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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The Commission for Racial Equality in the UK has taken on a decidedly sinister tone by calling for a Tintin book, Tintin in the Congo, to be removed from sale because it is racist.
A CRE spokeswoman said: “This book contains imagery and words of hideous racial prejudice, where the ‘savage natives’ look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles. “How and why do Borders think that it’s okay to peddle such racist material?
I am pleased to say Borders’ reply was a polite NO:
Naturally, some of the thousands of books and music selections we carry could be considered controversial or objectionable depending on individual political views, tastes and interests,” [a Borders spokesman said] “However, Borders stands by its commitment to let customers make the choice. After consideration of this title, we have instructed all stores to move it to the adult graphic novels section.”
Choice? CHOICE? That will never do! Clearly we need some more laws!
The fact is, Tintin is racist. So what? It is a very good illustration of the attitudes of the era in which these stories were written (Tintin in the Congo was published in 1930), which was during the Indian summer of colonialism (with apologies to the people of Tibet still under Chinese colonial occupation circa 2007).
I personally find books glorifying socialism hideous as history has proven again and again that socialism is repression and its end state is mass murder and horror. Maybe I should demand Borders stop selling those. Better yet, maybe books shops should not sell anything that offends anyone, which should limit them to selling phone books in all likelihood.
You can get your very own copy of Tintin in the Congo here (UK) or here (US) (I notice that Amazon in the USA wimped out and did not show the cover illustration).
It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that when I come to the USA, I use the opportunity to and do some shootin’ and visit my weapons-in-exile (such as one of which is featured on the Karl Popper book at the top of the page, although technically that particular 9mm weapon belongs to my fairer half, my otherwise identical piece is in .40 cal). Of course this trip was no exception and so I have been rescheduled my ongoing homages to the Yuengling Brewing Company until the evening and headed to one of the more remote parts of Pennsylvania to frighten the wild life and try to resurrect some rusty rifle and pistol skills.
 As mere possession of a handgun is illegal, it is at times like this that just how far Britain has fallen really hits home. For all its many and variegated flaws, in the USA enough people with some attachment to liberty have managed to fight off the worst excesses of those authoritarians who favour crime victim disarmament. It is interesting that many PA Democrats are actually quite pro-gun, even though many politicos in that sinkhole called Philadelphia are quite authoritarian and anti-gun (note that NRA ratings are not all that good an indication of a politician’s true position). It is good to see that the right to self-defence and to own and shoot guns is widely respected even on the political left.
However man does not live by guns alone and the USA has many other things to offer…
Apple pie and a dawg… how American is that, eh?
Big Ice Cream, Big Bikes, Short Shorts… I must be in the USA again! Back in London tomorrow. Oh crap.
There is a very interesting article in the Telegraph about middle class Islamic terrorism. For me the ‘money quote’ came from Ed Husain, a former member of the extremist Hizb ut-Tahir group.
Mr Husain, whose book, The Islamist, exposed the workings of Hizb ut-Tahir, is contemptuous of the idea that the latest plots were inspired by the West’s intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This is just an excuse. They reject Western culture full stop, not just ‘slags in night clubs’. They would have supported the bombing of Muslims attending the cinema in Cairo in the 1950s. They do not want Muslims to enjoy social freedoms. If it was not Iraq they would cite Chechnya. Or Palestine. These are angry men. Accommodation is not an option. It has to be containment or annihilation.”
That is what makes these people so different from the IRA or ETA or any of the West’s entirely indigenous terrorists: there can be no possible meeting of the minds or compromise or middle ground to be found with the current crop of Wahhabi inspired mass murderers. It really is them or us.
I just came across an article describing why the recent bombs in the UK set by Islamic terrorists failed to detonate… presumably this must have come from some member of the British security services or some other part of the government with access to that information.
It seems to me that this is tantamount to saying “Attention all members of Islamic Terrorist cells operating in the UK: the reason your bombs did not go off and kill hundreds of British civilians is that a medical syringe used as part of the firing mechanism caused a malfunction. We hope this helps you to ensure that the next time you do this, you are more successful in your attempted mass murder. So remember, pay particular attention to that element of the design of your bombs.”
