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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I was an occasional reader of American business-technology magazine Red Herring, which has just closed down. They often carried very interesting articles, such as the excellent round up of the state of nanotechnology (by several authors), and a piece on The Company and Society by John Micklethwait (who is indeed a relative of Samizdata.net’s very own Brian Micklethwait) in the final March 2003 print version (hence no links).
However I was only an occasional reader of Red Herring because although its coverage of technology was rather good, I found its neo-conservative acceptance of statist axioms in so many articles tedious, and to be honest I am not all that interested in the details of how corporate America finesses OSHA and tax regulations in order to function, or how they get their snouts in the public trough for R&D money.
Likewise I found my eyes rolling back when I read remarks from Editor-in-Chief Tony Perkins like…
We wish the Bush administration luck in trying to change the spending culture in Washington, D.C.. State governments must also learn how to do more with less.
…because there, oh so succinctly, is why I regard neo-conservatism as something which completely misses the point. The principle problem with government is not that it takes lots of other people’s money… no… that is just a consequence of what is wrong. The root problem is that government does things it has no business legitimately doing at any cost to taxpayers.
We do not need the state to do more with less, we need it to do less with less.
 Cry “Blog for Harry! England and St George!”.
(with apologies to William Shakespeare)
I hope to see many of the Samizdatistas at the St. George’s Day party tonight on the Thames. If anyone spectacularly misbehaves, or turns up looking particularly hot in a little black dress (no, not you David), I will try to get incriminating photos posted as soon as possible.
For those interested in royal genealogy, you could do worse that check out this scholarly work from a sober blogger who is destined for greater things. This chap could well be the next David Starkey.
Blogger Sina Motallebi has been arrested by Iranian authorities for the ‘crime’ of giving interviews to Persian language radio stations outside Iran and for his blogging (in Farsi).
I suspect giving his plight as much publicity as possible may give the notoriously intemperate Iranian security services at least some motivation to play it cool if they think the spotlight of world opinion is on them.
It is a good thing we in the west have freedom of the press and internet, eh? No way would such heavy handed tactics be tolerated in somewhere like the USA, right? Right?
I was going to churn out another paean to blowing up tyrants just to cement my credentials as a dangerous heretic in certain libertarian circles, when macho testosterone crazed samizdatista extraordinare, Gabriel Syme burst in though a window and seized my keyboard, compelling me to ‘write something different’ instead. As one look at Gabriel’s bloodshot eyes made it clear that he has been mainlining granulated Hunter S. Thompson books, I though it prudent to play along, humour him and not make any sudden moves.
Seeing as Brian felt the need to link to a song on the best bonkers site on the internet, I feel I must link to this treasure on the same site as it was pointed out to me by the inimitable Syme.
Now as soon as he stops fiddling with that large Nepalese knife I keep on the wall, I will try and slip out unnoticed and contact my Samoan lawyer for advise.
That the Russians should be such buffoons by backing Ba’athist Iraq long after it became clear they were going to suffer the full weight of an Anglo-American attack is remarkable. That the Germans should have done so is nothing less than astonishing.
Just as in the Falklands War, when Britain’s ‘ally’ France did not withdraw military assistance from Argentina until it no longer actually mattered, we have seen the European Union’s two most influential nations, France and now Germany, actively collaborating with national socialist enemies of Britain overseas.
Tony Blair has just lead Britain into a spectacularly successful war, but at a cost in British blood and treasure. Will even this revelation get Tony Blair to finally see the €uro-fedarists for what they are? Are these really the people he wants to bind the future of Britain to?
Wake up!!!
And she is in need of your assistance. Psychotic ex-boyfriend. Restraining order about to expire. Needs to move. Pronto. Go here to help out.
Blogatrix in need of assistance… its a Blog-eat-Blog world out there.
The United Methodist Church are calling on Methodist George W. Bush to repent for overthrowing Saddam Hussain’s regime in Iraq. He is enjoined to:
…repent from domestic and foreign policies that are incompatible with the teaching and example of Christ.
Ah yes… the eleventh commandment… “Thou shalt not overthrow tyranny but shall instead give aid and succour to murderers and rapists”. Oops. Sorry. I guess silly ol’ Dubya was reading the abridged version of the Bible.
