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]
In case the link disappears, it says “Co-pilots must not stab the pilot. This is called assault.” It is parodying a Home Office leaflet called “Understanding behaviours and expectations in the UK: a guide for asylum seekers” (non-illustrated version here), which helpfully explains on page 5 that “In the UK, both people must say ‘yes’ to sex. This is called consent.”
It came after the Centre for Migration Control (CMC), a think tank, asked the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) to reveal the total number of convictions broken down by nationality and offences for the seven years under freedom of information laws.
The MoJ initially refused, saying that to gather the data would be too expensive and that publishing the information could lead to the identification of individuals in breach of their rights to privacy.
Both arguments were rejected by the information watchdog. However, The Telegraph revealed last month that David Lammy, then justice secretary, sanctioned legal action seeking to overturn this ruling.
Opposition parties claimed the MoJ’s actions amounted to a “cover-up”.
One of the first political demonstrations I ever attended, over forty years ago, was in defence of refugees and asylum seekers. I still have great sympathy for those who seek freedom from oppression, such as Iranian Christians fleeing the Islamic Republic, and for the genuinely moderate Muslims – the almost comical over-use of that phrase does not mean they do not exist. But the current UK asylum regime is an illustration of the old medical saying that “the dose makes the poison.”
*My auto-correct tried to change “Turkey” to “Türkiye”. No.
… I noticed a UK aid sticker fixed above a tiny incubator. Inside was a premature baby fighting for breath. Nearby stood oxygen equipment that staff explained had been funded through UK support. I learned that when power outages struck the hospital, as they often did, that equipment helped keep vulnerable newborns alive.
Being in the presence of these sometimes inconceivably small children, seeing the UK aid sticker labelled across the incubators that were keeping them alive, emotion completely overcame me. It was not only sadness. It was pride. Pride that people in Britain, most of whom would never meet that baby or their family, had helped make survival possible. Seven years later, that moment remains one of the most impactful of my life.
Many years ago, I turned against foreign aid – well, against most government-to-government foreign aid except immediately after natural disasters. How can I justify such a stance? Don’t I want premature babies in Sierra Leone to have incubators? I do want it. I want it very much. But take a look at this graph comparing the change in GDP per capita in current USA dollars of Sierra Leone and South Korea from 1960 to the present. In 1960, South Korea was at $158.8, a little higher than Sierra Leone’s $142.0, but still desperately poor. The next year South Korea’s figure ($94.2) was actually lower than Sierra Leone’s $142.3. I don’t know why that sudden year-on-year dip in South Korea’s wealth happened or if the effect were even real, but there can be no possible doubt about the reality of what happened over the next six and a half decades. The GDP per capita of the Republic of Korea is now $36,227.0, forty-three times higher than that of Sierra Leone, which is $846.7.
I want Sierra Leone to have incubators the way South Korea has incubators.“The Republic of Korea (South Korea) maintains excellent maternal and newborn health outcomes through its advanced healthcare system. With a maternal mortality ratio of approximately 8.1 deaths per 100,000 live births and a neonatal mortality rate of approximately 1.3 deaths per 1,000 live births, the country ranks among the world’s safest for childbirth.” South Korea did receive some foreign aid in the 1960s and 70s. Then it stopped. The country is now a donor rather than a recipient. Sierra Leone has received orders of magnitude more aid, and it has never stopped. In terms of things you can point to, like the incubators Mr Harewood saw, no doubt all that aid did some good. But in terms of that which is not seen, I believe that aid did more harm than good. The unceasing torrent of money made it less likely that Sierra Leone would do as South Korea did and so get South Korea-like outcomes.
So I’m not a fan of foreign aid. You knew that. Bet you didn’t know until you saw the headline to this post that Guardian readers are scarcely more enthusiastic about it than I am. Here are the top-level comments to Mr Harewood’s article ordered by number of recommendations:
misterrusty
27 Sep 2026 8.51
133
If Africa, which is 3 times the size of Europe stopped all the tribal infighting, it might become rich enough to support itself. The question is why a continent with such huge resources is so poor it has to rely on aid.
