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.
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“The Covid ‘lab leak’ theory isn’t just a rightwing conspiracy – pretending that’s the case is bad for science”, writes Jane Qiu in the Guardian.
That’s right. In the Guardian. My surprise at the location of the article was equalled by my surprise at the location of its writer: “Jane Qiu is an award-winning independent science writer in Beijing.” I didn’t know there were independent science writers in Beijing, but I guess there must be for an article on this particular topic written by someone describing themselves as such to appear. Anyway, she writes:
Some scientists assert evidence supporting natural-origins hypotheses with excessive confidence and show little tolerance for dissenting views. They have appeared eager to shut down the debate, repeatedly and since early 2020. For instance, when their work was published in the journal Science in 2022, they proclaimed the case closed and lab-leak theories dead. Even researchers leaning towards natural origins theories, such as the virus ecologist Vincent Munster of Rocky Mountains Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana, told me they lamented that some of their colleagues defend their theories “like a religion”.
No one embodies the crisis of trust in science more than Peter Daszak, the former president of EcoHealth Alliance. A series of missteps on his part has helped to fuel public distrust. In early 2020, for instance, he organised a statement by dozens of prominent scientists in the Lancet, which strongly condemned “conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin”, without disclosing his nearly two-decade collaboration with the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a conflict of interest.
Similarly, he denies that his own collaboration with the Wuhan lab involved gain-of-function research, even though Shi Zhengli – the Chinese scientist who led the bat-borne coronavirus studies – has openly acknowledged that the lab’s work produced at least one genetically modified virus more virulent than its parental strain. (That work is not directly relevant to the origins of Covid-19.)
The documentary [Christian Frei’s Blame: Bats, Politics and a Planet Out of Balance, short title Blame] claims that attacks on EcoHealth Alliance and the spread of lab-leak conspiracy theories have fuelled distrust in science. In reality, it’s the other way round: public distrust in science, fuelled by the unresolved H5N1 gain-of-function controversy and by lack of transparency and humility from scientists such as Daszak, has driven scepticism and increased support for lab-leak theories.
This is not news to anyone who has read Matt Ridley and Alina Chan’s book Viral. Or to anyone who does not entirely get their news from the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times, come to think of it. Still, better five years late than never. Why now, I wonder? Did someone at the Scott Trust take Katharine Viner to one side and gently suggest that it would be nice if the customary Guardian delay between “this is an absurd far right conspiracy theory” and “it’s the fault of the far right for talking about it before we did and using up all the available words” was not too far out of line with the nearly four years it took to admit Hunter Biden’s laptop was real and Joe Biden was senile? Or is something big about to break?
Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, and Anne Hidalgo, the Parti Socialiste mayor of Paris, have written a joint article for the Guardian called “In London and Paris, we’ve experienced vicious backlash to climate action. But we’re not backing down”. They write,
“We welcome efforts such as the EU’s Digital Services Act, which requires online platforms to counter the spread of illegal content, including disinformation, and lays the groundwork for holding platforms accountable. But much more is needed. For example, the UK’s Online Safety Act could be strengthened by explicitly recognising climate disinformation as a form of harmful content.”
It is remarkable how people who would be ashamed to support a law to “counter the spread of illegal speech” happily praise a law that “counters the spread of illegal content.” The magic of words: just re-label “speech” as “content” – as being inside something – and it can now truly be contained, as in “restrained or controlled”.
The same people regularly proclaim that Europe is a place which has banished censorship of the press. That is almost true, although both the EU and the UK governments are working to restore their old powers. In the meantime they are willing enough to temporarily refrain from censorship of ideas spread by old technology if it gives them cover for censoring ideas spread by new technology.
Do not go along with their word games. The term “Freedom of the press” is not restricted to words conveyed to the public by means of a a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a print medium. Nor does “freedom of speech” only refer to words that come out of mouths by the action of tongue and lips. In the words of a source they claim to respect, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says,
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Emphasis added.
