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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Almost uniquely amongst nations, the United States takes upon itself the super-ownership of its subjects even when they are not within the territory over which it claims sovereignty. Even if you live and work outside the USA, you are required to file tax returns and have US tax liabilities. It would appear Americans cannot escape the enveloping grasp of their government and its rules anywhere on this planet.
And yet as soon as you step outside the USA, even though US subjects retain their tax liabilities to the state, it would appear they loose any constitutional protection from its excesses.
Whilst in many ways the USA offers the world a splendid example of defended civil liberties, in so many other ways the freedom Americans assume is theirs is really an illusion.
The state is not your friend.
Tony Blair seems to be trying to make it into that dark pantheon of truly dire British Prime Ministers of the last one hundred years. Although given the procession of craven toadies who make up that list, that is really quite a task he has set himself, he is showing considerable promise of being a real contender.
Still, he has quite a way to go yet. He may have just given away £8.2 BILLION of British taxpayers money in return for nothing whatsoever… and it is nothing as all he got in return was a promise from the weak and politically toothless French government to review their huge farm subsidies in return for the UK actually giving up a huge chunk of money (yes, seriously, the French gave up a promise to do nothing more than review how much they get from the EU)… but he is still in the shadows of those who went before him.
Of course, Blair is minor league in his endless pursuit of surrendering British interests compared to such luminaries as Neville Chamberlain (he after all gave away Czechoslovakia, rather than a few billion quid, in return for another European leader’s empty promises), Ted Heath (The Three Day Week and First Great Betrayal to Europe) and the evil twins of Harold Wilson/James Callaghan (joint award for the astounding destruction of British liberty and economy via wholesale nationalisation),. As in all things, Blair is just… lacking… compared to these guys. But he sure shows willing, you got to say that.
In truth, this may well be a good thing in the long run as it brings that day of some sort of ‘Glorious Revolution’ closer, and for all you history buffs out there, no I do not mean a Dutch backed coup d’etat, I am thinking more along the lines of what Thatcher just hinted at. Let the enemy class squeeze harder and harder and until the nation that constantly votes them into power starts to choke on its entirely democratic stupidity.
Michael Totten, who has clearly been having some interesting times in Lebanon, has a fascinating article in LA Weekly about his first hand experiences attending a Hezbollah event as the ‘Party of God’ is trying to improve its image in the West.
He does a good job of giving a sense of what these people are like and what their ideal vision of the future would be.
It is good to see opposition to the absurdly named ‘Patriot Act’ but as expected, there are many who want to see this monstrous legislation extended.
Looks like the best chance here is for moves to extend the provisions of the act falling to a filibuster and therefore allowing many of the more egregious aspects to expire.
Much was made much of ‘sunsetting’ aspects of the Patriot Act when it was initially passed so one would have hoped Congress would be happy to see those parts of this draconian and intrusive law wither away. However the eternal trouble with giving the state more power is that ’emergency’ provisions inevitably become the norm from that point onwards as those in power are loath to ever accept a reduction in their ability to exert control over people.
When the answer is bloody obvious, that is when!
There is a public investigation by the US Congress underway into a string of disappearances aboard cruise ships.
So let me get his straight, a cruise liner, which is in effect a floating pub in which people regularly drink to excess, has people disappear from it and that is… mysterious?
How about this: they unwisely drink too much, they fall overboard when no one is looking and as a consequence they drown.
And it takes a Congressional investigation to solve that ‘mystery’?
Spending a few days in Turkey and reading their newspapers makes it very clear that the Kemal Ataturk’s vision of a modernising, secular Turkish republic is still very much an ongoing battle. It should also be noted that very few secular Turks seem to be anti-Muslim, they are just pro-secular and as the overwhelming majority of people in Turkey are indeed Muslim (at least nominally), that the whole structure of politics are avowedly secular makes Turkey the front-line on the struggle against Islamist governance.
The news is abuzz with political skirmishes on that subject. Articles in the New Anatolian and Turkish Daily News (no individual article links unfortunately) discuss opposition to some municipalities trying to introduce alcohol serving ‘red light districts’ and banning its sale elsewhere. As many Turks drink raki (Ataturk’s favourite drink in fact), this is not just a matter for tourists.
Other articles tell of five teachers in Mersin being driven from their jobs and moved to different schools after pressure from local imams who were angry they were teaching evolutionary theory, on the grounds they were “destroying the religious beliefs” of children. The teachers’ union in Mersin responded furiously that their members have been punished for engaging in “secular, democratic and fact-based teaching”.
