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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A wondrous row has erupted between two fat, middle-aged, uncouth, bearded geazers, one of them the British Minister of Education, and the other the Chairman of Chelsea Football Club. Mr Clarke is plugging a scheme to get sports clubs to help out with teaching the 3Rs to recalcitrant youth, and Mr Bates’ Chelsea are the only football club not to be cooperating. Mr Clarke slagged off Bates, and now Bates has been slagging off Clarke, pointing out that the British state education system is appalling and getting worse and he, Mr Clarke, should see to it instead of attacking defenceless football clubs.
I have dealt with some of the boring educational angles of this story in another place, but the interesting aspect is that Mr Clarke has now said that he wants West Ham to beat Chelsea in their forthcoming and crucial Premiership clash tomorrow. Or, to put it another way, he wants Liverpool and Newcastle (rather than Chelsea) to qualify for the European Champion’s League next year, and even more controversially, Mr Clarke supports West Ham in their desperate effort to avoid relegation, and accordingly he must favour the idea of one of the clubs above West Ham, such as Bolton, Leeds, or Fulham, getting relegated from the Premier League instead. Bolton, did you get that? I can’t remember a Cabinet Minister wading into sport like this. Supporting your own team in a new-laddish, post-modern sort of way is one thing, but to mix this kind of thing with serious politics is new, surely, and frankly rather unsavoury.
Since Ken Bates is making trouble for a politician, we here presumably all now support Chelsea against the abominable West Hamsters and the even more abominable West Ham support Clarke. And that’s quite aside from the Samizdata HQ being in Chelsea, and David Carr already being a Chelsea season ticket holder. I’m a Spurs man myself, that is to say, for the benefit of Americans, a supporter of Tottenham Hotspur. But Spurs are never involved either in trying to get into Europe or in being relegated because they come eleventh in the Premiership every year. Very dull. So by now I don’t care what they do tomorrow and am happy to swing into line behind Chelsea also. I’ll be keeping a close eye on the Chelsea game tomorrow and keep everyone posted. Go you … Chels?
It is often said that free speech does not extend to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre. Likewise, actually incitement to violence within the context of civil society is not a matter of free speech at all, but is rather a matter pertaining to violence. In a genuinely free and reasonable society, a category in which I would not include Britain, to betray one’s ignorance by loudly declaring that “All Pakis and Niggers smell bad and should go back where they came from”, should be regarded as legitimate free speech (and of course the answer should be “What? You want me to go back to Croydon?”). Likewise any rather more aggressive replies questioning the racist’s intellect, honour and rationality should be likewise be regarded as legitimate free speech.
However to call for the murder of members of those ethnic groups is quite a different matter. And so when the likes of Al Muhajiroun, the much publicised Islamic organisation active in Britain, are found to be again and again to be encouraging the straightforward murder of civilians in various parts of the world, the point of tolerance should long have been passed. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the self-styled “emir” of Al Muhajiroun publically praised suicide bomber Asif Mohammed Hanif and would-be suicide bomber Omar Khan Sharif, both UK passport holders who were posing as ‘peace activists’:
These two brothers have drawn a divine road map, one which is drawn in blood. We pray to God to accept one brother as a martyr. I am very proud of the fact that the Muslims grow closer everyday, that the Muslim land is one land and there is no more nationalism or Arabism.”
As David Carr previously mentioned, that these lunatics came from Britain’s Muslim community is not an insignificant detail. That Al Muhajiroun is not setting bombs off here in London should not disguise the fact that just as the people in the USA who gave money to pro-IRA fund raisers in the United States were guilty of financing the murder of innocent civilians, Al Muhajiroun is responsible for the slaughter of civilians in Israel by giving aid and comfort to the people who are physically doing the murders.
Just as the Irish Republican terrorists who far from killing civilians as ‘collateral’ damage to an attack on a military target, actually targeted civilians for mass murder, the Islamic terrorists supported by Al Muhajiroun’s rhetoric, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and their ilk, actually target pizza parlours and nightclubs, rather than the Israeli army or state.
Of course, some will claim that as these acts happen outside Britain, there is no grounds for doing anything. What I wonder would they think of Al Muhajiroun’s British-born lawyer Anjem Choudary’s remarks quoted in today’s Daily Express (print edition) in which he encourages Muslims from overseas to come to Britain and attack targets here? Given that these ‘religious men’ have signally failed to criticise the intentional slaughter of civilians in Israel, I rather doubt any ‘martyrs’ heeding this call will be going after a well protected British military target… more likely we can expect a suicide bomb attack on Oxford Street when it is crowded with people shopping.
I would urge members of the Muslim community in Britain who regard these people as lunatics that do them a great disservice to move heaven and earth to disassociate themselves with these people. That the British government tolerates a group such as Al Muhajiroun in our midst is a measure of the decadence at the core of the state.
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Crispin Blunt MP, a frontbench Conservative spokesman on trade, has resigned and called for Iain Duncan-Smith to be deposed as party leader. Having the largest share of the vote, more councillors and more councils than any other party just isn’t good enough.
