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]

Samizdata quote of the day

[W]hen you pull a gun the implication is that you will use it. All subsequent actions proceed on that basis. When you raise your interactions to that level here in Wisconsin you should bear in mind that Wisconsin is a concealed carry state. You better be prepared to play for the stakes you wager.

– Samizdatista Midwesterner, discussing the implications of coercing people into ‘doing the right thing‘ with threats.

Samizdata quote of the day

Ah “intellectuals” – do you not just love them?

I do – especially with chips.

– Paul Marks

Samizdata quote of the day

No. North Korea is not socialism betrayed. It is socialism done.

Which everyone here knows, but it is worth repeating.

– Brian Micklethwait

Samizdata quote of the day

States love a few Big Businesses but hate lots of small ones… in essence, if there are more people who actually matter in an industry than can fit around a dinner table with the appropriate Government Minister, then clearly that is a sector that cannot be controlled by the state. And that is intolerable.

And of course many Big Businesses also rather like those sort of relationships as a few large competitors with a similar size-to-brain ratio as themselves are much preferred to a whole bunch of innovative small folk who names they don’t even know and who might actually start doing things they did not expect to have to deal with.

– Perry de Havilland

Using a SWAT team as a weapon against investigative journalism

Brian Krebs, a information and network security journalist, a few days ago had a little visit from a SWAT team:

When I opened the door to peel the rest of the tape off, I heard someone yell, “Don’t move! Put your hands in the air.” Glancing up from my squat, I saw a Fairfax County Police officer leaning over the trunk of a squad car, both arms extended and pointing a handgun at me. As I very slowly turned my head to the left, I observed about a half-dozen other squad cars, lights flashing, and more officers pointing firearms in my direction, including a shotgun and a semi-automatic rifle. I was instructed to face the house, back down my front steps and walk backwards into the adjoining parking area, after which point I was handcuffed and walked up to the top of the street.

I informed the responding officers that this was a hoax, and that I’d even warned them in advance of this possibility. In August 2012, I filed a report with Fairfax County Police after receiving non-specific threats. The threats came directly after I wrote about a service called absoboot.com, which is a service that can be hired to knock Web sites offline.

His blog carries the story context. Krebs further notes:

I have seen many young hackers discussing SWATing attacks as equivalent to calling in a bomb threat to get out of taking exams in high school or college. Unfortunately, calling in a bomb threat is nowhere near as dangerous as sending a SWAT team or some equivalent force to raid someone’s residence. This type of individual prank puts peoples’ lives at risk, wastes huge amounts of taxpayer dollars, and draws otherwise scarce resources away from real emergencies. What’s more, there are a lot of folks who will confront armed force with armed force, all with the intention of self-defense.

Statutory murder is an occasional topic of discussion in the information security community, for instance by planting a small quantity of drugs on someone who is travelling to Singapore.

It’s a risk, and it’s only getting easier to exploit with calls for ever more heavy-handed “security“.

Samizdata quote of the day

Sheldon Cooper is a typical very smart guy who thinks that because he is an expert in one field, he therefore knows everything about all other subjects as well. I suspect that he would be quite a fan of a centrally planned society, provided he was the one doing the planning.

– George Mulberry

Samizdata quote of the day

Let’s see – Native Americans were wards of the state for a century, and, until the recent casino boom, were the most impoverished, addiction ridden, unemployed group in society; the family farmer has been the object of endless state programs to save him for most of he 20th century, and his numbers have shrunk from over half the population to under 2%; black people were “adopted” by the modern welfare state about 50 years ago, with the result that the black family has shattered, perhaps irreparably, and the male part is massively either in prison or unemployed, while the female half now has a 75% or so rate of births out of wedlock, and single parent families struggling with poverty lead to homicide from gang activity being the primary cause of death for young black males.

The wars on poverty and drugs continues to decimate the very populations they were supposed to help, the federal education programs have overseen a massive decline in the competency and educational achievements of our youth across the board, and catastrophically poor literacy rates among the minority communities.

The Fed decided to massively aid the housing market, to assist people in buying homes, and within a few decades, the housing and financial markets collapsed into a recession which we are still struggling to climb out of, and return to a semblence of our former economic levels.

And so now, the progressive state under the current progressive regime is going to come to the aid of the struggling middle class?

Yeah, that will work out just fine…

– Samizdata commenter ‘veryretired’

Samizdata quote of the day

An independent Ireland – an interesting idea, so when are they leaving the E.U. then?

Surely rule from Brussels is no more “independence” than rule from London.

– Paul Marks

 

 

Samizdata quote of the day

There is also a difference in the begging aspects of the two traditions.

For Guy Fawkes night, kids would club together and build a realistic looking mannekin and a cart to drag it around on. Then they would accost strangers in the street and request “A penny for the Guy, guv?”.

On Halloween, kids band together, dress up in menacing costumes, invade people’s property, bang on their door and demand tribute with the threat of violence.

So which tradition teaches our kids how best to survive in the twenty-first century.

– Commenter Kevin B

Samizdata quote of the day

The Americans will always do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted

– attributed to Winston Churchill

Samizdata quote of the day

Oh mortal man, is there anything you cannot be made to believe?

– Adam Weishaupt

Samizdata quote of the day

Together with other central banks, the ECB is flooding the market, posing the question not only about how the ECB will get its money back, but also how the excess liquidity created can be absorbed globally. It can’t be solved by pressing a button. If the global economy stabilises, the potential for inflation has grown enormously

Jürgen Stark