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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Just read an article by Afua Hirsch in the Guardian called “How can lawyers help Haiti?”
“By going away” was the general opinion expressed in the comments. A little harsh, I thought, given that establishing a more solid rule of law might indeed help reconstruction there. But I am not really interested in that coz my gob just got smacked. In passing, Ms Hirsch mentioned this little fact:
…what is happening to millions of extra dollars pouring into a country that already had a staggering 10,000 NGOs before the earthquake. For an island with a population of fewer than 10 million, there is at least one NGO per 1,000 people.
Blimey. Ten thousand. Not ten thousand people, ten thousand organisations. Of the sort called “non-governmental” although that is a lie. And that was before the earthquake. Ah well, ’tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Just think, had not the earthquake come along all these helpers might have solved all Haiti’s problems and left themselves with nothing to do.
Of course, when I say that that is what Strathclyde Fire and Rescue (“making our communities safe places to live work and visit”) preferred, I do acknowledge it cannot have been pleasant to sit around listening to her desperate cries for the last six hours of her life while rescue equipment that could have brought her out from the mine shaft into which she had fallen stood inactive. But it was that or disregard a memo.
According to the Times,
An injured woman lay for six hours at the foot of a disused mine shaft because safety rules banned firefighters from rescuing her, an inquiry heard yesterday. As Alison Hume was brought to the surface by mountain rescuers she died of a heart attack.
A senior fire officer at the scene admitted that crews could only listen to her cries for help, after she fell down the 60ft shaft, because regulations said their lifting equipment could not be used on the public. A memo had been circulated in Strathclyde Fire and Rescue stations months previously stating that it was for use by firefighters only.
Tough call. We must hope that the eighteen firefighters present (according to an account in the Scotsman) supported each other.
I am a little confused by the fact that the this rope equipment was specified for use by firefighters only. I suppose this restriction is to avoid untrained people being rescued.
Richard Castle of the Burton Mail wrote the following story about a recent act of vandalism: Vandals deface the town war memorial :
A ROYAL British Legion boss says vandals have “dishonoured those who have given their lives for our country” by defacing Burtonʼs war memorial.
Roy Whenman, vice-chairman of the town’s Legion branch, received calls from members saying an extremist message had been written on the statue. Having been informed at 9.20am, borough council chiefs had cleaned the graffiti from the relic, situated outside Burton College, in Lichfield Street, by 9.40am.
Mr Whenman, of Birches Close, Stretton, has described whoever committed the offence as “diabolical”.
He said: “There’s nothing worse, in my eyes, than discrediting a war memorial. It dishonours those who have given their lives for our country.
“I don’t know how long it was there for, but I was pleasantly surprised by the council’s quick action and I commend them for it.
“What I would say to them is there are other ways of expressing your anger about certain issues.”
Dennis Fletcher, chairman of East Staffordshire Racial Equality Council, said he suspected someone from the far right was responsible.
He said: “My reaction is one of horror. Just two nights ago at our general committee meeting we were talking about the harmony between communities in the borough.
“I suspect members of the far right have done this to stir things up and there are generally very good inter-cultural relations in East Staffordshire.
“Graffiti of any type is terrible but when it includes racist material it has to be considered utterly unacceptable.”
An East Staffordshire Borough Council spokesman said: “We would say that this vandalism is deplorable and we do our best to clean such graffiti as soon as we possibly can.”
â– The Mail has manipulated the mainpicture to remove some of the content of the message.
The Burton Mail would like you to think that what was removed in the manipulation was swear words or something like that.
Actually, no. A picture of the graffiti has been posted by “OldWarDog” of the “4 Freedoms Worldwide” blog. It shows that the censored words were…
…Before I tell you, see if you can guess. Not the exact words, but the general idea. You can make a guess based on this gnomic comment from the vice-chairman of the Burton branch of the British Legion: “What I would say to them is there are other ways of expressing your anger about certain issues.” (What issues? Why are you talking in this strange, indirect way?) You can make a guess from the otherwise inexplicable involvement of the chairman of East Staffordshire Racial Equality Council, and his guess – unsupported by any evidence – that “someone from the far right was responsible”, when the British Far Right are usually all too anxious to muscle in on displays of support for the armed services. You can make a guess from his further comment, which only starts to make sense when you realise that something is being hidden, that “Just two nights ago … we were talking about the harmony between communities in the borough.”