IDS responded to the resignation by sacking frontbench spokesmen called Burgess, Maclean and Philby, just to be on the safe side.
Today, it is May 1, the day when we celebrate the greatest thing to benefit the living standards, opportunities and happiness of ordinary working people – capitalism.
I could wax lyrical, cite lots of clever books and such like, but I thought this item, via Reuters, surely says it all.
Shares of the bordello enterprise, which hired Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss to spice up its stock listing and touts itself as a recession-proof, five-star hotel, doubled on their first day of trading on Thursday.
About 1.4 million shares of the company — called The Daily Planet — changed hands.
“Obviously the price is going to go up. It’s sex…and everyone knows sex is a smart investment,” Fleiss told reporters just before the shares started trading.
God bless capitalism!
And that is no longer just my pejorative opinion. It is a view that is being enthusiastically endorsed by its proponents:
During the May Day protests, we are going to be in the City of London vacuuming up after capitalism.
We’ll be there with our vacuum cleaners and warning people to watch out for the dirty capitalism all around them.
With our cleaners, we never let dirty capitalism settle.
I hope they intend to clean up after themselves. Last year’s ‘May Day’ marches left central London looking like an industrial tip.
So a lot of work is about humour because that really works. If people see a group of us vacuuming or praying, I think it’s more likely to get them to question things.
You’re right, the humour does work. I am already doubled up with laughter.
All the messages that are put about by advertisers are basically saying that shopping is the new religion. We were just taking it that little bit further.
Shopping as a religion? Damn, that’s a good idea. Anyone else fancy the idea of forming a Church of Conspicuous Consumption?
We had quite an interesting reaction. A lot of the shoppers were quite startled. Some of them laughed. Others looked at us as if we were idiots.
Conspicuous consumers are generally a perceptive and sensible lot.
Eventually the security guards threw us out. We’re not aggressive and we know that what we do and film takes place on private property so if they ask us to leave, we do.
Yet more ‘crushing of dissent’! Oh the humanity!!
The group goes into a store, all wearing the same shirts. Then, in a line, each member pushes around empty shopping trolleys [carts in America] in a quiet meditation.
Just silently contemplating all those seductive bargains.
I’ve got no illusions that what we do is going to stop people shopping. But the person who sees us praying or vacuuming may go home and have a question in their mind about the society we’ve created.
I’ll wager that the question in their mind is, how did you manage to fall from the Stupid Tree and hit every branch on the way down?
Whenever I get despondent about the state of the world, up pop the Children of the Revolution to remind me just how debased, banal and self-parodying they have become.
A disturbing development in the Middle East. Well, two disturbing developments to be more precise.
First, another successful human missile attack in Israel, this time aimed at a beachfront cafe in Tel Aviv, has killed three people. Proof that no security system is foolproof and even though attempted mass murders are thwarted virtually every day, some still get through.
Secondly, Israeli police appear to have evidence that two men involved in the attack were both British citizens:
Israeli television has shown passports alleged to belong to the two men, which name them as Asif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif.
If it transpires that the claims are true then this is the first time, to my knowledge, that non-Palestinians Muslims have been engaged in attacks on Israel. It must raise the issue of the extent to which Islamic terror gangs have been successfully recruiting in this country and, perhaps, elsewhere in the West.
Of course, there is also the corollary that perhaps the reservoir of ‘willing recruits’ among the Palestinians is starting to dry up, forcing the terror-masters to look elsewhere for their walking payloads.
Looks like there’s an uprising in progress down in East Africa:
Baboons “protesting” at the killing of one of their group have disrupted traffic on the busy Tororo-Jinja highway in eastern Uganda.
The trouble began after a speeding lorry ran over a huge female baboon, who died instantly in the Busitema Forest Reserve, 15 kilometres from the Uganda-Kenya border.
According to eyewitnesses, the driver deliberately swerved across the road to hit the female who was eating white ants.
Soon afterwards, an infuriated group of baboons converged at the scene of the killing and surrounded her body.
They sat in the middle on the road for about 30 minutes causing a temporary traffic jam.
Baboons are as mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore. A representative of the PLO (Primate Liberation Organisation) said:
Eating white ants is an important part of our culture and we are sick of the anti-baboonist attitudes of this illegitimate regime. This was no accident. It was a deliberate act of African imperialist aggression.
Despite the fiery rhetoric, the majority of baboons claim to be committed to finding a peaceful solution. But, clearly, there is a lot of anger down on the plains.
I threw a piece of sugarcane to the bereaved baboons, but none of them rushed to pick it up.
The PLO representative was dismissive:
Do they think we can be bought off with a bit of sugarcane? We will actively resist this neo-humanist attempt to subjugate our species and steal our resources.
The conflict rages on with no easy resolution in sight. Meanwhile, the Primate Liberation Organisation has denied any formal links with the French Government.
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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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