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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A young cosmopolitan such as I did not need the foreign terms explained. When well-meaning people tried to tell me that the “Cookie Monster” was equivalent to a “Biscuit Monster”, or that the “trash can” in which Oscar the Grouch resided was the same as a dustbin, I responded, with some hauteur, that I already knew these things. There was, however, one thing that I did not understand about Sesame Street, and that was why on earth at some point in every episode the announcer would say something along the lines of, “Today’s show is brought to you by the letter P and the number 6”.
Oh well. I liked the puppets.
I remain a fan of the letter P and the number 6. But when it comes to the American media I consume nowadays, I no longer like the puppets.
Oh, I can sympathise a little with the American newspapers for dutifully hastening to parrot every Word of the Week that the Harris campaign gives them. It is human nature to follow the herd. Although, as Glenn Greenwald put it in this tweet, “Not even herd animals are this flagrant about it. You tell me how and why corporate media constantly speaks from the same exact script this way, verbatim.” “Not happiness, not glee, not delight, not jubilation.” The cue card says JOY.
Until Kamala’s JOY expires and the next card comes up. The next card is Donald Trump’s dress sense, or lack of it.
As I said, I can understand, if not admire, the obedience of the American press. But why do British newspapers feel the need to immediately follow suit in complying with the “TRUMP’S SUITS” order?
Cue the Telegraph: The meaning behind Trump’s ill-fitting suits
Cue the Guardian: Donald Trump’s weird clothes: from shoulder pads to extremely long ties, what do they mean?
The Observer’s Property section had a sad but interesting story last Sunday:
‘They encouraged us to insulate our home. Now it’s unmortgageable’
Householders are angered by the discovery they cannot remortgage or sell their homes after installing spray-foam insulation to cut energy use.
Jim Bunce thought he was doing the right thing for his purse and the planet: in 2022, as fuel costs soared, he and his wife decided to improve the energy efficiency of their house.
They discovered that the government had endorsed spray-foam insulation, a quick and unobtrusive technique by which liquid foam is spray-gunned into roof spaces and walls. Their loft was successfully treated at a cost of £2,800 and their gas bills duly fell.
Now, two years on, they have found that, by making their home more energy efficient, they have also made it unsaleable. “We are unable to borrow against it, or potentially to sell it, unless the foam is completely removed,” says Bunce.
I feel sorry for Mr and Mrs Bunce. My title was not intended to single them out as being unusually insulated from reality; until recently the great majority of the population would have assumed that taking up a scheme promoted by the government was a safe choice.
It isn’t. On the contrary, if a new type of technological product is being pushed by government in order to meet national policy targets, that means that it has not been through the filter of large numbers of people freely deciding to buy it and telling their family and friends that it benefited them as individuals.
Professor Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL sent this tweet at 8:01 AM · Aug 10, 2024:
My entire @facebook account has been deleted, seemingly (no reason given) because I tweeted that genetically male boxers such as Imane Khalif (XY undisputed) should not fight women in Olympics. Of course my opinion is open to civilised argument. But outright censorship?
For the second time in two posts, I find myself saying, “Thank God for Elon Musk”. Professor Dawkins very much would not say this. That’s fine. Those interested can debate on Musk’s platform whether God exists or whether boxers with one X- and one Y-chromosome should fight boxers with two X-chromosomes. For now, until Commissioner Mark Rowley of the Metropolitan Police has Musk extradited.
Update: Dawkins’ Facebook page is back. Facebook says it was a technical problem.
“You know who else should be on trial for the UK’s far-right riots? Elon Musk”, writes Jonathan Freedland, who used to be a liberal, in the Guardian, a newspaper whose very name was once universally understood to mean “Guardian of our Liberties”.
Mr Freedland writes,
Of course, it’s good that so many of those responsible for a week of terrifying far-right violence are facing an especially swift and severe form of justice – but there’s one extremely rich and powerful suspect who should join them in the dock. If the UK authorities truly want to hold accountable all those who unleashed riots and pogroms in Britain, they need to go after Elon Musk.
Freedland then accurately describes the way that pogroms throughout history have started:
In 1144, it wasn’t Southport but Norwich, and the victim was a 12-year-old boy called William. When he was found dead, the accusing finger pointed instantly – and falsely – at the city’s Jews. Over the centuries that followed, the defamatory charge of child murder – the blood libel – would be hurled against Jews repeatedly, often as the prelude to massacre.
