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.
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It is splendid news that the trapped Russian submariners have been rescued from the dreadful fate that overtook the Kursk a few years ago. Fortunately the Russians did not stand on their pride as they did the last time they suffered a sub-aquatic disaster. This time they seem to have fairly quickly accepted the help that was offered to them by many navies around the world.
Although the Royal Navy’s robotic sub was the prime mover of this rescue, it was really a very international effort with the USA and Japan providing vital assistance in the rescue. Hopefully this more enlightened approach by the Russian government and military authorities admitting they could not effect the rescue themselves is a sign of institutional change at the top, but the cynic in me wonders if it was not just a domestic political calculation that the embarrassment at having to have their submariners rescued by Western naval personnel represented less political damage than another scene on the television of angry family members on the dockside grieving over their dead sons.
The government’s plans to impose ID cards on British people get wobblier by the day and at last they seem to realise that there is no point in pretending otherwise. Nevertheless, it is important for everyone to remember who cast their votes in Parliament and thereby allowed us to get this close to a civil liberties calamity in the first place. We are by no means in the clear yet but it does seem that things are going our way to some extent and so it is important to kick and stamp on this beast hard whilst it is down.
If we are to avoid this issue coming back to haunt us again and again, we need to make sure that forgiveness is left for the afterlife and use the voting record to MPs who voted in favour at any time to question their fundamental morality and trustworthiness, regardless of party. It is essential not just now but in the foreseeable future to make this issue as fraught and unpleasant as possible for all concerned. If we can make ‘the ID cards issue’ synonymous with political calamity, methinks politicos might just avoid the issue in favour of lower hanging fruit.
Home Office minister Hazel Blears has met with certain Muslim leaders and some rather ‘interesting’ things have emerged. In order to assuage Muslim fears, she has said that racial profiling will not be used and all stop-and-searches will ‘intelligence led’.
So a nervous looking Asian man with a backpack who is wandering around on the London Underground will not be examined more closely because there might be no special intelligence? Hopefully that is not what Ms. Blears means, though I am not really sure what she does mean.
Now on one level, racial profiling can actually be dangerous if that criterion is over-emphasised: Muslims are not a race and although somewhat unlikely, a blonde haired blue eyed Muslim convert could indeed be a potential suicide bomber. Yet the reality is that the vast majority of Muslims in Britain are non-white and logic therefore indicates that in order to maximise the effectiveness of scarce resources, a degree of racial profiling in entirely appropriate. In fact, contrary to the Home Office Ministers claims, Ian Johnston of the British Transport Police has made no bones about the fact his officers intend to make race one of the criterion they use when picking people to examine closer, noting: “We should not bottle out over this. We should not waste time searching old white ladies”. Very sensible.
A news segment on television this evening (I think it was SkyOne but I am not sure) even spoke with an Asian man on the London Underground with a backpack who was not unsympathetic to the fact he likely to be searched given the prevailing circumstances. Perhaps that is not so surprising as he is just as much at risk as anyone else if a bomb goes off on his train. Yet I cannot help wondering of this government really grasps the gravity of the situation and how attitude really need to change.
Another interesting and all too expected thing to come out if this meeting with Muslim leaders in Britain is their annoyance that the government will not discuss foreign policy and Iraq. This seems to answer the question I asked earlier if there are any really moderate Muslim ‘leaders’ in Britain. The fact they cannot see how the terrorist acts London, far from making it necessary for the government to discuss foreign policy with the leaders of the very community from which the terrorist have sprung, it make its impossible for them to do so or the terrorist attacks will have succeeded in the most clear cut way possible, inviting only more of the same any time the UK decides to do something that displeases some community.
Rather encouragingly, on the same news programme there was a Muslim ‘activist’ whose name I wish I had caught (was anyone else watching SkyNews?) who said it was a waste of time for Hazel Blears to talk to a bunch of largely foreign born religious leaders in Britain whose mosques had done exactly nothing to combat the extremist memes since July 7th. Judging from his remarks, it is well past time that British Muslims take a hard look at who their purported leaders are and decide if these are the people they really want speaking in their name.
