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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Alice Bachini takes on the post-war modern(ist) architecture and a BBC Open University educational programme in one sweeping and scathing masterblog:
“But alas, somehow, the Great Vision of Modernism went wrong. Mr Doodah is now the only person living in the enormous freezing-cold ‘penthouses’ perched atop the huge ‘mega-centre’ designed for shops and offices that inexplicably refused to co-operate with his vision and move to DumDoodle in the darkest Hebridean Countryside. “It was designed as a Centre For Living,” he explained, “a complete, all-in-one place which you would never have to leave again! And look,” he says. “What do we have now instead of my miraculous ideas? Shopping malls. Who wants shopping malls, might I ask you? Honestly!” and he shook his head in disbelief and delusion.”
[…]
“And there we have it: modernism. Yet another tragic victim of the international capitalist conspiracy.
The End. A BBC Educational Production for the Open University.”
Elon Musk, a South African internet entrepreneur made $300M on Zip2 and followed it up with $1.5B on PayPal.
His third company, set up in June this year, is SpaceX. He has done a clean sheet design start on a new vehicle aimed at cutting costs by two thirds. Falcon is targeted for launch by the end of 2003. Once operational, the two stage lox/kerosene Falcon will become the upper stages of a three stage heavy lifter.
He’s out to eat Boeing, Arianespace and Lockheed’s lunch.
In addition to being miserable, it seems that the British (or a few of them anyways) are also getting a bit uppity:
“Police have issued a nationwide alert after discovering a deadly explosive device attached to a speed camera.”
No-one has yet claimed responsibility but I think it is safe to pretty much rule out the Islamofascists.
They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers.
– Frédéric Bastiat
I have been wondering recently why all the Al-Qaeda attacks happen in countries that would be at the bottom of the list of expected targets for a terrorist group with their agenda. They aim at American or Israeli targets but that does not explain the exotic selection of places they chose to do so. Here is a list of suspected Al-Qaeda attacks, by no means exhaustive:
- Djerba, Tunisia, 9th March – A truck explodes near the El Ghriba synangogue, killing 14
- Rishon Letzion, Israel, 11th April – a suicide bomber kills 16 and wounds 60 at a billiard hall
- Karachi, Pakistan, 14th June – suspected suicide bomber kills 14 outside Sheraton hotel and a car bomb outside the US consulate explodes later killing 11 and injuring 45
- Aden, Yemen, 6th October – an explosion of the French tanker Limburg kills a crew member
- Bali, Indonesia, 12th October – bombs explode outside the Sari Club disco at Kuta Beach resort killing 185 people and injuring hundreds more. A third bomb explodes near the US consulate in Sanur, no-one is hurt.
- Zamboanga, Philippines, 17th October 2002 – two bombs detonated at a shopping center leaving 6 people dead and 144 injured.
- Mombasa, Kenya – 28th November – a vehicle crashes into the lobby of the Paradise Hotel and together with a second device explodes, 14 killed and 80 injured. Two Stinger missiles are fired at an Israeli passenger jet at it takes off from Mombasa airport, narrowly missing 260 passengers.
These are not obvious terrorist destinations. One explanation is that the developed Western country have higher security, which makes it more difficult to carry out same style of attacks. I very much doubt that, as the IRA used to manage just fine disrupting life in London and I am not aware of any security measures that would make terrorist attacks impossible.
Any more theories about why the strange collection of targets? It is the ones that are missing from the list that puzzle me…
Paul Marks points out that it is the spending rather than the taxing which is the root of governments woe
People (not just us evil libertarians) often complain about taxation and there have been many attempts to reduce or at least limit it – these attempts have mostly been unsuccessful.
Few governments tax in order to create piles of money in their store houses – governments normally tax to spend. If we are to limit (let alone reduce) taxation it is government spending that we must fight. Limit one tax and the government will increase another – limit them all and government will borrow, ban borrowing and the fight come back to spending – i.e. (in the end) the fight is about government spending.
As far as I know there is only one State in the U.S. which shows (in its’ laws) a clear understanding of this and that State is Colorado. Colorado has many problems and I would not claim it is the most free market State (although it is one of the smaller government States), but I think that its spending based version of a “Taxpayers Bill of Rights” has, over the few years of its’ history, proved to be useful thing.