In another article, retired General Hursit Tolon has said that Turkey is “edging away from secularism, which is the first pre-condition of modernism”. He is in the process of forming a new political party to try and combat that drift. He also seems to be saying that “the intervention of the West, the European Union and the USA” are behind many of these problems. Exactly what he means by that I do not know but at least in once sense I suspect he is quite correct, though I do not see a conspiracy at work here (and as I cannot read Turkish, I cannot easily find out precisely what General Tolon means unless some Turkish blogger wants to clue me in) but rather the bull-in-a-china-shop threat springs from the parochial and often simplistic underpinnings of so much of the received wisdom that spews forth from the West.
Obviously the struggle between those who want to see laws enforcing Islamic principles and those who demand Turkey remain a secular state out in the open now. I do not know enough about Turkey to venture an opinion on how strong and coherent the political and social forces are defending secular values but historically the final bulwark against Islamic governance has been the Turkish military, who simply take over via a coup d’etat if it looks like the core principles which Ataturk set out are in danger. The US has a constitution to limit the scope of democratically sanctioned change, but for better or worse the Turks have their military fulfilling that function.
There is nothing wrong with the wishes of the plurality being thwarted if what they want amounts to tyranny, so whilst I deplore the past excesses of the Turkish military, I really have no problem the basic idea of them simply refusing to countenance the end of the secular Turkish republic. Democracy is a tool, nothing more and if a measure of it leads to an increase in liberty (and it usually does), then that is good. But it an excess of it leads to tyranny, no matter how popular that tyranny might be, then some sort of effective check is needed to unalloyed democratic politics. Are the social and political forces of secularism strong enough to survive without that final drastic check on Islamist aspirations? I am certainly not qualified to know but I have not heard that question even being asked by all to many people in the West when the subject of Turkey joining the EU comes up.
Yet should Turkey join the EU, without doubt the democracy fetishists will require the military to entirely step back from any political role and I cannot help wondering if the net result of that will be the inevitable progress towards an impeccably democratic but Islamic Turkish Republic that no longer seperates ‘church’ and state.
Some said much the same about secular Iraqi Ba’athism being a ‘good thing’ because it kept the Islamo-fascists at bay in that country, but although previous Turkish military regimes may have been no respecters of humans rights (to say the least), it does not seem to me that secular Turkey circa 2005 is comparable to secular Iraq under the Ba’athists. Yet do you think there is any chance the EU could see a positive role for the institutions in Turkey which simply will not countenance the development of an Islamic state? Not a chance. The great and good that make up Europe’s political elite are simply not smart or sophisticated enough to see past the simplistic notion “more democracy always good”. And of course given the crazed over-emphasis on the importance of democracy (rather than liberty) in Iraq, much the same can be said of the intelligentsia in the USA.
My brief stay in Turkey and exposure to its English language press gave me a tantalising glimpse of what is going on. However I just do not have enough of a feel for the country to know how things will shake out and it might be interesting to see what the Turkish blogosphere has to say.
Charles Crawford, the British ambassador to Poland, is in hot water for an e-mail which says several entire true things:
He describes the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as “the most stupid, immoral state-subsidised policy in human history, give or take Communism”.
He also ridicules French leader Jacques Chirac for “nagging the British taxpayer to bloat rich French landowners and so pump up food prices in Europe, thereby creating poverty in Africa”.
He also suggests Blair gives EU leaders one hour to make up their minds on the budget because “If anyone says no, we end the meeting. The EU will move on to a complete mess of annual budgets. Basically suits us – we’ll pay less and the rebate stays 100 percent intact”.
Oh, but he was only ‘joking’ of course. Riiiight.
Yes, this guy should indeed be fired from his job as an ambassador… he belongs in 10 Downing Street doing Tony Blair’s job!
A few more pictures from grimy, chaotic, interesting Istanbul…
Turkey… NATO member and on the frontline of the struggle for secularism
Hagia Sophia, now a museum, is a fitting place to ponder the fact civilisations and not just nations sometimes disappear
Perhaps the coolest place in Istanbul is a cistern, built by Justinian! It is unknown why the two statues of medusa are sideways and upside-down
The bazaars and streets are insanely busy and…
… you see the strangest things!
I must say I find the place fascinating, though my travelling companion might use rather different words.
