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]

Someone made a profit from finding a cure for a deadly disease. This must never happen again.

Citizens for Financial Justice have a new article out!

Who are they? You mean you don’t know?

Citizens for Financial Justice is a diverse group of European partners – from local grassroots groups to large international organisations. Together, we aim to inform and connect citizens to act together to make the global financial system work better for everyone.

We are funded by the European Union and aim to support the implementation of the Sustainable development Goals (sDGs) by mobilising EU citizens to support effective financing for development (FfD).

A cosy arrangement. Thank God the UK is out of it. Here is the article:

World Hepatitis Day: How Gilead Science Profits from Hepatitis Deaths

Alternative title #1: How Gilead Science Profits from Ending Hepatitis Deaths

Alternative title #2: How the Profit Motive Led Gilead Science to Find a Cure for Hepatitis C

Guys, my apologies. I have to do some work – work work, can you believe that? – so when I remembered that I had already written a post that said what I wanted to say about about this lethal idiocy, I decided simply to post it again. It is seventeen years old. It does not require updating.

Life is still tough for the owners of lazy slaves

An extract:

Now, just possibly you the reader aren’t very sympathetic. Just possibly you opine that the slaveowners had only themselves to blame – “Well, of course,” you are saying, “it’s no surprise that if people are forced to work for nothing then they don’t bust a gut.”

So why do so many people expect these familiar laws of human behaviour to suddenly change when the time is now and the work to be done is AIDS research?

In this link Stephen Pollard quotes Roger Bate, writing in the Wall Street Journal, as saying that AIDS drug development is trending downwards.

Why the decline?

Because the drugs companies no longer believe that they are going to get rich out of AIDS research. In fact they begin to doubt they will get any compensation at all. They read the newspapers, they study the speeches of politicians, and they sense that the popular wind is blowing against them. They think, probably rightly, that governments will either force them to sell at a loss drugs that were developed at huge expense or will bypass them and the law entirely by buying generic copies of patent drugs. Governments, after all, are the ones who can change the law when it is inconvenient. One minute the authorities will come down like a ton of bricks on pirate music or pirate videos. The next minute they will say that it is ‘unacceptable greed’ for companies to actually want to profit from patents on medical discoveries. I accept that there are subtleties and genuine conflicts of principle in the field of intellectual property – but the bottom line is that if pharma companies get nothing but abuse for the work they put in they bloody well won’t put in much more of it. Just as for the slaves, it’s no surprise that if people are forced to work for nothing then they don’t bust a gut.

The leader of Plaid Cymru must attend a struggle session

Adam Price, the Leader of Plaid Cymru, writes in Nation Cymru:

Wales, colonised and coloniser: a reflection

The murder of George Floyd and the desperately unequal burden faced by people of colour in the grip of the global pandemic have placed the question of racial injustice, at the forefront of our politics, in Wales just as in the wider world.

Accepting that to be silent at this time is to be complicit, I have committed to use the platform that I have to call for action: for the Welsh Government to instigate a wide-ranging review into the realities of structural racism, to decolonise the curriculum and to build a National Museum to celebrate the history of people of colour.

In the middle of this global moment of truth some criticism – some of it fair and some it not – has been levelled at me for some comments that I made about the Welsh colonial experience. I have spoken publicly about this before and I planned to do so again, having discussed it in depth with Plaid’s BME Section and others. While continuing to reflect on the criticism I have been more interested in listening than defending or explaining myself, not wanting to distract from the bigger issues at hand. But in response to claims that my actions mean Black Lives do not matter in Wales, I feel it’s now right that I respond.

Gwan, give us the dirt.

In October last year in an article headlined Westminster owes Wales reparations, I wrote:

“The Wales Office – that colonial outpost of a Westminster Government – stands in Whitehall in the building that once housed the Slavery Compensation Commission which infamously paid out to the slave owners after abolition rather than the newly liberated slaves. The argument that the British Empire owes reparations to the people of its former colonies is powerfully well-made by the Indian politician Shashi Tharoor. But England’s first colony should be added to that long list of creditors.”

