I wouldn’t recommend alcohol and drugs to anyone. But they have always worked for me.
– Hunter S. Thompson
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There have been reports that casualties were suffered during the heroic rescue of Adil Farooq yesterday by members of the 22nd Samizdata Air Service (the spectacular SAS success being evidenced by Muslimpundit‘s site being updated today in spite of the efforts of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Robert Fisk to silence it). However other reports have indicated that the casualties were in fact the result of friendly fire suffered at a debriefing in London which extended into the wee hours of the morning, at a clandestine location near Tottenham Hale. DEBKA‘s ‘military sources’ suggest that Dr. Chris Tame, the infamous and shadowy figure behind the Libertarian Alliance (the person upon whom the fictitious ‘Dr. Evil’ was in fact based), was seen in the area where the debriefing was taking place. There is speculation he may have masterminded the daring rescue. Similarly Dale Amon reported the SAS was also conducting intensive combat operations in Belfast yesterday as well. Due to the fog, the report from Northern Ireland was slightly garbled:
War is hell. December 23rd, 2001 | Comments are closed
 Our esteemed fellow blogista, Adil Farooq of Muslimpundit has been taken prisoner and forced into servitude by his crazed capitalist employer, no doubt driven insane by reams of government regulations and finally unhinged by one EU directive too many… ‘Military sources’ have informed DEBKA that this deranged employer may in fact have links to Osama bin Laden‘s brother’s aunt’s sister’s cousin from Manchester, Hilda bin Laden. I propose forming a militia of concerned libertarian bloggers to mount a rescue mission… using sound military principals of deception and misdirection: 1. We lure his boss away by burning a pile of tax regulation forms in the street in front of his premises. 2. When he comes out to dance maniacally around the bonfire, a second snatch squad will enter from the rear of the premises, moving with cat-like tread. 3. The snatch squad will stun any lackeys on guard that they encounter with blows to the back of the head with a hardback edition of Murray Rothbard’s ‘Ethics of Liberty’. 4. They will grab Adil, egress from the combat zone and retreat for helicopter extraction at the LZ next to the Fish and Chip Shop down the road, possibly stopping off at a nearby pub for lunch en route before embarking. I love it when a plan comes together. December 22nd, 2001 | Comments are closed
Way back when, I pointed out that DEBKA were making some highly questionable contentions about thousands of Al Qaeda soldiers being airlifted out of Konduz before it fell to the Northern Alliance forces of Generals Daoud Khan and Rashid Dostam. World Net Daily has belatedly picked up on this DEBKA theory. First of all let me lay my cards on the table and say I think DEBKA are by and large a waste of pixels. Almost nothing they say cannot be deduced from open source data that is also available to anyone with a search engine and a working computer. Their analysis ranges from ‘okay’ to ‘wild conjecture’. What is more, to put it bluntly I am not sure I really trust them or their alleged ‘military sources’ given the quantity of dubious calls they have made in the past.
My objections to this whole weird scenario remain unchanged from when I first suggested my interpretation of what probably happened in Konduz, which I posted to the Samizdata on November 27th. This section is relevant and nothing I have read has changed my mind since I wrote it
DEBKA does not explain where the ‘Al Qaeda’ air assets came from, how they avoided detection by the USAF/USN and how they managed this feat of night time airmanship with the larger Antonov’s than an AN-26 that would be required to get those sort of numbers out of the Konduz pocket. In two other articles on November 28 th, I discussed DEBKA’s view that it was the Pakistani ISI behind it (and I agreed) but pointed out their numbers did not really add up. In the very next Samizdata article after that, I pondered the views of Tunku Varadarajan of the WSJ, who was saying much the same, only on the basis of sources probably far more reliable than DEBKA’s. Like Tunku Varadarajan, I felt (and still do) that it is hard to believe that the airlift of Pakistanis trapped there was not done with American acquiescence…and therefore indirect observation by sensor (not to mention nearby US and UK Special Forces). Thus it becomes even more fantastical to think a veritable airfleet was going in and out of Konduz unnoticed and unhindered, when all the US was acquiescing to was a limited airlift out of ‘sensitive’ ISI people. I think we can assume AWACS and JSTARS crews are fairly numerate folks. Unless we see some evidence other than DEBKA’s alleged ‘military sources’, I would recommend treating their story of 3000 Al Qaeda folks winging their way to freedom with considerable skepticism, to put it mildly. December 22nd, 2001 | Comments are closed
Dependable as ever, Peronists in Argentina are claiming that the economic meltdown in their nation is due to the failure of the ‘free market’. Now let’s not mince words, the Peronists are neo-fascists (and not very neo at that) and thus to get a right-socialist critique of free markets from them is hardly a surprise.
