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]
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If you do not regularly read Michael Totten’s Middle East Journal, you really are missing out on something you just do not see in the MSM. He delivers straightforward reportage not just of The Big Issues when they happen but of the mundane realities of what it is to be in the Slums of Fallujah with the USMC.
Lieutenant Lappe overheard our conversation. I think he was worried that I was getting nervous.
“No one can lay down an IED anymore without somebody calling it in,” he said.
Very revealing.
If you like his stuff as much as I do, consider dropping your mouse on his PayPal button and support truly independent journalism.
There is an interesting article on Martin Kramer’s Sandbox blog about Obama adviser Samantha Power. The article points out the extraordinarily daft 2002 foreign policy suggestions made by her and Michael Ignatieff (who I have met a couple times… nice enough for a total Guardianista) in which she urges US military intervention against Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. But in the quoted part of her problematic remarks…
Unfortunately, imposition of a solution on unwilling parties is dreadful. It’s a terrible thing to do, it’s fundamentally undemocratic. But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway. It’s essential that some set of principles becomes the benchmark, rather than a deference to [leaders] who are fundamentally politically destined to destroy the lives of their own people.
… the real ‘money quote’ for me is not the bizarre notion of (in effect) going to war with Israel, it is “But, sadly, we don’t just have a democracy here either, we have a liberal democracy. There are certain sets of principles that guide our policy, or that are meant to, anyway.”
Her remark is a pretty clear cut rejection of the US Constitutional Republic in favour of unrestrained democracy. That is of course clearly what Obama thinks as well and why he will not allow the Second Amendment to get in the way of what he wants. So it is hardly surprising that he chooses an advisor who shares his opinion that constitutional limits on democratic politics are something to be sad about. It is also something that needs to be pointed out loudly and often by people who think limits on what the state can do are a very good idea indeed. At least Samantha Powers is somewhat honest about the fact she feels the US Bill of Rights is a regrettable limitation on untrammelled democratic politics. I wonder how many politicians would be so candid?
John McCain has called himself a ‘liberal Republican‘.
In other news today, Maria Sharapova called herself a ‘tennis player’, Nicolas Sarkozy called himself ‘President of France’, Natalie Portman said she was interested in Scarlett Johansson’s breasts and Terry Pratchett called himself ‘an author’.
The Ministry of Defence is to be commended (not often I write that) for the way they have handled Prince Harry going to Afghanistan. Aware that knowledge of his presence would greatly increase the risk to him and those serving with him (killing a Royal Prince would be a propaganda coup for the Taliban), they hid the fact for ten weeks, which is no small feat in this day and age. Their tactic was to both appeal to reason and to in effect ‘buy off’ the highly competitive UK media by promising juicy photos of Harry if they kept their collective cakeholes shut whilst he was deployed… quite clever really and it is a credit to the wiser heads amongst the UK press that they could see there was no broader ‘public interest’ at stake here (quite the opposite in fact).
I am all for the media and new media reporting the news and in particular news that the powers-that-be might be discomforted by. However reporting a wartime operation detail likely to increase the chance particular group of serving soldiers will attacked by the enemy (namely revealing the presence of a political ‘high value target’ in the war zone) fall way outside acceptable behaviour. Even if you oppose the war, such behaviour suggest you are not so much against the war as actually on the other side. It is at the very least socially despicable and quite frankly giving aid to an enemy in wartime. Unsurprisingly that is something far beyond the ken of a dim bulb like that self-important idiotarian ass Jon Snow.
Matt Drudge and the German Newspapers were not the first to mention where Prince Harry had been deployed, that dubious ‘honour’ goes to the Australian publication New Idea, who have at least expressed regret that they blew Prince Harry’s cover, suggesting they may be guilt of a lack of thought rather than callous disregard for someone’s safety in a war zone. The MoD kept quiet when New Idea first broke the story, suggesting they rather sensibly assumed an Australian woman’s magazine was probably not high on the reading list of many Muslim fundamentalists and indeed it took over a month for it to get picked up elsewhere. But the person who really moved this into wider circulation and got the story picked up globally was Matt Drudge. Although the Berliner Kurier and Bild also reported this, Drudge was at some point claiming this as an ‘exclusive’ and claiming the ‘credit’ for himself, so I will take him at his word and call him an honourless shit in that case.
The United Nations and the various NGOs which operate within its orbit, which naturally sees the world in terms of nation-states, regards statelessness as a ‘problem’ and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights include the phrase “everyone has the right to a nationality”.
Yet as the world becomes more cosmopolitan and globalised, the primary threats to security are themselves non-state based (such as radical Islam) and private trade without the intermediation of states has never been easier in the dawning age of virtualised networked economics. Could we one day see a time in which many see modern narrow concepts of nationality and ‘citizenship’ of any Westphalian style state as an imposition rather than a ‘right’?
You have nothing to lose but your place at the trough and a whole world to win!
