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]
|
Not even for a fleeting moment do I believe that President Bush and his cabinet need me to jump their defence. Indeed, jumping to the defence of any politician is not an activity that generally sits well with me.
However, I am prepared to set aside my customary reluctance in the case of George Bush but only because he seems to have become an Aunt Sally for every loud-mouthed class-war agitator who is looking to make a name for themselves with the woolly-hatted, mushy-brained, stapled-face brigade.
A case in point is the current (and I am so ashamed to have to type these words) Mayor of London, Mr.Ken Livingstone. Livingstone is veteran political shape-shifter who has spent the last thirty or so years hitching himself to every po-mo leftist bandwagon that rolled into town and maybe even invented a few of his own. Having been shoved back under his rock by the Thatcher government of the eighties, wily old Ken has since re-invented himself as a cuddly ‘man of the people’; an image that he has assiduously cultivated as a base from which to launch a political resurrection.
Thanks to his favourable media coverage and a severe outbreak of Memory Deficit Disorder (a condition endemic to this country) ‘Ken Il Sung’ managed to get himself elected to this high-profile office that enables him to regale the world with what I suppose he regards as his words of wisdom:
Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, was widely condemned yesterday after comparing George Bush to Saddam Hussein.
Oh well, I suppose it makes a change from comparing George Bush to Hitler.
The Left-winger described the American President as a “coward” who was at the head of a “venal and corrupt administration”.
Anyone who accepted large sums of cash from Colonel Qaddafi in order to set up a trotskyite newspaper has got some nerve calling other people ‘venal and corrupt’.
Addressing an audience of schoolchildren…
I don’t suppose adults would want to listen to all his tiresome bollocks.
“This really is a completely unsupportable government and I look forward to it being overthrown as much as I looked forward to Saddam Hussein being overthrown.”
Yes, which is why ‘cuddly’ Ken was at the head of every ‘Stop the War’ march.
Mr Livingstone is used to courting controversy. Shortly before being elected mayor he appeared to endorse anti-capitalists rioters when he said: “Every year the international financial system kills more people than World War Two. But at least Hitler was mad.”
But, Ken, Hitler’s views on the ‘international financial system’ were remarkably close to your own. What are you trying to tell us?
Yesterday he played down his latest remarks, saying that he had made the same point at an anti-war rally in February and that no one took much notice.
No doubt because they were all stunned to hear that you wanted Saddam Hussein ‘overthrown’. You did tell them that back in February, Ken?
Asked about the row, Ari Fleischer, Mr Bush’s spokesman, said: “I’ve never heard of the guy.”
The perfect response. Ken Livingstone: the nobody’s nobody.
Rod Liddle in The Spectator was unimpressed by the BBC’s recent coverage of the British local municipal elections, saying that the BBC seemed determined to play down the Tory Party’s success in winning a lot of seats, and played down the losses suffered by Labour.
The BBC is biased? Noooooooooooo! Say it ain’t so, folks.
If the Devil makes work for idle hands it is surely because he has no need to find any for busy bodies. They are far too engaged on Satanic projects of their own.
These infernal Children of Eternal Night are, it appears, girding their loins and grinding their battleaxes for another Unholy War, this time against….Vitamins!!
In accordance with sacred Samizdata liturgy there is no link to this UK Times article but here are some of the best bits:
The Food Standards Agency says that many vitamin supplements do more harm than good, and urges people to cut down on vitamin C, calcium and iron. It has for the first time set safe daily limits for various supplements, issues strong warnings on six and even demands the ban of one product — chromium picolinate, which athletes and slimmers use to help them to stay lean or lose weight.
Just a warning, of course. Mere sensible advice. A directive. Guidance. Official common sense. Satanic intentions are usually dressed up in the terminology of caring and sharing in order to mask the faint whiff of sulphur. We all know the Path to Hell has been pre-scripted though. This is where it starts and it is only a matter of time and bureaucratic stealth until the vitamin products they have targetted become restricted by law and then made available by prescription only (which must be accompanied by payment of the state fee, of course).
But this is not the first time ominous noises have been made:
Workers at a Sussex vitamins firm could lose their jobs if a European directive on food supplements becomes law.
Owners of G&G Food in East Grinstead have called on Euro MPs to block the European Directive on Food Supplement which they fear would take vitamins, minerals and herbal remedies off the shelves.
So is this an empire-building initiative from the British Food Standards Agency or are they merely minions taking their order from the Pit of Hades? It matters not, I suppose, because battle is enjoined and the signs are that it is going to be long and bloody:
Ralph Pike, of the National Association of Health Stores, which represents 12,500 health shops, was incensed by the “meddling”, and demanded: “Where are the dead bodies? There has not been one death anywhere in the world from people taking a legitimate vitamin supplement. This is disgraceful, and all it will do will scare people from taking safe and legitimate products for no good reasons. The authorities just don’t like people taking control of their own health and they want everyone to abrogate responsibility for their lives to the nanny state.”
