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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Just who are these people going around saying that a decadent, post-historic, senescent Europe is no longer capable of galvanising in response to dangerous threats?
Nothing could be further from the truth:
Jelly mini-cup sweets have been banned by the European Commission because of a risk of children choking.
The sweets are packaged in plastic cups and designed to be swallowed in one.
The commission said they were a risk because of their “consistency, shape and form” and that warnings alone were not enough to protect children.
Though I do think that diplomacy and negotiation should have been tried before embarking on such unilateralist and aggressive actions.
The Guardian, dubbed The Grauniad for its typos, seems to be in a world of its own. Its articles are full of polytoines. The Britain it describes seems not to have anything to do with the one here on Earth, but on some distant land – the Planet Guardianopolis perhaps. The paper’s spin rarely gets corrected but, in the face of undisputable facts, corrections and clarifications do get published. Here is one example:
In our report, Life after Living Marxism, page 10, July 8, we referred to the Reason Foundation and said its “leading writer, the syndicated columnist Sandra Postrel, is author of the libertarian book The Enemies Of Freedom and frequently talks at the Hudson Institute”. The Reason Foundation points out that no one of that name works at the Foundation or for Reason Magazine. The editor-at-large and former editor of the magazine is called Virginia Postrel. She is a columnist for Forbes and the New York Times but not a “syndicated” columnist. Her book is not called The Enemies Of Freedom. It is called The Future And Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress (Free Press). The Reason Foundation says Ms Postrel has never been to the Hudson Institute and has no connection with the organisation.
Good work, chaps.
Plenty of people around the world by now know of the allegations of philandering made against the English footballer David Beckham, based on claims made to the media, and also on transcripts of SMS phone messages that are said to have been sent between Beckham and one Rebecca Loos.
The ins and outs of the affair are none of our concern, but what did concern me was this explainatory article in The Advertiser:
He apparently even has offered to produce his mobile phone records to prove his innocence. It may surprise some mobile phone users that some carriers retain details of text messages.
In Australia, Telstra keeps SMS messages for up to 28 days and Optus keeps theirs for three days.
I have three questions here. First, why are telephone companies keeping records of these things at all, and second, why is there such a large difference between Telstra, the dominant company that is still half owned by the government, and Optus (which is now owned by Singtel, the phone arm of the Singaporean government.) And thirdly, why are these messages apparently so insecure?
Australian Libertarian blogger Tex waxes lyrical on free markets:
For me, nothing – nothing – in recent years has confirmed my faith in the wonders of markets and competition more than one humble little sector of our economy: the pizza industry.
I’m a pizza addict. Ten years ago, I would have to part with the best part of twenty bucks to get one large pizza delivered. Suppliers in my area were limited and it sometimes arrived cold. When in Sydney a few years ago – in an area not well serviced by the Pizza men – I shelled out nearly fifty bucks for two delivered pizzas + a drink. Nowdays, I can get two large pizzas – easily enough to feed three people – for less than $15. It arrives quickly, is great quality, and there are a far greater variety of pizzas to choose from.
So in ten years, pizza prices have more than halved, the quality has gone up, the delivery times are quicker, and there’s a greater menu to choose from. And it’s 100% the result of competition. As a couple more suppliers moved into the area, the “coupon wars” began. Maybe a couple of coupons per month would arrive in the mail, offering a few bucks off per pizza. Then other companies started to price-match. Nowdays, my letterbox is flooded with pizza coupons, each subsequent one outmatching the last.
As another example of the benefits of free markets, I was in Melbourne on the weekend. Melbourne is justifiably proud of it’s food- I’m not a well travelled man by any means but it does seem to be one of the world’s leading cities for fine dining.
In the restaurant strip in Lygon Street, for example, you will find that the establishments there actually have hired people to stand outside and make offers to passers-by, to entice them in, and in this way you can get yourself, for example, a free bottle of wine. Australians don’t haggle much, but the visitor who has this skill can make good use of it there.
In Melbourne’s Chinatown on Little Bourke Street, the same practice has come into vogue.
This hot-house atmosphere of competition isn’t just a boon from the point of view of the diner’s wallet either. Restaurants don’t just compete on price- they compete on quality as well, and reputation is as important as price in these markets. For they are dealing with a clientele that is, on the whole, very well educated in dining.
And this also encourages risk-taking, to provide new and innovative ways of presenting and preparing food. Bon apetite!
It was said that El Sado’s (or whatever the man’s name is) newspaper in Iraq was closed down because it was “inciting violence”. I think that is true – I do not have to read the newspaper to guess what sort of things it was printing “mutilate, kill, feed what is left to the dogs” (and so on) or therefore understand why it was closed down. However, hearing of this did make me think of the following.
One does not have to be a libertarian to think the government of the United States has treated the Constitution of the United States as a bit of toilet paper for at least the last 71 years. And, of course, President Bush far from fulfilling his Oath of Office to “Protect and Defend the Constitution of the United States” has added new unconstitutional programs (the ‘no child left behind’ thing, the extension of Medicare, and so) in addition to all the existing unconstitutional programmes.
