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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Satan ist der Führer

· German affairs

A young German couple were sentenced today after being found guilty of the murder of a friend in a Satanic Ritual.

The couple claimed to be under the influence of Satan when they stabbed the young man to death after luring him to their home.

In their defence they both said that they were “only obeying orders”.

Some things just never change, eh.

January 31st, 2002 | Comments are closed

News from gun-free Britain

· Self defence & Security · UK affairs

Two people were shot, one of them fatally, in a West London restaurant today

January 31st, 2002 | Comments are closed

Where is John McEnroe when you need him?

· Opinions on liberty

There are some people in the world who will go to great lengths not to be taken seriously. One of these people is a certain Mr.Paul Clark who has contributed this stupendous bit of reality-subversion on Lew Rockwell’s website.

According to Mr.Clark, Libertarians and True Conservatives everywhere could do a lot worse than look to European Union for inspiration. Well, yes, they could always look to North Korea, I suppose. He goes on to state that the USA should seek to emulate it.

“In fact, the EU offers, in many ways, an example for the United States to emulate. The EU still is what the US is supposed to be: a federation of more or less sovereign states, united for economic and military cooperation.

For those of us who advocate a small, truly constitutional government basically the same as the US had in 1800, the common response is that the world has changed, and that it is now impossible to have the kind of weak central government that existed two centuries ago, when the population and area were a fraction of what they are today. In response to that, one simply needs to look at the European Union”

Yes, he actually says that! And, to add injury to insanity:

“If I were leader of an island nation in the middle of the Atlantic, and were forced to choose between joining the EU or the US, there would be only one choice. If one were concerned with preventing a deluge of tax collectors, bureaucrats, and regulators; and if one wanted to maintain traditional culture and laws, then one would not join the US”

Do you think he means us?

The whole article is a tissue of egregious distortions and outright misrepresentations. For example, Mr.Clark claims that the EU does not tax its citizens when it is common knowledge to every European that plans to do are already well-advanced. He also claims that the EU has no army when the European Rapid Reaction Force (a rose by any other name…) is being built around our ears and with a brief to do just about anything its political masters order it to do both internally and externally.

As someone who has many friends in the USA so I am only too well aware of the exasperation they feel when dealing with their bloated and blundering Federal Government but to compare it unfavourably with the EU requires not just gall but a breath-taking turn of relativism.

It seems that Mr.Clark is yet another of that curious breed of American Libertarian that is so convinced of the irredeemable iniquity of their own government that any ANY alternative is better, be it the EU, Latin American Caudillos, the Moonies or Pol Pot for that matter. Perhaps Mr.Clark should be directed to this Blog for some clarity about the ‘laissez-faire’ credentials of the EU. He could start by trying to explain away the post below.

But maybe I am leaping to judgment. Maybe Mr.Clark has merely written a ripping satire. Maybe he is deliberatly trying to be provocative in order to make some other subtle point. But, if not, then I regret to say that it isn’t just the prisoners at Camp X-Ray who are hooded and goggled.

January 29th, 2002 | Comments are closed

A rear-ender from Brussels

· European Union

My considerable thanks to Iain Murray for bringing to our attention this crass bit of wealth-destroying codswallop courtesy of our enemies, the Eurocrats.

Ever more wedded to discredited enviro-mental ideology, the EU has now passed laws forcing all EU motor vehicle manufacturers to pick up the tab for the recovery and recycling of old vehicles and has drafted a raft of pettyfogging regulations that they have to comply with in the process.

Thus they have not only delivered a legislative hammer-blow to the fruitful and wholly organic (in the best sense of the word) car-recycling industry but heaped a wholly unnecessary cost burden onto industry and, therefore, European consumers. Oh, and we ain’t seen nothing yet.

“Where will it end? Not content with cars and fridges, the EU has now moved on to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, covering televisions, toasters and the like. The concept of ownership is thus undermined, property rights are violated, industry is put at a competitive disadvantage and – to top it all – illegal dumping is encouraged”

Do these people have the first inkling of how an economy actually works? Are they cretinous or malevolent or both? Do we have to rely on a kindly asteroid for salvation?

January 29th, 2002 | Comments are closed

Who started all this photo lark anyway?

· Independent sites, Blogging & Bloggers

I just want everybody to know that I have been forced into doing this against my better judgement. I was perfectly happy blogging away in semi-anonymity but I have now been un-burquered by Perry. He telephoned me tonight and told me that if I didn’t upload a photograph he would have no choice but to use the hood and goggles on me (again!)

