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.
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Until recent heavy pressure from the US Congress, Saudi Arabia had a fast track for US Visas. All you had to do was talk to your travel agent and everything was sorted. Of course you had to make other arrangements for your AK47 and explosives, but what the hey?
Meanwhile, Marcelo Tosatti, a top Brazilian Computer Scientist with Connectiva, the current maintainer of the Linux 2.4 Stable kernel and the resident of a free democratic country that doesn’t treat women like excrement, is banned from entry. In his words:
I wouldn’t avoid going into the United States because of the DMCA, but I can’t go there anyway. I went into the United States for business on a B1 tourist visa, by mistake. I’ve been doing it for a long time, I never thought about it. They turned me away, I had to turn around and fly back. Before they always let me into the country on this visa, but after September 11 they’re more paranoid.
It’s not a big deal, with the B2 (business) visa you just have to pay $40. But now I can’t go into America.
Yep, that’s the way to do it. Keep out those pesky well paid computer geeks from friendly democratic countries. You just can’t tell what they might get up to.
It has taken me nearly a year to “get around to” a small task. Reading the list of the dead from the opening shot of the war. It was not a pleasant thing to do. At each scroll I expected to see some name jump out at me.
None did.
Oh, there was one possible, a person with the same name and age as someone I went to Coraopolis High School with. But it is not likely he’d have been in financial services in New York and there was no hit on the name when I searched the old home town.
It doesn’t mean there weren’t any people I knew in the list. I just didn’t spot any. You can’t ever know, Not really. Old girlfriends get married and change their names; people vanish from a “crowd” and a time. Names and faces become indistinct with time. I may yet hear sad news at some gathering of old friends,.but at least the names I most worried about were not there.
My biggest fear was assuaged by a hole in the list of the dead from the New York Fire Department. A hole where a name I knew wasn’t to be found.
It is good to know I will listen and enjoy the craic with Tony DeMarco again as he fiddles away at his weekly Session at Paddy Reilly’s.
I think I’ll just give him a hug next time over.
While googling for the previous posting I ran across a pair of articles which left me open jawed. The first of them should be informative to many as to why Americans think Europeans dislike Americans for their middle class culture. While the reality is euro-trash culture is just as middle class as that of the US, the Continental Elites are, well, more Elite. “People who matter” actually listen to them and nod in sage agreement when they speak.
But before anyone over there gets their back too straignt and proud, read this one. You’ve got your own Holier Than Thou academics, every bit as bad as their euro-brethren.
It’s just that you don’t pay them no never mind.
I was quite pleased to read New Yorkers have as much disdain for the plans as I have.
I don’t know about you, but I found all six of the plans cowardly and inward looking. I was really rather disgusted – and offended – by them. The NY I came to know, while living in the East Village and working in Midtown, would build them bigger and better than they were. Personally I kind of liked the idea of one wag: four tall buildings. One slightly taller… yep, an upraised finger to those fuckers.
Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Paul Marks reports on some interesting developments in the USA… and the politico-legal establishment do not like it one bit!
Our old friend jury nulification is back. For those people who have not heard of jury nulification it is the doctrine that a jury has the right to judge, not just the “facts of the case”, but THE LAW as well. All the Founding Fathers of the United States believed in this doctrine, but it tends to make modern legal folk froth with rage – things like the “war on drugs” might get into some difficulty if jury nulification makes a come back.
This November in South Dakota an amendment to the Constitution of the State will be on the ballot. The amendment will explicitly give a defendent the right to argue against the law (whether in terms of what it makes illegal or in terms of the severity of the sentance) .
Now I am not claiming that the admendment will pass (no doubt the legal establishment will do just about anything to defeat it), but it would be interesting to see “judge made” and “politician made” law mitigated by a real jury.
Of course, I should not assume that a jury would be more libertarian than a judge or a group of politicians in a legislature – but it may put an obstruction in the way of the statists.
Paul Marks
Now whilst I have long known that there are tiny fringe communist parties quixotically tilting at windmills in the United States, until I read an article about so-called September 11th ‘profiteers’ on the Ludwig von Mises Institute website, I had no idea that any of them were in fact in power. Yet it seems that Michigan’s Attorney General Jennifer Granholm not only believes that the State owns the means of production and distribution, but is willing to use the force of state to simply impose by edict (not even by ‘law’) how people dispose of property they have legally purchased for resale.
I strongly recommend this article to anyone who still blithely feels that ‘America is the freest country in the world’ and ‘it couldn’t happen here’ and ‘that sorta thing only goes on in Europe’. Dream on. The enemy is not at the gate enviously looking in, she is sitting in an office in a state capital near you.
Imagine walking into a branch of a fast-food restaurant with a view to buying yourself a quadruple cheeseburger and fries, only to be told by the smiling counter-assistant; “Sorry, sir, we can’t serve you that food because you’re already too fat. Have a nice diet”.
When you protest at this public humiliation you will be told (through a rictus smile) that they are only acting on their legal advice.
This is the scenario that could be coming to a town near you if a certain Mr. Caeser Barber gets his way. Mr.Barber, a resident of New York City, has launched a legal action against several world-famous fast-food restaurant chains who, he claims, have conspired to turn him into a hog-beast.