Piracy in the Straits of Malacca has been a serious problem for many years now and shipping companies have grown tired of waiting for governments in the region to do something effective to stamp it out.
So they are hiring private companies to do it instead. Sounds like an exciting line of work.
Attempts to use the Kelo ’eminent domain’ ruling to take property in New Hampshire from US Supreme Court Justice David Souter have now been extended to trying to do the same to Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
This is splendid but maybe it would be good to extend this to Senators and Congressmen and particularly much lower level local politicians who collude with property developers. Some of these people often have property outside the jurisdiction they live in (and thus maybe be vulnerable to politically or personally motivated grudges from other elected representatives).
The important thing is to make as many members of the political class uneasy that they could be targeted. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Forgive me if I am not breaking out the champagne just yet at the announcement that the ethnic collectivists of the IRA have declared their ‘armed campaign is over’. Of course the fact their ‘decommissioning’ of arms will take place in private, in marked contrast to the indecent haste with which the UK government has started very publicly ripping down its fortifications, just conforms my view that Blair is a credulous fool.
Contrary to the woolly impression some of the media’s dafter talking heads are giving (I really must stop watching early morning TV, bad for the blood pressure), the IRA is not disbanding and unless I see large piles of semtex being burned in front of Stormont, I very much doubt anything more than a token number of already unserviceable weapons and expired explosives will be put beyond their reach as an organisation.
I may not be a huge fan of the ethnic collectivists of the DUP either, but they are the ones who seem to me to be exhibiting the most appropriate amount of continuing distain for Sinn Fein/IRA and so are offering only highly contingent acknowledgement of this latest ‘breakthrough’.
My guess is there is a lot less to this that meets the eye. Like the song says: “Don’t believe the hype.”
Police have now arrested all four of the would-be suicide bombers who attempted a second round of terrorist mass murders in London on the 21st July. This is splendid news. Kudos also to Italian police who picked up one of the targets in Rome.
People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people
Oh I am soooo up for this…
Peak Talk has the perfect summation of the tragic affair of the murder of Dutch film maker Theo Van Gogh by a Muslim fanatic.
Although they have come late to this story, The Times has also noted Scott Burgess’ TKO of the Guardian regarding their employment of an Islamic extremists and subsequent firing of him once the story came to light.
It is a pity The Times did not also pick up on the bad grace in which The Guardian took their lumps, what with their snarky no-by-line remarks about how “Scott Burgess, a blogger from New Orleans who recently moved to London, spends his time indoors posting repeated attacks on the Guardian”, recalling the “guys in pyjamas” sneer made by someone at CBS following a similar humiliating mauling they received at the hands of the blogosphere. If ever you need a clear indication you have landed a painful blow against a MSM target, you have but to look for a petulant ad hominim response.
Moreover, it is fascinating how The Guardian inaccurately (follow first link to Media Guardian) attributes this incident breaking into the mainstream media down to “rightwing US bloggers” when the truth is that whilst Scott Burgess (an American living in London) sounded the charge, he was rapidly followed by Labour supporting British blog Harry’s Place and ourselves (no great fans of the Tory party either), to name but two of many largely UK based blogs. The Guardian’s take on this is therefore either shoddy reporting or a case of seeing what you choose to see.
Still, nice to see that the broadsheet newspapers do not feel any need to close ranks over this story.
To run from armed police who are shouting at you (rather than shooting at you) at any time is an extremely bad idea… to do so at a time like this in London is utter madness.
Anyone running from armed cops who have challenged them first in London today should expect to get shot dead given the clear and present danger we are in… but that does not makes this any less of a horror. If Jean Charles de Menezes just reacted idiotically to the situation he found himself in, that does not mean we should feel distain for him.
We really need to know exactly what happened and why, but shooting a man dead who is suspected of being a suicide bomber and who is running away and trying to board a train(!) when being called on to stop is not the incorrect response. It was a tragedy of execution (in ever sense of the word) but not an incorrect policy.
It appears that the ‘bomber’ who was shot by the police yesterday was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is horrendous news.
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