In Colorado government spending can only be increased in line with an increase in population or an increase in prices (yes I know there are all sorts of problems with the idea of a price index – but I will not go into that here). This would seem to a be a very moderate limitation – but (as far as I know) there is not another State in the Union that has such a limitations. Over the last few years Colorado has reduced the burden of taxation (i.e total taxes as a percentage of income – not reduced one tax and increased another) and balanced the budget.
The key really is government spending. To convince people that if they want some special benefit from government another benefit will have to be abolished (not just the total spending of the government increased).
In the end the fight has to be about spending. Whatever waffle either side comes out with about the “institutions of a just society” what matters is where the money goes. If we allow people to convince others that government spending is a “good thing” then all the anti tax and anti borrowing campaigns in the world will not save us.
Paul Marks
Instapundit reports that the Cato Institute is having a go at gun control in their nation’s capital city. Makes sense. The media people don’t have to go far for the story, unless they’re scared of course, what with the law not having yet been changed the way it should be.
Reynolds links to Fox News, who make it clear that Cato is really rolling up its sleeves and getting stuck in to the issue.
The CATO Institute, a public policy research group that bases its work on libertarian principles, is crafting a legal challenge to Washington, D.C.’s law, claiming that all Americans have the right to defend themselves.
“The Second Amendment provides an individual right for a person to bare arms, not a collective right, not a right of the states, not a right of the militia, but a right on each and every person,” said Bob Levy, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at CATO.
I don’t think that’s quite what Bob Levy said. Seriously, I never thought I’d see this particular spelling mistake done for real.
One of the extra shake-it-out-and-chuck-it-out items with the latest Radio Times, which I nearly did chuck out but then decided to take a look at, is one of those catalogues full of slightly stupid software for £49 “reduced to £39 SAVE £10”. But one of these software packages looked really good. It was a virtual train set. “Build your own landscaped railway”, said the brochure. I went to the edream.co.uk website to investigate further, and it said, of this build-your-own landscape railway (if that doesn’t get you straight there, click on “Hornby Special Edition 2002” on the right of the main page):
Adults and children alike adore model railways but how many can afford the money and space for their own set? Well, you can! This new 2002 virtual train set costs less than £20 and lives in your PC so there’s no clutter and no tidying up. Operate legendary engines ancient and modern from The Flying Scotsman to Eurostar around sprawling track layouts to whistle blasts and the clackety-clack of rolling stock as you switch points and pull up at platforms and sidings.
→ Continue reading: Virtual trains in two dimensions (and in three?)
Sundon Lower School in Bedfordshire has banned video and digital cameras from its nativity play this year, because it is worried that the images may get into the hands of paedophiles.
So let me get this right… The head teacher of a state school has banned parents from recording their children in a play. How can it be okay for a woman in authority to be instilling fear of sexual predators into small children, clearly implying their own parents are collectively under suspicion?
This is the toxic paranoid psychology of the witch hunt. The world is not packed full of paedophiles hunting for pictures of nativity plays but it suits some people to act as it that was the case… powers must be expanded to ‘protect’ children after all and who better than a pettifogging head teacher to do that?
I suspect that this head teacher must be a fifth columnist for the Home Schooling Movement in Britain because no one is really that idiotic and paranoid, right? Right?
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The Libertarian case against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is going to the courts now and there is every expectation it will go all the way to the Supreme Court. Read Perry Willis’ testimony if you want to know more of the details.
I hope Real Campaign Reform succeeds in their civil liberties battle for us, but if they should fail… our North American readers could organize some very creative Guerilla Campaigning. You may want to begin planning of your 2004 campaign law snoot cocking right now.
Your mission, should you chose to accept it Mr. Phelps, is to keep alive the idea of a free and open political process. Here are a few ideas:
- Start your own underground Free Libertarian Voters “cell” (the FLV as opposed to the dastardly LFV) with a few trustworthy friends. No one outside your group should even know you have “formed”. Above all, do not discuss this with anyone who is involved with an above ground “official” campaign group. Look in a mirror and practice not telling yourself about it.
- Using your own computers and printers, make up flyers and posters for Libertarian candidates. Do nothing traceable: Big Brother is watching. Go out in the dead of night and plaster them all over. Place stacks in information trays; hand some out to passersby at malls or other busy areas. And don’t forget! Black ski masks are a serious fashion faux pas this season!
