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 the rush of breaking news today, do not forget 7/7/2005. Lots of news today. Nigel Farage has stood down as MP for Clacton, stating he will seek to be re-elected in the resulting by-election. The Daily Mail has defeated Prince Harry and several other high-profile claimants in a phone hacking case brought against it in the High Court, a result that Lord Dacre, the Mail’s publisher, has hailed as a victory for press freedom.
The papers were no doubt equally full on this day twenty-one years ago, before the 7 July 2005 London bombings wiped everything else off the front page.
|
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.
|
I had an appointment in London on 6th July 2005, and I took the Piccadilly Line around 24 hours to the minute before the bomb went off. Had my appointment been a day later, serious chance I would have been killed. Funny how there are no commemorations of the dead, isn’t it? Can you name even one of them, if they weren’t your friend, relative or colleague? I believe that is a monument somewhere to the dead.
Mr Ed – it is, sadly, not strange. None of the Islamic attacks in Britain is really commemorated, because it does not fit the establishment narrative of “Diversity and Inclusion”. People such as Prime Minister Gladstone or Winston Churchill would be sent to prison today – for what they said about Islam, and for their statements on other matters.
As for Prince Harry – he is as “Woke” as the rest of the establishment, not because he has a deep understanding of Critical Theory Marxist doctrines (he has no such understanding), but because, like all the rest, he ticks the boxes and had the approved set of opinions.
Mr Ed, unusually for me, I spent the day gardening and didn’t hear about it until hours later. You are right – there hasn’t been much said about it on the anniversary. I suppose, to be fair, that the 21st anniversary is not nearly as newsworthy as the 20th. But one would think there would be at least a small item on every front page, and on the BBC.
I stepped off the Bakerloo Line at Embankment just as the whole thing was unfolding.
I ended up spending the night at the Royal Horseguards Hotel on Whitehall. I wandered over to Covent Garden later in the evening. I’d never seen it so deserted before on a Thursday night.
At least the United States armed forces are now hitting the IRI forces (the Sunni/Shia distinction is not important in relation to infidels – remember Shia Iran is happy to back Sunni Hamas) – but the Americans are still talking the language of “heavy costs”.
We have heard this language of “heavy cost” or “making them pay a heavy price” for many years – it is why, for example, Israel has failed to destroy Hamas almost three years after October 7th. The Israeli military (contrary to what the “protesters” in Western cities think – including Sir Ed “Genocide” Davey of the Liberal Democrats) is trained in the same mentality as the Americans – that they need to destroy the enemy does not occur to them – they think in terms of “talks” and “deals” with the enemy “disarmed” not wiped-out.
Islamic forces, Sunni or Shia, have no interest in “heavy costs” or “heavy prices” – they do not care if some of them are killed, after all followers of Muhammed, killed by infidels, go to paradise, and they have the same attitude concerning their children – which is why they are happy to use them as shields in war (the attitude is that the children should be happy to go to paradise – which is why, for example, the Islamic Republic of Iran marched young children, their own children, over minefields in the Iraq/Iran war – in order to clear the mine fields). “But do they not love their children?” – they would say that sending them to paradise, by using them as human shields, is an act of love, and that is theologically and philosophically logical – if you accept their basic assumptions.
You either destroy these forces or you are destroyed them by them – “heavy costs” or “heavy prices” are meaningless to them, ditto “talks” and “deals”.
Sadly I suspect President Trump is as ignorant about Islam as other Western leaders are – but at least he does not send people to prison for telling the truth about Islam.
I was working for a large news service at the time, based near Chancery Lane, London, on the Central Line of the Tube. I took a Tube from home in Pimlico to St Paul’s that morning, around 08:45, to attend a business conference at the Guildhall. At some point during the event a message went around saying there had been a serious incident; my mobile phone – a Nokia that we all used to have – was disabled and I could not get a signal. My line manager and senior editors were frantically trying to contact me. Several of my colleagues were on the Tube minutes before.
I remembered the hour-long walk home from the office that night, and the recurring walks I had to take for more than a week while Tube services were restored.
There have been hardly any references to 7/7 in the news this week. I start to wonder whether, with certain exceptions, such as 9/11, the sheer volume of terror attacks by Islamist fanatics on Western targets means there is, at least in terms of memory and significance, an “overload problem” in terms of cognition around all this. There are simply far too many to single out. And the weird thing is, the terrorists want this sort of phenomenon to exist so that the rest of us get numbed to it. It becomes like rain on a corrugated iron roof – you notice it, it is there but it is sort of also in the background. It is becoming “normalised”. Such killings – bombings, stabbings, ramming people with cars and trucks, and all the rest of it – is what these goblins do.
The 21st anniversary of 9/11 falls this year. I am sure all eyes will be on the current Mayor of NY to see how well or not he comports himself.
I was working at West Brompton and went through Algate East on the tube just an hour before the bomb at Aldgate. At lunchtime I decided to walk home; three of us did. There were no buses and no cars allowed in. It was a very pleasant walk across London, nine miles to Whitechapel (just outside the barricades) where I got picked up. Next day I was back on the tube as usual.
Shitty day that. I missed the Circle Line bomb by the narrowest of margins. It was the train after mine I think. They just shut the tube line down and threw us all off. No information or anything.
Walked through the crowded streets to the office in confusion. We didn’t find out what was going on until later in the morning.
I remember back to the IRA bombings of the 80’s and 90’s, sat in the office and hearing an explosion in the distance, then trying to guess where the Paddy’s had detonated this time around. We seemed far more sanguine about it back then, but 7/7 hit different somehow.
Maybe it was just the semblance of peace and safety (false as it turned out) that the intervening years provided.
