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]
|
Rand Simberg has pointed out an excellent speech by Tony Blair about the global war we are fighting. Here is a short excerpt:
We can no more opt out of this struggle than we can opt out of the climate changing around us. Inaction, pushing the responsibility on to America, deluding ourselves that this terrorism is an isolated series of individual incidents rather than a global movement and would go away if only we were more sensitive to its pretensions; this too is a policy. It is just that; it is a policy that is profoundly, fundamentally wrong.
Well worth the read.
I take the greatest of pride in reporting the Danish cartoons are to be republished in The Blanket here in Belfast over the coming weeks.
One of the two major papers in the city, The Belfast Telegraph, has published an interview with a representative of the site. They report Mr McIntyre expects this will provoke a reaction but told them it was important to stand up against religious fundamentalism:
“We are putting out one of these cartoons a week in response to the Manifesto Against Totalitarianism which has been published by a string of writers and can be seen as a defence of those who publish the cartoons,” he said.
“These writers are people who have had sanctions issued against them and they are still willing to speak out and it is right to put out these cartoons in defence of freedom of expression.”
The Belfast Telegraph says The Blanket journal is “known for its anti-establishment views and takes a wide range of contributions on the current political scene in Northern Ireland as well as other world events.”
Kudos to the Tele for making it news and to The Blanket for having goolies enough to lift a middle finger to the anti-liberal forces of darkness.
PS: Our more cowardly journalistic brethren on the other side of the Irish Sea don’t even have the guts to publish Mark Steyn!
There are moves afoot to ban the burqa in the Netherlands on the basis that they are oppressive to women and in the words of Geert Wilders, a Dutch member of parliament…
an insult to everyone who believes in equal rights
Which is quite curious logic because if he believes in equal rights, does that not include the right to wear what you damn well please without it having to be politically approved by the state? Will other forms of clothing be banned in order to make this an ‘equal right’? Moreover it sets a horrific president: does that mean ‘offensive’ clothing can be banned, such as, say, a mini-skirt that some Muslims with sexual hang-ups find offensive?
This proposal is a dreadful idea with only one thing to recommend it, and that with proviso is does not actually pass into law. The notion of making Muslim fundamentalists (and I would argue that anyone wearing a burqa is a fundamentalist) feel that they are not accepted and that even toleration of them is hanging in the balance is not such a bad message to send. Yet this is nevertheless an appalling notion for the state to decide what people can wear. A vastly better idea would be to just scale back the welfare state which brough many of these people to Europe and most importantly return the abridged property rights and freedom of association and dis-association to individuals to deal with who they please and freely (but peaceably) express themselves without fear of prosecution for ‘discrimination’.
That way, if enough individuals decide that not make people who wear burqas welcome into their places of business, the problem of state supported non-assimilation would quickly disappear. If people really do not care, then that too is the ‘voice of the people’. Either way, the state has no business enforcing dress codes. Provide some real social motivation to assimilate and adopt western norms of behaviour. If some un-assimilated Muslims find that notion offensive and choose to leave for some nation which is more accepting of dark ages mores. Either way the problem is reduced.
There is a lot of stuff about Dubai at the moment. The issue of Dubai Ports’ purchase of P&O and the reaction by certain American Democrat and Republican politicians is a massive story Stateside, though it has not registered much in the UK, unless you are a reader of the business sections. There is a smell of protectionism in the air in Europe too, with a number of European states scratching each other’s eyes out about merger and acquisitions involving banks and utilities. Plus ca change..
Dubai is now a major story on a number of fronts. The BBC recently ran a series of programmes about the incredible amount of construction happening there and the local magnates and immigrants who are driving the economy forward. A vast artificial archipelago of homes and estates has been built into the Gulf. Dubai is also a major business and media centre, a place where a lot of sporting and cultural events goes on. Dubai is also becoming one of the major venues for business conferences in areas such as finance.
So it seems to me that even with all the reservations one might have about that part of the world and the islamist threats not far away, Dubai’s vibrancy is a sort of Good Thing. The place has, potentially, the capacity to exert the same impact on parts of the Middle East as Hong Kong did on mainland China. Perhaps it is all a bubble and will go up in smoke, as the Eyeores out there might think, but on the whole I am optimistic. Let’s face it, pessimism is a sort of cop-out.
May the meme of liberty spread out from its borders and confound the naysayers. Meanwhile, this man is doing something highly admirable.
