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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After much poking around, I cannot find any particular significance about 11 Sept 1970 that Natalie was wondering about. The dates of any significance I found were:
On 6 September 1970 the PFLP carried out one of the most memorable hijackings in history prior to September 11 2001. This was the simultaneous hijack to Jordan of a Swissair DC-8 and a TWA 707.
On 12 September, this was followd by the hijacking of a BOAC VC-10. All aircraft were forced to land at Dawson Field, outside Amman. At the same time another group of PFLP hijackers hijacked a Pan American 747 to Cairo and blew it up there. The Jordanians were deeply divided on what to do about the hijackers. The day after the destruction of the hijacked planes King Hussein declared martial law and sacked his pro-Palestinian prime minister.
As far as I can figure, it was 14 September when it all finally went horribly pear shaped. The Jordanian army and Palestinians directly came to blows when the Jordanians attacked the Palestinian base at Zarqa.
On the 19 September, Palestine Liberation Army and regular Syrian army armoured units invaded northern Jordan, driving towards Amman, with Arafat declared northern Jordan a ‘liberated area’. After initially loosing ground, the very professional Jordanian army counter-attacked the Syrian/PLA forces and pushed them back.
On 22 September an Arab League delegation arrived in Amman to broker a deal between the Jordanians and Palestinians.
On 24 September (or 25 Sept in one accounts I found) no sooner had the Arab delegates returned to Cairo to announce a political deal than Arafat rejected the settlement and renews his calls for the overthrow of the Jordanian Hashemite monarchy (in spite of the fact the Jordanian Army was now starting to get the upper hand throughout the country).
On 27 September King Hussein arrived in Cairo for more peace negotiations with Arafat. These came to nothing and eventually Arafat’s forces were finally completely crushed and ejected from Jordan by July 1971.
Does any one else know if there was anything special about September 11 1970 that I might have missed? If so, e-mail and tell us.
The demented Hollywood Investigator reports on the fact that due to the marvels of modern technology, Britany Spears has been ‘upgraded’. As you can see in the pictures, they are talking about her, ahem, microphones.
I wonder if David Deutsch is aware of Miss Spears’ less well known talents in the field of Quantum Theory?
There is an interesting piece on the Afgha website about US and British Special Forces moving around Kandahar openly and the curious rather than hostile reaction of the local Pashtun population.
I have had a wave of interesting e-mails from Samizdata.net readers about the fallacious Jonah Goldberg missive ‘Freedom Kills’ and my reply to it. Whilst there were a variety of incoming views on the matter, it does seem everyone is queuing around the block with their baseball bats eager to take a swing at the dangling Goldberg piñata.
Let me address just two of the e-mails. Sarah Walker from New Zealand writes (excerpt):
The way I see it, you let him off easy. Rather than just pointing out his glaring errors, you need to emphasize that what he is objecting to is the libertarian antipathy to civic coercion and his implicit authoritarianism. Libertarians such as myself who take the rational ‘fallibilism’ approach, think that whilst truth is objective, it is also conjectural, therefore realise the foolishness of imposing by force what can only ever be conjecture. That is ‘cultural’ libertarianism. It means that we do not accept every demented belief just because it makes us feel good, merely that we reject dogmatism and its political manifestations, such as conservatism and socialism. A libertarian may say ‘if you want to go join the Taliban/become a Christian/believe the moon is made of cheese, I am not going to stop you doing that’, yet that is not the same as saying ‘because all ideologies are the same’. I think the Taliban are evil tyrants, that Christianity is irrational superstition and that the moon is not made of cheese, and I will strongly argue my views, ridiculing the Taliban, Christianity and the idea of cheddar cheese moons. Yet I have no problem tolerating these idiotic beliefs in others (unless they intend to do violence to me) even though I believe I am correct and they are not.
Mark Wells similarly bristles at the Goldberg article but he also takes issue with one of my remarks in which I said “Almost everything [Goldberg] ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis”. Mark writes (excerpt):
Maybe not. What Mr. Goldberg calls “find[ing] whichever creed or ideology fits us best” seems to be common among libertarians: evaluating creeds and ideologies and finding one (or a combination of several) that fits our experience, instead of just committing to one at random. “You want to be a ‘Buddhist for Jesus’? Sure, mix and match, man; we don’t care.” His objection is not to moral relativism; it’s to independent thought that cuts across the boundaries of tradition. Goldberg makes this clear in his attack on Nick Gillespie: Gillespie keeps going beyond [disdain for identity politics], and argues that people should be able to be whatever they want.” What does Goldberg think they should be able to be? Why can’t one be, for example, a ‘Buddhist for Jesus’? In Goldberg’s analysis, it’s not because he believes there’s a logical contradiction in such a worldview but because he thinks it’s disloyal. Different traditions ought to remain separate, so as to spare people like Goldberg the trouble of thinking about them. Goldberg writes: There are no universal truths or even group truths (i.e., the authority of tradition, patriotism, etc.)–only personal ones.” If Goldberg’s idea of a ‘universal truth’ is the authority of tradition or patriotism on a grand scale, many libertarians would indeed reject it.
