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Dale is right, in their simplistic minds, the news anchors miss the real battle.
Finally, France appears favourably disposed to new U.S. proposals for a draft resolution that now drops any immediate authorisation for a military strike against Iraq unless Baghdad balks at U.N. weapons inspections.
Facing major opposition from everybody, except the trusty Brits who supported all the U.S. drafts, the United States radically changed key parts of its earlier draft resolution which authorised any U.N. member to “use all necessary means” if it decided Iraq violated a whole series of infractions. The new text also deletes earlier proposals explicitly threatening “serious consequences.”
It does sound pretty watered down, if you ask me, but after meeting chief U.N. arms inspector Hans Blix, the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, said that a new resolution would not prevent Washington from undertaking a military strike against Iraq:
“The United States does not need any additional authority even now, if we thought it was necessary to take action to defend ourselves.”
The new U.S. compromise has been labelled as a “one-and-a-half step.” Instead of two resolutions – one that would give Iraq an opportunity to comply and a second that would authorise force – if the Security council does not do so after reports by Blix of any failure by Iraq to comply with its disarmament obligations, the United States could decide to strike Iraq anyway, and would probably get considerable support to do so.
What seems to be happening is that the French are backtracking whilst trying to preserve some diplomatic dignity. French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte said France insisted on a “two-staged” approach but did not say if this meant a second resolution. Well, given that the U.S. envoys are going around making statements about the U.S. determination to use military force anyway, and in the light of recent terrorist attacks, the opposing Europeans are starting to look like complete twits. The only reason they can get away with it, is that they look quite reasonable next to the rest of the U.N. twits.
The Russian U.N. ambassador, Sergei Lavrov, sharply criticised any unilateral action and warned the United States not to use the Security Council as an excuse for a military strike or one that would lead to a “regime change.” I am surprised that the holier-than-thou Russian even understands the meaning of “regime change”!
Bangladesh Ambassador Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury opined:
“Every possible effort should be made to avert war. These views are evidently shared by a preponderant majority of the membership of the United Nations. They must be heard, listened to and heeded.”
Yes, and your delusions of relevance must be exposed, dispelled and shown for what they are. An empty rhetoric with potentially dire consequences, endangering lives and safety of millions of innocent citizens whose governments, for once, are trying to have a go at protecting them. It is not often you will hear me support Tony Blair or George Bush as representatives of the state that, in case you missed it, is not your friend…
Patrick Crozier is back from his far eastern expedition. His experiences are now showing up on UK Transport – which deals with transport everywhere, and which will one day, I hope, have its name changed to something more everywhere-sounding – and on CrozierVision – which sounds perfect and which now deals with everything else Crozier-related. Apart from UK Transport’s title my only other quibble is that most of the photos are displayed too small to appreciate properly. I enlarged one of them by mistake while putting this together, and there’s nothing wrong with them that displaying them bigger wouldn’t correct at once.
Such trivia aside, it’s fascinating stuff. For instance, from the latest CrozierVision piece:
We are told that Japan has been in recession or thereabouts for a decade. So, while I was there I thought I’d try to spot the evidence. It wasn’t easy. Cars are new, people are well-dressed, there doesn’t seem to be much abandoned property, restaurants seem busy enough, there don’t seem to be any sales.
I did however spot a shantytown. This one was in Tokyo and there was a similar if smaller one in Nagoya. Even in destitution the Japanese beat us. Quite simply they have a better class of dosser. Take a careful look at the photos and you will spot that in addition to the regulation cardboard box these people also have blue tarpaulins. Pretty sensible really. I also saw plenty of coat hangers presumably so that could hang out their shirts ready for that all important interview. Japanese cardboard cities also don’t smell of stale urine. How they do it I don’t know because public toilets in Japan seem pretty thin on the ground.
Patrick will be doing both of the last Friday of the month talks in November, on the 8th at the Evans household in Putney on Congestion Charging (that’s road pricing before the spin fraternity got hold of it), and on the 29th at my place on – what else? – Japan.
Until today, I missed this piece last Friday (Oct 11th) by Tunku Varadarajan for the Wall Street Journal, on the need for a Nobel Non-Science Anti-Prize that could really make sense and do some good. I believe you need to register to make the link work, so here are two of the key paragraphs:
This will not be a joke prize, as the peace prize is; it will be something that Saddam Hussein would get right now, a species of anathema, or international pillory. Apart from being cathartic, a negative award would have a genuine effect on the international order, a real bite in the form of a profound disincentive. Such an award would carry some of the odium of a war-crimes tribunal. No country – or, at least, no civilized country – would allow the winner to visit; and those that do would be tainted. The winner would become a pariah.