This photo was taken about 4 years ago when I took a career break from the law to become a scriptwriter and stand-up comic. It was snapped by a producer at a cable TV company who was going to use it as a part of comedy show promotion. I was supposed to exude street-wise cynicism and moodiness but I’m not entirely convinced that I managed to pull it off

January 28th, 2002 | Comments are closed

How to be a successful scientist

· Science & Technology

Do you have a science qualification? Are you tired of struggling to pay your bills and make ends meet? Are you sick of seeing the other guy making a good living while you constantly scrimp and save? Do you ever wonder what the secret is to making loads of money?

Well, wonder no longer. Just follow our easy 8-step guide below and you too can be a Successful Scientist

1. Fix your attentions to some aspect of modern life or a consumer product; preferably something technological, new-fangled and, therefore, little understood
2. Issue releases to the press expressing your concerns about possible links between the said product and vague, nebulous ‘health risks’. Don’t worry about rejection, the press will lap them up
3. Approach the manufacturers of the said product and threaten to kick up even more of a stink unless they play ball. Remind them of the damage their reputation can suffer if they appear to be unresponsive and heartless
4. Do the same thing to the appropriate government department
5. Advise all parties concerned that your fears will only be assuaged by more research
6. Advise all parties that this research cannot possibly be conducted without more resources
7. Set up your research facilities with the huge portion of taxpayers money that the government presents you with in order for you to shut up and go away
8. Repeat Steps 1 to 7 above until retirement

January 28th, 2002 | Comments are closed

News from gun-free Britain

· Self defence & Security · UK affairs

Three men have been admitted to hospital, one of them in critical condition, after a shooting on a Glasgow Housing Estate

January 28th, 2002 | Comments are closed

What Lies Beneath

· Anglosphere

Over on Vodkapundit Stephen Green waxes lyrical about us Brits and speaks of us as ‘Congruent Forces’, a phrase which lends itself to so much more than the reactions to 9/11 and contains within it a recognition of ties that go beyond a common langauge

Thanks to the Bush Telegraph of Blogdom the Americans have learned that, despite the best efforts of our Sneering Classes, every voxpop opinion poll in the country puts support for the USA at over 90%! Is there any country in the world where pro-USA feeling runs so high? Come to think of it, does it run that high in certain parts of California?

This is more than a Fifth Column (although it is that as well); it is the big ghost in Blair’s machine, the great, immovable mass of Britain that he must, by some means or other, tear away from its Common Law roots and into the arms of Napoleon’s Code where rule of the people by the people is replaced by rule of the people by the their betters. Theirs is the other 10% and they are the New Aristocracy, taking their holidays in Tuscany while the vulgar, embarrassing , white-bread English serfs chug Budweisers in Florida and insist on defending their homes. The former, almost without exception, rely on various forms of government activity for their wealth and power. While the latter consist of the plumbers, electricians, small businessmen, shopkeepers, hairdressers and builders; the real ‘warp and weft’ of any country

This is the congruent force that goes deeper than World Wars or 9/11. It is a shared epistimology of liberty assumed not requested; of Magna Carta, Habeus Corpus and each to his own. A worldview that binds at a cellular level and is bedded in the sense of objective rightness that power over the individual should vest, ultimately, in that individual and not in the capricious favour of potentates

These are the values breathed into America by the great English and Scottish enlightenment and it is why Americans like Stephen Green rightly call us The Mother Country for the ‘American Revolution’ was not so much a revolution as a Civil War between the rebels trying to champion those ideas and their imperial rulers whose persistant continental wars had so wounded them

Yet, despite all the wars the British fought, because they too often tried to rape instead of seduce, in every bit of the globe in which the Sons of Albion planted the Union Jack they left behind those Common Law values and good administration and, hence, shaped so much of it. Britain gave birth not just to America but to Gibraltar and Hong Kong and New Zealand. It is not mere coincidence that, today, of the world’s top ten most liberal economies, no less than eight of them are former British colonies

Those Yeomen of England are now the Bloggers of Cyberspace and we lie beneath; we are chained in the attic, buried under the floorboards. That blury shape in America’s bathroom mirror is us; that shocking reflection in their bathwater is us. We are trying to communicate with you Americans. We’re trying to tell you something. We’re trying to warn you that Tony Blair may be sleeping with your President; he may be whispering sussurating, cooing declarations of eternal love in your ear, but really he is a murderer and he is trying to kill us. Can you hear us, America? Can you see us?

