On behalf of the Samizdata Team, it gives me great pride and pleasure to announce a major change to our readers.
For some days now we have been working feverishly behind the scenes to smooth the path of the imminent merger between Samizdata and the Noam Chomsky Blog.
As I am sure you can all appreciate, this is not just a time of thrilling change but it is also a supremely fitting culmination of all the hard work and endeavour we have put in to this blog. That someone as august, as visionary and brilliant as Professor Chomsky should see fit to share a platform with us, honours us all in a way to profound and moving for me to express with mere words.
This is not merely a collaborative effort. It is a great coming together of like hearts and like minds in a grand joint push to change the world. We know that you, our readers, must be every bit as excited by the prospect as we are.
The newly-merged blog, called Noamizdata will be launched very shortly, so get ready to update your ‘Favourites’ list. We regret that this site will be down for a short period while the changeover is effected but we are working tirelessly to ensure that the interruption to your regular service is kept to a bare minimum.
Samizdata and Chomsky together will be a unstoppable force. The future starts now.
Ha! You with the wiseacre and the joking and the glaven!
On the very first day of Noam’s blog, he allowed comments…and without even the most rudimentary protection. Within minutes, they exploded. Some were informative, some were trolls (including the fellow who posted JEWS JEWS JEWS JEWS, like, a kjillionty-willion times, and somebody who did something unintelligible in Arabic). Very few were supportive or Noam-like.
They’d shut it down by the end of the day, of course, which took all the fun out of the blog. I think comments might have been sustainable if he’d put some very basic limits on them. But I wonder which bothered him most – the mindless trolls, or the reasoned naysayers?
Your fooling skills need work. You have to make it somewhat believable, or it ends up just looking like an Onion article.
My favorite Noamism so far:
Yes, they hoot in Havana! In Pyongyang, they roll about on the floor! They bust a gut in Baghdad, or did until we louts soiled their delightful civilization with our muddy boots.
No. actually there is more to it than this. David has always thought this was a good idea, but the editorial team was less enthusiastic, as well as being highly adept in the use of blackmail to prevent David from revealing his true views. David this evening staged a coup, and Samizdata is now his. It is a poor substitute for his true ambition, which is to be a European commissioner, but it will give him some satisfaction for now. We will also be joining the fair trade movement, expressing our admiration for intelligent design theory, and granting “Principal Contributor” status to Kodiak immediately.
It should be a great and exciting time. We shall be back shortly.
Can we expect regular postings from the well-known Finnish political economist Sloof Lirpa?
If you wanted to be plausible, you should have announced a merger with Free Republic…
Well, perhaps he’s not wrong all the time:
“One well-known fact about trade is that it’s highly subsidized with huge market-distorting factors…. The most obvious is that every form of transport is highly subsidized…. Since trade naturally requires transport, the costs of transport enter into the calculation of the efficiency of trade. But there are huge subsidies to reduce the costs of transport, through manipulation of energy costs and all sorts of market-distorting functions”
(Quote pinched from paleocon-turned-anarchist Kevin Carson‘s “Iron Fist Behind the Invisible Hand“)
With Chomsky to provide the theory and philosophy, and the Samizdatistas to act as foot soldiers in the struggle, it will be an unstoppable force.
This is great news…This will mean more true liberatarians…hopefully fewer extreme right wingers (Chomsky is like Kryptonite to them).
Well stated: With Chomsky to provide the theory and philosophy, and the Samizdatistas to act as foot soldiers in the struggle, it will be an unstoppable force.
I would highly recommend his latest book to everyone “Hegemony or Survival”, actually buy a couple of copies and loan it to people who think that the state is their friend.
I gave a copy to a friend who worshiped Bush like the North Korean swear their lives to Kim Jong-il and it totally changed his life. Although he’s going to vote for Nader, it’s still a path in the right direction.
Just kidding! Good april fools joke…Although a merger with the Pyongyang Daily would have been more of a shock
To follow Rev’s suggestion: You should of said you were going to merge with the Pyongyang Daily to fight the European super state now that China is allowing citizens to ‘own’ property. That would of been more believable than joining forces with Chomsky. Unless you were joining forces with Chomsky against the Republicans and the Democrats.
Ha Ha, you sick and twisted people.
You should be chomping Chomsky. The only allowed merging is that of his corpus and a double decker bus, preferably at high speed.
If Samizdata merges with Chomskyblog, does that mean we “regulars” get to ride on Chompers’ two (or is it three now?) boats once in a while? Or stay at his multi-million dollar vacation spread on Martha’s Vineyard?
And I assume he has a nice guest room or two at his $700,000+ home in Cambridge, MA.
Being a revolutionary friend of the people and fighter against the evil capitalist ruling class sure pays well! But what’s wrong with Chompers?
He’s a piker compared to Fidel Castro, who unlike Chompers, who recently made it onto Forbes’ list of the richest people in the world. Apparently the Cuban billionaire he has more money than the Royal Family of Holland (which owns huge hunks of Shell Oil.)