And while I’m emphasising things, let me also emphasise this: the minute I learn that an idea is being censored, I give that idea more credence.
No, that does not mean that I automatically believe any censored idea entirely. (How could I? A million contradictory falsehoods are censored alongside the truth. The problem is that the act of censorship destroys our ability to tell which of them is the truth.) It means that I strain to hear what is being said behind the gag. It means that I start to wonder how real the claimed consensus is, if those who depart from it are silenced. It means that I start to wonder why the proponents of the “accepted” view feel the need to protect it from counter-arguments.
I said in 2012 that my belief in Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) was two and a half letters to the left compared to most commenters on this blog. Damn, it should have been one and a half letters to the right. Oh well, you knew what I meant. With regard to CAGW or whatever they are calling it now, whether I phrase it as my belief moving to the left or my disbelief moving to the right, the surest way to make that movement happen is to pass a law defining “climate disinformation as a form of harmful content”. Then I will know that the so-called scientific consensus on climate change is no such thing. If certain hypotheses cannot be discussed, not only is there no scientific consensus, there is no science.
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A related post, but focussing on self-censorship rather than the government censorship that Mayors Khan and Hidalgo favour: “Bubbles, lies and buttered toast.” Any form of censorship is fatal to science.
On Tuesday, Parliament voted to decriminalise abortion after 24 weeks. On Friday, Parliament voted to allow assisted dying. All eyes were on the latter change. LBC’s report was typical: “MPs pass landmark assisted dying bill by just 23 votes following emotional debate in historic social change”.
In contrast, the change to the abortion law had an easy birth. It was passed by a landslide. Scarcely anyone talked about it before it was passed – it featured in no manifesto – and, beyond a few sighs, even the right wing press does not seem to want to talk much about it now. It is portrayed as a merely technical change to deal with a few edge cases. Much is made of the fact that late abortions are not being legalised; rather they are being decriminalised. “It would not alter the settled time limit for a termination,” said the Labour MP Stella Creasy, disingenuously in my opinion, given that it makes the settled time limit into dead-letter law.
My record in political predictions is not great, but I will make three of them now.
1) This law will result in far more late-term abortions than its proponents predict. Many supporters of decriminalisation have pointed out, as did the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi in the BBC article I linked to above, that nearly 99% of abortions happen before a pregnancy reaches 20 weeks, leaving just 1% of women “in desperate circumstances”. But the number of people willing to do a thing when there are no penalties for doing it is much greater than the number willing to do it when there are penalties. And as the number of late term abortions becomes higher, the reasons for doing it will become slighter.
2) It’s 2025. People film everything on their smartphones. People will film late term abortions. Supporters of abortion will do it to show that they are not ashamed. Opponents of abortion will do it to show how similar the foetus you are now allowed to kill at 35 weeks looks to the baby you are not allowed to kill at 40 weeks. (Or at 35 weeks if it happens to have exited the birth canal.) And some will livestream late term abortions to show, or sell, the video to the curious. The dissemination of close-up images of what a late term abortion looks like in real time will change the abortion debate in the same way that the dissemination of close-up images of what being on the receiving end of an airstrike looks like in real time have changed the debate about war.
Of course visceral reactions to seeing war or abortion at close range do not change the logical arguments about either. But the Left has very little practice in countering the strongest argument against abortion, the very one that will be literally brought into sharp focus by the smartphone “record” button. As I said in a post called “How not to change minds on abortion”,
Over the years I must have read hundreds of Guardian articles on abortion, mostly in its US section because abortion is such a live issue there. I do not recall a single one that argued against the main sticking point of the pro-life side, namely that abortion takes a human life – let alone argued for it.
The arguments put forward in these Guardian articles and others written by progressives almost always relate solely to the rights of the woman. That is indeed an important question, but it avoids the question of whether the foetus also has rights. But pictures are harder to avoid than words.