The Peronists are people who are trapped in the 1940’s in their thinking. Yet at the risk of starting to sound like a broken record given my recent posts, the Argentine economy was never, by any stretch of the imagination, a free market…it was just less unfree than under the Peronists, who ran things along full fat, non-diet real McCoy fascist lines. The biggest problem for the economy is not foreign competition but a massive borrowing spree by the Government (surprise, surprise). Exactly how were they expecting to repay its most recent loans, let alone the staggering $132 billion outstanding? The Argentine Government was quite successful in curbing the hyperinflation that was ravaging the country in the early 1990’s, introducing wide reforms and pegging the Argentine peso to the US dollar. A useful comparison could be made with Croatia in 1992-3. Croatia found itself collapsing economically due to the Balkan War and it’s currency, the Croatian Dinar, was hyper-inflating as the Government printed money to keep its army running. When I was there in 1992, after having been in the country for less than one month I took my dollars to a bank in Zagreb and found they had gained 30% in value against the local money in 25 days. To prevent complete economic melt-down, the Croatians scrapped the Dinar completely, replacing it with a new currency called the Kunar, pegged to the Deutschmark. As in Argentina, this drastic move rapidly brought things back from the brink. Yet unlike Argentina, Croatia did not embark upon delusionary spending sprees. Whilst I would hardly call Croatia a paragon of fiscal rectitude (I know Natalija is very critical of Croatian economic policies) they were certainly restrained by comparison in spite of having had huge amounts of national infrastructure destroyed during the war. What Argentina has done was cure the problem of hyperinflation with strong medicine but they kept taking the drug for that particular ailment after the patient had recovered. What they should have done was either re-float the currency again or go the hole hog and dollarize (i.e. simply adopt the US dollar as Argentina’s national currency). The latter was rejected by the ruling Radical Civic Union Party, never staunch ‘free marketeers’ to begin with, as it would take away a powerful tool of economic control from the government, which of course is exactly why they should have done it! But even just allowing the peso to free float once inflation was at tolerable levels again, say in 1996, would have prevented the build up of pressures that can be seen today, by allowing devaluation of the peso to be spread out over many years. What we will see now is a huge traumatic crash in value of the peso that will take vast chunks of the economy down with it as dollar denominated loans become unserviceable with worthless Argentine money. The fascist Peronists will reintroduce trade barriers, compel all exporting businesses to submit to de facto state management and simply impose debt restructuring on foreign banks. A measure of stability will eventually return but the Argentina’s first world pretensions will be exposed for the absurdity they are. Only banks run by madmen (i.e. about 20% of them) will even consider lending more money to Argentina for the foreseeable future and therein lies the silver lining to this dark and stormy cloud… no more loans, the economic equivalent of crack cocaine, means eventually reality will reassert itself even through the thick skulls of the Peronists who are about to preside over the third-worldization of Argentina. I for one shall not be crying for Argentina over what is largely a self inflicted wound, albeit one inflicted with a weapon sharpened by the buffoons at the IMF. Reforms require courage and vision and sufficient social evolution to grasp objective realities. Argentina had none of the above I am sad to say. December 22nd, 2001 | Comments are closed
We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules, and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists. – Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, September 13, 2001 December 22nd, 2001 | Comments are closed
