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]
A man in Minneapolis was asphyxiated by a policeman, all the while with bystanders pleading with said cop to let the man breathe. Yes, I know the victim had past convictions and was being arrested as a suspect in another crime, but so what? He was effectively tortured to death in a street, slowly over nine minutes, whilst intermittently begging for his life when he could actually speak. The whole ghastly incident was captured on video by bystanders; an open and shut case of grotesque police brutality, no doubt about that.
This incident soon leads to riots and looting, ‘Antifa’ & other assorted political scavengers and opportunist thugs using this egregious crime as an excuse, and it all kicks off nationwide. At the time of writing, many American neighbourhoods are in the process of being trashed, including many largely black ones (not that it should make any difference whose neighbourhood is being looted and burned). This is an American tragedy, the whole thing, no doubt about that either.
Now we all have differing interests and it is unreasonable to expect everyone else to share our own particular obsessions. I am British, and for all the problems we have in Britain, the police here very rarely kill people. And whilst race relation can be fraught at times, UK lacks the all consuming obsession with race that poisons discourse in the USA, despite constant attempts by advocate of identity politics to import such sensibilities here.
And so, whilst I found this crime appalling, I saw no reason for the death of one man somewhere in the USA to dominate the headlines in Britain, particularly as widespread police brutality in France scarcely gets reported at all. Likewise, police violence in Hong Kong is also greatly underreported (albeit a bit better than official thuggery France). But if all you watch is the BBC, you might be forgiven for thinking the only places violence happens is in America and Palestine.
Being British, goings on in France are of concern to me, what with them being the place I get my claret from and our nearest major neighbour (sorry Ireland, it’s a size thing). Likewise, Britain has long historical links to Hong Kong, given ours was the nation that signed the treaty with China, turning the place over to Peking under the ‘One Nation Two Systems’ doctrine.
Those are my interests. And if you do not share them, well okay.
Then I turn on the stupid screen and behold a large pustule of iPhone wielding bourgeoise leftists gathering in Britain to protest what happened in America (the murder, not the riots, naturally). Do they march on the US Embassy? No, of course not, they assemble in Trafalgar Square and then shamble past Downing Street to scream at the Metropolitan Police, as if the local Plod are culpable for some psycho cop strangling George Floyd to death on the other side of the fuckin’ Atlantic.
Okay, I get it now. This is not really about police brutality in another country, it is a certain sociopolitical ilk of people, tearful that Dom Cummings and Boris don’t give a damn what they want, and bored by the Wuhan coronavirus lockdown. This is about having a nice day out in the sun, emoting their virtue and then posting it on Instagram. Were they chanting for the battered, crippled and dead students in Hong Kong? Do they give a flying fuck about some Gilets Jaunes getting the living shit beaten out of them in France? How about Spanish riot cops putting the boot in to separatists in Barcelona? Nah.
Fine, like I said, we all have our own obsessions, but I hope such folk marching in London, Berlin and Amsterdam understand why I think their public concern for what a man’s murder in Minneapolis represents is daft posturing, basically cosplay.
Then I scroll through Instagram, which for me at least is for pictures of food, cocktails, holiday snaps, cats and fit babes-in-bikinis. How odd, I see a hitherto non-political photographer in France has posted a solid black graphic, a blackout in solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter. Sigh. Unfollow.
And a rather fetching model in Prague has done the same, along with an incoherent something something racism platitude. Unfollow. Trendy furniture designer in Dublin whose work I quite like, they have just posted a black square. Unfollow. Italian actress, black square. Unfollow. Unfollow. Unfollow. Unfollow. I have probably unfollowed a hundred people today thus far, not kidding, and the day is still young. Seriously, just fuck off.
Perhaps ironically (or perhaps not), I have not unfollowed a number of commentators on both ‘left’ and ‘right’ who frequently discuss such topics, even though they felt the need to post black squares. It is not the topic itself that annoys me, I have written rather a lot about civil rights myself over the years, it is the sheer fashionable vacuous insincerity of it all.
Clever Churchgoers Avoid Arrest By Disguising Themselves As Rioters
LOS ANGELES, CA—Religious people in Southern California have found a bold, creative solution for in-person meetings in spite of the continuing lockdown. This past weekend, several area churches attended church services disguised as righteously indignant rioters.
“We already have the righteous indignation thing down,” said one church elder. “Now, we’ve simply added black balaclavas, hoodies, Guy Fawkes masks, and baseball bats! We found that when we do this, we can meet in large groups without much interference from the local authorities. It’s been a delightful experience.”
