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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That’s not an insult to your parents. THIS is an insult to your parents.

· Historical views

That.

The man who hated Britain: Red Ed’s pledge to bring back socialism is a homage to his Marxist father. So what did Miliband Snr really believe in? The answer should disturb everyone who loves this country.

– Geoffrey Levy, in a hit piece in the Daily Mail aimed at Ed Miliband.

This.

I am at no loss for information about you and your family; but I am at a loss where to begin. Shall I relate how your father Tromes was a slave in the house of Elpias, who kept an elementary school near the Temple of Theseus, and how he wore shackles on his legs and a timber collar round his neck? Or how your mother practised daylight nuptials in an outhouse next door to Heros the bone-setter, and so brought you up to act in tableaux vivants and to excel in minor parts on the stage?

– Demosthenes, in a hit piece aimed at Aeschines.

October 5th, 2013 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)

Discussion point: circumcision

· Health & medical · Opinions on liberty · Self ownership

Circumcision ruling: European bureaucrats are effectively banning Jewish boys, argues Brendan O’Neill, quoting the Jerusalem Post and unintentionally supported in his argument by the creepy quote from the Council of Europe in which it calls for “debate” and in the same breath announces what the result of said debate is to be. And this was put forward by a German rapporteur. I am not usually one for endless digs at modern Germans for evil done before most of them were born, but, Frau Rupperecht, do you have any idea of what that must look like to some of the Jerusalem Post’s older readers?

And yet – irreversible modification of a child’s body without the child’s consent. Gulp.

And yet again – parents irreversibly modify their children’s bodies by surgery all the time.

We have discussed this several times before, acrimoniously. Any new thoughts? Any constructive reformulations of old thoughts?

I have a question for medically knowledgeable readers. I gather that a far higher proportion – 79% in 2002 – of men in the US are circumcised than in the UK, yet the number uncircumcised is also huge. There must therefore be scope for large scale comparisons of outcomes. Have these been done? Does male circumcision make much difference?

October 3rd, 2013 | 147 comments - (Comments are closed)

Samizdata quote of the day

· How very odd! · Philosophical

We are the ones, we militants without a strategy of emancipation, who are (and who have been for some time now) the real aphasics! And it is not the sympathetic and unavoidable language of movementist democracy that will save us.

– Professor Alain Badiou, in an article arguing that “We need to rediscover the language of Communism.”

October 3rd, 2013 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)

Are all the Yanks dead yet?

· North American affairs

US government begins shutdown after Congress debates end in stalemate

Far-called our navies melt away—
On dune and headland sinks the fire—
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

With the watchmen gone from their posts, there can be very little chance that any of our American readers can have survived the plagues, the zombies, the rampaging NRA members and lack of a panda-cam. Theirs has been the fate of Belgium.

Mourn. Survive. But can our doom be far behind, now that they have said they will scrap the Human Rights Act?

October 1st, 2013 | 44 comments - (Comments are closed)

No one can explain it

· Economics, Business & Globalization · Latin American Affairs

Venezuela food shortages: ‘No one can explain why a rich country has no food’

I know you all want to jump in and offer your suggestions. Do not, however, be too scathing. Seriously, the clue train shows signs of having made an unscheduled stop at the Guardian station. The article mentions, albeit in a hurried way and sandwiched between irrelevancies, price controls as a possible explanation for the mystery. And this is downright subversive:

For Oliveros, an additional cause for the shortage of basic food staples is the decrease in agricultural production resulting from seized companies and land expropriations.

From the way that is phrased one could almost think that a decrease in agricultural production was a result of seized companies and land expropriation. I am beginning to wonder if the “No one can explain it” title was selected by either the writer or the mole among the Guardian‘s sub editors in order to call forth the responses it did get.

September 29th, 2013 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)

Women Against Justice

· Civil liberty, Law & Regulation · Sexuality · UK affairs

Lisa Longstaff is a spokesperson for a group called Women Against Rape. She and and Lisa Avalos, assistant professor of law at the University of Kansas, wrote this article for the Guardian: Michael Le Vell’s acquittal is no reason to give rape defendants anonymity.

If you want to read my views on the anonymity issue, see here. The discussion of that was not what shocked me. This was:

But the prosecution of women for alleged false reports strengthens the myth that women frequently lie about being raped and discourages victims from coming forward. It diverts law enforcement away from thoroughly investigating rape and lets rapists loose on the public. It is not in the public interest, and must be stopped.