From the EU Observer Neil Herron and Steve Thoburn, known as the British Metric Martyrs, last night in Brussels received the EV50 award as EU Campaigners of the Year. The prize was given to the Martyrs at a fashionable gala evening in the Palais d’Egmont in the heart of Brussels, hosted by the newspaper the European Voice Next: Mullah Omar receives highest honour from the International League of B’nai Brith December 22nd, 2001 | Comments are closed
Is this the National Review? Free Republic? The Daily Telegraph? The Economist? No, it’s Arab nationalist Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi writing in his book The Nature of Tyranny The year of publication? 1901 Plus ça change…. December 21st, 2001 | Comments are closed
The regular Samizdata contributors are reading and listening to: Dale Amon Perry de Havilland Walter Uhlman David Carr Natalie Solent Natalija Radic: Samizdata Illuminatus December 21st, 2001 | Comments are closed
Breathtaking, mind boggling, abject stupidity as well. In today’s London Evening Standard, Labour Members of Parliament Glenda Jackson, Tony Colman, Jeremy Corbyn, LibDem Members of Parliament Jenny Tonge and Vince Cable and Oxfam Campaigns Officer Rajinder Dadry write in to say.
So let us analyse what is being said:
Now read that again, gentle reader, before we continue… are you making the causal links that elude this chorus of clowns? The Tanzanian Government entered into loans with Western and Japanese Banks in the 1980’s and 1990’s. This money financed years of highly inefficient socialist centrally planned spending (plus a bonanza for the Swiss bankers working for a few inexplicably wealthy ‘retired’ Tanzanian ministers) that resulted in far less of an increase in Tanzania’s ability to produce wealth than was required to service the debt on the funds borrowed. Years later, well meaning and largely socialist elements in the West decide that somehow the actions of an African sovereign government are a ‘stain on Western capitalism’ and a large chunk of the debts are written off (at Western tax payers expense). And the lesson that we have taught the Governing classes in Tanzania is…?
The Tanzanian Government is not acting foolishly in buying this radar, they are just playing by the rules of the game we have written. Have I missed something here or is Glenda Jackson MP and her ilk really as obtuse as I think they are? December 21st, 2001 | Comments are closed
The value of money has been settled by general consent to express our wants and our property, as letters were invented to express our ideas; and both these institutions, by giving a more active energy to the powers and passions of human nature, have contributed to multiply the objects they were designed to represent. – Edward Gibbon December 21st, 2001 | Comments are closed
Today I have read of outrage amongst the chattering classes in Britain over the UK government allowing Tanzania to purchase a £28 million (about $40 million US) air traffic radar system with some fascination. Now I must confess I have no opinion whatsoever on whether or not Tanzania actually needs such a system and the last time I was there was 20 years ago so I am rather out of touch with the realities on the ground. But what is astonishing to me is that statist British pundits and their NGO cheerleaders with Christian Aid, Oxfam etc. have directed their ire primarily at Britain. Now I am rarely one to come to the defense of any government purchasing baubles with their stolen tax monies, but last time I looked, Tanzania was a sovereign state, a member of the Commonwealth and their government presumes to speak for the people of that nation. Surely the question of Tanzanian need is a matter for Tanzania to determine. Might I suggest that what NGOs and sundry mouthing politicos really mean is “Africans are too stupid to decide what is in their own national interests and thus ‘we’ must save them from themselves and prevent their governments from actually governing.” To put it bluntly, the white bwana knows better. Of course it may well be that the government of Tanzania is venal, foolish and corrupt, highly likely in fact… but does that give the British government the right to block it from purchasing a radar from a private British company? Of course not. Argue with the Tanzanian government that the money is better spent elsewhere by all means, but where do these people get off attempting to get the British state to coerce them ‘for their own good’? December 21st, 2001 | Comments are closed
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