You may have noticed that Mr Price mentions that when the British government abolished slavery in British colonies it “infamously” paid compensation to the slaveowners. He is right, it did pay an enormous sum to free the slaves. I am not sure what other path to liberating them Mr Price thinks the British government of 1833 ought to have followed. Perhaps that of France? The French revolutionary government declared all slaves in the French colonies free as early as 1794. Unfortunately words are not deeds, and in most places the declaration was ignored. Then in 1802 Napoleon restored slavery, and that was that for another forty six years. The other way of defeating a well-entrenched pro-slavery interest is this. While sometimes that sort of thing has to be done, I cannot help thinking that the British method was better for everyone, including the slaves.

I digress. Mr Price continues,

Much of the criticism has focused on the use of the word ‘reparations’. Historically this has been used to denote payment by way of compensation by a State to make amends to those it has wronged e.g. the reparation payments imposed on Germany after the 1914-1918 War.

In recent discourse, however, the word has been more closely associated with the campaign to recognise the financial debt owed to the descendants of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade and to the former colonies of Western countries, including Britain, in Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia and elsewhere (a campaign I fully support). In many conversations I have had since I spoke in October I’ve come to understand that many people of colour strongly believe that the word reparations should now be reserved exclusively for the context of slavery and western colonialism in acknowledgement of the unique scale of human suffering involved.

Now that we know that small self-appointed groups can take words out of common ownership, let’s buy up some Welsh words for our exclusive use. I am sure progressive Welsh speakers won’t mind the loss of them. They can always use English words instead.

Mr Price concludes:

I didn’t fully appreciate the force of this argument nor the strength of this feeling. I recognise now that this was a mistake. It was wrong to blur this distinction, and I would express myself differently today. If my poor choice of words caused anyone pain then I am profoundly, deeply, genuinely sorry.

Not a dry eye in the house.

Similarities between today and Ulster in 1969

  • Riots
  • Claims of discrimination
  • Calls for the police to be abolished
  • Involvement of communists
  • The media taking the side of the rioters
  • The creation of no-go zones for the police
  • Calls for the army to be used
  • Attempts to appease the rioters

I need hardly remind readers that over the following 30 years some 3,000 people were killed and that even though now the killing has stopped the enmity remains.

The similarity is intentional.

Peak Guardian in the Independent, and independent thought in the Guardian

Amrou Al-Kadhi writing in the Independent:

What the white supremacist roots of biological sex reveal about today’s transphobic feminism

Thomas Chatterton Williams writing in the Guardian:

We often accuse the right of distorting science. But the left changed the coronavirus narrative overnight

Edit 11 June: The Independent, perhaps stung by mockery in the readers’ comments, has changed the headline of the article by Amrou Al-Kadhi to “How Britain’s colonial past can be traced through to the transphobic feminism of today”.

That leads me to muse on what the Guardian has lost by the decision of its editor, Katharine Viner, to guard its writers from abuse by not permitting its readers to debate those of its articles they are most likely to want to debate. The Independent was able to see that the original headline to the Amrou Al-Kadhi article was not going down well even among its notably “progressive” readers. The Guardian can see from the number of clicks and shares that the Thomas Chatterton Williams article is getting a reaction – but what? I think it is favourable. I see comments from left wingers who are relieved to hear someone finally articulate their sense of unease and embarrassment at the speed with which the “party line” on social distancing was reversed. But that’s going by the comments of the writers I read and the websites I visit. The Guardian is no less hampered than I am.

The State’s lament: ‘A substantial number of people still do not feel sufficiently personally threatened;’

Thus went the UK government’s discussion paper on increasing social distancing on 22nd March 2020.

