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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Or so says leading New Labour talking head and failed Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson.
He says one of Europe’s “huge challenges” in the next couple of years includes “rebuilding the Atlantic alliance”. Well this is indeed a ‘European’ problem, but not a British problem. British relations with the United States and Canada are just fine, thanks… it is the governments of France and Germany which have problems with anti-Americanism at the highest levels.
At least I agree with the dismal Mandelson on one point: the need for ‘British Leadership’ in Europe. Let the nations of Europe follow Britain as it walks briskly for the door marked EXIT.
noun. Using googlebombs (qv), comment spam (qv), hostile trackbacks and other technical means to propagate memes.
noun. Intentionally altering a concept or phrase, or using it in a different context, so as to subvert the meaning. Also: memehack
Usage: for example the use of ‘socialist’ imagery to in fact advocate capitalism:
noun. A meme is considered to be a discrete idea that replicates itself, with the connotation that memes replicate themselves and are propagated by people through social and technological networks, much like both real and computer viruses.
(Coined by Richard Dawkins)
Usage: “The sarcastic meme of ‘Our friends, the Saudis’ continues to spread across the Intenet”
Note: Although not strictly speaking a ‘blog specific’ term, meme is very widely used in the Blogosphere (qv).
Also see: Meme hack, Meme war
Stacy Tabb worked on the samizdata.net web site and then threatened us with carnivorous plants until we agreed to pay her
The image above, which I took about an half an hour before writing this article, shows an employee of Britain’s premier cancer hospital, The Royal Marsden, standing by the front door having a cigarette. This is a man who works in a cancer hospital and comes face to face with the savage realities of what his habit vastly increases his risk of contracting, on a daily basis.
This picture says something very profound about human nature. One thing is for sure, it says more than any lengthy exegesis I could write about the futility of trying to use the violence of law to mandate behaviour the state feels is in the regulated person’s “best interests”. Ponder that.
That sounds like the name of some old British movie… but what I am referring to is the Libertarian Alliance meeting held every last Friday of the month at Brian Micklethwait’s place in Pimlico, London.
The speaker was samizdata.net contributor David Carr, delivering his views on the Middle East, specifically the Israel-Palestine troubles. It was possibly the most heavily attended Last Friday at Brian’s I have ever seen, literally standing room only… which made the final standing ovations for David’s outstanding talk all the easier 
Standing room only for David’s talk!
Paul Coulam and Adriana Cronin: the intellectual hardcore
Judith Hatton and Amoy Ing: libertarian thought across the generations
Let me write a little fiction for a moment:
John is in his late twenties and an Internet power-user. He uses it for work (he is an independent consultant of some sort), he uses it for games (he is a dab hand at playing on-line, feared amongst the community of Alien vs. Predator 2 gamers) and, being a guy, he likes to trawl through Usenet newsgroups to find pictures of who ever his babe-de-jour is… he is currently rather keen on Britany Spears (my, my, she is aging well).
One night, he visits one of his favourite newsgroups: alt.binaries.celebrities.nude
The list of articles builds, then he casts his eye down the displayed article headers, selecting several posts which indicate they contain images of Britany Spears. He sees one that says ‘Britany Nude’. ‘Hmmm, probably another fake,’ he thinks to himself, ‘no doubt some twit has used PhotoShop to put the divine Miss B’s head on the body of some porn star’..
He clicks ‘extract binaries’ to download the images that people have posted in 120 or so articles and while that chugs away in the background, he launches Excel to catch up on some work he has been putting off.
A few hours later, he goes back to the directory in which his UseNet reader saves extracted binary images and sees a long list of 120 .jpg and .gif pictures. He starts to check them out, keeping the good ones, junking the dross and any duplicates. Then he comes to a file called nudebritney.jpg. He opens it and his lip twitches up in disgust. It is a scared looking little girl, maybe 12 years old, naked and posed suggestively with her legs apart, a web address ending in .ru is written across the bottom of the image.
