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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Last week we had a rather stiff debate on the downsides of Coalition policing in Iraq here, here and here.
In this post Salam Pax responded to a recent email. He could just as well have been reading and responding to the comments of many of our readers. Go read it.
As for me, the more I read, the more I like the guy. I hope someday we will either have the honour of his presence at a Samizdata London Blogger Bash, or an opportunity to sit an afternoon in a Baghdad cafe with him… sipping only culturally allowable beverages of course!
Absolutely appalling interview with Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm unearthed at the National Review Online’s bloggish Corner:
IGNATIEFF: In 1934, millions of people are dying in the Soviet experiment. If you had known that, would it have made a difference to you at that time? To your commitment? To being a Communist?
HOBSBAWM: This is the sort of academic question to which an answer is simply not possible…I don’t actually know that it has any bearing on the history that I have written. If I were to give you a retrospective answer which is not the answer of a historian, I would have said, ‘Probably not.’
IGNATIEFF: Why?
HOBSBAWM: Because in a period in which, as you might imagine, mass murder and mass suffering are absolutely universal, the chance of a new world being born in great suffering would still have been worth backing. Now the point is, looking back as an historian, I would say that the sacrifices made by the Russian people were probably only marginally worthwhile. The sacrifices were enormous; they were excessive by almost any standard and excessively great. But I’m looking back at it now and I’m saying that because it turns out that the Soviet Union was not the beginning of the world revolution. Had it been, I’m not sure.
IGNATIEFF: What that comes down to is saying that had the radiant tomorrow actually been created, the loss of fifteen, twenty million people might have been justified?
HOBSBAWM: Yes.
→ Continue reading: The face of the enemy
From the manner in which our governing elites regulate, restrict, control, prohibit and monitor every jot and tittle of our lives, it is probably reasonable to infer that they imagine themselves to be presiding over a motley and sordid collection of cut-throats, gangsters, thieves, perverts, racists, conmen and every other manner of low and untrustworthy creature.
This is the diametric opposite of the truth. On the whole, the British are civil, law-abiding and touchingly decent. Personally, I put this down to our common law heritage.
How strange, then, that there appears to be no public concern whatsoever about an organisation based in this country and whose members clearly feel confident enough to openly publish and distribute such disturbing sentiments:
Two years on then, it seems that during their customary 1 minutes silence in NewYork and elsewhere on September the 11th 2003, Muslims worldwide will again be watching replays of the collapse of the Twin Towers, praying to Allah (SWT) to grant those magnificent 19, Paradise. They will also be praying for the reverberations to continue until the eradication of all man-made law and the implementation of divine law in the form of the Khilafah – carrying the message of Islam to the world and striving for Izhar ud-Deen i.e. the total domination of the world by Islam.
Well, at least they’re not going fox-hunting (I assume).
I remain a passionate advocate of free speech. I think these people should be able to say whatever they want to say. However, and by the same token, other people are free to draw from it whatever conclusions they see fit.
[My thanks to the crew at Gene Expression for the link.]
I have several items in my list of ‘stories to watch’ on the Iraq campaign. The silence on two of them has been deafening. They are dogs ‘that didn’t bark’.
- What is the story on the Iraqi Salman Pak training facility? That is where an old Boeing 707 airframe was seen from overhead photography. Ground truth reports said it was used to train terrorists in the fine art of hijacking. What has been found there? Why hasn’t it been reported on? Why hasn’t someone from the army of Baghdad news correspondents been out to the suburbs to tell us?
- Where in hell are those ships? You know the ones I’m talking about. Osama’s fleet. In March we heard how they were floating around the world’s oceans and changing name and flag in mid voyage. Other reports suggested they might carry weaponry Saddam wanted both preserved and not found.
The latter seems to have slipped entirely into the black world. Did a Navy Seal team board and sink them with all hands dead?
Stories don’t go away in the blogosphere. They aren’t forgotten. They’ll keep popping up until satisfactory answers are found. Perhaps someone in ‘big media’, someone with resource enough for real intelligence work, can dig for the facts.
The truth is out there.
There appear to be no good days in the Middle East, just varying degrees of bad day. How does today rate on the scale, I wonder?
In Baghdad, a bomber in a truck blows up the UN Headquarters: death toll 16 and rising.
In Jerusalem, a bomber blows up another bus: death toll 20 and rising.
It is conceivable (though by no means inevitable) that the attacks were co-ordinated in some way.
I often wonder about the future of that region and, every time I do, the vista just grows darker and darker. Some might say that that prognosis is simply a product of my pessimistic tendencies.
