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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Report here stating that Israel’s response to Hizbollah’s kidnapping of Israeli soldiers took Hizbollah by surprise, particularly the extent and ferocity of the IDF action, according to a Hiz deputy leader.
Given the determination of Israel’s armed forces to defend the tiny Jewish state over the years against a host of enemies, why some terrorist organisation like Hizbollah should be surprised is, frankly, surprising. In any event, this interview may suggest that Israel’s campaign to hammer Hizobollah may not be quite the debacle that some commentators have supposed. The jury is still out on the future of the current Israel administration, however.
There is a strange article in the LA Times called The Governor’s cold shoulder to Muslims, in which Shakeel Syed, the executive director of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California criticises state governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for refusing to meet with him. The title suggests this refusal amounts to cold shouldering ‘Muslims’ rather than just certain Muslims (i.e Shakeel Syed).
After waiting for more than a week, and following up with at least 10 phone calls to the governor’s office, I had gotten no response. I felt it was my duty and my right as a citizen to avail myself of a public forum to reach the governor. When a reporter from the L.A. Times called, I spoke with him and, on Aug. 16, The Times correctly reported my perspective: The fact that the governor had ignored my request to meet was disrespectful and insulting.
Of course, what with being the governor of a large state, I would guess Schwarzenegger is not exactly an easy man to get a meeting with, so I am not quite sure why Mr. Syed thinks not being able to meet with him amounts insult and disrespect. Moreover he then tried to apply pressure to Schwarzenegger by attacking him in the LA Times for not meeting with him, whilst noting the Governor was quite happy to meet with “rabbis and others who support Israel”.
He then acts surprised that Schwarzenegger’s communications director stated that: “We did not meet with Mr. Syed [because] it was inappropriate for the governor to meet with someone who uses the media to demand meetings and threaten political retaliation.” In other words, as Mr. Syed annoyed the person he wanted a favour from (to meet him), he was surprised that the person he annoyed was, well, annoyed enough not to meet with him.
In the earlier LA Times article, it said…
Muslim leaders on Tuesday called Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger disrespectful and insulting for ignoring their request to meet about the war in Lebanon so he could explain his appearance at a rally supporting Israel that was attended by thousands.
What does Schwarzenegger need to ‘explain’? Clearly he supports Israel (the dead give away is that he attended a rally supporting Israel) and if some Muslims in California do not like that then perhaps they should consider not voting for him. Which bit of that needs an ‘explanation’? Arnie obviously values the Jewish vote rather more than the Muslim vote.
But then if Schwarzenegger wanted some even better reasons for refusing to meet someone from the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California, those would not be hard to find. Mr. Syed supports making it illegal to say or print things Muslims find deeply offensive, making the categorical statement “We call for laws that prohibits defamation of all Prophets and faiths”. So the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California thinks the sensibilities of religious people trumps the First Amendment and therefore the rights of people who might think religion is so much superstitious claptrap to say what they please about a historical figure or a person’s beliefs. Just a guess but I suspect the rabbis Schwarzenegger met were not urging him to pass any laws against making movies like The Life of Brian or other forms of satire which clearly defame religion.
Syed does not just demand tolerance, to which he is of course entitled, he also frequently demands respect, which is not something a person should get as a matter of right. I hope Schwarzenegger continues to tell him to get stuffed.
Michael Totten has an interesting interview with a couple Israeli members of Peace Now. Although I think many of their views are wacky in ways only old socialists can be, they say many things I cannot imagine all too many CND members saying.
There is an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement that claims not only are radical Islamists trying to recruit at UK universities, the universities are doing little to combat it (a claim they naturally deny).
I do not know who is correct, but as Shiraz Maher claims the universities are not on top of this problem and he was a former member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, I am inclined to think the worst.
How many Islamists does it take to change a lightbulb?
At last we can put an end to all the quarrelsome debates and ill-informed speculation
A fundamentalist Islamic movement is emerging as a common link between several of the men arrested on suspicion of plotting to blow up transatlantic airliners.
Well, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
(And, by the way, I wonder what links the remainder of the men? Perhaps it was too soon to call for an end to the quarrelsome debates.)
…or anything, but I think have some reason to feel smug about my over/under on the Israeli/Hez ceasefire.
On day six of the ceasefire, we get:
Israeli commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold deep in Lebanon on Saturday, engaging in a fierce gunbattle, and the Lebanese government threatened to halt further troop deployments in protest as the 6-day-old U.N.-brokered cease-fire was put to a critical test.
“If Israel uses its military decisively to wipe out Hezbollah, such an action will simply create a whole new generation of terrorists.”
