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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On none of these matters have Trump’s tactics worked. The US trade deficit is unchanged. Greenland has not been sold. Ukraine has not been forced to agree a peace deal with Russia. Iran’s nuclear capability remains. The current conflict with Iran, which began after Boys’s book was completed, is the clearest evidence yet that other states have seen through Trump’s bluster and faux belligerence. Despite numerous threats of armageddon, the Iranians have not backed down, and they called Trump’s bluff because he appeared unwilling to accept the economic consequences of escalation. China has taken a similar approach to managing trade wars, forcing concessions on the export of chips while finding ways to circumvent tariffs.
[…]
The so-called realists have been bolstered in recent decades by the failure of more ambitious American strategies. Russia, China and other autocracies have not been converted to liberal democracy via capitalism, as many hoped in the years following the Cold War. The post-9/11 invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are now acknowledged by almost everyone to have been disasters on a historic scale, undermining the US’s moral and military authority at enormous expense in terms of lives and cash. The US’s humanitarian interventions have a chequered record: they stopped Slobodan Milošević from massacring Kosovar Albanians, but failed in Somalia and Libya. The realists also argue that the conflict in Ukraine is a direct result of overreach in the 1990s and 2000s, as the US and western allies unnecessarily provoked Russia by interfering in its “sphere of interest” – though others would note that Vladimir Putin’s own imperial fantasies might have more to do with it.
– Sam Freedman
I’m not a great fan of Freedman but his analysis is sometimes interesting.
When Sanchez came into power, he did so not via an election but by winning a no-confidence vote against former PP leader Rajoy in June 2018. In this moment, he promised to wash away the corruption of PP and lead Spain with dignity. After eight years of premiership, his ministers are in prison, and his only idea for economic growth has been the now completely discredited policy of importing waves of immigrants with cheap tourism to avoid reforming the country. He has hollowed out institution after institution, including his own party.
His legacy? Pedro Sanchez is the dead end of Europe´s open borders experiment. Let us pray that when he goes, he takes that corpse with him.
– Pimlico Journal
The N-word is very much the ultimate trigger-word right now. Despite this being a full article about this precise epithet, I am unable to easily use it. Just to be safe from malicious prosecution or algorithmic suppression, even free speech websites like the Daily Sceptic will generally use asterisks to obscure it as ‘n****r’, even though you all know perfectly well what full word the typography indicates. It’s not ‘number’ or ‘nectar’ (‘neuter’ might be quite appropriate, though).
– Steven Tucker, writing In Minnesota, words matter more than rape.
Words of Power lose their impact when overused or habitually misused, which is why “fascist” and “racist”, once useful categoric descriptions with specific meanings, now mean almost nothing beyond “someone I do not like and wish to place beyond the pale”.
However “nigger”, absolutely a word of power in a strangely inverted way, is just a crass insult. Yet it is so powerful we’re required to render it as “the N-word”, akin to saying “Adonai” rather than the true name of God. Yet bizarrely in this two-tier civilization of ours, it becomes acceptable when used by melanin enhanced rappers, in which case it becomes something more akin to “geezer” or “my crew” or various other non-taboo things, depending on context.
It’s a funny old world.
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) has been accused of damaging scientific integrity after retracting a paper which suggested that Covid vaccines may have been to blame for some excess deaths during the pandemic.
In 2024, a group in the Netherlands published a paper in BMJ Public Health, warning that some pandemic deaths may have been caused by the indirect effects of containment measures and vaccination programmes, and calling for further investigation.
The work was peer reviewed for nine months, and accepted as accurate by the BMJ, the UK’s leading medical journal. However, it was retracted this week after a slew of complaints and an investigation by the Princess Máxima Centre in Utrecht, where three of the four authors worked.
The investigation found no evidence of malicious intent, fabrication or falsification of data, but still labelled the work as misleading and selective because it “did not reflect scientific consensus”, and had disproportionately focused on the negative effects of vaccination.
– Sarah Knapton (£)
“We are Jason Arday,” say the Cambridge faculty.
“We are Jason Arday,” say the British academic establishment.
“We are Jason Arday,” say humanities faculty throughout the West.
And you know what?
They are all correct.
– Dinesh D’Souza
As a writer and broadcaster in 2020s Britain, one almost expects the police eventually to arrive and allege some sort of thought crime, particularly if one writes about anti-Jewish racism and violence, free speech, the Middle East, Islam or trans issues. I write about all of them.
I recognised the moment for what it was. A rite of passage, and an attempt to place a boundary around my speech. Informing her as I did so, I reached for my phone and began recording, as much for posterity as for evidence.
– Jonathan Sacerdoti
Some people say the government has abandoned us.
I know what they mean – our governments have abandoned their primary function of defending us and our borders.
But in every other area, they are suffocating rather deserting us!
– Alice Smith
This is not good enough, says Ofcom. It wants, it seems, pre-emptive powers to block access to sites operating anywhere in the world, should they be deemed harmful to people in the UK.
This is authoritarian nonsense on any number of levels. For one thing, it moves noticeably towards a Great British Firewall, like that used in China. We should also worry that an unelected agency is spending its time digging around the internet looking for material it would like to stop us seeing. Admittedly, we are told that the issue here is material that’s harmful to children and sites such as suicide forums. But it is a racing certainty that any such powers, if given, will be invoked to go well beyond suicide forums.
Equally, it’s not clear whether Ofcom wants these powers to extend to blocking sites to users across the globe. A recent Ofcom update on a suicide site clearly suggests it sees a UK geoblock as insufficient. This really would bring us into cloud-cuckoo-land. No national regulator, whether it comes from the UK, China or Burkina Faso, has any business censoring the global internet.
– Andrew Tettenborn
All things grow, bacteria, blue whales, businesses and bureaucracies. The difference for the latter is, that the first three must wrench a living from a cold, uncaring world, whereas the latter merely needs to increase taxes.
The bureaucracy grows like a cancer, stealing resources and threatening the viability of its host. Eventually the host, us, starts to ask whether it shouldn’t be reduced to something taxpayers can actually afford. The bureaucracy responds by doing everything in its power to prevent its dismemberment. Join the EU, there’s safety in numbers, import millions of voters to block the right, all while continuing to drain the lifeblood from the economy. It can’t win, of course, either it gets dismantled or the economy collapses. It’s just a matter of what is left afterwards.
– Roué le Jour
The Americans are gaining healthy life years while we are losing them.
Hmm, that is interesting, no? Thus the UK requires more red in tooth and claw capitalism, more neoliberalism, obviously. Sell the NHS for scrap and go private!
And, well, but that’s not quite how American health care works, not for those over 65. That’s Medicare. Which is paid for by the government. But not supplied by the government. Which is a reasonable guide to what the problem is with the NHS. Tax paid health care is fine. It’s government supplied that is not.
At which point we gain our prescription – sell the NHS for scrap and have more neoliberalism. We’ll gain longer and healthier retirements by doing so.
– Tim Worstall
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.
People are such rubes.
– Phillips P. OBrien
That government can be scarcely deemed to be free where the rights of property are left solely dependent upon the will of a legislative body without any restraint.
– Joseph Story
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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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