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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“On Friday about a thousand European citizens, representatives of the organisations of civil society and elected representatives at the local, regional, national and European level participated in a human chain around the Rond-point Schuman, right in the heart of Brussels “quartier européen”.
This event was organised by the Union of European Federalists in collaboration with the Intregroup European Constitution within the European Parliament on the occasion of the European Council meeting in Laeken.
There cannot be a strong Europe with weak institutions, and there cannot be strong institutions if their democratic legitimacy is not reinforced, the organisers stated afterwards in a press release.
“If the EU does not manage a qualitative leap of its political system, Europe will be condemned to institutional paralysis – be incapable of governing the Euro, acting on the international scene, efficiently contributing to maintaining world peace, fighting against terrorism and defending Europeans’ security. It will be left to the financial markets and incapable of facing the challenges of globalisation,” the organisers stated.
Among the participants were Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Co-President of the Group of the Greens/EFA in the European Parliament, Virgilio Dastoli, Spokesman for the Permanent Forum for Civil Society, Andrew Duff, MEP (ELDR, UK) and Fernand Herman, President of the U.E.F.-Belgium, Jo Leinen, MEP (PSE, D) and President of the Union of European Federalists, Cecilia Malmström, MEP (ELDR)”
The comrades are taking to the streets! From every slum and factory the oppressed of the earth are pouring forth onto the blood-spattered cobbles of Belgium and putting up the barricades. This is revolution and the air is thick with popular slogans such as:
“If the EU does not manage a qualitative leap of its political system, Europe will be condemned to institutional paralysis”
How cleverly it rolls off the tongue and sears into the heart of every visionary as they storm the steps of the Winter Palace.
Bureaucrats, lobbyists, statisticians and office-holders unite! You have nothing to lose but your weekly column in the departmental newletter
“WHAT TO WE WANT?”
“MORE FOOD SAFETY LAWS”
“WHEN DO WE WANT THEM?”
“NOW!”
The European Union (all please stand up and salute) has ‘declared war’ on junk mail.
Legislation will be enacted within the next 12 months to outlaw unsolicited e-mails, letters and phone-calls which, according to Grand European Panjandrum for Consumer Protection ‘costs EU businesses about 9.6 billion Euros (about 40 pence) per year’.
So there we have it, boys and girls. The New World Order is taking shape before our very eyes: the US is going to war on Bin Laden and the EU is going to war on binned letters.
A big meeting of the 15 EU heads of state in Laeken has ended today in a Billy Wilder-style farce of childish squabbling about who gets which brand, spanking new taxpayer-funded lavish office in Brussels. Just how precursive is this going to prove, I wonder?
The meeting itself was supposed to address the problem boldly identified by Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt that the ‘EU is out of touch with the people’. (No kidding, Guy??!!) Cue, huge conflab in Laeken to discuss ways in which the EU ‘can be made to be more relevent to people’s lives’ (or similar).
Of course, what all this euphemistic twaddle translates into is the bold fact that nobody loves the Eurocrats and the Eurocrats know it. They know it and don’t like it because, like all potentates they require not just our lives but our hearts and minds as well. Without the latter they can never quite feel secure. So they want us to love them, to hang their pictures on our walls, to quote their speeches and fill our bookshelves with their ghosted biographies. That way we need them, they need us, we’re all in this together and we march forward to a happy fEUture
But it won’t happen. Governments, all governments, have been a stick-and-carrot operation but the EU has no carrots and using the stick will bring them down more quickly than us. They can still bully and threaten but what precious little ability our political masters had to inspire loyalty or devotion bit the dust long ago and that kind of thing is impossible to resurrect. They can always try the singles columns
“German technocrat, 53, cuddly and sincere. Hobbies include drafting pointless laws and constructing vast bureaucracies. Seeks willing and compliant polity for mutual dependence leading to full union”
More likely though they will have left Laeken with instructions to their minions to draw up a convoluted brobdignanian set of regulations designed to ‘bring the people closer to the EU’. Expect them to be trumpeted joyously through the usual channels within a month or two – and then promptly forgotten about
The EU is now like some old dowager empress, seized with money and power but repulsive and unloved. How long can they live without it until they die of a collective broken heart?
On the evening of September 23rd 1999, Harry Stanley, a 46 year old Grandfather, was returning to his home in Hackney, East London. He had spent the afternoon at his brother’s house helping him to repair a coffee table
Harry took one of the table legs home with him to work on. He wrapped it up in a plastic bag
On the way home, he stopped off at a pub for a drink. As he left one of the other patrons rang the police and reported ‘an Irishman carrying a shotgun’. (Harry was actually Scottish). The oblivious Harry continued on his journey home until he was some 50 yards from his front door when two policeman from the SO19 Armed Response Unit opened fire on him. One bullet hit Harry in the temple and he died instantly
Today, after a 12 month long enquiry, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that the police officers who carried out the shooting acted in ‘reasonable self-defence’ and would not face any charges
In the absence of a private prosecution by the Stanley family, we will never know quite what occured on that evening and why Harry is dead as police and witness statements and reports will remain filed away in the CPS cabinets. However, one doesn’t need to be privvy to these documents to ask some pertinent questions about why Harry Stanley was so ruthlessly gunned down outside his home
Harry was neither a terrorist nor a criminal and it seems highly unlikely that he would not have responded to some shouted warning. It seems even less likely that, confronted with the police, he would have tried to run or fight it out given that he was recovering from surgery for cancer. Is it all plausible that, acting on an unsubstantiated allegation, armed officers made a decision not to take any chances and simply executed him?
