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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Dutch-born writer Ian Buruma writes about the issues stemming from the murder of Dutch film-maker Theo Van Gogh. On the basis of his previous writings, I would have expected his account to be a compelling one. This reviewer of his book, however, gives a fairly harsh assessment. (Via Arts & Letters Daily).
Readers of Murder in Amsterdam are likely to close the book with a heavy heart. One reason is that the problem it addresses, the emergence of militant Islam as a divisive political/religious force in the West, is not going to go away soon. Another is that, though full of learning and skilled if tepid reporting, Buruma’s book often feels muddled, ungenerous and confusing. There is plenty of scholarship on display, but no compelling point of view.
There is, however, an off-putting strain of snobbery. Buruma, an Asia specialist and the author of Inventing Japan, Anglomania and, most recently, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of Its Enemies, grew up in Holland but left it as a young man in the 1970s. Now a New Yorker, he clearly feels he’s gone on to bigger and better things. He rarely misses a chance to take a swipe at some aspect of Dutch life, whether it’s the “dank and gray” area of the Hague he was raised in or the “arrogance” of the great national soccer teams of the 1970s and ’80s.
Van Gogh’s murder followed the assassination two years earlier of Pim Fortuyn, Holland’s flamboyantly gay, and very popular, anti-immigration politician who had also railed against the Islamicization of the Netherlands. Fortuyn was killed not by a Muslim, but by a white, left-wing vegan “activist”, who didn’t like the fact that the flashy politician wore fur collars and criticized immigrants. “The sobering truth,” wrote Rod Dreher in National Review shortly after Fortuyn’s death, “is that Europe – democratic, gun-controlling Europe – is a place where questioning the immigration status quo will not only get you branded a fascist by the news media, it will get you shot dead.”
Read the whole article.
There is an article in the Independent called Another fatal day in the ‘war on terror’ in which Patrick Cockburn, the “award-winning journalist and author” states:
The real reason of the increasing violence in the Middle East is the return to imperial control and foreign occupation half a century after the European colonial empires were broken up. This is the fuel for Islamic militancy. This is why fanatical but isolated Islamic groups can suddenly win broader support. Governments allied to the US and Britain have no legitimacy.
It seems to me that “the real reason for the increasing violence in the Middle East” is a bunch of Saudi Arabian Muslims hijacked several aircraft flying over the United States and used to to commit mass murder in 2001 and thereby caused the US to defend itself. Forget that and nothing makes sense.
The Taliban, the government who sponsored and facilitated Al Qaeda’s attacks on the USA, did not take control of Afghanistan because of a “return to imperial control and foreign occupation”, except in the sense that foreign Arabs did indeed occupy parts of Afghanistan.
Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda and the Taliban all pre-dated the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Pretending they were caused by unwise actions of western governments rather than by the development of anti-modern Islamist ideology centred on Iran and Saudi Arabia, puts the blame in the wrong place. If the US and UK have made any major strategic mistakes, they were not intervening in more force in Iraq and to have not started working to encourage ‘robust’ opposition to Wahabbism in Saudi Arabia and Shi’ite fascism in Iran decades ago.
Robert Bidinotto has an interesting article up discussing the admission in the Washington Post that their reporting on the matter of former CIA agent Valerie Plame and former US ambassador Joe Wilson was completely wrong.
Buried in this editorial is the fact with the most far-reaching implications: that Joe Wilson falsely claimed that he had “debunked” White House charges that Saddam had been trying to buy uranium in Niger. It turns out that Saddam had been trying to buy uranium, so that Iraq could build nuclear weapons.
Thus, it turns out that the White House stands vindicated on one of its key arguments for going to war against Saddam: that this thug and his regime were actively pursuing a WMD program. So…where are all the headlines about this? Except for this editorial admission by the Post (which implies that the newspaper had been taken in, rather than played a key roll in disseminating the lies), where are the media mea culpas, retractions, and apologies for many months of false, anti-Bush “conspiracy” stories? Don’t hold your breath.
I must confess when I quickly zipped through the specific WaPo article mentioned earlier today, I paid more attention to the Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson aspects of this saga and not really pick up on what I now realise was the ‘bombshell’ aspect to all of this: it seems that Saddam really was shopping for uranium in Niger.
Interesting.
Michael Totten has another excellent and well illustrated article reminding us that rockets fired into Israeli civilian areas are not just launched from Southern Lebanon.
Israel scores a direct hit on the enemy.
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.
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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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