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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To all the people worldwide who Walked for Capitalism, well done one and all!
To those of you who walked in London, it was great to meet you and much mirth was had by all when we temporarily diverted en-mass and all piled into the CUBA Bar in Kensington. We all drank beer and bourbon with our pro-capitalism placards and buttons whilst the pictures of Fidel Castro looked on very disapprovingly (there was even an anti-Castro Cuban emigré in our merry band)!
I think these now-to-be annual Walk for Capitalism will become steadily more popular as a fun day out when people realise what a superb networking opportunity such events are. There was much exchanging of e-mail addresses and promises of future business/conspiring/drinking etc.!
Grizzled Libertarian Alliance grognards were well represented in the walk. The whole thing was a highly successful hoot!
Instapundit is reporting an interesting Gulf News article about the disillusionment with the fundamentalists in Pakistan
A groundswell of resentment has emerged in Pakistani tribal territories against a fundamentalist leader who took thousands to Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban and left them stranded, residents said yesterday.
Soofi Mohammad, head of Tehrik Nifaz Shariah Mohammadi (TNSM), was arrested and jailed when he returned from Afghanistan after the rout of the Taliban militia, leaving his men behind. Scores of the tribesmen were reportedly killed inside Afghanistan and more than 2,000 were still missing.
Now far be it for me to say ‘I told you so’ but back on November 16th I predicted exactly this coming to pass in the article The depth of the disaster for the Islamists starts to become clear:
So as the Islamic politicians of Pakistan survey how in the matter of eight days the entire situation in Afghanistan has turned upside down, the families and friends of the dead Pakistani boys who listened and then marched to their deaths across the Khyber pass are going to start asking ‘why?’ When people start to figure out the answer, I don’t think the forces of Islamo-fascism are going to like what happens next. It must be slowly dawning on the more secular forces in Pakistan that their Islamist political enemies are starting to look very exposed indeed
This is probably not quite the result Osama had in mind on September 11.
I told you so.
WALK FOR CAPITALISM: TODAY!
LONDON details:
Time and Place:
3.00pm-4.00pm Assemble at Speaker’s Corner, just OUTSIDE Hyde Park, London W2.
4.00pm-6.00pm (Approx.) Walk round outside of Park via Bayswater Road, Kensington Church Street, Knightsbridge, Hyde Park Corner.
6.00pm-7.00pm Return to Speaker’s Corner for Capitalism Award Presentation.
Bring an electric torch.
The Walk
On Sunday 2nd. December 2001 the first ever global Walk For Capitalism will take place. Over 100 cities worldwide, including London, have signed up so far, and you are all welcome to take part and lend your support.
The London “Walk” is open to any person who supports free market capitalism and free trade. This includes business people, employers, teachers and students, actors, poets and anyone else who understands the value of human rights.
We need your assistance to help spread the word. So why not join us, and bring a torch/flashlight to light the way?
See The Walk for Capitalism website for more details. For some info on the Walk for Capitalism in your town, also see the earlier Samizdata article.
Annoy a luddite and come support us. It is a great opportunity to network and meet like minded people. Perhaps the man/woman/lycanthrope of your dreams will be there!
London WALK FOR CAPITALISM: Tomorrow!
Time and Place:
3.00pm-4.00pm Assemble at Speaker’s Corner, just OUTSIDE Hyde Park, London W2.
4.00pm-6.00pm (Approx.) Walk round outside of Park via Bayswater Road, Kensington Church Street, Knightsbridge, Hyde Park Corner.
6.00pm-7.00pm Return to Speaker’s Corner for Capitalism Award Presentation.
The Walk
On Sunday 2nd. December 2001 the first ever global Walk For Capitalism will take place. Over 100 cities worldwide, including London, have signed up so far, and you are all welcome to take part and lend your support.
The London “Walk” is open to any person who supports free market capitalism and free trade. This includes business people, employers, teachers and students, actors, poets and anyone else who understands the value of human rights.
