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 They are listening to a 16 year old. This is like some kind of weird surreal art house movie in which a lunatic asylum’s inmates break out, sneak into Parliament, throw the MPs into the basement, take their place… and no one notices.
– Perry de Havilland
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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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To rewrite the tune:
“Would you believe in a looney bin coup?”
“Yes I’m certain that it happens all the time.”
It’s possible that these people who are fawning over this child (who should really be at home doing her homework and experimenting with sex, like any other 16 year old) are aware of the person who is behind her, funding her, and giving her instructions on what to say and do. Unfortunately, because they dare not mention the name, in a year or two, after the civil war,we’ll all be under the Dark State and it will be too late.
I assume that this a reference to the Swedish teenager who seems to be a replacement for Malala, except that thankfully she hasn’t been shot. I’ve heard it said that this person is not neuro-typical, but I’m not sure what that has to do with the value of her observations. I would like to ask her to explain the hockey-stick graph and the precise adsorption spectra of CO2, the pH of seawater, the buffering effect of HCO3- ions and the like and how that all works, and see how far it can be pushed, then ask her who put her up to all this.
But then again, one key characteristic of modern politicians is the childlike ‘If I don’t admit to being wrong, I am in the right’ approach that sees them bullshit their way through interviews, so listening to a 16-year old telling politicians to do more of what they really want to do anyway isn’t really asking them to go below their own level.
Let’s be precise here. They are being photographed listening to a 16 year old. Absent the photographers, I doubt they’d be sitting there. They will learn nothing from her, but they will garner votes by having those photos shown.
We get the government we deserve.
It is all very odd – especially the government ministers (such as the utterly dishonourable Michael Gove) fawning on the people who are messing up London.
As James Lovelock (the “Gaia Man”) was fond of pointing out – the real test for someone who believes in the human emission of CO2 causing Global Warming theory (and he did believe in it) is ARE YOU IN SUPPORT OF A MASSIVE EXPANSION OF NUCLEAR POWER?
My guess is that these Occupation “protestors” and their 16 year old mascot are NOT in favour of a massive expansion of nuclear power – they just ramble on about “renewables” which proves they are NOT serious about their own theory.
Only a MASSIVE EXPANSION OF NUCLEAR POWER is going to lead to a major reduction of C02 emissions – so people who are not in support of a massive expansion of nuclear power are just messing about (“protesting” for the sake of “protesting”).
I’m going to go there, and say that I have an enormous amount of admiration for the young lady. On the assumption that she honestly believes what she’s saying (and please separate that from whether she’s right or wrong, I’m purely talking of her belief in an incredibly divisive subject), then what an achievement she’s had!
There’s lessons to be learned there, people. She’s done more to advance her cause than most folk.
Only because she’s saying what they want to hear.
If she was saying things that weren’t useful to them, they’d ignore her.
She’s a pawn. Too bad she probably doesn’t realize it.
In re: Your lunatic replacement theory.
In all fairness, how could you tell? I’m absolutely certain that if that happened with Congress no one would notice.
“… and nobody notices.”
Mayhaps because the MPs never were in the looney bin, just looney?
There is another theory which says that this has already happened! 🙂
(With acknowledgements to ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide’.)
The climate change alarmists are consistent liars. Since Greta has claimed that her Asbergers gives her the ability to detect lying, how come she hasn’t spotted this?
Socially acceptable child abuse
Paul Marks: “Only a MASSIVE EXPANSION OF NUCLEAR POWER is going to lead to a major reduction of C02 emissions”
Paul, you are probably old enough to remember when Peak Oil was the Doom-of-the-Day. The foundation document for that scare was a 1956 paper presented by a geologist from Shell Oil, Marion King Hubbert, at a meeting of the American Petroleum Institute. The paper got a lot of credibility in later years because Hubbert successfully predicted that Lower-48 US Onshore Conventional oil production (a subset of total US oil production, which is a subset of global oil production) would peak in the early 1970s.
Although he became a Doomer mascot, Hubbert was not a doomer himself. The title of that 1956 paper — “Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels”. While Hubbert asserted that the supply of fossil fuels would eventually decline, he saw nothing to worry about because of the potential for nuclear energy. He wrote ‘… we may at last have found an energy supply adequate for our needs for at least the next few centuries of the “foreseeable future”. ‘
Of course, Hubbert did not reckon on know-nothing environmental extremists, and the damage they would do to the West. But today something like 44 countries have nuclear reactors, and Russia & China are hard at work building many more. One has to smile at the wisdom of the Chinese — they build bird-whacking windmills for export to the West, and build nuclear reactors at home. The suicide of the nations of the West will be hard on those of us who have to experience it, but it is a big planet and the human race will do just fine elsewhere.
Good background article on Ms. Thunberg:
https://quillette.com/2019/04/23/self-harm-versus-the-greater-good-greta-thunberg-and-child-activism/
Would Ms Thunberg have received the same respectful hearings if she had been a boy?
Or is she a beneficiary of the flip side of ‘everyday sexism’ in much the same way as the recent female defendant who was released by the judge with the comment that had she been a man she would definitely be serving a jail sentence?