I think both Sarah and Mark make good points even if not all libertarians would subscribe to all their views (many libertarians are indeed Christians). One of the reasons I said “Almost everything he ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis” [emphasis added] is that he is correct about a few things but grossly misinterprets what they actually mean. Libertarians do not view all ideologies as equal, however they take a non-dogmatic approach (at least the Popperians like Sarah do, pace Ayn) and as free thinkers are willing to examine a wider variety of cultural influences than Goldberg seems to think is healthy, seeing as we view choice as having intrinsic value. For example when Goldberg claims:
Virginia Postrel can write triumphantly that the market allows Americans to spend $8 billion on porn and $3 billion at Christian bookstores, because she isn’t willing to say that one is any better, or any worse, than the other.
Yet it is clear Virginia Postrel is indeed making a judgement, just not the particular one that Goldberg thinks is at issue. What she is saying simply does not pertain to either Christianity or porn and contrary to what Goldberg thinks, that is far from being a lack of “willing[ness] to say that one is any better, or any worse, than the other.” Au contraire, Jonah. I do not know Virginia Postrel personally yet it is abundantly clear what she means. It is a clear statement that what is of value here is not the porn or the Christian books but the value of a society based around having THE CHOICE. It’s that whole liberty thing again.
Interesting predictions from both Jay Zilber and Glenn at Instapundit that Israel is setting the stage for the Jordanian reoccupation of the West Bank as the means by which Israel can avoid becoming host to what is well on the way to becoming a permanent state of Palestinian Intifada.
It is certainly a fascinating idea but I have one big question for these two esteemed blogpundits… what on earth is in it for Jordan? It seems to me that the Hashemites would have to be out of their minds to want to take on the responsibility for several million pissed off, radicalised, impoverished Palestinians.
Do not forget that in 1970-71 the Bedouin Jordanian Army forcefully crushed the PFLP after years of Palestinian agitation and violence, ejecting them from Northern Jordan at bayonet point (and leading to the creation of ‘Black September’). Do they really want to go through all of that again? Somehow I doubt it.
Jonah Goldberg over on National Review Online writes in Freedom Kills, one of the least informed articles about libertarianism I have read in a long time. Frankly I have read better from the ghastly Noam Chomsky, which is just about the biggest insult I have written in a very long time. The sheer depth of his complete and utter lack of understanding of what underpins libertarianism is summed up thus in two paragraphs:
In this sense, cultural libertarians are less bigoted than their liberal cousins. The libertarians think all ideologies – so long as there’s no governmental component – are equal.
Huh? So let me get this straight. People who are profoundly influenced by Ayn Rand or Karl Popper or Murray Rothbard or Hans-Hermann Hoppe et al, think all ideologies are the same? Has this guy ever actually met a libertarian in real life? What breathtaking ignorance of the subject about which he opines. If anything, libertarians only think all non-libertarian ideologies are the same in so far as they reject them as just so much morally subjective crap. Libertarians are the very antithesis of what he calls ‘liberals’ in that respect, hardly what he sneeringly calls “cousins”.
But of course, the flip side of this is that cultural libertarianism is essentially a form of arrogant nihilism. There are no universal truths or even group truths (i.e., the authority of tradition, patriotism, etc.) � only personal ones. According to cultural libertarianism, we should all start believing in absolutely nothing, until we find whichever creed or ideology fits us best. We can pick from across the vast menu of human diversity – from all religions and cultures, real and imagined � until we find one that fits our own personal preferences.
Now due to the fact libertarianism comes in many hyphenated forms, it is risky to generalize about ‘what all libertarians think’, but overwhelmingly they operate on the basis of objective epistemology (look it up, Jonah), typically of the Randian or Popperian type. As a consequence they strongly advocate objective morality as the only basis for legitimacy, rather than subjective prejudice-based state centred coercion of the sort Goldberg seems to think holds American culture together. If you hold that morality can only be valid on the basis of objective knowledge, how can we also be “believing in absolutely nothing , until we find whichever creed or ideology fits us best”? Almost everything he ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis.
