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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Every decent and right-thinking person must surely condemn today’s tragic events in Madrid.
BUT…while our thoughts go out to the families of the innocent victims this must not cause us to forget that horrible incidents such as we have witnessed today are the wholly predictable result of the Spanish government’s wrong-headed, meddling foreign policy and their continued brutal occupation of the Basque homeland.
Of course, no one can ever condone such senseless acts of bloody violence but that does not mean we cannot sympathise with the plight of the ruthlessly oppressed Basques who are struggling for dignity and nationhood beneath the jackboot of Spanish domination. Such people, who are condemned to a future without hope or self-worth, can hardly be blamed for the state of desperation that may have forced some of them to indiscriminately slaughter hundreds of people on public transport. What choice do they have?
While the rash and the thoughtless among us may seek scapegoats here, a more mature and nuanced analysis is required. The truth is that there are no perpetrators here, just different types of victim. The real culprit is Spain’s ultra right-wing fundamentalist Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar whose lunatic extremist policies are the root causes of today’s shocking violence.
This dangerous demagogue (who some have compared to Hitler) has surrounded himself with a sinister, shadowy cabal of Neo-Conquistadores and, together, they have hijacked this country and brought the shame and opprobrium of the world upon it with their wicked plan to establish a Global Iberian Empire. It is the policies of Aznar and his government that are driving Spain, and maybe the whole world, into catastrophe. Until they are stopped, there will be more horrific carnage of the type unleashed on Madrid today.
The Spanish people would do well not to squander the sympathy they have earned as a result of this attack. They must immediately distance themselves from their own deranged leaders and join in with the efforts of the rest of concerned humanity in ending the occupation and bringing Spain back into the fold of civilised, peaceful nations.
I hope that nobody in Ireland was naive enough to imagine that the recent public smoking prohibition was the zenith of their government’s ambitions.
Not even close. In fact, they are just getting warmed up:
After piloting through radical laws that will ban smoking in Irish pubs at the end of the month, Irish Health Minister Micheal Martin pledged to bring in new controls on alcohol.
Martin’s smoking prohibition will mean that anyone found lighting up in bars and restaurants after March 29 will face a fine of up to 3,000 euros.
Addressing his Fianna Fail party’s annual conference, Martin said he now planned to target the country’s alcohol problem and to encourage “responsible” drinking, in particular targeting under-age offenders.
Lord only knows what else is on his ‘hit-list’ but his blood his up and his nostrils are flared with the scent of victory so its onwards and upwards to new frontiers of micro-management. His is an addiction for which is there is no ‘cold turkey’. It is a thirst that can never be quenched and neither reason nor persuasion can divert such people from their mission.
How apposite is the wisdom of C.S. Lewis:
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may 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.
I have posted this quotation here on Samizdata before but the age in which we live demands that it be repeated again and again.
Have you thought about learning to speak a foreign language? If so, then why not learn to speak Tranzian? A good grasp of Tranzian will enable you to rub shoulders with bureaucrats, lawyers and Outreach Co-ordinators the world over and conversational fluency is easier than you might think. Tranzian is widely used in travel, business, culture and nagging.
Not only will the ability to speak Tranzian broaden your horizons and help you to make new friends but it will also give you an air of supreme self-righteousness that opens doors and, more importantly, state purse-strings.
So, come on, let us learn to speak Tranzian. Here is Lesson 1:
Violence against women is a “cancer” in every society affecting at least one in three women, human rights body Amnesty International has said.
One in three, two out of every four, over half, the majority. The statistics are hardly worth quibbling about. This is purely an academic exercise and should not be confused with actual facts.
Amnesty’s secretary general Irene Khan urged governments to enforce laws to stop attacks on women and girls.
So, class, we see in this example that there are laws against attacking women but governments cannot be bothered to enforce them. Okay so far?
Female genital mutilation is one of the abuses being targeted by Amnesty.
The organisation says it affects 135 million globally, and these cases, along with so-called honour killings, should be treated as human rights crimes by governments.
So we have ‘female genital mutilation’ which, in English, is called ‘Grievous Bodily Harm’ and ‘honour killings’ which, again in English, are pronounced ‘murder’. However both of these English phrases translate into Tranzian as ‘human rights crimes’.
Thus we learn what a useful language is Tranzian. In circumstances where using the plain English terms will cause embarrassment or discomfort, you simply reach for the anodyne Tranzian lexicon of faux-rights to make yourself sound terribly important and caring without actually offending anybody.
