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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There have been some scorching articles on many worthy blogs this year but over on Transterrestrial Musings, ace blogista Rand Simberg has out done himself with the ultimate take down of the establishment media pundit’s irrational cultural masochist tendency.
Down the hall come blood-curdling screams from an emergency surgical unit. The doctor explains, “We’re low on anaesthetics. We’ve requisitioned supplies, but it’s hard to get anyone to respond. For some reason, there seems to be very little sympathy for these people.”
The cries of agony continue–it is almost unbearable to hear. “Sometimes, the only way to save them is emergency removal of fatally-flawed precepts and paradigms. There’s no time to do it gently.”
Outstanding. This is the perfect article to sum up the genesis of the whole blogging phenomena and it’s non-deferential wrecking-ball ethos. Absolutely stormin’ stuff! Run, do not walk, to Transterrestrial Musings to read the entire sublime article.
As evidenced by the previous post, Samizdata has a new contributor whose name will be familiar to many out there in Blogistan. Christopher Pellerito has long been running the excellent Liberty Blog, and his was the third blog we linked to (after Instapundit and Transterrestrial) when we burst upon the blogging scene. And thus do our ranks grow.
This latest Don Feder column, advocating the continued embargo against Cuba, nearly chokes to death on its own contradictions. First, Feder contends:
Castro has nothing we want and nothing to pay for what he wants from us.
If Cuba had something we wanted, of course, they would have something with which to pay for what they want. And in his concluding paragraph, Feder, perhaps unintentionally, concedes that Cuba does indeed have something Americans want:
Besides supporting oppression of the Cuban people, unrestricted U.S. trade — and the tourist dollars to follow — would be invested in America’s destruction. As U.S. forces clean out the Tora Bora caves, we would be nuts to subsidize a branch office of the terrorist international 90 miles from our shores.
Hmmm … so Cubans do have something Americans want — tourism, for one thing. If they “had nothing we wanted,” they would not earn any income with which to pad the coffers of terrorists, now, would they?
The antiterrorist argument is a nonstarter. We do not trade with Cuba now, and they are already a bastion of terrorism. Terrorists could function anywhere, and they generally choose not to set up shop in open, free societies. They operate from repressive places like Afghanistan, Libya and Cuba, right? By keeping Cuba cordoned off from US markets, we are making the place more inviting to terrorists. Moreover, if we opened trade to them, we could at least threaten to shut them out of our markets again if they don’t vigorously prosecute terrorists.
Castro has plodded on in Cuba precisely because of the embargo. With no access to American products, Cubans do not see what they have been forcibly denied. Castro can blame America rather than his own kleptomania / thuggery for the nation’s woes. End the sanctions on Cuba, and watch Castro topple.
PC meaning Peikoffian Crap.
Okay, I realise it is actually Boxing Day now, but ‘Merry Christmas’ anyway. That’s Christ-mas… as in Christ. Son of God and all that stuff. It does not matter if you believe in Christ or not, because it does not change what Christmas actually is.
Although I am an extremely secular person, I do not hesitate to extend those sentiments to Samizdata‘s Christian readers in spite of the fact religion does not loom large in my life. Yet I think it is important to remember that Christmas is a Christian festival and thus I shall not hedge my Christian greeting with anything like ‘and you have a nice holiday too for those who are Atheists, Agnostics, Hindus, Satanists…’
Don’t get me wrong, I actually do hope any Atheists, Agnostics, Hindus, Satanists, Druids, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddists, Jews, Druse, Shinto, Pagans, etc. etc. who read the Samizdata have a really great and entirely secular couple days off… but then as that is all Christmas is to them, I do not feel any special need to be ‘inclusive’ if they are just hitching a perfectly reasonable cultural ride on someone else’s wagon. I often partake of bhangra-and-booze excesses during Diwali but I certainly don’t expect special ‘Diwali greetings’ from my Hindu friends because I am not Hindu. To me Diwali is just an excuse to eat good Indian food. Likewise I would hope that many atheist (or whatever) libertarians would have no problem with the idea of Christians (libertarian or otherwise) regarding Christmas as ‘their’ day. Yet some people do indeed seem to disagree.
Although I have been much influenced by objectivism, I do not actually call myself an objectivist as Karl Popper looms just as large in my philosophical views, probably more so in fact. I have nothing against objectivism per se, which I like to describe as a sub-set of libertarian thought because I know it will annoy certain people. However I do regard the ‘organised’ objectivism of Leonard Peikoff, of the Ayn Rand Institute, as essentially irrational and pathologically intolerant. Peikoff’s historical error riddled article about Christmas did nothing to change my views on the fatal justificationist structural flaw in his brand of dogmatic objectivism (yeah, yeah, send hate e-mail pointing out my ‘errors’ to the usual address). Let Peikoff pick any day he likes to celebrate the adulation of St. Leonard, Intellectual Heir to the Blessed Ayn… but to fail to understand that Christmas without a reference to Christianity is just another Disney theme event, is culturally illiterate and needlessly insulting.
