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]

Samizdata quote of the day

The ability of the ‘sensible centre’ to define other people’s labels is rapidly decaying as they are mid-suicide collectively & are unaware their sense of rapture is a lack of oxygen to the brain. A Great Realignment is coming & we’ll see some very strange alliances until the new normal emerges.

– Perry de Havilland

The Joke and the Reality

April Fool’s day is the day to tell a story that seems real but is in fact a joke. Yesterday was the day when a joke became astonishingly real for me.

Sunday morning, I was casually shown this picture on a friend’s phone. On a brexitter’s blog, it would be no surprise. On that friend’s phone, sent her by her children, it told me the joke was going viral. I laughed appreciatively – and reflected that whatever diminishes the respect anyone still feels for “Parliament knows best what to do on Brexit” was good.

QueenInstructs00onParliamentMission

Just what her majesty has told James Bond 007 (licensed to kill) to do with all members of parliament is not explicitly stated – appeal to their (very) latent honesty as regards keeping promises, perhaps? But I saw that it was of course a joke, utterly unreal – the Queen is portrayed uttering a swearword!

That afternoon I saw the Sunday Times. The Times is the ultimate establishment remainer newspaper. It is Sir Humphrey Appleby’s newspaper. Imagine my shock when I read on the front page, illustrated with a picture of her, that

“The Queen has a constitutional role to play in Brexit … The Queen may block a soft Brexit …”

Were parliament to seize control of Brexit, then (this establishment remainer paper stated – in more or less the words I am writing here) Mrs May could well advise the Queen to withhold assent. As the private chats between her majesty and her prime minister are confidential, it did not say – nor would we perhaps know – whether that would be the result of Mrs May begging the use of every lever at her disposal or of the Queen pointedly advising Mrs May to advise her so. Far more important to me was this explicit statement that, in our current state, when Parliament cannot or will not act, or not within the rules, the Queen can – not by invoking any extraordinary prerogative power but as an ordinary constitutional act. I saw that last week but I was very surprised to see an establishment endorsement of it over the weekend.

Like everyone else – like Theresa May, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Etc. Etc. – like everyone in the UK and the EU, with the possible exception of Elizabeth R – I don’t know what is going to happen next. But beware making a joke. The papers may report it for real that afternoon.

In other news, while many marched in London, some acquaintances marked the absence-of-Brexit day by climbing the Cumbrian hill called ‘Great Cockup’. It is next to ‘Little Cockup’ but they felt the latter summit was not so appropriate a destination.

April fool, suckers! It was me all along!

French literati embarrassed after Marxist hero admits to murders

An anguished debate has erupted among French intellectuals after an Italian Marxist whom they lionised as a victim of oppression and injustice confessed to being a murderer.

Cesare Battisti, 64, a former member of the Armed Proletarians for Communism…

Who could have guessed that a member of Armed Proletarians for Communism might have been violent?

…embarrassed the French literati who were his most ardent defenders when he admitted last week to a series of killings and knee-cappings in Italy in the late 1970s.

Battisti lived openly in France for 14 years from 1990 despite having been convicted in his absence in Italy of carrying out two murders and aiding and abetting two others. He earned a living as a crime writer, a television scriptwriter and an occasional contributor to Playboy.

When a French court upheld an Italian extradition request in 2004, authors, artists, philosophers and politicians sprang to his defence. They denounced Italian justice as biased, proclaimed his innocence — even though he refused to do so explicitly for many years — and said that he should be able to live freely in France.

Battisti fled to Brazil then Bolivia.

…but was arrested there in January and extradited to Italy. Under questioning he not only admitted to the crimes but said that he had “never been a victim of injustice”. He went on to say that his backers had been interested only in his ideology and not in his innocence or guilt.

Ho ho, what a joke. Except for the people he murdered and their families.