Now for Lesson 2 and since you have all been such good and responsive students, I am going to give the answers in advance:
Q: Why is it that governments are not enforcing crimes like murder and rape?
A: Because they are far too busy farting around trying to enforce bogus ‘human rights’.
HM Tax Collectors are burning out, cracking up and breaking down. They cannot take it anymore. They can not eat, they can not sleep and they do not know which way to turn.
THEY NEED HELP!!!
If your tax affairs are driving you to despair, spare a thought for the Inland Revenue. It has been forced to call in the Samaritans to help to train staff driven close to the edge by dealing with irate callers struggling with the tax system.
The charity, vastly experienced in helping people who are depressed or on the verge of suicide, has been hired to train around 2,000 Revenue staff who take calls from the public.
The idea is to enable them to be more empathetic when dealing with taxpayers who have reached the end of their tether after trying to understand the shambolic tax credits system or fathom out their self-assessment form.
Or maybe it is taxpayers that are melting down? Or is it both? Who can tell? We are all going crazy round here.
Emotional training is not cheap. The Samaritans normally charge £1,500 a day for this service; it would not disclose yesterday how much the Revenue was being charged.
The ‘revenue’ is not paying a penny. Somebody better get on the telephone to those untethered taxpayers and tell them the bad news. It is all their fault anyway. Then they will get even more angry and the Revenue staff will get even more stressed and then they will need even more therapy and… How deep does this rabbit-hole go?
Perhaps the problem could be alleviated by sending the entire staff of the Inland Revenue off on a holiday… for a few years!
One of the many perils associated with declining birthrates is that it makes it much easier for the social-working classes to nationalise children:
Every local authority in England will be required to appoint a director of children’s services in a bid to improve child welfare under legislation due to be unveiled by the government.
An “information hub” will be set up in 150 local authorities to record details of all the children in the area. Each child will have an electronic file – including their name, address, date of birth, school and GP – that states whether they are known to social services, education welfare, police, or youth offending teams.
Other measures expected in the bill include the creation of a children’s commissioner for England, who would protect the rights of children and young people, and statutory children’s safeguarding boards, responsible for coordinating local child protection work among social services, the NHS, the police and other agencies.
Only they don’t call it ‘nationalisation’ any more. Now they call it ‘protection’ but it amounts to same thing.
Sometimes, just occasionally mind, I actually quite miss the old-style firebrand lefties and their revolutionary rhetoric. At least they were honest and open about their ambitions and, in many ways, that made it a lot easier to tackle them head-on.
Amidst all the partying I did in Brussels last weekend, I somehow managed to find the time to actually learn a thing or two.
The first thing I learned was not everyone takes the Euro terribly seriously (while fiddling around for correct change to pay for a taxi, I let the words ‘Mickey Mouse money’ slip from my mouth whereupon the taxi driver began laughing and said “oui, Monsieur, oui”).
Secondly, and rather less anecdotally, I also learned of something called the Stockholm Network. Before last weekend I had no idea that this organisation even existed and, in this case, ignorance was not bliss.
I think it fair to say that there is a widespread impression in the Anglosphere (especially the American bit) that the continent of Europe has fallen under the unbreakable spell of the Grand Wizards of Schtoopidity. Sadly, this is mostly true. But it is not completely true and the difference between ‘mostly’ and ‘completely’ can be found at the website of the Stockholm Network.
Billing themselves as ‘Europe’s only dedicated service organisation for market-oriented think tanks and thinkers’, the website is contains a treasure trove of links to well-organised, well-funded and highly active free-market and libertarian think-tanks and organisation in Britain, Ireland, Albania, Finland, Turkey, Macedonia, Switzerland, Sweden, Portugal, Serbia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Holland, Norway, Spain, Russia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Croatia, Estonia, Rumania, Georgia, the Ukraine and elsewhere.
The idiots and the kleptocrats may be running the show for now but, pleasingly, there are pockets of determined guerilla resistance. Even more pleasingly, these pockets seem to be growing in number.
And that is all I am going to say on the matter. Otherwise there is a danger that I might start sounding optimistic and, as everybody knows, that is strictly against my religion.
One of the very few benefits of Tony Blair being Prime Minister is that he and his supporters are hollowing out the Labour Party :
Labour was in disarray about how to deal with its “serial rebels” after splits emerged among ministers last night over high risk plans to bar dissident MPs from standing at the next election.
Miss Armstrong – furious at mass rebellions over top-up fees, foundation hospitals and curbs on asylum seekers – wanted rebels to know they could be deselected by the party’s ruling National Executive Committee unless they pledged loyalty to Tony Blair.
