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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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[Editor: We thought this reader’s letter from Lagwolf was worth published ‘as is’ and without comment]
When not holding off the spawn of the “Goat with a Thousand Young” this week (Natwest Bank), I have been contemplating a few things. Most obvious during the post-euphoric cigarette smoke and chat centreing around the Euro, is that of libertarianism and the EU.
Most specifically is it possible for someone who calls themselves a libertarian to be also pro-European Union. For the sake of giving the thoughts borders, let us assume that the EU is an organisation that wishes to end up as single European state called “Europe” and that Prodi was right in his recent musings on the subject. Let us ignore the domestic apologists for the EU who believe that is not heading that way and is merely a collection of like-minded states wishing to co-operate. The seems to be a particularly British disease, I have yet to meet, in all my dealings with continentals, one who does not believe the EU is heading that way. It does not matter whether they are pro or anti or none of the above.
I think it is impossible for someone to be pro-EU and be a libertarian if they in fact know anything about the EU at all. The entire apparatus is anti-freedom and highly statist. Do anyone who reads this honestly believe that they EU will ever keep its meddling hands out of any aspect of its citizens lives? What is most amusing of course is there attitude towards the transfer of labour. On one hand they promise all their citizens to move about and work where he or she wishes to do so, but on the other hand they are striving to make it unattractive to do so. What would be the point, baring love or taste, of someone moving to a fellow EU country if all aspects of financial and professional life are the same. The EU is its lowest common denominator approach wants to make it so no part of the EU is any more attractive to a worker than other part. This will of course please the bureaucrats because they absolutely hate people who do not stay in one place and preferably stay in the same job. Let’s face it, the bureaucrats want to know where you are and what you are doing at all times.
Further the musing on Euro-slavia (there was an alright published under that name a few years back ). You really do not have to look at Yugoslavia to see that there is a great possibility the EU will eventually fall into chaos and civil war. It may last 50 years or even 100 but its internal rifts are just too large to overcome. I have been pondering this for many a year and have written a trilogy of Eurosceptic cyberpunk novels that remain unpublished. I lost any hope of getting them published once I realised all the major players in the publishing game in the UK are owned one way or other by the Germans. At this point it is possible that a publisher of said books could be prosecuted for distributing an anti-EU publication. However, thanks to the glory of this wonderful thing called the internet, the books are available in edited manuscript form from my website (lupusandco.com)*1 in a few days once I re-launch it.
Of course it is quite possible that the recent laws limiting criticism of the EU will ultimately be its undoing. When enough people start getting banged up in gaol for merely criticising one aspect of the EU people, even in the UK might sit up and take notice. It would be a wonder to behold to see Amnesty launching a campaign to save some fisherman or farmers being held in some Belgium jail for burning the EU flag. Is the Euro-wide arrest warrant the first nail in the EU coffin?
Lagwolf
[Editor’s note: *1 = We will report when this site is up and running]
President Bush announced today that they have stopped a terrorist organization that has taken millions and millions away from the American people. Yes! The IRS is finished!
– Jay Leno
Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.
– Lord Acton
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously
– Hubert Humphrey
Noam Chomsky, please take note,
More bad news for the Taliban. Remember how they are promised 72 virgins when they die? Turns out that it’s only one 72-year-old virgin.
– Jay Leno
…the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
– “On Liberty” by John Stuart Mill
Over on Where HipHop and Libertarianism meet, Cal makes a non-trivial observation pertaining to the much derided Cornel West rap album
I heard some of Cornel West’s rap album on CSPAN today. It is awful. He is not rapping to start with. Rapping seems to be a requirement for a rap album.
Yes, that would seem a rather important prerequisite! Still, if an ‘artist’ can win the Turner Prize for Art without producing any art…
It seems that the US media now have a new bugbear as the source of all teen miscreant behaviour: Osama Bin Laden. When a teenager (a loner, naturally) in Tampa crashed his airplane into the Bank of America building, the US media rushed to blame Bin Laden. No where has it been suggested that the usual suspects, heavy metal bands, were at fault. Marilyn Manson, Slipknot and Rob Zombie are all off the hook. American has a new bugbear and he has a towel-wrapped around his head. Osama bin Laden does share one thing with his musician miscreants co-defendants, they all made really crap and disturbing videos.
It seems the media was right one this one, a note was found praising Osama Bin Laden in the wreckage of the airplane, expressing sympathy for him and praising the events of the 9/11.
What is more alarming is that the airplane was just trailed and allowed to crash into the skyscraper. It does seem rather daft to watch the airplane crash and do nothing. We are supposed to be re-assured by the fact that the airplane was followed all the way into the building and that there were two F15s scrambled. Surely the whole point of chasing the plane was to shoot it down? No doubt the Al Queda cells left in the world are studying this event closely. Fortunately the boy stole a pathetic little 2 seat airplane. This is proof, not that it is needed, that the Americans still have not grasped the danger of air based terror.
NB: It is curious to note that some of the leading hard-core left wing bands in the US have kept very quiet since 9/11. There has been virtually not a hard-left peep from Rage Against the Machine, Zack la Rocha, Eddie Vedder or Chumbawumba.
Andrew Ian Dodge
“What Sucks? Statism Sucks!“
I hope that if evil days should come upon our own country, and the last army which a collapsing Empire could interpose between London and the invader were dissolving in rout and ruin, that there would be some, even in these modern days, who would not care to accustom themselves to a new order of things and tamely survive the disaster
– Winston Churchill
Those wanting to delve into the odd references that sometimes appear on Samizdata might wish to point their browser to Shoggoth.net and The H. P. Lovecraft archives. These sites will provide the curious with many lurid tales that will explain the lure of ‘Old Ones’. It might interest the reader to know there are many tales linking the octopoid Old Ones and the discovery of oil. Could Riyadh merely wish to pump its oil out to free those trapped beneath it? Is this why the Saudi’s are so reluctant to cut back their oil production when OPEC wishes them to? The Saudi desert contains many ancient temples said to be dedicated to gods as old as man itself as well as oil. Is their resistance to outsiders hiding something sinister?
Could the Whahabi desire to fund their brand of Islam all over the Arab world been in preparation for the arrival of someone? Many observers say that some in the Saudi Royal family have tentacle-like networks all over the Muslim world. A deliberate hint or merely a blind stumble on the truth.
I think it is time for all good scholars of the al Azif*1 to re-examine the accursed tome. Has Mr Bennett stumbled on an 1000 year old scribes’ error?
Andrew Ian Dodge
Doctoris Metaphysicae: Miskatonic & Anglospherist Cultist
*1 = better known as ‘The Necronomicon’
[Editor’s note: as you might have noticed, we Samizdata folks are endlessly amused by references to horror fiction written in the 1920’s and 1930’s]
Scholar of arcane Anglospheric Cultism, the eminent James C. Bennett of Miskatonic University, has turned up a disturbing fact after translating an ancient text. In a closed session address to Foreign Policy Research Institute, Bennett reported his findings:
H. P. Lovecraft got it garbled: It’s “In his house in Riyadh great Cthulhu lies sleeping.” That’s why the Saudi Whahabis hate all other varieties of Islam. Their form is really Cthulhu-worship.
Naturally the Saudi ambassador dismissed this as:
Obviously just another Zionist smear campaign and quite clearly racism against Middle Eastern people. So what if a few of us smell strongly of fish, commune with extraplanular creatures and have tentacles under our burqas?
Alarming stuff.
[Editor’s note: you need to have read H. P . Lovecraft’s horror stories to have the slightest idea what this means]
When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.
-From “Life In Hell” by Matt Groening
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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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