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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One of the many joys of the Samizdata is that it is a truly marvelous tool for weedling all manner of Libertarians out of their various hidey holes. So it is with nothing but pleasure that I accept the gentle rebukes of Paul Marks from whom I have not heard since sometime before the last Ice Age.
For the benefit of Paul (and others) let me make it clear that I accept that President Bush is not beyond criticism and I will leave it at that for the moment.
And, like Paul, I welcome the likes of Messrs Prodi and Petain speaking their minds. It means that blind people can hate them as well.
Romano Prodi wants tax harmonisation in the EU and a single foreign policy. Does it mean we will all have to surrender simultaneously?
Meanwhile Chris Petain calls for all Europeans to discard their national identities and learn to love the EU and the Blair government is busying itself with it’s plans to ‘regionalise’ England (both matters liberally linked to in the ‘sphere).
All of a sudden, the EU looks like a project in a big hurry; sort of like campers desperately trying to get their tent erected in double-quick time ‘neath brooding storm clouds.
Perhaps, with one big puff, we can blow their house down.
The world is a complex and confusing place oftentimes. It can be so hard to know for sure whether or not one is doing the right thing. There are, though, some yardsticks and one of them is the ‘European street’ which has risen up in protest at a visit to Germany by George Bush.
I’m not entirely sure what track Mr.Bush is on, but when he induces rent-a-mob to take to the streets with slogans like ‘Nature Before Profits’ we can all be pretty sure that he’s on the right one.
Personally, I’d like to see him rub some salt into the wounds while he’s about it. Perhaps he could play up the ‘cowboy’ image? (Is this Germany? Where are all them folks wearing them leather pants?). Better still he could echo Reagan in the 80’s but instead of calling for the end of the Berlin Wall, he could call for the end of the Welfare State. Then he could fly back to the US, chuckling to himself, while watching Berlin explode in his rear-view mirror.
I am not entirely sure what to make of this admission from Donald Rumsfeld to the effect that it is ‘inevitable’ that terrorists are going to get their grubby paws on WMD sooner or later and bloody well use them.
I don’t think anybody is blogland is surprised by this admission. After all, isn’t this something we have all speculated about? A nuclear weapon is not exactly available at any retail outlet (yet!) but it seems that constructing just a rudimentary one is not as mind-bogglingly difficult as it used to be. Given that, all that is required is the will to use it and we all witnessed an unambiguous demonstration of that will last September.
No, what is arousing my curiosity is the Official Stamp that these suspicions have now been given by Mr.Rumsfeld. Even the most gauche among us have been alerted in no uncertain terms. So is Mr.Rumsfeld trying to soften us all up? Does he know something we don’t? Or is it a case of expecting the worse but hoping for the best?
I couple this with the appearance yesterday of a dire warning on the front page of a popular British tabloid (sorry, can’t find link) that suicide bombers were on their way to Britain. It may or may not be true, of course. British tabloids are somewhat notorious for issuing dire warnings that turn out to be nothing more than, well, dire warnings.
Things are a tad less dramatic over on the actual battlefront in Afghanistan where British Royal Marine Commandos trudge around disconsolately seeking engagement with an enemy that either cannot be found or no longer exists. Meanwhile, back in the West, we are fighting a war of catastrophic expectations and that ratchet has just been cranked up another notch or two.
With all attention focussed on the Middle East, it might be easy to forget the India .v. Pakistan conflict which, according to this report has moved another half-notch up the ratchet.
Of course, it may be nothing more than a brief intensification of the sporadic skirmishes that have been bubbling under for the last few months but, coming on the back of the news that Delhi has expelled the Pakistani Ambassador, a lot of the ingredients of all-out, balls-out war look like they’re falling into place.
I was in the process of polishing off an acidic rebuke to the American Jewish Congress over its campaign to boycott France, which would be counterproductive even if it was merited (which it isn’t), only to find that my colleague Mr.de Havilland has gone and beaten me to it. Not only has he beaten me to it but he has also said, more or less, everything that I wanted to say. I was going to send him an e-mail to endorse him but, in the circumstances, it is more politic that I endorse him publicly.