It’s just that I can’t help but contrast her treatment by the media with that meted out to the teenage William Hague’s famous address to the Conservative Party conference.
The school of David Hogg and yet twice as creepy.
bobby b, thank you for the link to the first-rate Quillette piece by Paulina Neuding. It’s written with no little understanding of the afflictions from which Ms Thunberg suffers, but makes it clear that serious adults would have nothing to do with her, her abysmally irresponsible family or the other puppeteers. Where are the serious adults, though?
She makes a fantastic poster girl for people who don’t want to be argued with.
“But she’s only a child! And she has Asperger’s! What kind of monster are you!?”
@ bobby b – that Quillette article seems to have disappeared.
Hubbert did not reckon on know-nothing environmental extremists
But he did eventually know about the soviet funded anti-nuclear groups, who had nothing better to do once the cold war ended, and became environmentalists.
Regarding Ms Thunberg, she perhaps needs to visit Africa and see the conditions there before deciding they should be denied the lifestyle she benefits from in order to meet her dystopian demands. Basic sanitation and hospitals do not run on pixie dust, most of the world is crying out for cheap energy to afford basic life saving needs, and pressuring western governments to reduce emissions, even when they are already committed to do so, is a waste of time and diverts from this vital issue.
Her sort just prolong the misery and death of the Third World’s children.
What none of these adults dare do is ask her the difficult questions about climate data, data shifts, models being inconsistent with satellite temperature data and other scientific work she must have read to pontificate on this topic. They dare not because that would be seen as bullying. The fact that she seems to be using emotional blackmail is glossed over. She is a PR opportunity for the Establishment, nothing more.
They’re not listening to her, she’s repeating common talking points and people are applauding.
This weekend my three year old niece memorized the four questions gir the seder, we all applauded her feat, but we didn’t pretend she wrote them.
I’ve long maintained that Global Warming is a religion (yes I know that’s not an original thought. The Greta episode is merely another strand of evidence in support: this child is in exactly the same position as the two children in the film (was it “La Dolce Vita”? Or maybe “8 1/2”?) who claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary.
As you’ll all remember, they were immediately overwhelmed by a gigantic media presence and huge crowds of “believers” who at first fawned on them, and finally ignored them.
History is replete with similar incidents, most of them so far involving the Catholic Church, but clearly times are a-changing.
I’m not sure whether to feel sorry or angry with the parents. Parents of children with disabilities face more than the usual amount of work raising them, but do not have many opportunities to feel pride in their children. Assuming they are genuine in their fears about global warming, which I assume they are, then I think I’d find it hard to berate them.
By they way, is it just me that finds their time glass symbol a bit fascistic in style?
“They are listening to a 16 year old.”
How odd. We have the same issue with the US House of Representatives Freshman class!
It’s back with a comment suggesting a different version was published in error
“Socially acceptable child abuse”
No doubt about it. They’re listening to a 16-year-old with mental health problems. I was about to write “severe”, but actually the point is that they’re quite run-of-the-mill issues (some of which I’ve suffered from myself) which are being encouraged, instead of being treated.
“I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day,” she says. I did. I was much the same age. It ended my education and, in turn, wrecked the plans I’d made for my life. It horrifies me to think that someone going through the same thing, who has fixed the object of her fear not, as I did, on disease and her own mortality (for several months, I believed I only had days to live), but on the percieved threat of climate change, has the ear of heads of government.
In the name of God, stop indulging this girl and help her. Thanks to those lucrative book deals, she’s not going to end up worrying how to pay the bills (massively inflated by the policies she advocates) like me, but her life will be miserable nonetheless.
“Where are the serious adults, though?”
Good question.
“History is replete with similar incidents, most of them so far involving the Catholic Church, but clearly times are a-changing.”
And a good point.
Oh, the joy for our feeble politicians: to be photographed next to a ‘caring’ 16 year old who (like all teenagers) knows the answer to the world’s problems.
Our so-called betters are so easily used for whatever agency is manipulating this child — although it will encourage the lame-heads among our politicians to demand 16 year olds simply must be given the vote.
(PS, I wonder what little Greta thinks of the mass immigration issues in her own country? Love to hear her views)
What Sam Duncan and San borodin said, only more – it’s not just socially-acceptable child abuse, which is bad enough – it’s child abuse which is being actively-encouraged and -promoted. The basis for her personal issues may be hard to pin down, but those who are encouraging her to amplify them, and benefitting from that amplification, deserve to be horse-whipped.
Is there not one single person on the Climate Change As Massive Disaster side of this issue who is prepared to say ‘ just a minute, this is a teenage girl with some serious mental health issues, perhaps it’s not the best and most-humane thing to do, to exploit her for our purposes. Let’s gently send her back home and help her to get the help she needs.’ Not one?
llater,
llamas
I’m thinking of the children and wincing.
However, reasons to be cheerful:
1) Greta’s not world dictator (yet);
2) Thanos (in the screen Avengers) is the most villainous greenie ever (half the population of the Universe has to die, for reasons of sustainability). This is going to have significant impact on the children when they experience the associated cognitive dissonance (the adult politicians are either too stupid or too disconnected to ever get it).