However objectivism without Leonard Peikoff…ah, now that would be something worthy of a festival of its own! For precisely that, go to The Objectivist Center for Peikoff-free objectivism that includes tolerance and ideas that survive contact with reality. Go read what they have to say.
As for me, once I have finished reading the lyrical Sufic work ‘The Rose Garden‘, I shall be re-reading Popper‘s ‘Open Society and it’s Enemies‘.
I have always suspected that most hackers who cause damage were people suffering from a low and probably very accurate self image. They try to prove that they are really cunning and smart by damaging an on-line system but in fact all they prove is something known since time immemorial… it is always easier to destroy something than it is to build it.
So what has the hacker who attacked blogger.com on Christmas done? By changing all the passwords his adolescent psyche craves for us to think he is ‘clever and cunning’ and oh how witty this ‘Robin hood hacker’ is for posting a benign message on Instapundit.
Of course the truth is rather different. Far from demonstrating any of those attributes, the hacker shows us he detests people who actually create things. Thousands of people wanting to post to their newsblogs, diaryblogs or whateverblogs are locked out and have to use the ‘forgot my password’ option on blogger to find out what their password has been changed to. He has said to every person he locked out “you can write an article and help make an on-line community, but why aren’t you paying attention to ME?… I can throw a rock through your window. Aren’t I clever?”
Pathetic actually. He has done the equivalent of breaking into an art gallery at night, not to steal a painting, oh no, that would actually make a certain amount of sense, but merely to scribe a message about how ‘he could have been more evil’ and then shit on the floor so that people next day will come and marvel at his ingenuity at breaking in. Yeah, we are real impressed.
You want us to pay attention to you? Sure. Tell us who you are and you will get your wish big time. We all know how horse-thieves were treated when they were caught.
Well, actually post Christmas Day now, but nonetheless, we had at least one of the ingredients for a Traditional(tm) Christmas here: it snowed. Now, you would think that a place this far North would see a fair share of snow. Nope. When an inch comes down Belfast drivers are about as prepared and perplexed by the white stuff as someone in South Carolina. Iceland and Greenland are not all that much further North, but the Gulf Stream keeps us from looking like Norway. Which is fine except for the long, long nights this time of year. That’s one of the reasons for the pub life I suspect… besides the lack of central heating of course… at least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
On other fronts, someone hacked into Blogger and left a posting on Instapundit today. While the post was innocent enough, it was not quite an example of ethical hacking because if it were, we would not have seen a message: only the system administrator would have known.
Ethical Hackers can be helpful although many admins would publicly disagree with me. The facts of life are nearly every computer facility in the world is vastly undermanned. The result is a few heroic souls who do their best, but with the number of sources of information to watch and the rates of changes and updates to be dealt with they face a nearly hopeless task. if you visualize an anteater with ten anthills to watch you’ll have a good idea of the reality admins live with. In this sort of environment it is inevitable that something will be missed or an error will be made . If an Ethical Hacker spots the security hole and sends a nice polite private email to all involved stating what is open and what action should be taken to fix the problem, they are doing a service for all.
But if it is just a matter of putting a line on a blog or website so friends can see you did it… then you are just part of the problem. I would like that person to consider that they most likely pulled some guy away from his only day off in weeks, a day to feast with family and friends… Christmas Day fer chrissakes… just so they could show off.
To whomever did it: get some Christmas spirit in your soul. Someday you’ll be the one getting a call out in the middle of Christmas dinner.
Here is yet another example of how the newsblog movement*1 has inspired media upstarts to challange established media companies all over the world. The full ‘story’ can be found here.
Galina Petkova, 19, takes off her clothes during a newscast of “The Naked Truth” a late evening cable show on M-SAT TV in Sofia, Bulgaria, Dec. 10, 2001. Four days after the newscasts premiered, the programs’ rating outstripped the state’s television’s late evening news program, normally the most commonly watched.
Objective insights, clever punditry and naked babes… the perfect admixture for the next media revolution. As Frederick Hajek would have said “There ain’t nuthin’ that leads to catallaxy more that a bodacious naked 19 years old chick dispensing profundities! Beat that, Keynes, you totally bogus ol’ fart!”. Right on, Fred baby! Gil Scott-Heron blew it big time: the revolution will indeed be televised.
