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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I do not depend on the ‘main stream media’ world for my news. I expect that is true of most Samizdata readers as well. There is just the tiniest bit of self-selection effect at work here: you are applying your eyeball time to us rather than elsewhere. That given, I hope you are perusing the Iraqi blogs and papers for their take on the US election. There are many fine Iraqi blogs, but my current favorite is The Messopotamian. Here is his take on yesterday’s events:
Congratulations to all American people and to our Iraqi people for this great outcome of the American Elections. This was a great statement by the American people; a statement showing the quality and backbone of this people and affirming their worth and qualification as world leaders. Now that this matter has been settled in satisfactory manner, in my humble opinion; we should emphasize that this is no time for division and rancor. Senator Kerry has acted in very dignified manner when he did not allow the matter to drag, and has shown his patriotism and sense of responsibility and awareness that the interests of the country at these times require national unity and putting this election campaign behind our backs to concentrate on the momentous tasks ahead. Yes at times of war and conflict, the unity of the nation and putting higher interests above partisan considerations is the mark of a great people.
Read the whole thing. Then keep reading: it is well worth the time.
Unless it turns out to be an artful fake, it seems that contrary to my long held views, Osama bin Laden may indeed still be alive.
Quite why it has taken this long for a video of him saying something timely is hard to fathom, but then many of the things the likes of bin Laden do defies rational analysis. I am astonished by this turn of events.
Today is the 150th anniversary of that glorious cock-up known as The Charge of the Light Brigade.
The charge, which was part of the Battle of Balaklava, was one of those iconic moments in British military history due more to the works of Alfred Tennyson than the actual importance of the incident itself, which was really little more than a footnote in the overall conduct of the Crimean War. Yet at the time many newspapers accorded the charge of the Light Brigade far more significance than it was really due (and they also tended to gloss over the rather more successful actions of both the Heavy Brigade under Lord Lucan and the magnificent Chasseurs D’Afrique under General D’Allonville).
The charge was regarded as a great military blunder, and certainly it was not what Lord Raglan actually intended to happen when he issued the orders, nor what Lord Cardigan, the Light Brigade’s commander, wanted to execute (he is alleged to have quipped “Here goes the last of the Brudenells”, his family name, upon receiving the order), but in point of fact, the charge largely disrupted the astonished Russian forces at the end of the valley. As military blunders go, it was a fairly effective one and the overall battle was more or less a draw (though Russian attempts to take Balaklava failed, so it could be argued that it was a net allied victory).
Also in the news is the redeployment of the Black Watch mechanised battlegroup into the American zone of operations in Iraq. The fact this unremarkable operational movement of forces within Iraq has caused apoplexy in media and political circles shows that 150 years on, the pundits back home are just as clueless about military affairs as they ever were.
If Moses had turned right instead of left, the Jews could have had the oil, and the Arabs would have got the oranges.
– Harry Hutton
The Mesopotamian writes about the US Presidential Election. This quote is also quoted by Alice in Texas (also of Samizdata). It is, you might say, another letter to voters in America (see immediately below)..
So, I have been, personally very attentive to the debates and positions of both candidates, and I have some thoughts which I would like to share with you, my American friends. To start with, Senator Kerry may be a very good man and quite patriotic. Also we have to respect the almost 50% of the American people who lean towards the democrats. I don’t know much about domestic issues in the States so naturally, as might be expected, the position of any Iraqi would be mainly influenced by the issue that most concerns him. Thus, regardless of all the arguments of both candidates the main problem is that President Bush now represents a symbol of defiance against the terrorists and it is a fact, that all the enemies of America, with the terrorists foremost, are hoping for him to be deposed in the upcoming elections. That is not to say that they like the democrats, but that they will take such an outcome as retreat by the American people, and will consequently be greatly encouraged to intensify their assault. The outcome here on the ground in Iraq seems to be almost obvious. In case President Bush loses the election there would be a massive upsurge of violence, in the belief, rightly or wrongly, by the enemy, that the new leadership is more likely to “cut and run” to use the phrase frequently used by some of my readers. And they would try to inflict as heavy casualties as possible on the American forces to bring about a retreat and withdrawal. It is crucial for them to remove this insurmountable obstacle which stands in their way. They fully realize that with continued American and allies’ commitment, they have no hope of achieving anything.
On the other hand if President Bush is reelected, this will prove to them that the American people are not intimidated despite all their brutality, and that their cause is quite futile. Yes there is little doubt that an election victory by President Bush would be a severe blow and a great disappointment for all the terrorists in the World and all the enemies of America.
In today’s Telegraph, there is a story about Yusuf Islam, the former Cat Stevens, all about how very strange and mysterious and unfair it was for him to be refused entry into the USA.
