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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Before I proceed, let me make several things clear… Firstly, although I have a certain fondness for Mrs. T (that whole ‘facing down communism at the crucial moment in history’ thing cuts you a great deal of slack with me), I am not a Tory: I just happen to think Britain needs an effective and differentiated opposition party. Secondly, I personally do not vote for anyone as I am opposed the entire system of kleptocratic populism called ‘democracy’, particularly as it is practiced in Britain… but as I realise as I cannot wish it away, I have to address democratic politics. Thirdly, although I find Roger Knapman pretty impressive for what I have heard of his views so far, I also think some of the things certain members of the United Kingdom Independence Party stands for are truly odious and amongst its ranks are to be found no small number of crackpots, conspiracy theorists and crypto-fascists.
I mention that last point because if you are going to vote for the Tory Party (and therefore obviously hold democratic politics and the Tory Party in vastly higher esteem than I do), you might do well to ask yourself why are you voting Tory?
If it is because you like the idea of broadsheet reading Grandees with their safe pair of hands on the tiller of state and trust them to do whatever they see fit in your name (i.e. you are a Ted Heath/Michael Heseltine/Chris Patten fan and therefore support Labour Party-Lite), then please stop reading now and piss off, I am not talking to you… and anyway, what on earth are you doing reading a blog like Samizdata.net which is written by people like myself who utterly despise you?
If however you vote Tory because you think the Anglosphere approach of not conflating state and society is vastly preferable to the state-centred systems which generally prevail in Continental Europe… or you have the notion that British politics of any sort should be made in Britain rather than Brussels (and yes, I suppose I am talking to no small number of Labour supporters here too)… then you have a very simple decision to make.
If you want force to the Tory Party to support traditional civil society rather than have it do nothing mote than debate the speed with which Britain acquiesces to a regulated and therefore politicised existence more in tune with Continental norms… then you must send the message that continued support for Euro-statism is not acceptable to you. And the only way you can do that is not just to abstain, but to vote for the UKIP. Only that sends an unmistakable message why you did not vote for them.
And if by doing that you cause the Tory Party to lose to Labour yet again… so what? If you care enough about the Tory Party, you will do whatever it takes to demonstrate the electoral cost of saying platitudes like ‘In Europe but not ruled by Europe’ whilst demurring to regulation after regulation from Europe which indeed amounts to being ruled by it.
Vote UKIP, at least until you have clubbed some sense back into the Tory Party.
…3 days later than last year. The Adam Smith Institute has announced that this year’s Tax Freedom Day will be tomorrow, 30th May 2004.
The ASI calculates this every year, providing a useful measure of one of the ways in which the state reduces liberty, destroys wealth and lowers overall living standards.
As usual, Tax Freedom Day attracts quite a lot of media coverage from the usual suspects. I wonder if any voters are actually noticing?
Good luck to Iyad Allawi, the man who will, inshallah, be Iraq’s next Prime Minister.
Hopefully he will be given the external support he needs to stabilise the security situation sufficiently to allow more internal solutions to develop. Although it would be difficult to underestimate the struggle ahead, the situation is far from the hopeless one often portrayed by people with axes to grind which have very littloe to do with Iraq.
Gabriel Syme and I (and a certain Frogman) have been away from our keyboards for a few days because we have in Geneva, adding our efforts to that most worthy of activist groups, Bureaucrash, on the occasion of the first outing of Eurocrash in Switzerland. The target for our attentions was the Fifty-seventh World Health Assembly held by that hotbed of socialist obscurantism, the World Health Organisation.
The simple message of the Eurocrash was not something all too many of the people participating in that tax funded Tranzi event wanted to hear: Capitalism Heals/Socialism Kills
 Step One: Infiltrate the WHO events by getting a badge…
Step Two: wander over to the UN Palace of Nations…
Step Three: take embarrassing pictures of UN type folks smoking in front of where WHA sessions are going on…
Step Four: hand out pro-capitalist leaflets designed to demonstrate that there is more than one point of view…
Step Five: get run out of town by UN cops…
Although it was all only a very small fly in their ointment, it was all worth it just to see the incredulous expression of people at the notion of pro-capitalist demonstrations on UN property.
The next round of jolly japes immediately afterwards was to crash the screening of a new film by socialist activist German Velasquez, called ‘Profits or Life?‘, which criticises attempt to uphold the intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical companies who have developed many life saving drugs. Velasquez was supported on a Q&A panel afterwards by Marxist activist Carlos Correa. Twenty or so Crashers turned up to to ask a few rather awkward questions and distribute some rather clever leaflets which dissented from the movie’s message…
Crasher Niger Innes asks why, given that the
panel was representing itself as the voice of the
poor in Africa, there were no Africans on the panel? Ouch.
Crasher Stefan Metzeler points out that as the
majority of drugs are not under patent anyway,
blaming intellectual property rights for the Third World’s
health problems, rather than massive regulatory statism and
a lack of free trade, is rather idiotic…
And then who should appear in the audience but Dr. Harvey Bale, who Velasquez’s movie has cast as ‘the ugly American Bad Guy on the side of the evil pharmaceutical companies’. Far from being the sinister character ‘Profits or Life?‘ portrayed him to be, he turns out to be an urbane and very articulate fellow as he addressed the point which had been made on-screen. Never have I heard a man demolish another man’s arguments so systematically and yet remain utterly charming and polite.
And then Dr. Harvey Bale, the Director General
of the Geneva-based International Federation of Pharmaceutical
Manufacturers Associations had a few words…
And with that, the Crashers vanished into the surroundings… well, into Geneva actually in search of food and drink. A fairly interesting time was had by all and I found the event a very useful networking opportunity as well.
