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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The Illuminatus post below puts me in mind of a little anecdote that was doing the rounds in the legal profession a few years ago. It concerned the case of a homeless vagrant who had been arrested for being drunk and disorderly in a public place. A trivial matter and quite unremarkable but for the sentence handed down by the Magistrate:
“I am going to discharge you on the condition that, for the next six months, you do not touch a drop of alcohol. And when I say ‘not a drop’, I mean not a drop; not even a glass of sherry after dinner.”
It may not be true but I like to think it is.
Overheard on Radio 4 this morning – a plan by Westminster Council to fine the homeless who sleep in the ‘tourist sensitive’ areas around Westminster. What a marvellous idea, fine the homeless, like they have the £500 ($750 US) proposed fine! Why don’t they just admit they want to lock them up – and cut out the court admin of chasing the fine? The state is not your friend, whether you are rich or poor…
Also, why is David Trimble really so upset with Sinn Fein spying on the Northern Ireland Assembly? Yes, there are security implications given their ‘links’ to the IRA but surely it couldn’t have come as a surprise? Is he just making political capital out of his opponents being caught with their listening devices out? Is he covering his embarrassment that his party wasn’t doing it? Or is he protesting too much to cover up the fact that he was doing the same thing?
Finally, a policeman’s take on the “after the war in Iraq” question (from a trusted source close to the police, i.e., a policeman I know):
“Iraq’s population is a combination of three different and ethnically varied races who hate one another with a vengeance. They hate us [the West] even more than each other and may be unwilling and unable to support the west should a strike occur. However, if intervention is necessary and the aftermath is about putting together a new and effective ‘junta’, then there might be a chance. If not, it will be a hell of a hole to police.”
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the government agency trusted with making sure that we, the people of the United States, don’t come down with the plague is ramping up an advertising campaign. Is it focusing on the threat of smallpox, anthrax, or any other bio-terror threat? How about Ebola, West Nile, or even maybe Hong Kong chicken flu?
No, the CDC has more important things to worry about. Specifically, fat kids. That’s right, American tax dollars are being put to use, in time of war, to tell kids to get in shape. Kids ages 6-17 are being bombarded with a media buy of nearly $3 million dollars (not to mention the cost of creative, the PR agency they hired, additional advertising agency fees, or the costs associated with the on-site events) between now and next July.
As a conservative guess, I would say that the CDC, while being faced with threats to real live national health, are going to be spending somewhere near $15 million dollars putting on a program dedicated to telling fat kids to shape up.
And just to make it better, they are also refusing to discuss the threats facing our nation when it’s been requested for interviews. No questions about smallpox vaccinations, the spread of West Nile – all fat kids, all the time.
And the campaign itself – VERB. That’s right, VERB. As in ‘RUN’, ‘SWIM’, ‘MASTURBATE’1, etc. Here is a list of events:
- Wild & Crazy Kids – Live staged version of the Wild N’ Crazy Kids series, pitting audience members against each other in larger than life stunts.
- Having the kids ‘SIT’ and watch other people be active. Good start. How well do you think the fat kids will do in these stunts?
- MTV Experience Tour – Interactive ‘day village’ that will encourage teens/tweens to experience VERB through a variety of current and relevant booths themed around MTV’s franchises and music.
- MTV. A TV channel. I guess ‘WATCH’ is the message they are trying to get across here.
- Paint the Town – Identify a mural, water tower or other highly visible figure and paint it to resemble a VERB activity. (e.g. Paint a water tower to look like a soccer ball with ‘KICK’ across it).
- ‘VANDALIZE’ will go well with most of the programming on MTV.
- Treasure Hunt – Kids stop at local places to pick up fun merchandise such as hats, t-shirts, etc. Tie-in with radio station, or existing promotion.
- ‘PURCHASE’ will go well with ‘DRIVE’, getting the parents involved.
- Parent Media Tours – Celebrity couple to speak with local media about the importance of getting kids involved in positive activities.
- Back to ‘SIT’ and ‘WATCH’ as celebrities get kids involved in ‘positive’ activities. Are “get busted for drugs” or “sleep with director” considered positive?
- Step Club – Online clubs for kids to participate in programs to increase positive activity by using a pedometer to measure daily steps for a chance to win VERB merchandise.
