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 A long list of foreign leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have said they wanted Britain to stay in the bloc, but Gove dismissed those interventions, saying those leaders would never cede sovereignty in the way required of EU members.
“Don’t pay attention to what they say, pay attention to what they do,” he told the audience.
Gove also attacked U.S. banks Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, which have donated funds to the “Remain” campaign, saying they were doing very well out of the European Union and portraying them as part of an elite that cared little for ordinary people.
“Banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs said that Greece could enter the euro and they knew that that was wrong. Banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs spend millions lobbying the European Union in order to rig a market in their favour.”
– Michael Gove
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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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Mr Gove is correct – the bankers want their bailouts (for lending to the Greek government and so on) and Mr Cameron is not telling the truth when he says that British taxpayers will not be hit by the bailouts.
However, it is more than that.
There is certain idea (spread by the education system for the elite) that the world (not just Europe) should be governed in a certain way.
Nice meetings of members of the elite – deciding things for everyone else.
The world leaders (and even the bankers) are mostly SINCERE.
There really do believe that they are Plato’s Guardians (or those of Francis “The New Atlantis” Bacon, or Jeremy 13 Departments of State, Bentham) controlling everyone “for their own good”.
If Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne (and so on) were just motivated by corruption things would be LESS bad.
It is the fact that they are SINCERE (they really are) that is the problem.
Mr Brexit on Obama and the USA:
“So it can be seen that at all times since the critical era of 1945-62 as US ‘European policy’ went through its initial defining trials, the policy has remained stable: Britain is the US spearhead into European policy, used to shape EU policy, to hold Eastern Europe into the US sphere of influence, and to act as the cheerleader for American foreign policy and intervention in the chambers of European power. Except for the brief period of the Reagan Administration, the relationship would appear very one sided.
We must ask ourselves, is that really a ‘special relationship’, and should we therefore listen to America’s self interested pleas for us to remain inside the European Union so as to further American interests?
I would suggest not. Our decision must be ours and ours alone, made for our own domestic and wider aims, and we should not be swayed by our American cousins. They can look after themselves.”
https://thebrexitdoor.com/2016/02/18/obamas-intervention-us-policy-in-europe/
Sorry, that article was by Tony E not Mr Brexit*
Mr Brexit is worth a read over at http://votetoleave.blogspot.co.uk/ though
I agree with Mr. Tydfil, it is our decision and I have made that point with the “Electoral Commission”. Not that they will take any notice of a voter they are “independent” they claim????
Yes I have made similar points myself. The interests of other countries should irrelevant to UK voters.
Donald Trump will save Europe by ignoring it.
In amplification of the PMO:
The “Elites” (those from whom the elected are to be selected) have now largely been reduced to those “self-anointed.”
Those “New Elite” have formed by generating for the “populace” perceptions of their personal identifications and motives, which they come to “believe” in of themselves, creating an aura of “sincerity,” based largely on false premises.
They have formed out of social structures of “personal identification” without the burdens of consequences from the characteristics and exercise of individuality (which are suppressed).
Without individuality, they have “run out of ideas” and are primarily concerned with relationships within their groupings of similar “identities;” and, with hierarchal order.
Connections with the “populace” have atrophied and “leadership” (essential where individualities are to be constrained) is being replaced by demagoguery.
Nothing restricts large organizations (finance, industry, education, etc.) from Demagoguery – effective demagoguery.
Those who view “Brexit” as a “Backlash” are blind to the changes that have occurred in the origins and constitutions of “elites,” to what they now do; to the impotence of “Leaders,” and to the great errors of constraining individuality.
“If Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne (and so on) were just motivated by corruption things would be LESS bad.
It is the fact that they are SINCERE (they really are) that is the problem.”
This reminds me of the following by CS Lewis:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of itself victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
When quoted in an article most stop at the end of the 3rd sentence. I like the full paragraph as it sums up social tyranny perfectly.
Well, I say Brexit is in America’s interest, Obama to the contrary. Remember: Obama does not have America’s interest at heart.
One major reason is the one Paul states and RRS extends.
Although the reason to Brexit is that on balance, and in more ways than one, it makes sense for Britons; and in good libertarian fashion, it is not in any way aggressive nor unjust toward the EU or its “member” states. :>)
What I sense Paul Marks also senses (he may demur) is that the populace, Brits first, are not leaving the “Idea” of the original objectives for the formation of the EU, but that the “EU” through the means determined by the New Elite has “exited” the realm of the populace.
I have heard in recent weeks, in many places, from airshows to the bedside of a stranger in a northern hospital who was a recent amputee, that there is a lot of discussion about the EU referendum and I have not heard anyone who is not a partisan Labour or Lib Dem middle class ‘ponce’ type be for remain.
