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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It is often said that free speech does not extend to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre. Likewise, actually incitement to violence within the context of civil society is not a matter of free speech at all, but is rather a matter pertaining to violence. In a genuinely free and reasonable society, a category in which I would not include Britain, to betray one’s ignorance by loudly declaring that “All Pakis and Niggers smell bad and should go back where they came from”, should be regarded as legitimate free speech (and of course the answer should be “What? You want me to go back to Croydon?”). Likewise any rather more aggressive replies questioning the racist’s intellect, honour and rationality should be likewise be regarded as legitimate free speech.
However to call for the murder of members of those ethnic groups is quite a different matter. And so when the likes of Al Muhajiroun, the much publicised Islamic organisation active in Britain, are found to be again and again to be encouraging the straightforward murder of civilians in various parts of the world, the point of tolerance should long have been passed. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the self-styled “emir” of Al Muhajiroun publically praised suicide bomber Asif Mohammed Hanif and would-be suicide bomber Omar Khan Sharif, both UK passport holders who were posing as ‘peace activists’:
These two brothers have drawn a divine road map, one which is drawn in blood. We pray to God to accept one brother as a martyr. I am very proud of the fact that the Muslims grow closer everyday, that the Muslim land is one land and there is no more nationalism or Arabism.”
As David Carr previously mentioned, that these lunatics came from Britain’s Muslim community is not an insignificant detail. That Al Muhajiroun is not setting bombs off here in London should not disguise the fact that just as the people in the USA who gave money to pro-IRA fund raisers in the United States were guilty of financing the murder of innocent civilians, Al Muhajiroun is responsible for the slaughter of civilians in Israel by giving aid and comfort to the people who are physically doing the murders.
Just as the Irish Republican terrorists who far from killing civilians as ‘collateral’ damage to an attack on a military target, actually targeted civilians for mass murder, the Islamic terrorists supported by Al Muhajiroun’s rhetoric, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and their ilk, actually target pizza parlours and nightclubs, rather than the Israeli army or state.
Of course, some will claim that as these acts happen outside Britain, there is no grounds for doing anything. What I wonder would they think of Al Muhajiroun’s British-born lawyer Anjem Choudary’s remarks quoted in today’s Daily Express (print edition) in which he encourages Muslims from overseas to come to Britain and attack targets here? Given that these ‘religious men’ have signally failed to criticise the intentional slaughter of civilians in Israel, I rather doubt any ‘martyrs’ heeding this call will be going after a well protected British military target… more likely we can expect a suicide bomb attack on Oxford Street when it is crowded with people shopping.
I would urge members of the Muslim community in Britain who regard these people as lunatics that do them a great disservice to move heaven and earth to disassociate themselves with these people. That the British government tolerates a group such as Al Muhajiroun in our midst is a measure of the decadence at the core of the state.
We are having various server problems which are making it difficult for us to post articles. It also seems to be causing error messages when people try to leave comments.
Unfortunately the resolution of these difficulties may take a while due to circumstances beyond our control.
Just a brief comment regarding the Dixie Chicks. As no one has been threatening to sling their boney arses in jail, I do rather think the ‘fighting against censorship’ and ‘striking a blow for free speech’ meme that is floating around is a bit odd.
They freely said what they wanted, as have the people who freely slagged them off for doing so… that they may have suffered negative commercial consequences for this entirely fair use of their gobs is neither here nor there regarding their right to sound off.
That we have the liberty to speak our minds is vital and an objective right, the absence of which means tyranny pure and simple… but that does not always make it a good idea. You may think your boss is a stupid malodorous clown, and you cannot be sent to jail for saying that to him whilst the entire office listens, however…
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses,
And all the king’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
– Traditional English rhyme
Vladimir Putin, the hero of Chechnya, has in essence told Tony Blair to take his attempt to paper over the disagreements regarding Iraq, now that the allied takeover is a fait accomplis , and stick it where the sun does not shine.
Moreover, the French, Germans and Belgians are going to continue to work towards a new ‘European’ alternative to NATO aimed at reducing US influence, whilst all the time keeping a straight face and claiming they have no hostility to the USA, of course.
This is all truly excellent news.
Now whilst it was clear that Tony Blair was willing to go a long way in the interests of a return to the ante-bellum political status of seeming harmony with ‘Europe’, the USA is highly unlikely to have much desire to take such a conciliatory position. Blair however was obviously willing to let slide the fact the French and Russians hurt him quite badly politically by scuppering his attempts to get a UN imprimatur for the liberation of Iraq.
My big worry post-Iraq was that the Axis of Weasels and their Russian cohort, having failed in their diplomatic objectives of safeguarding their economic sweetheart deals with the Ba’athists in Iraq and pandering to domestic anti-Americanism, would avoid paying a price for these positions. I thought the key to their ‘damage limitation’ would be to play on Tony Blair’s manifest desire to “be at the centre of Europe” whilst at the same time remaining best buddies with the United States in his ‘warrior prince’ role.