- ‘CLICK’ is now a way to get thin? Kick ass, office work will be taking on a whole new light now!
Now, I’m not a completely cold-hearted bastard, but this just seems to be a little bit over the top. Besides, most fat kids either have a genetic pre-disposition that won’t be fixed through this program, or they lose weight when they get to college or high school. In fact, this program will do nothing more than give athletic kids a chance to show off, and fat kids something to feel bad about. I understand that weight problems abound, but there have always been fat kids, there will always be fat kids, and nothing in this pork barrel will change that.
So why, at a time when we are faced with so many external threats, are we spending a lot of time and money cross-promoting MTV with taxpayer dollars?
Be sure to check out www.verbnow.com if you think I am kidding about any of this.
1 = Ok, masturbation was left off the list. Just like the state to leave out activities the kids will actually enjoy.
We do not wish our ancient freedom and the decent tolerant civilisation we have preserved in this island to hang upon a rotten thread.
– Winston Churchill, September 1935
Since they are vehicles by which ideas are spread, it stands to reason that definitions are important. Very important. There is nothing controversial in this view but I often feel that it is a principle more honoured in the breach than in the observance.
So I was delighted to read this article by Michael of 2 Blowhards wherein he demonstrates the flagrant absurdity of American left-wingers being referred to (and declaring themselves to be) ‘liberal’.
This is a point that we at the Samizdata have made previously and with good reason because American ‘liberals’ are not liberal at all, they are socialists. It sticks heavily in my craw to have to refer to these people as ‘liberals’ when the policies they favour and the ideas to which they subscribe (state interventions and pre-planned outcomes) are diametrically the opposite from anything even resembling classical liberal theory.
This is not just word-play, it is important. As Michael points out:
“One of the tricky things about “liberal” is that it’s just such a damned attractive word. It’s nice to think of yourself as being a liberal person. “I don’t care if my neighbor’s gay” equals “Thus I’m a liberal.” Sure, why not?”
This rings true. The word ‘liberal’ being associated with the qualities of being decent, humane and fair, provides a perfect cover for advancing an agenda which turns out to be largely indecent, horribly unfair and often inhumane.
American socialists are guilty of Definition-rustling. They have stolen a term that belongs to us and used it as camouflage behind which they have surrepticiously advanced their forward lines. I think it is time that we venture forth to take back that which belongs to us. Michael agrees:
“I also find it helpful to refuse to let the American left get away with calling itself liberal. I insist on referring to them as leftists, and to their views as leftism. Why let that crowd of sentimentalists, thought-police and socialists maintain exclusive ownership of a word as beautiful as “liberal”?
Why indeed, Michael. Far better to strip them naked and force them out into the open where the whole world can laugh at their grotesqueness.
Posted from Bratislava, Slovak Republic
Here at the only Internet cafe in Bratislava that I can find, I am struggling with a crazy Eastern European keyboard and what are for me the difficulties of using�yahoo. It’s an arkward combination, not made�anz easier bz the fact that whenever I tzpe z I get y and whenever I tzpe y I get z. So it comes out as zahoo unless I concentrate verz carefullz.
But enough of trivia. I got to Bratislava last Friday and leave next Monday, and so far it’s been great. I have lucked into a classical music festival, the initials for the Slovak title of which are BHS. So when I went to the concert on Saturday, I thought, oh no, they�ve done a truly tacky sponsorship deal. But all was well.
The concert however was dull, I thought.��The solo pianist, Ivan Moravec, is world-renowned, but frankly he made his two pieces, the Franck Variations for Piano and Orchestra and the Ravel Concerto, sound to me like run-throughs. Maybe it was me. Maybe it is that he looks like a waiter. Whatever, everyone else seemed happy.
But then on Sunday, there was Vladimir Ashkenazy conducting the Czech Philharmonic in Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony. It was sold out of course, but I went along anyway, and a Japanese gent sold me a ticket, for the Slovak equivalent of about £6 sterling ($9 US). Unbelievable. As was the performance. For once all the flim-flam of classical musical ovations – a loud a pretentious ‘bravo’ as soon as the last chord went silent, vast gobs of flowers for the lady solo singers and even for the gentleman conductor, constant returns to the platform for more applause, rhythmic applause – all seemed entirely appropriate. → Continue reading: Eastern European Idylls
Graham Turner asks in an article in the Telegraph Can the Conservative Party recover?… and of course the answer I would give is no. It is fascinating to watch the Tory Party Conference. I have not enjoyed myself as much since I last saw Dawn of the Dead.