Whilst I am not drawing a direct analogue to what is going on in Iraq (for obvious reasons), I wonder what the Founding Fathers would be writing if they were around today – I think they might well be inciting violence (although, I accept, they would not be writing about mutilating or feeding to dogs).
Please no comments about how “time changes how a text should be interpreted” or “the Supreme Court says X is O.K., so X must be O.K.”
The Constitution of the United States is not some strange mystical text written in an ancient language – any person of average intelligence (who bothers to read it) would know that most of what the United States government now does is unconstitutional.
Europhile, n. (pronounced “yew-ro-file”) Person or institution with an enthusiasm about the merging of the European States into a single State, usually regardless of any other considerations. A Europhile is often reluctant to be identified as such, especially when he is a politician.
Urophile, n. (pronounced “yew-ro-file”) Person with an enthusiasm for being subjected to showers of urine. A Urophile is often reluctant to be identified as such, especially when he is a politician.
Now it would be easy and gratuitous of me to imply that both are one and the same, but this is obviously unfair.
One is a harmless pervert who engages in fantasies in private that involve no coercion against other people. The other is a dangerous pervert who conspires in private, and who needs to be exposed and subjected to public embarrassment.
The ‘e’ makes all the difference.
Don’t let’s be beastly to the Germans!
But don’t let’s be beastly to the Hun!
– Noel Coward
Former celebrity brain tumour sufferer and Labour politician Dr Mo Mowlem reportedly believes that we need to “negotiate with Bin Laden”, along the lines of terrorism appeasement in Northern Ireland.
I agree.
In the spirit of reconciliation I propose the following gestures of good faith:
- Remove all British forces from the Middle East and Afghanistan.
- Break off diplomatic relations with all non-Islamic countries.
- Ban women from holding any educational qualifications past primary school.
- Ban women from holding any jobs other than primary school teacher, nurse or doctor in women only clinics. Especially remove all women from political office.
- Ban all Jews from holding political office, working in the public sector, the media and the legal profession.
- Prohibit the sale or consumption of alcohol between 3pm on Fridays and noon on Saturday.
- Release all Moslem terrorist suspects.
- Order the Archbishop of Canterbury to publicly abjure Christianity [Editor’s note: is this not already the case?] and exhalt the supremacy of Islam. Convert the established churches of England, Scotland and Ireland to Islam.
- Prohibit all religious education in schools, except Islam.
- Order the abdication of Her Majesty the Queen in favour of a male relative (her husband perhaps).
Obviously, we should hold back on some Islamist demands until we have some reciprocal agreements from Mr Bin Laden, for instance:
- No mass public executions of homosexuals and female adulterers.
- No public flogging of drug or alcohol addicts.
- No enforcement of the veil for non-Moslem women.
- No declaration of war on Israel and the USA.
- No handing-over of British nuclear, biological and chemical weapons technology to al-Qaeda.
After all, we must have something to bargain with!
Just an after-thought. Am I confused, or did negotiating with the IRA lead to a split with even more violent factions launching even more deadly bomb attacks?
I can only hope that the Americans keep their nerve and use the wide scale of the uprising to not just decapitate the more florid Islamist leadership but also place clear ‘markers’ as to what the response will be to armed uprisings during the de facto ‘protectorate’ phase of Iraq’s post-Ba’athist reconstruction.
As things are developing day by day, it is pointless for me to just reiterate the reports filling the news media as to the current state of the cut and thrust on the ground, but there may indeed be an analogue with the Vietnam war here… and it ain’t a ‘quagmire’… the Tet offensive may have been a political disaster for the USA but it was a military triumph and more or less wiped out the Vietcong as a significant military and political force. If the US can do the same to not just Muqtada al Sadr’s Islamo-fascist militia but also to any the militias of any who make the mistake of supporting him, it will have profoundly useful effects long after the fighting fades into history and the US and UK forces have gone home.
 Translation: Follow my finger and shoot… hereAlthough Ali Sistani is, in the overall scheme of things, someone that the occupying powers can probably do business with (though that remains to be seen), it can only be helpful to his education if Muqtada al Sadr, that heir to the ‘Mad Mahdi’, can be seen to come to a fairly public and messy end surrounded by as many of his supporters as possible. Notions of putting this man on trial are to say the least ‘unhelpful’.
If a successful confederated Iraqi republic is going to come out of this without falling into a democratically sanctified ‘popular Islamic’ tyranny like that which so many in Iran are trying hard to throw off with their own efforts right now, it is going to take some serious stick, and not just carrot, to make things come out more or less the right way. That is, alas, the way the real world works and hopefully the US and UK have the fortitude to see it through to its conclusion without cutting and running prematurely. So far the signs are reasonably good as only the usual suspects are bleating for political defeat to be plucked from the jaws of eventual military victory.
A representative of SMCCDI, an Iranian student freedom movement Samizdata has long supported, will be on the drivetime airwaves in southern California today:
Aryo B. Pirouznia will be speaking, on Monday April 12, 2004, on the widely listened Southern Californian 740 AM Talk Radio. The program is hosted by the famous KBRT’s anchor Paul McGuire and will be of half an hour length starting from 05:00 PM PST.
