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.
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The notorious Lagwolf writes in with his views of streaking and joys of older women
For some odd reason both Maine and the UK, two places I hold dear, are both in a tizzy over silly sex stories. I have been resisting to write about these two stories, but they do seem to be getting many a knicker in a twist. Both involve 20-something women doing things, they ought not to, but in perspective not too egregious.
In Maine two women have successfully defended themselves (Judge rules women can jog naked in Maine) against the charge of public indecency. In seems that these two “streakers” were not breaking the law because no genitals were shown. Having done their research, the arresting officer was asked if he say any genitals. He said “no.” Case dismissed, and the state of Maine has wasted oddles of money prosecuting two women for doing something college students have been doing since Rome. This does mean the law is sexist of course, because men’s genitals are exposed they may not streak. You would almost think the law in Maine is encouraging women to streak.
There are those who want to ban “streaking”. As Maine Goes has a whole thread dedicated to who is more childish, those defending these women’s right to run around nude or those against it.
The case is the UK is a bit more serious, but just as daft. A woman has been found not guilty of “sexually abusing” two boys over the age of 14. Of course, the Independent is screaming that she raped these boys. The Telegraph and its columnist Boris Johnson have quite rightly poo-pooed this notion. That is not to say that pressure groups have not fired off a few terse letters to the paper for their “callous” disregard for the case.
We get to read how one man became a drug addict, socially maladjusted and a loner after he was “raped” at 15 by a woman twice his age! Oh give me a break, this guy was all of those things before he got his cheery popped.
Another letter fails to realise, as the Telegraph clearly stated, that there are big differences between girls and boys. Boys cannot get pregnant, have to be “interested” to perform and were no doubt quite willing.
The woman involved, the ‘Mrs Robinson’, was a 25 year substitute teacher. It could be argued she took ‘lessons’ a tad too far, but rape? The only reason the woman got busted was the two boys involved bragged. No doubt one of their mates who was not getting any, ‘told’ in fit of pique. For what its worth the woman involved has been sent back to Canada and won’t work as a teacher again.
There are, of course, advantages to boys having flings with older women. The women are more likely to insist on a condom, choose somewhere discreet and less likely to have guilt pains afterwards. Far from discouraging this sort of behaviour amoung young men, we should encourage it. The older woman might knock some sense into these testosterone fueled young boys. Worked for me.
Lagwolf
You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
– Alphonse Capone
Just the other day I finally got a box out of storage, one which contained all of my old photographs. Now the truth can finally be shown.
I prefer going for accuracy over rate of fire. It’s all a matter of situation and appropriateness to the purpose at hand.
Perry (below) makes reference to the idiotic comments of US Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) — the folks at Best of the Web have also had some fun with this one — see today’s Stupidity Watch. But this is not the first time that Kennedy botched a sports analogy with an absurd malapropism. In 1998, he managed to refer to fellow Democrats Richard Gephardt and Tom Daschle as “the Sammy Sooser [sic] and Mike McGwire [sic!]” of politics during a campaign stump session. (For our European readers, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire play baseball, a distant cousin of cricket played by men in pajamas.)
Kennedy’s staffers must hand him this stuff — he probably didn’t know his constituent team had won the Super Bowl until his interns told him — but what is more disturbing is his suggestion that we are fighting against “individualism.” I am still trying to think of a single aspect of OBL’s ideology that favors individual rights over collectivism. And, as Perry astutely observes, the New England players honed their skills and negotiated their robust contracts in a spirit of self interest, not “sacrifice to a greater cause.”
One word for you, Senator: O’Doul’s!
Today’s Opinion Journal newsletter has an interesting quote from the Axis of Evil:
Iranian Ex-Prez: We’ll Nuke the Jews
Anyone who thinks Bush was wrong on the merits in calling the Iranian government “evil” should consider a speech ex-president Hashemi Rafsanjani gave on the occasion of “Jerusalem Day” last month. He said that the Islamic world will soon have nuclear weapons: “On that day, the strategy of the West will hit a dead end, since a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli counterstrike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world.”
While his statement is true as far as it goes, he neglects to include the response from elsewhere. I humbly suggest the US could spare a volley from a Trident or two without even raising a particular sweat.
It would be such a lovely memorial fireworks display. Mister Rafsanjani could watch it and ponder his errors… during his last .00000001 seconds.
Honourless buffoon Senator Ted Kennedy read into the Congressional Record, as a result of a sports event, the following example of breathtaking absurdity.
”At a time when our entire country is banding together and facing down individualism, the Patriots set a wonderful example, showing us all what is possible when we work together, believe in each other, and sacrifice for the greater good.”
And so we are lead to believe that a voluntary collaboration of free individuals, working for personal profit, a great deal of profit at that, is a rejection of individualism and an affirmation of collectivism. And what exactly are these sportsmen supposed to have ‘sacrificed’ in the course of their highly paid jobs?