There is nothing new about abortion being shown on film. You can find examples from both sides if you look. One of the best known examples from the anti-abortion side is the 1984 film “The Silent Scream” made by Bernard Nathanson, a former abortion provider who became an anti-abortion activist. It shows live ultrasound footage of a 12 week old foetus being aborted. Critics argued that elements of the film that seemed to show the foetus feeling pain were deceptive, as a foetus at that stage of development is not capable of pain. This argument will be unavailable in the case of similar videos showing abortion in the third trimester.
3. As a result of public outrage, in ten or fifteen years’ time the UK’s abortion laws will be stricter than they have been since 1967. My guess is that the limit will be around 15 weeks, as it is in most of Europe.
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I discussed how the issue of abortion relates to debates within libertarianism in this post from 2013: “Thinking aloud on a mountainside”.
Quote:
“Having to carry a stranger because otherwise the stranger will die is approximately the position of a pregnant woman expecting an unwanted child.”
Today’s Guardian has up an article with the title “Climate misinformation turning crisis into catastrophe, report says” and the strapline “False claims obstructing climate action, say researchers, amid calls for climate lies to be criminalised”.
Quote:
Climate misinformation – the term used by the report for both deliberate and inadvertent falsehoods – is of increasing concern. Last Thursday, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change, Elisa Morgera, called for misinformation and greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry to be criminalised. On Saturday, Brazil, host of the upcoming Cop30 climate summit, will rally nations behind a separate UN initiative to crack down on climate misinformation.
“It is a major problem,” said Dr Klaus Jensen, of the University of Copenhagen, who co-led the Ipie review. “If we don’t have the right information available, how are we going to vote for the right causes and politicians, and how are politicians going to translate the clear evidence into the necessary action?
An hour ago the Twitter account “NHS Nurses”, @SocialistNHS, posted a video to Twitter that shows a fat White British man with a can of Stella in his hand and a Union Jack painted on his belly complaining about immigrants.
“They’re taking all our jobs,” says the man.
“What qualifications do you have?” asks the female interviewer.
Our man replies with a choice piece of nonsense: “None – they are taking all our qualifications as well”.
The NHS Nurses mock this reply with the words,
“They’re taking all our jobs and all our qualifications”
Jesus wept… Our NHS and social care is made up of highly skilled migrant workers
How can this ever be a bad thing?
It is in fact possible to conceive of circumstances in which this would be a bad thing. There is an obvious conflict of interest between migrant workers and native born workers – or would-be workers. To observe this conflict of interest is not to take a side, but it is stupid to pretend it does not exist. A commenter called Robert Ferguson raises another way in which “Our NHS” being made up of migrants is not necessarily a good thing when he says, “Stealing other countries healthcare workers is not a good look.” I think Mr Ferguson’s belief that workers belong to their states of origin is fundamentally mistaken on moral grounds – and states which try to keep “their” workers by force are poorer than those which do not – but, still, the question of why this transfer of labour from Africa and South Asia to the UK takes place needs to be addressed rather than treated as a law of nature.
I found the tweet via this comment from a group called “Labour Beyond Cities”, who said:
A large swathe of the left is both too thick to realise this is an AI video and also too thick to realise that class hatred towards white working class people is strategically very poor, divisive and alienating.
So the stereotypical fat, white, useless, racist Brit in the video is not real. He was a little too exactly like a socialist’s idea of a Reform voter to be true. As one of the comments a proposed Community Note says, if you need confirmation, look at the gibberish written on the pub sign. And one can just about still tell it is A.I. by something “off” in the way the man moves.
In a few months we won’t be able to tell.
What difference, if any, does the man’s nonexistence make to the arguments involved?
“This will be in textbooks”, writes Maria Avdeeva.
Ukraine secretly delivered FPV drones and wooden mobile cabins into Russia. The drones were hidden under the roofs of the cabins, which were later mounted on trucks.