“He claims the fast food restaurants, where Barber says he used to eat four or five times a week even after suffering a heart attack, did not properly disclose the ingredients of their food and the risks of eating too much.
It is too much to hope that that is a mis-print? Even after suffering a heart-attack this human vacuum-cleaner continued shovelling cheeseburgers and fried chicken down his neck. As somebody who is engaged in a lifelong jihad against flab, I am only too aware that my waistline is entirely my own responsibility but that sort of makes me a marginal minority in an age when one’s woes are expected be laid at someone else’s doorstep.
I could wax angrily about the rank silliness and raging absurdity of this victim-culture but I’d only be treading over well-worn carpet. Besides, Mr.Barber is highly likely to win regardless of my posturings.
Those of us who are familiar with the Holy Scripture of Post-Modernism (Neurosis, Chapter 1, verse 12 – “He that provideth for me shall face a mighty reckoning for his sin”) know only too well how this will play out. Mr.Barber will sit in the Courtroom (in a reinforced chair and with some sort of drip in his arm for theatrical effect – it generally works) and blub about his ruined life. His pudgy hand will wipe away a tear as he recounts how his childhood dreams of competing in the Olympic Decathalon have been cruelly dashed by Colonel Sanders and his monstrous regiment of corporate calorie-peddlers. Mr.Barber will blub, the Judge will blub, the lawyers will blub, the jury will blub and the press reporters will blub. Everyone will have a good old blub about blubber and the good citizens of New York will do their humane duty and compensate this poor man and punish the wicked purveyors of tasty nosh who have actually profited from his misery.
And once the inevitable verdict has been delivered, the flood-gates (or should that be ‘the food-gates’) will be open for everyone who has ever popped a button off their shirt or moved up from dress size 14 to dress size 16. The money may even make it worthwhile. Hey, if you can’t be beautiful, you may as well be rich. I swear that I see a new form of prohibition on the horizon, together with a War on French Fries.
Thanks to Ain’t No Bad Dude Brian Linse for pointing me to this Matt Welch piece at TechCentralStation. Like Matt, I also remember that fascinating Red/Blue November 2000 county by county election map. However as a Libertarian (colour as yet unassigned) I had a relatively neutral perspective on it, whiich is perhaps why a certain feature absolutely jumped out and screamed at me.
The election was not Republican vs Democrat. It was City Folk vs Country Folk. The only exception to his was the democractic strip up the southern Mississippi, an area inhabited by the descendents of black sharecroppers.
The Democrats should be asking themselves: “Why do Country Folk hate us?” Likewise and reversely the Republicans.
I wonder if the divide is bridgeable? City folk may have simply drifted too far into the Disney version of the land and nature to be able to communicate with those who grew up with the real thing.
Perhaps the crossing over effect Matt speaks of was simply the reaction to common danger by un-common people. Perhaps blogging will keep at least a semblance of debate going, but I think the differences run deeper than he fears.
Carla Howell reports they are well ahead of expectations at this early date in the campaign for the rollback of Massachussetts income tax. According to the July 15th Boston Herald, polls already show 37% support for the ballot initiative. There has been virtually no reporting of the measure in the Boston papers to this point, so this level of support before the proposed TV advertising campaign is nothng short of stunning.
Get your warpaint and feathers ready, me lads!
If Carla and Co are reading, may I humbly suggest the Green Dragon for a pint of Guinness? It’s where the Sons Of Liberty met (or on the site thereof) . A very good place from which to begin the Second Boston Tea Party! The management are quite nice. It was our HQ while I was in Boston with an Irish band. They let us stash our gear in their basement.
Dee Moore and Kevin Ryan in front of the Green Dragon with myself behind the camera, Aug 24, 1994 (photo D.Amon)
Quite why so many people write about Nelson Mandela in such a hagiographic manner baffles me. This is a man who is going out of his way to give aid and succor to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the man convicted of murdering 270 people in the air and on the ground when he blew up a Pan Am Jumbo Jet full of people over Lockerbie, Scotland.
One of the angry relatives, who lost their 19 year old daughter, asks:
If Mr Mandela is truly concerned about the conditions Megrahi is suffering, then perhaps he should visit and represent other convicts in Britain’s prisons who are serving their sentence for their crimes in worse conditions than Megrahi will ever have to experience.
Back when I was at school, I reall seeing some people wearing tee-shirts saying ‘Free Nelson Mandela’… Now whilst I abominated the apartheid regime in South Africa, it seemed to me that replacing white tyranny with the ANC was just going to be a case of changing not that country’s tyranny but merely that tyranny’s colour. I also happen to recall seeing other folks, ‘Young Conservatives’, in the 1980’s wearing a tee shirt which said ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’… hmmm…
Perhaps marketing those tee-shirts again might be a nice business opportunity!
Better late than never?
The American Liberty Foundation “Intruder” ad will air on CNN Headline News:
Wednesday July 10 - 10:06am Eastern
9:06am Central
8:06am Mountain
7:06am Pacific
Times may be modified by CNN to within 30 minutes of the scheduled time.
4th of July
Happy Birthday to you…….
Happy Birthday to you……..
Happy Birthday, dear America…..
Happy Birthday to youuuuuuuuuuu…….
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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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