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]
The green transition was paid for in roubles, and the people who signed the cheques sat in the chancellery, not on the fringes. When Donald Trump warned the UN General Assembly in 2018 that Germany was making itself dependent on Russian energy, the German delegation was filmed smirking. Merz now tells a British Prime Minister that Russia’s friends sit on the AfD benches. Russia’s most useful friends in Germany wore SPD and CDU rosettes, and they were doing exactly what RT asked.
And look how it turned out. Labour went into the 2024 election promising to ban fracking for good. The Bowland shale stays where it is. Britain buys gas from Norway’s pipelines and from tankers out of Qatar and Texas, at whatever price the world sets that winter. Whether or not Moscow lifted a finger, it got exactly the British energy policy RT spent years asking for, and Burnham’s government is the one delivering it.
So here’s a question for the next time he walks into Number 10 asking what the Russians have been up to. Not the referendum. Ask about the shale.
Moscow strikes with drones and glide bombs despite US president’s surprise claim of an energy truce
Is there any evidence either Ukraine or Russia actually agreed to any cessation of strikes against energy targets?
When I started using ChatGPT, I encountered answers that were phrased with great certainty but were in fact ‘hallucinations’ with no basis in reality whatsoever. And by that I mean the AI invented an ice-cream parlour, with a technical description of how its ice-cream was made and a street address… which proved to have never existed and address was a parking lot in Prague.
The recent news about a Ukrainian counteroffensive liberating several hundred square kilometres of territory around Lyman in eastern Ukraine has come as a pleasant surprise in the midst of the ongoing Russian missile barrages against Ukrainian cities, and the appalling spectacle of American negotiators discussing good memories with the Russian president in Moscow. The Ukrainian gains have been documented by a variety of sources, including drone videos, soldier accounts and media organisations that have held off reporting the operation. The Institute for the Study of War has stated in its latest update that “ISW’s mapping methodology is likely underestimating the extent of Ukrainian gains in the ongoing counterattacks in the Lyman direction.”
[…]
Thus, over the space of two months, Ukraine has executed two quiet yet successful counteroffensive operations in different parts of the country. Not only does this challenge the popular (and lazy) narrative of a stalemate along the frontline, but it also means that the Ukrainians have been investing in the hard intellectual work of finding new methods of conducting successful offensive action at the tactical and operational levels.
Regarding the “appalling spectacle of American negotiators” remark… having businessmen do diplomacy is a bit like having a heart surgeon fix your roof. Even if he is a great surgeon, he is going to fuck up your roof.
“In the current Russian leadership’s rather 19th — though increasingly 21st — century view of how the world works, lesser powers must defer to great ones or pay the price. The UK, a country in a category all of its own when it comes to Kremlin resentments, has just been warned that it’s inline for such a punishmentand I’m not sure that’s being taken seriously enough.”
Part 5: Trusted includes information on how we will design the new system to ensure that everyone can have confidence that it will protect their data. It includes discussion of technical security measures, data protection standards and how people can exercise greater consent and control when using the digital ID. There is also a chapter on governance and oversight
*
There’s an interesting report in today’s Telegraph:
Russian hackers have infiltrated the email accounts of UK government officials and overseas Foreign Office staff in a major national security breach.
In the sophisticated and ongoing attack – nicknamed FortiBleed by researchers – hackers stole login credentials belonging to government staff, granting unauthorised access to sensitive systems and threatening further infiltration across Whitehall departments.
And, btw, when it comes to words, Trump made one of his most astonishing public lies recently about how Putin did not help Iran in the recent war. Speaking at the G7, Trump went out of his way to praise Putin for being “neutral” in the Iran War. Here is what he said.
“And I want to thank Vladimir Putin, he was very neutral. They could have made it much more difficult for us.”
Of course, Russia was anything but neutral in the war, and provided key support to Iran, support that seems to have helped the Iranians win the war and defeat US forces (and defeat Trump). This Russian help went from vital drone components, targeting intelligence to help the Iranians hit US bases, sanctions evasion help and the delivery of finished munitions.
So Trump has recently gone to great lengths to lie and protect Putin and to loosen sanctions on the Russian economy. But hey, he did not insult Ukraine.
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.
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa
Recent Comments