The perceived level of personal threat needs to be increased among those who are complacent, using hard-hitting emotional messaging. To be effective this must also empower people by making clear the actions they can take to reduce the threat.

There were other considerations:

Hong Kong’s experience:

Having a good understanding of the risk has been found to be positively associated with adoption of COVID-19 social distancing measures in Hong Kong

And carrots:

Incentivisation
6. Social approval: Social approval can be a powerful source of reward. Not only can this be provided directly by highlighting examples of good practice and providing strong social encouragement and approval in communications; members of the community can be encouraged to provide it to each other. This can have a beneficial spill-over effect of promoting social cohesion. Communication strategies should provide social approval for desired behaviours and promote social approval within the community.

And of course, coercion, along with ‘social disapproval’:

Coercion
7. Compulsion: Experience with UK enforcement legislation such as compulsory seat belt use suggests that, with adequate preparation, rapid change can be achieved (16). Some other countries have introduced mandatory self-isolation on a wide scale without evidence of major public unrest and a large majority of the UK’s population appear to be supportive of more coercive measures. For example, 64% adults in Great Britain said they would support putting London under a ‘lock down’ (17). However, data from Italy and South Korea suggest that for aggressive protective measures to be effective, special attention should be devoted to those population groups that are more at risk (18). In addition, communities need to be engaged to minimise risk of negative effects. Consideration should be given to enacting legislation, with community involvement, to compel key social distancing measures.

8. Social disapproval: Social disapproval from one’s community can play an important role in preventing anti-social behaviour or discouraging failure to enact pro-social behaviour (15). However, this needs to be carefully managed to avoid victimisation, scapegoating and misdirected criticism. It needs to be accompanied by clear messaging and promotion of strong collective identity. Consideration should be given to use of social disapproval but with a strong caveat around unwanted negative consequences.

So, for us rats in the lab, we can see the experimental parameters. I can’t find the words ‘rights‘, ‘freedom‘, ‘free‘ or ‘liberty‘ anywhere in this document. I can see this, my emphasis in bold, with the lie about people being ‘asked’:

9. Community resourcing: People are being asked to give up valued activities and access to resources for an extended period. These need to be compensated for by ensuring that people have access to opportunities for social contact and rewarding activities that can be undertaken in the home, and to resources such as food. Adequately resourced community infrastructure and mobilisation needs to be developed rapidly and with coverage across all communities (6, 15).

10. Reducing inequity: Adherence to these measures is likely to be undermined by perceived inequity in their impact on different sections of the population, especially those who are already disadvantaged, e.g. those in rented accommodation and those working in precarious employment. Reducing costs of phone calls, data downloads etc. by ‘responsibility deals’ or government subsidies should be considered.

Just in case you don’t think that this is an experiment, there is a reference to methodology including this, but read the whole thing:

The criteria go under the acronym, APEASE (Acceptability, Practicability, Effectiveness, Affordability, Spill-over effects, Equity)

Edit: Just after Paul’s comment, a bit more has just come out, from 25th February 2020, about the risk of disorder, foreseeing a risk of PPE shortage on 25th February 2020, so they knew that they could be short long before they did anything about it:
The last paragraph says it all:

Promote a sense of collectivism: All messaging should reinforce a sense of community, that “we are all in this together.” This will avoid increasing tensions between different groups (including between responding agencies and the public); promote social norms around behaviours; and lead to self-policing within communities around important behaviours.

The Scottish National Party is at it again

I can think of little to add to what Andrew Tettenborn of Spiked has written about The SNP’s war on free speech:

In 2017, the SNP government decided this had to change. It appointed Lord Bracadale, a far from libertarian Scottish appeal judge, to review the matter. His spectacularly hardline report was published a year later. Based on this report, Holyrood now proposes leaving racial-hatred law largely alone while introducing, in effect, three new offences.