I agree with Julie; Brexit is in America’s interest every much as it is in Britain’s. The fact that such luminaries as Obama and Goldman Sachs oppose it is all the evidence any thinking person should need.
I’ll be pulling for you.
Face it like a man, Laird. When you’re right, you’re right. :>)
Brexit Vote questions:
Is this a mail vote or a mail/walk into a polling place vote?
Can Brits living overseas vote in this by absentee ballot?
Any peculiarities that would make this vote smell rotten like the recent Austrian election bullshit
Brits living overseas for less than 15 years can vote.
Any peculiarities that would make this vote smell rotten like the recent Austrian election bullshit
You can vote in person, or you can vote by mail (in the UK it’s called “post.”)
The key difference is that if you vote in person, you get one vote, but if you vote by post, you can vote pretty much as often as you like. The British postal voting system is wide open to fraud. Naifs say this is an unfortunate mistake; those over 5 years old know that this was a feature, not a bug, designed in when Tony Blair felt he might run out of real votes.
Why is Obama even opening his pie-hole? What an embarrassment!
The man who turns gold to lead with a touch has no business giving advice to anyone.
Spoofing real votes is hardly impossible. My polling card for the 2015 election did not arrive. I contacted the relevant authority and they expressed regret – it had “got lost in the post”. When I went to vote, my mere word that I was who I dais I was was accepted without question. None of the evidence of identity I had brought was wanted.
There _may_ have been an element of “it’s obvious” and/or “we can see he’s brought stuff to identify himself” but I got the distinct impression that my phone query had _not_ been advised to the polling place staff – that if I’d felt unwell that day, and someone aware of the situation had decided to spoof my vote, they would have needed only the vaguest plausible resemblance to my name to do so.
I agree with commenters above that postal voting is alarmingly open to abuse. I also agree about the Austrian election – and the also-sinister absence of coverage. We can all imagine what the coverage would have been if the _opposite_ candidate had won by coming from behind thanks to a 146% turnout in certain communities
So let me get this straight, the country that insisted on the dismantling of the Commonwealth because it was exploitative and the natives needed their own ruler-ship is insisting the UK join a Commonwealth and allow itself to weaken its own ruler-ship and be exploited.
Well that seems like good advice.
On postal votes.
We ended up with a hung Parliament here in Oz because one crucial box of votes “fell off a van” or something, which meant the seat was re-contested.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-15/senate-ballot-boxes-may-have-fallen-off-truck-committee-finds/6395716
The nearly 1,400 Senate ballot slips that disappeared in Western Australia during the last federal election may have literally fallen off the back of a truck, says a federal parliamentary committee.
The missing votes triggered a $21-million re-run of the Senate election in WA, which the committee said caused unprecedented damage to the reputation of and confidence in the AEC.
In short our voting is a sick joke.
RRS said:
The original objectives of the EU are generally what we’re getting now – a european technocratic government sitting above democratically elected national ones. This came out of Jean Monnet’s and Arthur Salter’s WWI experience of state control of resources and industry, noticing how effective technocratic authority can be in achieving particular goals.
The British population were deceived in 1972 that they were joining a trading bloc despite already being in one at the time (EFTA). However, the ideas for political, monetary, security, etc union were in the background even 45 years ago.
Last night on the BBC Parliament channel they were replaying a 1975 episode of Panorama featuring a discussion between Tony Benn and Roy Jenkins in the run up to the 1975 referendum on staying in the EEC. I was surprised to hear that basically, 40 years ago, the arguments for and against membership were the same as today. Benn was for leaving, recognising it as a major loss of authority, turning our back on the rest of the world, manufacturing would move to Germany etc. Jenkins laying it on thick that we’re too small to influence anything on our own, that peace is maintained by membership, that internal competition isn’t enough so we must be exposed to external competition and so on. Jenkins even said then that the future might well be monetary and political union and that he wasn’t opposed to that.
This has been festering for 45 years.
samizdata
Sorry about that.
I had a brain incident and thought I was still in Google!
I keep mine in a jar (floating in Armagnac) until I need it, prevents accidents.
At 48, my work in liaison with Llyods, Storebrand, certain banks, and some budding German outfits had me in London, Dublin, and on the Continent back in ’72. “Trading Bloc” and what it entails is a reasonable simplification of what was anticipated – as I recall the attitudes in commerce back then. I had little exposure to the “Labour” attitudes.
Whether that “stage” involved “deception,” or something like bait and switch seems less descriptive to me than does a perception of other forces (Continental Hegemony, e.g.) changing the “pitch” for a different set of games.
I see that the European Commission is now proposing a directive to create a pan-European tax system, complete with new tax ID numbers for all citizens, the object being to force the increase in tax rates in low-tax countries (such as Ireland) so they don’t “compete unfairly” with their high-tax neighbors. Does anyone there really need any further reason to support Brexit?