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]

Bite back

Colour me cynical but whenever I hear the word ‘campaign’ these days I generally assume the worst. If it isn’t a bleat for some more state nannying then it’s a demand for some godawful prohibition or other. I realise how jaundiced I sound but I am confident that an examination of the record of these things over the last two decades or so would bear me out.

However, there are always exceptions:

Tony Martin, the farmer jailed for the manslaughter of a burglar, will campaign after his release this month for better legal protection for householders who defend themselves against intruders, his MP said yesterday.

He will also work for changes in the law to stop burglars obtaining legal aid to sue homeowners for compensation if they are injured during a break-in.

There is an old Japanese saying that time is a slow but fair judge. How sweet it would be if Mr.Martin were to finally triumph over those who have wronged him.

In regards to a proposed change in the law it is my view that while the letter of the law should be examined the weight of the problem lies with its application and the assumptions of both the police and the judiciary. It is well past time that those assumptions were challenged and I cannot imagine a more worthy champion than Tony Martin who, as the saying goes, has been there, done that and got the T-shirt (prison issue).

We at the Samizdata will be keeping a close eye on this campaign.

Airbrushed out like Trotsky

Now, we have to be doing something right! The Guardian has written many articles about blogs – arguably they are the most clued up newspaper in the UK on the subject, however much it pains me to admit it – and so far not once they mentioned Samizdata.net. The latest omission occurred in their article on political blogs, a day after the VoxPolitics seminar in the House of Commons. We were there, in force, and made ourselves heard. To our surprise, we learnt that many people who are not our natural fellow-travellers (to put it mildly) apparently read us quite regularly. So it can hardly be said that we are unknown among the statist left and right.

  1. The Guardian have heard of us, in fact, maybe even read us but given our dislike for their ideology cannot bring themselves to mention us. Perhaps, the Guardian blog crew who have studiously been ignoring our existence hope that if they shut their eyes long enough we will have disappeared like a bad vision. Ain’t gonna happen, guys. If this is the case, the Guardian is biased and their reporting is poor.
  2. It is just possible they have never heard of us – stranger things have happened. However, we do get around and it is no mean feat to miss us in the blogosphere… Out of eighteen bloggers they mention in the article we know personally, in the flesh, seven of them and further three certainly know about us. So, if it is the case of the Guardian missing us, well, they did not do their homework right and their reporting is poor.

It’s a win-win situation.

The Guardian do not need to like us or our writing, agree with us or even rate us particularly highly. But to write about the British blogosphere as if we do not exist, means that they really do not understand what they are writing about as we are almost certainly the most visited British political blog. We know from our comments and emails that a goodly chunk of our readers do not always agree with us. We take their custom as a compliment since they obviously find us interesting enough to return regardless.

Dispatches from Basra II

Another letter from the source in the British Army stationed in Basra.

I am sorry about the handwriting but I am very tired, haven’t slept much for a couple of days. I keep getting woken up in the night to reach to events because they want my input on what I know and I work long hours to begin with. But it is absolutely fascinating. I love the work out here. The patrolling is interesting although I do not get to do much of that, but the work I am doing now is great.

I am ‘interviewing’ people to find things out, using as much knowledge of Arabic culture as possible and in the long term cases ‘getting inside their heads’. With each one, it is like a performance in which you try to build a connection, a friendship, so you must find the things you agree on. At the same time you must keep a core that is remote and calculating, wondering why is he telling me this, what is his motivation?

A lot of the rest of the time I am analysing information, explaining it to others and briefing, dealing with ‘specialist agencies’. Sometimes I get to go find some things out myself, ‘discreetly’. And I also work out what we should do to catch the enemy, and recommend it. Yesterday afternoon we carried out an op [ed. operation] based on a suggestion from me to hurt the oil smugglers. Normally, we catch at very best a tanker. Yesterday we caught four and two ships. A team effort, but my idea, so satisfying. The idea is now being continued. Prison sentences last one day so don’t deter these people but losing that much stuff will hurt!

I was called in to co-ordinate the actual capture (or rather what to do once we got them). I made the decisions, ‘interviewed’ people through my interpreter, made the plan and even kept the smugglers reasonably co-operative. That is what I call a good day’s work.

Enviroloons .vs. Femiloons

With the whole world apparently in a state of flux and a preponderance of gloomy prognoses, it gives me joy to be able to report just a smidgeon of good news:

Feminists and environmentalists, social pressure groups which usually see eye to eye, have clashed over a shock poster campaign on the streets of Paris and other French cities.

The poster shows a woman’s breast dribbling a dirty, oily fluid. There is no caption or explanation, other than the name of a private, ecological foundation, run by a celebrated television journalist and green campaigner, Nicolas Hulot.

No show-trials or North Korean-style denouncements yet but give it time.

More please and faster.

oily_boob

Image located via D Anghelone

Ten Reasons Why a Handgun Is Better Than a Woman

In reverse order, they are:

10. You can trade an old .44 for two new .22s

9. You can keep one handgun at home and have another for when you’re
on the road.

8. If you admire a friend’s handgun, and tell him so, he will probably
let you try it out a few times.

7. Your primary handgun doesn’t mind if you have a backup.

6. Your handgun will stay with you even if you’re out of ammo.

5. A handgun doesn’t take up a lot of closet space.

4. Handguns function normally every day of the month.

3. A handgun doesn’t ask “Do these new grips make me look fat?”

2. A handgun doesn’t mind if you go to sleep after you use it.

AND…..THE NUMBER ONE REASON WHY A HANDGUN IS BETTER THAN A WOMAN….