“It is high time we stopped talking about the Chinese Government as if it were presiding over just “another way of doing things”. For all its economic progress, it is hell-bent on control, not just at home but abroad too. For decades, Hong Kong has been the exception to the rule. It is a hub that has plugged China into the world and the world into China. It was the place where Chinese intellectuals could publish books that couldn’t get through the mainland’s censors. It was the place readers went to buy books or use Facebook. It was where mainlanders went to buy formula milk that wouldn’t poison their babies when it turned out China’s most popular brand was tainted. It was the gateway through which Western capital flooded in to build factories and it is the escape hatch through which the Chinese try to get their wealth out, away from the CCP. But the Chinese Communist Party does not want its citizens to be plugged into the world. All it wants from the world is technology, money and obedience. The least we can do is refuse to grant the CCP any of them.”
“It is not – though the situation is very bad. But testimony without reservation is the only testimony I will give – so I will give no testimony in support of your testimony.”
Ostensibly, these two characters at the start of Albert Camus’ The Plague are talking about the health situation of Algerian natives under French colonial rule. But The Plague is not actually about an outbreak of the black death in Oran. It is about France under Nazi occupation, recast as a description of French behaviour in an epidemic. The plague represents the Nazis: deadly, relentless, reigning in terror for a time and then gone. The book’s interest is in how people act when a thing like that sweeps over them; about the scum it brings to the top; about who decides to resist and when and why; about Vichy and freedom and the human heart.
By setting the book in Oran, Camus gave himself an advantage: he could describe the city he grew up in very well (and the ostensible event – an outbreak of plague – was more likely). But he also gave himself a problem. France was under the Nazis but Oran was under the French colonial authorities. The French readers of Camus’ book are like the French readers of the newspaper whose journalist “cannot condemn absolutely”. So Camus explains – very exactly, in terms of his analogy – that he will say nothing, and from that point on, the book focusses only on how the ethnically-French inhabitants of Oran behave.
I have been a little surprised never to see mention of The Plague in my recent web browsing. (Only a little surprised – the amount that is on the web and not noticed by me is vast.) That an epidemic can be like an invasion, empowering Vichy-like petty tyrants and harming freedom, would seem topical at this time. I’m no great fan of Camus (though, like anyone honest, I greatly prefer him to Sartre and suchlike) and it is from old memory that I provide the quote heading the post. But some people think highly of him, and I’ll grant that, even in translation, a certain quality of the prose shines through. The left did not welcome his post-WWII advice that what they needed most was “pitiless criticism”, but they never managed to push him all the way down the memory hole.
In the UK and the US, I’ve seen criticism of the lockdown that I thought very fair – and other criticism I thought OTT, as if it were rational to think Boris and Trump really loved lockdowns and wanted them to last forever. The cruel absurdity I see in France seems to belong in the pages of The Plague.
“Our nation and our civilization were built on production, on building. Our forefathers and foremothers built roads and trains, farms and factories, then the computer, the microchip, the smartphone, and uncounted thousands of other things that we now take for granted, that are all around us, that define our lives and provide for our well-being. There is only one way to honor their legacy and to create the future we want for our own children and grandchildren, and that’s to build.”
As “manifestos” go, this is not bad at all and more sense than seems to come out of a lot of certain businessmen these days (particularly those that seem more interested in giving their wealth away, like Bill Gates, than creating it). Here is a follow-up that supports much of what this Silicon Valley rainmaker writes, with some caveats and added points.
Venezuela’s socialist government says it is ending its policy of allowing motorists to fill up with free petrol as the country confronted an economic meltdown.
“Petrol must be paid for,” said President Maduro in a state TV address. He described the change, euphemistically, as a “normalisation and regularisation plan.”
Hong Kongers are some of the most educated and entrepreneurial people in the world, so even folk who depreciate immigration from the Third World should be able to get behind this idea, given Hong Kong is very much First World.
I rather doubt Hong Kongers (Hong Kong GDP/capita = $49,334, UK GDP/capita = $42,976) are not going to be competing with poor British people for council houses.
Anne Giwa-Amu won her race and age discrimination case after being mocked for complaining about the cold, wet weather, which a colleague referred to as her regular “weather reports”, and accused of stealing ice cream.
Reading the Times account, it does seem that Ms Giwa-Amu was bullied by her colleagues:
The tribunal was told that Ms Giwa-Amu felt Ms [Daisy] Cartwright was trivialising discrimination by calling her racist for moaning about the weather.
