‘something’ that needs debating is not evolution, it is state schooling. Return all schooling to the private sector and the whole issue goes away from the political sphere. Let the market decide if there is demand for schools that teach creationism, I have no problem with that at all.
To which I would add…
The way to get people behind this is to argue that the only way to make sure your children are not subjected to [choose one: (1) Godless indoctrination (2) religious gibberish] is to make education non-political and the only way to do that is for schools to not take tax money. The moment anything involves ‘public money’, it perforce becomes political because that means you are trying to spend the money of people who do not agree with you. Dis-intermediating the state is in the interests of both sides of this issue.
The same logic applies to homosexual marriage. Get the state out of the ‘recognising marriage’ business and the political issue goes away. Want to shun/accept same sex couples? The only way you can be sure you are free to act on your belief on this subject is to make it a social issue, not a political one, by getting the state out of the way.
Then this is sooooo not the article for you.
As I am still in a residual Christmas torpor and fully expect to remain in one until after New Years Day, I am going to resist commenting on the appalling assassination of Benazir Bhutto by some Islamic fundi-mentalist fucktard and instead give you a link to the trailer for a completely gonzo Japanese movie.
Well it was either that or post a gratuitous cat picture.
Yes, I know I wrote an article tentatively supporting Ron Paul, but please, someone, tell me this clip in which Dr. Ron Paul rejects the theory of evolution has been edited to remove the full context of the remark.
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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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