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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Though the pictures seem pretty, as a Christian, I probably would not care for the new book by Gerhard Haderer, an Austrian cartoonist. He depicts Christ as a “binge-drinking friend of Jimi Hendrix and naked surfer high on cannabis.” What daring iconoclasm! In 1905, maybe. In 2005, apart from six nonagerian nuns living in enclosed orders and a few hobby-protesters, nobody gives a monkeys.
Yesterday if anyone had made the slightest suggestion that the furore that results from writing such a book qualified a man to be regarded as some sort of martyr for free speech, I’d have retorted that the “furore” had probably been budgeted for to the last euro by the publishers. “Regrettably, Herr Haderer, the market for Christian outrage is not what it was, and we cannot agree to your suggested advance.” Or I’d have suggested that if he wants to play martyr he could try it with the Muslims, who are more likely to enter into the spirit of the game.
But by the holy bowels of Jimi Hendrix, the poor little poseur really is in danger of arrest. And do you know why? Because of the European arrest warrant, that’s why. An Austrian cartoonist and writer faces extradition to Greece (Greece: why does that not surprise me?) for something he wrote in Austria. I assume that Austria has no law, or dead-letter law, against blasphemy. So he wrote something that was legal in Austria but not in Greece, and now he faces extradition to Greece. He did not even know his wretched book had been published in Greece.
I found this via Public Interest. Peter Briffa points out that when this law was introduced much was said by its sponsors about extraditing foreign criminals to Britain … and very little about the extradition of British people to foreign countries for “crimes” that might well not be crimes at all in Britain.
Perhaps some legally knowledgeable reader can tell me if there is anything at all to stop this happening to, for instance, a British Samizdata contributor, if the authorities in some foreign capital should take a dislike to something he or she had written.
If you don’t like what the label on your clothes says – the size or the brand name – cut it off.
(From a beauty book or a women’s magazine, I forget which. Sublime wisdom, whatever the source.)
In a detailed post about about the Identity Cards Bill Chris Lightfoot makes this point:
…Hilariously, they haven’t even fixed s.12(4) in which
The things that an individual may be required to do under subsection (3) are–
(a) to attend at a specified place and time; […]
— this is the same as in the draft, and they haven’t even bothered to add `reasonable’ as many responses to the consultation suggested. Presumably if some bored Crapita employee does send out a notice of the form,
You are required to attend the summit of Mt. Snowdon at 0300h tomorrow morning so that we can take your fingerprints; failure to attend will be punished by a civil penalty of £1,000. Do not pass `go’.
the courts will eventually tell him to go fuck himself, but we have to wait to find out.
I am happy and relieved by the result of the US election. I thank those who campaigned, volunteered or just plain voted to keep the right man at the helm.
All the same, I take literally the statement that democracy is the least worst form of government.
Many here argue that we do not need any government at all. It is not going away any time soon, though. Most anarchists and minarchists will concede that modern liberal democracy is fertile ground compared to the despotic wasteland that makes up most of history, even if it is not yet a garden of libertarian delights.
I figured out as a child that the least wonderful aspect of a modern liberal democracy is that it lets the majority decide: the tyranny of the majority is to be feared. Votes are a mechanism to deal with the fact that some administrative variables affecting many people (speed limits, for instance, or surrenders) must be set at a predictable value for a recognisable group, or bad stuff happens.
I also figured out as a child that the good soul of a liberal democracy, the thing that has made us the most fortunate human beings in history, is the idea that every individual matters. None of us can be made to stop mattering because we look wrong or do wrong. That’s why every individual has certain rights that cannot be…
…OK, OK, I had better stop myself before I re-hash the Declaration of Independence in much inferior prose. You know all this. You can probably cite references. Please do!
It is a pity it ever has to come to voting. Votes by definition make some people sad. Yet we go on and on about majorities and mandates and elections and other things to do with the regrettable majoritarian aspects of our system. We talk much less about how the only reason that counting people matters is that people count. And, as we on this blog know, it is a constant struggle to defend individual rights against the majority.
I just wondered, is the reason that we so exalt the rule of the majority over the more fundamental principle of equality before the law simply because we picked the wrong ruddy name for our system of government? Everybody knows that we don’t mean by democracy what the Greeks meant by it. We don’t have ostracism. We don’t have slavery. These prohibitions are not mere differences of custom but integral to the system. The difference between our ‘democracy’ and theirs is precisely that we believe in inalienable rights and equality under the law. So whose bleedin’ stupid idea was it to call our system the Greek word for “people-rule?” It was sure to give folk the wrong idea. If we had just called it isonomy instead we would all be a lot better off.
A series of posts on Crooked Timber criticise pro-Iraq war libertarians, mentioning this blog in particular. The posts (and still more the comments) differ in their degree of charitability to our position but the general thrust is ‘… can we think of a new name for libertarians who think it’s a good idea to invade other countries and overthrow their governments, like maybe “shmibertarians”?’
Apologies to those who have heard me saying this before.
It is all much simpler than you think.
When I see my house burning down I do not wait for the evolution of private fire brigades.
One of my favourite scenes from the funniest ever Carry On film, Carry On Up The Khyber, comes right at the end when the villanous Khazi of Khalabar (Kenneth Williams) discourteously attacks the Residence while Sir Sidney Ruff-Diamond (Sid James, of course) and his good lady wife (Joan Sims) are having a formal dinner.