We shall never know for the officers in question will not stand trial. What should stand trial though is the policy of victim disarmerment which has left Britain with a duopoly of fire-power between state agents and criminals. If you’re not one you must be the other and holding something that could possibly be interpreted as a weapon gives said state agents a carte blanche to rub you out and call it ‘self-defence’. After all, as far as they are concerned you must be a dangerous criminal, right
The British police have advertised the fact that anyone found in a public place with a gun or something that looks like a gun will be met with lethal force. But such is the depth of anti-gun hysteria that this policy of extra-judicial execution is not only tolerated but demanded and will clearly be acted upon in the event of rumour/allegation/sniff/hint/outright lie. No chances are to be taken and no questions are to be asked
For us in Britain it is now too late to change this state of affairs but for those Americans reading this please remember Harry Stanley when the victim-disarmers tell you that guns are dangerous. Tell them that over here in London, table-legs can get us killed by the very people we pay to protect us
Daily Life for Al-Qaeda
MEMORANDUM
Monday, October 22, 2001 @ 8:17am
FROM: Bin Laden, Osama
TO: All Cavemates
RE: The Cave
Hi guys.
We’ve all be putting in long hours lately but we’ve really come together as a group and I love that. Big thanks to Omar for putting up the poster that says “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team'” as well as the one that says “Hang in there baby.” That cat is hilarious.
However, while we are fighting a jihad, we can’t forget to take care of the cave. Frankly, I have a few concerns.
First of all, while it’s good to be concerned about cruise missiles, we should be even more concerned about the scorpions in our cave. Hey, you don’t want to be stung and neither do I, so we need to sweep the cave daily. I’ve posted a sign-up sheet at the main cave opening.
Second, it’s not often I make a video address, but when I do I’m trying to scare the most powerful country on earth, okay? That means that while we’re taping,please don’t ride your razor scooters in the background … just while we’re taping. Thanks.
Third point, and this is a touchy one. As you know, by edict, we’re not supposed to shave our beards. But I need everyone to just think hygiene, especially after mealtime. We’re all in this together.
Fourth, food. I bought a box of Cheez-Its recently and clearly wrote “Osama” on the front and put it on the top shelf. Today my Cheez-Its were gone. Consideration, that’s all I’m saying.
Finally, we’ve heard that there may be American soldiers in disguise trying to infiltrate our ranks. I want to set up patrols to look for them. The first patrol will be Omar, Muhammed, Abdul, Akbar and Richard.
Love you lots.
Osama.
From Asia Times
From German literature Nobel laureate Guenter Grass to Swedish bestselling mystery novel author Henning Mankell, from conscience-stricken German social democrats to politically clueless French socialists, it’s all clear as daylight: The arrogant new imperialist Americans brought September 11 upon themselves; now they are arrogantly and callously bombing the hell out of one of the world’s poorest nations, ignorantly flailing about rogue-elephant style, crushing friend and foe, presumed-guilty and innocent alike. Here’s how Mankell, speaking for – ahh so many of his co-thinkers – put it: “My first thought was, oh what a horrible story. But the next thought was: I’m not surprised … I’ve seen it coming. The gap between rich and poor for many years has been growing ever larger. The poor have nothing to lose. The United States, I’m afraid, has acted arrogantly in many respects … We have to solve the problem of poverty. We have to tackle the AIDS problem. And we must strengthen the emancipation of women …”
There are variations to the theme: The Palestinians must be given their own state; globalism must be reined in; the root causes of terrorism must be addressed; indiscriminate bombing of a poverty-stricken country will only reinforce terrorist sentiments and support; terror as such is an abstraction – fighting it an impossible dilemma.
There are truths and truisms in the war critics’ and opponents’ complaints and laments. But for the better part of the less left-sophisticated populace of Western and Asian nations alike (us included), such sophistry holds little water. Mass murder was committed on September 11; 5,000 people died. There is simply no way that can or will be excused or “explained” away. To the political misfortune of leftists, greens, anti-globalists, what have you, overwhelming popular majorities want justice to be done and punishment exacted. And to their greater political misfortune, that popular sentiment will prove not merely a temporary reaction but is here to stay, it is making a profound impact on the fortunes of political leaders, and it will soon make large impacts at ballot boxes.
In the US, that’s an open and shut case. Question the manner in which President George W Bush expresses himself; but make no mistake about the support for his policies and leadership team and the confidence Americans have in the way conservatives from New York Mayor Rudi Giuliani to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have conducted themselves and conducted policy over the past two months. The very notion that they are conservatives and hence might only represent the views of one portion of the political spectrum has disappeared. What they have said and done is seen as right and just and simply representing common sense. Most of those once to the left of them have joined them. The 50:50 Bush-Gore political divide of a year ago is no more.
