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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I was going to just point out a splendid article in the UK edition of Esquire magazine by the dependably excellent Karen Krizanovich about ‘the murky world of the dominatrix’ and how context really matters:
Let’s say that one evening your girlfriend starts having a go at you for not doing the washing-up. “You are so lazy!” she screams, slapping a teatowel against her firm thigh. Her breasts quiver as she gestures at you. “I should put you across my knee and spank you!” she shrieks, her pupils dilating with anger. She’s red in the face now, and you are the helpless target of all her built-up rage and resentment. She steps forward, towel in hand, to take her revenge…
Whoa! Stop right there. Maybe this isn’t the perfect evening for you. But picture this scene in the bedroom with both of you naked. Maybe now you get the point.
Yes indeed I do!
But the fact is that quite apart from this howlingly wonderful Karen Krizanovich piece, this is one of the best issues of Esquire I have read in ages. There is a great article about the race car driver and supremely cool French Resistance hero Robert Benoist, a fascinating piece on the Falklands War, a hilarious ‘Ali G’ interview, new iMacs, why the sex, sadism and hard drinking in Ian Fleming’s James Bond books make the 007 movies look pallid, and an excellent list of Britain’s 40 most eligible women. Under the entry for supermodel Kate Moss:
Money: You know your annual salary? She wouldn’t get out of bed for that.
Personality: Like shouting at an alien bartender through a wall of ice 6ft thick while juggling two cats and a monkey
Run, do not walk, to your nearest news agent and purchase a copy of the April UK edition of Esquire
I’ll take up Dodgson’s gauntlet. Let’s look at the young girl in the article. What are her choices in life and what do various systems of thought say about which are preferable? She may face a starving future versus being the well treated slave of a rich man. Given the culture, she might eventually become an influential member of the harem.
How does this differ from what socialism offers all of us? Instead of a rich, dirty old man, we get the State. It takes care of us, feeds us, gives us our medicine, tells us what we may do and when we may do it, and punishes us for disobedience or for showing it insufficient love and respect. Slaves, whether State or private are usually treated well because they are valuable property.
As for myself and other Libertarians, we prefer the Patrick Henry route; “Give me Liberty, or give me Death.”
I have no more problem with “private” slaves revolting and killing their masters than I did with the fall of Communism… when the slaves revolted and killed their masters.
We neither confirm nor deny our spies have determined Stephanie is a pseudonym for one of Brian’s many young starlets in waiting.
Since I have always fancied myself as a bit rugged and rather dashing, I was unable to resist taking this much-touted test so as to ascertain exactly what type of sleek and hi-tech manifestation of military armaments engineering best reflected my personality
To be informed that the firearm I most resemble is a Fisher-Price ‘Mr.Wallop’ Potato Gun is not just disappointing it is also deeply degrading
I shall not be taking that so-called ‘test’ again!
Charles Dodgson takes aim and fires at Libertarians and our ideas which he clearly regards as ill-conceived and even harmful.
Mr.Dodgson uses an article from the Boston Phoenix exposing the slave trade in Pakistan.
“The bidding starts quickly. About 15 minutes into the bidding, one of the buyers asks for an inspection. The elderly woman removes the girls tunic, fingers the childs breasts, and then shines a flashlight into her open mouth to show that she has a good set of teeth. Bidding resumes with a certain intensity; some of the men can be seen rubbing themselves.”
The article paints a truly pitiful vista and I share Mr.Dodgson’s revulsion. What I do not share, though, is his rather strange conclusion that this is the kind of thing that Libertarians approve of:
“Libertarians argue for a society in which people solve their problems by making whatever commercial bargains they can, and the government takes an enforcement role, if that. The more radical among them suggest that society would be best off without any government at all, with nothing but private trade to regulate their interactions.”
Not quite right, of course, but it is an indication of where Mr.Dodgson is going wrong and he is definitely going wrong even according the article he has used as his source which, further down, advises us:
“Precious few Americans know anything about the history of Pakistan, much less that ul-Haq’s reforms consolidated conservative Islam’s stranglehold on the national imagination. Fewer still know that, in the process of imposing Islamic law on the land, he created a culture of servitude for the poor.”
Ah, that explains it then. Would all those Libertarians who are going around advocating the imposition of Conservative Islamic Law please stop doing it because you are distinctly off-message and giving people like Mr.Dodgson the wrong impression. Thank you.
Any genuine Libertarians could tell Mr.Dodgson that our ideas are based on the sovereign rights of individual human beings. A concept which, in both theory and practice, may lead to all manner of interesting and even exotic consequences, all of which are the very antithesis of slavery.
It is often said that a little learning is a dangerous thing. I don’t know about that and I don’t think that Mr.Dodgson is a man of little learning. The rest of his posting is devoted to taking our Johnny Student to task for his interpretations of the US Civil War in a lengthy rebuttal which appears to be both well-researched and informative.
No, I prefer to think that its a little misconception that is a dangerous thing and, of course, a big misconception is a really dangerous thing. Yes, I ‘m happier with that.
Former lefty Brian Linse has more or less succumbed to Stockholm syndrome and we will soon be asking him to become a regular contributor to Samizdata. 
It was tough but although he is still in a state of denial, the process is irreversible and we will have him signing his soul away signed up to ‘The Cause’ very soon indeed.
