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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This is an article from the Guardian:
“The Angel of Death is stalking the streets and leafy suburbs of Maryland in the form of an unknown and, thus far, unseen sniper who has seemingly murdered up to six people in cold blood and for no apparent motive.
The fear of sudden death hangs like a shroud over the entire State under which its hapless and anxious citizens scurry from cover to cover lest they be the sniper’s next victim. This is the real America; rheumy-eyed, mistrustful and dangerous. A place where any passing stranger could be a stone-cold killer and where a violent and bloody death waits just around the next turning for it’s vulnerable and haunted citizens.
While the police search frantically to find the elusive marksman before he claims his next victim, maybe they should pause to consider whether they will ever really bring the guilty party to justice. For, regardless of who’s finger is actually pulling the trigger, the real culprit here is America itself.
Despite the increasingly horrific death toll, this is a nation which still clings rabidly to the absurd and outdated notion of allowing private citizens to own firearms. The simple fact that guns kill people is so banal in its obvious truth that it should not need restating anywhere; except that is, among the Republicans and their gun-lobby puppet-masters who will baulk at the merest suggestion of sensible regulation lest it blow a big hole in their profits. In the meantime, we Europeans can only scratch our bemused and wiser heads and wonder how many more painful lessons will have to be endured before America’s red-necked boys get their toys taken away from them.
But the gun-toting culture is only partially to blame because, in order to be truly lethal, it has to be combined with a reckless, inhuman cowboy capitalism with its injunction to the devil to take the hindmost and let the weak and frail die where they fall. In the land where the Dollar is King, the citizens are merely dispensable serfs providing nothing more than an opportunity cost to be measured on the bottom line against a cardboard cut-out target and a magazine full of dum-dum rounds. In America, breakfast is cheap but so is life.
For us on the safe side of the Atlantic, we can but give thanks for a more progressive political leadership that recognises these squalid dangers and defends us against their encroachment. Not so the average American who is left to twist in the pitiless wind while their elected officials busy themselves with the more lucrative task of propping up their nations corporate interests. When democracy can be trumped by chicanery, as in the Florida elections re-count, good faith lies bleeding. When you witness your own government flaunt the will of the international community, as expressed by Kyoto and the International Criminal Court, is it any wonder your dashed hopes and routed expectations may express themselves as murderous fury? If you hold democratic institutions up to contempt it is but a short step to holding life itself in contempt.
Pray that the Maryland police find this trigger-man quickly and let their be no more tragic victims. But pray also that the bereaved seek true justice by demanding that the murders of their loved ones be added to ever-growing list of crimes that must be laid at the door of George W. Bush”
Alright, I lied. This article did not appear in the Guardian. But it probably will at some point. Who knows, maybe I’ll send it in as copy.
Sunday’s news reported an amazing turn in the upcoming US New Jersey elections. While the subject is of scant interest to the majority of our readers, the sheer audacity of the gambit deserves at least a passing note.
The issue at hand is the New Jersey Senate race between Democrat (Liberal; Socialist) incumbent Robert Torricelli and Republican (Conservative; Capitalist) challenger Doug Forrester. In June, Torricelli had a commanding 14% lead and expected an easy victory. Then one of his 1996 campaign contributors was convicted of making illegal contributions and sentenced to 18 months in jail. Torricelli apologized for failing to report some campaign gifts, was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee and everyone expected the issue to fade away into the politics as usual category.
But it didn’t. Forrester kept the issue alive, and the results of the last poll showed that people were tired of politics as usual. Torricelli had dropped from 14 points ahead to 14 points behind.
After recovering from their apoplexy, the Democratic Party decided something had to be done. Torricelli obligingly fell on his sword and, in an emotional farewell on Sunday, withdrew from the running 35 days before the election.
Now for the audacious bit. The Democrats appointed Frank Pallone to take his place and are currently trying to get him on the ballot despite the election law that clearly states all nominees must be on the ballot 48 days before the election. As a handy precedent, a couple years back in Missouri, Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash a few weeks before the election and they couldn’t replace him. That the NJ Democrats seek to swap in a pinch hitter simply because polls suggest their original candidate would have lost demonstrates their disregard for the entire election process. It is an attitude displayed all too often by politicians everywhere.
