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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Here are some very interesting articles relating to Somalia and it’s ongoing experiment without any central government. First there is A Dying Dream by Joshua Holmes, followed by What’s Really Going On in Somalia by Jim Davidson
Also of interest is a Somali perspective of the military actions that resulted in 18 US deaths and many more Somali deaths in 1993. Not exactly what we had heard from the western media thought the numbers were about right. Jim Davidson is not some kook so do not be inclined to just reject this out of hand.
Alas but that vertiable babe of the bloggistas and erratic contributor to the Samizdata, Natalie Solent is out of action with a broken computer. We will have to manage without our daily fix of her sardonic Frédérique Bastiat impersonations until she can shell out for the repairs. Visit her blog and donate vast sums of money to her.
I just spotted this muslimpundit blog mentioned on Instapundit.
“Going after starry pan-Islamic futurists with a rubber glove and a sharp stick”.
Way to go! I have always believed that there is a large body of rational, reasonable and moral Muslims living in the west who did not subscribe to the crap spewing out of the mouth’s of some of their community ‘leaders’. Now we know that is indeed the case!
It has been widely reported that no sooner does the multi-party conference in Germany select pashtun leader Hamid Karzai as the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan than a stray 2000lb JDAM bomb from a USAF B-52 comes within a hair’s breadth of killing him. I suspect the only reason the conspiracy theorists are not already in full voice on this one is that three US soldiers were killed in the same incident.
But give them time… once it has rattled around in their heads for a few days, the dark theories will start to emerge. You think I am wrong? Well if an armed prison revolt in Mazar-i-Sharif can be reported in some quarters as a ‘massacre involving US forces’ in spite of the fact a German TV crew caught on video a captured prisoner blowing himself with a hidden grenade (and injuring attractive British ITN reporter Andrea Catherwood) and SkyNew filmed outgoing rifle, machinegun and mortar fire (having a camera man injured in the process), then methinks you underestimate the strangeness of the conspiratorial mindset. When wild and woolly theories about Hamid Karzai’s close call start to appear, I call on all Samizdata readers to e-mail them in to us.
Emmanuel Goldstein and I have crossed swords over this one on the Libertarian Alliance forum. That said, I do not regard Emmanuel as a complete looney tune conspiracy theorist (in spite of some intemperate remarks I may have made in the past), merely someone with a few looney tune theories and his Airstrip One blog is not without it’s perverse charms.
Although I am someone who finds 90% of all conspiracy theories not just bogus but ludicrous, they do have a certain entertainment value. I have my own pet theories regarding the conspiracy fetishists (as I prefer to call them). One of my more sublime discoveries after reading many of them is that they almost all, if you regress them far enough, will be traced back to the Knights Templar.
As Fox Mulder of the X-Files would say, “The truth is out there”… but so is the paranoid bullshit. And so for your edification, gentle reader, I present my semi-serious conspiracy meta-theory:
The vast majority of conspiracy theories tell us nothing about the subject matter of the conspiracy but quite a lot about the mind of the theorists themselves. However the endless procession of conspiracy theories are in fact perpetuated by institutions with real conspiracies to hide on the basis that when a true conspiracy theory actually hits the mark, it will then be dismissed out of hand as the paranoid ravings of a fantasist.
Are you impressed? You should be: that is an anti-conspiracy theory conspiracy theory!
Of course as I fit the profile of a sinister globalist illuminatus myself, you can safely assume I am just saying these things to conceal The Truth.
Christopher Hitchens is in typically ebullient form on The Nation as he writes The Ends of War, in which he makes a remark that I suspect is destined to became a classic quote:
The United States of America has just succeeded in bombing a country back out of the Stone Age.
Outstanding. Just for good measure, he yet again carves up Noam Chomsky in his Parthian shot. In a battle of wits, nauseating Noam is unarmed. This whole article is well worth a read.
I am only just starting to get used to the idea of not reflexively thinking of Christopher Hitchens as the enemy.