Someone close to me recently lectured me on this fact. It appears to makes sense prima facie, but such an enlightened-sounding utterance falls apart as an empty truism with the addition of a little perspective. The Middle Eastern conflict must be viewed from a long-term angle, whilst attempting to countenance the ramifications of the alternative tactic mentioned. Those who might be attracted to the deceivingly pacific fog shrouding the above statement would benefit from realising that by strategically not responding in kind to a belligerent act by zealots like Hezbollah is no silver bullet to the problems of the Middle East; on the contrary, such a strategy may well carry consequences that could ultimately be unthinkably awful.
A powerful expression of the quote I provided above can be found in Steven Spielberg’s recent movie, Munich. The moral of that tale is identical to the one pronounced by my close relative; if one hunts down and kills those who planned and carried out the kidnapping-murders of the Israeli athletes at those fateful Games, all one does is inspire a new and more brutal generation to rise up in its place and start spreading increased chaos.
In response to this assertion, I ask; was this same generation not destined to pollute the earth with their hatred and intolerance in one form or another? Israel, by its relatively frequent, um, non-diplomatic actions, may well have inspired many, many Muslims to embark on violent jihad over the course of its existence. However, if Israel left – for example – the horrors of the Munich Olympic Games unanswered, it is perfectly conceivable that the people who reacted to Israel’s subsequent blatant retaliatory assassination programme by joining Islamic militant movements would readily join the same sorts of organisations (or even Arab state militaries) when inspired and emboldened by a flaccid Israeli reaction to a travesty of this kind, or perhaps an aura of weakness created by such a profound act of Israeli inertia in the face of this sort of crime. Long and rambling sentence, sorry. Considering that the existence of Israel is an anathema to so many Middle-Eastern Muslims, Israeli inaction and the perception of Israeli weakness is plausibly just as strong an inspiration to take up arms against the relatively tiny Jewish state as a hail of super-potent Star of David-marked precision-guided missiles.
The overarching problem – and this extends beyond Israel and into the international arena – is Islam and its unique propensity, amongst the major religions, towards radicalism. It seems more than likely that Israel will defeat Hezbollah in the future, however I have no doubt that some other radical Islamic organisation will fill any breach left expeditiously. If radical Islam’s nature is hydra-like, as those urging Israeli restraint imply from the above quote (and I believe they are correct), chopping off the heads of the hydra when they appear until the organism is exhausted through struggle or circumstance seems a perfectly logical grand strategy for the enormously durable West to pursue over the decades.
The ideal that lasting peace could reign in the Middle East if Israel would simply act passively towards its aggressors when she comes under attack is delusional nonsense. Israel is (again) biblical territory in Huntingdon’s oft-quoted, prescient – and surely by now undeniable – Clash of Civilizations, and ultimately the conflict between the liberal West and conservative Islam is a fiendishly complicated, opaque and unpredictable game of strategy that will be played out over many, many years. Every move in this game has the potential to yield both highly predictable and confoundingly unpredictable consequences. It is predictable that when Israel neutralizes an external threat using its military, a certain kind of person will be motivated to fight this force. Conversely and equally predictably, if Israel fails to respond adequately to an external threat, the enduring pan-Arab desire to drive the Israelis into the sea will stir in the heart of the same sort of person, provoking a similar outcome. I fear Israel, due to its location, will suffer negative long-term consequences emanating from the actions of the armed belligerati of conservative Islam, regardless of whatever strategy Israel chooses (ranging from rank appeasement to overwhelming military retaliation) to deal with blows bestowed by these aggressors, for that is the nature of the consolidated foe. Hence, Israel needs long-term support from the Western world. Israel may not be a liberal place itself in many ways, but in many ways it is the (somewhat unlikely) vanguard of liberalism.
Michael Totten has another interesting and well illustrated dispatch from Northern Israel, describing the situation in Kiryat Shmona, which took the brunt of Hezbollah’s Katyusha rocket attacks.
Can it be true that UK mobile phone company Orange has suspended an employee, Inigo Wilson, for a non-work related entry on a blog? What seems to have caused offence is him making jokes in his ‘Lefty Lexicon’ such as:
Islamophobic – anyone who objects to having their transport blown up on the way to work
Unless there are other factors at play here (I will be see what I can find out), I am about to become an ex-Orange customer and will start urging others to do likewise. If Orange is concerned about one of their employees ‘upsetting customers’, well I think they need to be told that pursuing this course of action against Inigo Wilson, they are doing precisely that. I do not dispute their right to hire and fire whomsoever they wish, but I intent to try and make them suffer some economic consequences as a result if this is as egregious as it appears.