The Khaleej Times is reporting that the Danish consul to Dubai has said:
The massive protests in the Muslim world against the Danish cartoons have helped Denmark, as also Europe, have a better understanding of, and respect for, Islam
Well that is both quite correct and completely false, but of course a diplomat is someone whose job it is to lie for his country. It has indeed given millions of Europeans a better understanding of Islam… and thereby led them to an utter lack of respect for it. Now every time I hear someone saying “Islam is one of the world’s great religions”, I tend to get very rude rather quickly.
The diplomat was quite sound on the core issue however.
The Danish diplomat made it clear that, however, ‘We will not change our constitution (to exert controls over the media)’.
And that is why this site has a ‘support Denmark: no burqa on free speech’ graphic in the sidebar. Hold the line.
Update: It would appear that Imran Khan is now officially a moron:
I don’t think the message has got through that for us it’s far more painful than perhaps even the Holocaust for the Jews. Any caricature or any ridicule or any humiliation of the holy prophet is far more painful for the Muslims
These cartoons are more ‘painful’ that the mass extermination of six million Jews? And this from a much acclaimed ‘moderate’? Yes indeed, I think a great many people’s understanding of Islam is improving pretty much by the day.
There was an excellent article the other day in the Prague Post about the whole Jyllands-Posten ‘Mohammed cartoons’ issue. What a pity such sentiments seem few and far between in the craven media in Britain.
To many, the notion that a cartoon could provoke global riots, dozens of deaths, a $1 million assassination contract and vacillation among Western leaders seems like an abstract fantasy, a trip down the rabbit hole into a theater of the absurd.
But that perspective remains precisely what these protesters have attacked: the rejection of the idea that it’s justified – or even rational – to kill people over their speech, particularly a statement as trifling as a cartoon.
The purple elephant in the middle of this crossfire is the contemporary notion – or, more accurately, the Western one – that the values of most Islamic societies have modernized along with the rest of the world.
[…]
The West has naively greeted this scorpion with its Cold War handshake, believing that the virtues of peace and democracy appear self-evident; as if good intentions, by definition, will be good enough. But even the mainstream Islamic mindset has proven inscrutable to the West in a way that communism was mythologized to be but never truly was.
Good stuff. Read the whole thing.
Also, some of the people very much at ‘fatwa ground zero’, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie, are taking a stand against the new Islamic totalitarianism.
(hat tip to JP)
For those of you who are following Michael Totten’s interesting Middle Eastern adventures, he has written about one of the more interesting religious groups in that part of the world.
There is an excellent article by Michael Totten, who is currently blogging from Iraq, about what quite a few people think is the inevitable end result: partition into three (or at least two) separate entities. It is interesting to see the facts on the ground seem to back up the view that we already have a de facto independent Kurdistan.
An Islamo-fascist Southern Iraq is not such a great outcome but an independent Kurdistan would seem to have much to commend it.
I really have no problem with that and wrote something on the subject myself called: to hell with nation building, lets see some nation wrecking!
Andrew Sullivan, reminds me why I was a fan of his blog from the off and remain one:
Leave aside the issue of mob violence for a moment. No moderate Muslim or “sensitive” Westerner is defending that. What of the non-violent request: that one faith be granted its taboos, that Western culture must abide by them, that the law be reformed to protect religious faiths from blasphemy or offense? It seems to me that we should indeed avoid gratuitous insult of Islam, and Christianity, or any faith. But it is a complete delusion to believe that the major source of our problem today is something called “Islamophobia.” No: the problem is terrorism and tyranny propagated under the banner of Islam. Without that, no Danish cartoon could have been conceived of, let alone published. That is the real and far more blatant blasphemy. If 10,000 angry Muslims had marched in London after the bombing of a major mosque in Iraq, I’d be impressed. But they didn’t. Until they do, the West has nothing to apologize for. The Muslim world needs to take the beam out of its own eye, before it removes the speck from the West’s.
I must say that I always enjoy reading what Michael Totten has to say even if I do not always agree (though in truth I find myself agreeing more and more often). His reports from Lebanon were always compelling.
He is now writing from Iraq (Kurdistan to be exact) and I strong recommend people take a peek at his blog.
In the past I have had opportunities to spend money at Carrefour, but due to a conflux of circumstances, I am happy to say that I have never bought a thing from this large French supermarket chain. And now I never will.
Via Tim Blair.
Erik and Arthur Wneir from No Pasaran took on several thousand Muslim protesters and only the intervention of French police prevented a repeat of the Battle of Tours.
More seriously, watch the video to see the characteristic Muslim reaction to people daring to state an opinion different to theirs.
|
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.
|