They would use this huge psychological weak spot to get Blair back on-side and eager to be a ‘Good European’, leveraging the fact the US manifestly ‘owes Tony a big one’ to mitigate any political and economic cost to them of their placing the wealth of the Elf Aquitaine Oil company and its Russian counterparts over the lives of Iraqis living under Ba’athism, not to mention US geo-political interests.
Well I am delighted to see that are not nearly such devious political operators as it is so often claimed. Putin in particular continues to confirm my views far from being the wily fox that pundits describe; he is in fact a true dunce with delusions of his own importance as he presides over a basket case economy with an imploding society that is drinking itself to death on homemade vodka.
That Tony Blair’s world view has received such a public kick in the bollocks from the people who should logically need his good will and support at this point in time is…simply splendid news. It may even start to break through the cloying desire in the Prime Minister’s head for logic-free €uro-harmony, that the world changed forever on September 11th 2001. He can stay with the dynamic Americans and spend his political capital wisely or he can piss it away with sclerotic Old Europe. He cannot do both and maybe even he will start to see that now as he heads back from Russia with his tail between his legs.
We may be moving servers as soon as tonight (or if not, hopefully tomorrow), so we may have a few hiccups in Samizdata.net availability.
Also, our comments seem to be having a severe case of deja vu (multiple entries) at the moment. As we are bit server lagged, do not keep pressing ‘Post’ when adding comments or we will get your pearls of wisdom again…and again…and again.
On April 23rd, the Daily Kos had an article called Bringing libertarians into the Dem fold. In it, the author proposes:
I have argued for the past year that libertarians (with a small “L”) have a more natural home in the modern Democratic Party than with the GOP.
He goes on to describe how the Democratic party can leverage Republican abridgements of civil liberties to show libertarians that the Democratic party is their natural home, and that it is in fact ‘The party of personal liberty’.
Demonstrating at least a partial grasp of the difficulties of selling this notion to libertarians, he concedes that for this to have any chance whatsoever to work, the party of Charles Schumer and Joseph Lieberman is going to have to abandon its position of progressively abridging the right to keep and bear arms.
Although I left a long comment about the article on the Daily Kos, and mentioned that the idea of trying to appeal to ‘the other side’ was something I also had views on, there are a few interesting things about this that make it clear to me why Daily Kos does not understand the nature of the pool they are fishing in. Whilst the author understands the right to bear arms issue as being directly related to the issue of personal liberty, he also clearly sees the great majority of other things the Democratic Party does as being either neutral or unrelated to maters of personal liberty and thus not being ‘deal breakers’ in his proposed hand of friendship to libertarians.
For example, when he wrote about how the Republicans have consistently opposed business regulation, admiringly quoting an article elsewhere decrying GOP attempts to deregulate economic matters, presumably Daily Kos thinks that having the state regulating the control of several means of production is unrelated to issues of personal liberty. Perhaps in his eyes anyone who runs a business is not a person-who-has-liberty but rather some sort of collective entity and creature of the polis to whom issues of liberty are simply not germane. Perhaps this is a product of the ‘them and us’ class warrior view of the world found amongst the statist mainstream on both left and right.
And when he writes about how backs Wesley Clark as a Democratic candidate for President to run against Bush:
As everyone here already knows, he’s my favorite in this race. He’s solid on national security, well-spoken, presidential, pro-choice, pro-gun, pro-affirmative action, anti-PATRIOT Act, and believes strongly that the government should provide for the less fortunate amongst us.
I read that and when I hit the bit about ‘pro-affirmative action’ I hear the sound of screeching brakes. Now whilst I may think ‘affirmative action’ (I prefer to use the term ‘anti-white and anti-asian male state mandated discrimination’) is not materially different morally to apartheid, the fascinating thing here is that Daily Kos obviously does not even see this as an individual liberty issue! So when a specific individual white or asian man does not get a job because of a force backed state law that requires a quota of women and certain favoured ethnic groups to be hired, presumably his personal liberty, and the liberty of the owner of the company offering the job, is simply not an issue of ‘personal liberty’ at all.
Then of course we have the ‘government should provide for the less fortunate amongst us’ remark, which to most libertarians is tantamount to an apologia for proxy mugging at gunpoint. Also implicit in this is the hilarious notion (to a libertarian) that the Republicans do not take money at gunpoint from various ‘fortunate’ sections of society to give to the ‘less fortunate’… and that would be, bad, presumably. Would anyone care to list the number of violence backed redistributive ‘welfare’ acts signed into law by Republican law makers in, say, the last 30 years? Please use no more than 100,000 words.