To watch a time-honoured institution like the British Labour Party rip itself asunder is tragic. Just tragic.
George Monbiot is as mad as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore. Narcolepsy-inducing speeches, plaintive whining and bogus statistics are no longer enough to bring about revolution. And George should know because he has tried all three.
The time for mere words has passed and the time for action has begun:
The formula for making things happen is simple and has never changed. If you wish to alter a policy or depose a prime minister between elections, you must take to the streets.
I think George is making yet another big mistake if he thinks that sleeping in shop doorways and begging strangers for money is going to change the world. But who am I to argue?
I have been to a marvelous party and now I am back.
The marvelous party was the CNE Capitalist Ball, held at the Belgian Stock Exchange in central Brussels.
Now before I go any further here, I have a confession to make. Two confessions, in fact. Last Thursday, I referred to Brussels as the ‘Heart of Darkness’. Well, I was wrong about that. I also suspected that I was going to find myself in Brussels amid a room full of musty, fusty academics plus a few corporate types and policy wonks. I was wrong about that too.
In fact, my travelling companion and fellow Samizdatista Antoine Clarke and I found ourselves in sumptuous surroundings with hundreds of European, British and American glitterati and illuminati from the worlds of business, finance, politics, journalism and academia. In other words, lots of clever, interesting men and lots of clever, interesting and head-turningly lovely women. They were smart, young, chic, funny and sexy.
The belles are ringing for capitalism → Continue reading: I love the smell of glamour in the morning
Very early tomorrow morning, as the first shimmering rays of a fire-red sun cast shadows on the ground, (creepy background music starts up) I shall set forth of my journey.
Seeking my date with destiny (music rumbles menacingly) I will travel by Eurostar (spine-chilling crescendo) along the mysterious, winding, unchartered route (screechy violin climax) into the ‘Heart of Darkness’: Brussels! [Effects: huge peal of thunder, gigantic lightning fork]
Actually I am rather looking forward to it. The occasion is the CNE Capitalist Ball where free-market luminaries from all over Britain and Europe will be gathering to drink, waltz and carouse the night away right under the very noses of the enemy.
I shall be back on Sunday. With photographs.
Not too long ago, David Goodhart, the editor of the left-wing magazine Prospect, had an epiphany.
Rather less romantically, he must have had one of those “oh..umm, hang on a minute” moments when he realised that his movement was not just heading off in two different directions but that those directions are mutually exclusive:
And therein lies one of the central dilemmas of political life in developed societies: sharing and solidarity can conflict with diversity. This is an especially acute dilemma for progressives who want plenty of both solidarity (high social cohesion and generous welfare paid out of a progressive tax system) and diversity (equal respect for a wide range of peoples, values and ways of life). The tension between the two values is a reminder that serious politics is about trade-offs. It also suggests that the left’s recent love affair with diversity may come at the expense of the values and even the people that it once championed.
Mr Goodhart calls this the ‘progressives dillema’ which, in a nutshell, means that for the want of the diversity, the solidarity may be lost.
[It is worth digressing here for a moment to note how Mr. Goodhart, along with the rest of his ideological bedfellows now insist on referring to themselves as ‘progressives’, a painfully sanctimonious but revealing bit of re-branding. It is as if they no longer want to be publicly associated with the contaminated ‘S’-word. There is much satisfaction to be had here for people like me. Indeed, it is something I may have mentioned on previous occasions but I cannot be bothered to go trawling through the archives and, in any event, it is an observation that merits virtually no end of repetition.] → Continue reading: Who put that brick wall there?
What does this sound like to you?
[From UK Times]
DOZENS of speed cameras are to be replaced with electronic signs that display a frowning face when a driver is speeding but do not result in fines or penalty points.
The devices are to be placed where police can no longer justify having a speed camera because there is no recent history of crashes.
Police hope that the speed indicator devices (SIDs) will defuse some of the anger generated by the huge increase in camera fines. Last year an estimated two million drivers caught on camera were fined £60 and given three penalty points.
The new devices use radar to detect the speed of an oncoming vehicle, and flash it up on a screen. If the driver is within the limit, the screen changes to a smiling face.
At just 1mph over the limit, the face will frown.
Because it sounds to me like the Home Office are starting to back down.
At this rate it will take about another year for the ‘frowny faces’ to be replaced by an All-Weather Traffic Co-Ordination Officer whose job it will be to stand on the verge of a dual carriageway and shout “fascist, fascist” as the cars whizz by.
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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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