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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Loopy Holes
Having failed in their efforts to depict the recent terrorist acts as indicative of the need for yet more gun control, the civilian disarmament crowd is still desperate to capitalize on the tragedies with a renewed push next month to close “the gun show loophole”. Except the loophole they’re raging about is nothing of the sort. The control lobbyists dreamed up that catchy moniker to give a vaguely nefarious air to what is simply private commerce between individuals. It’s the exact same commerce by which average people buy and sell houses, cars, dishwashers, ironing boards, chainsaws and kitchen knives.
Okay. Okay. It’s not EXACTLY the same. Gun show sales from dealers still involve more paperwork and record keeping than most mortgages. And yeah, they still have to clear you with the National Instant Check System, which only takes fifteen minutes except when it takes four or five days. And if you’re from out of state the weapon must be shipped to a dealer in your state where you have to comply with the local laws and permit processes before you can pick it up. In fact, purchases from a dealer at a show are the same as purchases from dealer at a store, and purchases from an individual at a show are the same as purchases from an individual anywhere. All local laws must still be followed.
The various gun control groups harp about the fictitious “loophole” in an attempt to muddy the waters on the whole debate. These are the same groups that recently claimed Al-Qaida training manuals describe how to use lax US gun laws to buy guns and that Barrett Firearms sold Osama Bin Laden .50 caliber sniping rifles. I can’t say where they got the supposed training manual from; maybe they are on Al-Qaida’s mailing list. As for the sniping rifles, it turns out they were actually sold to the U.S. government. A show of hands, please, from everyone who read the embarrassed retraction. Anyone? No? I’m not surprised. The Brady Campaign, Handgun Control Inc, the Center for Violent Criminal Empowerment or whatever the civilian disarmament gang is calling themselves this week is infamous for loudly braying twisted statistics, massive misinformation and bald faced lies. When the truth manages to sneak out, they respond with the defense so typical of a miscreant caught red handed: stubborn silence.
Closing the much-hyped “loophole” will not reduce crime. It’s not meant too. The real purpose is to make it so difficult to hold or attend a gun show that people simply give up. By driving gun shows out of business, they hope to transform innocent open social events into furtive backroom deals and pervert a proud tradition into an unacceptable affliction. The ultimate goal, of course, is to attain the United Nations ideal of the Norm of Non-ownership. That’s civilian non-ownership. Governments and police forces can have all they want.
In the final analysis, the forces in favor of gun control are fundamentally anti-liberty. Colonel Pagano, a former Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police summed up the issue quite succinctly; “Gun control is not crime control. Gun control is people control”. Just as owning a weapon is a de facto statement of profound personal independence, trying to remove that same weapon is a de facto expression of social engineering at its worst.
I had a wonderful Christmas with my family. It was everything Christmas is supposed to be: all the family together, exchanging gossip with my brother’s wife until we were both weeping with laughter; excellent food cooked by my mother (and too much of it) eaten with everyone talking at once; warm cosy house while the wild wind whipped the trees outside; happy overfed dogs lying in a pile in front of the open fire and sleepy cats curled up in the lap; I am ridiculously overdressed wearing a whole Valentino ensemble that a certain Englishman who edits the Samizdata sent to me for Christmas…and there is cat hair all over it now. Bliss.
A couple days of feeling good, I go upstairs to my old room and plug my PowerBook into the phone and decide to post to Samizdata… oh. I cannot get into blogger.com. Oh well, must be these miserable Croatian phone lines. I try again later…still no luck. Go back downstairs, drink some loza. Try again…and again…
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeekkkkk!!!!!!!!!
Feelings of panic! Suddenly I am no longer in my comfortable home…now I am just an isolated nervous woman in the middle of nowhere in rural Croatia, cut off from the invigorating, cosmopolitan rush of the Internet. Gasp! Instapundit looks… dead… Mind over what matters? Silence. I check out Dawson to see if he has finally writen this “sort of ‘love post’ to Natalija at Samizdata” he said he was going to write…but all I see is eerie stillness. I look out of the window and the trees look back, gaunt and threatening. Beyond the gloom, is the rest of the world still there? The wind shakes the house. I close my PowerBook and stumble downstairs, stepping over the dogs. Even they are looking uneasy now. The fireplace is making the air seems oppressive, close, almost imprisoning. I drink more strong loza until I pass out.
And then I log on today, nervous, fearful, hung-over…
Ah! Phew! A tingle runs up my spine. I am back in contact with the world! The dogs are chasing each other around the house, the cats are hissing at them; mother is walking around with steaming pots of wonderful smelling…something; father is happily discussing the merits of his new Christmas rifle with my brother (who is pretending to be interested); my sister-in-law has remembered a prime piece of gossip she forgot to mention before and I see my lovely Valentino dress on a hanger… someone has removed all traces of cat hair from it.
Tomorrow I drive to Vienna to stay with friends.
The world is back running in well oiled grooves.
The Christmas hacker vandalism that took blogger.com off-line for most of yesterday is all the more appalling when you consider that blogger.com are one of the Internet’s secular saints, when you think what they provide to us, the bloggers, and you, the readers, essentially for free.
I feel another bout of ‘hunt the advertisement’ coming on… remember everyone, if you see a banner advertisement on a blogpage, anyone can click on the ‘get rid of this ad’ link under the banner on anyone else’s site and contribute a measly $12 for 1 year of ad-free blog viewing for everyone. If all 300,000+ people who have blogs on blogger.com or the millions of readers who read those blogs contributed that paltry sum, blogger.com, which is run largely on good-will, would be able to afford more bandwidth and better firewalls and obviously that would be in all our interests.
US Marines were handed an unexpected defeat yesterday and commentators are scrambling to find how this could have been allowed to happen. Reporters interviews dazed survivors at Bagram Airbase, near Kabul. Capt. Hank McHunter, from Dallas, Texas said
I called for support from an AC-130 but it all happened too fast… they got in among us so all our airpower didn’t mean diddly squat. I want my wife, Becky-Sue, to know I’m okay though.
Sgt. Bud Burbacker from Oraldo, Florida added
Our defence was holdin’ okay but then one of them got through and it all went totally down the shitter. Where the hell are them friggin’ Northern Alliance bastards when you need ’em?
A reporter for the Independent attempted to put this question to Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, the foreign minister in Kabul. He replied
Who’s that? Robert Fisk? Shove it, Fisk, I ain’t talking to you, you slimy piece of…
However Deputy Defence Minister with the Interim government, General Abdul Rashid Dostam, promised he would make more information available to the selected members of the Western media later tonight
May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your pubic regions, Fisk. If you want to know what the Northern Alliance position is regarding this incident, then send two bottles of good Kentucky Bourbon and that most excellent Lara Logan chick, you know, that reporter who works for GMTV, to my HQ later tonight and I’ll tell her all about it
During a press briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld was evasive on the exact details but did indicate an enquiry was underway to find out how this could have transpired
Yes, we were quite suprised to hear what has happened… we didn’t even think those bastards knew the rules! It would be fair to say I am pissed as I had ten bucks on our guys to win. Oh well, war is hell and it cannot be refined.
SkyNew showed video of US Marines and British Royal Marines playing American football after a large Christmas lunch at Bagram Airbase. The Royal Marines narrowly won.
[Editor’s note: This would have been posted yesterday but for the intervention of the hacker who disrupted blogger.com… may the fleas of a thousand camels infest his public regions too]
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
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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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