–
aunib
27 Sep 2026 9.07
120
We’re currently running a 4% GDP deficit and the interest on our debt is £110B a year. Charity is for surplus cash, and our government doesn’t have any of that at the moment.
–
Manchotte
27 Sep 2026 8.52
110
But the question remains: when will these African countries be able to support themselves? Sixty years since independence and they are still relying on British aid. Where did all the £100 billion go? apart from Swiss bank accounts!
–
Firtree
27 Sep 2026 9.26
92
Can someone please explain to me how it is okay for the government to borrow 10s of billions every month to keep us afloat while giving a big chunk of of it to others for free?
–
Bathreader
27 Sep 2026 8.50
83
Foreign aid is laudable but has to take its place with other priorities.Defence is the urgent priority after years of underspend.
–
The Guardian does its best to hide this preponderance of aid-sceptical sentiment among its readers by taking all eight of its “Guardian picks” from among the pro-aid comments, but anyone who sorts by “recommends”, as most people do, cannot fail to note that it is only on the sixth comment down that we finally reach one that is unambiguously in favour of foreign aid.
Edit: if the link to the graph comparing historical GDP per capita for the Republic of Korea and Sierra Leone is too much for your browser, you can generate it yourself by going to the World Bank “GDP per capita” page, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD , and entering both “Sierra Leone” and “Korea, Rep” into the search bar.
This is where it scratches the old Cold War itch while addressing the very real fact that regardless of what happens in the Russo-Ukrainian War and with the demographics of those nations in the coming decades, the geography is not changing.
The HOMEFRONT Act is a GRANITE-style foreign censorship shield bill, the seventh such GRANITE-architecture bill or model policy to be advanced by American legislators in the last seven months, and the third such bill to be advanced in the last ten days. I anticipate there will be even more GRANITE-style bills, both state and federal, in the next several months.
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.
Scientists who were instrumental in shutting down the Covid lab-leak theory admitted in private “we can’t rule it out”, newly released messages show.
In March 2020, a group of influential virologists published a paper in the journal Nature Medicine arguing that an animal spillover event probably caused the pandemic.
The article, known as “The Proximal Origins of Covid” [Link to the paper here. In fact its title refers to “Origin” in the singular- NS] concluded “we do not believe any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible” and was hugely persuasive in stifling debate globally.
But messages obtained and published by US senator Rand Paul show that behind the scenes the scientists voiced concerns that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) had been carrying out experiments on coronaviruses at insufficient biosecurity levels.
The virus emerged eight miles from WIV laboratories and was seemingly pre-adapted to infect humans
and
The messages also reveal that authors were aware that Dr Shi – the lead bat virus scientist at WIV – was herself worried that Covid had been caused by a lab accident.
In September 2021, it emerged that before the pandemic Dr Shi had applied for a grant to insert a furin cleavage site (FCS) into bat coronaviruses – the very addition that made Covid-19 so infectious to humans.
Although the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency dismissed the grant because it was too dangerous, Slack messages showed that scientists feared the work had gone ahead anyway.
Prof Andrew Rambaut of Edinburgh University wrote that “it isn’t beyond plausibility that someone went ahead and tried some of this stuff”, adding, “We just need to re-convince ourself it is coincidence.”
You may be saying, “I’ve read Viral. This is not news to me”. The news is that it is being reported in a major “quality” British newspaper.
Here is what the Telegraphwas saying about the “Proximal Origin” paper on 1st May 2020:
The study that proves conspiracy theorists wrong – coronavirus came from nature
Covid-19 is not a “laboratory construct” but emerged as a result of natural evolution, according to a report which demolishes conspiracy theories about the origins of the disease.
The virus first emerged in Wuhan, China, at the end of December and has since spread rapidly across the globe, with more than three million people worldwide now infected.
But fear and misinformation have escalated alongside the pandemic, with the World Health Organization warning that the globe is fighting an “infodemic” as well as an epidemic.
One common myth has been that the new virus, called SARS-CoV-2, was originally made in a laboratory. But in a study, published in Nature Medicine journal, researchers analysed the genome sequence of the coronavirus and found strong evidence it evolved naturally, probably from a bat or a pangolin.