A spokesman for the US Department for Homeland Security said that Islam had been placed on a “watch list”, compiled to combat terrorism, “because of his recent activities” – he was only allowed to board the plane to Washington because of a misspelling of his name at Heathrow.
Yes, I guess that “Yusuf” bit might be slightly confusing.
It was not his first brush with immigration: he was deported from Israel in 2000 after claims that he had given money to the Palestinian group Hamas 12 years earlier, though he has always vehemently denied the claim: “I have never knowingly supported any terrorist group, past, present or future,” he stated.
But in yesterday’s Sunday Times, there was a piece at the front of the News Review section by Sarah Baxter, called I’m a Democrat for Bush. Ms. Baxter now lives in the USA and used to work for the New Statesman. In her piece, she mentions Yusuf(Cat) Islam(Stevens) in passing (page 3), and what she says throws a somewhat different light on the matter of the US Government not wanting him in the USA. → Continue reading: What sort of Cat?
It will probably now be a widely accepted view that Saddam Hussein had no active weapons programme and was some way off from creating one. But that he intended to create one given a moment’s opportunity, is beyond doubt, and one reason why, given the increasingly porous nature of the sanctions regime, Saddam’s risk-taking behaviour and the corrupt oil-for-food programme of the UN, I felt war was the least-bad option.
Uber-blogger Andrew Sullivan linked this week to a Reuters story about how mothballed nuclear facilities were stripped and spirited out of the country after the Coalition successfully invaded Iraq.
It is one of the most serious charges one can level at George W. Bush that he bungled the aftermath of the war and that the Coalition forces failed to secure sites such as nuclear facilities. It was, after all, supposed to be a central justification for the war that we were securing such sites and preventing weapons getting into the hands of terrorists. Stuff like this makes me wonder whether Bush and Co. really had a clue about what they were doing.
But it is also interesting to note that a Reuters story (that big fat commie news service) implicitly conceded that Saddam did have a nuclear programme. And if it were not for the bravery and brilliance of the Israeli airforce in 1981, he would have had one up and running some time ago.
The September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States spurred calls for the Saudi royal family to modernize the country’s political landscape. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers involved in September 11 were Saudis.
Which is obviously why the Saudi political landscape has changed so radically that women… um, still are not allowed to vote. Or drive. Or talk to men in public. Or go out of doors without a big black cloak on.
They would be voting though, if it weren’t for a few major administrative problems that the government can not possibly be expected to solve. Oh yes.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there are not enough women to run women’s-only registration centers and polling stations, and that only a fraction of the country’s women have the photo identity cards that would have been needed to vote.
Well, obviously. Not to mention that:
Many women in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam, have balked at getting the ID cards — introduced three years ago — because the photographs would show their faces unveiled.
Right. And anyone who says this only illustrates the extent to which they have had the s*** scared out of them is just a Bush-loving Zionist neo-con. They should be glad that the ban on women voting, “[eases] fears among conservatives that the kingdom is moving too fast on reforms”. Because, moving too fast on reforms would be terrible, obviously. So, hang onto those abayas for a little while longer, girls. You will be needing them.
Overall, it is good to see how things are improving in the kingdom now. Islamism can seem a little off-putting from time to time, but Saudi hotels are super, and the government is surely well-intentioned. And the women are not in any way oppressed: they may have “limited freedoms,” but then again, don’t we all?
Thank gooodness CNN is there to tell it like it is. They even took the trouble to interview women against the idea of votes for women, just to provide a clear and balanced picture of events.
Fifteen of the 19 hijackers involved in September 11 were Saudis.
Did I mention that already? Please excuse me.
Here is an interesting effect of the Internet, I think you will agree.
The Telegraph declines to run this article, and Mark Steyn declines to change it until they would.
So, he just sticks it up at his website anyway. (Without the Internet, might he have been more pliable? Without the threat of the Internet, would Mark Steyn be such a good writer?)
Quote:
Paul Bigley can be forgiven his clumsiness: he’s a freelancer winging it. But the feelers put out by the Foreign Office to Ken Bigley’s captors are more disturbing: by definition, they confer respectability on the head-hackers and increase the likelihood that Britons and other infidels will be seized and decapitated in the future. The United Kingdom, like the government of the Philippines when it allegedly paid a ransom for the release of its Iraqi hostages, is thus assisting in the mainstreaming of jihad.
By contrast with the Fleet Street-Scouser-Whitehall fiasco of the last three weeks, consider Fabrizio Quattrocchi, murdered in Iraq on April 14th. In the moment before his death, he yanked off his hood and cried defiantly, “I will show you how an Italian dies!” He ruined the movie for his killers. As a snuff video and recruitment tool, it was all but useless, so much so that the Arabic TV stations declined to show it.
