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]
|
Triangulations, Third Ways and New Deals are all euphamisms for playing ‘Hide and Seek’ with reality. But reality is famously persistant and you can’t hide for long before it finds you. Then the game is up.
And even the ludicrously partisan BBC has to admit that the Labour government has a serious problem on the horizon:
“The Office for National Statistics said on Wednesday that the government’s coffers were £2.5bn in surplus last month, down by more than half on the same period last year, and well short of the £4.3bn predicted by analysts.”
The article points the finger at lower corporate tax takings but the real reason is that HMG has crossed over the Laffer Curve and further tax hikes will only result in diminishing returns.
This is a deeply worrying problem for a government that has ridden to power on the promise of an endless supply of lovely lolly to their core supporters in the public sector. That same public sector took them at their word and grows more militant by the day in its demands that HMG now cash the blank cheque they recklessly wrote to buy the election.
So the pot is empty and Chancellor Brown is left only with the option of massive borrowing to fund further spending. That means going back to the ‘bad old days’ of the 1970’s; something which Tony Blair has said repeatedly he is not prepared to countenance.
‘Hey reality, HMG is in the cupboard under the stairs’.
Greece has banned the sale of living dead dolls – kids’ toys featuring fiery eyes, scarred faces and bloodied mouths which come in their own little coffins. Oh, and the dolls also have their own death certificates.
 Playful Sybill Sybill is strapped in a strait jacket with a collar and chain while Inferno has auburn hair, fiery eyes and bat-like wings. They should be a hit with children who just love all things gory and gruesome. But no, the Development Ministry said:
“There is no way we will allow these dolls on the market…these toys constitute a serious threat to the smooth formation and development of the child’s personality and mental health.”
Unlike your knee-jerk statist interference., right? 
Germans are fighting back with humour! The country’s number one hit is called Der Steuersong (The Tax Song), and has found fertile ground in the hearts of a nation fed up with broken election promises and increasing taxes.
The song that shot to the top of Germany’s pop charts with more than 350,000 copies sold within a week is a spoof sung by Schroeder’s impersonator, Elmar Brandt, who has captured the mood of the country in the lyrics:
“Promises that were made yesterday can be broken today….”
“I’ll raise your taxes, I’ll empty your pockets, every one of you nerds stashes some cash away, but I’ll find it no matter where it is…”
“I’ll raise taxes now because the election is over and you can’t fire me now…”
“We could raise a ‘bad weather tax’, or an ‘earth-surface usage tax’, a levy for breathing, air’s going to become more expensive, and I’m only getting started..”
“A tooth tax for chewing, bio tax for digestion – nothing’s free anymore…”
Schroeder’s government of Social Democrat-Greens has slumped dramatically in voter surveys since the September 22 polls after breaking election promises not to raise taxes. On Monday Schroeder announced another new tax on equities and property sales – which the conservative opposition called the 49th new tax since he was first elected in 1998.
“I’ll rip you nerds off, you’ll be overpowered, I’m always in for a surprise…”
“There is no tax that I can’t collect. I want your bank notes, your sweaters, your cash and your piggy banks…”
“Dog tax, tobacco tax, car tax, ecological tax – did you really think that was the end of the line? Like a pirate hunting for income, I’ll raise all your taxes and if you’re broke, you can buy your food at a discount store or go hungry…”
I am not sure it sounds better in German (here is the full English translation) but the spirit of the song is sound. Ordinary Germans say that “it sums up what we’re all thinking.” Fed up with taxes? Well, what are you going to do about it?
noun. A web log written by lawyers and/or concerned primarily with legal affairs.
(Probably coined by Denise M. Howell )
verb. Similar to fisking in that it is a refutation of another’s views, but misting is less aggressive and is usually humorous. ‘Mistings’ usually take the form of an imaginary exchange of views.
‘Misting’ is really MiSTing – from the show MST3K, Mystery Science Theater 3000, which was a show on The Comedy Channel about characters who were captured by malicious aliens and forced to watch terrible old sci-fi movies. They responded by commenting (rather hilariously) about the movies.
The term has rather different connotations amongst German speaking bloggers.
expression. When a blogger finds that he has been linked by multiple sites, or has been added to several blogrolls, in a short time.
(Coined by James Martin )
There is a tendency among Libertarians to worry obsessively about every infringement by the state, to link up instances of state oppression, and to deduce from this either that there is a vast campaign to destroy freedom, or that we’re powerless to combat the tide of enslavement. This makes us seem obsessive, paranoid and miserable company, except to others of a similar emotional condition.
One of the problems is that it is literally possible for a single libertarian activist to discover every single instance of arbitrary power by state officials on a given day. The posting by Brian on some local bureaucratic monster in the U.S. state of Illinois is a case in point.