Did you get it? Here is the picture.
And in case that link goes dead, let me just tell you. The graffiti says “Islam will dominate the world. Osama…” The next few words are difficult to read in the picture. Never mind, you guessed the general thrust of them anyway.
Now read Kathy Shaidle’s post :When media bias becomes media malpractice.
What is the Burton Mail playing at? I was about to write, “you can’t get away with that sort of thing now we have the internet” until half a second’s more thought told me that you couldn’t get away with that sort of thing in the days before the internet either. Hundreds of people in Burton must have seen the graffiti, even if it was removed quickly by the council. When even one or two of these hundreds saw that report in the Burton Mail they will have instantly realised they were being lied to, and will have become far more likely to spread the news about what they really saw. The graffiti on its own will do harm to race relations. The graffiti plus the cover up will do far worse.
(Via House of Dumb)
I am almost surprised that we were treated so moderately by our captors – apart, that is, from the tragic, largely unexplained, decision to kill Tom Fox, the American Quaker.
– Norman Kember, writing in the Guardian.
According to the Times….
SCIENTISTS at the University of East Anglia (UEA) have admitted throwing away much of the raw temperature data on which their predictions of global warming are based.
It seems that
The data were gathered from weather stations around the world and then adjusted to take account of variables in the way they were collected. The revised figures were kept, but the originals — stored on paper and magnetic tape — were dumped to save space when the CRU moved to a new building.
and
… the data were thrown away in the 1980s, a time when climate change was seen as a less pressing issue.
Indeed. That fact, that climate change was once seen a less pressing issue and is now seen as a very pressing issue, explains a lot. Firstly, as the article says, it explains why the basis of the famous Settled Science has now presumably settled even more firmly beneath two decades worth of layers of landfill. I sympathise. Nine times out of ten throwing out piles of tatty old paperwork is a good idea. (Though it would have been more honest for the Climatic Research Unit to have admitted that the data had been thrown away when first asked) And it also goes a long way towards explaining why the CRU, and so many of the scientists involved in climate science, have been behaving so badly despite almost certainly not being very bad men. They had the heady experience of being transformed from obscure boffins to Protectors of the World. To have the captain of the ship turn over the wheel to you, the skilled pilot, for expert guidance in dangerous waters is a grave responsibility but also one that makes you stand a little straighter, no? After all that it would be embarrassing to notice, let alone proclaim, that maybe the waters were not as dangerous as first thought.
When I posted yesterday’s Quote of the Day I should have made it clear, as David Foster does in the link, that it has relevance to the story of the scientists who were, and will be for a while yet, part of the Inner Ring.
To nine out of ten of you the choice which could lead to scoundrelism will come, when it does come, in no very dramatic colours. Obviously bad men, obviously threatening or bribing, will almost certainly not appear. Over a drink, or a cup of coffee, disguised as triviality and sandwiched between two jokes, from the lips of a man, or woman, whom you have recently been getting to know rather better and whom you hope to know better still- just at the moment when you are most anxious not to appear crude, or naïf or a prig- the hint will come. It will be the hint of something which the public, the ignorant, romantic public, would never understand: something which even the outsiders in your own profession are apt to make a fuss about: but something, says your new friend, which “we”- and at the word “we” you try not to blush for mere pleasure- something “we always do”.
– C.S. Lewis, from an essay called The Inner Ring. I was reminded of this by David Foster of Chicagoboyz.
You may have forgotten this.
Short of arranging a letter of congratulations from Roman Polanski, this could scarcely be bettered.
UPDATE: ah, sheesh – sorry Johnathan. Great minds collapse into hysterical laughter alike.
UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: And Perry. And, uh, everyone on the planet. Getting this post out has been a wonderful journey for me and I thank the Committee from the bottom of my heart.
“She’s a communist. A real one.”
Some thirty years ago I, then a bookish sixth former, attended a week long “Introduction to Philosophy” course at London University. One of the tutors was a commie. She was quite pleasant, introduced us to philosophy more than adequately, but truly, really was an actual no-kidding self-declared communist. First I had ever met.
