…rather a lot actually.
Michael Totten continued to climb in my estimation after a very good article called The Israel of the Balkans on the interesting parallels between Kosova and Israel.
Strongly recommended.
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The rioting in Lhasa seems to be continuing and now it has been reported that some discontent is boiling over elsewhere in Chinese occupied Tibet. Of course if the official death toll says:
It is safe to say it is probably ten times that, at least on the side of the resistors. It seems that Chinese colonists have also been involved in attacking Tibetans, so this does appear to be far from over. Sadly I cannot see China having any serious trouble remaining in control given the sheer size of their security apparatus. So, all you activists out there who have made a career out of excoriating Israel, do you have anything to say about this? Update: I received the following e-mail from a person called Lee Ming:
Some Chinese claims assert they have ruled Tibet since the 13th century (the Peace Treaty between Tibet and Britain in 1904 is strangely forgotten): 1. Chinese rule was always debatable 2. The historical claim is largely irrelevant. Scotland has been part of the UK since 1707 and it was in a loose de union with England since 1603… yet if a majority in Scotland vote to become independent now, do you think UKGov will send in the riot cops and troops? No. Hell, if a majority in Wessex want to go their own way, I quite like the idea of that too. There is nothing sacred about nation states. The fact a majority of Tibetans want to be independent of China rather than live under colonial occupation is all the justification needed. March 17th, 2008 | 75 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The latest great idea from ‘digital-strategy consultant’ Jim Griffin, who is advising the Recording Industry Association of America on new and innovative ways of rent seeking, is to propose a piracy surcharge on ISPs in the USA. Of course the advantage of that is if all broadband users have to pay the music industry $5 per month, regardless of whether or not you actually download any music, legal or illegal, why bother promoting music at all? Who needs products when you can just force people to pay you regardless? Is it great that we have governments around the world who are in a position to actually try and do stuff like that? March 15th, 2008 | 19 comments - (Comments are closed)
The toxic effects of collectivism rear its ugly Hydra-like heads in Finland, where the state wants to introduce a Chinese style ‘Internet Great Wall’ to stop people expressing political idea the state disapproves of. It also wants to prosecute Mikko Ellilä for the thought crime of expressing a dislike of multiculturalism.
And what ‘racist act’ did Mikko Ellilä commit that enraged the state?
Yup, he quoted official crime statistics. Given that Finland has one of the highest rates of internet usage in the world, I hope this provokes a powerful backlash against the control freaks who run the country. March 14th, 2008 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
Michael Totten’s latest bloggage from Iraq is as informative as ever, but the thing that fascinated me most was a brief but interesting discursion into the use of the English word ‘Supermarket’ on a sign in a small town in Iraq.
I disagree with Michael’s use of the word ‘imperialism’ and I think he answers that point himself in the very next sentence. An even more demotic variation on the inexplicable prevalence of English puzzled me many years ago BB (Before Blogging). I spent some time in a few fairly rough parts of Croatia and one can hardly miss the prevalence of racist and sexist graffiti on the communist-era concrete tower blocks. The odd thing is that mixed in with the usually ‘Jebi Se’ varient epithets in Croatian, you will find floridly racist threats or extravagant anatomical references in more or less grammatically correct English. And this in an area that was not exactly a magnet for English speaking tourists, particularly in the middle of the then on-going war. The huge number of people who speak English in Croatia can be easily explained by the ubiquity of satellite dishes, which is why I often referred to the local Croatian English dialect as MTV English. But that does not answer the question of why in a linguistically and ethnically homogeneous area (such as unlovely New Zagreb in Croatia or Saqlawiya in Iraq), people use written English when there is no commercial or political pressures to do so. Interesting. March 10th, 2008 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
It appears that courts in the USA feel it is perfectly all right to issue a search warrant to raid someone’s house on the basis of higher-that-average electricity use. The linked example happened a few years ago but I gather it is not all that unusual a basis for a search in the Land of the Free. Presumably as I often have five computers running that is the sort of thing that would attract the attention of The Fuzz in the USA too. I also noticed that the search warrant allows them to search for ‘firearms’… so is possession of a firearm a criminal offence in the People’s Republic of California these days? March 9th, 2008 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
There is an amusing article in The Observer magazine today called The world’s 50 most powerful blogs which deigns to list our crazed (but correct) rantings here, I am pleased to say.
Such lists are of course highly subjective and whilst I am happy to see Samizdata numbered amongst new media’s Golden Horde, there is a howling error, indeed it is a glaring radioactive glow-in-the-dark omission… where the hell is INSTAPUNDIT? March 9th, 2008 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
For me the idea of the state installing cameras everywhere to ensure compliance with its edicts was the most memorable aspect to George Orwell’s dystopian 1984, with Newspeak a close second. But of course here in the real world, the state would never try to force private business owners to allow the state to place cameras to make sure people are following regulations, right?
And what comes next? Cameras in schools and daycare centres naturally. For the children of course. And after that? I mean, why stop there? March 7th, 2008 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
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.
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. March 4th, 2008 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
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…
… 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? March 3rd, 2008 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
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’. February 29th, 2008 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
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. February 29th, 2008 | 135 comments - (Comments are closed)
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