There is an interesting article in the Virginian-Pilot called Gun shop owner sues ATF over reports. The owner of a gun shop in Virginia is suing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms because it has demand records of the shop’s used gun sales. The owner says the government is compiling a database of gun owners, which is strictly illegal. I particularly liked:
“While no one has accused me of committing a crime, they’re going on a fishing expedition, and I’m not going fishing with them,” Marcus said in a recent interview from his shop.
Excellent. The state can only tie liberty in knots if enough people are willing cooperate with it. Don’t cooperate.
Reading the post below by our esteemed Samizdata Illuminatus, I have just realised what a ‘broad-based government’ means… a government with broads in it!
Throw away those burquas, ladies! It’s time to get your snouts in the pork barrels with all the guys!
Oops… maybe we need a different expression other than ‘pork barrels’ when describing government funding boondoggles in Muslim countries.
British sporting ‘hero’ Sir Geoff Hurst is too afraid of terrorism to fly on a British Airways aircraft. He joins the list of cricketer ‘heroes’ Robert Croft and Andrew Caddick and movie action ‘heroes’ Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwartzenegger in The Chickenshit Files.
My theory is that sports and media personalities such as these people are so astonishingly egocentric that they think any terrorist wishing to harm the USA or the UK must surely regard them as the very embodiment of that nation, hence they are a prime target. I hate to break this to you guys, but I do not think Osama bin Laden ever thought that US foreign policy was drafted by card carrying members of the Equity Actors Union, or he would have arranged for one of those hijacked aircraft to have been flown into Hollywood Boulevard.
In my first article on November 7 about these ‘heroes’ with feet of clay, I contrasted them quivering behind the walls of their mansions, with Ellen Degeneris, who stood up and taunted the Taliban live on television. Similarly, I would like to tip my kevlar battlebowler to Mariah Carey.
Now Mariah has been going through a rather bad patch in the last few months, with a nervous breakdown, erratic behaviour and visits to rehab gleefully reported in the press. Yet in spite of that and although she is a nervous flyer at the best of times, she flew to Kosovo yesterday and entertained US soldiers involved in the peacekeeping operation there.
So although Mariah Carey is not my usual taste in music, next time you see Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwartzenegger or sundry inconsequential sportsmen described as ‘heroes’, I invite you to blow a raspberry and go out and buy a Mariah Carey CD. She is got it where it counts… and I am not just referring to her more obvious charms. Good on you, girl.
Following the horrors in Israel, it is entirely reasonable and justified for the Israeli security services to do what the Palestinian Authority of Yassir Arafat has singularly failed to do, namely go after the psychopathic Hamas and Islamic Jihad organisations.
Israel is also quite right to demand that Arafat make a serious effort to suppress Hamas himself. This very point was made by an Israeli minister on the BBC this morning. In response however, the BBC reporter asked the minister
“If you want Arafat’s security services to do their job as you demand, then why are Israel’s attacks primarily directed at Arafat’s security services themselves?”
The reply can be best described as no reply, other than to insist that Arafat was responsible for arresting members of Hamas and he was not living up to his part of the bargain. The BBC reporter rephrased the question, asking:
“Why is Israel destroying the very force that you are demanding Arafat order to crush Hamas?”
The minister replied
“Israel is sending Chairman Arafat a message and if he does not understand that message, we will send it again.”
Well I sure as hell hear Israel’s message and it has very little to do with what that minister was saying. It is entirely reasonable for Israel to go after Hamas, given the Palestinian Authority’s abject failure to do so. But how does destroying Arafat’s assets achieve this? It would be rather like the USA striking the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan because they were not attacking the Taliban with enough gusto. Clearly that is absurd. If you want to understand what is going on, you have to ignore what the Israeli government is saying and just look at what they are doing.
The reality is that Palestinian Authority is a deeply corrupt, tyrannical, factionally riven organisation which could not control Hamas or Islamic Jihad even if it was inclined to. My analysis is that as well as going after the elusive Hamas, Israel is attacking the Palestinian Authority partially because internal Israeli outrage demands ‘action’ and requires someone been seen to pay big time (and the Palestinian Authority is a nice easy visible target) but mostly because Sharon sees this as his best chance to destroy the Palestinian Authority and reshuffle the deck whilst the world’s attention (meaning the USA) is focused on Afghanistan. Israeli colonisation of the occupied territories will continue (25 new settlements under the Sharon government) and the Palestinian west bank bantustans will not be allowed to expand into a proto-nation. Governments by their very nature are vast engines of deception: watch what they do and subject every utterance to skeptical but rational analysis. The target is Arafat’s ‘government’ with Hamas only being struck en passant. For reasons that are a mixture of Jewish colonial expansion and reasonable self-defense of Israel, Sharon wants to destroy the existing order in Palestine and replace it with something more to his liking. That is the reality.