I and some of the other kids from various different schools on this course found this even more interesting than Logical Positivism and we all tried to get into debate with her about it. Got nowhere, of course. A woman who had been defending the party line in all its various manifestations for decades was more than capable of disposing of the arguments of a bunch of seventeen year olds.
All of us but one – there was one boy who did, just about, make an impression. The tutor had some particular link with East Germany and this boy simply repeated, politely but insistently, several very basic statements about that state. “Nobody is allowed to leave.” “They have a wall and and barbed wire to stop people escaping.” “If you try to escape they shoot you.” And when he said this he sounded honestly astonished that anyone could be – could allow themselves to have become – the sort of person who would sincerely defend East German communism. It was not just wrong but weird. I mean, what? The wall, the shooting people, and she says she likes that?
I am moved to write about a communist I met thirty years ago because the second referendum in Ireland on the Lisbon Treaty will be held tomorrow. The European Union is not remotely as bad as Communism. But there are some very basic things wrong with it and this referendum has brought them out. The European Union will not accept a vote against it. It will not allow a vote at all, if it can get away with it. If people do vote against something the EU wants it makes them vote again and again, knowing that the donors and volunteers for the opposing side will be exhausted eventually, as will the voters, whereas its side has bottomless coffers and power to keep on pushing till it gets its way. The European Union lies to get what it wants. The Lisbon treaty is the rejected Constitution under another name. The Lisbon Treaty is deliberately written in confusing language so as to hide what it means. That is what con-men do. The Lisbon Treaty is a con.
I think that anyone who has allowed themselves to become the sort of person who would sincerely defend these lies and abuses of democracy should be regarded as a weirdo. Amazing, and not in a good way. Yeah, sure, people might be bribed or bullied or bored into doing what the EU wants – all these I can understand, if not admire. But the “neverendums”, the Constitution written like the small print of a dodgy timeshare agreement – you say you like that? I mean, what?
Of course my view as to how such people should be regarded counts about as much as a “no” vote three referenda ago. What is more to the point is that I am almost sure that in Britain at least, my “should” has become, or is in the process of becoming, an “is”. At some point during the Lisbon treaty saga normal people in Britain became embarrassed to actively like the EU. This does not mean that they cannot be bullied or bribed or bored into going along with it, as the Irish will be tomorrow, if the polls are to be believed. But when did you last meet a person who passionately and proudly supported the EU? And what were they, some sort of weirdo?
Parents who ferry children to clubs face criminal record checks, reports the Guardian.
Parents who regularly ferry groups of children on behalf of sports or social clubs such as the Scouts will have to undergo criminal record checks — or face fines of up to £5,000, it was disclosed today.
They will fall under the scope of the government’s new vetting and barring scheme, which is aimed at stopping paedophiles getting access to children.
Other interesting quotes from the article:
A total of 11.3 million people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are expected to register with the ISA.
All 300,000 school governors, as well as every doctor, nurse, teacher, dentist and prison officer will have to register because they come into contact with children or “vulnerable” adults at work.
And
Unlike previous lists of barred individuals, everyone registered with the agency will face continuing monitoring, with existing registrations reconsidered if new evidence is disclosed.
And
Martin Narey, the Barnardo’s chief executive and former director general of the Prison Service, said: “If the vetting and barring scheme stops just one child ending up a victim of a paedophile then it will be worth it.”
I do not know if this will actually come to pass. The proposal is massively unpopular on all sides of the political aisle, judging from the comments to this Guardian article and indeed the comments to this Daily Mail article, and this BBC Have Your Say forum. But a moribund Government can convulse in strange ways; they may not care very much about popularity.
What is the origin, importance and future of trutherism?
… thirty nine years ago, the Dawson’s Field hijackings were in progress.
I have long thought – longer than eight years – that the seeds of a poison tree were sown by an event that happened soon afterwards. To quote the Wikipedia entry linked to above:
About two weeks after the start of the crisis, the remaining hostages were recovered from locations around Amman and exchanged for Leila Khaled and several other PFLP prisoners.
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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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