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 quote of the day But the 9/11 deniers have two mighty weapons. One is technological. In the age of the internet, if you don’t want to read evidence that contradicts your fantasies, then you don’t need to. Just visit one of hundreds of websites that will supply you with freshly minted “evidence” to replace any bits of your theory that have fallen apart on you.
The other weapon is cultural. Thanks, in part, to multiculturalism, facts have been reduced to accessories in the West’s intellectual wardrobe. The postmodern message is that your version of reality is part of you; don’t let inconvenient truths damage your customised worldview and your self-esteem
– Damian Thompson. Often when I quote Thompson it is to fisk him but this one hits the nail squarely on the head.
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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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My thoughts on 911, in remembrance, and on the points in this post/comments:
I remember lying in bed listening to the news on my radio alarm at about 0630hrs that morning and thinking:
And then it slowly dawned in my still sleepy head that this wasn’t a fake broadcast – that it really was happening as I lay there in my bed.
I remember saying to one of my coworkers that day, “Things will never be quite the same after this.”
And it turned out to be true, and a bit of an understatement.
Here are a couple of clips of how the world responded after that event:
* Remember Me:(Link) Beautiful musical clip with images from around the world showing solidarity with America’s losses of 9/11, to the music of Mark Shultz singing “Remember Me”.
* Rejoicing:(Link) Fox News footage of Palestinians dancing and celebrating at the news of the fall of the twin towers on 911.
Now I gather that there is a proposal to build a massive Islamic mosque (uh, sorry, that should read “Civic Center with prayer room”) at Ground Zero. Yeah, right.
In the film The Thin Red Line:
The point about quoting this film is to suggest that there may be some truth here. We are doing the killing. It is us, and it is usually justified by belief in one religio-political ideology or another. It doesn’t really matter which one. We will apparently kill other people for not accepting our ideologies – except in the case of Islam and the Jews, the latter who must be exterminated regardless and are not allowed to convert and submit to Islam.
Experience and history would seem to indicate that for over 2,000 years this killing and violence of ours is unlikely to make anything go away, except maybe those with weaker religio-political ideologies, but certainly not Islam in any event.
So, here we are, irrationally predicting that somehow, magically and merely by our wishing it in some bold speech, history will show little left of Islam excepting its “icons will be remembered only in dusty historical archives”. Good luck with that.
Islam is already 1,400 years old and its membership is at an estimated 1.6 billion approx, making it now greater than the estimated 1.2 billion approx Christians/Roman Catholics (a religious sect formerly in the majority). This doesn’t quite seem like a historical decline to me, but maybe I misunderstand the statistics.
Never mind, if that fails, we can always be comforted by the irrational thought that “Islam can be destroyed non-violently”. Hey, we will just make fun of it and it will go away! Of course! Now why hadn’t we thought of that before?! Good luck with that too.
Time to get our heads back in the sand, methinks.
Great piece by DT.
I have a colleague who is a truther and
I reduced this clown to tears in expressing my contempt. This doesn’t happen enough with these lowlifes.
Perhaps the mightiest weapon is the lies that we have been fed constantly by government and politicians. Sets the tone somewhat.
OTOH, I’m no truther but something still doesn’t sit quite right about the whole thing. Probably just some odd coincidences or something but it wouldn’t surprise me if all is not as it seems.
I don’t agree with the truthers. However, I have little problem with their existence.
Ignoring their weak physical evidence, their underlying beliefs seem to amount to:
1.) Governments often lie to their own people.
2.) Governments have commited and are still capable of false flag attacks.
I happen to agree with both of these beliefs even though I don’t think they are the case in 9/11.
I had a friend unfriend me on Facebook because I’d refute his idiotic Truther posts constantly referring to his references as “fucking idiots” and “loathsome scumbags.” Really though, I can think of no better way to refer to such people.
He was also a chemtrail believer and Ron Paul fan.
Jeff, I empathise. I have broken off with one or two people who have gone down the conspiracy-mongering U-bend. You are best off not having anything to do with these idiots.
I still think the Southpark rationale is the strongest rebuttal of Trutherism, from a libertarian point of view*. A government simply isn’t competent enough to carry out an attack of 911-scale and complexity without screwing it up royally. The operation would also face exposure from whistleblowers – it would take literally thousands of people to pull such an operation off, many of whom would know what they were doing and what the target was, and surely more than one would get the guilts at some point and come clean. This hasn’t happened. So the reasons that inspire my contempt for government also preclude it from being the culprit.
*and this is one reason why I consider Ron Paul to be rather on the nose – that he pals around with such people and takes their money.
Oops, “such people” = Truthers, and not the Southpark guys and/or their fans.
Similar to what some have mentioned here, I’ve come across several folk who think they’re being cleverly subversive or thinking cool heretical thoughts or sticking a finger in Uncle Sam’s eye or simply trying to be less boring than they actually are by floating and giving credibility to Trutherist allegations in social settings. Humiliation of such people is not unwarranted, in my opinion.
James Waterton’s point re exposure makes sense. Such a large conspiracy would inevitably leak somewhere.
That the US government was behind 9/11 is probably another of the facile conspiracy theories (Da Vinci Code, et al) cooked up or encouraged by, those who are involved in the real conspiracies, as a distraction.
That there are indeed some undercover agendas, and in fact a substantial agenda that I cannot yet fully identify but that seems committed to driving the world insane seems however the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from looking at world disastrous events and the way these events are so rigorously pursued even when the inherent disaster is clearly visible.
Not ALL intelligent people can be so stupid.
So many clever, expensive and difficult to achieve systems to achieve defeat and inconvenience, economic collapse and destruction cannot, surely, come about by accident?
A good article Perry.
And Thompson is, sadly, correct – there are many “on the right” who have taken up the methods of Marxism and (no surprise) come up with demented conclusions.
“Truthers” are from both the left and the right – but those who claim to be libertarians, shame us.