You give me all your love
You give me all your kisses
And then you touch my burqua
And do not know who is it!
Heh. Who says the Germans have no sense of humour?
(h/t: Nick M.)
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March 3rd, 2007 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
 For Crumpler bags and Honda Element cars. February 25th, 2007 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
The powers-that-be are moving to remove that annoyance to business-as-usual called the United Kingdom Independence Party by killing them with a legal move.
What seems strange to me is that UKIP actually appear to be surprised something like this could happen. They are trying to break The System and neither of the two main parties who benefit from it really has any interest in seeing the vast body of consensus they both share threatened by outsiders. The LibDems are a predictable ‘given’ that do not really threaten the status quo… UKIP on the other hand is a wild card. If the UKIP thought the risk they posed as a spoiler was going to be fought out amongst ‘gentlemen’ via the ballot box, then they are more naive than I thought. Also a pet peeve of mine… “launching legal action to recover 68 separate donations…” Recover? The money will be gobbled up by the Treasury. Seize, confiscate, appropriate, take, perhaps, but in order to ‘recover’ the money they would have to give it back to the donor. I have always though the legal use of the word ‘recover’ was the state speaking at its most euphemistically disingenuous. February 23rd, 2007 | 34 comments - (Comments are closed)
I have just discovered that I am clearly a member of the scofflaw demographic, as I suspect are a great many of Samizdata’s contributors and readers.
Great article, read the whole thing. February 21st, 2007 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
Here on Samizdata, we do not have a single ‘editorial line’ and therefore we sometimes disagree with each other. And this is a case in point. Midwesterner has stated that:
Actually there are loads of them. If a foreign state wants to subsidize (say, mp3 players) that I buy at the expense of their hapless taxpayers,well, more fool them. In the long run it is unsustainable and if at some point their wicked government stopped the export of said products, then the glory of capitalism is that domestic producers will simply re-appear or an intermediary market for importing them via a third party will pop up, but in any case it is hardly a tragedy for the overseas people purchasing said products. Is it ‘fair’ to the mp3 player manufacturers elsewhere else? Wrong question because trade is not about fairness in that sense. If it is ‘unfair’ that a country (say, Taiwan for example) subsidies a product to make the price lower, why is it not ‘unfair’ that a western state makes me pay more for my mp3 player because they have forced domestic mp3 player manufacturing companies to expend vast sums on welfare payments and other labour cost increasing regulations and hence making them uncompetitive? As the USA is generally less regulated than most other countries, by the logic of ‘fair trade’, no one else should allow the US to import ‘their’ unfairly under-regulated products into their over-regulated markets. If you follow the logic of ‘fair trade’ rather than ‘free trade’, a nation-state should not allow its subject people to trade with anyone not subject to that nation-state’s laws (i.e. there should be no international trade at all), otherwise it is bound to be ‘unfair’ in some way. Labour costs, raw material costs, ease of market entry, etc. etc. are always going to vary. Moreover, it is a mistake under most circumstances to accept that buying a product from a foreign company is trade between (say) the UK and US. Unless a state of war exists or I am trading with a state owned company, trade occurs between me and a company, not ‘my’ nation and some other nation. Unless the company I trade with is largely an adjunct of a foreign government, it is just trade between private people. To think otherwise suggest accepting that the state has a controlling interest in every economic action you make, even if the other party is not subject to its sovereignty. From both moral and utilitarian perspectives that is a serious mistake. February 19th, 2007 | 59 comments - (Comments are closed)
The continuing story of Samizdata people meeting in the USA in order to conspire, drink, shoot and eat… 
The poison of the evening was both delicious and lethal in equal measure, which eventually necessitated…
…the development of some innovative instant sober-up techniques…
… which proved surprisingly popular The following day, we took out our hangovers on the surrounding environment…
…and scared local wildlife by creeping around and pointing basters at them… …large quantities of .40 were expended at metal objects…
…although we did not end up eating a local turkey, we had a sublime lamb dinner I am not a believer but if there is indeed a ‘happy hunting ground’ in the hereafter, I think it will look something going shooting with your close friends followed by a meal of epic quality. February 18th, 2007 | 25 comments - (Comments are closed)
As Michael has posted some interesting pictures from sunny Mozambique, I thought I would contrast that with a picture out of my window of the freezing USA…  … I am here to do some shooting and maybe some skiing in the Land of the Free(ish). More later. February 16th, 2007 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