First: a general crime of doing anything, or communicating any material, which is threatening or abusive and is intended or likely to engender hatred based on age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender or intersex identity. Second: a crime of merely possessing any such material, if you hold it with a view to communicating it – that is, in any way to anyone either in public or in private (such as showing a computer file to a friend over a dram). Third: criminal sanctions on anyone involved in the management of any organisation who fails to take steps to prevent any of the above. The penalty in all the above cases is up to seven years inside. And in addition to all this, the government proposes stiffer sentencing for hate crimes based on age.

There is so much wrong with these proposals. For one thing, the whole idea that hostility should aggravate an offence in relation to certain characteristics but not others needs reining in, not extending. To say that assaulting someone because he is old (and within the charmed circle of victim categories) deserves a heavier sentence than assaulting a teenager because he is the teacher’s pet (and therefore outside it) is discriminatory, grotesque and insulting. It is the hostility that matters, not whether the target falls within a group which has managed to persuade a government that it deserves victimhood status.

Read the whole thing.

“Possible equity issues”

“Coronavirus in Scotland: Parents and children left to struggle after councils ban online teaching”, Helen Puttick of the Times reports.

It seems many private schools in Scotland are using video conferencing and other internet tools to continue to educate pupils while they are in quarantine. Some state schools are doing likewise. But fear not, Scotland’s ever-vigilant local councils have been alerted:

However, a number of councils in Scotland have banned state education via live video interaction. East Dunbartonshire council said: “Streaming live lessons is not recommended at this time due to safeguarding and possible equity issues.” East Renfrewshire said they were “not advocating” the approach. East Lothian and Stirling also cited safeguarding issues. Midlothian council told headteachers: “No platform is considered suitable for interactions involving young people at this time.”

You may send any enquiries as to what “Possible equity issues” might mean by letter or postcard* to:

East Dunbartonshire Council
12 Strathkelvin Place
Kirkintilloch
G66 1TJ

*Enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope if you wish to receive a reply. Please note that the council does not accept owl post as not everyone has owls.

East Dunbartonshire council thanks you for your ongoing understanding and co-operation as we put measures in place to support our children and their families during this difficult time.

Everybody gets to be racist eventually

The latest newly discovered racist is Trevor Phillips.

Trevor Phillips, the former head of the equalities watchdog, has condemned Labour’s decision to suspend him from the party over alleged Islamophobia, while defending his view that the UK Muslim population is “different”.

Phillips, a pioneering anti-racism campaigner who previously chaired the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has been suspended from Labour pending an investigation and could be expelled.

To me, the remarks in question seem to have an honest attempt to engage with the fact that the attitudes of the Muslim population do differ sharply from the UK average – surely a matter of public interest. Some here, remembering Mr Phillips’ previous role as head of the Commission for Racial Equality and his lifetime of commitment to the ideal of enforced equality, will speak of karma and say “what goes around comes around”. I disagree. As a matter of policy and humanity, when someone starts to move in the right direction we should not rebuff them.

Two snapshots of our times

1) Eurogamer reports,

PC Specialist ad banned for perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes

An advert for a bespoke PC retailer was banned for perpetuating harmful gender stereotypes of women.

The TV ad, below, for UK retailer PC Specialist, begins with a computer exploding, then shows three men getting excited over using a PC Specialist PC for gaming, making music and coding.

[…]

The Advertising Standards Authority received eight complaints from people who said the ad perpetuated harmful gender stereotypes by depicting men in roles that were stereotypically male, and implied it was only men who were interested in technology and computers.

PC Specialist responded to the watchdog to say its customer base was 87.5 per cent male, aged between 15 and 35 years, and “their product, branding and service had been developed for and aimed at that target audience and the characters in the ad therefore represented a cross-section of the PC Specialist core customer base”.

Ten years ago the Advertising Standards Authority would have said something like, “We just want you to stop portraying women as laughably incompetent at computers until a man helps them. Surely that’s fair? After all, some women are great at computers.” At that time it must have seemed ridiculous to make a fuss about freedom of speech when faced with such a reasonable request. But when the beast is fed it grows stronger.