At the signal, the roofs opened remotely. Dozens of drones launched directly from the trucks, striking strategic bomber aircraft.
And — Russia can’t produce these bombers anymore. The loss is massive.
Nothing like this has ever been done before.
In one sense, of course, it has been done before. The military history of the twentieth century contains many examples of large numbers of planes being destroyed on their airfields – by the Japanese at Pearl Harbour, by the Germans at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, and by the Israelis in the first hours of the Six Day War, to name but three.
But such damage being done by itty bitty little drones that were considered little more than toys a few years ago is new.
“Robert Jenrick turns vigilante in bid to tackle London’s fare dodgers”, reports the Guardian in a valiant effort to make tackling fare dodgers look like a bad thing.
Tory MP claims ‘law breaking is out of control’ in video in which he accosts travellers on the underground
Robert Jenrick is perhaps best known to the public as the former government minister who unlawfully intervened in a planning decision involving a billionaire Conservative party donor.
To others, he may be the Tory MP that parliament’s spending watchdog said was centrally involved in wasting nearly £100m on a botched plan to house asylum seekers.
Now, however, Jenrick has a new claim to fame: as the man who released a video of himself delivering “vigilante justice” to people he accused of fare dodging in London.
The failed party leadership candidate posted a video online on Thursday morning in which he accused the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, of “driving a proud city into the ground”, adding: “Lawbreaking is out of control. He’s not acting. So, I did.”
The problem for the Guardian’s Kevin Rawlinson is that Jenrick’s video has indeed brought him fame and admiration, which has only been augmented by the sneering responses from various left wingers. Jenrick’s video has had 11.6 million views. The Secret Barrister’s response, “This is the most spectacularly Alan Partridge thing that has ever happened, and I include Alan Partridge”, has had 1.4 million views and a ratio for the ages.
The alternative media outlet “The London Economic” has been busily putting out anti-Jenrick arguments that exemplify how left wingers miss the point, and which contain the word “akshully” even when they don’t:
“It’s been pointed out that Jenrick’s constituency of Newark actually has a higher crime rate than London”
So the Shadow Justice Secretary isn’t allowed to care about crime outside his own constituency?
and
“Robert Jenrick broke TfL rules in video complaining about Tube fare-dodgers”
Oh no, won’t somebody please think of the poor Transport for London rules – since TfL itself evidently does not.
I came across this tweet a week ago and bookmarked it because I knew it would soon be relevant:
One of the fundamental operating modes of the British state is that it will make everyone’s lives worse in numerous small ways rather than properly get to grips with the people who actually cause the problems.
So, President Macron’s wife appeared to push him in the face.
A flood of analysis immediately followed. Here is the Guardian‘s offering: “Brigitte Macron’s push has reverberated around the world. Why was it met with a shrug in France?”
The standfirst to Pauline Block’s article is: “Whatever the explanation for the incident, the reaction points to backward French attitudes – including from the president himself”. Although Ms Bock probably did not write those words, they are a fair reflection of her article. It casts its net wide, and among the fish brought up from the depths are the age gap between the Macrons, the convention by which the French press says nothing about the romantic relationships of French politicians, how would we feel if it was a man pushing a woman, and…
That Macron doesn’t see the potential problem in the video points to a narrow, obsolete understanding of couple dynamics and domestic violence. He has twice proclaimed gender equality to be the “great cause” of his presidential mandates before refusing to properly fund it; he has spoken in support of the French actor Gérard Depardieu, who has recently been found guilty of sexual assault and is soon to be on trial again for rape; and to this day, the former interior minister and current justice minister, Gérald Darmanin, who was accused of sexual assault (the case has now been dismissed), has remained in Macron’s cabinet.
It would have been easy enough to turn this moment into a public health message. He could have simply said that he’s all right, thanks for your consideration, but that men who do experience violence should feel no shame in seeking help, using it as an opportunity to discuss domestic violence prevention. Instead, he mocked the “fools” who thought anything could be amiss.