Mark my words, he will not be able to resist the forces drawing him back to salvation in London for long. We all know that latent libertarians like him never have an easy time coming out of the closet. Still, it was touching to see him actually eat the autographed picture of Barbara Streisand he used to carry around in his wallet.
You don’t believe me? Well I lured him into taking the Ethical Philosopher Selector test and this was his top 5 results (I was peeking and he didn’t cheat):
1. Rand (100%)
2. Sartre (98%)
3. Stoics (90%)
4. Kant (88%)
5. Nietzsche (79%)
That’s right… our former pet pinko aced RAND! We may have created a monster!
This quiz on what firearm you resemble most certainly fits our ethos better than some of the other tests I’ve seen recently.
I think I could do worse than be compared with the H&K, although I’m more familiar with the Beretta:
# 1 H&K PDW
# 2 Glock 17
# 3 H&K PSG-1
# 4 Dragunov Sniper Rifle
# 5 Desert Eagle
# 6 Alliant Techsystems OICW
# 7 FN P90
# 8 Beretta M92
# 9 H&K MP-5
# 10 Steyr AMR
# 11 IMI UZI
# 12 Vektor CP1
# 13 Franchi SPAS-12
# 14 Taurus Raging Bull
# 15 H&K CAWS
# 16 Colt M1911A1
# 17 H&K G11
# 18 M4A1 w/M203 Grenade Launcher
# 19 MAC-10
# 20 H&K SOCOM
# 21 Kalashnikov AK-47
# 22 Ruger Super Redhawk
# 23 H&K HK69A1
# 24 FA-MAS
# 25 GE XM214 Minigun
…goes to Matthew Yglesias, who can rest happily between ‘Adbusters’ and ‘David Duke’. Natalija’s first language is not English and judging from his recent reply to Natalija’s articles, perhaps neither is Yglesias’… so here is a link he might find useful.
The more free a society the wealthier it becomes. Guns cost money. Wealthy societies can afford lots of guns. Mao was wrong. All political power comes out of a cash register, not the barrel of a gun.
– Perry de Havilland
I was on the phone this afternoon with an old Manhattan customer of mine. As long time readers of Samizdata know, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time working in Midtown and lived in the Lower East Side while on the job. I even did jobs in the WTC, and in fact just heard today one of the hotel staff I dealt with on a cybercast was last seen making certain people were evacuated.
In any event… my consultancy customer base in New York went down the crapper along with the DotCrash so I’ve not had any jobs there since summer 2000.
The call lasted nearly an hour. We discussed the possibilities, some of which would require I once again spend considerable time on the left shore of the Atlantic. I suggested further negotiations go through my Financial Director – her family is from Cavan so she knows how to bargain. Afterwards I was in quite good form, thinking about getting back to my old haunts, looking up the friends in the trad scene there… and then I read this.
The 10kt weapon which the Drudge Report mentions is in the size range of the missing Russian ones I discussed earlier today. If al Qaeda do have one, and if they do use it… may Almighty God have mercy on their souls.
Because we will not.
The Drudge link looks rather generic, so if the content should change, this is the info to search for: Sun March 03, 2002 09:22:37 ET, October Bulletin Said Terrorists Thought To Have 10 Kiloton Nuclear Weapon To Be Smuggled Into New York City
I am supposed to be going to Milano tomorrow for a long delayed business meeting, but maybe I will instead sneak off to Budapest to spy on Brian Linse and see what he is up to. Perhaps he will cast me as a femme fatale in his movie.
Steven Dorff seem rather cute so that might be fun, hehehehe! Keep checking his Internet entry to see if under trivia someone has added ‘Dated actress Natalija Radic’. Then again, I am not sure I want to be regarded as ‘trivia’, so maybe you will have to look under the trivia entry for famous blogger Natalija Radic and see if it says ‘Dated actor Steven Dorff’. Yes, much better 
I remember laughing to myself about mediots (media idiots) who castigated President Bush for not immediately flying back to Washington DC after the attack. I simply could not understand how anyone could concievably make it into US national media without knowing about the well oiled but never before used procedures which bind the President and other top federal officials during an attack.
Of course under most of the scenarios for which these procedures were created… most of the media, along with everyone else would have been too dead or occupied trying to stay alive to bitch that the President was carrying out his assigned wartime duty. Which is to stay alive and in communications… and issue those terrible orders which only the acting President may issue, using the codes available only to him.
Similarly, I find the bruhaha over the “shadow” government inane and a result of willful ignorance. There are very real fears of attacks on the continental USA by weapons of mass destruction. While on the face of it some might think losing Washington and all the federal government a positive good… I suggest you think again. I, for one, prefer civil over military government, however benign.
The Amygdala blog did a nice bit of research on the policies and procedures involved in Continuity Of Government. He referred to a web publication written by John Pike at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). I’ll personally vet the source. I know John quite well and although we have very different politics and don’t agree on much of anything, he’s a good guy. He’s done me some seriously good turns in the past.
The purpose of Continuity of Government is to ensure that even under the direst of circumstances the United States remains under civilian control as mandated in the Constitution and does not ever fall under military governance by failure of the leadership to stay alive and in communication.
To put it bluntly, if you don’t like the dispersal of senior officials to not-so-secret locations, it is tantamount to saying you prefer the US Military keep order after we lose Washington.
And before this war is over… we just might.
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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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