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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Continuing on the topic of Belgian idiocy, I have been marvelling at the way the police in Brussels have been pronouncing on yet another night of rioting by Muslims in that city.
Philippe Close, the chef de cabinet of the Mayor of Brussels, Freddy Thielemans, said that the authorities would continue their efforts to defuse the situation in a peaceful manner, but he announced that the police will be less complacent in future, “since we cannot tolerate that this [Marollen] neighbourhood falls victim to a problem from outside the neighbourhood.”
Why ‘in a peaceful manner’? People try to set fire to a hospital and that should be solved ‘peacefully’? After three days of violence and looting of private property, the police should be cracking skulls without apology and to make the important point that violence should be met with greater violence. If they cannot protect the taxpayers who pay their salaries, what use are they? Moreover what are we to make of Philippe Close’s remark about the Marollen district falling victim to a problem from “outside the neighbourhood?” Does that mean it would be okay if only the rioters were local lads?
No doubt the Vlaams Belang (about whom I am deeply ambivalent) will reap the rewards from the Muslim rioting at the upcoming Belgian municipal elections, probably leading to the Belgian government banning them at some point in the near future.
UK military authorities are claiming the Taliban in Southern Afghanistan has been ‘tactically defeated’, which can mean quite a variety of different things. Certainly the accounts of what has been going on there indicate bloody hard fighting down to bayonet range on occasion and given the lack of resources at their disposal, any significant victory against the casualty insensitive Taliban reflects rather well on the British Army.
Now if only the UK government would get rid of some of the many utterly pointless government departments, say for starters the Department of Trade and Industry and the truly preposterous Department of Culture, Media and Sport), we could spend more on the military and still reduce the level of taxation. Well, one can wish…
The fact Belgian newspapers want it to be harder to find the content they put on the internet is weird (why bother having an on-line presence at all then?), the fact they went to court to force Google to stop driving traffic to their sites is bizarre, the fact a Belgian court found against Google is insane.
Moonbat Media have some good pictures from Saturday’s demonstration in Manchester by the usual suspects… plus some coverage of an incident where Reza Moradi and a friend were removed by Stop The War organisers because they staged a counter-protest, interrupted Tony Benn’s speech. Check it out.
“What was going through your head during that second engagement?” a journalist asks me at a press conference the next day.
“A rocket-propelled grenade,” I say.
– Private Johnson Beharry VC
Much is made of bogus asylum seekers (with considerable justification) but in truth, the basic principle of countries in the west being a haven for those who are oppressed for reasons of their belief is a very righteous one indeed.
And that brings me to the case of ‘Isaac Shrödinger’, the pseudonymous Pakistan born ex-Muslim blogger who is currently seeking asylum in Canada. If ever there was something I would like to see more of in the west, it is ex-Muslims, apostates if you like, who are willing to talk about Islam and say it the way it is.
Read his article and perhaps do as I have done and drop your mouse heavily on his PayPal button to help with his legal expenses… it will give you some serious blogospherical karma points.
So now before British police will carry out raids on Muslim terror suspects, they will consult with a group of Muslim ‘community leaders’ before acting (i.e. they will in effect ask permission from the same people who have so conspicuously failed to prevent the need for such raids in the first place). And of course one can only wonder at the potential for the targets of such raids being tipped off.
So tell me, did the Metropolitan Police ask for permission from, oh I dunno, the Catholic Church maybe, before raiding possible IRA terrorist suspects in London for fear of upsetting the delicate sensibilities of the UK’s Irish community?
This is beyond parody.
I have a technical question… the comment forms on Samizdata have formatting buttons for the text, but alas these only appear to work for people using Internet Explorer.
Does anyone know of a pop-up comment system we might be able to use which will allow push-button formatting to function in IE and Firefox, plus allow us to use our groovy graphics and is compatable with an anti-spam Turing test/captcha system similar to the one we have… all of which would work within Moveable Type (TypeKey is not an option)?
The recent typically well mannered coup d’etat in Thailand has been loudly depreciated by the usual people, with calls to ‘return to democratic government’ being made. But in truth in places like Thailand (or Turkey), the military acts as an informal check on the untrammelled political power of democratically elected politicians, rather like the Supreme Court in the United State or (theoretically) the House of Lords in the UK.
Just as the Supreme Court regularly thwarts the ability of impeccably democratically elected politician to pass laws pandering to the vox populi without howls for a ‘return to democratic government’, the military in Thailand is there to stomp on over-mighty politicos who try and break the commonly accepted boundaries of ‘the system’. Well mannered coups are (usually) the norm in Bangkok and should be thought of as a sort of common law ‘House’ of Lords engaging in a political ritual , rather like Black Rod bagging on the door of the Commons, it is just that the Thai ritual involves parking tanks and armoured personnel carriers in front of TV stations.
I take no position on whether of not this particular coup was a Good Idea as I just do not follow the day to day realities of Thai politics closely enough to make an informed guess, but the idea of the military acting as a check on democratic civilian government when conducted like this is really not offensive to me. I just see it as different sort of Supreme Court… with tanks.
I know that the West’s struggle against communism in the twentieth century was merely a blip on the historical radar, whereas the struggle of Islam against all other cultures has been a constant of human history for almost 1400 years.
– Peter Saint-Andre
I dislike ‘push’ advertising, no, I hate ‘push’ advertising and go out of my way to avoid products advertised in ways that annoy me, the sort that tries to shove what you are doing aside and force their goddamn product in your face… and a prime example is those web banners advertising animated ‘similes’ that play audible intensely annoying sounds as you are browsing, shouting “Say something! What?” at you. My usual response is to rather pointlessly yell “Piss off!” at my monitor.
I regularly and quixotically write to websites running these accursed advertisements and tell them I will never return as long as they run audible advertisements. One site did agree they were unacceptably intrusive but sadly a couple weeks on they are still running the damn things. Does anyone know of some way to turn off unsolicited sounds in Internet Explorer so I do not have these moronic things inflicted on me when I arrive on some site?
There is an interesting post on ‘Classical Values’ that people who share my view that we are indeed in a war of civilisations might want to see. I may not be a Christian or a Jew but I do know who my enemies are… and are not.
Sign me up for the Oriana Fallaci Society.
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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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