What would “disarming” Hamas or Hezbollah achieve? The 7/7 bombers came from Britain – one of the most extreme examples of “disarmed” on the planet, the establishment here are ardent followers of Sir Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, Jeremy Bentham and the rest – they do not believe in any natural right of defending other people against the state, they believe that the state should have a monopoly of force.
The “disarming” here did not stop British girls from industrial scale rape (and that industrial scale rape was not carried out by Jews, Sir Ed “Genocide” Davey) – and “disarming” Hamas and Hezbollah, or the IRI regime, would also achieve nothing. They would simply buy or MAKE weapons if all their existing weapons magically vanished – or kill with the bare hands and teeth.
It is not the weapons that are the point, President Trump, it is the Islamic regime that has to be destroyed.
The fancy weapons of the West are without value if the people in control of them are not prepared to destroy their enemies – if their goal is “talks” and a “deal”.
President Trump now says that, because of their endless attacks on shipping, the deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is off.
Fair enough – now destroy the IRI regime, no more talks, no more deals, destroy all 31 commands of the Revolutionary Guard.
It is not a militarily impossible task – the difficulty has been lack of political will.
I was out of the office on that day, but not in London thankfully. The senior managers in the business I worked for arranged for people out of the office to be phoned and accounted for.
It is somewhat spooky that the event no longer resonates for most people – unless they were directly affected.
Entirely predictable… or at least, some commenters here (including yours truly) predicted it.
Maybe the Iranian regime would have been better off biding their time. But maybe there are reasons why they could not.
PS: Glenn Reynolds also predicted it.
The US president has insisted that the on again, off again campaign against Iran is not a war but a “military operation”.
Who knows? Perhaps he will soon call it a “special military operation”.
Snorri Godhi – yes both yourself and Glenn Reynolds deserve credit for your prediction. Let us hope President Trump actually, this time, gets the job done – no more talks, no more deals.
JJM – I do not care what the President calls the operation, as long as the IRI regime is destroyed.
And you should want the same thing – as the IRI wants you (and all infidels) dead or enslaved. Yes even Tucker Carlson and Candice Owens – their “friends” the IRI would slit their throats the moment they were no longer useful.
Have a nice day.
More than half of the children in Brussels (the capital of the European Union) are Islamic – and a similar trend is seen in many other Western cities.
It may already be too late to save the Western world – the West may already be doomed to destruction.
The demographic change that is occurring, over only a few generations, in the Western world, is more radical than anything since the “age of migrations” at the fall of the Roman Empire.
Indeed it may, eventually, be as radical as the demographic transformation at the start of the Bronze Age – look up how radical a demographic change that was in northern Europe.
Yet the establishment, up to and including the Monarch, claim nothing bad is happening – that all is well.
Paul: I do not claim any credit for my prediction.
I think that it was intuitively obvious that the Iranian regime would not take full advantage of the respite that Trump offered to them.
I also think that it was entirely predictable that you cannot play that sort of game with somebody like Trump.
Still, it is not over yet.
“I also think that it was entirely predictable that you cannot play that sort of game with somebody like Trump.”
And yet they are.
Yes JJM – which is why the IRI regime should have been destroyed months ago, but President Trump forbad attacks on XYZ targets because he wanted “talks” and a “deal”.
I have seen this again and again in my life time – and it started even before that, it started with the betrayal of Chang in China in 1946 – the Manchurian Offensive was succeeding, Marxists were being destroyed, by the United States government ordered it stopped – because they wanted “talks” and an “agreement” – and they threatened Chang and the Republic of China with an arms embargo unless he obeyed, and when he did obey, they-later-cut-off-military-supplies-anyway.
Tens of millions of people paid with their lives for this policy of Washington D.C. – the United States government, in effect, CREATED the People’s Republic of China – which is a deadly threat to liberty in this world.
The folly of negotiating with Marxists, is similar to the folly of negotiating with the followers of Islam.
Mark Steyn remains unconvinced that the American government is serious about destroying the regime in Tehran, after all (as he points out) they can not even destroy the regime in New York City (Mr Mandani and the other fanatical enemies of the United States).
The Supreme Court has declared that anyone born in the United States is an American citizen, even if they were born to invaders (“undocumented migrants”) filled with fanatical hatred of the United States and the Western world generally.
But why even bother to enter illegally – even the Mandani family (open enemies of the United States who would rejoice if America was reduced to ashes and dried blood) entered the United States quite legally – and were given citizenship.
So were a vast number of other fanatical enemies of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.
As for United Kingdom – within five years the majority of children in English primary schools will not be English.
And children grow up – which means that, eventually, England will cease to exist.
“They will assimilate” – some may assimilate (the children the eastern European parents), but others will NOT (either for religious reasons, or, yes, for racial solidarity reasons – think of David Lammy and his endless demands for “reparations” when he uses the word “us” he is not referring to the British – even though he was born here, and is Deputy Prime Minister), not in the important things. Oh they may know a lot about Association Football and pop music, vastly more than I do, as I know very little about such things – but if anyone thinks that is real assimilation, I have a nice bridge to sell you.
That old Cassandra Mark Steyn (now clinging to life – just out of coma) predicted all this when there was still time to prevent it – but he was ignored, just as the Trojan leaders ignored the original Cassandra.
And John Enoch Powell predicted it back in the 1960s.
“What can be done?”
I fear the answer, now, is “nothing can be done – it is too late” – and not just too late for this nation, too late for the Western world in general.
This is why, for example, Nigel Farage and Richard Tice say we must not “alienate Islam” – because they believe the demographic struggle is hopeless.
What they do not understand is the price of “not alienating Islam” – the price is servitude.