3) Hilary is never going to be President of the USA.
One thing you can say for Thunberg: If she gets the Peace Prize, she’ll have done more to deserve it than Barack Obama had.
I wonder how long these predicted climate change disasters will have to continue not to happen before this nonsense dies its inevitable natural death? At present every natural disaster is being pointed at as evidence that climate change is happening now. Surely people who are aware that natural disasters are nothing new must be in the majority. Surely it must eventually dawn on people that those that are claiming that natural disasters are something new and unusual are full of shit. Yes I know, stop calling me Shirley.
Ladies and Gentlemen, you fail to realise the wisdom of today’s young people. They know far more than their teachers years before they are allowed to leave school.
We must replace the dim old teachers with sixteen year olds, preferably ones with an abnormal personality!
Sure the thick old teachers (some of them are over twenty one!) won’t like it, but the future of the world is at stake.
Stonyground: “I wonder how long these predicted climate change disasters will have to continue not to happen before this nonsense dies its inevitable natural death?”
When this particular nonsensical threat becomes no longer supportable, it will not matter — some other transparent nonsense will take its place. Once upon a time, the world was going to run out of food (“The Late Great Planet Earth”); AIDS was going to develop into an epidemic which would eliminate an entire generation; we are going to hit Peak Oil; Anthropogenic Global Warming was going to be the end, before it morphed into “Climate Change” when the observations did not fit the theory. And when Climate Change slides down the Hit Parade (as it inevitably will), it will be replaced with some other scare which is useful to the Political Class.
The clear observations about all of the long history of manufactured scares are that they are interred without fanfare when no longer supportable (Never an Apology!), and that they all require a great increase in government to address (from which there is never a retreat).
Our weather forecast for tomorrow calls for more snow.
Why does Greta Thunberg hate me?
A serious legislature would never show such deference to the delusions of a brainwashed child. If it addressed the matter at all it would be to express righteous indignation at how the poor girl was being exploited by callous extremists. Even those members who were only looking for some way to turn the situation to their advantage would be careful to align themselves with mainstream opinion rather than a tiny doomsday cult. Yet today’s MPs can’t even manage that. It is further proof – if any was still needed after the fiasco of the Brexit negotiations – that Parliament is a decadent institution filled with frivolous and irresponsible people and British politics is rotten to the core.
Andrew: “… Parliament is a decadent institution filled with frivolous and irresponsible people and British politics is rotten to the core.”
There certainly is a lot of evidence to support that view, especially these days. Looking at the UK from outside, that is most puzzling aspect of the Brexit saga. Someone could argue (though very few people seem to do so) that separation from the EU is a necessary but insufficient condition for the long-term health of the UK. Unless Brexit is followed by near-revolutionary changes in the governance of the UK, separation will be a very severe disappointment. Yet there seems to be no discussion, no constituency for the changes which will be required after leaving the EU.
Gavin Longmuir (April 28, 2019 at 3:36 pm), by refusing to give us a real Brexit and failing to get a fake Brexit through on the downlow (or, indeed, at all so far, but rumour suggests they are becoming afraid of the EU-elections a month hence), Parliament has quite unintentionally addressed your point. Your statement
was true. Because they are openly fighting Brexit, it is now obvious that unless Brexit is accompanied by near-revolutionary changes in the governance of the UK, separation may not occur. The increased risk to Brexit is also an increased chance that changes will occur.
Gavin, couple of points, if I may.
I said a couple of days ago that I believe you have a wise head, or other such wordsmithing. You’ve made a number of comments on Brexit similar to the above over the past few weeks, that I’ve noticed, which led me believe in your wisdom. I wasn’t just blowing smoke up your arse, I was being very sincere, you appear to have understood Brexit very well.
Secondly, I humbly submit that Niall Kilmartin, in particular, but amongst others, is trying to work out exactly how to transition from “here” to “there”. I base that on our other conversation on AGW, but also on the number of threads that he’s linked me to over the past couple of weeks.
It won’t be easy, but the opportunity to do so is there. We just need to find our way through it.
Niall, neonsnake — Thanks for your comments. I am glad to learn there is a growing recognition that separation is only the start of needed changes.
My far-off view has been influenced by seeing too many reports where proponents of separation seemed to imagine that the sunlit uplands of freedom are only a simple Brexit vote away. Even today, there is not much being reported outside the UK about any discussion on the reforms that will be required post-separation. While those of us on the outside do get the impression that large numbers of Brits are now thoroughly fed up with the under-performance of MPs, it is not clear whether that disgust is translating into an effective drive for reform. Even the up-and-coming Brexit Party seems to be mostly just the same old Oxbridge metropolitan set.
Perhaps this is your Yalta moment? The war is not over, but it is time to start thinking about what the world should look like after the captains & the kings depart. Please do a better job than FDR did!
I don’t know how, Gavin.
You’re right, but I don’t know how to get us from here to there.
I’ve had a bad day. I’m being irrational, I get that. But what do we do?
How do we get people onside? I can’t do it.