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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Carla Howell seems to have made a major breakthrough. She will be in the Massachusetts Governor’s Debate. It’s going to be awfully hard to ignore her after this (from her press release):
“Carla Howell is in the October 1 Governor’s Debate. ABC, CBS, NBC, and New England Cable News TV. The Boston Globe. The Boston Herald. The Worcester Telegram & Gazette. It will be simulcast on the internet. Moderated by CNN’s Judy Woodruff. Shannon O’Brien, the Democratic nominee for Governor, and Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for Governor, will both debate Carla Howell face-to-face.”
After she’s done with Boston Tea Party II, could we talk her into throwing one over here too?
How very odd that Perry should decide to add a category called ‘How Very Odd’ on exactly the same day when I uncover something that I can only describe as very odd.
Or, to be precise, it was uncovered by a colleague at work when seeking the website of the The Law Society. The Law Society is the professional governing body for solicitors in England and Wales and, as one would expect, it does have a very comprehensive website which is located at www.lawsoc.org.
However, acting largely on instinct, he initially typed www.lawsociety.org into his browser and found something altogether different not to mention wholly unrelated.
Just a coincidence that they chose a similar name for their website? Well, possibly I suppose. On the other hand, is it a deliberate marketing ploy? In either event, one must conclude that it is a very effective, if not altogether transparent, way of getting their messages across to a lot of British lawyers.
Labour takes money from Sun readers and gives it to Guardian readers, who then decide how best it should be spent.
– Richard Littlejohn
The Labour government is dropping heavy hints about further tax increases in order to fund what it euphamistically refers to as ‘redistribution of wealth, power and opportunity’. Pure, coal-filtered, organic bullshit with no artificial additives or flavourings. What they really want to do is loot more money from productive wealth-creating people and hand it over to their parasitical, wealth-destroying supporters in the public sector.
Of all the high-falutin’ media responses to this, none hits the nail so squarely on the head as Richard Littlejohn in The Sun:
“Like the Lottery, Labour takes money from Sun readers and gives it to Guardian readers, who then decide how best it should be spent.
This Government has presided over a massive explosion of unproductive, worthless public sector appointments.
How many times have I written about the hundreds of millions of pounds showered every year on the Guardian-reading classes?
Each week thousands of irrelevant, unnecessary jobs in Town Halls and Government departments are advertised in that newspaper.
Some days, the Guardian’s jobs supplement is three times the size of The Sun.
The Guardian is the last great nationalised industry. Without its massive subsidy from taxpayers it would fold.”
You call it exactly the way you see it, Richard. And you see it the way it is.
Because I expect it to get negligible coverage in the mainstream media, I feel obliged to remind everyone that grassroots Britain goes on the march this Sunday.
The Samizdata Team will be duly represented and, if you wish to join us we will be meeting with several others of a like mind at Hyde Park Corner at 09.45am Sunday morning.
Insights come in varied and peculiar forms, such as those decanted from the lips of such British sages as Rab C. Nesbit to the north and the Macc Lads from a tad further south.
To be honest I think the Macc Lads are at least as reliable as DEBKA when it comes to military analysis and probably rather better… well certainly more forthright. Read the article and make up your own mind.
If there is war, it will be a clash of experts as well as armies. If Saddam’s forces collapse, and the American-led action has a quick outcome, the Macc Lads will have disproved Field marshal Lord Bramall and most of academe.
Before you read the linked Spectator article, let me proffer some linguistic assistance to our non-British readers… ‘Boddingtons’ is an inexpensive but far from ineffective beer in considerable favour with the broader end of Britain’s socioeconomic pyramid.
I can’t comment on whether or how guilty or dangerous the alleged terrorist ring is, but some statements, such as the following from Fox News just make me laugh:
Hochul said other evidence found at al-Bakri’s home in Lackawanna included a rifle, a telescopic sight, and a cassette tape that “asks Allah to give Jews and their enablers (U.S.) a black day.”
Now please tell me why finding a rifle and a sight in a house in Pennsylvania is unusual? I grew up in a small town in Western PA, and it would have been closer to news if they entered a random house and didn’t find an entire cabinet full of rifles, shotguns, ammunition and assorted sights and accessories.
It just makes you cringe to read this kind of idiocy.
Erratum: Lackawanna is across the border in New York state, not in Pennsylvania.
The attempt by statist corporations to allow their Big Media interests to hack your computer with the US government’s blessing is moving into high gear with the Berman bill.
