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 – farcical UK Covid Inquiry edition “Never in the history of Britain have politicians so clearly abandoned their own policies and instincts at the behest of the technocrats. This was made plain day after day as the scientists took the airwaves and stood behind podiums, saying nothing different from the politicians who echoed and praised them.”
And:
“More and more, it looks as if this inquiry, set up by the Blob, staffed and run by the Blob, sees its job as blaming the politicians and excusing the Blob.”
– Matt Ridley, Daily Telegraph (£), writing about the farcical covid enquiry in the UK.
By the way, I remember watching The Blob, a movie starring a young Steve McQueen, years ago. It was quite scary. Fortunately, McQueen turned to more realistic fare to achieve greatness in films such as The Great Escape, Bullitt, and Papillon.
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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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Surely McQueen would have had to have starred in “The Birdman of Alcatraz” to achieve greatnest.
[Sorry!]
As the Master of Baillie College says to Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, you’ve got a lot to be smug about.
If I had 75,000 a year, a knighthood, an index-linked pension, and a bunch of politicians to take the blame for all my mistakes, I’d be pretty smug myself!.
Technocracy is yet another one of the Progressive “Gods that Failed”, and it’s going to be an ugly thing when people realize that.
There’s a seemingly inevitable progression with institutions: You start out with the best of intentions and the best of people you can find, to solve some problem or set of problems. Then, with the institution set up, the powers granted to it, it becomes a place attractive to the exact wrong sort of people, the ones who’re looking for power, self-aggrandizement, and the “easy life” of existing within the hierarchy.
It’s a life-cycle, one you can plot out very easily if you step outside the hierarchy and observe. One careerist begets another, as they choose their subordinates and successors; the idea of legitimate merit escapes them. The weird thing is how often the sociopaths manage to camouflage themselves and deceive others.
I recall a certain specific case I observed, once upon a time. Gentleman careerist of the enlisted sort didn’t want to go to Korea, so he got himself declared “Sole Surviving Son” in order to get out of the deployment, which is a thing that even today’s volunteer force can do. Once out of that assignment, he wrangled his way into a succession of jobs like running the NCO academy and other things, culminating in his final assignment as a First Sergeant. Now, interesting thing was that along the way, he was guilty of multiple iterations of sexual harassment, which included marrying one of his female subordinates at the NCO academy. Which nobody apparently paid attention to… In order to become First Sergeant, he had to make himself deployable, so he signed a waiver on that “Sole Surviving Son” thing… Made First Sergeant, he immediately proceeded to conduct himself in a similar manner to his time at the academy, driving many of the females out of the unit.
Eventually, got relieved-for-cause when someone finally made enough of an objection. Managed to get out of it, and was working excess to needs for a bit, and then 9/11 happened and we got deployed. Whereupon, our hero decided to claim “Sole Surviving Son” again, to get out of the deployment to Iraq…
That was the point at which the scales fell from the eyes of the higher leadership, and he finally became “Persona non Grata” to them. Never mind all the other egregious crap he’d pulled, all the good soldiers he drove out of the unit and the Army, it was his determination not to deploy there at the last. I had to laugh at the shocked expression on everyone’s faces when that little tid-bit crossed their desks… Up until that point, he’d been the command’s “golden child”, unable to do any wrong, whatsoever. They’d taken his side against the multitude of female junior enlisted who’d complained against him, and he’d only been removed from his position of authority because the IG insisted on it.
The military is full of these self-serving careerist types, and the system insists on promoting them and selecting them for prestigious and responsible jobs, where they pull more of their kind up with them. They’re entirely uncomfortable with anyone who is actually competent and in possession of even the slightest degree of integrity.
That tale is a microcosmic recap of what has gone wrong across most of our institutions. You wonder how the current presidents of the Ivy League got where they are, and why they’re such scumbags…? Same syndrome, same pathology, different venue.
Any collection of human beings making up an organization create an entirely separate life-form, an organizational one that has an entirely separate life and identity from those participating in it. It is a weird thing to observe, and you only ever get to see it if you’ve spent a lot of time inside one, leave it, and then return years later to find that despite the fact of every individual participating in it having rotated out, things are still very much the same…
Covid came from the Chinese lab that was backed by American government agencies, and Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance and the World Health Organisation.
Early Treatments that could haves many lives, were systematically smeared – on an international basis.
The “lockdowns” were medically useless, they did NOT “save lives”, and imposing them earlier would have achieved nothing but more harm. The lockdowns have caused incredible levels of harm and may well have broken Britain and other countries – as we were already in a terrible condition of vast government spending and cultural decline (decline of the family and of cultural institutions – secular as well as religious) long before Covid, the lockdowns may well have pushed us into a further spiral of debt and decline.
The cloth masks were useless – indeed did harm. And the Covid injections were not “vaccines” as they did not prevent people catching or passing on the virus, and the injections have caused many injuries and deaths.
The Covid “inquiry” will reveal none of the above, what it does, unintentionally, reveal is a corrupted establishment – which stands against truth.
I was listening to a documentary on Radio 4 a couple of days ago, about how the Isle of Man civil service head of healthcare was raging that the Iale of Man politicians were thinking for themselves and taking their own decisions, and refusing to lock up the entire island. It was so weird, the entire thrust was Civil Servant Right, lock down HARDER FASTER, DO WHAT I TELL YOU DAMMIT!!!!!
The politicians are to blame. The buck stops at the top and they made all the decisions. As with everything else these incompetents believe that they know best. They listened to people with previous experience of screwing things up and ignored people that didn’t fit their narrative. They got drunk on power.
Unfortunately they will not get the justice that they deserve and this whitewash will come out with the usual.
Mistakes were made.
Lessons have been learnt.
The sad part is the public are still as dumb as ever. I still see the occasional person with a mask on and people still queue for jabs.
Lord T, I think you mean ‘Mistakes occurred by themselves.’ As for masked people, can you prove they are ineffective? Maybe masks do help some folks. And some people should wear masks all the time! Many ugly people are walking around, unmasked. Bring on more Covid restrictions!
Nicholas, I stand corrected. All government mistakes are not really mistakes because they were unavoidable.
I must confess that I assumed the mask was for coviddy reasons. Extrapolating from the rest of the head/body it was more likely covering up ugly and allowing her an element of obscurity. I should be more thoughtful. A mistake was made and lessons have been learnt. 🙂