Is it?
Reuters reports that Saddam Hussein’s former vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, has been captured by U.S. Kurdish allies in northern Iraq, U.S. and Kurdish officials. Ramadan was No. 20 and the 10 of diamonds in a deck of cards issued to U.S. troops hunting the 55 most wanted members of Saddam’s administration.
Ramadan, who is in his 60s and originally from the Mosul region, was one of the most hawkish members of Saddam’s inner circle and one of the only surviving plotters of the 1968 coup that brought the Ba’ath Party to power. His capture will fuel speculation that U.S. forces may be closing in on Saddam himself.
Ramadan is alleged to have been involved in crimes against humanity for his role in suppressing Kurdish rebellion in the north in the 1980s and against the Shi’ite revolt in southern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War. A man of blunt words, he told Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister to “go to hell” during the U.S. invasion when the minister suggested that Saddam should step down.
Reuters
A new letter from Basra, this time adding a bit of colour (or new shades of grey) to the black and white picture of Iraqi society.
I promised you a description of Basra society. The most important division is not religious or tribal but between the top 20% and the bottom 80%. The top 20% is the educated class that run the country. It was a totally technocratic country, with the highest percentage of PhDs per capita in the world, and it shows. The educated 20% are scared stiff of Islamic fundamentalism, Iranians and extremists.
They want to see a modern, comparatively secular state, so they tend to be pro-CF [ed. Coalition Forces] as a bulwark against all of the above, and because they have the most to lose from a breakdown in law and order. They are also terrified of mob rule. They are appalled by the current crime, which is not simply old Basra without Saddam, but Basra with the worst scum from across Iraq deliberately released into it just before we arrived. They want security above all from CF and are frightened of not getting it. Talk of the Badr corps, Iranian trained Iraqis, is everywhere.
The top 20% are usually tainted ex-regime to some degree although they also include those most vehemently opposed to the old regime, as they tended to have suffer more personally – they were important enough for the regime to bother to deal with. Most have also quickly switched to CF as the resident power and will switch again just as easily. There are plenty of genuine patriots and some humanitarian idealists, but most look to see how the new regime works and how they can manipulate it. They now want to get on and get ahead with their fairly typical middle-class aspirations, but most are held back to some degree by Ba’ath Party connections. And some are involved in the crime in the sense of general managerial corruption.
Authority – many people, especially at the top defined themselves by their positions. This has all gone, creating a social vacuum and loss of identity. The top 20% provide the main support of the secular political parties, i.e. INC, CINU, etc. Influences on the top 20% in rough order of importance are the CF, the political parties, western aspirations, ex-regime connections, tribes, and religion.
Amongst the poorer 80% only 40% of the total population count, as only the men count politically. Women have a lot more sway within the homes than western stereotyping realises but not outside of it. (Women in the top 20% have professional status just as in the West.) Their sources of information are primarily their local Imams. They all go to the Mosque on Friday and listen to the sermon but they do not necessarily agree with what they are told (if they did, there would not be so much crime…) In addition, if they do not like the message they simply swap mosques.
The small educated part of the bottom 80% tend to be religious scholars, anyone else who is educated gets immense respect, i.e. any doctors, lawyers. Otherwise, people listen to radio in crowds in markets and barber shops. They are 80% illiterate, but those who can read pass on whatever they read in pamphlets, leaflets or papers, inevitably putting their own spin on it and increasing the power of rumour. There is a popular local saying Egyptians write, Lebanese print, Iraqis read…
Tribal connections are becoming more important in urban Basra than in the past, as they provide the only available means of security – the police are frightened of being attacked, but a tribe is big enough and violent enough to protect you. The police are not willing to kill your enemies, the tribe is. To a lesser extent religious political groups try to fulfil the same function. This part of the population is very localised and rely upon local community links. Their other options are to join or work for a crime gang.
The bottom part of the population is used to being told, not so much what to do, as what will happen. They are desperate for direction and basic security and basic infrastructure, i.e. immediate water and electricity and fuel to cook. By way of comparison Saddam Hussein got the infrastructure back up and running in a month in 1991 after Basra was far worse damaged. He did it largely by threatening to shoot looters. The influences at this level are the Imams, who also act in effect as local social workers, tribes, and crime gangs.
That’s enough for now. Things have actually improved on the security front because of the ops [ed. operations] we have done, mostly VCPs [ed. vehicle checkpoints]
On the ITV Channel 4 news tonight I saw some of the more disturbing of news footage I have seen.