We need your assistance to help spread the word. So why not join us, and bring a torch/flashlight to light the way?
See The Walk for Capitalism website for more details. For some info on the Walk for Capitalism in your town, also see the earlier Samizdata article.
On The Fly Bottle, Will Wilkinson continues to put the boot in to arguments against cloning. It is also an issue that quite exercises Glenn Reynolds on Instapundit.
Twelve British and two Dutch plane-spotters languish in the dismal jails of fellow NATO member Greece, whilst what is probably the most corrupt and ineffective ‘justice’ system in the European ‘Union’ investigates them on charges of espionage. We are told by Greek government spokesmen that “the judicial system must take it’s course” as these harmless geeks sleep on concrete floors surrounded by rapists, thieves and murderers.
Yet over the last 25 years, a Greek Marxist terrorist group called November 17 has, during the course of over 150 terrorist incidents, murdered twenty four people, including a British Army brigadier, a senior CIA officer and three other US national. They have regularly attacked the offices of multinational corporations with bombs, arson and shootings.
And how many of these terrorist have been convicted or killed by the Greek Security Services in the last 25 years?
Er… none.
How many have even been arrested in the last 25 years?
None. Not a single one.
So then would it be fair to say that the Greek Security Services are perhaps the most inept in the western world? Well there is certainly some truth to that, but unfortunately the principal reason is that the November 17 terrorists are all closely linked to the Greek socialist PASOK party and have tendrils deep within the security services themselves, according to people as varied as former CIA chief Jim Wolsey and former Greek Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis.
Jim Wolsey was once quoted as saying:
When you don’t catch a single terrorist after twenty five years, that’s not a mistake… that’s a policy.
It is good to know that we have such wonderful allies within NATO. I guess if those foolish plane-spotters had not been tying up so much police time, November 17 would all be behind bars by now.
Or not.
The hapless Greek people are very ill served by their vile political establishment. Next time the half-wits in Whitehall start muttering about Britain signing up for Europe wide extradition warrants, ponder exactly what sort of judicial systems await in nations of our oh so wonderful ‘allies’.
I thought this was an interesting article in Government Executive Magaine (being a typical libertarian governmentophobe, this not my usual reading I must confess). It is essentially a US Army lamentation and paean to the USMC:
The fact that the Marine Corps was needed to extend into what most Army officers consider their service’s territory had some of them wondering where Army leaders were when the mission planning decisions were being made. “If this doesn’t raise questions about Army relevance then I don’t know what would,” said one infantry captain who says he is beginning to think he might feel more at home in the Marine Corps than in the Army.
and
“You’ve got to give the Marine Corps credit for trying to make themselves useful,” said Thomas Donnelly, deputy executive director of the Project for a New American Century and a former staffer on the House Armed Services Committee. “At least they’re making some attempt to respond to what the country needs to have done. The Army just seems to be spending most of its intellectual effort trying to find ways to stay out of it.”
Ah, I love the smell of inter-service rivalry in the morning. It smells of…victory.
With thanks to Graham V. for pointing the Samizdata at Government Executive Magaine.
When I read about people like the hilarious American Center for Law and Justice and Family Research Council calling for on-line censorship, I am not sure if I should laugh or snarl… perhaps both. In an article in Charisma News Service, they say things like:
This is an important opportunity for the Supreme Court to protect children in the ongoing battle against online porn,” said Jay Sekulow, of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA). “This measure…represents a proper and constitutional protection to ensure that pornographers don’t commercially profit from making pornography available to children,” Sekulow said. “The First Amendment protects free speech — but was never intended to permit the sale or distribution of porn to children on the Internet or anywhere else.
Hmmm. Although as a libertarian I do not usually argue matters on constitutional grounds but rather moral ones (a constitution is just a statement of rights, not the source of them), let us look at the First Amendment of the US Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Now perhaps my copy of the US Constitution is an abridged version but no matter how many times I read it, I cannot see the bit that says:
However freedom of speech, and of the press, can have the crap abridged out of it if computers and the Internet are involved.
