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Our chum from Baghdad has some new stuff up, so check it out. If the blogger archives are still phuked, just go here. Although I have never met the guy, would not know him from Adam and I doubt we see the world in the same way, I am unaccountably delighted he made it through the war in one piece and is once more blogging. May 9th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Bringing Democracy to Iraq may prove difficult if the Americans are wary of the potential result; namely Iraq voting to become Iran-lite. But bringing prosperity should prove easier. The dispatch of a corrupt gangster-regime of looters can only assist. David Plotz writing over at Slate makes some good market orientated points. But why do I have the suspicion that a Washington written program devised by the likes of the World Bank and IMF might be less than turbo-charged. If we go from warfare to welfare for Iraq, the outcome will be a burden on Coalition nation taxpayers as well as Iraqi proto-capitalists. Privatisation of the oil fields is being painted by those who marched against a ‘war for oil’ as if its Bush’s personal peace dividend. But it seems to me eminently sensible and appropriate. Split the oil fields up by region, privatise ’em and give ’em to the people. If it can not be done by direct mass privatisation via a Thatcherite give-away, with every Iraqi citizen/stock holder receiving an annual dividend check, then set up trust funds chartered to pay dividends for infra-structure capital projects that directly benefit the people. Maybe they can securitise the trust’s future earnings to get up front capital to finance urgently needed projects immediately: Iraqi owned and inviting to badly needed foreign capital, a win-win for everyone. Just make sure that the oil trusts are transparent, with contracts public knowledge so that corruption can be thwarted. George Soros’ Publish What You Pay NGO is one of his best ideas. As for Iraq’s debts, its obviously a matter for the future government of Iraq whether they honour them or not. But I suggest they repay Russian debts with easily and cheaply sourced Czarist bonds. Chirac’s contracts will of course be subject to some ‘re-negotiation’ by the newly democratically elected government of Iraq. Payback can take many forms, monsieur. May 8th, 2003 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
Salam Pax has posted again. Well, not quite. Someone has posted in his name. Interesting observations, insider story, basically a gripping read straight from Baghdad. Go and raed… May 7th, 2003 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
One of the great myths about anti-Semitism is that it’s only a problem for Jews. But if you were one of the people walking down the street doing nothing while European Jewry was being rounded up for slaughter during WWII, I hope you would not just have felt sorry for ‘God’s ancient people’ and left it at that. I hope you might have done something positive to help them. To stand by and do nothing while an evil psychosis sweeps your civilisation is not likely to be a very moral option. So maybe you would have felt honoured to risk and even sacrifice your life, like the eighty-three-year-old man I quoted above. Sometimes that is the only way to conquer evil. Anti-Semitism is a problem for us all, because civilisation-destroying evil is a problem for us all. Would Marxist nutters be trying to take over Europe right now if Europe hadn’t annihilated a vast swathe of its own cultural topsoil sixty-five years ago? I wonder.
…as James C. Bennett said in this very good article. It is not just that if ‘they’ start by looking for the Jews ‘they’ will end up looking for anybody and everybody. It is simply that good cultures and civilisations require decent moral human beings, and the destruction of those decent, moral human beings (who also happen in general to be intelligent, freedom-loving capitalist human beings, as you will notice from taking a cursory overview of their societies) by evil crazy ones has massive and terrible ramifications we can not begin to measure. Had the Allies bombed the death camps when they should have, or even (unimaginable!) gone into Germany with the full backing of America sometime in the 1930s with the explicit purpose of removing the dictatorship and instigating democratic rule, Europe might now be far ahead of where it is. Good ideas grow more good ideas. Evil destroys them. We might have evolved the kind of free market European collection of small capitalist democracies that we can only hope might happen in another fifty or a hundred years through some as-yet-unconceived democratic libertarian miracle. And we might not be producing, or nurturing, people like these. Or Tom Dalyell, the Leader of the House accusing Blair of having built his war policy on “being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers”, rather than on any kind of moral or political substance. As Jack Straw (one of the “cabal”)’s spokesman responded: “If these reports are accurate, these remarks are too unworthy to be worth a comment.” I agree, in theory anyway. But Mr Dalyell also said, “I am not going to be labelled anti-Semitic.” Well, sorry Mr Dalyell, but you are anti-Semitic. Objecting to the influence of British MPs on the basis of their Jewishness can hardly be described as anything else. And I am amazed at the new respectability anti-Semitism has achieved since the growth of left-wing anti-capitalism inspired by the actions of good nations in the war. Life is surely complicated for free countries. No arrest and torture for Mr Dalyell, of course. But when leaflets like ones that say this:
…published in the UK, are found in the Gaza strip, it is clear that the freedom our society offers is being abused. The kind of brain that can turn liberation into annihilation in one fell slander is not the kind of brain we want festering in the UK. I don’t know exactly how we’re going to deal with it, but we are definitely going to have to find ways soon. Otherwise the next suicide bomber might indeed turn up in Oxford Street M&S, and it might be you or me who gets blown to smithereens in the frozen ready-meals section. And the next person who tells me that targets should not attract trouble in the first place can go and live in Switzerland and get citizenship there and then write me an essay entitled, “What would have happened in WWII if the UK and the US had acted like us.” Zionism: it’s not just for Jews anymore. May 4th, 2003 | 26 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is often said that free speech does not extend to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre. Likewise, actually incitement to violence within the context of civil society is not a matter of free speech at all, but is rather a matter pertaining to violence. In a genuinely free and reasonable society, a category in which I would not include Britain, to betray one’s ignorance by loudly declaring that “All Pakis and Niggers smell bad and should go back where they came from”, should be regarded as legitimate free speech (and of course the answer should be “What? You want me to go back to Croydon?”). Likewise any rather more aggressive replies questioning the racist’s intellect, honour and rationality should be likewise be regarded as legitimate free speech. However to call for the murder of members of those ethnic groups is quite a different matter. And so when the likes of Al Muhajiroun, the much publicised Islamic organisation active in Britain, are found to be again and again to be encouraging the straightforward murder of civilians in various parts of the world, the point of tolerance should long have been passed. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the self-styled “emir” of Al Muhajiroun publically praised suicide bomber Asif Mohammed Hanif and would-be suicide bomber Omar Khan Sharif, both UK passport holders who were posing as ‘peace activists’:
As David Carr previously mentioned, that these lunatics came from Britain’s Muslim community is not an insignificant detail. That Al Muhajiroun is not setting bombs off here in London should not disguise the fact that just as the people in the USA who gave money to pro-IRA fund raisers in the United States were guilty of financing the murder of innocent civilians, Al Muhajiroun is responsible for the slaughter of civilians in Israel by giving aid and comfort to the people who are physically doing the murders. Just as the Irish Republican terrorists who far from killing civilians as ‘collateral’ damage to an attack on a military target, actually targeted civilians for mass murder, the Islamic terrorists supported by Al Muhajiroun’s rhetoric, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and their ilk, actually target pizza parlours and nightclubs, rather than the Israeli army or state. Of course, some will claim that as these acts happen outside Britain, there is no grounds for doing anything. What I wonder would they think of Al Muhajiroun’s British-born lawyer Anjem Choudary’s remarks quoted in today’s Daily Express (print edition) in which he encourages Muslims from overseas to come to Britain and attack targets here? Given that these ‘religious men’ have signally failed to criticise the intentional slaughter of civilians in Israel, I rather doubt any ‘martyrs’ heeding this call will be going after a well protected British military target… more likely we can expect a suicide bomb attack on Oxford Street when it is crowded with people shopping. I would urge members of the Muslim community in Britain who regard these people as lunatics that do them a great disservice to move heaven and earth to disassociate themselves with these people. That the British government tolerates a group such as Al Muhajiroun in our midst is a measure of the decadence at the core of the state. May 2nd, 2003 | 16 comments - (Comments are closed)
A disturbing development in the Middle East. Well, two disturbing developments to be more precise. First, another successful human missile attack in Israel, this time aimed at a beachfront cafe in Tel Aviv, has killed three people. Proof that no security system is foolproof and even though attempted mass murders are thwarted virtually every day, some still get through. Secondly, Israeli police appear to have evidence that two men involved in the attack were both British citizens:
If it transpires that the claims are true then this is the first time, to my knowledge, that non-Palestinians Muslims have been engaged in attacks on Israel. It must raise the issue of the extent to which Islamic terror gangs have been successfully recruiting in this country and, perhaps, elsewhere in the West. Of course, there is also the corollary that perhaps the reservoir of ‘willing recruits’ among the Palestinians is starting to dry up, forcing the terror-masters to look elsewhere for their walking payloads. May 1st, 2003 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
I came across this article, via Jim Henley, and the piece does raise some uncomfortable – to put it mildly – questions about how advocates of the recent Iraq war should feel if it turns out that Bush and Blair told untruths (perish the thought) about the existence and scale of WMDs in Iraq. If Bush, Powell and the Rest lied deliberately to us to boost the case for war, then that is baaaaaad news, in my view. For starters, pro-war folk like me who took the stance we did on proactive self defence will feel betrayed. We have been made to look like twerps. Yes, I know that you might argue that we should not have been so naive in the first place (ever trust a politician?), but the WMD threat seemed to be pretty genuine, if only because of what happened under Saddam’s rule these past two decades or more. And of course the onus was on him, not us, to comply with the terms laid down by United Nations weapons inspectors. He didn’t as even Hans Blix’s report made clear shortly before hostilities commenced. Even so, the feeling of betrayal will be immense if turns out that Bush and Blair seriously exaggerated the evidence. Which may suggest that our whole approach to self defence needs a major rethink. It suggests to me that the CIA and other intelligence services in the west require a massive overhaul, if not outright abolition. I haven’t seen any examples in the media of such folk getting the sack. Far too many of them have been allowed to stay in their cushy jobs despite manifestly screwing up. If it turns out that they gave false info to gin up the case for war, that is very bad. And in case any warbloggers’ blood pressure is rising dangerously about the above two paragraphs, no, I am of course thrilled we stiffed the Ba’ath regime in Iraq, but forgive me, that wasn’t the original reason why we committed blood and treasure to deal with Saddam. April 30th, 2003 | 66 comments - (Comments are closed)