Can the person responsible for releasing this to a media company please be found, fired and then put on trial for aiding the enemy (and possibly violations of the Official Secrets Act). Please do this as quickly as possible please.
As Paul Marks mentioned the other day, sometimes something happens that makes you proud to be English. A case in point: I read an article in the Guardian by Marcel Berlins called If half the nation is in denial about the threats we face from climate change, what hope is there? and felt a frisson of excitement wash over me. Perhaps, just perhaps, we are not so totally fucked after all.
I was more depressed by the findings of a single public opinion survey on climate change than I’ve been by all the pessimistic stories about how little is being done by governments and individuals to combat global warming. An Ipsos Mori poll, published this week, found that 56% of more than 2,000 adults interviewed believed that scientists were still questioning the existence of climate change.
[…]
So how come more than half the British nation still believes that climate change is a questionable, arguable proposition, still a matter of scientific debate? Is the media at fault by not informing the public of the true situation? Or are we facing an epidemic of mass denial, because it is too horrifying to think of the ghastly consequences of unchecked climate change?
Of course whenever the other side is ‘depressed’ because the great unwashed refuse to believe their betters, that is a good reason to light up a nice pungent cigar to celebrate. But might I suggest an alternative option to Mr. Berlins: could this be the beginning not of a mass epidemic (oh how the control freaks loves to pathologise disagreement as a disease… of course two can play at that game) but rather a mass revolt. No prize for guessing how the authoritarians will respond to that.
Surely the cumulative effect of all this truth-telling would have persuaded the doubters by now, not just of the effects of global warming but of the almost total unanimity of scientific opinion on the issue? It seems not.
It matters. Up to a point, laws can be passed to combat climate change, and offenders who don’t conform can be punished. But any successful policies will depend on the cooperation of a population that truly understands the dangers and threats we face. If half the nation continues to be ignorant or in denial, there’s not much hope.
The Big Lie of scientific unanimity will be endlessly repeated and they will naturally try to impose their will with the violence of law, driven by the increasing ferocious indignation of the scorned righteous of the One True Faith. But Berlins is quite correct that in the end if much of the nation refuses to cooperate, all their attempts to control us will come to nothing. Remember the chorus of Rule Britannia, hehehe.
Just leave your computer turned on! I am pleased to see that all the modern gizmos that make life worth living are having a significant effect on everyone’s ‘carbon footprint’.
I cannot tell you how delighted that makes me. The notion that all the traffic that Samizdata generates adds to the preposterous statistics used to describe anthropogenic global warming gives me such a warm fuzzy glow I am myself no doubt heating up my little part of the globe… however the notion at all the people using their computer to visit the Greenpeace site are doing the same is thigh slappingly funny.
And yes, I leave my computers on 24/7. Take that, Gaia.
…definitely the time to be in the USA, watching fireworks on a lake whilst drinking far too much Yuengling beer.
The most invidious part of ‘health authoritarianism’ is that it takes a very reasonable aspect of a state’s responsibility, that of defending against the truly collective threat of infectious plagues, and debases it to interfere with non-infectious diseases which only pose a risk to people who voluntarily enter private property where certain very obvious conditions pertain.
And so we have the smoking ban on enclosed non-residential private property in Britain being imposed by classifying private property as ‘public places’. Never mind that you do not have to enter that privately owned property if you do not like the smell of it, or that the owners should be able to exclude people they want to exclude (such as smokers or for that matter, non-smokers) or that employees who do not like the working conditions can quit and go work somewhere else.
No, the political class loves the idea of eliminating emergent civil society and extending political control ever deeper into people’s lives (this is usually described as making things “more democratic”), and the idea that private property is actually private is an intolerable obstacle to those whose world view is based on violence backed control of the lives of others.
