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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The Vlaams Blok is the largest political party in Flanders, the Flemish speaking half of Belgium… and the Belgian high court has just in effect required it to disband. Now I hold no brief for an ethnic nationalist political party (though they are the closest thing to a free market party in Belgium, which I certainly approve of), but it is hard to see how the nation which hosts the key institutions of the EU can now claim to be democratic in any meaningful way.
To ban the Vlaams Blok because it is allegedly racist, and yet not ban communists or socialists from running for office, means that only certain types of enforced collectivism will be tolerated, namely the type which is imposed equally on all, but not any form which is only imposed on immigrants. Repression is only acceptable if everyone is repressed. Keep in mind that the Vlaams Blok is not some tiny lunatic fringe of neo-fascist moonbats like the BNP in Britain but are a major political party. Yet the political establishment have just used the courts to put there opponents out of business.
I eagerly await a series of fierce denunciations of the wholesale disenfranchisement of a significant proportion of the Flemish electorate. Given the importance attached to democracy by the Guardian and Independent, I expect at least a week of outraged headlines and calls to action to defend democracy in Europe by Robert Fisk and George Monbiot.
Ok, I am waiting  .
… Gunpowder treason and plot!
I shall be going out tonight to give that Catholic boy Guy Fawkes a rousing send off on this most politically incorrect of nights.
Just to cast a slightly different view in to the frenzy of commentaries here about the election in the USA…
Sorry but I cannot see how the election of George Bush, a big government right-statist, shows that the the so-called ‘right’ differs that much from the McGovern/Mondale/Kerry view in reality. Fetishizing the differences between the two, which is particularly strange when viewed from overseas, does not change the fact the underpinning meta-contexts are pretty similar when you add it all up. Sure, the Republicans will probably not do something idiotic like try to emulate Britain’s nightmarish socialist healthcare system whereas that is exactly what many in the Democratic party want… but how many government departments is Bush going to simply wind up in order to roll back the state? The argument between the two parties is how much to turn the ratchet of the state’s encroachment into civil society, not whether or not to actually turn the ratchet around to face the other way.
Economic and technological reality will eventually break the regulatory statism of both left and right: party politicos will follow, not lead that process, but please, just keep in mind the only real good thing about Dubya winning is that we get to give all manner of sanctamonius lefties an aneurism, and whilst taunting the collectivist left because the collectivist right won is indeed great fun, it is little more that a minor blood sport that will soon loose its appeal as Leviathan gets more corpulent by the day as both left and right shovel more severed bits of civil society into its maw… the defeat of the ghastly Kerry by the ever so slightly less ghastly Bush was hardly the victory of the forces of light over darkness.
The No2ID campaign has established an e-petition aimed at 10 Downing Street demanding the end to plans for imposing mandatory ID cards and pervasive state databases recording a vast range of what you do in your life.
The No2ID campaigners have taken the line of principled objection, given that the government seem to have decided that there is no longer any room for public debate and refuses to engage with serious – and growing – civil liberty and privacy concerns with the scheme. The Home Office have not met once with civil liberties organisations yet say their concerns have been addressed whilst at the same time avoiding public meetings but at the same time having private briefing with technology partners for introducing the schemes.
Take a stand and make your voice heard while you still can at www.no2id-petition.net. Time is fast running out.
The state is not your friend.
The No2ID campaign has established an e-petition aimed at 10 Downing Street demanding the end to plans for imposing mandatory ID cards and pervasive state databases recording a vast range of what you do in your life.
The No2ID campaigners have taken the line of principled objection, given that the government seem to have decided that there is no longer any room for public debate and refuses to engage with serious – and growing – civil liberty and privacy concerns with the scheme. The Home Office have not met once with civil liberties organisations yet say their concerns have been addressed whilst at the same time avoiding public meetings but at the same time having private briefing with technology partners for introducing the schemes.
Take a stand and make your voice heard while you still can at www.no2id-petition.net. Time is fast running out.
The state is not your friend.
Dear Michael,
Although things are hectic at my end, as I am sure you can imagine, I wanted to take time out to thank you for your part in my success. Difficult times make for difficult decisions and in the final analysis, the buck stops on my desk. As a result I am not surprised that Rummie, Condi and I have taken flak over Iraq and in retrospect we might have done some things differently.