(Link via Joshua Claybourn)
In British military vernacular they are called ‘bumpy jumpers’, but they are a sight more chilling to the very hearts of Islamic fundamentalist extremists than an approaching squadron of B-52s wheeling in for an attack run.
Women without veils…
Good looking blonde women without veils…
Good looking blonde women without veils with guns!
A commenter called Johan from Sweden got me thinking about memes and their uses.
Next time you hear of a new tax or a new abridgement of civil liberties such as surveillance or free speech or conscriptive ‘education’ or an increase in regulation of what you do even on private property or any of the host of democratically sanctified violence backed imposition on civil society, the meme to start trumpeting should be clear:
Not in my name!
The socialist left and statist right are both big on majoritarianism whilst paying lip service to the right of minorities… well I have news for you, we are all a minority of one in the final analysis. Just because someone votes for the state to help itself to your money, remember to protest loud and long and give lie to the myth that democracy empowers anyone except the political factions able to manipulate the system.
Not in my name!
It may not stop them but every little bit that de-legitimizes the politicization of civil society under the blanket of democracy is a step in the right direction.
The UN, meaning significant portions of its membership such as France, Germany, Russia etc. are refusing to simply lift sanctions against Iraq automatically until they get their way politically… which is to say to dilute US and British control over post-war Iraq.
So even after Ba’athism is gone, the sanctions could be maintained. In short, the people backing this are saying “do what we want or we will make the Iraqi people suffer even though the regime the sanctions were designed to contain is now gone”.
And the thing that really sticks in my craw is that these sanctimonious bastards think they have the moral high ground.
When it comes to the British International Development Secretary, Clare Short, any attempt to analyze her views are bedeviled by the fact she is such a mass of contradictions and illogic. Yesterday at a briefing in London she was asked by a journalist if she thought the death toll of Iraqi civilians was a price worth paying for the overthrow of Ba’athist Socialism, to which she replied:
I do not think that the death of any human being is a price worth paying
Let us ponder that remark… that the Ba’athist regime was mass murderous is beyond doubt and clearly something of which Clare Short would be cognisant. So what is she saying? She is not saying that what even the hilarious Iraqi Minister for Information admitted was a small number of Iraqi civilians killed was too high a price to end two and a half decades of tyranny.
No, she is saying that the loss of even a single life is not a price worth paying… paying for what? To prevent the murder of thousands of Iraqi people every year, that is what. The term ‘absurdity’ seems inadequate somehow.
Face it… Clare Short does not give a damn about the Iraqi people. She is more concerned about preserving the sanctity of her surreal world view. Why else would she say such an idiotic thing if not because trapped within her dogmatic meta-context, she is simply incapable of saying anything else regardless of florescent evidence suggesting better moral theories.
As I have written before, to oppose the war on the grounds that the domestic cost in Britain or the USA in blood, treasure and encroachment of the state is too high a price for the sake of the Iraqi people, is at least a coherent viable argument… but to oppose the war on ostensibly altruistic grounds that the price to the Iraqi people of overturning the Ba’athist Socialist status quo is too high is simply ridiculous, given that the scale of that Saddamite tyranny was hardly a secret.
To have taken such a position at before the war or in the early stages of the campaign was at least somewhat tenable, at least for a person with a poor understanding of the military and technological realities, on the grounds the cost in blood would indeed be mind bogglingly high.
But to still use that argument after we know that the ‘massive casualties’ scenario has not proved to be the case is bizzare. Pictures of tragic little Ali Ismail Abbas are truly heartrending for sure, but how does that change the cold hard facts about the butcher’s bill if Ba’athism had not been overthrown?
To argue on a ‘what is best for the Iraqi people cost/benefit analysis’ means the likes of Clare Short cannot have it both ways… unless all that matters is not that a ‘single life’ is lost to violence but only who did the deed. Although Clare Short’s logic is hard for me to fathom, perhaps she is saying that preventing thousands of Iraqi civilians dying every year in Saddam Hussain’s jails and torture chambers is not worth a single Iraqi death if a British taxpayer funded soldier was the one who ended the ‘single life’ in question. Or maybe she means nothing of the sort.
So who exactly does Clare Short care about? What does she mean when she opens her mouth and makes noises that sound like English? I cannot figure it out.
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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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