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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I briefly toyed with the idea of posting this under the ‘Humour’ category but, the trouble is, I am not making this up. I couldn’t possibly make this up.
In a country where virtually all forms of private firearm ownership have been outlawed, there was a march today in South-East London by a group calling itself ‘Mothers Against Guns’ in protest at rising gun violence.
But that thigh-slapping irony descends into tragi-farce:
“The march had to be re-routed away from the crime scene of the early morning shooting outside Pharaoh’s Pub in Peckham Road.
Police confirmed one man was killed on the spot and that another was in a stable condition in hospital after the incident.
Sometimes I feel as if this isn’t a nation anymore. More like an open-air Theatre of the Absurd.
I don’t normally respond publicly to comments, but I will make an exception. Peter Cutbertson has a blog called Conservative Commentary, it is certainly better than the Conservative Party’s website. He thinks that this conclusion I made makes me insane:
“The problem for British libertarians is that they aren’t really used to the idea that the state really is our enemy. This is one reason why I don’t think that the UK withdrawing from the European Union is an automatic recipe for joy.”
In the exchange which follows he appears to believe that “without law or government” society cannot function, and those who disagree with him are “insane” or follow “an incoherent, warped political philosophy”.
I am very tempted to ask our Mr Cuthbertson to define Conservative political philosophy, in plain coherent terms, with the agreement of those current and former leaders of the Conservative Party who are still alive: Heath, Thatcher, Major, Hague and Duncan Smith. But I don’t hate the man, so I won’t.
However, it amazes me that Mr Cuthbertson cannot see that law doesn’t necessarily derive from government. For a start, any conservative who believes in God ought to consider the possibility that there is a higher authority than the State. Assuming atheism (which isn’t very conservative, but hey, who’s being coherent?), I should have hoped that a conservative might believe in the organic, spontaneous order of common law. Assuming God doesn’t exist, and the common law is a fiction (sounds more like a French Jacobin!), what has Mr Cuthbertson done with civil society? Is it true that members of the Carlton Club only behave because of the fear of being arrested by the police? Does the members’ code of conduct depend on the State for its existence and enforcement? Is there an Act of Parliament for table manners?
If the cream of the Conservative movement believe that regulation of human behaviour is only possible by State intervention, then it is no wonder the Conservative Parliamentary Party is an unelectable shambles comprised largely of cretins, petty crooks, pompous buffoons and in-bred yahoos. I will take no lessons in morality or “coherent political philosophy” from a Tory.
Shop ’til you drop day!
Some who think poverty is a noble, exalted state would have you buy nothing today, calling it ‘Buy nothing day’. But those who reject the Luddite anti-life call of atavistic collectivism know better.
Every November 30th, we all need to remind ourselves that due to the creeping spread of global capitalism, more of humanity has been lifted above a subsistence level of existence than at any other time in the history of our species.
Plumbers, builders, postmen, farm workers, sailors… all owning technological marvels like motorcars, televisions, computers, all having unheard of life expectancies. This occurs not because of central planning, but rather in spite of it… yet somehow Paris gets fed.
So on November 30th go out and turn your mundane daily participation in the capitalist system into a celebration of it! Make it special. Go out and buy the one you love a book they have wanted but is only available in hardback or maybe even a nice sheepskin coat for the winter. You know it makes sense.
From pixalated passions to physical phrolics, the cabalistic Sasha Castel and the vampiric Andrew Dodge – a union made in heaven, hmmm, … or perhaps the other place [A little known village in Dorset].
The blogosphere is agog.
My previous posting about ‘ironic Jihad’ was satirical but this is certainly not!
The militant Islamic group Hamas is urging followers to conduct a three-day ‘electronic Jihad’ on Jewish websites, starting today, Novermber 29th. Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles said the latest find this week was particularly alarming: “We have had numerous hackings back and forth between Israeli and Islamic sites since the Intifada began two years ago.
But this is something we have not seen in some time. There seems to be an entire portion of a We site which is devoted to a ‘how to’ get involved in that kind of activity.”
The term ‘Jewish’ websites could mean anything from Israeli government sites to any company that does business with Israel.
Apparently, the same way bloggers are using the Internet as a forum for ideas and for additional sources of information, increasingly computer literate Islamic groups are using it to transform the Islamic and Islamist world and to circumvent official sources of information.
“….The Internet has become not only a battlefield, as this announcement would seem to indicate… of electronic wars, but it is also a key element in propaganda battles in Arabic, Persian and in English.”
It is good to know that in a turbulent world, one can count on our Anglosphere cousins down under to maintain their glorious traditions of brash vulgarity and plain-spokenness (and not to mention the ability to kick ass at cricket). On a gloomy November afternoon, while pondering the latest tragic events in Kenya, I came across this cheeky little news report, which should gladden the hearts of anyone who has less than 100 percent respect for the police, who increasingly seem more intent on social control than beating crime.
Lawyers for an Australian man who “mooned” a police car claimed it was his constitutional right and part of the larrikin Australian character.
Sounds entirely reasonable to me! 
UK Transport is now Transport Blog, and has a burst of short but varied new postings. This is a good name, combining Patrick Crozier‘s all-embracingly global field of vision (although the latest postings are mostly British, with only the occasional Japanese reference) with his general gloom about his ability to dazzle. No “Transports of Delight” nonsense.
Now that Patrick has moved it over to Movable Type, I am nagging him to set me up with automatic posting rights to Transport Blog, to take up some of the slack when he gets too depressed about the state of Britain’s deeply depressing transport infrastructure, for words, as it were. When my campaign has succeeded, this is the kind of stuff I’ll be putting there, although if Perry wants to insert a weekend type picture here, I recommend this as being more his (our) kind of thing.