Praise be to Mr.Pike for he has surely Seen The Light and is ready to step up to the ranks of the Holy Warriors.
And if you read through this Programme Complaints: appeals to the Governors (pdf file: go to page 8 for the best bits), you can find exactly how they do see it. I love this little gem:
- [E]ven if the two men were involved in terrorist acts, it did not follow that the BBC should necessarily have referred to them as “terrorists” rather than “militants” […]
Read that again… slowly. And again. Once more. Okay? 
Now substitute the words ‘rape’ and ‘rapists’ for ‘terrorist acts’ and ‘terrorists’, and then replace ‘militants’ with ‘sexually forceful’. Read the whole document to get the context of the actual remarks, but do you see where I am going with this?
I would care a whole lot less if these ‘gentlemen’ were not being funded with my appropriated money.
Tony Martin will not be released from jail. He will remain inside for the crime of defending his property for the full five year period of his sentance (he was initially sentanced to life).
The people who make up the parole board which has just decided that he poses an unacceptable threat to people who may in the future break into his home are wonderful examples of what Sean Gabb describes as The Enemy Class.
I strongly suspect their treatment of Tony Martin, found guilty of shooting dead a serial burglar in August 1999, has more to do with the fact he refuses to apologise or acknowledge any wrong doing in his act of defending his property from predators. That a group of parole board members whose salaries are paid by the state predating taxpayers should think that way is perhaps not such a surprise.
As I said before, the lunatics have taken over the asylum. As the political process in Britain has decayed to the point that there appears to be no political cost to the established power elite for the de facto criminalisation of self-defence (never mind that the state can gun you down in the street with scarcely a murmur), and de jure criminalisation of defending your own property, be it from the state or criminals (and the difference between them narrows daily), I wonder if people may simply start going out of their way to avoid involving the state in the aftermath of any act of self-defence.
As people seem to be unclear who to blame for the state deciding it is easier to prosecute law abiding homeowners than to go after housebreakers, and thus most seem unclear who are the correct people in need of having bricks thrown through their windows given that voting seems to make no difference, I expect sales of shovels, bin-bags, deep freezers, hacksaws and baseball bats to start increasing in high crime areas. There may even be a business opportunity for specialised discreet garbage disposal companies to assist this possible future trend.
The core of that problem is rooted in the contempt for private property found amongst the statists who make up the majority of the political class in Britain. Never forget that defending yourself is the ultimate expression of self-ownership and that is something the British state cannot tolerate, particularly the overt socialist parts: these people support ‘democratic’, which is to say political, control of the means of production and that includes your body. Just ask Tony Martin… the state is not your friend.
Burglars and street robbers are to benefit from new rights under proposals announced today by the government.
The extension of the existing rights regime is contained in the Employment (Non-Lawful Activities) Consolidation Act 2003 which has passed its second reading in the House of Commons and is due to take effect from 1st January 2004. Under the new legislation, all burglars are street robbers will be entitled to a maximum of six weeks paid paternity leave and a similar period of statutory sick pay. If any burglar or street robber is a member of a gang or criminal organisation, they will also now be able to claim compensation for unfair dismissal.
A government spokesperson rejected criticisms of the new legislation:
It is simply an administrative measure designed to extend basic protections that already exist for all other employees.
The Equal Opportunities Commission broadly welcomed the new legislation but said it did not go nearly far enough. Spokesperson Elaine Simper-Sweetley said:
The lack of rights for workers in the crime industry is nothing less then scandalous. We believe that this is a step in the right direction but the government must do more to protect burglars from negligent and exploitative householders.
Ms.Simper-Sweetley added that the Commission would continue to campaign for existing Health & Safety legislation to be extended to protect both full and part-time criminals.
It is nought but a small step, and a hesitant one at that, but at least some Conservatives are starting to make the right noises about the BBC:
The Tories have pledged to rule nothing in and nothing out when it comes to pondering how the BBC should be financed in the future.
Culture spokesman John Whittingdale told BBC News Online that it was difficult to justify the current arrangement of the licence fee which he said faced growing public opposition.
Th irony of this being reported on the BBC news website is not lost on me but neither is the inference that the ‘growing public opposition’ is merely a Tory allegation instead of an objective fact. But even if it was a mere ‘allegation’ I am mildly encouraged that some Conservatives are prepared to level it. If this isn’t an opening shot across the bows of the hitherto inviolable shibboleth status of the BBC, then it is pretty convincing impression of one.
The Tory spokesman’s comments leaves the door open to everything from part-privatisation, subscriptions to the BBC’s digital programmes and the direct grant method.
Not exactly the kind of radicalism I have in mind but then I am not a politician and not, therefore, worried about ‘frightening the horses’ in the way that all politicans (be they Conservative or otherwise) are.