Now, that is a deterrent. That kind of award has reason to exist. And it would require some real agonizing over. Imagine the debate: Will it be Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong Il?
Indeed. Several blog-years ago I did a piece on how stupid the Nobel Peace Prize is, on the grounds mostly that peace takes decades to identify, yet they persistently grant it to people who signed alleged peace treaties last Wednesday. Evil, in contrast, can often be identified right now, just as some forms of scientific progress can be. (The cracking of DNA by Watson and Crick springs to mind. As I understand that triumph, they were getting joyously drunk the evening of the day they cracked it.) Likewise, if almost an enitire nation is being systematically starved (as in North Korea right now) you don’t need thirty years to realise how evil that was. So yes, I’m for it.
Seriously, if the blogosphere got behind this notion we could really make it happen. Let nominations commence.
Boring I know, and boringly topical, but I think I’d go with whoever is most in charge of North Korea these days. But if you can suggest someone nastier and make your mud stick, go ahead and good luck to you. That’s the whole point.
That’s it, then. Prime Minister Tony Blair has been warned that military action against Iraq to force a regime change would breach international law. According to the Financial Times, he received confidential advice from Attorney General Lord Peter Goldsmith and Solicitor General Harriet Harman that international law would allow military action in “limited circumstances” to support U.N. resolutions, but it rules out war to achieve regime change.
Apparently, the legal advice explains why Blair has shied away from openly calling for a “regime change” like U.S. President George W. Bush who wants to see Saddam Hussein gone regardless of whether United Nations inspectors return to check Iraq’s weapons capability.
This is Tranzis at work using ‘international law’ to restrict national sovereignty, this time from within a national legal system. Let’s not forget their true agenda:
A good part of the energy for transnational progressivism is provided by human rights activists, who consistently evoke “evolving norms of international law” in pursuing their goals. The main legal conflict between traditional American liberal democrats and transnational progressives is ultimately the question of whether the U.S. Constitution trumps international law or vice versa. Before the mid-twentieth century, traditional international law usually referred to relations among nation-states: it was “international” in the real sense of the term. Since that time the “new international law” has increasingly penetrated the sovereignty of democratic nationstates.
It is, therefore, in reality, “transnational law”. Human rights activists work to establish norms for this “new international (i.e. transnational) law”, and then attempt to bring the United States into conformity with a legal regime whose reach often extends beyond democratic politics and the guarantees of the U.S. Constitution.
Or the United Kingdom or anywhere else…
I’m off on holiday soon, and I nearly forgot to mention it. We got an email from Shams Ali:
Hi there!
With reference to your passage in the BLOG:
“And that is when it starts to become confused. Who exactly is going to do the applying? Evidently not ‘politicians’, but somebody will have to. What is a “non-political government” when it’s at home? What ‘fundamental principles’ are these? Perchance, the Law of Sharia?”
The confusion arises from the human habit of jumping at conclusions without having done the spade work to dig out the facts.
The “fundamental principles” are enumerated and defined at
www.worldjustice.org/principles.html and the rules of their application at www.worldjustice.org/rules.html also the reasonings for the need for such institution are described at www.worldjustice.org/wcj.html and some history of it all at www.worldjustice.org/history.html for the difference between government and politics see www.truth-and-justice.info/govpol.html as for Judaism, Christianity and Islam see www.truth-and-justice.info/religions.html and for the various “isms” see www.truth-and-justice.info/isms.html. You will also find some stuff on government, politics, unions, pensions, etc., by browsing the www.truth-and-justice.info/issues.html – and all that stuff is the tip of an iceberg.
Once you’ve gone through the stuff, I would like to hear from you what exactly YOUR “libetarianism” is, or, in other words, whom do YOU propose to favour and at whose expense?
regards,
shams ali
I’m more of a Popperian than Shams and I think that jumping at conclusions is very different from jumping to conclusions. If it isn’t Sharia, and if Shams tells us it isn’t Sharia, then fine, it isn’t Sharia. But he doesn’t answer that with a yes or a no. Instead he tells me I have to do an iceberg of homework.