‘What type of vermin do that to a little girl?’ he growls to the un-hearing screen. With a couple clicks of the mouse, he deletes the offending image and moves on to the next, which turns out to be a picture of the real Britany Spears dancing with a snake at the MTV awards. The angry scowl fades and the smile reappears on his face.
About 2 months later, there is a knock on his door and there is a tax inspector with a warrant. They seize his computer as part of an ongoing tax related dispute… two days later they return, not to charge him with tax evasion but with child pornography offenses! They used an un-delete utility (such as Norton Utilities) to recover supposedly ‘erased’ files and found a file called nudebritany.jpg.
Is this a far fetched scenario? Unfortunately not.
There is a fascinating article in Wired magazine about the terrifying approach taken by the FBI towards eradicating child pornography on the Internet:
As one FBI agent put it, “Even my friends can’t believe there’s a federal offense that’s so easy to commit. One click, you’re guilty.”
Possession of child porn is a strict-liability offense, like possession of cocaine. Possessing it, though, does not only mean you have intentionally downloaded and stored the images on your hard drive. Under Title 18 of the US Code, the felony is committed the first time sexually explicit images of minors — defined as anyone under 18 — appear on your screen. If your computer is searched, even files that have been dragged to the trash or cached by your browser software are counted as evidence. Some offenders have been sent to jail for “possessing” images that only a computer-forensics technician can see.
So even if you receive an unsolicited spam mail with attached pictures of child porn and delete the images without opening them, you cannot prove you did not look at them but the state sure as hell can prove they were on your hard drive once!
Much as RICO statutes in the USA were passed to fight against the Mafia but ended up being used against anti-abortion activists and environmental protestors, so too will laws against Internet kiddie porn be used to criminalise people the state just happens to want to criminalise, regardless of whether or not they have the slightest thing to do with the problem of child pornography. This will be hard to stop… after all, who wants to stand up and protest when that risks you being called an ‘apologist for child pornographers’. Nasty.
The Internet gives us many and varied ways to fight the state’s constant attempts to regulate our lives and livelihoods, but is also gives the state new ways to attack us. The state is not your friend.
USA: HIGH
UK: SEVERE
This meme hack is brought to you by the voice of critically rational libertarianism, www.samizdata.net. We now return you to your regularly scheduled torpor.
Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the United States Federal Reserve, has delivered a rather splendid kick in the orbs to the pro-€uro/anti-sterling campaign. Greenspan said whilst speaking in the City of London (London’s powerful financial district):
The City of London is thriving outside the eurozone and has not suffered from Britain’s decision not to join the single currency in the first wave […] and was a sterling place to do business. London has stayed on top in the provision of financial services despite the euro…
Now I am no fan of the whole concept of central banking (and hence no fan of central bankers) but the fact is it would be bonkers to deny that Alan Greenspan is probably, hell, certainly, the most influential voice on the subject of economic affairs alive in the world today. His remarks are therefore going to cause some gnashing of teeth in certain circles, which has to be a good thing, as the pro-€uro campaign is predicated upon turning the abolition of sterling from a constitutional issue into a purely practical economic issue… and thus having Greenspan point out that Britain is managing just fine outside the eurozone is not what Brussels’ fifth column in Britain want to see splashed across UK newspapers.
Ah, but you should have seen the size of the one that got away. It was this big I tell you!
noun. A term of abuse for an advocate of what are deemed to be irrationalist and subjectivist values that have very little reference to the workings of the real world. Idiotarians are often socialist (quintessentially Noam Chomsky), but can also be paleo-libertarian or paleo-conservative. The defining phrase of idiotarianism is “it is all the fault of the United States”: this is usually applied to geopolitics but is sometimes encountered with regard to cultural issues, economic issues, environmental issues, the weather, socks lost in the laundry etc.
The term is obviously highly partisan but is in quite widespread use by many blogs. However it is not a term used exclusively by the neo-conservative ‘right wing’ and many well left of centre or libertarian blogs have used it describe the more surrealist wings of their particular branch of political thought.
Also see: Tranzi, Anti-idiotarian
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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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