But why should he turn it into a “public health message” if he and his wife really were only larking around? There is something very cavalier about the Guardian‘s “whatever” in “Whatever the explanation for the incident”. The true explanation of the incident is the only thing that matters. If it was play, even play mixed in with annoyance (and such pretended fighting moves can be used to defuse quarrels as well as to escalate them), then it is nobody’s business other than the Macrons’ own, and the demand that he – or she – use it as a teaching moment is intrusive. How would Mme Bock like it if a similar demand for an impromptu sermon were made of her after some innocent but embarrassing incident in her private life was accidentally caught on camera?
But if it was a real attack, there are indeed things to discuss. Does anyone have the right not to have their act of domestic violence investigated because their spouse or partner has not officially complained? Does anyone have the right not to have an act of domestic violence against them investigated because they have made no official complaint? Does it make any difference whether either party is male or female? Does it make a difference if either party is a political leader?
If it was real. But we don’t know if it was. Looking at the video at quarter speed, I still couldn’t decide. So all the questions above are repeated with “act of domestic violence” replaced with “what looks on the face of it like an act of domestic violence”.
In favour of the push crossing the threshold into being an assault, albeit not one intended to cause injury, is the fact that Mme Macron looked angry and refused to take her husband’s arm as she descended the steps, and that the Elysée Palace initially lied and said the video was fake. In favour of it being mere bickering horseplay is that the plane was full of bodyguards specifically charged with protecting the President of France.
What do you think?
“Kneecap rapper charged with terrorism offence over alleged Hezbollah flag at London gig”, reports the Guardian:
Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh, who performs with the Irish rap trio Kneecap, has been charged with a terrorism offence for allegedly displaying a flag in support of Hezbollah at a gig in London, police said.
The 27-year-old, of Belfast, was charged after an investigation by the Metropolitan police’s counter-terrorism command and is scheduled to appear at Westminster magistrates court on 18 June.
Kneecap, named after the IRA’s favourite type of mutilation, are a rap group who sing in the Irish language. They’ve had it all, the award winning biopic, the laudatory coverage in the Guardian, the visit from Jeremy Corbyn. And now they’ve had the visit from the counter-terrorism police.
In these cases I never know whether to wrap myself in the mantle of libertarian righteousness and defend even these terrorist fanboys – it was only a piece of patterned cloth, FFS – or to say with Ulysses S. Grant that “I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.”
The late Niall Kilmartin examined this dilemma in this post, “The equal oppression of the laws”. He gave a characteristically fair hearing to both sides, but concluded:
We will not lack for mind-broadening frenemies to defend even after tolerating ‘equality before the law’ arguments against the loudest “I can say it but you can’t” enforcers of the double-standard. The woker-than-thou of today love purging the woke of yesterday – they will supply.
Equality before the law is good in itself. Demanding equality of oppression before the law is a way to expose a dishonest process. Think carefully before judging it a betrayal of our war against the hate speech laws’ evil goal, rather than a way – that can be both honest in itself and effective – of waging it.
No one with a shred of humanity could fail to sympathise with Leanne Lucas. On 29th July 2024, she was hosting a Taylor Swift-themed children’s dance and bracelet-making workshop in Southport when Axel Rudakubana walked in and started attacking the children, killing three of them. In trying to protect the children Ms Lucas herself was stabbed five times.
When people suffer terrible things, they often throw themselves into searching for a means to help others avoid the same fate. Ms Lucas thinks she has found her cause. The Daily Mail reports:
Southport survivor calls for ban on pointed kitchen knives – as she says she’s not been able to use one herself since the attack that left three girls dead
[…]
After her horrific experiences, the teacher had assumed there would be tighter controls around kitchen knives and was shocked to find there weren’t.
She said: ‘Every time I learnt something new, I’d think, “That doesn’t sound right. Surely there are laws in place so that couldn’t have happened.” The more my eyes have been opened, the more I’ve been able to formulate an idea.’