I have been growing increasingly uncomfortable with continued claims that the EU’s attitude towards the conflict in the Middle East is motivated by antipathy towards the Jews. I am uncomfortable because it isn’t true. To say that men like Goran Persson or Javier Solana are rabid (or even closet) anti-semites is arrant rubbish. Nor are they motivated by any feeling of kinship or goodwill towards Palestinians or Arabs. No, the discomfort with Israel has far more to do with the Israeli insistence on action over compromise; survival rather than capitulation. In post-modernist Europe such iron-will and self-belief are sins to be shunned.
And, of course, it also has a great deal to do with the USA for a lot of Euro-posturing about the Middle East is, in fact, anti-Americanism by proxy. Whatever Americans are for, the EUnuchs must be seen to be against and there is a certain breed of Eurocrat who would rather be seen publicly reading a copy of ‘Little Miss Muffin Monthly’ than taking any position alongside George Bush. If Israel’s main ally was, say, China, then I am sure we would see a very different European approach to the Middle East and, furthermore, I seem to recall that the Euro-elites were far more comfortable with both the US and Israel when they were led by Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak respectively.
Now before I start getting any e-mails reminding me of the high incidence of anti-semitic attacks in Europe and the conitnued rise of radical nationalists, please note that the attacks were all carried out not by native White Europeans but by young Arab muslim immigrants and it is no small part due to fear of those same immigrants that the radical nationalists are riding high in the polls. Whilst I am generally very averse to these kind of collectivist labels, the least I can do is implore that they be pasted on straight.
This should not be read as any sort of defence of or apology for the ruling European elite because, as anybody who has read my posts on the subject before will know, I find them loathsome and untrustworthy in almost equal measure. And that is rather the point behind this post because when accusations are made that turn out to be baseless and hysterical it only serves to contaminate the accusations that are meritorious and deserved.
We at the Samizdata are busy building our dossier of ‘Peace Crimes’ against the EU. Please don’t muddy our waters. Thank you.
Who says the Germans don’t have a sense of humour? By extending constitutional rights to animals they have presented the world with a cornucopia of comic possibilities [“Sheep claim Wool-fare benefits”, “Rabbits sue for workplace hare-assment”].
It is rather less amusing to contemplate the scope of this. Exactly what animals does it extend to? Rats? Cockroaches? Amoebas? Viruses? Will innoculation become a war-crime? Will fly-paper become an offensive weapon? How many Germans are going to bask in the warm glow of self-righteousness when they find that the mice in their kitchens are protected from eviction?
Like all the best comedy, it is actually the height of absurdity. Animals have only one right and that is the right to be served in the appropriate sauce and whilst it is deeply morally wrong for humans to be wantonly cruel to animals or subject them to unnecessary suffering, this is far from the same thing as declaring that those animals have ‘rights’.
If a dog is as good as a human being then a human being is no better than a dog. But in the through-the-looking-glass, relativistic and future-phobic world of the European polity, reversing the last two million years of agonising evolutionary development is seen as ‘progress’.
“The main impact of the measure will be to restrict the use of animals in experiments.
There hardly seems any point. The Germans are suffering from a sickness of spirit that no amount of medicines will ever cure.
The Dutch have rained scorpions of political death onto the Centre-Left coalition government and driven the List Pim Fortuyn into second place behind the Christian Democrats making it highly likely that that the ‘List’ will form some part of a new Centre-Right coalition government.
It is a spectacularly vicious kick in the Nether regions for the left but will it actually amount to anything more than ripples across a very stagnant pond? The media hacks have been quick to point out that, minus their charismatic leader, the ‘List’ is a party which is less than three months old and appears unfocussed and a little incoherent. For once, this may be more than the familiar journalistic (which is to say, socialist) whining and sour grapes. There does seem to be something which is rather cobbled-together and even rather amateurish about the ‘List’ which, whilst it may have benefitted from a sympathy vote to a degree, is also the collective expression of an impatient, anti-consensus, anti-elitist grouch.
Such movements, when they actually do get anywhere near the corridors of power, have a tendency to be ineffective; proving to be nothing more than smoke, mirrors and tinkling brass. Lacking both political nous and a clear vision, they may find themselves being outmanoeuvered by their establishment foes who, while lacking any enthusiastic support, nonetheless possess the guile and experience sufficient to form the de facto coalitions and horse-traded allegiances that ensure that they keep their grip on the real levers of power.
And the Dutch will find themselves right back where they started.