There are differences, of course, starting with the fact that, so far and thankfully, these riots have not killed anyone – although given the attempts to burn down buildings with people inside, that seems more a matter of luck than mercy. But the common element in events nearly a millennium apart is that lies can wreak havoc when they spread. And that spreading now takes seconds.
So Mr Freedland describes a phenomenon that has recurred throughout history, citing an example that occurred 862 years before Twitter existed. He observes that this phenomenon has taken place yet again, but with the blessed difference that this time (when Twitter was present) no one was killed – and concludes that Twitter made it worse.
That does not make sense. Not only did the Norwich pogrom that Mr Freedland cites happen before the coming of Twitter, it happened almost exactly three centuries before the coming of Gutenberg’s printing press, with its terrifying ability to spread unvetted commentary right across Europe in mere weeks. “And that spreading now takes seconds”, frets Mr Freedland, but on these islands at least, the correlation between the speed of propagation of information and the frequency and severity of race riots and pogroms has been negative. As has been the correlation between these things and the freedom of the press.
Why?
→ Continue reading: Thank you, Elon Musk, defuser of riots
“Flashback: Harris fumed at Americans for saying ‘Merry Christmas’ before illegal migrants got protections”, Fox News reports:
Then-Sen. Kamala Harris warned Americans not to say “Merry Christmas” until there was permanent status for some illegal immigrants — amid a Trump-era battle over protections for some illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as children.
“And when we all sing happy tunes, and sing Merry Christmas, and wish each other Merry Christmas, these children are not going to have a Merry Christmas. How dare we speak Merry Christmas. How dare we? They will not have a Merry Christmas,” she said at a 2017 press conference, a video of which was obtained by Fox News Digital.
Speakers pushed for the passage of the Dream Act, which would grant a pathway to citizenship for some illegal immigrants who came to the U.S. as minors, NBC News reported.
Here is the video and here is the 2017 NBC article to which the article refers.
This clip has got a lot of play because it shows Kamala Harris as a purse-lipped woke puritan. Fair enough, she is one. Even if one completely accepted her point of view that passing the DREAM1 Act was a desirable objective in 2017, why should that not having been done be the thing that made it outrageous for Americans to wish each other “Merry Christmas” until it was done? There were plenty of worse things going on in the world in 2017: wars, famines, natural catastrophes, terrorism, poverty, crime. Why were these miseries not enough to prompt the curtailment of Christmas greetings until they were solved? Nor were these evils limited to the year 2017. So far as I know the DREAM Act has not been passed to this day. So we must assume Kamala Harris has now personally abstained from “speaking Merry Christmas” for six years and seven months and is still saying “How dare you” to anyone else who does it.
Yet in her defence, gestures of self-abnegation as a demonstration of commitment such as Harris made have a long history. In 1601, during the Dutch Revolt, Archduke Albert of Austria was laying siege to Ostend. His wife, Isabella Clara Eugenia, Infanta of Spain, declared that she would not change her shift until the city fell2. Since that did not happen until September 1604, her underwear got a bit grubby, giving rise to the colour term “Isabelline”.
Now that’s what I call commitment. If she wants to be taken seriously, Kamala Harris needs to follow the example of Isabella and urge her followers to do likewise.
*
1No offence, Yanks, but for introducing the idea of bills or laws whose titles spell out aspirational words, your entire nation deserves to suffer the fate of Ostend.
2This story has been fact-checked to the standard expected of the Guardian or the New York Times.
I was going to write a post about the riot in Southport that followed the random knife murders of three young girls in that town carried out by Axel Rudakubana. Prior to Rudakubana’s name being released, a false rumour spread on social media that the perpetrator was a Muslim, leading the rioters to attack a mosque. Then I remembered I had already made the same points in this post about the riot in Dublin that took place in November 2023 following the attempted knife murder of three young children by Riad Bouchaker. I am not re-using the old post merely to save time: I am doing it to demonstrate that the two incidents have a great deal in common.
“Despite police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive”
In the following quote, replace “Irish” with “British” and “would-be child murderer” with “child murderer”:
It does not excuse the riots in the least if the rioters are correct to think that the would-be child murderer is any or all of a migrant, legal or illegal, or a Muslim, or from an ethnic minority. But the obfuscation from the Irish authorities and media on this point is making the situation worse.
The usual flashpoint for riots throughout history has been a rumour of crimes committed by a member of Group A against Group B. The riots in the Lozells district of Birmingham in 2005 have been almost forgotten because whites were not involved, but they were a typical example of the type, having been sparked by a completely unsubstantiated story that a black girl had been gang-raped by a group of South Asian men.