The new Tory manifesto is starting
to take shape nicely
Iain Duncan Smith continues to amaze me with his triviality and casual insults to potential supporters. The latest thigh slappingly funny remark is that he dislikes the ‘doggerel’ found in Roman Catholic Masses. Not in and of itself a momentous observation, but then please keep in mind that this is the man who would presumably like Catholics in Britain to vote for him so that he can be the one plundering private assets instead of those nasty labour people.
Did anyone hear front bench advocacy for
genuine capitalist solutions and free trade over
all the blather about ‘public services’ being paramount?
And when IDS finally implodes, or more likely people just forget his name, it seems that chubby paleo-statist Kenneth Clark still hankers after party leadership so he can revive the glories of the Ted Heath era…
Now this is almost better that Evil Dead…
Kenneth Clark’s supporters were much in
evidence this year
 Update: I have now sobered up and I would like to apologise to all of our readers who happen to be undead… in no way was I implying all zombies are members of the Conservative Party. 
Alice Bachini has posted an interesting reply to my recent article called The world is a messy place. Alice writes in When is violence OK?:
Bashing people for the purpose of communicating something moral might sound like an oxymoron, but I don’t think it is. I think the idea “No to badness!” is expressed usefully, and anyway, sometimes the only alternative is between that or “Yes to violence!” in the non-bashing alternative. It might seem generous to absorb the other person’s nastiness by taking it on the chin and walking off in silence, but unless they interpret this in the right spirit, it’s worse than useless.
I could not agree more!
Making dire predictions about the organisational abilities of the European Union is a fairly safe bet I reckon, but even I have been taken aback by the speed with which this prediction (from early April):
“So, cue another round of horse-trading, bickering and monumental waste as each part of the Galileo project is apportioned out according to who makes the most noise. The French will build the electrics, the Italians will build the housing, the Belgians will make the navigation system, the Germans will make the rocket boosters, the Spanish will make the launch platform, the Austrians will make the sandwiches and Sweden will provide the environmental protestors.”
has become this reality:
“Germany and Italy are fighting it out within the European Space Agency for the right to provide the main production base for the satellite system, to which EU governments gave the green light in March.
Their dispute has prevented the ESA from beginning work on the project and risks setting back its projected completion date of 2008.”
I submit that I am entitled to enjoy a brief frisson of self-congratulation.
[My thanks to Philip Chaston for the second link]
“Socialism in its contemporary watered down form is little more than envy disguised as principle.”
-Martin Pot, the Institut Héraclite
Eminent blogger Alex Knapp of Heretical Ideas thinks beyond the impending war against Iraq
As you can tell by the title of this post, this discussion isn’t about whether or not it’s ‘properly libertarian’ for the U.S. to wage war against Iraq. I’m going to assume that as a given. The question that has been running around in my mind is this: what is the libertarian case for regime change? Or, to be more specific, there’s a clear libertarian case for toppling a government that proves itself to be a danger. I don’t think any libertarian thinks that, once World War II started, the only goal of the Allies was to contain Germany within its borders. Clearly, Hitler and the Nazis posed a danger, and it would have been suicide for the world to simply let them rebuild again. However, what about the aftermath? Is there a libertarian case for the Marshall Plan, rebuilding the nations of the former Axis powers, etc.? This is a particularly vital point of discussion when it comes to Iraq.
The Libertarian case for Marshall Plans
First, let’s look at a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Iraq. At first glance, it looks like the libertarian case is easy: ‘we’re against it.’ After all, libertarian theory relies heavily on the idea that neither state-supported safety nets nor foreign humanitarian aid are moral or effective. Yet a Marshall Plan would seem to combine qualities of both. However, there are several factors that differentiate the rebuilding of a country after a war from the twin devils of welfare and foreign aid. → Continue reading: Libertarians and regime change
It is necessary to guard ourselves from thinking that the practice of the scientific method enlarges the powers of the human mind. Nothing is more flatly contradicted by experience than the belief that a man distinguished in one or even more departments of science, is more likely to think sensibly about ordinary affairs than anyone else.
– Wilfred Trotter
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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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