1. You can buy a silencer for a handgun.

[My thanks to Dr.Chris Tame for posting this to the Libertarian Alliance Forum.]

US Snooping Project Faces Axe

The BBC reports that in a surprisingly positive move, the US Senate has voted to withdraw funding from the proposed Terrorism Information Awareness programme (TIA).

The TIA (previously called by the much more chilling name “Total Information Awareness”) was to have been the largest snooping system in the world. Its objective was to centrally co-ordinate and cross-reference every single piece of data available on every single person in America. The justification for this appalling idea was the phoney “war on terror”. As usual, supporters used the lie that “the innocent have nothing to fear”.

It now seems that with funding removed the TIA will be scrapped – publicly at least.

Now if only this country could remove funding from then scrap Big Blunkett.

A howlingly good movie

Least you think all we talk about is politics here on Samizdata.net. I just got through watching a DVD of Dog Soldiers and it is proof positive that you do not need a famous cast of ‘Big Names’ or vast budget for special effects to make a rather good horror B-movie.

The script will not win any awards for originality but as anyone who knows British squaddies could tell you, the characters are well presented and credible: the slang and comportment are perfect. Also they react as one might expect when suddenly confronted with a seemingly unbelievable yet manifestly undeniable situation… which is to say they do not (initially) believe that they are being stalked by honest-to-goodness werewolves, but they do not deny the obvious either when they find themselves wading through gore and intestines.

Excellent stuff… if you are a connoisseur of B-movies, then your hard earned pounds/bucks/€uros could be far worse spent than renting or purchasing this dirty little gem of a movie. I have seen flicks ten times worse than this which cost one hundred times more to make.

Waahhhoooooooooooooooo!

A movie with... bite

Lucky lawyers

Never mind the ‘luck of the Irish’, what about the luck of the lawyers? I ask you, has there ever been a group of people so consistently blessed by the fickle finger of fate? Somebody ‘up there’ must like them, that’s for sure.

‘Not so’, I hear you cry? Well, how’s this for proof? No sooner has the legal profession turned its formidable guns on the fast-food industry than, flash-bang-whallop-wham-as if by magic, some learned scientists turn up with a whole bunker full of ammunition:

Women with a high-fat diet may increase their risk of developing breast cancer later in life, say researchers.

A study of more than 13,000 women from Norfolk found that women who ate the most saturated fats – such as those found in chocolate snacks and fast food -were almost twice as likely to develop cancer, compared with those who ate the least.

I am sure it is nothing more than coincidental. Honestly. Really. But, you must surely concede, the timing could not be better.

And is that lucky or what?

Silent witness

The political storm over the government’s ‘Iraq dossier’ seems to have taken a rather macabre twist:

Police searching for the weapons expert suggested by the government as the possible source for a BBC story on Iraq say the body they have found matches Dr David Kelly’s appearance.

In fact, the TV news is now reporting that the recovered body is that of Dr.Kelly.

Let the conspiracy theories commence.

Samizdata slogan of the day

No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or disseised [dispossessed] or outlawed or exiled or in any way victimised, neither will we attack him or send anyone to attack him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.
The Magna Carta (1215)

The knives are out

My dear pal Brian Micklethwait was not exaggerating; Tony Blair is, indeed, in deep trouble.

Judging from this article in the Independent the assault on his premiership has just been ratcheted up to a whole new level:

Supporters of the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, have launched an extraordinary attack on Tony Blair, portraying him as a “psychopath” and “psychotic”.

Blair loyalists are furious about a string of hostile articles about the Prime Minister in the current edition of New Statesman magazine, which is owned by Geoffrey Robinson, a former Treasury minister and a close ally of Mr Brown.

Another article in the magazine is headed “What is the point of Tony Blair?”, while a third declares: “The question of Tony Blair’s sanity can no longer be avoided.”

This is pretty grim stuff. It is one thing to disagree with a Prime Minister’s policies but quite another to denounce him as a ‘psychopath’. I cannot recall any serving Premier being publicly subjected to quite such a vicious attack. And from members of his own party, to boot!

Mr.Blair may have been warmed by the adulation he has received in Washington but back here in Britain, he has got serious problems.

Property rights New York way

This week New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed into law a provision that transfers liability for personal injuries on public sidewalks from the city to the adjacent building owner. In addition, a companion bill the mayor signed will require property owners to carry liability insurance that provides coverage for sidewalk injuries.

This legislation transfers liability for sidewalk accidents from the city to the property owners who already have the duty to keep the sidewalks in good repair.

So let me get this right. You do not own the bit of the pavement in front of your house/flat. Nevertheless, you are responsible for keeping in it good repair, clean it of snow, ice and other obstructions to pedestrians. At your own cost. For the Public Good. And you are also liable for anything that happens to your accident-prone, trigger-suing compatriots.

Call me old-fashioned but this is outrageous. The concept of being responsible for something you do not own and have no property right to is not only non-sensical but goes to the heart of your personal freedom. The New York City imposes a cost on you without any corresponding choice to dispose of that responsibility. They make you clean, repair and pay legal costs for the pavement whether you like it or not, in the name of Clean and Safe Pavements. You are made a slave to the passing pedestrians or rather the Public in general, which of course is a patriotic and public-spirited thing. That sounds familiar…

Oh, and now you are also forced to buy insurance to pay for the liability you have no choice in incurring. It seems that New York Mayor sees property rights his way.