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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 I am horrified but not exactly shocked. This is the Leitmotif of our lives. It is the continuous grinding pressure that makes our lives a slow misery. And all because of the deranged rantings of a goat-botherer nigh on a Millennium and a half ago.
Our culture has put Neil and Buzz on the moon. Our culture has created computers, our culture has made it affordable for me, as a student, to see the Applachians. Our culture enables boys to wear skirts to school. I am 42 and the largest social change I have seen in my time is the increasing acceptance of homosexuality. I’m straight but I’ll happily have a pint on Canal Street* in Manchester so this could of been me. It quite possibly could have been you.
I have a short message to jihadis. If you want to live in the Dark Ages many countries are available. We have gay marriage (a boon to florists – especially if Sir Elton John is involved). Shoddy Absurdia executes people for “crimes” such as “sorcery”. That is the difference.
– Nick M
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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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Sadly, Saudi Arabia has very few infidels to kill. That’s why they are here.
The victory of the House of Saud in the interwar period (thanks the socialist traitor Philby – the father of “Kim”) over the more moderate Hashemite House (an example that the “game of thrones” does matter – various claimants to a throne are NOT all the same) was indeed bad.
Although the fall of the House of Saud now would most likely lead to an even worse government in Arabia.
As for Mohammed.
For most of his life he seems to have been a fairly peaceful chap.
Then, when he was about my age, Mohammed became an intolerant man of blood – and for the last ten years of his life he slaughtered his way round Arabia and taught his followers to do kill or enslave all those who defied them (anywhere on Earth).
I know how Mohammed felt – it is very nasty to get old. And it leads to ill temper when one feels frustrated.
I suspect Muhammed just seized an opportunity when he saw it. And yeah we are all paying for it to this day. Alas. I don’t think age was the issue
These two statements are the saddest statements in the quote. Not because I dislike homosexuality but because I expected the 21st century to have moon bases and humanity to be moving forward not naval gazing into where we put our penises.
If you had told me the 21st century would see a resurgence in beheadings and slavery, I would have assumed a post-nuclear wasteland.
The underlying problem is that unless your culture of freedom is more fecund than that of Islam or whatever, you will eventually be outbred and fail, no matter how successful you otherwise were
No, that is not the underlying problem and comes from a flawed understanding of culture and where the western world’s advantage lies. ‘Our’ culture of liberty is really good at turning their children into people like us, when it is allowed to (indeed Osama bin Laden said as much). This has been true for a very long time.
The problem is that over the last few decades, too many people have supported a political class that is *actively* preventing that process from happening, via anti-free-association laws (i.e. anti-discrimination laws), via welfare states making non-integration economically viable, and increasingly by directly prohibiting expressing views that are essential to our culture crushing theirs. Islamic immigrants are not the problem (on their own, that is) but rather our own political and educational elites working tirelessly to prevent them being turned into us… THAT is the problem.
My comment.
momo,
I have to agree. I wish I didn’t live in these times. But I do. I suggest you look-up what Gandalf said to Frodo in Moria.
Our culture may have reached the moon, but it bought slaves (from other cultures that enslaved them) for a century plus before ceasing, and waited decades more before freeing them. It then conquered an empire (and freed the slaves within it) and ruled it for its power and glory (and incidentally increased the wealth of the ruled a lot) in an arrogant, “we’re better than you” way (especially about freeing slaves). At home, it never did, and never will, move far enough fast enough to be socially just to raceZ/orientationY/sexX/whatever, especially if its hateful habit of free speech is maintained. It’s the height of arrogance for you to think that just because some privileged white males reached the moon that entitles you to criticise members of other cultures acting on their indigenous beliefs to resist your racist, patriarchal, cis-whatever hegemonic oppression. The more you claim your culture has some innate value that distinguishes it positively from some other culture, the more guilty you are.
I wrote a post on an aspect of this attitude years back.
Niall, Leslie’s linked poster illustrates your point perfectly! :>)))!!!
. . .