In a gloriously demented show of stiff-upper-lippery the assembled diners refuse to admit that anything is happening. The musicians play on even while the ceiling falls in and the walls crumble. Change our ways because some dashed foreigners are set to slaughter us? By Gad, Sir, next you’ll be asking us to pass the port to the right!
Robert Fisk and the other staff of the Independent probably do not often think of themselves as Sons of the Empire. But I was rather struck by the headline an unknown sub-editor gave Fisk’s front-page Independent article yesterday. The article commemorated the third anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 – when the crumbling walls and the slaughter were, alas, real rather than part of a movie. The headline said: “We should not have allowed 19 murderers to change our world.”*
* = full story archives here.
It will be found from the Foreign Prints, which from time to time, as Occaſion offers, will be mention’d in this Paper, that the Author has taken Care to be duly furnith’d with all that comes from Abroad in any Language. And for an Aſſurance that he will not, under Pretence of having Private Intelligence, impoſe any Additions of feign’d Circumſtances to an Action, but give his Extracts fairly and Impartially ; at the beginning of each Article he will quote the Foreign Paper from whence ’tis taken, that the Publick, ſeeing from what Country a piece of News comes with the Allowance of that Government, may be better able to Judge of the Credibility and Fairneſs of the Relation
– from the The Daily Courant of March 11, 1702. The Courant was probably the world’s first daily newspaper.
Bloggers might not like the next bit:
Nor will he take upon him to give any Comments or Conjectures of his own, but will relate only Matter of Fact ; suppoſing other People to have Senſe enough to make Reflections for themſelves.
They are not artefacts, they are not animals, they are not a tourist attraction, they are people. They do not belong where animals do, they belong in settlements, villages, towns and cities like you and me.
– Sydney Tshepiso Pilane
This is an account of my wildly fluctuating sympathies as I gradually found out more about a legal case launched by the Bushmen of Botswana.
I first saw the story on Ceefax. It’s disappeared from there, so I can not quote, but I got the impression that the Bushmen had been evicted from the Kalahari game reserve and that the (possibly dishonest) reason the Bostwana government had given for evicting them was that it could not afford to provide services. Riiight. I powered up for Welfare Rant #2 on the way that welfare systems start by offering their clients services and end by making the ‘services’ compulsory and demanding that people live their lives in such a way as to allow the government to fulfil its side of the forced exchange with minimum inconvenience.
Then I thought, not so fast, Natalie. → Continue reading: Kalahari Bushmen, New Age Travellers and the paradoxes of state welfare.
I have a problem with Rowan Atkinson. He only has to open his mouth to set me off laughing. Bob.
Maybe we should start taking him seriously. Every few years Mr Blunkett takes it into his head to publicly demonstrate that he is not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican, by making a new law against incitement to religious hatred and Mr Atkinson stands up to argue against him. This is what happened in 2001 and that is what happened again the other day in the pages of the Times, and on Radio 4’s Today programme where I heard him, waiting for a joke that never came.
The joke is indeed a long time coming. Freedom of speech in this country did not merely arise during a period of violent religious divisions but because those divisions were insurmountable by any means other than allowing liberty for all.
We at Samizdata are always happy to awe. When the occasion merits we also do our best to agitate, derange and discommode.
Basically the only tenable defence against our collective awesomenosity is to flatter our socks off. What a very sweet thing to say, Mr Goldberg, and me likey you fine.
“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the Air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
– Memo composed by General Eisenhower, 5 June 1944.
Today, we commemorate one the most glorious chapters of German arms: the lightning-fast response of 21 Panzer Division to Eisenhower’s overconfident thrust, a response that rolled up the British left flank and culminated in the annihilation of the British and American invaders.
How appropriate it is that, lacking the the confidence in race-destiny that comes so naturally to the Germanic peoples, the Allied commander had actually composed his memo taking responsibility for failure beforehand!
Despite the somewhat tense international situation, the commemorative ceremonies have proceeded with our customary German precision. It is certainly a sign of how the bitter memories associated with the dawning of the atomic age over Hamburg, Smolensk and Manchester all those years ago have faded that for the first time we have welcomed to our remembrance the President of France, speaking from Vichy by audio-visual link, and the General Secretary of the British Communist party speaking from London. Many have seen in this technical and political triumph a sign of a possible convergence between the two great systems, National Socialism and Communism, that currently dominate our world.
I just found out about the latest Al-Qaeda beheading. I haven’t seen the video. Probably I never will.
I thought of Daniel Pearl. I wondered how and when the murdered man’s family learned of the manner of their son’s death. I wondered if he himself knew what was about to happen, as Fabrizio Quattrocchi did.
And such is the unalterably tactical nature of the human mind that mixed in with all that I thought:
Thanks for the reminder, Hellspawn. No thanks for the killing; we’ve had enough of that, but thanks for the reminder. In all this agonized talk about what we are, we were beginning to forget what you are. What you stand for.
What your pictures show.
Andrew Sullivan thought the same way, evidently:
And they [Al-Qaeda] are as stupid as they are evil. Iraqis now have contrasting images. Do they want to be run by people who cut innocent people’s throats at will or by people who have removed a dictator and are investigating unethical abuse of prison inmates? Zarqawi has now done something for our morale as well as his. He has reminded us of the real enemy; and he has reminded the Iraqis. One simple question: will CNN now show these video stills?
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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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