At one point Goldberg says about himself “if I were smarter and more patient […]”, well Jonah, there is little chance any libertarian reading your incoherent rant would have thought otherwise on either point. Try actually reading Ethics of Liberty first (gawd knows there is enough about Rothbard to criticise, just not the on the grounds Goldberg does).
Addendum: Will Wilkinson on the enigmatically named The Fly Bottle also has no less that two excellent skewerings of the ignorant Mr. Goldberg’s dismal offering.
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Thanks (sort of) to Hannah Biel for pointing me at the Goldberg article. I have been grinding my teeth as a result for the last few hours.
Tim Blair has written an utterly hilarious piece about a loopy article in the Sydney Morning Herald that contends that the appeal of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings is fundamentally racist. Chris Henning writes
Harry and the hobbits, with their takeaway racism, offer the same comfort for the whole world: join our tribe, be special with us, despise our subhumans.
To which Tim Blair replies
Which is almost exactly what my eight-year-old niece told me after she’d read her first Potter book. “I feel better now about the destruction of my community, Uncle Timmy,” she said. “Now can we please go out and kill some Jews? Please, Uncle Timmy! You promised!”
Outstanding. Read the whole of Blair’s article, it had me howling with mirth.
And thus, when the pseudo-democratic authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin, notable for crushing the free press in Russia, come out in favour of gun-control (victim disarmament) advocates in America, it becomes clear that supporters of well armed liberty are well and truly on the right track. According to World Net Daily, our liberty loving Russian ‘friends’ have done exactly that
Russia supports restrictions on U.S. gun ownership, according to official sources, pointing out that after the events of Sept. 11 gun sales in the United States increased. The blame for increased gun sales, according to Moscow and anti-gun activists, lies with gun manufacturers. “American firearms manufacturers saw their chance at profiting from the tragedy of people scared of threats from international terrorists,” Moscow declared. Asserting that “a nationwide campaign has been launched to advertise pistols and guns,” Moscow referred to a recent press conference held to “draw attention to gun makers’ marketing efforts.” The event included participation by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., and Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice. The statements were reported by the Voice of Russia World Service, the official broadcasting service of the Russian government.
I can only assume that this is actually a plot by unknown well meaning NRA sympathisers within the Russian establishment, because I can hardly imagine a better way of encouraging a surge in US civilian gun acquisition than ‘The Official Russian State Media does not want you to own weapons’. Superb. Well done, Vlad. I knew you were on our side really.
Our most recent new link is the wonderfully named Recovering Liberal. The term ‘liberal’ obviously being used in it’s North American sense (i.e. illiberal). The subtitle is a particular delight: sacred cow slaughterhouse. Excellent. At first glance this blog seems more neo-conservative that libertarian but is a good read nonetheless. After all, us capitalists gotta stick together!
Whilst on the subject of interestingly named blogs, I would be interested to hear from readers what blog titles tickle their fancy (regardless of content).
My favourites are Opinionated Bastard, Fevered Rants and, possibly the best, Where HipHop meets Libertarianism.
What do you think?
Addendum: Yikes. What could I have been thinking? How can I write about interestingly named blogs without a tip of the hat to The Edge of England’s Sword and The Fly Bottle, both of whom we are already linked to (see side bar).
There is a good article by Douglas Carey called Wartime’s Lost Liberties over on the Ludwig von Mises Institute site.
Many others say that any lost liberties will be restored once the war is past us, or once terrorism has been eradicated. Although history has shown us that the most egregious laws and orders are usually rescinded eventually, each bold step by the government has led to even bolder steps in the future.
That is the trouble with laws: they are easy to pass but hard to repeal. One merely has to look at the idiotic British Pub Licensing Laws, introduced as a ‘temporary measure’ to curtail alcohol related absenteeism in the factories during World War I. They are still on the books today.
Samizdata reader Kate Redmond wrote in pointing out that view similar to mine regarding the dismal Taliban member John Walker are appearing beyond blogland. Kate writes
I have finally started to see some vaguely similar sentiments in the mainstream press. I don’t know if you saw this article by Mark Steyn this
week:
I’m not in favour of trying him for treason: Alan Dershowitz and the other high-rent lawyers are already salivating over the possibility of a two-year circus with attendant book deals and TV movies. But there is another way: on page four of John Walker’s US passport, it states that any American who enlists in a foreign army automatically loses his citizenship. Mr Walker wants to be Abdul Hamid: Mr Bush should honour his wishes. Let us leave him to the Northern Alliance and let his San Francisco fancypants lawyers petition to appear before the Kabul bar, if there is one. It would, surely, be grossly discriminatory to subject Mr Hamid to non-Islamic justice.