- Come up with harmless and non damaging publicity pranks that will garner positive attention to your candidate or perhaps negative attention to the records of the Demopublican candidates. Do this especially in the last few days before the campaign.
- Try to do as much rhetorical damage to the FEC and its’ regulations as you possibly can. Make them look like fools: “Every joke is a tiny revolution”. Make them look like a bunch of anti-democracy demogogues. That they actually are should help you immensely in this task.
- Brainstorm with your cell. Be creative like the “Sons Of Liberty”. They invented guerilla theatre over a few pints in the Green Dragon, an idea so advanced we didn’t invent the name until 190 years later.
Read “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky. It worked for the Left, it will work for you! This book is also very funny. I’d never have thought of a political use for baked beans.
- Don’t get caught. You really could be in it extremely deep. You could go to jail for supporting the candidate of your choice in a non-State approved fashion, time and place.
- If you are caught, read about the Chicago 7 for some really cool ideas on how to make a mockery of the campaign laws in the courtroom. Judge Hoffman is probably long retired by now, but there are other buffoons in robes and you might get lucky. If you’re going to spend a few years behind bars, you might as well land a good blow for Liberty on the way to the slammer.
Read defendant Abbie Hoffman’s “Steal This Book” or “Revolution for the Hell of It” to get into the proper frame of mind. Again. It worked for the Left, it’ll work for you!
- “Black world” campaigning must always be totally deniable by real campaign organizations. You can’t work in both. You can’t even communicate across the boundary. They cannot know who you are or what you are doing, not even a clue. For real. I’m not joking.
- Watch what the official campaign is doing and follow their lead. Campaign managers know more about what is going on than you do. Don’t go off on your own tangent. Remember the Hippocratic Oath: “The first rule is to do no harm”.
It will be good practice just in case more of our civil liberties have to be exercised underground. I guess one could say “If political campaigning is outlawed, only outlaws will have political campaigns.”
We aren’t called Samizdata for nothing you know!
This tape will self destruct in zzzzzztttttttttttttttt………..
From being the envy of the world, the British armed forces are in danger of becoming merely average: a cut-price, camouflaged UNICEF…
My sources tell me that this is an accurate account of what’s going on in the British Army at the moment. Or more precisely, how the New Labour government has been undermining one of the most respected and professional British institutions:
The British military and New Labour are politically and philosophically polar opposites. The government has made these differences even more acute by spending much of the last few years forcing soldiers to adopt a work ethic more in line with commerce than with combat. Who Dares Wins has been replaced by Health and Safety. The government believes that it has a duty to look after soldiers by protecting their ‘rights’, but this approach to soldiering seriously undermines the ability of the men and women of the armed forces to get on with a difficult and dangerous job.
[…]
The government’s obsession with political correctness has been applied to the military with such relish that at times it seems almost insane. I have lost count of the number of forms I have had to fill in giving details of my ethnic origin. These forms used to be anonymous, but the last one I had to complete carried my name, rank and service number. Perhaps this was a reaction to an earlier (anonymous) form, which had revealed that in our all-male unit there was a huge number of Bangladeshi single mothers!
[…]
Health-and-safety inspectors are blamed for recommending that chlorine be introduced into the underwater tunnel, in case some poor Commando picks up a bit of dysentery or a sore throat as a result of wading through dirty water. The steep ravines worn into the slopes that recruits had to run up and down at various points on the seven-mile course were also contrary to all sorts of well-meaning legislation. The recommendation was for proper steps and handrails to be installed — just like the ones you find in the mountains of Afghanistan or the wadis of Iraq.
The armed forces in the UK are currently so over-streched that their management amounts to a permanent crisis-management. The professionalism and high quality of the British army currently rests on the dedication of its officers. Let’s face it, they are not there for the money and they don’t get to shoot much these days either. The British military doesn’t lobby, speak out, point out the ignorance of the current government of military matters (which has no limits as this is the first government where nobody has a direct military experience) or do anything that would undermine its strong ethos as a ‘civilian’ army. Her Majesty the Queen, a civilian, is head of the Navy, Army and Air Force of Britain.
Perhaps they should.
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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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