One non-conservative Big Government Republican (George Bush Sr.) praising the ‘conservative’ credentials of another non-conservative Big Government Republican (John McCain). I assume I am not the only finding this more than a little absurd. These guys are not ‘neo-cons’, they are ‘non-cons’.
Kosova has declared its independence from Serbia and if ever a people have justification for not trusting the political institutions of another, it is the Kosovars. Perhaps this will, as some fear and other hope, start a wave of reasonable and logical separations… starting with Taiwan maybe?
Michael Totten has a superb article up that compares the approach to counter-insurgency followed by Israel under the dismal Ehud Olmert, and that of the US in Iraq under General David Petraeus.
What Totten points out is that the policies promised by Barack Obama for Iraq (in essence remove the army and drop bombs on anyone who seems to be the Bad Guys) is essential the same as the demonstrably failed approach used by Ehud Olmert in Lebanon. Israel blew the crap out of Lebanon from the air and achieved precisely zero of its war aims.
Read the whole article.
The latest control freak ravings from UKGov are the impending crusade against bottled water:
Drinking bottled water should be made as unfashionable as smoking, according to a government adviser. “We have to make people think that it’s unfashionable just as we have with smoking. We need a similar campaign to convince people that this is wrong,” said Tim Lang, the Government’s natural resources commissioner. Phil Woolas, the environment minister, added that the amount of money spent on mineral water “borders on being morally unacceptable”.
Very telling, no? People deciding to spend their own money on something “borders on being morally unacceptable”. Let me what you what is morally unacceptable: that force addicted control freak tax parasites like Phil Woolas have the gall to tell people how to spend their own damn money. “Immoral”? You do not know the meaning of the word, Woolas.
I loath almost all canned and bottled soft drinks (or ‘soda’ in American parlance)… vile phoney tasting sweet muck… and so I am delighted that finally the UK has followed long standing European custom and now conveniently sells bottled water almost everywhere.
Fungible: Etymology: New Latin fungibilis, from Latin fungi to perform
: being something (as money or a commodity) one part or quantity of which can be substituted for another of equal value in paying a debt or settling an account – oil, wheat, and lumber are fungible commodities.
Hugo Chavez, the paleo-socialist who is working tirelessly to turn Caracas into Pyongyang, has threatened to cut off oil sales to the United States due to actions brought against the Venezuelan government in British, Dutch and US courts by ExxonMobil. Following the freezing of $12 billion in assets by a British court, Chavez said:
“If you end up freezing (Venezuelan assets) and it harms us, we’re going to harm you,” Chavez said during his weekly radio and television program, “Hello, President.” “Do you know how? We aren’t going to send oil to the United States. Take note, Mr. Bush, Mr. Danger.”
Chavez has repeatedly threatened to cut off oil shipments to the United States, which is Venezuela’s No. 1 client, if Washington tries to oust him. Chavez’s warnings on Sunday appeared to extend that threat to attempts by oil companies to challenge his government’s nationalization drive through lawsuits.
And your word for the day, Mister Chavez, is ‘fungible’.
If his intention is to sell Venezuelan oil to no one, he will push up the price to everyone, that much is true. And of course that also means he is cutting off the cash flow being used to finance the Glorious Bolivarian Revolution. Your call, El Presidente.
If on the other hand he intends to sell Venezuelan oil to anyone except the USA (and presumably the UK and Netherlands as well as they have also been crossed off his Christmas Card list), then… who cares? As oil is fungible, it just goes into a big global market and what does it matter if Venezuelan oil goes to China instead of the USA when all it means is that someone else’s oil will take its place?
Vladimir Putin has announced that if NATO does not act in a manner more to his taste in future negotiations, he will take action to let them know he is not to be trifled with by unleashing an arms race.
So Russia (GDP $2.08 trillion) is threatening the EU (GDP $14.44 trillion) and USA (GDP $13.86 trillion) with an arms race?
Who says Russians do not have a great sense of humour? They are famous for it, in fact and this is a case in point. In effect Vladimir Putin is saying “if you do not start respecting me, I will bankrupt my country by producing large quantities of the same weapons that the Israelis consistently turn into confetti using western military technology.” Oh saints preserve us! It is rather like a petulant child threatening to hold his breath until they turn blue unless they are given what they want… except I cannot see why anyone should give a shit if Russia goes blue in the face and keels over due to self-inflicted stupidity.
Modern Russia is rapidly turning into a vile police state, so why pander to this unrepentant KGB scumbag with delusions of grandeur?
If you do not read Michael Totten’s blog regularly (and why the hell don’t you? It is one of the best damn things on the internet!) then you may have missed this treasure.
And this comment is pretty good too:
This video proves that the surge has failed miserably. The Iraqis are running wild with their scissors and refuse to drink milk and wear seat belt. The pitiful American forces can’t even muster the courage to summon insurgents to a shootout themselves. Instead, they have to order random drivers on the road as “human invitation cards”. This is sickening.
Heh indeed.
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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.
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