To subject the dead horse to another beating, the poor thing, the point is that Western moral self-confidence has been attacked and lies wounded and bleeding on the cutting-room floor. The West generally is demoralized to the point of being terrified of trying to defend itself, and most of those who enjoy positions of intellectual trend-setting are among the anti-Western-Civ preachers…to one extent or another.
This excerpt from a good recital of the aims of the Frankfurt School is explicit as to the most important elements of the program of demoralization — although it’s the objective and methods rather than the origin that are the reason for quoting:
http://australian-news.net/articles/view.php?id=235
I wonder if Kilmartin has considered the peace that would envelope the globe if a certain Islamic sect, currently behaving in a violent fashion, were to conform to his dicta?
Niall, that’s an excellent posting. I particularly like the detail in your analysis.
Hold on! My nation the UK put considerable blood and treasure into ending slavery within our reach and we did that long ago. Slavery still exists especially in the Islamic World. So don’t be a domestic in Saudi Arabia and don’t get raped in Qatar. The first point is well known. The second is more recent. Yes a Dutch woman was very probably raped in Qatar and was jailed for reporting it. You can’t make these people up can you?
Rob, Saudi Arabia has infidels to kill, but they do their sneeky business on the island of Bahrain. But, alas SA has it’s spies and decoys there too, or so I undersand.
In Islam peace is the submission to the will of Allah.
I’ve got a shorter message to Jihadis:
No.
Paul Marks
I suspect that should we get a plurality of non-progressive leaders in Europe and north American (well, Canada and the US) that allowed us to build a non-petroleum energy infrastructure pressure could be brought to reform the House Of Saud lest the entire family be used as chew toys for the boys of ISIS.
IIRC he was a thief.
What is the Mencken quote about spitting on one’s hands, raising the black flag and slitting throats?
I know how Mohammed felt – it is very nasty to get old. And it leads to ill temper when one feels frustrated.
Julie near Chicago (June 13, 2016 at 8:23 pm): you may known Thomas Sowell’s discussion in “The Vision of the Anointed”. Choosing those whom the common people revile as your mascots is a great way of virtue signalling. The more annoyed flyover country is, the more virtue is signalled. The pecking order of political correctness, which puts islamists on top of gays (if I may thus express it 🙂 ), therefore comes naturally. Where your quote analyses their tactics from an intellectual perspective, Thomas Sowell highlights the incredible pettiness of motive the underlies attraction to the whole sorry business. (You probably also know his book: ‘A Conflict of Visions’ – if not, I heartily recommend it.)
I know what you mean about “the dead horse, poor thing”. I wonder, in the 30s and 40s, did people ever get tired of having to explain over and over again why national socialism was a bad idea?
Confused Old Misfit, June 13, 2016 at 8:37 pm “I wonder if Kilmartin has considered the peace that would envelope the globe if a certain Islamic sect, currently behaving in a violent fashion, were to conform to his dicta?” Good point!. If one removes all the qualifications in brackets, and the bit about going to the moon, then my text, reapplied to Islamic history, is a bit kind (e.g. it omits some mass slaughters caused by intentionally-wielded swords, not accidentally-introduced diseases) but not so bad a summary on the whole. But for the reasons I mention above, talking to Julie, your insight will not be noticed by the PC; only islamophobes have such thoughts. 🙂
As regards the early comments in this thread: Mohamed’s evolution from ‘man of peace’ to ‘man of peace through submission’ has been recapitulated by many a western lefty over the centuries. Gerard Winstanley, the Diggers leader, assured all in 1648 that his group “would but digge the common lands of England”. By 1652, having discovered how many people were so unbelievably stupid as not to recognise the perfect justice and wisdom of his concept, he was begging Cromwell to impose his form of communism at the point of the sword. Many a young person arrives at university full of their distaste for prejudice and oppression. Twenty years later, they’ve either been “mugged by reality” or they are a voter for, or an active operative in, a system of prejudice and oppression.
ot because I dislike homosexuality but because I expected the 21st century to have moon bases and humanity to be moving forward not naval gazing into where we put our penises.
