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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Quite why so many people write about Nelson Mandela in such a hagiographic manner baffles me. This is a man who is going out of his way to give aid and succor to Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, the man convicted of murdering 270 people in the air and on the ground when he blew up a Pan Am Jumbo Jet full of people over Lockerbie, Scotland.
One of the angry relatives, who lost their 19 year old daughter, asks:
If Mr Mandela is truly concerned about the conditions Megrahi is suffering, then perhaps he should visit and represent other convicts in Britain’s prisons who are serving their sentence for their crimes in worse conditions than Megrahi will ever have to experience.
Back when I was at school, I reall seeing some people wearing tee-shirts saying ‘Free Nelson Mandela’… Now whilst I abominated the apartheid regime in South Africa, it seemed to me that replacing white tyranny with the ANC was just going to be a case of changing not that country’s tyranny but merely that tyranny’s colour. I also happen to recall seeing other folks, ‘Young Conservatives’, in the 1980’s wearing a tee shirt which said ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’… hmmm…
Perhaps marketing those tee-shirts again might be a nice business opportunity!
Better late than never?
Adriana is known for her cutting style of blogging
Perry and his chums bag another tasty socialist swine
As well as being eminent bloggers, Brian Micklethwait and Steve Chapman are founder members of the Mauve Shirt Appreciation Society
David Carr was tongue tied at the sight of Adriana’s see-through top
There are many tools of liberty that may bring illumination to the benighted
Adriana ponder the meaning of ‘In vino veritas’.
Andrew Dodge and Tom Burroughes attempt to form non-Euclidean shapes with their arms
Our Croatian Rose was irked that someone had stolen the top part of her dress
It is difficult to get one’s mind around the vast sums of taxpayers’ money that British finance minister Gordon Brown has planned to hurl at our public sector. The sums are mind-numbing. The spending plans are predicated on some pretty rosy forecasts for the British economy over the next few years, not to mention some fairly dubious accounting methods which reduce the potential bill to the taxpayer from infrastructure projects.
Those rosy forecasts could easily fail to materialise, particularly as mounting red tape, higher taxes and growing interference from the EU clogs the arteries of the UK economy. What is beyond doubt in my mind is that “New Labour”, that strange political entity supposedly different from old tax-and-spend Labour, is dead. Central control of finance, big spending, handouts for the public sector unions – the whole unlovely mix is back. And of course Brown’s announcement on Monday of this spending mania was accompanied by a sharp fall in British equities to the lowest levels in six years. Of course much of the damage to stocks stems from events in the U.S., mired as it is in accounting scandals. But one cannot help but conclude that Brown’s charmed existence for the first five years of his time in the job is about to get a lot rougher.
There may be some upside to all this. Brown’s attempt to improve our creaking health and education system may prove the futility of state monopoly as the ideal way to deliver good service and give the opposition Conservatives ammunition for the case for root and branch reform. But I would not bet the farm on it just yet.
Just went awandering, via Natalie Solent and a mention of an open letter, which I never got to) about Algeria. (Natalie says that it would have been better for the Algerian fundamentalists to have kept their election win and taken Algeria down the Iran trail, which eventually, if Iran itself is anything to go by, gets better. I think I agree.)
Anyway, what I actually found was this fascinating report about the recent huge forest fires in the USA. It turns out that the enviros may have severely contributed, by legally contesting every second scheme the foresters proposed for cutting back trees to make firebreaks, and such like. What’s more, local politicians are actually starting to say this. It would seem that the “noble ends justify any means” philosophy of the average green is backfiring. So to speak.
Changing the subject completely, when Perry was over here yesterday we invented, or probably re-invented, the word “blogule”, which is of course rehash of globule. Usually you already have the meaning and then devise the word. In this case we have the word, but what exactly does it mean? I think it may be a single blogged idea. A meme of the blogosphere, which only achieves blogular status if it gets circulated. If so, then this posting contains two definite blogules, and an attempt at a third. My spellchecker is getting very excited.
NASA Glenn has selected General Electric Aircraft Engines (Evendale, Ohio) for a Revolutionary Turbine accelerator (RTA) demonstrator as part of the Revolutionary Aerospace Engine Research contract given to GE in 2001.
Propulsion is perhaps the major driver in the world of aerospace. If the demonstrator project succeeds in pushing turbine propulsion based systems up to Mach 4, it will be a major step toward airline style access to space.
While I’d rather see NASA get out of the way, I must in all honesty commend this type of work. If they are going to spend our money at all, they should at least be applying it to the commercially high value high-risk research which was their original remit as NACA.
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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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