Although I was always a supporter of the armed liberation of Iraq primarily on the grounds that overthrowing a tyranny is justification in and of itself, I have always been highly sceptical of the ostensible reasons quoted by the US and UK governments. Nevertheless, I still supported the actions even if the reasons were suspect. Although sometimes a war may amount to the lesser evil smashing the greater evil, that is not reasonable grounds for opposing the overthrow of the greater evil… for example I was quite happy to support the ghastly communist Vietnamese regime’s invasion of Cambodia and their overthrow of the utterly demonic Khmer Rouge regime, so supporting a US/UK ouster of Ba’athist Socialism is a no-brainer. I am probable-to-puzzled on the WMD issue: I suspect they do indeed exist but I suppose only time will tell. But on the much trumpeted Iraqi secular Ba’athism – Islamic fundamentalist Al Qaeda link however, I have been scornfully dismissive. It would seem I was quite wrong. It looks like the Saddam Hussain – Osama bin Laden link was indeed true! April 27th, 2003 | 51 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Christian Science Monitor, which is not exactly a regular read for yours truly, says it has further documents alleging that Labour MP and all-round jackass George Galloway was on the take from the late unlamented Iraqi regime. Well – we shall see. A point strikes me – is a man’s views about certain issues automatically more suspect if he has been receiving cash payments? It is sometimes claimed, for example by anti-smoking fanatics, that the views of libertarians on the smoking issue are invalid if they have, for example, been working for a big tobacco firm like BAT or Philip Morris. But surely we need to focus on the validity of the views themselves, and not whether they were given by people receiving money. Ultimately, whether Galloway did or did not receive payments will not substantially alter my views of him. Even if he had not received a single penny from Saddam, I still regard Galloway as a vile individual for his shameless defence of Saddam’s regime over many years. In some ways, if he held his views for free and was truly sincere, it almost makes it worse. April 25th, 2003 | 9 comments - (Comments are closed)
Well, the hunt is still on for possible instruments of Mass Death in Iraq, and so far, from what I have seen and read, not a great deal has yet been found. Should advocates of military action to deal with this possible menace like yours truly be now eating vast amounts of humble pie, agree that non-interventionists like Jim Henley were correct all along? Well, not quite. For starters, it hardly needs to be pointed out that one cannot fight or not fight wars on the basis of 20/20 hindsight. Nothing that Saddam did over the past 12 years, including his devious treatment of UN weapons inspectors, led one to think that simply keeping Hans Blix and co in situ for another year or so would suffice. And I think that Saddam’s past record, such as his gassing of Iraqi villagers, made me doubt he was either deterrable or that he could be made to bend to the will of the arms inspectors. However (gulp) I am beginning to detect among some pro-war types a clear shift in their stance. We have, so it appears, shifted from the “war is justified to rid Iraq of WMDs and then getting to terrorists” stance to a “Let’s bring peace and democracy to Iraq”. The first stance can be clearly based on self defence, which as a libertarian I have no quarrel with, though interpretation is the hard part. The latter stance, though, however idealistic and admirable as an ideal, smacks of hubristic social engineering. April 24th, 2003 | 94 comments - (Comments are closed)
The Daily Telegraph is running an impressive scoop of documents allegedly proving that George Galloway MP was in the pay of Saddam’s regime. George Galloway has long been ridiculed as the “Member for Baghdad Central” for his defense of Iraq; now it appears that he was motivated by pure greed rather than just a love of controversy. It is impossible for outside commentators to be absolutely certain of the authenticity of these documents. Perhaps they have been planted by British intelligence. Perhaps they were written by the Iraqi foreign office as a prepatory insurance policy, for blackmail. Perhaps there is even an innocent explanation, though I do not see how there could be. Occam’s razor, however, suggests that George Galloway MP was corruptly attempting to change government policy towards an hostile nation from the floor of the House of Commons, that he was giving aid and comfort to the enemy for personal gain. I believe there is a legal term for that. April 22nd, 2003 | 27 comments - (Comments are closed)
Blogger Sina Motallebi has been arrested by Iranian authorities for the ‘crime’ of giving interviews to Persian language radio stations outside Iran and for his blogging (in Farsi). I suspect giving his plight as much publicity as possible may give the notoriously intemperate Iranian security services at least some motivation to play it cool if they think the spotlight of world opinion is on them. It is a good thing we in the west have freedom of the press and internet, eh? No way would such heavy handed tactics be tolerated in somewhere like the USA, right? Right? April 21st, 2003 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
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