Actually, what it says in my U.S. passport is that, Under certain circumstances, you may lose your U.S. citizenship by performing, voluntarily and with the intention to relinquish U.S. citizenship, any of the following acts: […] (3) serving in the armed forces of a foreign state
So, I guess the crux of the matter for Steyn’s argument is whether Walker intended to renounce his citizenship. I’m not certain that it’s not possible to serve in a foreign army without losing one’s citizenship. I believe I’ve heard of American citizens who have served in the Israeli army and I know Swiss-U.S. dual citizens who almost certainly do their mandatory Swiss military service.
Similarly many US citizens served with the British military prior to America’s entry into WWII, notably the pilots who flew for the RAF during the Battle of Britain. There were also US ‘Internationals’ with the Croatian HV and HVO during the recent Balkan Wars and certainly the State Department never made any attempt to go after them. I think the ‘certain circumstances’ quoted above is intentional legal wiggle room, thus it very much depends on exactly whose military you have joined. Joining the French Legion Étranger is not likely to get people hopping up and down (though in reality most US members of the LÉ claim to be ‘Canadian’) but signing on for a jaunt with North Korea, toting a Kalashnokov with the Cubans or becoming Abdul Hamid and joining the Taliban is a rather different matter.
I must say the prospect of the likes of Alan Dershowitz turning John Walker into some cause célèbre is quite an unpleasant thought and I love Mark Steyn’s suggestion on that matter. On the contention that anything that thwarts Alan Dershowitz must surely be in the national interest, Walker should loose his citizenship on that basis alone.
I have already had some peeved e-mails saying I am overstating things by calling Britain a Police State. Well, just yesterday Britain agreed to extradition to any country in the European ‘Union’ simply on the order of a foreign judge or magistrate. On nothing more than their say so that the person in question is a suspect in some crime, you can find yourself arrested and taken by force from your own country. This is regardless of wether or not the alleged crime is even an offence in Britain. You have NO recourse to a British court to prevent your extradition.
Thus British people can now find themselves in courts in which there is a presumption of guilt rather than innocence, under the Napoleonic legal systems that prevail in most of Europe. They will also be without any protection of habeas corpus. Is it any wonder the British state has ensured its population of subjects are well and truly disarmed? Given the option of shooting it out with British police attempting to serve a Greek arrest warrant on me or trying my luck with a corrupt Greek court answering to an establishment that sponsors domestic terrorism, that is not a choice with an obvious answer. In fact by accusing the Greek establishment of actually supporting the N-17 terrorist group, I am probably breaking Greek law and could soon be theoretically liable for arrest here in London.
Another e-mail questioned how any country with a free press could be regarded as a police state. Well, Britain has a free press only if you ignore the Official Secrets Act,the variety of Race Relations Acts and the fact the law will soon prohibit inciting ‘religious hatred’. Many of the anti-Islamic post found on numerous blogs will soon be illegal in Britain. There is no British ‘First Amendment’. And does no one remember the farcical situation of the TV media being prohibited from broadcasting the words of Sinn Fein/IRA leader Gerry Adams? The media responded by showing his image and having an actor dub over the words he was speaking. Free press? Sure, just so long as you don’t say things the state does not approve of. The capacity for self-delusion amongst British people never ceases to amaze me.
The fact the astonishing raft of repressive British laws is only lightly enforced (at the moment) just shows that the liberties of British society is now at the sufferance of the state, rather than by right. Given that it was largely British legal concepts that underpin the American legal system, this should serve as a salutary lesson to people in the USA as to what happens when a culture of liberty is allowed to decay… and please, I do not want e-mails from Americans telling me “Oh, but we have our wonderful constitution.” I have two words for you: forfeiture laws. So much for the 4th and 6th Amendments.
I am a great admirer of Western Civilisation and particularly the Anglosphere’s traditions of liberty. In many ways, we can see very encouraging trends as the communications revolution drives economic globalisation ever wider. Our ability to freely associate and trade outside the bounds of the state grow almost daily. Yet there are also trends in the other direction. As governments lose their largely illusionary ability to ‘control’ national economies, they are resorting to other means of applying power and coersion. Our liberties, regardless of where we live, do not come from judges or democratically ‘legitimised’ politicians or from a sanctified scrap of 200 year old paper. They come from us ourselves and are made real only by our willingness to refuse to let ourselves be the ‘things’ of any state. The best, no, the ONLY defence for liberty is a culture that values it and will fight for it by whatever means are required. There is no other way and there never has been.
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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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