Time will tell whether the Conservatives are serious about depriving the BBC of its tax-cushion or whether the Tories infuriating paternalism is leading them to look for a less visible way to maintain the distorting state-subsidy.
But I will refrain from damning in advance and settle for some measure of satisfaction that the BBC’s reservoir of goodwill is rapidly dwindling away even among the political classes and if it is dawning on the Conservatives that we do not need ‘public service broadcasting’ then perhaps they may also realise that we don’t need ‘Culture Spokesmen’ either.
Still, given the circumstances, that is a quibble that I will reserve for another day.
Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
– Thomas Paine, Common Sense,1776
For a measure of the institutional senile dementia that grips the British state, you need look no further than here:
Government lawyers trying to keep the Norfolk farmer Tony Martin behind bars will tell a High Court judge tomorrow that burglars are members of the public who must be protected from violent householders.
The case could help hundreds of criminals bring claims for damages for injury suffered while committing offences.
In legal papers seen by The Independent, Home Office lawyers dispute Mr Martin’s contention that he poses no risk to the public because he only represents a threat to burglars and other criminals who trespass on his property.
They say: “The suggestion … that the Parole Board was not required to assess the risk posed by Mr Martin to future burglars or intruders (on the grounds that they do not form part of the public at large) is remarkable.”
“It cannot possibly be suggested that members of the public cease to be so whilst committing criminal offences, and whilst society naturally condemns, and punishes such persons judicially, it can not possibly condone their (unlawful) murder or injury.”
Whilst it should be clear from this that the lunatics have indeed taken over the asylum, the pathology at work here should be clear. Private property, far from being the bedrock upon which western liberal civilization is based, is instead seen as having no genuine value at all to those who see ‘The State’ as the axis around which all revolves and nothing whatsoever that is distinctly separate called ‘civil society’. Thus private property is seen as a distasteful aberration that does not really make any sense, at best ‘property which the state does not yet own’. Therefore to use force to defend that which has no real value is clearly unacceptable.
As the people who think that way have made sure they have a near monopoly on the means of violence and coercion, that does not bode well for… well, anyone who is not happy to just be an drone-like adjunct of the state.
Last Thursday’s local council elections in England seems to have provided some evidence that the Conservative Party may still be twitching and not yet dead. They managed to pick up a whopping 566 seats nationwide, thus far exceeding all expectations, including my own. The Tories now control more local authorities than both Labour and the Liberal Democrats combined. I am far from convinced that this performance will reflect at parliamentary level but it does mean, for the time being at least, that Iain Duncan Smith keeps his job as party leader.
Scotland, though. Scotland is a very different and far more melancholy story. Last Thursday also saw elections to the regional assemblies in both Scotland and Wales but it was Scotland that returned the most worrying results. Even prior to last Thursday, Scottish politics is lock-down between Labour and the Liberal Democrats, both left-of-centre parties. Their main opposition comes from the Scottish Nationalist Party which is also (surprise, surprise) a left-wing operation. There are also a handful of squeaky, apologetic Scottish Conservatives who, it would seem, spend most of the time trying to keep their heads below the parapet (though, to be fair to them, they are seriously up against it).
Now one would think that the Scots had more than enough socialists to go round and keep everybody happy but, no. The biggest winner from the Thursday’s regional assembly elections were the Scottish Socialist Party, a class-war marxist outfit, who jumped from having one seat in the assembly to nine seats and a 5% share of the vote.
Apparently a growing number of Scots are getting tired of the milquetoast, watered-down version of socialism they have been getting and yearn for the real thing:
The SSP stands for the socialist transformation of society. To replace capitalism with an economic system based on democratic ownership and control of the key sectors of the economy. A system based on social need and environmental protection rather than private profit and ecological destruction.
The SSP do not control Scotland. Far from it. But they are now an electoral force to be reckoned with in that country and it means that an already left-of-centre administration is going to have to tack much further to the left to appease them and prevent their support from snowballing.
The country that gave Adam Smith and Andrew Carnegie to the world, is fast succumbing to the Endarkenment.
It is often said that free speech does not extend to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre. Likewise, actually incitement to violence within the context of civil society is not a matter of free speech at all, but is rather a matter pertaining to violence. In a genuinely free and reasonable society, a category in which I would not include Britain, to betray one’s ignorance by loudly declaring that “All Pakis and Niggers smell bad and should go back where they came from”, should be regarded as legitimate free speech (and of course the answer should be “What? You want me to go back to Croydon?”). Likewise any rather more aggressive replies questioning the racist’s intellect, honour and rationality should be likewise be regarded as legitimate free speech.