A cameraman points his camera at a group of US soldiers by a tank or other armoured vehicle. A soldier by the vehicle raises his gun and fires. You hear the crackle of rounds and see the muzzle flashes.
Then the camera drops to the ground. The cameraman was already dead.
I think many will find this newspaper opinion piece of interest. It’s straight out of Iraq, by and for Iraqi’s.
It’s good to see the local view point of current events. I recommend reading other articles as well.
The BBC reports that two young British soldiers have saved the life of an abandoned newborn Iraqi girl after finding her in an ammunition dump.
Private Damien Kenny and Private Jonathan Hunt of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment were searching a house in Basra after rounding up five terror suspects when they found two days old baby in a dusty 3ft-long padlocked metal box and nestling among rocket-propelled grenade launchers, AK47s and ammunition. Tightly swaddled and prematurely born, she was no longer breathing.
The squaddies began giving her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and a few minutes later Rose – named by the soldiers after the red rose of their Lancashire regiment – squeezed Private Kenny’s finger.
The Army was able to track her down and mother and daughter have been reunited in hospital. Lieutenant Craig Rogers, who is in charge of the unit which found Rose said:
The mother has actually said that it was the father who put the young child inside the ammunition box. He has been arrested by ourselves.
Four soldiers from the 1st Battalion The Queen’s Lancashire Regiment had chased armed Iraqi men into the house in the Al Jubaylah area of Basra early on Sunday following reports of looting at a local water treatment plant. They were arrested and the baby was found – along a large white bag containing one million Iraqi Dinars – in the subsequent routine search of the house.
And all this without a search warrant…!
Update: The first commenter in a fit of otherwise commendable paranoia against the BBC wants to wait for a confirmation. So far I have found Annanova reporting the same story pretty much verbatim. I shall keep searching…
Another update: And here is SkyNews with the same story. Here is CNN’s version of the same event.
Update: Ignore the previous updates. The author of this post has gone off the rails.
Salaam Pax is covering the story of how his friend, Baghdad photo blogger “G” was knocked about by US soldiers. Those in the know around the blogosphere have enjoyed “G’s” candid shots around Baghdad.
Here at Samizdata we don’t take kindly to our fellow bloggers getting roughed up. So whoever did it, go and apologize to him. NOW!
Well, I’m waiting!
Our Man in Basra has sent us a few quotes from locals before his next dispatch about Basra society.
Words from the streets of Basra:
For over 30 years we suffered under Saddam. No Arab, no Muslim country came to help us. Then America and Britain made political decision to get rid of Saddam. Now we should help the British.
From local Sheikh.
You should be more like the Americans and kill more Ba’athists.
After US killed Uday and Quasay and first time I heard anyone say we should be more like the Americans!
I am very happy that Uday and Quasay were killed but it is a pity they were not captured so they could be put on trial and tortured and then killed. Being killed like this was good for them.
The people here really hate Saddam and all his family and friends. It’s about the one thing everyone agrees on. When the news was confirmed that the evil sons were dead, the whole place was like 4th July in South L.A. In fact it was like watching TV footage of the nights Baghdad was bombed, there was tracer arching up into the sky from every direction you looked. Quite pretty to watch it sailing overhead, but a little worrying to see how many places all around us have automatic weapons to fire off, as well as all kinds of flares. And no shortage of ammo either. On the other hand these people must like us really, because we don’t get all that fired at us, and there’s a lot more civilians with guns here than there are soldiers. But basically, Saddam’s sons dead – party time. The only down notes I heard from anyone was “let’s get the rest”, and “pity they didn’t suffer more”. A lot of people wanted them put on trial but I don’t think a few years in prison and early parole for good behaviour was ever an option. Incidentally, one 12 year old boy sleeping on a roof seems to have been killed by falling fire, though we can’t be certain that was the reason – we had a few near misses. This prompts the thought that one of the first things Iraq really needs is some decent fireworks for celebrations. And don’t worry too much about the safety regs, just make them loud.
You British built Basra, you built the sewers, you taught us how to dress, how to eat, how to run the oil industry. We do not know the Americans, we think they are against the Muslims because of what they do, but we know you. Why do you not do now what you did in 1920 and 1941 and control this place and get rid of the bad men? Then Basra will be very rich for everyone.
By bad men this man meant Ba’athists, anti-CF, sheikhs, criminals and religious fundamentalists. There are quite a lot of anglophiles in Basra from the last time my Regiment was here in WW2 but of course you have to allow for them telling you what they think you want to hear…
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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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