Most Europeans would be unable to pick out the state of Illinois on a map (so much for the vaunted European superiority at geography). Yet thanks to Brian’s posting, any English-speaking European looking for examples of state oppression could discover that – somewhere in Illinois – there is an instance of heavy-handedness happening now.
Consider what our knowledge in Europe would be of the Waco massacre if it had taken place before outside television broadcasts. Instead of assuming that everything’s worse because our databases are overflowing with complaints, we should note that we have the tools to expose state oppression almost anywhere on this planet. Think of Rodney King. Did police officers never beat black men before hand-held video cameras existed?
There may be a suit against the Feds over the use of Federal funds for electioneering purposes at the State level.
Wouldn’t it be lovely (cough) to see those Statist turkeys behind bars? (pass that over to me again would you?….)
Secretary of Homeland Security to be Tom Ridge commented on domestic spying:
“Ridge said his recent visit to MI5, the British domestic intelligence agency, was “very revealing,” but that the powers the British agency wields would be unacceptable under the U.S. Constitution.”
I can’t really say I find this surprising. (Hi guys, did you get all that?)
More stuff from my Brian’s EDUCATION Blog beat that deserves the Samizdata treatment.
Daryl Cobranchi picks up on a “state repression of home-schoolers” story. Here are the first two paragraphs of it:
A public school superintendent has sent police in squad cars to the houses of homeschooling families to deliver his demand that they appear for a “pre-trial hearing” to prove they are in compliance with the law.
Bruce Dennison, regional superintendent of schools in Bureau, Stark, and Henry counties in Northeastern Illinois, has contacted more than 22 families, insisting that they need his approval to conduct education at home.
Dennison is, legally speaking, quite wrong, or so something called the Home School Legal Defense Association argues (see their Nov 13 2002 story). Sadly, these days, something can be wrong, legally speaking, but still be true, factually speaking.
Nevertheless, for what it’s worth (and I hope it helps the home-schoolers of Illinois), Regional Superintendent of Schools Bruce Dennison, you are now also being denounced on the other side of the Atlantic.
Donald Rumsfeld listed Saddam’s available options in an interview with a reporter from El Mercurio, a Chilean newspaper:
“That’s a possibility. A number of leaders of countries have decided they were in a corner and they had no choice and, rather than have a conflict in their country, or rather than have their family and friends killed, that they will leave. So, that is a possibility.
Another possibility is that he will try to do what he has done repeatedly before: to lie, and to pretend-as he is already saying-that they do not have weapons of mass destruction and see how long he can fool the inspectors.
Another possibility would be simply to say, “Fair enough. We’ve got them, and you can come in and we will destroy them and life will go on.” And try to stay in office that way. Try to keep his regime intact that way. Which of those three courses of action he will end up taking I think is probably a function of how the world behaves as much as how he behaves.
If there is a determination and a steadiness of purpose, so that the countries of the world and the United Nations demonstrate to him that he really does not have a lot of choices; he does not have the choice of not disarming.”
Donald missed one, and it’s the one I’m starting to believe is the one which will actually happen.
Let’s think in medieval terms. Why would a King or Warlord arrange for his family and favorite courtiers to be sent out the backdoor of the castle? Why would he pay large sums of money to another Kingdom to ensure their safety?
Saddam knows he is going to lose. He is going to go down fighting.
He will use everything he has. Saddam expects to die and will go down shooting. Whatever you may think of him, Saddam is no soft bureaucrat. He killed his first man when he was in his teens or early twenties. He knows how to handle military weapons.
I suggest he is following a twofold strategy. First and foremost he is trying to buy time. He hopes he can pull off a fudge once again but doesn’t really believe it is going to work this time. He is using the time he buys to prepare for his final battle.
If he has made the Roman-like decision “to die well”, he has a number of options open to him. He might try hitting US forces or local allies first. Suicidal? Yes, but he might think it his best chance for inflicting casualties on us. Even if the kill ratio is badly against him he could think it a good idea to grab the initiative. We know high casualties don’t bother him much: just look to the Iran-Iraq war for proof.
There could be secret operations going on right now to deploy his nasties for the last “glorious” stand. He’ll take down half the population of Iraq if it will take more american soldiers with him. If he has bio and chem, they will be released not only in the desert. He will use them in urban battles, even in heavily populated areas. If he has nukes, he will have them pre-positioned with orders to set them off when defeat is imminent. His Fedaheen will certainly be prepared to die with and for him as they cannot expect to long survive his passing.
I assume the US military has already worked through this scenario and has plans to minimize it. They most likely have contingency plans for quickly regaining initiative if Saddam strikes first.
Make no mistake. We are dealing with someone fully capable of making a last glorious stand his statement for the history books. In his mind it’s the chance for the Persians to play the Spartans with him in the starring Leonidas role.
This game has no rules… and no limits.
If you ever wondered who handles bomb disposals when the bombs contain the bad stuff you will find this transcript of a demonstration by the Army’s TEU of interest.
|
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.
|