The Daily Telegraph is carrying interesting articles on the expanding role of the SAS in Afghanistan.
ALLIED commanders want the Special Air Service to provide one of the lead assault teams for the attack on Tora Bora, the mountain cave complex where Osama bin Laden is expected to make his final stand. Gen Tommy Franks, the operational commander of US forces involved in the Afghan campaign, made the decision after a series of spectacularly successful operations conducted by British special forces in the past fortnight.
I cannot help wondering if the Brits have not just won the booby prize. Hunting terrorists in a cave complex? That is certainly not my idea of jolly japes.
It is also reported that the Brits will be reinforced by their comrades in the Australian SAS and the New Zealand SAS. Given the somewhat different operational philosophies of the British/Commonwealth SAS and the US SpecOps groups, there is considerable scope for valuable synergies. The sheer range of experience, specialist skills, equipment and capabilities that these groups collectively represent is tremendous. As a result, the range of tactical options available must present Taliban/Al Qaeda with an appalling defensive dilemma on every level.
A lot of utter tosh has been written by the small but loud and malodorous nitwit faction within British BigMedia(tm) (such as the cretinous Daily Mail), who seem to be suggesting the SAS would win the war single handed. To that end “sources said” the Brits were making sure they did not end up having to work the inept US special forces and thus were operating in completely separate operational areas from the Yanks. Completely ludicrous of course. During the messy prison revolt in Mazar-i-Sharif, who should be filmed operating together, as in literally next to each other, M4 rifles in hand, by the excellent SkyNews team? British SAS and American Delta commandos naturally. And people wonder why I say the Daily Mail is best employed in cat litter trays.
There is also an article about the ‘new’ British L115A .338 calibre sniper rifle being used by the SAS in Afghanistan. They are quite correct that it is a superb weapon: the combination of rugged Arctic optimised construction, outstanding ballistics and sub-MOA accuracy makes it ideal for poaching Al Qaeda members… but with all due respect to the Daily Telegraph, the ‘new’ L115A is just a re-barreled L96A1. It has been on the civilian market in the fearsome .338 Lapua for several years.
Due to the ghastly atrocity in Israel, there has been an upsurge in declaiming about that particular ongoing festival of horrors. Will Wilkinson on The Fly Bottle gives his views not specifically on the latest acts of futile psychopathy by Hamas but rather on why he finds it hard to to take sides at all.
Agree with him or not, it is refreshing to read something different amidst the seething sea of punditry.
It seems that British Special Air Service (SAS) commandos came very close to nailing the biggest hunting trophy in recent history! There is a fascinating article in The Advertiser about how Osama bin Laden came extremely close to getting caught and (probably) killed.
The conflict featured the largest deployment of SAS troops in one battle since the war in Oman in the mid-1970s, the paper said.
“We were within a whisker of getting him. It was a hard battle and will have put the fear of God into his people,” a source close to the regiment was quoted as saying.
“When prisoners were questioned it came out we had just missed him by about two hours,” the source added. Intelligence sources, also contacted by the paper, believed bin Laden fled as the battle began.
“The enemy were facing highly-trained and disciplined troops who, although outnumbered, had the tenacity, professionalism and firepower to terrorise them.
“Bin Laden knows the SAS are not far behind,” one said.
It was during this action that the four British casualties that were recently reported received their injuries. Other accounts have said that the SAS, which usually operates in four man teams, had deployed two entire sabres (the idiosyncratic SAS equivalent of a platoon, or aprox. 60 men per sabre) for the operation.
Let us hope it is only a matter of time before the SAS or their American Delta comrades personally deliver the civilised world’s definitive response for September 11 directly to its author.
Godspeed and good hunting gentlemen.
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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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