There was I thinking it was looking like a slow news day when, apparently, Israel drops a political bombshell on the Palestinians by voting against the establishment of a Palestinian State.
Except it wasn’t quite the Israeli government but the Likud Party and, on second sight, it wasn’t quite such a bombshell either. However the development deserves comment if only for the brows it appears to be furrowing round the Blogosphere. General opinion seems to be that it is a serious blow to the prospects for peace and a snub to Washington. I beg to differ.
No, the vote by the Likud Central Committee (59% to 41%) was actually a re-affirmation of a long-time plank of the Likud manifesto that there shall be ‘no Palestinian State West of the Jordan and it is a posture that says far more about Likud in-fighting than it says either about the ‘Peace Process’ or Washington.
Ariel Sharon is in the peculiar position of riding high in the opinion polls whilst appearing as a dithering embarrassment to many within his own party. Sharon had actually abandoned the above-mentioned Likud principle whilst in power because that’s the kind of thing leaders have to do in the cut-and-thrust of diplomacy and compromise. But it is meat-and-drink for his arse-kicker-in-chief, Benyamin Netanyahu, Likud’s blue-eyed boy, who has made no secret of the fact that he has his sights firmly set on the cat-bird seat. It was Netanyahu that sponsored the motion and, to everyone’s surprise (maybe even his own) actually won it.
It makes little material difference to facts on the ground. Until there is a change of Palestinian leadership then all talk of a Palestinian State anywhere remains so much moonshine. Likud’s reaffirmation of its traditional hard-line stance does not represent a change of heart or policy but rather a formalisation of extant positions. It will make a material difference to the bit of ground on which Sharon is standing for it’s a humiliation that will remind him that he cannot take his own party’s support for granted nor ignore the theatrically ferocious Netanyahu snapping at his heels and every other part of his anatomy.
I have read that this shows that Netanyahu is even more hard-line than Sharon but that is a simplification. Netanyahu is not in the hot-seat so he has the licence to act as man-of-the-hour for the party faithful and play the firebrand. Were he to find himself back in the premiership again, he would have to play the International Statesman and that means confronting and making hard choices. The same kind of hard choices Sharon had to make.
President Bush may well be losing sleep tonight, but not over this.
It is not often that I use this blog as an advertising medium. In fact, I cannot remember ever having done so. So this is a first.
We Brits at the Samizdata require some help from our American readers (we know you’re out there, we can hear you breathing). We have decided that we need a change of political representation, our own having chucked its lot in with Soviet EUnion. We need to ‘clean house’ and begin again and we think we can best do this by appointing a US Senator for Britain
We think this is a marvelous way of reconnecting us with our Anglo-Saxon heritage and of bringing the two most dynamic lynchpins of that community closer together. As well as that, it will help in the drive to get Britain out of the EU and, without Britain, the EU will not survive.
We should make it clear that we do not have the time or resources to mount any sort of election campaign so we simply intend to appoint the said Senator without he/she having any say in the matter. It may be somewhat presumptuous but these are interesting times and they call for interesting measures.
We have already pledged that we will not bother add to their administrative burdens by sending letters to their office but we do intend to write open letters to them on this blog for time to time as occasion requires.
However, we being Brits and all that, have no idea to appoint and this is where our US contributors and readers come in. If you really want to stick it to the Euro-snots, then unzip your trusty computer keyboards and mail us with your suggestions for a suitable Senator for Britain and the reasons why he/she would be suitable.
Mock not. We are serious.
Some good news today. The USA has renounced its membership of the International Criminal Court.
“…When you sign you have an obligation not to take actions that would defeat the object or purpose of the treaty,”
says US diplomat Pierre-Richard Prosper.
He actually, and rather diplomatically I suppose, understates the case. The effect of signing up to the ICC is to wrap a straightjacket around any effective means of self-defence. And that’s only the start of the problems which I go into in greater depth in one of my previous post on the ICC.
Whilst I am delighted, the usual suspects are already moaning about American ‘unilateralism and isolation’. I say we put a stop to that by following America’s example and making it ‘bi-lateral’.
1)Who? and 2) Why?
Dutch anti-immigrant politician Pym Fortuyn has been assassinated.
First reports suggest he was shot several times outside a radio station in Hilversum by a lone gunman.
I think those tectonic plates of history just juddered. Stay tuned.
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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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