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September 16th, 2014 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
 The only ‘cross’ most westerners care about is the little cross hair in a laser guided bomb aiming unit used to send a 500kg cultural critique in your direction, from our technologically advanced culture to your dark ages one. September 14th, 2014 | 57 comments - (Comments are closed)
What’s the difference between Jim Davidson and Frankie Boyle? One is reviled as a right-wing Tory and thus an obvious racist whilst the other is an ardent far-lefist whose jokes about black mentally handicapped babies are not racist but absolutely hilarious and the sign of comic genius. BOOM BOOM!! – Samizdata commenter Lee September 11th, 2014 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
But when we look around in Europe today, we see that not only is Europe not whole and free, we see the ghosts from the painful 20th century returning to our midst. Ghosts that we thought we’d never see again, that we had buried deep in history’s trashbin. Today, when we look around us, we see it all again. The annexation of territory, the violation of borders, religious conservativism pairing with political authoritarianism and imperialist bravado. 80% of Russians support annexation through military aggression in Crimea, where the Anschluss – and I use that term most seriously here – the Anschluss of territory was justified by the presence of co-ethnics. Moreover, there is widespread support for an anti-liberal attack against decadent Western “permissiveness,” be it in freedom of speech or choice of life-partners. Indeed, we see that liberal democracy has not only failed to win the battle of ideas against authoritarianism, it has failed even to prevent the resurrection of that once vanquished demon, fascism. The nationalist fervor east of us is expressed in arts in a way that makes Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will look like a liberal programme – I suggest you look at the video of the so-called “biker show” staged on August 8 this year in Sevastopol. It is on You Tube. It is a genuine Gesamtkunstwerk. Everything is there – music, art, ballet, motorcycle gangs, it’s all there. – Estonian President Toomas Hendrik September 9th, 2014 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
The day after James Foley’s beheading, President Obama paused his Martha’s Vineyard vacation—to express his condolences to the Foley family and inform Americans of the threat posed by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Listening to him as a Kurd, I had no reason to doubt his sincerity when he said, “Earlier today, I spoke to the Foleys and told them that we are all heartbroken at their loss, and join them in honoring Jim and all that he did.” What troubled me was the way he qualified ISIS or failed to do. The man who hails from the “happiest” state, Hawaii, declared ISIS—the “angriest” wannabe state in the world — without a “religion.” That’s like calling Hitler an internationalist or Lenin a capitalist! Posing as an authority on Islam, he said, “No faith teaches people to massacre innocents.” Speaking for the 21st century, he went on, ISIS doesn’t belong to it. And then this gem by way of reducing the threat to an understandable sound bite: ISIS is at war with the West “out of expediency,” but it really is at war with its neighbors and offers “nothing but an endless slavery to [its] empty vision.” I will admit to my immediate reaction: my hand involuntarily went to scratch my head. September 8th, 2014 | 40 comments - (Comments are closed)
A new study shows first-born children are more able and ambitious. So, why have we been ruled by a succession of younger siblings as prime ministers? So, why have we been ruled by a succession of younger siblings as prime ministers? Because the able and ambitious go off to do something more interesting than tell the rest of us how to live our lives. I mean seriously: where’s the sodding ambition in straining to reach a position that Gordon Fucking Brown managed to gain? September 6th, 2014 | 13 comments - (Comments are closed)
Okay, but there are ways of going about that which do not involve asking Russian tanks to cross the border in support and shooting down passenger jets. Last I looked, Scotland wasn’t fighting English soldiers in the streets, parading captured Englishmen through the streets of Aberdeen, and handing out weapons to Glasgow Celtic fans willy-nilly. I’d not have any problem if East Ukraine had attempted peaceful means of seceding from Kiev, but they haven’t: it’s been thuggish violence from the outset. – Tim Newman, commenting here on Samizdata. August 30th, 2014 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
…and now it is happening in Kaliningrad! Yet another instance of unprovoked aggression by the Putinpotamus! August 29th, 2014 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
I read this and suddenly found myself having a knee-jerk reaction.
My immediate reaction was “how about in a mosque in your middle eastern country of choice? That sounds like a pretty safe place to speak about how Britain is deeply suspicious of people who primary identity of defined by being a Muslims these days.” If you feel disaffected by how the largely irreligious secular host society sees you because of your religion… bugger off to somewhere your notions do not seem utterly alien to most people. Do what your high initiative parents or grandparents did when they emigrated seeking a better life: seek a batter live elsewhere. I hear there is an outfit in Raqaa looking for “disillusioned young Muslims” if you have a sense of adventure and want to put the whole 72 virgins thing to the test. Strangely I find surprisingly few people uneasy about the mostly-Muslim Kurds, and surprisingly few Kurds moaning about how Britain has treated them, for reasons that should be fairly obvious. August 26th, 2014 | 47 comments - (Comments are closed)
To be fair, Swiss agriculture is so heavily subsidised that it makes French agriculture look like a bastion of free market liberalism. If the Swiss were to expand it further to make more exports to Russia, that would make them poorer, not richer. I see that places like Argentina do seem to be attempting to sell things to Russia in response to recent developments. I wish them luck with it, honestly, and this might be good for Russian consumers from the perspective that Argentina does, at least, produce some decent cheeses. On the other hand, doing business with Russia is likely to be a nightmare. Just like doing business with Argentina. Possibly they deserve each other. August 19th, 2014 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq decries the abduction of women for a life of rape and servitude under the black banner of the Islamic State, doomed to supply jihad al-nikah, or “sex for the pursuit of struggle,” but the organized feminists, so eager to complain of abuse, such as having to pay for their own birth control, are strangely silent. – from a Washington Times editorial. August 18th, 2014 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
To paraphrase Hayek, then, the curious task of the liberty movement is to persuade citizens that our opponents are the idealistic ones, because they believe in unicorns. They understand very little about the State that they imagine they can design. – Michael Munger August 14th, 2014 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
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