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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Over the seas and far away, President Milei of Argentina has abolished a government function, that of INADI, the purpose of which was easily comprehensible from its name in Spanish, the Instituto Nacional contra la Discriminación, la Xenofobia y el Racismo the newspaper La Nación has this report, and I quote.
“Disolvimos el INADI. Ente ideológico de uso político partidario. Despedimos a los empleados y devolvimos el edificio. Nuestra gestión se concentra en achicar el Estado y cerrar los organismos innecesarios. No creemos en la utopía del Estado eficiente. Vamos por más, mucho más”, escribió el ministro de Justicia.
” ‘We have dissolved the INADI. An ideological entity of partisan political use. We are dismissing the staff and are taking back the premises. Our management will focus on shrinking the State and closing unnecessary organs. We do not believe in the utopia of the efficient State. We will be doing more, much more.’, wrote the Ministry of Justice.”
Looks like he means what he says. On one YT video (in Spanish) I saw a comment to the effect of ‘If there isn’t a government Department for Breathing, will we all be asphyxiated?’.
Probably the most important man of the 21st Century, if only for his potential to do good, Argentine President-elect (as I write) Javier Milei sat down with Tucker Carlson for an interview, (excerpt provided) at which he discussed the Pope, the murderous Castros and architecture amongst other points (that socialists are evil and think they are ‘God’). The interview was done with Mr Carlson asking questions in English and Señor Milei’s replies in Spanish are sub-titled (accurately I would add) and presumably interpreted in real time.
This segment is just over 9 minutes long, and it is well worth watching. We have all the indications that he is the real deal, he says that he is prepared to die for his beliefs, let us wish him a long and productive life and Presidency.
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
– a frequent paraphrase of Eric Hoffer (that is actually better than the original IMO)
When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.
– Edmund Burke
However, what followed was an extraordinary one-sided item. Newsnight’s presenter, Victoria Derbyshire, proceeded to hold a three-way discussion between herself, a Just Stop Oil activist, Indigo Rumbelow, and, er, Rupert Read, formerly of Extinction Rebellion. Read now leads an embryonic organisation called the Climate Majority Project, whose web page suggests it has a strikingly similar outlook to Extinction Rebellion.
There were obvious questions to ask Rumbelow: namely, who do you think you are, thinking you have the right to ruin a sporting event that is enjoyed by millions, either as participants or spectators? And why target a running event, which is surely all about doing something of which you ought to approve: getting about on foot?
There were questions to be asked of Extinction Rebellion, too – given that it has offered to ‘police’ the event. Are climate pressure groups now operating as a kind of protection racket, to which we are also supposed to go and negotiate before we are allowed to go about our day-to-day business?
None of these questions got asked. Rather, Newsnight first ran a short video in which it asserted that ‘violence’ was being shown towards climate protesters; it illustrated this partly with a police officer doing his job and arresting a member of a mob vandalising a building with red paint.
– Ross Clark
Android users (may be somewhat different on different makes of phone).
iPhone users.
Because if the Covid years have proven anything, only a crazed conspiracy theorist would believe governments would think nothing of using heightened fear to induce mass formation psychosis, thereby hugely increasing its power over every aspect of life, right?
I predict it will eventually be illegal to turn off such ‘warnings’ and phone makers will make it impossible, but then I am just a crazed conspiracy theorist 😉
Together was formed in response to the catastrophic overreach of government and authorities during the pandemic. The consequences of that episode need no repetition here, but the government’s smearing, censure and censorship of criticism, and the attempts to use psychology (fearmongering – as you have observed well) to assert its agenda was a grotesque departure from the norms of democratic society. Together launched a very successful campaign to reassert democratic control and freedoms, demanding the reinstatement of care workers sacked for their non-compliance with vaccine mandates. And they have since started a campaign to challenge some of the aggressively anti-car policies that local authorities have installed under cover of lockdowns, which will have a detrimental effect on freedoms, incomes, and health, despite seemingly being formulated in the interests of public safety. Climate Debate UK was launched at the end of last year, with the intention of informing debates relating to the Net Zero agenda. And so there was considerable overlap, and a joint project seemed like a good idea. I hope to be working with Together much more in the future.
– Ben Pile in discussion with Laura Dodsworth.
Pushing back against state overreach is a perpetual battle of attrition that must be fought on many fronts.
How long before Twitter and YouTube takes down these videos of massive rolling demonstrations in Canada and Germany?
Libertarians often like to tell their own “conversion story”, perhaps with just a touch of “humble-bragging” about their own open-mindedness. It seems impolite to boast of having changed someone else‘s mind. If the other person is present there is a distinct danger that they will purse their lips and announce they have jolly well changed back. In any case those who are good at changing people’s minds, as the late Brian Micklethwait was, do not think of it as winning a duel but more as clearing up any misconceptions that were stopping the other person from seeing the true situation and changing their own mind.
But naming no names, have you ever done it?
The world is going to hell in a eco-friendly handbasket, but the sun just broke through the clouds where I am, so here are a couple of things I recently found in the intertubes that made me laugh.
Ayn Rand’s Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone
Hero: Someone had ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ paged at Chicago O’Hare International Airport (via Ed Driscoll at Instapundit)
The whole “Let’s go, Brandon” phenomenon is a hoot. It’s inspiring to witness these hip young rebels sticking it to The Man while avoiding profanity. Remember when it was left wingers who used their wit to sneak under the censors’ radar?
Seen at the massive anti-lockdown demo in London today…
As they say on the internetz: LOL.
(via Helen is sick of this shit)
The management and communication during the epidemic has been plagued by misleading statistics, the cherry-picking of the worst data, alarmist language, horror-film-style advertising, one-sided media coverage and coercive language and tactics, all of which I wrote about in my new book, A State of Fear.
Bludgeoning people with ‘nudge’ (behavioural psychology), weaponising fear, and tightly controlling the narrative risk undermining the public’s trust in government, public-health messaging and the media. This is the third time I have reported on anti-lockdown protests for spiked, and the third time I have been slack-jawed by the lack of honesty in how the media misrepresents the scale and purpose of these protests. This mistrust can be read clearly in the placards.
– Laura Dodsworth
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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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