The writers literally believe that no woman ever should be prosecuted for making a false report of rape. Not that the decision to prosecute should be weighed carefully, that it should never be made. Effectively that it should be legal to knowingly and maliciously make a false report of rape. This cannot be put down to careless phrasing; as pointed out by commenter snoozeofreason, Ms Longstaff has made the same demand at greater length here.

I was relieved to see the response from Guardian commenters, particularly StVitusGerulaitis and EllisWyatt, but that relief could not overcome my disgust that a law professor could be so utterly indifferent to any notion of justice, or that a representative of a group that claims to want to help real rape victims could lobby in favour of those who are parasitical upon them.

September 27th, 2013 | 57 comments - (Comments are closed)

Medhi Hasan is ill-advised

· Environment

Medhi Hasan, former editor of the New Statesman and now political director of the Huffington Post, writes,

Depressingly, you can draw no other conclusion from these facts than that the conspiracy theorists are winning. The deniers of global warming have come in from the cold. The “merchants of doubt”, to borrow a phrase from the science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, seem to have perfected the dark art of “keeping the controversy alive”, sowing seeds of doubt and confusion in the minds of politicians, journalists and voters, in spite of the scientific consensus.

Thus, I use both the terms “denier” (rather than “sceptic”) and “conspiracy theorist” advisedly.

If so, Mr Hasan, you are getting bad advice. As it happens I am a “lukewarmer” but if I were as anxious about anthropogenic global warming as Mr Hasan is, the last thing I would do is make a habit of directing public insult upon the heads of people who disbelieve in it.

Not just because it is nasty to compare people to Holocaust deniers, though it is, but because you will make people wonder whether the famous consensus is based on scientific judgement or fear. As I said in 2006 and still say seven years later:

The consensus convinces because there is no good reason to suppose that so many eminent scientists are lying or deceiving themselves when they say climate change is happening. But if you give me cause to believe that departure from the consensus gets a person ostracised, then there is a good reason.

I was rather prescient, wasn’t I? I supplied in advance the answer to Mr Hasan’s next point:

As for the “conspiracy theorist” tag, let me be blunt: climate-change deniers are the biggest conspiracy theorists of all. In order to embrace the delusions of the deniers, you have to adopt the belief that tens of thousands of researchers, some of them awardwinning scientists, from across the world (not to mention the political spectrum) have conducted behind the scenes, undetected by the media, a campaign of peer-reviewed deceit in defiance of empirical data.

One does not have to believe that tens of thousands of researchers consciously carried out an organized deceit in order to become a “denier”. One only has to believe the much more likely scenario that tens of thousands of researchers separately looked around them, noted that opposing the consensus gets you compared to a Nazi and duly – and quite possibly unconsciously – followed the proverbial advice “don’t stick your neck out”.

September 26th, 2013 | 59 comments - (Comments are closed)

… without a paddle

· Latin American Affairs

Venezuela seizes toilet paper factory to avoid shortage

September 22nd, 2013 | 51 comments - (Comments are closed)

The critics’ verdict

· African affairs · Arts & Entertainment · Middle East & Islamic

American “Jihadi Rapper” and British Islamist executed by former comrades.

September 12th, 2013 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)

A Song for Australia

· Aus/NZ affairs · Humour

With apologies to all those who will be les misérables tomorrow, I give you… One Day More

RUDD:
One day more,
Another day, another destiny,
This never ending road to Calvary.
These men who seem to know my crime
Will surely come a second time,
One day more.

ABBOTT to ELECTORATE:
I did not live until today,
How can I live when we are parted?

RUDD:
One day more.

ABBOTT OR WOULD THIS WORK BETTER AS RUDD and ELECTORATE:
Tomorrow you’ll be worlds away,
And yet with you, my world has started.

GILLARD:
One more day all on my own.

ABBOTT CORRECTION RUDD YES STICKING WITH RUDD HERE and ELECTORATE:
Will we ever meet again?

GILLARD:
One more day with him not caring.

ABBOTT and ELECTORATE:
I was born to be with you!

GILLARD:
What a life I might have known…

ABBOTT and ELECTORATE:
And I swear I will be true!

GILLARD:
…But he never saw me there.

A FLOATING VOTER:
One more day before the storm
At the barricades of freedom
Shall I join my brothers there
When our ranks begin to form?
Do I stay or do I dare?

RUDD:
Will you take your place with me?

ALL:
The time is now!
The day is here!

