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 slogan of the day

Everyone is reactionary about subjects he understands.
Robert Conquest, quoted in the Guardian, and then quoted again in The Week

Samizdata slogan of the day

There will be no war on Iraq. There will be a liberation of Iraq. There will be an end to the war that the Ba’ath Party has been waging on the people of Iraq through its policies of racism, persecution and genocide. Liberation will bring hope to enslaved Iraqis and justice for the dead, for the hundreds of thousands of Kurds murdered during such campaigns as the Anfal, for the Assyrians who were “disappeared,” for the Shi’a Arabs slaughtered for rising up against the regime, for the deported Turkomans and the Sunni Arab officers shot for plotting to overthrow the regime
– Dr. Barham Salih, the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, in the region controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

Samizdata slogan of the day

As we await the Budget in March and the rise in National Insurance rates in April, you’ll be glad to know that Gordon Brown is responding to criticism that he’s made the tax system too complicated. The new tax form will have only two lines: ‘How much do you earn?’ and ‘Hand it over’.
Eamonn Butler from yesterday’s Adam Smith Institute Bulletin

Samizdata slogan of the day

We certainly have seen the results of appeasement. It is much easier to tolerate a dictator when he is dictating over somebody else’s life and not your own.
– Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga in response to Jaques Chirac’s outburst.

Samizdata slogan of the day

When people fear the government, there is tyranny. When government fears the people, there is liberty
-Thomas Paine

Samizdata slogan of the day

If “International Law” is more important than saving the lives of innocent people now and in the future, by:

  1. Liberating the Iraqi people,
  2. Preventing Saddam from invading and attacking any other places in the future,
  3. Making sure he can’t develop nukes, not even in secret, and can’t give them to international terrorist organisations…

… then all I can say is, fuck International Law.
Alice Bachini

Samizdata slogan of the day

The French prime minister, Jacques Chirac, had visited Baghdad in December 1974 amid much pomp. Vice President Saddam offered to take care of Chirac’s visit and in their several meetings the two men enjoyed an unexpected rapport, much to the surprise of the traveling French entourage. At the end of the visit the French prime minister warmly embraced Saddam, calling him ‘a personal friend’, a returned home with a sheaf of lucrative contracts (for weaponry) worth 15 billion francs. One of them was the deal to supply the brand new reactor.
– Brighter Than the Baghdad Sun,” published in 1999, page 74

[Thanks to The Invisible Hand for the quote]

Samizdata slogan of the day

All I can say is that the comments confirmed to me what I had to keep to myself all semester: that most of you mental midgets are the most immature, sheltered, homophobic, sexist, racist, lying sacks of s—t I have ever met in my life. … Seton Hall may be kissing you’re a—es now, but out here in the real world, brats like you will be eaten for breakfast.
Professor Mary Ann Swissler — responding to some complaints from her students about her Promotional Writing course — for more go here and here

Samizdata slogan of the day

Here are four pieces of advice. The first two are evil, the last is prudent
and the third is, um, British I suppose.
– James Knowles

Samizdata slogan of the day

Good theories are sticky, but they still need advocating. Slowly, slowly the low-fat mantra is being replaced by acknowledgement in public places that constant blood-sugar swings mightn’t be very good for us. Slowly, slowly, free-market capitalism and libertarianism will stop being the standard butt of establishment sneers.
– Emma, in a comment on a posting by Alice Bachini

Samizdata slogan of the day

Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.
– Tom Stoppard in his play Artist Descending a Staircase

Samizdata slogan of the day

We shall know what we go to Mars for, only after we get there. You might as well ask Columbus why he wasted his time discovering America when he could have been improving the methods of Spanish sheep-farming. It is lucky that the U.S. government like Queen Isabella is willing to pay for the ships.
– Freeman Dyson, letter to his parents, 19 May 1958

though it is a pity the US and other governments also crowd out private space business alternatives