Sometimes the rumour is true, sometimes it is not.
If, as in that case, the inciting rumour is not true, the best tool for squelching the false claim and quelling the violence is a trusted press, taking the term “press” in a wider sense than just newspapers. If the rumour is true, the best tool for quelling the violence is still a trusted press. It can do things like publicising condemnations of the crime from leaders of the group to which the perpetrator belongs. What a pity that Ireland, like much of the Western World, no longer has a trusted press because it no longer has a trustworthy press.
It’s not “Despite police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive, far-Right thugs emboldened by “misinformation” descended on the streets of the capital”, it’s a damn sight closer to “Because of police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive, far-Right thugs emboldened by “misinformation” descended on the streets of the capital”. If the official sources of information won’t do their jobs, don’t be surprised when people turn to unofficial sources instead.
Top Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh killed in Iran, reports the BBC.
It is particularly good that Israel killed Haniyeh while he was staying in Iran to attend the inauguration of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Let all know that Iran cannot protect its proxies.
The BBC continues in its usual style:
Widely regarded as a pragmatist, Haniyeh was said to have maintained good relations with other rival Palestinian groups.
Here is a short video clip of Haniyeh pragmatically celebrating the October 7th massacres.
. . . knowing about Joe Biden’s condition and not being able to say anything.
“I spent 6 HOURS tidying up a hedge overhanging a pavement near my home – I wanted to help but was branded a ‘criminal’”, the Sun reports.
A MAN has been branded a “criminal” after spending six hours tidying up an overhanging hedge to help locals.
Adam Myers, 22, thought he was carrying out a simple act of kindness when he chopped back grass verges on a stretch of 40mph road in the sleepy village of Broughton Moor, Cumbria.
The young lad, who has autism, jumped at the chance to fix-up the area after residents expressed concern online about walkers’ safety.
Around 10 minutes after the the chaotic bushes were strimmed and the weeds were ripped up, local cops received reports of “criminal damage”.
Adam had shared before and after pictures of his work on Facebook before being hit with backlash from the parish council.
A member of the community group commented on Adam’s post telling him he had broken the law and carried out an act of criminal damage.
The report of the incident in the Sun, quoted above, refers to a “member of the community group” reporting Adam Myers for criminal damage. However other accounts, such as the Telegraph‘s, say that the person who reported Mr Myers for criminal damage was actually a member of the parish council.
That would explain the sequel to this tale. According to the Telegraph link above,
An entire parish council has resigned after a man was reported to the police for criminal damage for clearing a roadside pavement of weeds, stinging nettles and brambles.
All seven members of the Broughton Moor parish council near Cockermouth, Cumbria, have quit following a backlash to news that Adam Myers, 22, who has autism, was reported for strimming grass verges and hedges near his home in the village.
They did not leave without a last petulant gesture:
In a statement posted on the parish council website said “As of June 20, and following an orchestrated campaign of bullying and abuse, both online and in person, against the members of the parish council and the clerk, Broughton Moor no longer has a parish council.
“All future plans for improvements for the village have been cancelled and the community centre has been closed.
If the reactions from citizens of Broughton Moor quoted by the Telegraph are typical, the now former councillors in question will not be missed. But to be fair to them – I always try to be fair to parish councillors, because the ones I know do a vast amount of work for either a tiny allowance or no money at all – there is a potential reason to object to individuals cutting hedges. The Sun may have missed that the person threatening to dob Adam Myers in was a parish councillor, but their account did include a little panel on “the rules” for cutting hedges, which said,
Under Section 1 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, it’s an offence to intentionally damage or destroy a wild bird’s nest while it is being built or in use.
It does not say that was the reason the parish councillor or councillors objected to Adam Myers trimming roadside hedges himself; it just says that it could have been. But for that defence to work, it would have to be the case that the council lovingly inspected every hedge for birds’ nests before trimming them. Now, I have not had much chance to observe how the local councils in the vicinity of Cockermouth go about trimming hedges – though I know of a Samizdata reader who has – but I know how they do it in Essex. When the council gets round to it, which is not often, they send a vehicle equipped with a robot arm tipped by three spinning bladed wheels, whose passage instantly reduces any projecting branches of the hedge to dust. Any eggs or baby birds slumbering in their little home also get the scythed chariot treatment. The point is that someone such as Adam Myers – or such as I, since, dear readers, inspired by his example I have gone forth and done some hedgecrime myself – who laboriously snips the hedge branch by branch is infinitely more likely to see and avoid a nest than the man driving Boudicca’s chariot while wearing council-mandated goggles and ear-muffs.