2) And from the BBC:

Sheffield students paid to tackle racist language on campus

A university is to hire 20 of its own students to challenge language on campus that could be seen as racist.

The University of Sheffield is to pay students to tackle so-called “microaggressions” – which it describes as “subtle but offensive comments”.

They will be trained to “lead healthy conversations” about preventing racism on campus and in student accommodation.

Vice-chancellor Koen Lamberts said the initiative wanted to “change the way people think about racism”.

The students will be paid £9.34 per hour as “race equality champions”, working between two and nine hours per week to tackle “microaggressions” in the university.

These are described as comments or actions which might be unintentional, but which can cause offence to a minority group.

It gives examples of what it means by microaggression – such as:

  • “Stop making everything a race issue”
  • “Why are you searching for things to be offended about?”
  • “Where are you really from?”
  • “I don’t want to hear about your holiday to South Africa. It’s nowhere near where I’m from”
  • “Being compared to black celebrities that I look nothing like”

    Rather than being about controlling people’s speech, the university says it is “opening up a conversation”.

  • Judging from the first two examples, they are allowed to open the conversation but you are not allowed to close it.

    Our ‘Stasi’ face a legal challenge – ‘The right to be offended does not exist’ says a High Court Judge.

    A Lincolnshire businessman (and former police officer), Mr Harry Miller, has sought a judicial review of one of the more sinister aspects of current policing, the recording of ‘hate incidents’ by the police even when there is no offence (on their own admission). The case is ongoing, and a report in The Telegraph (paywall of sorts) indicates that the judge made a remark that might indicate that he was surprised at the position of the ‘College of Policing’, one of those quangos that isn’t needed and might even have been invented to hammer nails in to the coffin of the liberties of Englishmen.

    The “right to be offended” does not exist, a judge has said, as the High Court hears that British police forces are recording hate incidents even if there is no evidence that they took place.

    The College of Policing, the professional body which delivers training for all officers in England and Wales, issued their Hate Crime Operational Guidance (HCOG) in 2014, which states that a comment reported as hateful by a victim must be recorded “irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element”.

    Mr Justice Knowles expressed surprise at the rule, asking the court: “That doesn’t make sense to me. How can it be a hate incident if there is no evidence of the hate element?”. Mr Justice Knowles made the remark on the first day of a landmark legal challenge against guidelines issued to police forces across the country on how to record “non-crime hate incidents”.

    He added: “We live in a pluralistic society where none of us have a right to be offended by something that they hear.

    “Freedom of expression laws are not there to protect statements such as ‘kittens are cute’ – but they are there to protect unpleasant things.

    “Its utility lies in exposing people to things that they do not want to hear.”

    I note that the BBC takes a different line on the case, highlighting the following:

    He (Mr Miller) previously described police as using George Orwell’s novel 1984 as an “operating manual”.

    His barrister, Ian Wise QC, told the court his client was “deeply concerned” about proposed reforms to the law on gender recognition and had used Twitter to “engage in debate about transgender issues”.

    Mr Wise said Humberside Police had also sought to “dissuade him from expressing himself on such issues in the future”.

    This, he said, was “contrary to his fundamental right to freedom of expression”.
    Mr Miller has “never expressed hatred towards the transgender community”, he said.

    “He has simply questioned the belief that trans women are women and should be treated as such for all purposes.”
    His views, he added, “form part of a legitimate public debate and cannot sensibly be regarded as ‘hate speech'”.

    In response, Jonathan Auburn, for the College of Policing, said: “While the claimant now expressly disavows having any personal hostility or prejudice towards transgender people, his social media messages speak for themselves.”

    In one tweet, he said Mr Miller posted: “I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don’t mis-species me.”

    It strikes me that Counsel for the ‘College’ is not making a legal point there, but is trying to stretch a factual one, and conflating incredulity with hostility.