Many people have a deep seated psychological need to see others controlled, not because they are genuinely threatened by them but because they simply get off on controlling other people. The world is full of curtain twitching busy bodies who feel enlivened by calling down the power of the state on those of whom they disapprove for no other reason that it ’empowers’ them (it used to be ‘queers’ who got reported, now it is different types of nonconformists). No totalitarian system that has ever come to power has been able to sustain itself for long without appealing to this all too common psychologically defective demographic, relying on denouncement and informers to perpetuate a political order.
And the only way to resist is to, well, resist. Find ways not to obey the rules. Subvert the meaning of statutes. Do not accept the ‘rightness’ of the prevailing bigotries. Speak out against the orthodoxies of though that underpin the control freaks. Call them what they are. Just find ways to be awkward, find ways not to cooperate, and confront those who assume they on on the moral higher ground and pour contempt on their world view. Just do not meekly cooperate.
Sean Gabb is in blistering and delightfully acerbic form in an article titled Two Wasted Hours in Doughty Street. I had a similar experience surrounded by Tories at an otherwise interesting Adam Smith Institute event once, so Sean, I feel for you old chum.
The article reminded me of an old and not particularly distinguished movie with the line: “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
The attempted London bombings were, we will be told, a consequence of US/UK actions Iraq or Palestine or Afghanistan or something or other about George Dubya Bush or Halliburton or Global Capitalism or Social Injustice. You may be certain that all these bullshit excuses will be trotted out by the disingenuous left who crave the accusations or the deeply provincial Americocentric faction of libertarianism who pretend bad people will leave you alone if only you stay in your mountain bunker in the Ozarks, do not ever send soldiers abroad and refuse to trade or interact with the rest of the world.
However I wonder what these people will make of the possibility that the attacks could well have been about Britain daring to grant an honour to Salman Rushdie. Yet again I am delighted that Rushdie was so honoured, thus subjecting so many of western civilisations’ enemies, domestic and foreign, to the harsh light in which their true natures are revealed.
Of course I have no doubt this will all be used to bring in yet more regulation of our lives, reducing even more of our already grotesquely abridged civil liberties whilst leaving us not even slightly safer.
I received an e-mail asking why, as many of the Samizdatistas live in London, we have not commented on the attempted mass murder by followers of Islam (also known as “the Religion of Peace”).
Well, firstly we Londoners are fairly used to people setting off bombs in this city ever since Irish terrorists started doing that in the 1800’s. The current crop of homicidal nutters trying to kill civilians happen to be less discriminating that some in the past (though please do not forget the none too discriminating Irish pub-bombers of days gone by), but in the end it is nothing we have not seen before.
And whilst I am delighted this was attempt to kill people was thwarted, it is not something that will actually have the slightest impact on my life or the lives of most Londoners. We will continue to act today much as we did yesterday. Frankly I am more worried about the pervasive threat posed to my civil liberties by Gordon Brown than the more or less random threat to my life posed by Al Qaeda.
So not much more to say about it other than… oh, that sucks…now I am off to dinner at a nice Thai restaurant tonight with my inamorata.
Update: looks like we were very lucky it was not a suicide bomber this time… thanks to some brisk and highly commendable work by a member of the Plod (who yanked some wires rather than wait for the bomb squad) this was a close call rather than a catastrophe. Our tax money well spent for once it would appear!
…a new career for Brown… Melanie Brown.
“You mean Gordon Brown, the new Prime Minister, don’t you?” you say.
Hell no, what could be interesting about that? I mean Melanie Brown.
The fact we have a new Prime Minister makes bugger all difference. In fact it is hardly worth reporting. Gordon Brown says he wants to govern for ‘change’. Well the catastrophic abridgement of the civil liberties of all Britons during the Blair Years was certainly a ‘change’. And no doubt we will indeed get more ‘change’ under El Gordo, all of it for the worse… so that is hardly newsworthy at all. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
No, the most interesting news worth reporting is all about Melanie Brown.
A singer called Brown. Vastly more interesting that some kleptocratic power crazed political hack called Brown
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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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