January 27th, 2002 | Comments are closed

The EU nationalises bacteria

· European Union · Science & Technology

The European ‘Kommisariat’ is deeply concerned about Europe’s lack of progress in the field of biotechnology

Apparently, Europe is light years behind the USA in development and commercial application (snigger). The solution? A brand new ‘Policy Initiative’ (read ‘Five-Year Plan’) which will involve all of Europe’s biotech companies being made answerable to the suits in the European Commission for the ‘Great Leap Forward’ which is now required of them and the Commission, for its part, will ‘assist’ by means of various ‘initiatives and proposals as appropriate’

Having been ordered to compete with the USA one wonders what fate awaits European bio-engineers should they fail? Exile in Siberia? I wonder if the European Commissioners have stopped for even a second to ask themselves why companies in the USA are so far ahead? Probably not. The idea that central plans don’t work is unknown to the Eurocrats; the reality that innovation and enterprise are smothered by ‘initiatives and policies’ is offensive to them. It is as if the Soviet Union is still the blueprint for them (while being an object lesson for everybody else)

Anyway, the American biotech companies shouldn’t bother losing any sleep. If this is the way that their European counterparts are going to be forced to play their hand, then the existing gap will only grow wider

January 27th, 2002 | Comments are closed

Chickens are people too, you know

· Opinions on liberty

Unfortunately, this is not a hoax

[Editor: this story is totally fowl]

January 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed

Thai’d into the Eurozone

· European Union

I am quite convinced that the only law that will never, ever be broken is the law of ‘Unintended Consequences’

Who ever imagined that the Thai 10-Baht coin would be indistinguishable from the 2-Euro coin?

Be wary when shopping for European prostitutes: they may be ‘ladyboys’

January 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed

The danger of Social Democrats

· Irish affairs

There may be better libertarian think-tanks around in Europe than the Irish Open Republic but if so I haven’t come across them yet. I don’t know if the editor, Paul McDonnell wrote the piece appearing below but, regardless of the authorship, it cuts through all the cant and recrimination to remind us who the real enemies are.

“Post ‘peace process’ Northern Ireland is like SimCity – a computer simulation game where you get to build and run a city – played by Social Democrats. During the peace process and its aftermath political life in the Province was immersed in a warm, enervating, bath of ‘reconciliation’, ‘mutual recognition’, ‘sharing of feelings’ and general ‘feeling’ of ‘pain’ all around. The politicians, think-tanks, civil servants, peace volunteers, community action groups, women’s groups, freed murderers of the innocent and, yes, even the White House all hunkered down in a general peace and love fest where a direct question was about as welcome as a swastika flag at Woodstock.

Of course before the whole thing got going no one thought to set conditions that Sinn Fein and their tattooed counterparts on the ‘Protestant’ side must both respect and actively support the enforcement of the rule of law. Any 12 year old playing SimCity realises that the police need to be able to uphold the rule of law or anarchy reigns and then it’s game over.

Not in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland today is what happens when Social Democrats do what they are best at. And what they are best at is Showing Concern Whilst Selling Out To Tyranny. Think of David Owen, Douglas Hurd, the British Foreign Office and the Bosnian Serbs. ‘Bombing the Serbs will make things worse’ etc. etc… Meanwhile thousands of innocents die. Likewise Northern Ireland is a product of the Social Democrat school of thought. Another name for it is fudge. Social Democrats are too influenced by the ideology that only groups, and not individuals, have real rights.Hence the ‘appeals’ to the gang who murdered the young postal worker – as if the murder of the young man was a genuine corporate act and not a conspiracy to, and commission of, murder. The ‘community leaders’ don’t want to insult anyone. If you are a murdering gang then you must be granted ‘parity of esteem’ with other groups.

Northern Ireland has been moulded into the Social Democrat narrative whose defining characteristics are mob rule and capitulation to mob rule – aka ‘achieving gender balance’, ‘equality’ and ‘parity of esteem’. The Social Democrat plan is to expand the public sector and use it as a vehicle to provide jobs for their friends and, as is the case in Northern Ireland, those whom they are afraid to confront. They pretend that they are ensuring ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’. This they do by making sure that if it employs thousands of people it doesn’t need at tax payers’ expense then at least the public sector must hire the right quotas of unneeded Catholics, Protestants, women and murderers.

The Social Democrats who sold the pass in Northern Ireland are the Irish political parties, the SDLP, the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, the British Government and former US President, Bill Clinton. The OUP cannot really be blamed. They were outgunned (literally) and they knew it. So when a postal worker is murdered, trades unionists take to the streets, political leaders ‘call for the violence to stop’. Sinn Fein blames the Protestants but nobody seems interested in catching and punishing the criminals.”

January 26th, 2002 | Comments are closed
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