Nice touch in linking the thing you don’t want people to take seriously to Trump, though that trick no longer works as well as it once did.
There is no shame in having been wrong, so long as you then work sincerely to put things right. In today’s article the Telegraph goes some way to atone for its past errors. Let’s see how the rest of the British media covers this story. Let’s see if the rest of the British media covers this story.
I often do not agree with Peter Zeihan, to put it mildly, but he might be more or less right about this, given the Atlantic alliance effectively ended in January 2025, at least de facto if not de jure. It pains me to write that as someone who has been a pro-US Atlanticist my entire life.
The United Nations General Assembly has voted to recognise the enslavement of Africans during the transatlantic slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity”, a move advocates hope will pave the way for healing and justice.
They’ll never get reparations. But this move might end up paving the way for healing and justice – by being annoying enough to finally kill off the MOPE Olympics and the self-destructive mindset that mopery promotes.
I was going to say that Guido’s headline cannot be improved upon, but, on second thoughts, the headline-writer really should have mentioned that the hamster was dressed as Godzilla. Details matter.
The article gives cost of living pressure as the main reason for the decline in giving. Commenters in this thread on the UKPolitics subreddit also mention invasive chuggers and the fact people tend not to have cash on them these days.
The article itself continues,
Peter Grant, an expert in philanthropy at Bayes Business School, said the decline in giving also reflected a more polarised society. “Culture war” attacks mounted by rightwing politicians and media on voluntary organisations such as RNLI and the National Trust had undermined the wider legitimacy of charities among some donors.
Maybe, but far from being the victims of “attacks mounted by rightwing politicians and media”, a lot of charities seem to have been eager to volunteer for the front lines of the culture wars.
This excerpt comes from the section of the website of Oxfam International headed “What We Do”:
Decolonization is intrinsic to achieving gender justice for all. Our sector comes from an extractive colonial history – hetero-patriarchal and racist in nature. Neocolonial dynamics continue to shape our sector’s work and approaches. We will evolve into an organization that centers decolonial and feminist practice by building on our principles and initiatives to deeply integrate them into every aspect of our work.
There speaks a soldier of the culture wars. How long did they expect to keep waving their banners without anyone noticing that they had picked a side?
I believe that Oxfam does still occasionally do the “help suffering people in emergencies” thing that most of those who buy from or volunteer to work in their charity shops think is their main purpose. That’s my excuse for buying that nice scarf I saw in their window the other day, anyway. But I wonder what proportion of what I paid for that scarf went to pay the salaries of the sort of people who write “hetero-patriarchal” with a straight face. And writing guff about “neocolonial dynamics” is actually one of the less bad things some of Oxfam’s paid staff have got up to over the last few years, as can be seen by reading some of the many previous Samizdata posts about Oxfam at this link.
Added later: Here is another example of Oxfam’s enthusiastic participation in the culture wars:
Oxfam has apologised after posting an animation for Pride Month featuring a character in a “hate group” who some say resembles author JK Rowling.
The charity has denied the cartoon woman with red eyes and a “Terf” badge is based on the Harry Potter writer.
In trying to make a point about “the real harm caused by transphobia”, Oxfam said it had “made a mistake”.
Compare the pictures in that BBC article and see if you believe Oxfam when it said that “There was no intention by Oxfam or the film-makers for this slide to have portrayed any particular person or people.” I do not. In the Telegraph’s account of the same story, the resemblance is even clearer. Some smart work by the Telegraph’s picture editor has almost certainly found the very photograph of Ms Rowling which Oxfam’s cartoonist had in front of them when they drew the middle witch.
That’s taking a side. I have read several comments by people who are on the same side who acknowledge and deplore this. When you alienate half the population, don’t be surprised when they stop giving you money.
On January 13th, Donald Trump indicated “Help is on the way” for Iranian protestors. Allegedly tens of thousands (!) of dead protestors later, which would be approaching Nazi-style Babi Yar massacre numbers if correct, what is the POTUS going to do? Help how? Realistically what can he do that would meaningfully change things for the better for the protestors, if anything?
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.
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa
Recent Comments