It’s an old trick. You write long tracts, and refuse to supply short summaries and short answers to short questions. The idea is that people will immerse themselves in your oh-so-elaborate thought processes, but the reality is they mostly ignore you on account of you being a pompous git. I shall do neither. I have glanced at some of my homework, and now I’m just going to carry on communicating – guessing, asking and answering. If Shams Ali doesn’t like it, tough. We’ll talk about him amongst ourselves. → Continue reading: Another open letter to Shams Ali
I’m sure most of you have read or heard by now about the “15 kilos” of Uranium seized by Turkish authorities. It’s turned out to be only 100 grams. I delayed writing about this due to my skepticism about the quantity. A quantity of enriched Uranium (ie high in U235) that “close” to critical mass in that small a container would be, shall we say, a bit on the warm side? …in both senses! There are ways around this if it is all pelletized (as from power plant fuel rods) and packed in neutron absorbing materials. Those, along with the lead shielding, would drive the weight up. The taxi would have been down on it’s axles!
So there were only 100g of possibly enriched Uranium and it was caught. That’s the good news. But there is a dark lining to this “silver cloud”. According to Ha’aratz:
Smugglers use Turkey’s porous eastern border to import drugs, and hundreds of thousands of migrants each year illegally cross the rugged frontier on their way to more affluent European Union nations.
Police in Istanbul seized more than one kg of weapons-grade uranium last November that had been smuggled into Turkey from an east European state. The smugglers were detained after attempting to sell the material to undercover police officers.
Note what Ha’aretz leaves you to infer for yourself. We all know how successful attempts to stop drug smuggling have been. About all you can do with drug seizure data is infer an order of magnitude more was not caught. Given the value of fissionable material and the actual quantities seized in Turkey alone in the last year…
Folks, we have a problem.
I don’t know who “Shams Ali” is exactly, but he has established something called the The World Court of Justice, and so far as I can judge, his ambition is simple. He wishes to be the Supreme Ruler of Mankind. I know the feeling. I once wanted that job myself, and I reckon I’d probably still take it if someone offered it to me.
Mr Ali has got be a Muslim of some kind, because of being “Ali” and because he writes of “the prophet Jesus”, which (David Carr tells me) strongly suggests a Muslim.
But, from a libertarian point of view Mr Ali is by no means completely to be dismissed. Have a read of this, from his World Court of Justice Comments on The National Security Strategy of the United States of America Report (17 September 2002).
The only difference between politics and ordinary crime is that an ordinary criminal uses his own force to interfere with freedom, person or property of other people against their will, while a politician uses the powers of government for the same purpose.
That at least is a classic libertarian meme.
Politics is incompatible with economic freedom, peaceful relations with other states, and respect for human dignity.
A bit vaguer, but still in our territory.
Political freedom is nothing else than a socially acceptable form of organized crime. Only 100% impartial non-political government, that favors neither majority nor minority, but governs by application of strict rules to fundamental principles can guarantee economic freedom, peaceful relations with other states, and respect for human dignity.
And that is when it starts to become confused. Who exactly is going to do the applying? Evidently not “politicians”, but somebody will have to. What is a “non-political government” when it’s at home? What “fundamental principles” are these? Perchance, the Law of Sharia?
Meanwhile, the global triumph of liberty (which is what Shams Ali says he wants) means that liberty puts a stop to – conquers, you might say – the existing political arrangements of the planet, that is to say, national governments and their various collaborations and aggregations, such as the UN. And that is a lot like establishing an alternative world empire. This man could simply be an utterly deluded and utterly orthodox Muslim fanatic with a vivid imagination. But maybe his fantasies are more interesting than that.
If you wish to communicate your views on these matters to Mr Ali, you can email him, or you can write to him, at the following address:
The World Court of Justice
PO Box 10121
Birmingham B27 7YS
UK
Who says the British imperial spirit is dead?
Time for another spook outing. Former US Marine and former UN arms inspector, still playing flat out for the home team, laying down his reputation for his country: Scott Ritter.
You’re the US government. You decided, soon after 9/11, to redo Gulf War 1 and this time finish it. You need inside intelligence. You dig through your mountains of electro-data with your electro-diggers. You exhaustively debrief everyone who ever has any remotely significant dealings with the Iraqi regime, and you put it all together as best you can. You’re looking for any sign of Saddam trying to get his retaliation in first, one way or another, and you’re looking for information about just how he is setting about defending himself, so that you can come at him from different directions to the ones he’s ready for.