Similarly in Europe, there has been a political seachange. Conservative French President Jacques Chirac who politically had his back against the wall earlier this year has made a dramatic comeback. Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin has barely been heard from. Conservative German social-democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder enjoys the highest approval ratings of his three-year tenure; leftist critics in his own party and the Greens have found no voice or cause to oppose him. The once unimaginable, that a leading Green Party politician, parliamentary defense expert Angelika Beer, now regards the deployment of ground forces in Afghanistan as necessary, now causes barely a political ripple. The center-right government of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, shaky at home and once seen as a potential political menace Europe-wide, is firmly entrenched in power.
In Asia, the issue of Islam, that nations such as Indonesia and Malaysia and, of course, Pakistan have large Muslim majorities, tends to blur political perspectives. But radical Islamism, while politically noisy, is in fact on the retreat and seen as a threat to be combatted, not appeased. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf made it a point to stop over in Turkey on his way to Europe and the US and the point will not be lost on his political friends and foes: Musharraf, educated in Turkey early in his life, has always regarded Turkish secularizer and modernizer Kemal Ataturk as the historical figure to emulate.
The global political landscape has changed vastly since September 11 and is continuing to change rapidly. It will now remain to be seen to what extent and how fast new political allegiances and strategic alliances will be able to transform openings and opportunities for construction and implementation of more rational political and economic policies into permanent realities. But for the first time since the end of the Cold War, that chance now realistically exists. The US, main target of the terrorists and their leftists sympathizers and “explainers”, will play a lead role in this transformation. However, the political constellations world-wide are now such that much of the US agenda has broad-based support rather than being seen as an imposition. Loose talk of a “new imperialism” is off the mark; it crucially ignores new realities and political forces.
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David comments:
I must confess that, after reading this, I had mixed emotions; I wavered between ecstatically happy and delirious with glee. Apart from the overwhelming satisfaction of the anti-everything mob getting it’s comeuppance there is the added delicious irony that the coup de grace has been delivered by one of their own – for what is Bin Laden except a student marxist with a ‘schmatter’ on his bonce? And to think of all the years we’ve spent arguing passionately the case for freedom and individuality…But who cares? We’ve won. Let the bells peal and pretty girls dance in the streets for we can declare Victory over Communism. Let’s get demobbed and beat our swords into nails which we can use to hammer into the coffins of the woodstockers, the flat-earthers and the 68 generation (who cares if they’re still breathing?)
But, lo soft and wait. Is this victory? Have we won? I mean, really. Look around you, comrades, for another better armed, better trained and better fed foe stalks the earth in search of tribunes to humble. I’m talking about the big NWO corporatist bugga-boo that lived and breathed fire long before Bin Laden popped his fat-lips over the parapet of history. The bugga-boo said that civil-liberties + tax havens = drugs. Now the bugga-boo says that civil-liberties + tax havens = terrorism and won’t there be oh so many crinkley mouths when this is proven, tragically, to be right?
Victory it may be but it is a victory of sorts; victory after a fashion. This is not Virginia in 1776, it is Poland in 1945
Alright, I dramatize. But on this rattling train of years those of us who have ‘Galt’s Gulch’ stamped as the destination on our tickets have always known that it lies at the very end of the line. Maybe. Next stop, Singapore?
(a right winger’s reaction to Perry’s “Giving libertarianism a left hook” article)
I must confess that this idea of a ‘left hook’ for libertarianism is one that I find simultaneously intruiging and implausible
Intellectually I know that Perry makes a very good case when he places traditional ‘left’ and ‘right’ ideas within meta-contexts that, to a large degree, are no long relevant or useful
Certainly arguments about civil liberties generally do, and have for some time, found a more sympathetic audience among Guardianistas than Daily Mailers but, speaking from personal experience, when I have tried to link these to economic liberty, I have run into a veritable Berlin Wall of denial and rejection
I appreciate however, that the term ‘left’ is not monolithic and embraces people with all manner of varying worldviews and epistomolgies and, whilst we may be able to reach some, many (if not most) will be horrified by our vision of a more prosperous, dynamic, healthier and innovative world because those things are poison to them. The essence of the marxist project is deeply anti-life and anti-human and it’s adherents first and last ambitions are destruction not creativity. A better world is the antithesis of their unstated aims
However, I am prepared to acknowledge that I am carrying more baggage then a Spanish hotel porter. My own roots lie in the Conservative Right and my fear and hatred of socialism is so instinctive and visceral that it’s rather akin to a form of arachnophobia. If I see a leftist scuttling across the carpet I cannot help but to run out of the room screaming “kill it, kill it. Hit it with a slipper and kill it”
Personally speaking it is going to take a great deal of patient aversion therapy in order to let one of them crawl over my arm
Still, I would be foolish to rule this out entirely purely because I have grown terminally weary of trying to reason my socks off with the inbred, pin-striped merchant bankers (in every sense of the term) who infest Conservative Central Office these days
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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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