She does not seem to be entirely clear in her mind whether that idea is a cultural change or a legal one. If my only source had been the BBC’s article on the same topic, I would have thought she was only advocating that people voluntarily adopt a different style of cooking that employs knifes with rounded tips rather than traditional knives with sharp tips.
This idea will not work. The sort of person who would take her proposed pledge to commit to exchanging their pointed knives for round-tipped ones could have a nuclear weapon in their cutlery drawer and still be no threat to anyone. But I have no objection to her proposing it as a desirable cultural change. I do have an objection to her proposing to ban pointy kitchen knives, as if the existing ban on murder lacked only this finishing touch to be effective.
As I said in an article for the Libertarian Alliance written five years after another massacre of children:
When the parents of the Dunblane children spoke there was every reason for the world to hear about their terrible experience. There was never any particular reason to suppose that their opinions were right. In fact their opinions should carry less weight than almost anyone else’s should. This point is well understood when it comes to juries. It goes without saying, or, at least, it once did, that guilt or innocence must be decided by impartial people. Decisions of policy require the same cast of mind as decisions of guilt and innocence.
We want to comfort those who have suffered unfairly. One way you comfort someone is by agreeing with them, by allowing them emotional license for any outburst. In the ordinary course of life and death, though, even as we say, “yes, yes” to a distraught person we discount – not ignore, but discount – the content of what they say. Phrases such as “He didn’t know what he was saying” or “She was mad with grief” illustrate this. Then, after a while, they are expected to get back to something like normal.
[…]
However it came about, nowadays we give the bereaved parents at Dunblane, the survivors of rail crashes, and similar groups both the license to say anything due to the distraught and the intellectual consideration due to experts. They can’t have both. Not because I’m too mean to give it to them, but because the two are logically incompatible. The press and public have handed power to those least able to exercise it well.
The Guardian, 6th December 2024: Romanian court annuls first round of presidential election
The Guardian, 9th March 2025: Pro-Russia Călin Georgescu barred from Romanian presidential election re-run
The Guardian, 15th May 2025: Romania might be about to make a Trump-admiring former football hooligan its president. This is why
Georgescu sounds a nasty piece of work, and Simion not much better, but the “election interference” that might truly kill off Romanians’ faith in democracy is not coming from them.
Taliban ban chess being played in Afghanistan as it’s deemed ‘un-Islamic’ – Daily Star
Since the Afghanistan government’s collapse in 2021, the Taliban movement have progressively worsened human rights and imposed strict laws on everyday life. Banning chess is the latest in a stream of restrictions targeting the country’s entertainment and leisure.
Declaring the game “haram” (not permissible by Muslims), chess is now entirely forbidden in Afghanistan, and the Afghan Chess Federation has been disbanded. Many Muslims believe that partaking in haram activities is an act of sin, that can lead to spiritual decline.
A spokesperson for the Taliban’s General Directorate of Physical Education and Sports, Atal Mashwani, told local media that the justification for the ban was “Sharia-related reasons”
The Telegraph quotes an official from the now-defunct Afghanistan National Chess Federation as saying, “This is a suspension, not an outright ban, but it feels like the death of chess in Afghanistan. Chess runs in the blood of Afghan society. You’ll find it in homes, cafes and even village gatherings. Afghans love chess, we’ve won international medals, and the game is part of our cultural identity.”
The Cambridge Dictionary defines “endgame” as “the last stage in a game of chess when only a few of the pieces are left on the board”. One of the last remaining pieces of Afghanistan’s cultural identity that was other than “Islam” has fallen. Afghanistan is entering the endgame.
Purity spirals are not limited to Islam – a well-known Radio 4 documentary made by Gavin Haynes covered how even the cosy communities of Instagram knitting culture and young adult novels were consumed by the frenzy – but Islam is so prone to them that I am tempted to say that Islam is not a medium in which vortices form but a vortex itself.
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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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