In front of colleagues, Ms Cartwright also repeatedly accused Ms Giwa-Amu of stealing ice cream. The tribunal found that while this may have started as a joke, Ms Cartwright carried on bullying Ms Giwa-Amu after others asked her to stop.
Ms Cartwright also sprayed deodorant near Ms Giwa-Amu, knowing that she hated it, and span around on a chair while sitting next to her to try to make her feel sick.
Another co-worker, Robert Lewis, “humiliated” Ms Giwa-Amu, the tribunal was told, when he accidentally touched her bottom. He said, in front of a large group: “I touched [Anne]’s bum. I touched her bum.” Ms Giwa-Amu said that the experience was horrible and that she felt Mr Lewis was laughing about how unpleasant he found it to have touched her.
The full Times story is behind a paywall, but this report in Personnel Today tells the same story.
But fear not, it all worked out OK for everyone in the end.
Mr Lewis is still an administrative officer at the Caerphilly office. Ms Cartwright was promoted to a job in another part of the civil service.
As for Ms Giwa-Amu, Personnel Today says she joined the Department of Work and Pensions in February 2017. The Times says she went on sick leave in March 2017 and never returned to work. At an Administrative Officer’s salary it would have taken around ten years to earn the quarter of a million pounds she was awarded.
So, everyone wins. Except for one group of people who are financially involved but whose interests can safely be ignored.
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.
Please. Stop acting like this Dominic Cummings farrago is actually about “what Dom Cummings did within the context of Wuhan Coronavirus in the UK”.
It ain’t.
Almost everything in UK media & politics makes perfect sense when viewed through the lens of Brexit, and that will be true until 1st January 2021.
Cummings is usually described as ‘hard line’ on the recommendations he gives regarding Brexit. It is obvious that the Cummings lynch mobs are really only interested in ‘salvaging’ some kind BRINO from the ‘catastrophe’ of Brexit.
In spite of coronavirus, it is still actually Brexit that really still drives everything in UK. Everyone worldwide is going to try and use coronavirus to leverage their preexisting political objectives, and UK is no exception. Normal politics will resume next year.
Please, mother Eva, will you look upon me as your own?
Make me special, be my angel
Be my everything wonderful, perfect and true
And I’ll try to be exactly like you
Santa, santa Evita
Madre de todos los ninos
De los tiranizados, de los descamisados
De los trabajadores, de la Argentina
Why try to govern a country when you can become a saint?
Cute kid A: The children of Scotland…
Cute kid B: …would like to say thank you…
Cute kid C: …to Nicola, our First Minister of Scotland.
Cute kid D: We are so grateful, thank you for always…
Cute kid E: …keeping us safe,
Cute kid F: working so hard,
Cute kid G: for being strong for us.
Cute kid H: Thank you for caring for every individual life…
Cute kid I: …and for always thinking about the children of Scotland.
Cute kid J: Thank you Nicola.
Cute kid K: Thank you.
Cute kid L: Thank you.
Cute kids M & N: Thank you.
Supremely cute toddler: Dank yoo.
STV has launched an internal investigation after the broadcaster released a video of children praising Nicola Sturgeon for “keeping them safe” during the coronavirus pandemic.
A series of clips from the video were posted on Twitter yesterday before being taken down following a number of complaints.
Some compared it to the sort of brainwashing media typical of totalitarian countries such as North Korea.
Apparently reading from a script, they say: “The children of Scotland would like to say thank you to Nicola, our First Minister of Scotland. We are so grateful, thank you for always keeping us safe, working so hard, for being strong for us. Thank you for caring for every individual life and for always caring about the children of Scotland. Thank you Nicola.”
Who in STV decided this was a good idea? Who made this video? Who wrote the script, who hired the children, who filmed it?
Who was paid to show it and who paid to have it shown?
Edit: Mr Ed comments,
“Someone please do a mash-up of all the women saying ‘Thank you‘ to Nicola’s predecessor, provided that reporting restrictions are not breached.”
The Ferguson – or Imperial – coronavirus model is a load of Hooey. But not, or not alone, for the reasons generally given that it’s a tangled mess of code that doesn’t even produce the same answer each time. Nor because its output was so useless that even the originator wouldn’t obey the implied rules from its use when seeking a shag.
No, Ferguson failed because his model failed to include human beings in it. Which is really very weird indeed when attempting to model, erm, human beings.
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