Will some legal scholar who reads the Samizdata please take pity and e-mail me and point out in which section of the US Constitution’s apocrypha is that passage to be found?
Now even if these authoritarian statist clowns got their way (unlikely), exactly how do they think a US law is going to prevent 15 year old Hank from Peoria taking a peek at a nice pair of titties on a web server in Amsterdam? These people are not just control freaks, they are pretty damn stupid
Have you ever noticed that groups calling themselves Pro-Family are often the ones who actually want the state to pass laws which remove responsibility from the family and make it a matter of criminal law? If little Hank from Peoria wants to look at porn on-line, why is that not a matter for the family to sort out? I suspect if these people think a US law will have the slightest effect on the global proliferation of on-line porn, then perhaps they are also sufficiently obtuse not to realise that the computer they purchased for little Hank also has an off switch. Doh!
Now Dawson is certainly entitled to his opinion that the Colt .45 “has never been surpassed as a combat weapon side arm”, but I think times have moved on. Sure, it is a fine choice, but I cannot see any real advantage over more modern .40 cal weapons like the excellent SIG 229 but I can see several disadvantages. The SIG has 12 rounds in the magazine (vs. 7 in the Colt), is a smooth double action out of the box and just as reliable as the venerable 1911-A1 (and it’s various grandchildren). To be honest, I think the Colt is only really competitive these days if heavily modified (polished feed ramp, extended slide release etc.). Most importantly, I just don’t like a Colt style lock safety in a combat piece… it is just too easy to forget that it is on at the moment of truth and too dangerous to leave it off in the mean time.
Don’t get me wrong, the Colt .45 is a great weapon and fun to shoot but when the chips are down and it is time for business…I want a 40 cal SIG 229…Don’t leave home without it.
I just felt like posting this short piece from the inimitable P. J. O’Rourke that he wrote a few years ago.
Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights–the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery–hay and a barn for human cattle. There’s only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
Quite so.
Then read this article Too many cooks about the multiplicity of players involved and their differing agendas. The article also suggests that the Taliban execution of Abdul Haq might have been due to him being set up by the ISI:
The USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which reportedly attaches greater importance to the co-operation with the United Front than to that with Pakistan’s intelligence establishment, and is distrustful of the ISI. This has been particularly so since the capture and execution of Abdul Haq, the CIA’s mole in the Pashtun community, by the Taliban in October.
However, do keep in mind that as the author is a member of the Indian establishment, a rather jaundiced view of Pakistan as the font of all worldly evil is to be expected. That said, just because he is Indian does not make him incorrect and the whole article is an interesting piece of analysis.
There is also an interesting take on the ‘Konduz airlift’ that suggests it was carried out by Pakistan in the confusion rather than with US complicity. I have my doubts on that but only time will tell what really happened. I fully expect that incident will become fodder for conspiracy theorists for years to come.
This is actually a very good site and I shall be keeping an eye on it in the future.
Thanks to Samizdata reader Bob Van Andel for pointing us at the Afgha.com site (availible in English and French).
It is remarkable when a man such as Christopher Hitchens makes the transformation from Prince of Darkness of the Socialist Left to something pretty damn close to a libertarian. He is on excellent form in this article in The Nation.
He even favored us with the most witless and fatalistic of the recent naysayings, to the effect that if we kill Osama bin Laden then others will rise to take his place. I actually think this proposition is an unsafe one: Bin Laden looks like one of a rare kind to me (and increasingly flaky in recent guest appearances). His deputies are obvious goons and would probably start knifing one another if the holy one stepped on a mine. But leave that to one side–does it never occur to anyone that tens of thousands of people would also rise up to rid the world of bin Laden all over again?
This is good stuff. Read the whole article.
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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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