If the FCO wants to issue advice in this area, that’s the way to go: If you’re kidnapped, accept you’re unlikely to survive, say “I’ll show you how an Englishman dies”, and wreck the video. If they want you to confess you’re a spy, make a little mischief: there are jihadi from Britain, Italy, France, Canada and other western nations all over Iraq – so say yes, you’re an MI6 agent, and so are those Muslims from Tipton and Luton who recently joined the al-Qaeda cells in Samarra and Ramadi. As Churchill recommended in a less timorous Britain: You can always take one with you. If Mr Blair and other government officials were to make that plain, it would be, to use Mr Bigley’s word, “enough”. A war cannot be subordinate to the fate of any individual caught up in it.
That last sentence would make a fine Samizdata quote of the day, and I nearly posted it that way instead.
Commenters will no doubt have all kinds of things to say about Scousers, Italians, the FCO, Mr Blair, etc. But what interests me about this little circumstance is that it is yet one more straw in the wind, gently falling onto the back of the camel that is the Mainstream Media.
It just cannot be such fun being an MSM editor these days. You spike an article. But it gets ‘published’ anyway, with your spike marks on it as a badge of pride.
Where do political ideas end and terrorist acts begin? Is every destructive behaviour in the name of any political ideology just dandy, fine and justified, or are some societies distinguishable from others precisely because they employ civilised means of political expression and government (voting, debate, free speech) as opposed to ruling and arguing by violent threat and patently, deliberately, terrorising violence?
Call me a pro-life extremist but in my view, organisations cease to be mere political debating circles as soon as they reject real opportunities for reasonable discussion in favour of blowing people’s heads off.
The United Nations does not agree. Peter Hansen, the UN relief agency chief in Gaza, says:
Hamas as a political organisation does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another.
Israel begs to differ:
Israel’s ambassador to the UN criticised Mr Hansen’s comments. “The very idea that individuals with clear links to the Hamas terrorist network may be on the Unwra payroll is totally unacceptable and should be properly investigated,” Dan Gillerman said.
→ Continue reading: Beneath politics
The other day, I snapped the following photo, in the London Underground. I tried as hard as I could to get the entire thing in my picture. Had I stepped back any further I would have been (a) electrocuted and then shortly after that (b) run over by a train.
I have not read this book, which is by Jason Burke. But: Naom Chomsky? “Rumsfeld and his clique”? Something tells me that whatever the nuances of the truth here revealed, America will get the blame for it all and Islam hardly any.
William Dalrymple should not be confused with Theodore Dalrymple. Read what Theodore has to say about William (no relation), in this article, this sentence being the one that seems to me to matter most:
… Dalrymple comes perilously close to condoning what he is trying to explain…
I did an earlier posting about William Dalrymple, and the comments there are also well worth looking at to learn more about the man and his views.
The Telegraph reports that an Iraqi-born gunman with a British passport, Mohammed Kasim, talked to an Iraqi translator in Fallujah about the latest video of Mr Bigley where he was shown shackled in a cage. Mr Kasim claimed that this had been staged to “terrify” the British public. There was no way of verifying the claim, particularly in a country awash with rumour and conspiracy theories.
The claims that the British hostage was free to roam his kidnappers’ home in Iraq and was “caged” only for terrorist videos coincide with a raid by Dutch intelligence officers of the home of Paul Bigley, Kenneth Bigley’s brother last, who lives in Amsterdam. He is accused of contact with the Tawhid and Jihad group, which yesterday claimed responsibility for Thursday’s killing of at least 35 children in Baghdad. Mr Bigley has been an outspoken critic of the Government’s handling of his brother’s case and has established his own contacts in the Middle East but denies being in direct contact with the kidnappers.
From yesterday news, Italy’s adoration of the “two Simonas” (Simona Pari and Simona Torretta), the women aid workers abducted in Iraq, began to sour yesterday, as the extent of their sympathy for the Iraqi fight against the allied occupation became clear.
After they were taken hostage on Sept 7, the two Simonas achieved iconic status in Italy and the conservative government and the opposition put aside their differences to work together for the women’s release.
But as the Turin newspaper La Stampa said yesterday, national unity has been short lived since their arrival home, wearing kaftans and thanking their captors in Arabic for their release before the cameras of the Al-Jazeera stellite television network.
There have been reports of a $1 million ransom… No matter, the girls are well versed in international law:
If you ask me about terrorism, I’ll tell you that there is terrorism and there is resistance. The resistance struggle of people against an occupying force is guaranteed by international law.
They have obviously become experts on the local situation – upon their return they gave their backing to insurgents opposing the allied forces. Alas, they did not seem to know about other hostages:
We didn’t know there were any other hostages. No one told us about the British prisoner, nor about the Americans who were beheaded.
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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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