Being a pedestrian with a heart condition is about to get worse.
In my previous posting here, about Gordon Brown’s plans to wreck the British economy, I said that all that was one reason I was happy. Here’s another: Brian’s EDUCATION Blog. It’s not for me to be saying how good this is, but I can say that so far I am managing to keep on doing whatever it is I’m doing. I’m not running out of things to say.
For example, I’m already thinking about a post I hope to do soon concerning the vital importance to the development of Silicon Valley not just in a general way of Stanford University, but in particular of just one academic at Stanford University, a man called Frederick Terman. I’ve semi-known about this man for almost as long as I’ve known about Silicon Valley, but there’s nothing like having to write regularly for a specialist blog to make you learn the outlines of a story like this properly, by the simple procedure of writing it out. Quite aside from what others may be learning from it, think what Brian’s Education Blog is doing for Brian’s Education. The ambiguity of the title is entirely deliberate.
And what about the writings of others that I might otherwise have missed? → Continue reading: BEdBlogging BEdBlogging BEdBlogging
Someone tried to shoot down an airliner full of Jews, not in Israel but in Africa…
Jew on holiday. Legitimate target
anywhere in the world, apparently.
But Jews = Israel and Israel = bad, in fact very bad as it is not just ‘Jewish’ but also ‘White’. Therefore the people who did this must be misguided ‘Islamic activists’. Terrible but ‘understandable’ to idiotarians and other sundry folk who take Noam Chomsky seriously. You know, the sort of people who say “Who are we do judge the value of other cultures?” and “Of course I deplore terrorism, but…”
Kikambala in Kenya is ripped apart by the same people who tried to shoot down the passenger jet and slaughtered Kenyans are photographed in the ruins of the resort which used to bring much needed foreign money into Kenya’s economy…
Vanquished capitalist tools perhaps? CIA agents maybe?
Black people in the Third World lie dead, therefore people who did this must be capitalists, um, imperialists, errr, Americans, no, Mac Donalds, um, er, ah…
I see pictures like those and I am soooooo sick of the people who say “It is all about Israel!” or “It is all about oil!” or “It is all about US policy!“… those dead Kenyans are not in Israel, I rather doubt they owned shares in any oil companies and they did not get to vote for who became the President of the United States.
What “it is all about” is that there are people using violence who advocate coercive pan-Islamic collectivism and who wish to force submission on everyone else. Once this is understood, all that needs to follow is to determine the best way to exterminate them as expeditiously as possible.
The irreverent Brainstrust reports how “devastated victims on all sides of the Miss World riots have claimed that they were merely trying to make an amusing point in an ironic manner and that their opposite numbers ‘have no sense of humour at all’.”
Read here about a comedy fatwa and call for a full-scale ironic jihad… It’s Friday, for God’s sake!
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, far too many people still believe that their elected officials exist to look after the interests of the ordinary person. Yes, of course they make mistakes. Doesn’t everybody? Still, their hearts are in the right place and that’s what counts.
For those who may still harbour these lingering, absurd delusions, I recommend this article by Sean Gabb.
As always, Sean’s language is both florid and forthright. But so it should be because it explains, in detail, how wealth-producing, hard-working Britons have been robbed of their future by a government that they, inexplicably, still trust above all other institutions.
“But the tax changes are enough. People of my generation may now be looking at a far less comfortable retirement than we expected. Some of us may find ourselves in very straitened circumstances. Those of us lucky enough to stay reasonably healthy may find ourselves having to delay or even give up on retirement.”
And it may get worse. We have a desperate administration that has plundered everything in sight and the temptation to help themselves to the juicy, low-hanging fruit of private pension funds, may be more than they can resist.
The government is not your friend.
David Carr is happy, because now not only is he sunk in gloom but he reckons all of us are, and especially me, Samizdata’s Optimism Correspondent. Bad news David, I’m happy now.
I have a number of reasons to be happy, but I’ll focus on just one. Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has been taxing the British economy at a higher rate, but, to his surprise and consternation, the extra tax revenue that he assumed he would get by putting the rates up has not proved to be forthcoming. In the House of Commons yesterday, he had to explain. He blamed the world economy. (Don’t they all?)
Well guess what. I told you so, on Tuesday May 28th. This makes me happy.
What this confirms …
(I was referring to a piece by Paul Staines)
… is that British government income is now as high as it can be. Increasing the percentage rate of taxation doesn’t increase government tax income, it merely slows the economy down and causes government income to remain static. Similarly, if the government were to reduce the percentage rate of tax, government income wouldn’t decrease. This would merely cause the economy to surge forward, and the smaller slice of a bigger cake would end up being the same size as the bigger slices of smaller cakes. Britain is now at the top of the Laffer Curve. Isn’t that exciting? In plain English, the bastards are taking us for the absolute maximum amount they can, and if they get any greedier we stop coming through their bit of the forest.
Gordon Brown’s response to his problem is that he has decided to take the government a lot deeper into debt than he originally had in mind to do, which is a further – albeit disguised – increase in the rate of taxation. If the government borrows the kind of money it now intends to borrow, it will raise the interest rates that all other borrowers have to pay.
So let me leave all my winnings from my previous bet on the table and give this prophecy game another whirl of the wheel. Brown’s latest decision will slow the economy down some more, and he still won’t get his hands on enough money to finance his spending spree. These plans can never materialise, and that fact will have to be recognised if Britain is not to be pushed down the far side of the Laffer Curve towards economic meltdown.
What this all shows is that, as usual, there are, in the words of Noel Coward, bad times just around the corner. What it also shows is that enjoying life is all about attitude. It’s not the facts that make you happy or unhappy; what counts is how you look at them and what you make of 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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