Critics say Berman and Hollings have no choice but to respond to the wealthy lobby of the entertainment industry, which has dumped generous campaign donations into their laps. But supporters of the legislation suggest the lawmakers are just doing the right thing.
“The essence of capitalism is for people to profit from the fruits of their labors,” said James Miller, a professor of economics at Smith College and proponent of government intervention. “I don’t think the Berman bill goes far enough.”
Ah yes, blesséd democracy… in fact the finest democracy money can buy. Of course what idiots like Professor Miller do not seem to grasp is that it is not “the essence of capitalism” at all: the essence of capitalism is allowing market forces (i.e. capital) to determine what is or is not a viable business model. By arguing that the state should prop up what is clearly becoming a non-viable business model (the existing music business), Miller is describing not capitalism but statist stasis based economic systems like socialism and fascism. Miller is free to propose what he likes for the benefit of th existing structure of Big Music but to describe propping it up with restrictive, innovation destroying, market mechanism deadening laws as “The essence of capitalism” suggests to me that perhaps the article has a typo and he is in fact a Professor of Ergonomics.
And that is without even considering the civil liberties aspects to this.
“It gives me pause that the only entities trying to block Internet access is the communist government of China and the entertainment industry,” said Phil Corwin, a technology attorney who represents music file-sharing service Kaza.
Also does anyone seriously think that if this law makes it onto the books in the USA that Big Music will restrict its Denial of Service Attacks and direct hacks to computers and networks in the USA? You must be joking. Of course two can play at that game, fellahs. Hackers are a moving target… which cannot be said for the corporations now threatening to hack personal computers by the million.
I wonder if the next ‘shot heard around the world’ will be fired at the state backed corporates from ten thousand keyboards of people who have finally seen an intrusion too far. We will just have to wait and see.
There is something extremely endearing about a blogger (or Blogatrice, to be accurate) who lists amongst her many personal interests:
…alchemy, soapmaking, Hermetics […] laughing.
Go visit her new site at sashacastel.com!
I finally found the right Microsoft compatible audio codec for Linux and have watched the video of Netanyahu’s press conference which I discussed yesterday.
I must admit I am impressed. I’d never before got the measure of the man. If your opinions of him, like mine, were formed by watching the BBC or other evening news, I highly recommend you take the time to listen. He is a very strong defender of Freedom of Speech.
I think he should get his own blog. He’d fit in nicely with the rest of us.
Now corporate promotional calenders featuring scantily clad ladies draped over the company’s products is hardly a new or unusual concept… expect when the company in question is an Italian manufacturer of coffins!
This article has induced me to add a new category to samizdata.net (see category archives) called ‘How very odd!’.
The essential problem of campaigning for the proliferation of handguns is the same as for proliferating nuclear weapons. The suspicion that the first million people who would choose to take advantage of the restoration of legal handgun ownership in the United Kingdom are precisely the million people least trustworthy with such weapons.
The assumption behind the global crusade to keep nukes in the hands of a global establishment is the same as that which would only allow state officials to carry guns.
Yet we have a case example of how nuclear proliferation need not make the world less safe: India and Pakistan. Both sides have governments that are itching for war: the Indian nationalist government believes it would win a conventional war and the Pakistani military regime stands to gain legitimacy from a show of force against India.
There is a balance of terror which ensures that neither side has opted for all-out war, as well as keeping neutral bystanders concerned enough to pressure both sides into staying within certain bounds.
Even deranged leaders seem to accept the balance of terror. One of the curious differences between the First and Second World Wars was the use of battlefield chemical weapons. Civilians in London and Paris carried gas masks during the early months of the second world war in the expectation of gas attacks by the German air force. No such attacks were made because Hitler believed that the British would retaliate (the British government planned to use anthrax bombs).
Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Kurdish people living inside Iraq and against the Iranian foreces during the 1980s Gulf War. He did not however use them against Israel or the Gulf states, despite firing missiles at both during 1991.
As a libertarian internationalist, I have no problem with free countries liberating the unfree, by deposing tyrants. I support a global assault on leftist, fundamentalist, racial supremacist and eco-terrorists. However, I have misgivings about wars started to impose global gun control, especially as this is so selective: why no war to disarm North Korea, Israel, India, Pakistan, or France? Would Australia be a target, or Brazil, Morocco, Turkey, Japan, Germany and Iran if they planned nuclear weapons programmes?
I have a theory that nuclear powers are simply not allowed to develop crack-pot governments: one way or another they are weeded out. If true one could say “A nuclear armed society is a VERY polite society.”
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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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