One way in is to get your spooks onto that “UN” WMD inspection team. And … another is to set up your very own peacenik pro-Saddamite appeaser, who can tramp all over various Iraqi red carpets, shake lots of hands, talk to lots of assemblies, conspire with or be deluded by lots of Iraqi dirty tricksters and generally shine a different light on all the things and the people and the places you want to know about. Whatever happens, however Ritter’s treated and by whom – trusted, distrusted, used, abused, whatever – you learn things, and possibly (when you combine it with all the other things you’ve learned) important things. Ritter himself may never know how well he’s now doing. → Continue reading: Scott Ritter – All American good guy
Tonight I’m speaking at the Putney Debates in London on the topic September 11th 2001, one year on.
A few thoughts I shall be raising are:
1) The terrorists failed the Machiavelli test of initiating a surprise attack: either kill your enemy or win him over. Al-Qaeda, it can be safely assumed, failed badly with regards to the global capitalist system, and hasn’t won over anyone who didn’t support them or hate capitalism already.
2) The ‘war on terrorism’ fails the test on the same grounds: it frightens people who aren’t enemies, is likely to miss the most dangerous targets, and creates the vehicle for new resentments, desire for revenge etc.
3) I think Bush’s speech was terrible: it would make a great recruitment spiel for any anti-Western gang of killers. Was I the only person who spotted Condoleeza Rice grimacing at a couple of passages? As for UNESCO, the less said…
4) The ‘war on terrorism’ is basically a just cause. That is precisely why it is so dangerous. It contains in its name all the inanity of the ‘war on drugs’ or ‘war against poverty’. It is also perfect for exploitation by government. ‘Ingsoc’ could justify anything in Orwell’s 1984 under the banner ‘the war against terror’. Do we suddenly trust Mr Blair and the man who sprung steel tariffs on the world earlier this year? I notice that on “fairness” grounds we’re all being sized up for a national DNA database in the UK. (It’s unfair on criminals that they get fingerprinted and not the rest of us!!!)
5) President Bush has to leave office by 2008 at the latest. Imagine that Al Gore succeeds him and the ‘war on terrorism’ is still going strong: does the Vietnam war sound familiar?
6) I should make it clear that I would happily fire a missile at Saddam Hussein, regardless of his involvement in last year’s attack, or whether he is building weapons of mass destruction.
“Good evening, this is the news from the BBC. Peace Activists are still besieging the Saudi Arabian embassy in London to protest at Saudi Arabian funding of violent terrorist organisations and aggressively exporting Wahhabist Islam. Although there are no reports of any violence, the activists have been handing out sample bottles of Vodka and girlie magazines to passers-by as a symbol of their disapproval of the Saudi regime.
A spokesperson for the activists said that the American military campaign will not stop until the root causes of American anger had been addressed.
Root causes of American anger Meanwhile at a meeting of European Heads of State in Strasbourg, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder issued a joint statement again condemning Al-Qaeda as a gang of ruthless savages and a threat to the entire civilised world. They also issued a warning to Saddam Hussein not to indulge in any aggressive, unilateralist behaviour that would lead to more conflict and cause even more anger in the West. Monsieur Chirac was particularly forthcoming, describing the Iraqi regime as ‘simplistic bedouin warriors’. His words were warmly welcomed by Church leaders and trade union representatives. Now over to Caroline for the weather…”
If I had suggested that the next head of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights would be someone like Colonel Gadaffi everyone would assume that I was making a lame attempt at satire.
Well, Colonel Gadaffi has just been appointed as the next head of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights.
Of course, the possibility that this is the work of one or more Western intelligence agencies (MI6?) cannot be entirely discounted but regardless of whether it is or not, it is actually robustly good news. It means that the Tranzis are casting off any pretences about the true nature of their project.
Although it has been linked to elsewhere in the blogosphere, I feel that this essay by John Fonte is simply too important to pass without mention here.
It’s a long essay but far more than worth it. For me, it was more like a gripping novel; once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. It isn’t just good, it’s exciting because a lot of us have known for some time that there was something wrong in the world but it was difficult to pin down and put our fingers on. It was something that has no face and no name. Like fog it swirled all around us but not being corporeal we lashed out fiercely in all directions, landing blows on nothing. It was like an itch we could never scratch.
John Fonte has done us all a service by running his nails deliciously down that spot and we will hear more of him and, more importantly, much more of the ‘Transnational Progressives’ (“Tranzis”) he so graphically disects.
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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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