*1 = no, the newsblog movement is not something that happens after you take too many laxatives.
The regular Samizdata contributors are reading and listening to:
Dale Amon
Last book read: Winning Colours (Elizabeth Moon)
[No Dale, Guinness beer mats are not ‘a book’ even if you did have a bunch of them stuck together]
In the CD player: Christmas with the Miracles (Smokey Robinson & The Miracles)
Last magazine: New Scientist
Perry de Havilland
Last book read: The Rose Garden (Sadi)
In the CD player: Praise the Fallen (VNV Nation)
Last magazine: The Economist
Walter Uhlman
Last book read: Art of War (Sun Tsu)
In the CD player: The Wall (Pink Floyd)
Last magazine: Paladin Press Catalogue
David Carr
Last book read: To hell in a handcart (Richard Littlejohn)
In the CD player: Itaipu (Philip Glass)
Last magazine: Free Life
Christopher Pellerito
Last book read: Guilt, Blame and Politics (Allan Levite)
In the CD player: The Word (featuring John Medeski and the North Mississippi
All Stars)
Last magazine: Car and Driver
Natalie Solent
Last book read: Getting the Message (Laszlo Solymar)
In the CD player: All Solent household CD’s are currently in use as beer mats
Last magazine: House and Garden (huuuuuge pile of back issues)
Natalija Radic:
Last book read: CIA World Fact Book, 1995 ed. (US Government)
In the CD player: Dawn Maiden (Lidija Bajuk)
Last magazine: Schlagzeilen issues 36 and 60
Samizdata Illuminatus
Last book read: De Vermis Mysteriis (Ludwig Prin)
In the MP3 player: Return of the Deadly Mantis (Namanax)
Last magazine: 2600
Whilst still very much an early ‘work in progress’, the Capitalist Chicks< website is starting to take shape and now at least works with MS Internet Explorer 5.0.
I do have one minor quibble though: ladies, do you really need the damn disclaimer on every page? If you think that you actually do, might I suggest you re-word it at follows:
Disclaimer
The term ‘chicks’ is in no way meant to be derogatory towards women. If you insist on taking it that way, let us introduce you to the concept of several property. This is our website, we like the word and that’s all there is to it. If you have a problem with that, you are probably a socialist and thus are likely to find ‘chick’ the very least of many things here that will upset you.
Just a suggestion, ladies.
One of the really nice things about sex is that you can completely loose yourself in it for a while. But what is it about sex that makes people lose their reason even when it is someone else who is doing it?
Our conservative friends may stand with us regarding economic freedom and capitalism, but as soon as I slip into something interesting and make a seriously risqué suggestion, I rarely have a problem separating the libertarians (or Eastern-communists for that matter) from the conservatives and Western-socialists… not that they actually have different urges, just that one is open about it and the other only admits it if no one else is listening.
In some ways, I think many conservatives have accepted the Western socialist-feminist attitude to women, and think we are these poor hunted things that need to be protected from men. This attitude, coming from a strange mixture of Christian prudishness and Western-socialist identity politics, is particularly hilarious to me as I grew up in a communist country in which men were men, women were women and everyone understood the implications just fine thanks.
So when I read something like a sad little article about a 15 year old boy in Australia who was provided with a prostitute before he died of cancer, I cannot help but wonder at how some people have reacted to what was nothing less than an act of kindness and charity.
Conservatives fume about ‘immorality’ and people who fondly imagine themselves to be feminists fume about ‘sexual objectification’, but fortunately in that hospital there were people who realised that what mattered here was not the views of others but rather that a dying boy wanted to experience what all 15 year old boys want to experience before he died.
Some people argued “[it] demeans women and reduces the sexual act to being just a physical one.” Yet what gives those people the right to impose their moral theories on this boy? Clearly he was never going to have the chance to form a lasting or deep relationship, given that he was dying, so how dare these people try to deny him such a basic human experience?
How can a woman be ‘demeaned’ by engaging in her chosen profession with a grateful dying boy? It makes me so angry sometimes when I read of such cruel stupidity and self-righteous dogmatism. I am so very glad that more compassionate souls were there to make the only true moral decision or this story would have reduced me to tears.
The reality is that people have sex for all sorts of reasons, such as love and respect and caring and lust and attraction and curiosity and too much alcohol and it-just-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time. That is reality. Sometimes ‘the sexual act’ is ‘just a physical one’ and sometimes, just sometimes, that’s just fine by me too.
Peace on earth and goodwill to all men
– Attributed to God
God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay…
Warmest Christmas greetings to all readers of the Libertarian Samizdata.
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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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