Vladimir Putin, the former KGB member who runs Russia as if the Soviet Union was still alive and well, does not like the fact the US is prone to take military action outside its own borders, claiming it is causing a new arms race. Arms race? With who? China is certainly arming itself but sclerotic Russia? I would love to see some figures for Russian arms procurement over the last ten years to get some insight into the true strength of Russia as a serious military power. The Russian GDP is about $1.7 trillion… i.e. slightly less than Italy… and does anyone really loose much sleep over what the President of Italy thinks? Still, it seems a bit perverse for a man who seems keen to sell technology to Iran to be complaining about all those things the pesky Yanks are doing which are not in his interests. February 10th, 2007 | 76 comments - (Comments are closed)
All credit to the Guardian for risking accusations of heresy for publishing such impious sanity. February 9th, 2007 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Statists the world over jumped for joy today when the UN released yet another report stating that global warming is due to human activity rather that cyclical solar factors. Watching the BBC reports about this, one could be forgiven for thinking not a single scientist or logical thinker demurred from that notion. Medieval Warm Period? What Medieval Warm Period? Oh, THAT Medieval Warm Period! No, the approved experts have spoken and no heresy shall be suffered to be reported. What particularly made me laugh was when the BBC voice over said “and the fact over one hundred governments have endorsed this report will add to its credibility.” So let me get this straight… the fact one hundred states which exercise political power over people have endorsed a report that will be used to justify imposing even more political control over people, and that makes this more credible? I wonder if the BBC would report a pro-tobacco report endorsed by tobacco companies the same way? What do you think? February 2nd, 2007 | 68 comments - (Comments are closed)
To forbid “discrimination” is to violate basic freedom – not just religious freedom, any freedom. It was grimly predictable that faced with a choice between freedom of association and the doctrine of “anti discrimination” Mr Cameron would choose to support state control. So much for his “big idea” of the greater delivery of “public services” by voluntary groups. Both Mr Blair and Mr Cameron have shown themselves to be people who only support association if people associate in the way they COMMAND. – Paul Marks January 31st, 2007 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is of course too much to expect much rationality in the debate about immigration occurring on both sides of the Atlantic at the moment. I keep getting completely deranged e-mails from an outfit calling itself Conservative News NYC from across the puddle who are claiming that the USA and Mexico are in a de facto state of war due to the ‘invasion’ of the USA by illegal aliens. They also take the view that anyone who takes a more measured opinion on this is clearly a vile traitor. This is the same outfit who thinks any American who supports Israel is also a traitor, a word they rather like it seems, although of course they preface this with “but we’re not anti-Semitic”. No, of course not, perish the thought. Now just because I think the fine fellows of Conservative News NYC are barking moonbats that does not mean all is well when it comes to immigration. There are indeed two groups in the USA (and one in the UK) who really are a problem. On both sides of the Atlantic we have an increasingly radicalised and non-integrating community of Muslims amongst whom support is very widespread for values completely antithetical to post-Enlightenment western civilisation. Add to this in the United States the quite similar, at least in outlook if not action, ethnic fascists of La Raza, the one form of overt in-your-face racist fascism that seems to be quite acceptable for members of the American left to praise and with whom they are quite happy to share a stage (I guess being racist to white people is not really racism, eh Hilary?). At least one good thing about La Raza is that they are a lunatic fringe amongst Hispanics in the USA (much as Conservative News NYC are a radical lunatic fringe amongst US Conservatives). Of course the same could probably be said of Samizdata in many ways as we are hardly mainstream in many of the views we take, so it is not like I am against lunatic fringes per se. Sadly the same cannot be said for much of the Muslim community who do indeed appear to share a wide range of views with the people we quite incorrectly call ‘extremists’… I say incorrect because it appears they actually reflect increasingly mainstream Muslim opinion, particularly in the UK. They are not extremists, they are merely practising Muslims who actually believe what their religious texts tell them to believe. The problem is not extremism, it is Islam itself and anyone who actually takes it seriously. One thing both of these groups have in common is that they must be relentlessly confronted and cannot be compromised with or appeased in any way whatsoever. It really is ‘them or us’. However… → Continue reading: Immigration successes… and disasters January 29th, 2007 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
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