The next great moon base pioneer might be gay, he can now be busy designing a lunar dome city for you instead of worrying about being locked up or forced to suffer chemical castration.
RB,
He might just have been shot dead in a nightclub.
“I suggest you look-up what Gandalf said to Frodo in Moria.”
“Fly, you fools!”?
Works for me.
Largest socials change?
Isn’t that how much richer we are compared with our parents?
A household can afford two cars if not three whereas before not even one, buy several TVs when not so long ago only afford to rent one, buy several computers whereas before only large companies could afford them or had enough room for one, can afford frequent scheduled air travel to foreign destination when previously only the rich and business travellers could, we can shop without going into one, from home and buy and pay for just about anything using only a computer, phone line and piece of plastic: the list is longer.
The fact that Gays have now insisted they too must get a licence from the State to order their domestic arrangements unlike before when they were free to do as they liked and only heteros needed the State’s permission to have sex, seems a step backward not forward.
And now we have the Orlando shooter in Florida. Whilst the media did it’s very best to suppress any Islamic association, (it was the guns you know), it was finally released by the FBI that Omar (who looks like he’s doing an Ali G impression in mugging selfies) made a 911 call before the shooting, swearing allegiance to ISIS, the prophet and Islam.
But that’s not “REAL” Islam, Pres Abomination assures us, (even though the Hadith tells Muslims to kill gays).
What was the response from the president named after Muhamad’s flying horse?
Move along, nothing to see here. It’s wrong to look at motives, and oh, BTW, he never received orders from ISIS overseas, so it’s not REALLY Islamic terrorism. And Oh, btw, it was the gun’s fault, and since President Flying Horse can’t touch guns, he’s got his cross-hairs on the ammo, allegedly 223’s, which is slightly larger than a 22 bullet, about the size of a green pea. Meanwhile no one’s talking, for example, 30-06’s (“thirty ought six’s”) with bullets + casing the size of my index finger that can cut down a elk at 250yrds or 3 senators with a single bullet at 200yrds. No problem there apparently.
Interesting, but it’s what we can expect from a Islamophilic president that FORCED the banning of the words “Islam” and “Jihad” from intelligence reports and counterterrorist training material back in 2008.
As Trump so aptly pointed out, Pres Abomination was madder at Trump than he was the goddamned shooter. ‘Probably because Trump “triggers” Mr Bluepill into showing his cognitive dissonance with reality.
“from intelligence reports and counterterrorist training material back in 2008.”
Sorry, 2011. 2008 is related to another incedent.
William O. B’Livion wrote,
Indeed, in Orwellian World, slavery is peace. (Perhaps this is yet another reason the politically left wing endorse it. They seem to have a penchant for Orwellian opposite-think).
However…it isn’t peace at all. Peace is not the absence of physical violence. Peace is not quiet submission. Peace is not worship, “voluntary” or otherwise. Peace is the absence of coercion and force. There can be no peace where there is Islam, so the common phrase “religion of peace” is what we’ve always thought it to be, yet another self-serving lie.
Niall wrote,
Indeed, and in this neo-marxist cult of “equal means fair”, they can’t force the backward, the uneducated, the untalented to excell, (nor do they really try), so their ownly option is what Dr. Yaron Brook described as breaking Michael Jordan’s legs in order to even-up our basketball playing abilities. “Equal” really means to destroy those who excell, and turn those who don’t excell, perhaps don’t even try, into victims and heroes with political power to bow down to, even fear.
Is it any wonder that such an inversion of values ultimately fails?
If you believe the history, M’mad went bonkers after he visited Jerusalem and was told by the PTB that only a Jew could become a Christian and since M’mad wasn’t a Jew, he couldn’t become a Christian. That question had already been answered otherwise, but he asked the wrong people. And the rest, apparently follows.
No. I don’t blame the jews for muslim murderers. I blame muslim murderers for muslim murderers. Islam delenda est.
Momo said,
I would have assumed a resurgence of religious theocracy, and I’d been right.