The furore over blog publishing software Movable Type‘s new licence arrangements continues to send shockwaves across the blogosphere. As it happens we were considering moving away from MT to a different php based content management system for Samizdata.net anyway (and we certainly will now)… but I think that what is really interesting about this incident is that trackback has truly come of age.
Like many very thoughtful bloggers, I think SixApart have just taken their best weapon, pointed it right at their foot and pulled the trigger.
But what really interests me is that the storm of hostile trackbacks have provided SixApart with magnificent and unequivocal information on what their market really thinks. The business implications for spontaneous feedback like that are almost inestimable. Of course that does not mean SixApart will correctly respond to the explosion at the core of their business model, but the fact is that the information they need to do exactly that has just landed on them in a very helpful and rather spectacular manner.
Trackback has come of age. It is now an indispensable feature for any commercially oriented blog.
British troops have been closing to bayonet range in fights against company sized units of Islamist militiamen in Iraq:
Scottish troops fixed bayonets and fought hand to hand with a Shi’ite militia in southern Iraq in one of their fiercest clashes since the war was declared more than a year ago, it was reported last night. Soldiers from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders mounted what were described as “classic infantry assaults” on firing and mortar positions held by more than 100 fighters loyal to the outlawed cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, according to military sources.
And in support of Britian’s soldiers, some Members of Parliament have called not for rapid reinforcement to be sent but rather for a vote to decide if the Blair government should send any additional troops at all.
It is one thing to oppose British involvement in Iraq in its entirety, it is quite another for politicos to take positions which places UK forces in danger by denying them support without having the courage to just come out and say that Britain forces should just be ordered back to the UK in order to allow Tony Blair to be deposed by more suitably leftward statists. It is unedifying to see the likes of Robin Cook playing political games in Westminster when people are fixing bayonets in Basra and calling for support.
Either support and reinforce the army or (bizarrely) declare defeat and withdraw them.
If reading about the failing of Robert Fisk and being hunted in a pub by ‘peace’ activist harridans if your cup of tea (it certainly is mine), then you could do worse than read the compelling and pleasingly off-beat Blog Irish:
Having exhausted her ignorance on the subject of Eamo, she suggested that we discuss the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. We suggested that after five pints that was probably not a good idea.
With no further ado, she started screeching at the top of her lungs at us. We walked to the other end of the pub, and she followed, still screeching. The pub patrons and staff took no notice whatsoever. She left, and returned five minutes later with five angry women who were apparently going to show us the error of our ways. They searched through the pub, and though we were sitting near the entrance, affected not to see us, and left.
It is a funny old world.
One reason for the limited output of bloggage from some of us tonight was that several of us went to an extremely well attended party. This was hosted by the Adam Smith Institute in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the start of the Thatcher Revolution. The event at the Oxford and Cambridge Club in London.
It is easy today to look back and scoff at what went wrong in those days, but those of us who lived through the steady economic and social collapse wrought by the likes of Jim Callaghan, Harold Wilson and Ted Heath, I have no hesitation describing what Thatcher presided over, which was nothing less than turning the tide of socialism, as a glorious revolution.
We are older and wiser now and all too aware of the missed opportunities and wrong turns of that era, but credit where credit is due. The future could have been very much darker indeed without Margaret Thatcher.
Update: More pictures on the Adam Smith Institute blog
It is very disappointing that some officers in the British and US military seem to have lost control over their troops in the manner that the reports in the media are highlighting. No, I am not about to join the ludicrous cat’s chorus equating the Allied forces with Saddam’s institutional mass murderers, but no one who actually cares about the mess in Iraq eventually ending the right way up can be anything less than dismayed.
Certainly I understand how the stresses of urban combat can lead to itchy trigger fingers but for the custodians of prisoners to have allowed this to happen is completely impossible to justify. That the perpetrators felt the need to take pictures of their criminal actions suggests that we are dealing with your common-or-garden variety of psychopath rather than people ‘merely’ brutalised into callous indifference or shooting first/asking questions later due to being in a combat zone.
The only way this can be salvaged is for the clear difference between the torturers of Iraq’s ancien regime and the US/UK’s militaries to me made starkly clear: the people responsible must be subjected to swift and decisive military justice.
And while we are on the subject of ‘what the military should be doing’, can anyone please explain why the Italians who were kidnapped in Iraq the other day had been disarmed by US troops at a checkpoint? Whilst the fighting against the Islamo-fascists seems to be progressing, in other ways the last few days have hardly been days to bask in the glow of a job being well done by some of ‘our boys’, which is a great pity indeed.
I cannot help thinking that whilst the leadership in-theatre did well during the conventional conflict, perhaps a far reaching change in local military commanders might not go amiss as it is not enough to just manage the battles in a situation like this.
The Al Qaeda attacks in Syria may be good news… whilst I am far from calling for significantly making common cause with the ghastly (& Ba’athist) regime in Damascus, there is much to be said for dealing with the bad guys one at a time and also for getting sundry vile ideologies to shoot it out with each other on their own time and dime.
And to that effect, if the Syrian state sees stamping on Al Qaeda and other Islamists as a ‘survival issue’, then that can only be a good thing. It needs to be remembered that whilst Syria is a primary threat to Israel, it is far from looming that large on the list of Things To Be Dealt With for the US, Britain or the Western World generally. Their time will come but that need not be right now.
So let us encourage as many people of whatever cloth as possible to stomp on the Islamists, and once that problem recedes to manageable proportions, well, no need to shed too many tears if Ba’athism’s last outpost comes in for a bit of serious stick from the US, Israel or whoever, as it is not like we need mistake them for being in any way admirable just because we might have once shared a common enemy.
The Adam Smith Institute‘s blog has moved, so update your links to:
www.adamsmith.org/blog
St. George’s Day Party at the New Cavendish Club, ergo more drinking and less blogging 
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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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