The SMCCDI Coordinator will be explaining the Movement’s reasons for supporting President George W. Bush and why millions of Iranians are concerned by John Kerry’s controversial position and statements in reference to the Tyrannical and Terrorist Islamic Republic regime.
It is hardly surprising Iranians would feel this way. I have heard similar sentiments expressed by some Iraqi bloggers and commenters. The upshot of this is, the American Iranian and Iraqi communities will be solidly in the Bush camp in the upcoming US elections.
One wonders if presidential hopefuls will in the future have to add two I’s to the traditional ‘three I’s’ voting blocks: Ireland, Italy, Israel… Iran and Iraq?
For more information, you can go here for the SMCCDI press release.
One of my earliest reminiscences is following the adventures of Bill Savage, self-styled resistance fighter and Cockney psychopath, who fought thinly disguised Soviets, called Volgs, in a future Britain that had been conquered by the communist hordes. The comic was that anti-establishment cultural icon, 2000AD, tapping into the punk zietgeist of 1977, and the comic strip was Invasion
British boys’ comics recovered from a rut in the 1970s with a newfound determination to cater for the violent tastes of their teenage market. They differed from their American counterparts as market segmentation led to titles concentrating on specific subject matter: War: Battle, Victor, Warlord and Commando; Football: Roy of the Rovers; Science Fiction: 2000AD, Starlord, Tornado, Eagle and Starblazer. No doubt I have missed out a few, including the weekly reprints of superhero comics by Marvel UK.
Bill Savage was a lorry driver whose exploits appeared in the first issue of 2000AD, spinning into orbit in 1977. This allows an indulgence of nostalgic relish as I recall Birmingham nuked, a clone of Maggie as Prime Minister shot on the steps of St. Paul’s and the new Prime Minister announcing “People of Britain. The Volgans are our Friends! We must not fight them…Hand Over All Your Fire-Arms!” With his handy shotgun and avenging the death of his family, Savage enjoyed taking the war to the occupiers and killing them in a number of diverse ways, followed by a suitable quip. The roadlayer that he gleefully used to ‘level’ a Volg firing squad was a particularly nasty way to go.
Whilst interesting, Invasion was a second world war story, transplanted to the future. The world of 1999 had changed little from the 1940s and there are no dark faces in the comic. A parallel can be made with the film, “Dr Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth, 2150”, another invasion narrative that symbolised England’s vulnerability by trading on the cultural myths of 1940. Nonetheless, even in 1977, popular culture could encompass a comic that envisioned a Britain where lorry drivers kept shotguns at home and firearms were an accepted part of working class life. It seems like another world.
Savage eventually made it to Canada with Prince John, ending his personal war. But, in his pithy way, Savage said it all…
“My cannon stays with me! Greased and ready…”
One of the problems with governments collecting and controlling data on individuals is their failure to secure this information. As a recent article in The Register demonstrated, the number of incidents involving computer systems in the civil service is high.
There are a number of serious concerns including inappropriate access of personal records, inappropriate alteration of personal records and their appropriation by a third party. This has been a problem for some time with Inland Revenue staff noted for “celebrity browsing” tax returns. These concerns are hidden within general figures for computer misuse that number up to two thousand. As these are the cases where such changes were noted and disciplinary action brought against the civil servant involved, it is impossible to gauge the seriousness if this problem.
Even after the data has been collected by the civil service agency, it is difficult to ensure that the information is accurate, secure and used only for the purposes required. This could be a minor problem or the tip of the iceberg.
The Lesson of This Century
Karl Popper
Routledge, 1996
This collection consists of two interviews with Giancarlo Bosetti in 1991 and 1993, who also supplies Introductions to them, and two earlier talks, given in 1988 and 1989. I assume (though this is not made explicit) that the interviews were conducted as well as published in Italian; the talks must have been originally given in German. Routledge, the publisher, gives information, and a picture, of Popper, but says nothing of Bosetti; if a book can be under-edited, this is it. Interesting as these interviews and articles are, could his publisher not have found more for us?
The title of the book is unexplained, and may not be either Popper’s (this is a posthumous collection; he died in 1994) or Bosetti’s. It may be in the nature of a warning, for Popper reiterates his injunction “Once More Against Historicism” (pp. 40-45), a slippery and subtle concept which as I understand it, goes something like: “Because I know where I am and how I got here, I know where I’m going and how to get there.” This might be all very well as a working idea if confined to the study; unfortunately, with Karl Marx, it got out, to be believed and acted on, even though his prophecies – immiseration of the proletariat and the resulting violent overthrow of capitalism – were falsified in his own lifetime, with many others since. As Popper says: “We can certainly learn from the past, but we can never project it to anticipate the future (p. 41)”. Karl Marx could not foresee the motor-car, and we can’t see the next revolutionary innovation, just as, Popper might have said, nobody foresaw the computer and the Internet. → Continue reading: Karl Popper? Rationality but no blueprint
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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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