Update: I received an e-mail from Stuart Jackson at Orange telling me:
To clarify, the suspension of an employee is not intended to imply that the employee in question has done wrong. It is a neutral act that allows us to conduct a full investigation and reach a conclusion based on facts. I will gladly update you regarding the outcome of the investigation.
But as the ‘facts’ are not in dispute, that does not really answer my question, which was:
I am enquiring about why Orange has suspended its employee Inigo Wilson. It is indeed the company’s position that remarks made on an employee’s own time and wholly unrelated to his work, is grounds for action by the company? I ask this as if there are other factors at play here, I may then refrain from cancelling my Orange account.
The ‘facts’ are not the issue. The issue is why Orange feels it has to do anything about them. Frankly even requiring Mr. Wilson to ‘apologise and not do it again’ would be wholly unacceptable given that his off-the-clock non work related remarks should be none of Orange’s business and if they think otherwise, they can do without my business.
Earlier this week I flew into London Heathrow from Athens, having been subjected to a relatively modest amount of incovenience, expense and humiliation as a result of the latest anti-terrorist security measures. Had I been travelling in the opposite direction (i.e. London to Athens), the story would have been altogether different and my trifling miseries compounded by several magnitudes. I truly sympathised with the weary, frustrated wannabe-outbound travellers who were camped on the floor of the terminal going nowhere, thanks to numerous cancelled flights, huge delays and a blanket of zealous security measures aimed at stripping them down to their socks.
I wonder if any of those people have been sullied by the experience? I wonder if any of the magic and wonder of modern civilian airline travel has been marred for them? I hope not, but what is certain is that the hidden costs of this latest air-travel crisis, in terms of time, money and lost opportunities, must be huge. Air travel is no longer the preserve of the privileged few; it is a vast mass industry that bestows incalculable economic, social, cultural and even spiritual benefits on us all.
And yet, it is all too easily assailable because no amount of security or scrutiny can obviate the basic fact that a pressurised, inescapable metal tube flying some 30,000 feet up in the sky is, and always will be, critically vulnerable to attack from either without or within, the results of which are simply to horrible to be shrugged off. Tougher security measures can make life harder for the Islamists but the fact remains that the security screeners need to be lucky all the time while the jihadis only need to be lucky once. That is why, over a longer time frame, the odds favour the latter.
Perhaps that is why the tune has changed. Following the London Undergound bombings in July 2005, there was an instant and comprehensive demand for solidarity. ‘One London’ read the official blazen of the Mayor’s office. ‘We will not allow these terrorists to divide us’ proclaimed HMG. From one end of the country to the other, hands were held, memorials were wept through and communities appealed to for calmness and reason. Everyone who was anyone rushed headlong towards the Totem of Tolerance and hugged it hard enough to squeeze out the sap.
In contrast, the airline scares have been just that; scares. Not a single bomb has exploded and (mercifully) not a a soul was taken. Yet the response could not be more different. This time, the message emerging from some official quarters is that it is time for profiling, a measure the mere utterance of which would have been unthinkable a year ago in the wake of 52 dead commuters.
Why the difference now? Perhaps it is just the cumulative weariness of one bloody thing following the next and a government that is rapidly running out of other ideas. Or perhaps it is because there is a dawning collective realisation that it will not take too much more of this to bring the whole wonderful, liberating phenomenon of commercial air travel to a juddering and insensible end. It seems that taboos can be easily dispensed with the moment they are no longer affordable.
Of course, the threat of profiling has precipitated a chorus of disapproval but, significantly, only from the usual and expected circles. I would wager that those exhausted travellers, stranded in blankets on the unforgiving stone floor of Heathrow’s Terminal 2, would noisily and heartily approve.
Anyone care to put some their predicted over/under for the Hez/Israeli truce on the record? Personally, I think I will go with six days.
Hez has already announced its intention to violate the ceasefire by refusing to disarm.
I find it interesting that Hez and the Lebanese government are already conspiring to violate the requirement that Hez disarm, as apparently all Hez will be required to do is refrain from displaying its weapons (with, of course, the knowledge and tacit consent of the French and the UN responsible for policing the cease-fire).
The longer this goes on, the more it is apparent that the Lebanese government is the creature of Hez, and the more justified the Israeli attacks on non-Hez assets appear to be. While I was willing to view the Lebanese generally as victims of Hez in July, by mid-August they look a lot more like co-conspirators.
With the fundamental condition of the ceasefire – the eviction and disarmament of Hez – already withering on the vine, I would say that Olmert blinked, gave Hez not only the hudna it needed to survive but a strategic victory over Israeli arms, and has guaranteed that the Israeli soldiers who died in this offensive died for nothing.
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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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