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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… people are beginning to be afraid of the state – but they are also afraid to be without the state
– Chris Mounsey
But I think, in fact, it is worse than that. There are many people – and you can often tell them by their fierce, defiant pronouncements that they have nothing to hide, they have done nothing wrong – who are in a dependant, abusive relationship with the state. They feel the bullying and their fear itself as evidence they are wanted and have a place in the world. Being pecked is reassurance that you are
…continue The Kitchen Devil on societal demons
The Times, assisted by Mr Justice Eady, who seems to preside over the whole mess that stands in the place of proper privacy law in England, has unmasked the police blogger NightJack. NightJack had just won the Orwell Prize for his blog. I am guessing that drew it to the attention of higher authority, and such articulate dissent must be punished.
It took just six weeks, including a court-case, to reveal his identity. The blog has now been deleted, and the DC formerly known as NightJack has been disciplined in some unspecified way. Apparently it is in the public interest
…continue Public service
Nicolas Bourbaki presents a very interesting insider’s view of the how things are developing in Russia. Several of the article’s links require registration at the linked site.
The summer of 2007 was a busy year for the Russian oil and gas business. In April of that year, the state-run energy company Gazprom finally exerted enough pressure on the Sakhalin II consortium to wrest control of the giant project in Russia’s Far East from Shell, who had hitherto been the majority owner and manager of the development. In return for a cash payment of $7.45bn, at the time seen as a
…continue Russia’s descent into reality
Andrew Sullivan, commenting on a remark about the enormous bailouts being put into place by Western governments, has this to say:
“The debt was so reckless and so immense that it now threatens to destroy the entire financial system. That’s what electing George W Bush twice has done for us. But then we are told that this threat requires us to do even more of the borrowing and spending before we can begin to get ourselves back in balance again. The unchallenged doctrine of the day is that: doing nothing would provoke a worse collapse than necessary and so we
…continue Debt addiction
Gorgeous pouting Blair babe, Caroline Flint MP, is shocked by her discovery, on becoming housing minister, that 50% of adults in ‘social housing’ (i.e. directly or indirectly state-subsidised rental property) are unemployed. She wants them to be forced to look for work on pain of losing their tenancies.
Leave aside the typical New Labour paternalism (“You! You, there! Do what we think you should do or we will punish you”), it is the apparent incomprehension of the life of the poor from someone who purports to represent their interests , was a trades union research officer for eight years, and
…continue Dim or disingenuous?
If you think that lower class yobbery is a problem in this country, as most seem to think it is, then is electing an upper class yob to be the Prime Minister the best next step in the right direction?
Perhaps it is. Perhaps a man who can look louts in the eye and say: “I know exactly what you are because I used to be exactly like you, the only difference being that I at least paid some of the bills for the havoc and misery I caused, and, being rich and lucky, I had the chance to learn
…continue Once a yob?
On BBC News 24 TV this morning there was a tech show that was dominated by a report from the Republic of Korea (‘South Korea’).
After explaining how nasty some Korean people are in writing their opinions about other people, the BBC person said that the government of Korea was going to bring in a new law that would demand that anyone writing an opinion on to the internet would have to give their name and ID number. The only criticism of this new law (which I believe is going to come into effect next year) offered was “some people
…continue BBC supports government control of the internet
Mark Edwards lays out some arguments against the Panopticon State
Yesterday I spent rather more time than I should have reading and commenting on the BBC ‘Have Your Say’ discussion about the surveillance society. Faced with the predictable response from the obedient serfs that “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” I tried to make three main points.
The first was that you have nothing to fear only if the authorities are perfect, all the time and every time. Imperfections could be mistaken identity, linking you with some criminal activity; if the bloke who asked me
…continue The surveillance society
I am feeling less of a lone loony than I did. After a decade of my saying the key thing wrong with the demon eyes campaign was that the slogan ought to have been: ‘New Labour: Old Danger’ because the electorate should not have the purported newness reinforced, more and more people in the chattering classes seem to be accepting that there is a danger. Even such fringe lefty agitators as Clifford Chance LLP have offered severe warnings about the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. Too late?
The War on Liberty may never end, but it became a general action
…continue The public mood (while the public moo-ed)
In his Telegraph column, Boris Johnson comes out strongly, and in his inimitable way, against ID cards in Britain. He goes for the proposal’s jugular, which has nothing to do with anti-terrorism and security and all to do with control and commmand.
I say all this in the knowledge that so many good, gentle, kindly readers will think I have taken leave of my senses, and to all of you I can only apologise and add, in the words of Barry Goldwater, that extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice, and that I really don’t know what I
…continue Ask to see my ID card and I’ll eat it
It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that we have long regarded the Ban on Foxhunting with Dogs as having very little to do with foxhunting.
As David Carr has pointed out before, those who shout loudly that the move against hunting is ‘undemocratic’ are completely wrong: it is perfectly democratic. Welcome to the world in which there is no give and take of civil society… welcome to the world of total politics.
Mr Bradley says: ‘We ought at last to own up to it: the struggle over the Bill was not just about animal
…continue A moment of utter clarity
Let me first of all state my basic position. I love America. There, I have said it. But I think there is a problem. I think the citizens of the United States are deluding themselves that they live in the ‘Land of the Free’.
As I write this, in the downtown financial district of Boston Massachusetts, I am a hundred and fifty yards from the site of the historic Boston Tea Party, right here on the harbour lip of Fort Point Channel. In my opinion this site rates as one of the most significant places on Earth, third in my
…continue Letter from America – Land of the Free?
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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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