[Update: Mickey Kaus has also picked up on this nincompoopery]
[Updated update: I am glad to see everyone and their brother in the blogosphere has picked up on this floridly ludicrous rant by the dishonourable ‘gentleman’ from Massachusetts]
A salute of many popping champaign bottles to our confreres with the Movimiento Libertario Costa Rica on winning at least five (and possibly seven) of the 57 seats in the Congress of Costa Rica. Bravo!
Recent events in Argentina have helped drag quite a few things out into the light that would rather have remained skulking in the shadows.
One of the things that is now clear is that the idea a debtor nation can be ‘too big to be allowed to fail’ is revealed to be a myth. When Ecuador defaulted on $6 billion worth of bonds in 1999, people just shrugged it off as ‘only Ecuador’. Yet now we see Argentina going the same way to the tune of $132 billion.
Another thing has become clear about the IMF. Anne Krueger, the IMF’s deputy managing director, has let it be known that the fund is very keen to get out of the ‘sovereign bailout business’. To this end the IMF has some fantastical plans for ‘harmonising’ international bankruptcy laws which will of course come to nothing. Yet the source of the impetus for restructuring the IMF’s relations with debtor nations is quite revealing and not one you might think. Much of these ‘new’ ideas being floated come in almost whole cloth from Jubilee Plus, a leading anti-globalization pressure group whose very name you would think would be anathema within the hallowed halls of an ostensibly pro-capitalist organisation like the IMF purports to be. In fact what is clear is that Jubilee Plus and the IMF are just different sides of the same pro-stasis coin, profoundly hostile to dynamic free trade networks and in favour of state centred status rather than value based economics.
It says much about the inevitable evolution of the IMF from a supposed facilitator of the global capitalist economic order to being little more than the financial arm of a network of pro-stasis organisations underpinning almost every kleptocratic state on the planet. For as long as the IMF is not just happy to prop up heavily regulated force based value destroying economies of the sort favoured by Jubilee and its ilk, there is little motivation for financial institutions to tailor their lending to the economic realities of a nation’s governance. Yet there is always the fond hope that while the IMF ponders its restructuring, a few really large international lenders will feel some serious pain.
What is really needed is for a few nice large international names to go belly up as there are few things that get the financial world’s attention better than that. I am thinking of people like Citigroup, FleetBoston, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya and Santander Central Hispano, who are all massively exposed to the mess in Argentina… sadly this is probably not going to happen but if it did, what we would have is a clear causal link established between a willingness to lend to kleptocratic governments and disaster. This in turn would impose a real cost in terms of an inability to borrow on governments which pursue anti-economic statist/stasist policies.
Just as companies with bad ideas must be allowed to go broke, so must governments. Sovereign default can be very invigorating to the cause of liberty and advocates of true non-crony capitalism should oppose any institutions which seek to ameliorate the link between government actions and the consequences of those policies. And if those governments, such as in Argentina, are democratic then all the more reason for allowing the voters of that country to reap the bitter consequences of their theft-by-proxy mandates. Let the financial tumbrils roll and lets see whose heads get cut off without the Scarlet Pimpernel of the IMF to come to the rescue.
Justice is sometimes achieved. Jean Bove, a key figure in the anti-globalisation movement who trashed a McDonald’s restaurant in France, has been jailed for three months for his offence, committed in 1999.
A report by Reuters on today states he claims he was protesting about US tariffs on cheese and other French foodstuffs, but I do not recall this French twerp as a principled advocate of free trade for American products in Europe. Frédéric Bastiat he most definitely is not!
The calm acceptance of tyranny is often more scary than its imposition in the first place. I saw the following letter in the online edition of the Daily Telegraph, the right-leaning broadsheet not normally known for excessive idiocy. The following letter on ID cards was written by a certain R.E. Parker who clearly regards libertarian concerns about ID cards as so much paranoia. The letter is a classic:
“I had an identity card for years during my time working in the Gulf states and I didn’t feel that my civil liberties were being infringed. During a recent trip to Oman I wished I did have an identity card as the bank would not change my money without formal identification.”
This surely misses the point. As a freedom-lover I don’t mind being asked for ID in certain cases and indeed, in a free market, all kinds of institutions would make it commercially sensible for persons to carry ID of some kind, such as banks in Oman. But what the letter-writer is interested in, I assume, are state cards, imposed by force.
It is a few minutes past noon and I can hear the sound of artillery from my home here in Chelsea… no, it is not the start of an anti-European Union revolt but rather a 41 gun salute being fired off in Hyde Park that heralds the start of the Queen’s Jubilee.
… is not the fact that he said this: “Nature intended women to be our slaves. They are our property. They belong to us, just as a tree that bears fruit belongs to a gardener. What a mad idea to demand equality for women! Women are nothing but machines for producing children.”
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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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