What does it all mean? Torricelli fell from grace because he flaunted the election laws. The Democrats current bait and switch tactics show they too put self-interest ahead of the law. It also shows they’re still playing politics as usual.
Hopefully, the voters will teach them a new set of rules. Stay tuned.
Paul Marks has a question for the blogosphere
Some weeks ago I bought a copy of the American journal Liberty (the September edition). I bought the publication because it had an interesting section on State and local taxes in the United States (written by R.W. Bradford).
On reading the section I found various minor errors (which I will not bore you all with), but one feature of the section keeps tormenting me.
Mr Bradford makes a major point of families in Connecticut paying over a fifth of their incomes in State and local taxes (with the biggest bite coming from property taxes).
Is this really true? Do families in Connecticut really lose more than a fifth of their income (regardless of whether the family income is 25,000 dollars or 150,000 dollars – or anything in between), to the various State and local taxes (income tax, sales tax, property tax and so on).
You see Connecticut is a high income State (so the Feds income tax takes a big chunk of Connecticut incomes). If the State and local governments take more than 20% of people’s incomes (in one way or another) and the Feds take another large junk (in Social Security tax, Income Tax and so on) then people in Connecticut are rather more harshly taxed than people in Britain.
Paul Marks
Kay Pirello from the Carla Howell team has asked for assistance from all and sundry:
NECN informed us that, although WPI invited Carla Howell to be in the gubernatorial debate on October 1st, and although she accepted their invitation, the media consortium covering the debate is now waffling and claiming the decision is up in the air.
Please contact the below people at the bottom of this email ASAP and urge them to stand by WPI’s ecision to include Carla Howell.
Below is a copy of the letter Carla Howell faxed to each of them earlier today.
If they exclude Carla Howell from this debate it will cause Carla Howell for Governor and Carla owell’s Ballot Question 1 grave damages.
Please CALL RIGHT NOW to URGE them to include Carla Howell!
Then any you can’t reach, please email your own personal message to them.
Thank you!
You might want to tell them you read it on a weblog based in Belfast, Northern Ireland – the following being Boston media and all!
→ Continue reading: Urgent! Carla Howell needs you to Phone and Email Right Now!
Carla Howell seems to have made a major breakthrough. She will be in the Massachusetts Governor’s Debate. It’s going to be awfully hard to ignore her after this (from her press release):
“Carla Howell is in the October 1 Governor’s Debate. ABC, CBS, NBC, and New England Cable News TV. The Boston Globe. The Boston Herald. The Worcester Telegram & Gazette. It will be simulcast on the internet. Moderated by CNN’s Judy Woodruff. Shannon O’Brien, the Democratic nominee for Governor, and Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for Governor, will both debate Carla Howell face-to-face.”
After she’s done with Boston Tea Party II, could we talk her into throwing one over here too?
I finally found the right Microsoft compatible audio codec for Linux and have watched the video of Netanyahu’s press conference which I discussed yesterday.
I must admit I am impressed. I’d never before got the measure of the man. If your opinions of him, like mine, were formed by watching the BBC or other evening news, I highly recommend you take the time to listen. He is a very strong defender of Freedom of Speech.
I think he should get his own blog. He’d fit in nicely with the rest of us.
Glenn Reynolds links to an an article on the anti-jewish riots at Concordia University in Canada. The Board of Governors are apparently gutless wonders who don’t remember World War II. They have not yet (to my knowledge) punished the rioters for attempting physical harm against the persons of elderly holocaust survivors.
I don’t have Windows here (I won’t either!) so I can’t actually view this video myself. Regardless, I’ve heard enough descriptions of the incident to wish I had been there just to kick some Nazi arse like my daddy’s generation did. They may call themselves Palestinian sympathizers: but if it looks like a Nazi and acts like a Nazi… perhaps it is a Nazi. After all, Mein Kampf has been selling briskly in the Middle East…
Am I mad? You bet. Anyone who tries this kind of crap in my presence, will get hurt.