What we have here is a fundamental failure to understand that what separates Republicans and Democrats is mostly a matter of policies within a largely shared meta-context (the framework within which one sees the world)… that is to say the Elephants and Donkeys both pretty much agree on the fact the state exist to ‘do stuff’ beyond keeping the barbarians from the gate and discouraging riots. The language and emphasis may be slightly different (forms of educational conscription with the tagline “No child left behind”… media control legislation described as “Fairness”… etc.), but the congress exist to do much the same sort of thing for both parties, just that whoever is their favoured group should have their snouts deeper in the trough.
Yet almost everything the Dems or Republicans do, beyond a narrow range of legitimate functions that can be counted on the fingers of one hand, are regarded as grievous abridgements of ‘personal liberty issues’ by almost all libertarians. That Democrats like Daily Kos cannot see that it is at the level of axioms and meta-context that libertarians disagree with them, not mere policies is astonishing. Sure, the absurdly named ‘Patriot Act’ is a monstrous abridgement of civil liberty, but the idea that this Republican law should make the Democrats more attractive to libertarians indicates just how little understanding there is of what makes libertarians think the way they do.
Of course, ‘libertarian’ is a broad term, as divisions on the war against the Ba’athist regime in Iraq have demonstrated, and many libertarians in the USA do indeed vote GOP on the grounds they would rather be ruled by the lesser evil (which is to say they vote against the Democrats rather than for the Republicans). But the fact so many people do not vote at all suggests to me that a large proportion say “a plague on both your houses”, and will continue to do so. If folks like Daily Kos realised the sort of disdain libertarians have for matters most in the statist ‘main stream’ would consider beyond debate, I suspect the hand of friendship from the Daily Kos would be withdrawn very quickly indeed for fear it might get cut off with an axe.
Democratic Party talent scout looking for libertarians
On this day in 1945, Benito Mussolini paid ‘the price of tyrants’ and became an interesting public ornament for a while.
As we hope to be moving to a new server some time soon (hopefully very soon), Samizdata.net may be unavailable for a short time during the DNS switch over.
Although I was always a supporter of the armed liberation of Iraq primarily on the grounds that overthrowing a tyranny is justification in and of itself, I have always been highly sceptical of the ostensible reasons quoted by the US and UK governments.
Nevertheless, I still supported the actions even if the reasons were suspect. Although sometimes a war may amount to the lesser evil smashing the greater evil, that is not reasonable grounds for opposing the overthrow of the greater evil… for example I was quite happy to support the ghastly communist Vietnamese regime’s invasion of Cambodia and their overthrow of the utterly demonic Khmer Rouge regime, so supporting a US/UK ouster of Ba’athist Socialism is a no-brainer.
I am probable-to-puzzled on the WMD issue: I suspect they do indeed exist but I suppose only time will tell. But on the much trumpeted Iraqi secular Ba’athism – Islamic fundamentalist Al Qaeda link however, I have been scornfully dismissive.
It would seem I was quite wrong. It looks like the Saddam Hussain – Osama bin Laden link was indeed true!
To all intents and purposes, the war has been over for a few days now, bar the shouting. Oh sure, incidents like the sabotage of the arms dump earlier today are going to be a problem for quite some time to come, so it is not exactly ‘Miller Time’ just yet, and I fully expect a few ‘messy days’ ahead. The war, however, is over and the police action is beginning.
What I am interested in is, from a purely military point of view, what went right and what went wrong? Which weapons performed as advertised and which did not? Which systems and organisations did better than expected and which did worse? Was ‘shock and awe’ a Terrible Swift Sword or a damp squib… or bit of artful misdirection? Can we start trying to pick through the propaganda and extract the signal from the noise, or is it still too soon?
In short… it is time for those who are interested in such things to start trying to figure out what the text books are going to say about this war in 5 years time. For example, there is some interesting stuff on Intel Dump, such as some discussion of the 11th Aviation Regiment’s repulse near Baghdad. As significant military set backs like that were so rare, the ones that happened will no doubts be analyzed to the point of obsession. Similarly there have been some spectacular images of just how tough the A-10 Warthog proved to be even after a severe pounding.
Hard as nails… the aircraft is pretty tough too
So… who has some good links to reports to contribute? Leave a comment!
I find it fascinating to see which blog posts generate passionate interest and a deluge of comments.
Often it is articles that I expect will shuffle down Samizdata.net’s page largely un-remarked before falling into the archives which turn out to be the ones greeted with clarion calls and angry-villagers-waving-torches, whereas some of what I think are ‘dynamite articles’ generate little more that a subdued murmur and the occasional burp.
Once again Australians are celebrating ANZAC Day. It seems only yesterday I was writing about it here on this blog but another year goes by and yet again, British and Australian soldiers are on Middle Eastern soil together.
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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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