Happy New Year from the Editors and Contributing Samizdatistas in the British Isles, America, Australia and Europe!
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January 1st, 2005 | 4 comments - (Comments are closed)
 When people criticise ‘America’ for not giving more money to help with the horrendous calamity that has overwhelmed a large part of southern coastal Asia, they really need to keep in mind that, as mentioned on James Bartholomew’s site, private aid does not get counted and that far outwieghs US government aid. Moreover, money received from a nation-state cannot be charity as the money is not freely given, whereas willingly donated private funds are true charity. December 31st, 2004 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ok, so I have been told some fruitcake stated the tsunamis were ‘Gaia’s revenge’1 (which would explain why it was only SUV driving capitalists who were drowned)… but how long before some nut job decides that the tsunami was actually caused by the Americans setting off nukes on the seabed? You just know it is going to happen! 1 = anyone have a link to this or other similar moonbatness? December 31st, 2004 | 38 comments - (Comments are closed)
…as many of the Samizatistas are locked in deadly contests with several bottles of excellent Port at a party at Samizdata HQ tonight Update: (from MJ) 
David Carr was particularly cutting at the party in question. (Of course, he could get ten years for this).. December 30th, 2004 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is an interesting article about the decline of religious belief in Britian that got me thinking. I am also one of those ‘shoulder shrugging agnostics’ yet it is not that I do not have ‘beliefs’, just not religious ones. I often wonder though if the decline of religious belief across great swathes of western society is a product of the growth of rationalism… or is it a decline in the ability to think about abstractions by millions of folks who think ‘Reality TV’ has something to do with reality? December 27th, 2004 | 58 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tory MP Patrick Mercer has tabled legislation to ‘rebalance’ the right to defend life, limb and property in favour of the victims of crime. And how exactly will that make a lone 60 year old woman safer if someone breaks into her house? Please remember that it was a Tory government which decided she will have no right whatsoever to have effective means to defend herself by restricting firearms. The Mercer Bill is welcome but all it does is make Britain a little bit safer for houses containing one or more adult males from their late teens to their late sixties who are actually capable of picking up a blunt instrument and taking on an intruder with a reasonable chance of success. The unpalatable truth is that most people are not able to effectively defend themselves against your typical house intruder (one or more young men between 16 and 35) unless they have an effective weapon. And that means a gun. “God made man but Colonel Colt made them equal” December 26th, 2004 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
December 25th, 2004 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
Self defence, wrote William Blackstone, the 18th-century jurist, is a “natural right that no government can deprive people of, since no government can protect the individual in his moment of need”. This Government insists upon having a monopoly on the use of force, but can only impose it upon law-abiding people. By practically eliminating self defence, it has removed the greatest deterrent to crime: a people able to defend themselves. December 23rd, 2004 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Home Office minister for race equality, Fiona Mactaggart refuses to condemn the fact Sikhs have used intimidation and violence to force the closure of a play they find offensive because…
So British culture is better off because rioters have forced the closure of a play they disagreed with? Britain is clearly governed by people who are either immoral or demented or both. But I am curious… would the ‘minister for race equality’ have thought it an equally healthy sign that British theatre is alive and well if a mob of angry white Scotsmen has stormed the theatre, smashed windows and forced the plays to close because they found something in the works of a Sikh playwright offensive? Well given that Fiona Mactaggart is the ‘minister for race equality’, I guess she would take the view that all races are equally permitted to use violence to prevent freedom of expression, right? Right? I mean, the races would hardly be equal if only when Sikhs riot is was “a sign of a lively flourishing cultural life”. December 22nd, 2004 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
Although I knew this day was coming, it is profoundly depressing nevertheless. It is now the law that ID cards will be imposed by force in Britain, with the support of the Leaders of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. They have won and as far as I am concerned, the guttering flame of the culture of liberty in Britain just blew out. I do not expect a truly repressive state to be implemented for many years yet (hopefully), but the infrastructure of tyranny is now well and truly in place, all of which came to pass with a soundtrack of a faint bleating sound of an indifferent public in the background. You might as well flip a coin to figure out which party will usher it in but a authoritarian panoptic state is coming. If this is what the majority of British people want, then may they get exactly what they deserve, but I am out of here. For those of you who will be happy to see me go, trust me, the feeling is mutual. I realise most people will just shrug their ovine shoulders and find my worries inexplicable, crazy even, as it is not like Blair and Howard are setting up Gulags, right? No, of course not. Who needs those when there is a camera on every corner and your every purchase and phone call will eventually be logged on a central government database? As far as I concerned, the war is over and my side lost. I have to try and speed up my business ventures and get out as soon as I can afford to do so. I shall try to be out of Britain and have my primary residence in the USA by 2007 at the latest to avoid being forced to submit to this intolerable imposition… and I shall be taking my wealth generating assets with me. I cannot say I am looking forward to winters in New Hampshire but I do not really see that I have much choice anymore. I do not see the United States as a paragon of civil liberties (to put it mildly), but at least it is a place in which the battle can be fought within the last bastion of the Anglosphere’s culture of liberty. Damn it. 
December 21st, 2004 | 113 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Sikhs who used violence to prevent free speech in Birmingham yesterday and truly the children of the Politically Correct generation. They see that force, be it of law or of the flying milk bottle, is the accepted way to respond if your feelings are hurt and thus have forced a play that they find offensive to close. Tolerance for dissenting views would appear to be a thing of the past and obviously the state is not the solution. If it was, it would have responded to this affront by the rioters against the basic right to express yourself by meeting force with force. The correct ‘dialogue’ with the rioters would be to crack a number turbaned heads open in the same manner those people are expressing themselves.
And so Mohan Singh demonstrates he opposes a pluralist civil society. Presumably when some people decide they find something he values ‘offensive’ and elect to start throwing bricks to prevent it from happening (for example, say some militant atheists, or more probably militant Muslims, find his religious services offensive to their sensibilities), or perhaps it is decide, as in France, that turbans will not be permitted in school under force of law, Mr. Singh will just shrug his shoulders and accept that being forced not to do things other people dislike is just the way of things. And if he does not accept that, why should he expect anyone else to care about what he wants? December 20th, 2004 | 51 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yes, I am glad a few people in the Conservative party have the backbone to stand against Michael Howard and refuse to back the imposition of mandatory ID cards. Yet the truth is than they are outnumbered both by those in the party’s authoritarian faction and in the others who say they opposed ID cards, such as possible future leader David Davies, but place their political careers above both their principles and what they presumably think would be best for the nation. Still, I suppose we should thank Michael Howard for making it clear to all but the most blinkered that they offer no alternative to Labour in any substantive way over an issue that offers much downside and no clearly explained upside. If you ever want to see an effective opposition in this country, vote for the one party who can deliver that by destroying the Conservative party once and for all by making it permanently unelectable, thereby showing the true cost of Conservative ‘moderation’ on the EU and civil liberties. Only once the last bitter hope that the Tories might ever form a new government has been removed by 10 to 15% of their vote defecting for the foreseeable future can something better emerge from their ashes. Vote UKIP. December 20th, 2004 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
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