Not even Fox News can bring itself to cover elections properly. It seems rather silly on their part to cover the Massachusetts gubernatorial race without mentioning Libertarian Candidate Carla Howell.
They just never learn.
I have finally, at last, got my all-you-can-eat-at-no-extra-cost adsl www connection, and am finally free to go awandering and not be frightened of getting too interested.
The best story I have found so far on my travels has been this from Asparagirl last Thursday, about a ship with a dirty bomb on board, or maybe just some mildly radioactive ceramic tiles, ready to destroy New York on the anniversary of you know what, or maybe just add some tiles to it. Don’t miss the comments. (And I do love comments. Where would Samizdata have been on 9/11/02 without them?)
My take is: it was perhaps a fuss about nothing, but it was still a fuss, and it is depressing to me – as it was to Asparagirl – how completely governments can damp down media reports of such things, simply on account of the sheer volume of news that governments themselves generate and can accordingly threaten, selectively, to withhold.
Asparagirl noted that the big story they did go with that day was a washed-up half-dead whale. Said she scornfully: “Whoop-dee-doo.” Said one of her commenters, elbowing his way past conspiracy buffs, conspiracy phobes and bomb-making experts: “You’ve obviously never been downwind of a dead whale. It’s news, lemme tell you.”
I have watched the documentary filmed by two french brothers this evening… and wish to make it clear they are a total exception to the below. They shared the danger of their new found friends in the NYFD, survived the WTC collapse side by side with them and throughout told an honest story.
I only wish the world of the media had more Men like them.
Why do you repeat, time after time, that we are terrorized? We are not. As a people we grieve our dead; we wish life for ourselves and our loved ones, but we are not “terrorized”. Is it perhaps your own coping mechanism, your own cowardice?
Why do you repeat, time after time, that we feel vulnerable? We have always known that. Have you already forgotten all but the youngest adults among us grew up knowing holocaust was 15 minutes away, every minute, every day, every year of our lives? Is it perhaps a realization that you too could die that makes you cry out your cowardice in our name?
Why do you repeat, time after time, that we have lost our innocence? We have long known and lived with the nightmare that some day an American city would see a mushroom cloud in its’ center. However terrible and unexpected the events we have survived, they are as nothing to what we understand we will have to survive and overcome in the future. Is it perhaps your own ignorance or failure to believe the reality of those risks that make you appear as cowards in our eyes?
Why do you repeat, time after time, that we are uncertain about our future? We are not. We will overcome any attack, no matter how deadly, and we will have the resolve to punish those responsible, to hunt them down to the ends of the Earth and kill or imprison them, even if they are crippled old men by the time we find them. Is it your own short attention span that leaves you incapable of understanding that others might take on a task of decades? Is it another sign of your lack of moral fiber and perserverence?
We are none of the things you say in our name. It is your own mirrored image you speak and write of, not ours. Do not speak for me. I am an American; I am proud of that fact; I grieve for my dead and I feel pride in the bravery and spirit and individualism shown by our heroes of that day… but I do not cower in fear and neither do my fellow countrymen.
Silence your fear-palpitated hearts and palsied hands. Listen to our voice. Listen to our spirit and share our strength….but never again tell us we are afraid or uncertain.
I flew home from London today. The fact I accepted this for a travel date is one tiny finger of defiance to those who misunderstood Americans so badly. I am not going to say a great deal as much is being said by those with far more right than I to say it. Today we remember. Today we honour. Today we come together and reiterate just how undefeatable is the spirit of our free country
Former New York City Mayor Ed Koch said to his BBC interviewer in New York City a few minutes ago: “We will fight. And we will win”. Our enemy does not understand us and has no conception of what they have awakened. If our enemies did have any idea of what they have unleashed, they would be terrified of the fearsome retribution that awaits every one of them.
“We will fight them. And we will defeat them.”
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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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