    At last, someone is taking on the PC State. The case continues. It could set a most welcome precedent on this issue, but it would need the Court of Appeal to rule on the issue to make a generally-binding precedent for England and Wales.

    Socialism is socialism until it turns nasty (because if it’s nasty it can’t be socialism)

    Via Instapundit, a tweet:

    Rand Paul: “Well if you vote for a Socialist, you might get Socialism”.

    Ana Navarro: “Maduro is not a Socialist. He’s a corrupt, murderous thug who is starving his people.”

    But Maduro is – or certainly was – a socialist. And, he’s a corrupt, murderous thug who is starving his people.

    As Instapundit might say, Kristian Niemietz smiles.

    Earlier this year, Niemietz did one of my last Friday of the month talks, on the subject of his recent book about how socialists think and act – “it’s socialism”, “it’s not socialism” – every time, time after time. Read the book for a ton of patiently assembled chapter-and-verse details along these lines.

    The point Niemietz made that I especially liked was how socialists simultaneously define socialism by its processes, and by its outcomes. So, socialism begins with socialist processes – stealing the property of property owners, goodies for the poor, fixing prices in accordance with a central plan, taking over corporations and replacing capable corporate managers with party hacks, monopolising the media, and so on – therefore it’s obviously socialism. But then it turns nasty – far worse poverty than before, violent repression, corruption, savage inequality, and so on – therefore, equally obviously, it can’t be socialism. That we critics of socialism had predicted exactly these outcomes from these processes doesn’t register. Only the obvious non-socialism of what had earlier and equally obviously been socialism registers.

    I sort of knew all this, of course I did. But Niemietz explained it better – “socialism also defined by its outcomes” – than I’ve ever heard it explained before. Or then again, maybe I just got there myself, and he merely said for me the thought I had arrived at. (What you hear best is that which you are best prepared to hear.)

    A logical danger in PC illogic

    (Normal service – i.e. prose – will be resumed promptly. I promised a follow-up poem about its being too easy to rebut the race scammers – or ‘race hustlers’ as is, I believe, the US term. Here it is.)

    ADVICE TO A CAMPUS RADICAL

    When true statements are uttered by those you despise,
    It’s not logical (nor helpful, narrative-wise)
    To shout “racist”, as if hearers will not realise
    That from true factual statements do not follow lies.

    Don’t unwittingly justify what you oppose,
    by discarding all logic for wokeness, like those
    intellectuals lacking in intellect who
    ‘prove’ some true facts are racist (so racism’s true?).

    When exam results don’t match what you want them to,
    When too few of the prize winners have the ‘right’ hue,
    Do not claim that it’s racist to add two and two:
    “Mathematics is racist!” says “Racism’s true”.

    If school discipline policies are colour-blind
    and offender percentage results in each kind
    are unequal, don’t say that is racist to do:
    saying “colour-blind’s racist” says “racism’s true”.

    That slavery is ancient, you should not deny,
    Nor that blacks sold the blacks that white traders did buy,
    Nor that one culture banned it and forced others to,
    Nor that these truths aren’t racist (else racism’s true).

    Falsifiable claims enforced by a loud few
    Do not silence the minds whose mouths dare not argue;
    Best let doubters weed errors in free speech review.
    Don’t say free speech is racist; free speech finds what’s true.

    Sadly, say what I like about freedom of speech.
    How ‘respect’ means first hearing the viewpoint of each,
    And how more diverse thoughts could expand your thought’s reach,
    Your thought is:   we listen, while you alone teach.

    When you welcome illegals, but back of the queue
    Is where you put the Copt, Venezuelan or Jew
    (anti-‘Zionist’ immigrants being welcome too)
    It appears that some racism’s OK by you.

    Know from false ideologies, falsehood derives:
    You’ll be spreading the hatred, you claiming the lives.
    If you war against truths then you will evil do,
    For no truth can be racist – else racism’s true.