So, all in all, it looks to me as if the ex-members of Broughton Moor Parish Council were annoyed at this young man for showing them up.
The Telegraph reports that “Doctors should talk to patients about climate change, say health leaders”:
A new green toolkit produced by the Royal College of Physicians tells its members they are “uniquely placed” to raise the issue in consultations and that they should “repeat it often”.
The guidance, which is can be found on the royal college’s website, also tells doctors to work from home on non-clinical shifts and offer remote consultations “where clinically appropriate” to cut emissions from commuting.
They should remain alert to “eco-distress”, depression or anxiety a patient may be suffering because of the changing climate, the document adds.
Critics branded the guidance, which is 11 pages long, “virtue signalling” and warned it could lead to diagnoses being missed.
The comment most recommended by Telegraph readers is this:
Mark Smith
Utterly utterly mad. When guidance like this is issued you know the current system is beyond repair. When patient get 10minutes with a GP, there’s little time to get a proper diagnosis and 5 of those minutes will be to receive a sermon. While the NHS is falling to bits we get this.
closely followed by this:
Andrew Bunting
Speaking as a doctor I find this diabolical.
Who has time on their hands to come up with such tosh?
I wake up, I check the morning news.
Oh.
Six days ago, on July 8th, President Biden said, “it’s time to put Trump in a bullseye”.
In January 2011, a man called Jared Loughner tried to murder Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and did murder six others. The media rushed to blame his crime on a map put out by Sarah Palin’s campaign showing a map of the US with states that she regarded as political targets marked by crosshairs, with the names of those states’ Democratic representatives whom she hoped to unseat listed below. Loughner was a paranoid schizophrenic who held a longstanding – and bizarre – grudge against Giffords. There is no evidence he ever saw Palin’s map.
Perhaps it is time to dust off this old post:
The uncertainty principle in violence blame mechanics
Sometimes one is privileged to witness the discovery of a law of science.
Δl Δm > M
The variables l, m and M are defined in the link.
“Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin!” Apart from introducing the president of Ukraine as the president of Russia and referring to Kamala Harris as “vice-president Trump”, Joe Biden got through the NATO summit just fine.
The Democrats have got themselves into a bit of a pickle, haven’t they? It is not as if there were no warning signs. Why, the Guardian’s Washington Correspondent, David Smith, compiled a long list of them called “Warning signs: a history of Joe Biden’s verbal slips” only a week ago.
Only a week ago. That is the problem. The first item on the list of warning signs dates from March 2021. The Guardian‘s article attempts to explain why it took so long:
Biden’s team came down hard on reporters who questioned whether the oldest president in American history – now 81 – was still fully capable of doing the job. Journalists also wanted to avoid the accusation of ageism or that they were helping to elect Trump.
“It is simply astounding for the entire country, including its most seasoned reporters, to be as shocked as everyone was by the ugly and painful reality of Biden’s debate performance,” Jill Abramson, former executive editor of the New York Times, wrote on the Semafor website this week.
While it was a “super hard story to report”, she said it could have been done. Instead, Abramson said, the American press failed in its duty to hold those in power accountable. Here are some of the dots that, with the benefit of hindsight, could have been joined sooner:
Or you could have read a proper newspaper like the New York Post or the Daily Mail and learned about them at the time. The Guardian‘s selection of “gaffes” is skewed towards things that, although they happen to Biden more frequently than average, could happen to anyone, such as Biden’s literal stumbles and his accidental substitutions of one word for another. The only really damaging items in the list compiled by David Smith are Biden calling out “Jackie, are you here?” to the recently deceased Jackie Walorski, and one of several claims he has made that his son died in Iraq. None of the charming anecdotes that he habitually makes up out of whole cloth were included. The New York Post was flagging this habit of his back in 2021. Nor does the Guardian‘s list include any of Biden’s frequent descents into meaningless gabble. Remember how he came out with “I’ll lead an effective strategy to mobilise trunalimunumaprzure” at a campaign stop in Luzerne County, PA, back in October 2020? Of course you do, because you read a proper newspaper, such as Canada’s National Telegraph, from where I got the link. The article by Gerry Kaur, includes a line saying that we need to talk about the “massive problem” of Joe Biden’s “lowering cognitive agility”. It was published on November 3rd, 2020. The Democrats, their friends in the media, and the left in general could have started that conversation four years ago and been in a much better position now, but they preferred to suppress the story. The trouble with hiding the truth from other people is that you end up hiding it from yourself as well.
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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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