Louise who? Louise Arbour is High Commissioner for Human Rights at the UN, that is who. Now like it or not (and I certainly do not), most people reading this blog pay for the United Nations and so have an interest in what their tax money buys in that cesspool of corruption. One of those things is Louise Arbour’s salary so that she can defend ‘Human Rights’.
Now rather prominently amongst those things commonly felt to be a human right is the right to express yourself, just so long as you are not crying ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre or actively inciting people to violence. Yet when a Danish newspaper prints some cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, sparking protests from Muslims, does she support the right of Danish people to express themselves? Hell no.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour was investigating the matter. “I understand your attitude to the images that appeared in the newspaper,” Arbour wrote the Organization of the Islamic Conference. “I find alarming any behaviors that disregard the beliefs of others. This kind of thing is unacceptable.”
Investigating? If it is ‘unacceptable’, it sounds like she is well past the ‘investigating’ stage as it looks pretty damn clear who she thinks is in the wrong here. Let me tell you what is unacceptable. Pandering to people who want to see force used to ‘punish‘ people for saying things they do not like, that is unacceptable. Claiming to defend human rights on our dime while giving aid and comfort to intolerant bigots, that is unacceptable.
Muslims should feel free to express themselves too. Let them match through the streets and scream until they are blue in the face, calling the entire editorial staff of Jyllands-Posten “kufur bastards” if they like, just so long as they do not call on the state to ‘punish’ them. The state can only punish people for breaking the law and there is nothing illegal about expressing critical views about Islam.
Either Louise Arbour immediately recants her views and accepts the non-negotiability of freedom of the press or she must be sacked. Your tax money pays for her antics, so you can demand her removal.
Tell you Member of Parliament/Congressman/Senator/whoever. Got a blog? Pass it on. Sack Louise Arbour.
Back in November I commented on how some Islamists in Denmark were getting worked up into a lather over some cartoons run by the newspaper Jyllands-Posten in which the prophet Mohammed was portrayed in a less than endearing light.
Well it seems that this story is destined to run and run. People in Srinagar, the largest city in Indian controlled Kashmir, have gone on strike in protest over the Danish cartoons. Now am I the only one who finds this truly bizarre? It is hard to imagine a provincial Danish town, say, Esbjerg, suddenly downing tools to protest a comic saying rude things about Lutheranism in a newspaper in the Indian sub-continent.
Still, it does go to show that there truly is a globalized culture war going on and that is it has nothing to do with the “evil plots of the Bush-Hitler Illuminati”. The fact people in Srinagar even know about the Danish cartoons is remarkable. That the Islamists should have taken the bait Jyllands-Posten dangled in front of them is rather splendid because you cannot win a war, cultural or otherwise, by just defending yourself.
And this is a war we can and must win and, best of all, we get to fight it on ground of our own choosing because what the people of Srinagar have shown is that the enemies of open society can be easily goaded. It is not about ‘social justice’ or ‘economic deprivation’ or any of those smoke screens generally deployed by the Fisks and Galloways of this world when they make their apologias for Islamo-fascism, it is about confronting a culture of intolerance and refusing to tolerate that.
I am out of London for a few days, taking in the sights, sounds and tastes of Istanbul.
They know a thing or two about footie in these parts
Almost every turn brings an interesting skyline
It would appear the gun laws are far less benighted than in poor defenceless Britain
The skylines are really amazing (click for larger image)
Rather cool Turkish police station… no doubt best seen from the outside
I had not realised how dramatic the Bosphorus is… a tremendously busy sea-lane running right through the centre of a large city is quite something to behold
The sense that the city revolves around the sea is everywhere. There are so many rod fishermen that my fanciful head started having images of ancient phalanxes (click for larger image)
And just to ensure no one thinks this report from Istanbul is being posted by an impostor… yes, the city is well stocked with rather fine ladies My first impressions of Istanbul are that it is dirty, chaotic, its traffic verges on homicidal, the food is great, people seem helpful and friendly. In short, simply splendid!
Britain’s government surrenders billions of our money to the EU in return for… nothing much… and that has left the UK government ‘isolated’ because more was not surrendered.
The gall of the Gauls at insisting Britain’s taxpayers stump up even more when they are massively greater beneficiaries of the EU’s largess than the UK is breathtaking but far from surprising.
Britain is not even nearly isolated enough from the EU for my taste.
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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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