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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Samizdata slogan of the day More than half a century of experience shows that the U.N. is a theater of hypocrisy, a sink of corruption, a street market of sordid bargains and a seminary of cynicism. It is a place where mass-murdering heads of state can stand tall and sell their votes to the highest bidder and where crimes against humanity are rewarded.
– Paul Johnson in Five Vital Lessons From Iraq [via Instapundit]
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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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True about the UN, but no need to be rude about street markets.
Someone should start keeping a website with a neat little graphic, showing numbers of UN members using torture, numbers of members for each number of years since last real election, and a couple of other measures.
The graphic could have two versions. One giving boxes of equal size to show that small members have as many votes as large members, and so that the overwhelming majority of countries are socialist/fascist. And the other with boxes reflecting size of population, to show that the overwhelming majority of population lives under socialist/fascist rule.
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Gee, Dr. Johnson, don’t hold back. Tell us how you really feel!
Seriously, Johnson is spot-on. By now, with two disastrously failed experiments in international forums under our belts, we should have learned how pointless they are. Let’s hope Washington sees this sometime soon.
“The Scottish Education Authority” according to The Daily Telegraph, “expressed concern …” If this child thought she was turning in a real [one-sentence] essay, then the Scottish Education Authority should be”expressing concern” about its own future. When the educational establishment uses phrases like “text messaging was inappropriately used” to describe their own failure to educate children in their native tongue, it’s time to sweep the lot of them out the door and start with some real teachers and some real administrators. I would suggest getting some ace administrators and teachers in from Singapore, although I doubt that a Singaporean would contemplate working for such a tenth rate organisation. I understand that many second-generation W Indian immigrants to the UK are sending their children “home” to the W Indies for their education as it is now superior to British state schools. Judith Gillespie of the Scottish Teacher Parent Association said, “The problem is that there is a feeling in some schools that a pupil’s freedom of expression should not be inhibited.” What freedom of expression? How much can you express, and with what precision, in pictograms and an infantile text message? I would call this an almost criminal failure to give a child the tools to express herself freely. They are ring-fencing children’s brains with this “freedom of expression” garbage. It is a way to discourage children from thinking. More comfortable for the state that way.
Clearly the anarchistic freedom of expression concept went to my head. My post was intended for the item below. Apologies for the hiccup in your reading pleasure.
Have United Nothing done anything good at all? Well, bad question since it depends on who you’re asking. From an Iraq point of view, I bet Saddam loves the UN..he can lull around as much as he wants to and verbal protests is just words so it doesnt matter for him. The League of Nations only complained when Japan, Germany and Italy was building the foundations for a WWII by comitting some serious agressive actions…actions speak louder than words…