RUDD:
One day more!

ABBOTT NO WAIT A MINUTE HE OUGHT TO BE LEADING THE REVOLUTION OH NEVER MIND I JUST CAN’T SEE RUDD AS JAVERT:
One more day till revolution,
We will nip it in the bud.
We’ll be ready for these schoolboys,
They will wet themselves with blood.

RUDD:
One day more!

KATTER, PALMER and OTHER BENEFICIARIES OF SECOND PREFERENCE VOTES IN THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE AUSTRALIAN ELECTORAL SYSTEM:
Watch ’em run amuck,
Catch ’em as they fall,
Never know your luck
When there’s a free for all,
Here a little dip
There a little touch,
Most of them are goners
So they won’t miss much.

VOTERS:
One day to a new beginning
Raise the flag of freedom high!
Every man will be a king
There’s a new world for the winning
Do you hear the people sing?

SOMEONE FROM A MINOR PARTY I’M HAVING TROUBLE FITTING INTO THIS ANALOGY:
My place is here,
I fight with you.

I’M LOSING TRACK OF THIS:
One day more!

THIS WOULD WORK BETTER AS RUDD AND THE ELECTORATE I THINK:
I did not live until today…
Tomorrow you’ll be worlds away
And yet with you my world has started

GILLARD:
One more day all on my own.

ABBOTT:
We will join these people’s heroes
We will follow where they go
We will learn their little secrets,
We will know the things they know.

RUDD:
One day more.

KATTER, PALMER, OTHERS ENDING WITH ER:
Watch ’em run amuck
Catch ’em as they fall
Never know your luck
When there’s a free for all

ABBOTT (I LOVE THIS BIT, GO JAVERT!):
One more day to revolution
We will nip it in the bud
We’ll be ready for these schoolboys

RUDD:
Tomorrow we’ll be far away.

RUDD and ABBOTT:
Tomorrow is the judgement day.

ALL:
Tomorrow we’ll discover
What our God in heaven has in store!
One more dawn
One more day
One day more!

UPDATE: I should have guessed I would not be the only one to think of it: Old Owl and 2dogs both pointed out in comments that “Bill Glasson, who is standing against Rudd in his seat of Griffith, has used this song in a video thanking his campaign volunteers.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Got it! I have finally settled on which character from Les Mis best represents Kevin Rudd. Gavroche. We are meant to find him loveable but he is an irritating little brat. He endlessly plays up his proletarian origins and faffs on about “what little people can do”. He denounces Inspector Javert and gets him sent off to be murdered by a People’s Court, setting the example for Children of the Revolution ever since. Then on the barricades, when the revolutionaries are offered the chance to leave, what does he do? He hams it up, sings his little song in a halting, childish treble, and basically dooms the lot of them. Go to the top of the class, little Gavroche! Or preferably go prancing out onto the top of the barricade – go on kid, you know you can’t resist an opportunity to show off – and get yourself slaughtered. Oh, you just did. Good show!

September 6th, 2013 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)

Polly Toynbee might possibly be right

· Opinions on liberty · UK affairs

In most ways the Pollyverse is a place where the rules of our continuum do not apply. She worships strange gods and that which she fears causes Earth-humans to rejoice.

But could she be right to fear the new lobbying bill?

The National Council for Voluntary Organisations publishes a report from a human rights QC warning that the bill could breach the right to freedom of speech. Lawyers for many charities warn of a legal minefield for trustees: if they trip into electoral law they must send weekly reports of all their spending during the electoral period, when any slip risks criminal charges. The government denies the bill will silence campaigners, but a letter of protest representing swaths of charities – from the British Legion to Citizens Advice – crosses the political divide. The campaign group 38 Degrees says the “proposed gagging law would have a chilling effect on British democracy”. The Taxpayers’ Alliance agrees: “The bill is a serious threat to independent politics that will stifle free and open democratic debate.”

Ironically, the bill seems to my uneducated eye to resemble the attempt to stifle free speech in the US that was defeated by the Citizens United decision, a ruling demonized by the Left. That irony might be fun to point out but the consequences are not reassuring. We in the UK do not have the protection of the First Amendment.

September 4th, 2013 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)

Karl Marx was nearly right

· Historical views · Middle East & Islamic · North American affairs

The quick version of something the old plague-carrier said is that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

Second time as tragedy and farce would have been more accurate.

Top comment: “I did not set a red line, Bush did it and you are a racist”

September 4th, 2013 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
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