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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My very best wishes to all our readers for a very happy New Year.
By way of clarification, the reference ‘New Year’ is based upon the standard, current, accepted Western Calendar which is not to say that the Western Calendar is in any way preferable or superior to any other form of Calendar be it religious, cultural, historical, scientific or regional and which may or may not be recognised by any other person, group of persons, organisation or self-defining community based either in a particular jurisdiction or transnational.
Please note that this greeting in no way implies any judgement against any other days which may or may not be recognised by any other party as marking the beginning of a new year or any implication that any such recognition, and any celebratory rituals that may or may accompany such recognition is, in any way, less valid or worthy of respect.
Furthermore, the extension of best wishes does not imply any obligation of acceptance or reciprocity in any form from any person or persons or other parties who do not recognise the standard new year or who do not recognise or celebrate the turning of any year (howsoever defined) or who may recognise (whether officially or informally) either the standard new year or any substantially similar event without the need for good wishes or by means of the customary extension of other greetings or forms of accepted social coda.
Finally, the use of the term ‘happy’ refers merely to a state of emotional being that may or may not be transient and acceptance of the best wishes does not imply any requirement on the part of the acceptee to be either in a state of happiness or arrange their affairs in such a way as to induce a state of happiness either in whole or in part. Nor does use of the term ‘happy’ imply that any alternative or different state of emotional being or emotional response is any less valid and the use of the term ‘happy’ (whether accepted with best wishes or not) should not be construed as any declaration that happiness is either a superior or desirable state of mind.
Thank you.
Happy New Year from the Editors and Contributing Samizdatistas in the British Isles, America, Australia and Europe!
The tsunami disaster in Asia appears to have spawned something of a pissing contest in the West:
The US plans to increase by 10-fold – to $350m – its contribution to help the survivors of the Indian Ocean tsunami.
The largest pledge so far was made just before talks between senior US and UN figures on co-ordinating aid efforts.
HMG may now be forced to raise its own bid. And the French. And the Germans, And the Japanese. And the Australians. And then the Americans will feel obliged to up the ante again in this unseemly ‘my-foreign-aid-dick-is-bigger-than-yours’ antler-lock.
And people call me cynical!
Here is my mother’s new kitten.
Happy new year everyone.
When people criticise ‘America’ for not giving more money to help with the horrendous calamity that has overwhelmed a large part of southern coastal Asia, they really need to keep in mind that, as mentioned on James Bartholomew’s site, private aid does not get counted and that far outwieghs US government aid. Moreover, money received from a nation-state cannot be charity as the money is not freely given, whereas willingly donated private funds are true charity.
Ok, so I have been told some fruitcake stated the tsunamis were ‘Gaia’s revenge’1 (which would explain why it was only SUV driving capitalists who were drowned)… but how long before some nut job decides that the tsunami was actually caused by the Americans setting off nukes on the seabed? You just know it is going to happen!
1 = anyone have a link to this or other similar moonbatness?
Polly Toynbee gets her priorities right:
Social democracy and global cooperation are struggling under the tsunami of US neoconservatism.
Few things in life are as reliable as the Guardian.
1- To quit smoking
2- To lose weight
3- To post more and better stuff on Samizdata.net
Happy New Year to all my fellow contributors and to the readers.
…as many of the Samizatistas are locked in deadly contests with several bottles of excellent Port at a party at Samizdata HQ tonight
Update: (from MJ)
David Carr was particularly cutting at the party in question. (Of course, he could get ten years for this)..
As regulators impose more onerous capital adequacy and reporting requirements on the Western world’s banks, investment firms and brokerages, demand surges for increasingly sophisticated computer infrastructure to keep track of all the new systems deemed necessary to make the regulations work. As a result, demand is rising, according to this Financial Times article, for graduates with science degrees, especially in the field of physics. And it does not come as much of a surprise to learn that Britain’s mostly state-run education system is not doing a very good job at churning out young physics students. I am shocked, shocked to hear this!
I would greatly prefer it if clever folk with scientific knowledge were engaged in the potentially fruitful areas of nanotechnology, biotech, aviation and civil engineering, all fields likely to see continued rapid growth, than working to make increasingly Byzantine bank regulations work better. It looks like a waste to me. We want our budding Isaac Newtons and Richard Feynmans working on spacecraft, not greasing the wheels of the latest EU banking directive.
The media lads are quick to jump on their own planted questions, but I doubt they will pick up on this rather incisive remark from a soldier when Rumsfeld spoke in Mosul yesterday:
Q: Sir, how do we win the war in the media? It seems like that is the place where we’re getting beat up more than anybody else? I’ve been here – this is my third tour over here and we’ve done some amazing things. And it seems like the enemy’s Web sites and everything else, they’re all over the media and they love it. But the thing is everything we did good, no matter if it’s helping a little kid or building a new school, the public affairs sends out the message, but the media doesn’t pick up on it. How do we win the propaganda war?
It is not really the job of the DOD to win an internal propaganda war. Mr. Rumsfeld indicated his understanding of this in his answer. The press has a right to do what it is doing and nothing can or should be done about that side of the equation. On the other hand, every Yin must have its Yang. The one-sided nothingness of the old media universe begat the blogosphere in a balance restoring reaction.
Here on Samizdata, terrorists are named the enemy and coalition forces are our people. We make no bones about it, make no false pretentions of neutrality. I consult in Manhattan (I will be on that side of the Atlantic much of January) and DC; I grew up in small town Western Pennsylvania(*); people I know work or have worked in the Pentagon at low levels. Perry worked in the World Trade Center during one phase of his life. For us, neutrality is not an option. We and people we know and love are in the enemy’s crosshairs.
This does not mean we will give the State a pass on much of anything. You will find us solidly against most of the civil liberty undermining machinations in Congress. We do not believe in winning a war by turning America (or the UK here) into a prison camp. We believe in winning it by going out and killing the enemy.
* However I was born in Florida and most of the family is in the Carolinas. I therefore claim red-blooded American status. Besides which, the Western Pennsylvania towns and countryside where I grew up are pretty solidly Jacksonian.
EDITOR: For those who may be interested, here is the transcript of the original DOD Town Hall Meeting at which a soldier passed on a question for an embedded reporter. It has been much reported on since so I will not bore you with a rehash. Other DOD transcripts following the aforementioned cover the up-armouring issue in excruciating detail.
Of all the criticisms of the War on Terror (and there are many legitimate ones), at least there appears to be no intention on the part of the prosecutors to deliberately target children.
Alas, the same cannot be said for the War on Drugs:
PUPILS at a secondary school will undergo random drug testing when they return from the Christmas holiday next week in what is believed to be the first state scheme of its kind.
Students as young as 11 at The Abbey School in Faversham, Kent, will have mouth swabs taken to detect the use of drugs including cannabis, cocaine and Ecstasy, Peter Walker, the headmaster, said.
Oh but why settle for all these namby-pamby, milquetoast, half-measures? There is only one sure way to stop children taking drugs: kill them.
Yes, that’s it! Kill the little bastards. Think of all the valuable police and court time it will save, not to mention precious and overstretched NHS resources.
Kill them all now. You know it makes sense. If it saves just one child from a life on drugs it’s worth it. It’s for their own good. It’s called ‘tough love’…etc…etc… (adding shopworn cliches infinitum).
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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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