But thanks to you, many people became so polarized that in the end, millions decided that no matter what they thought of me, the chance to give you one in the eye was all that really mattered. I mean, that loathsome dissembling lard ass shtick of yours is just amazing!
So thanks, I couldn’t have done it without you! Oh, and when you see Noam next, tell him I will also be sending him a few ‘kees’ of that great jerky to thank him for what he did too.
You guys are the best!
Yours faithfully,
George W.
Glenn Reynolds has a good article in the Guardian about the election and expresses some interesting ideas about its lessons for the media.
Thanks to the internet, cable news channels and talk radio, media bias is easier to spot and easier for people to bypass. This not only changes views, but prevents the formation of a phoney consensus – what experts call “preference falsification” – resulting from widespread, and unified, media bias.
Those of you across the Atlantic may wish to take a lesson from this. As the BBC’s atrocious handling of the Gilligan affair – and, indeed, its war coverage generally – illustrates, media bias is hardly limited to the United States.
But what is with that photo? I would not have recognised that as Glenn but for the context in which it was displayed.
Halloween… yes, many of the Samizdatistas duly did their duty on All Hallows Eve by going ‘bump’ in the night…
The girls were all spidery…
No, it was not tomato soup, it was the blood of virgins, honest
Paul was not used to women coming up and admiring his chopper
The host and hostess kill not kill all the trick or treaters to make the tasty stew
… but the true horror walks the earth tomorrow…
Tony Blair has given himself until 2006 to win round a sceptical British public to a new European constitution after having signed the ghastly document yesterday in Rome. Whilst nothing is certain in this life and two years is a long time in politics, I think a third term in the White House for Ronald Reagan is slightly more likely than him succeeding on that count.
There will come a day when the obfuscation and doublespeak will finally come to an end and it appears that day will be in 2006. British people have it within their grasp to smash the brittle foundations of the European Union and I hope that there will be many people working to ensure that is exactly what happens regardless of what the apparatchiks of all three main parties want.
I see some interesting times ahead.
At long last the shooting death by police of a man ‘armed’ with a table leg has been ruled an ‘unlawful killing’. It has been a damning indictment for so many years a couple servants of the state can gun an innocent man down in cold blood with impunity whilst at the same time other British subjects are denied the right to legitimate self-defence in any meaningful sence.
We have written before about the killing of Harry Stanley in September 1999 and I can only hope now that not only will the perpetrators of this act face prosecution for murder, the careers of everyone who worked to prevent charges being brought in the first place will will come to an absupt end, as an absolute minimum, and if there is any evidence that there were attempts to pervert the course of justice, then additional charges will be forthcoming higher up the chain of command.
It is a national disgrace that it has taken this long for the family of Harry Stanley to see anything even approaching the first glimmer of justice.
Unless it turns out to be an artful fake, it seems that contrary to my long held views, Osama bin Laden may indeed still be alive.
Quite why it has taken this long for a video of him saying something timely is hard to fathom, but then many of the things the likes of bin Laden do defies rational analysis. I am astonished by this turn of events.
Today is the 150th anniversary of that glorious cock-up known as The Charge of the Light Brigade.
The charge, which was part of the Battle of Balaklava, was one of those iconic moments in British military history due more to the works of Alfred Tennyson than the actual importance of the incident itself, which was really little more than a footnote in the overall conduct of the Crimean War. Yet at the time many newspapers accorded the charge of the Light Brigade far more significance than it was really due (and they also tended to gloss over the rather more successful actions of both the Heavy Brigade under Lord Lucan and the magnificent Chasseurs D’Afrique under General D’Allonville).
The charge was regarded as a great military blunder, and certainly it was not what Lord Raglan actually intended to happen when he issued the orders, nor what Lord Cardigan, the Light Brigade’s commander, wanted to execute (he is alleged to have quipped “Here goes the last of the Brudenells”, his family name, upon receiving the order), but in point of fact, the charge largely disrupted the astonished Russian forces at the end of the valley. As military blunders go, it was a fairly effective one and the overall battle was more or less a draw (though Russian attempts to take Balaklava failed, so it could be argued that it was a net allied victory).
Also in the news is the redeployment of the Black Watch mechanised battlegroup into the American zone of operations in Iraq. The fact this unremarkable operational movement of forces within Iraq has caused apoplexy in media and political circles shows that 150 years on, the pundits back home are just as clueless about military affairs as they ever were.
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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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