Samizdata

Most people believe that poor people should be free to trade with each other, and they should be free to buy and sell from us in the West. If people want to buy cheaper goods from abroad, and spend the money they save on food or medicines, they should be free to do so. Saving a few cents when buying a bag of rice makes little difference to you or me, or to the rich elite in poor countries. But to a poor family it could make the difference between eating at night, or going without.

– Andrew Mitchell MP, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, speaking Monday at the Globalisation Institute.

In what bizarre universe is this guy ‘liberal’ while someone like me – who is strongly pro-gay marriage, pro-easy availability of pornography, against the stupid drug war, and stridently anti-authoritarian – is often described as ‘conservative’? If he’s a liberal, I’m a Prada handbag.
– Jackie Danicki

I have little direct evidence about the atrocities in the Spanish civil war. I know that some were committed by the Republicans, and far more (they are still continuing) by the Fascists. But what impressed me then, and has impressed me ever since, is that atrocities are believed in or disbelieved in solely on grounds of political predilection. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence.
– George Orwell

It is my understanding that, in law, First Amendment issues are decided with a preference for the least restrictive alternative. In this context, the PMRC’s demands are the equivalent of treating dandruff by decapitation

– Frank Zappa discussing the Parents Music Resource Center, a pro-censorship group lead by Al Gore’s wife, Tipper Gore