However to call for the murder of members of those ethnic groups is quite a different matter. And so when the likes of Al Muhajiroun, the much publicised Islamic organisation active in Britain, are found to be again and again to be encouraging the straightforward murder of civilians in various parts of the world, the point of tolerance should long have been passed. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the self-styled “emir” of Al Muhajiroun publically praised suicide bomber Asif Mohammed Hanif and would-be suicide bomber Omar Khan Sharif, both UK passport holders who were posing as ‘peace activists’:
These two brothers have drawn a divine road map, one which is drawn in blood. We pray to God to accept one brother as a martyr. I am very proud of the fact that the Muslims grow closer everyday, that the Muslim land is one land and there is no more nationalism or Arabism.”
As David Carr previously mentioned, that these lunatics came from Britain’s Muslim community is not an insignificant detail. That Al Muhajiroun is not setting bombs off here in London should not disguise the fact that just as the people in the USA who gave money to pro-IRA fund raisers in the United States were guilty of financing the murder of innocent civilians, Al Muhajiroun is responsible for the slaughter of civilians in Israel by giving aid and comfort to the people who are physically doing the murders.
Just as the Irish Republican terrorists who far from killing civilians as ‘collateral’ damage to an attack on a military target, actually targeted civilians for mass murder, the Islamic terrorists supported by Al Muhajiroun’s rhetoric, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and their ilk, actually target pizza parlours and nightclubs, rather than the Israeli army or state.
Of course, some will claim that as these acts happen outside Britain, there is no grounds for doing anything. What I wonder would they think of Al Muhajiroun’s British-born lawyer Anjem Choudary’s remarks quoted in today’s Daily Express (print edition) in which he encourages Muslims from overseas to come to Britain and attack targets here? Given that these ‘religious men’ have signally failed to criticise the intentional slaughter of civilians in Israel, I rather doubt any ‘martyrs’ heeding this call will be going after a well protected British military target… more likely we can expect a suicide bomb attack on Oxford Street when it is crowded with people shopping.
I would urge members of the Muslim community in Britain who regard these people as lunatics that do them a great disservice to move heaven and earth to disassociate themselves with these people. That the British government tolerates a group such as Al Muhajiroun in our midst is a measure of the decadence at the core of the state.
And that is no longer just my pejorative opinion. It is a view that is being enthusiastically endorsed by its proponents:
During the May Day protests, we are going to be in the City of London vacuuming up after capitalism.
We’ll be there with our vacuum cleaners and warning people to watch out for the dirty capitalism all around them.
With our cleaners, we never let dirty capitalism settle.
I hope they intend to clean up after themselves. Last year’s ‘May Day’ marches left central London looking like an industrial tip.
So a lot of work is about humour because that really works. If people see a group of us vacuuming or praying, I think it’s more likely to get them to question things.
You’re right, the humour does work. I am already doubled up with laughter.
All the messages that are put about by advertisers are basically saying that shopping is the new religion. We were just taking it that little bit further.
Shopping as a religion? Damn, that’s a good idea. Anyone else fancy the idea of forming a Church of Conspicuous Consumption?
We had quite an interesting reaction. A lot of the shoppers were quite startled. Some of them laughed. Others looked at us as if we were idiots.
Conspicuous consumers are generally a perceptive and sensible lot.
Eventually the security guards threw us out. We’re not aggressive and we know that what we do and film takes place on private property so if they ask us to leave, we do.
Yet more ‘crushing of dissent’! Oh the humanity!!
The group goes into a store, all wearing the same shirts. Then, in a line, each member pushes around empty shopping trolleys [carts in America] in a quiet meditation.
Just silently contemplating all those seductive bargains.
I’ve got no illusions that what we do is going to stop people shopping. But the person who sees us praying or vacuuming may go home and have a question in their mind about the society we’ve created.
I’ll wager that the question in their mind is, how did you manage to fall from the Stupid Tree and hit every branch on the way down?
Whenever I get despondent about the state of the world, up pop the Children of the Revolution to remind me just how debased, banal and self-parodying they have become.
A disturbing development in the Middle East. Well, two disturbing developments to be more precise.
First, another successful human missile attack in Israel, this time aimed at a beachfront cafe in Tel Aviv, has killed three people. Proof that no security system is foolproof and even though attempted mass murders are thwarted virtually every day, some still get through.
Secondly, Israeli police appear to have evidence that two men involved in the attack were both British citizens:
Israeli television has shown passports alleged to belong to the two men, which name them as Asif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif.
If it transpires that the claims are true then this is the first time, to my knowledge, that non-Palestinians Muslims have been engaged in attacks on Israel. It must raise the issue of the extent to which Islamic terror gangs have been successfully recruiting in this country and, perhaps, elsewhere in the West.
Of course, there is also the corollary that perhaps the reservoir of ‘willing recruits’ among the Palestinians is starting to dry up, forcing the terror-masters to look elsewhere for their walking payloads.
|
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.
|
