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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A United States federal judge has ruled that Iraq provided material support to Osama bin Laden and his terrorist group al-Qaeda for the September 11, 2001, attack and is liable to pay $US104 million ($163 million) in damages to two victims’ families. The ruling, by Manhattan District Judge Harold Baer, is the first court decision stemming from the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Where does one begin? Cretinous? Idiotic? Ludicrous? Laughable?
The notion a US court would think it had any standing or authority to order Saddam Hussain’s Ba’ath Party, let alone the future post-Ba’athist government of Iraq, to do anything whatsoever is almost beyond belief. How divorced from reality is this? Judge Harold Baer and the people involved in this case must be suffering from serious metal delusions. I filed this article under the category ‘North American Affairs’ and ‘How very odd!’ because is sure has hell has nothing to do with ‘Middle East & Islamic’.
Here’s S. Weasel’s handy guide to American voting:
- If the race is dangerously close, and there’s a clear difference between candidates, vote the better candidate.
- If the race is not close, and there’s an interesting third-party candidate, vote the third party…just to rattle the bastards a little.
- If the race, close or not, is between two hopeless losers, stay home and cast a vote for apathy.
It’s an imperfect system, but it’s my own.
Just who do these arrogant Canadians think they are?
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien has thrown his weight behind efforts to get a World Health Organization travel warning withdrawn.
Mr Chretien told journalists the WHO had come to the “wrong conclusion” when it advised travellers to avoid Toronto, Canada’s largest city.
We must condemn this aggressive, unilateralist, neo-conservative challenge to the authority of the World Health Organisation.
Matthew Maly writes in with a remarkable tale of malfeasance and cover-up from stretching from the Ukraine & Russia to the corridors of power in the United States
Four years ago, I alerted the US Department of Defense about $20M grossly mismanaged and/or stolen from Defense Enterprise Fund (DEF), a US-financed program to convert the former Russian producers of weapons of mass destruction (anthrax, nuclear, etc). A Department of Defense Audit proved the theft, but the guilty American managers were not even reprimanded.
When Vector Plant of Novossibirsk, the Soviet Army’s prime facility for producing militarized anthrax and smallpox spores, asked for just $1M to convert itself – DEF did not have the money. When DEF COO was purchasing his private apartment in Moscow, DEF had a million dollars to finance it.
Just recently, I caused Defense Threat Reduction Agency to lower the number former Soviet WMD scientists said to be converted by DEF to peaceful pursuits from 3370 to 1250, a 66% reduction! But the real figure is no more than 200 scientists, not a good result for a $67M program.
A more complete description is here. For the full story, please go here and then click on “DEF”.
After my letter of concern, I was immediately blacklisted for US-financed assistance jobs in the NIS which was a professional and financial catastrophe for me. I am extremely frustrated that there has been four (!) intentionally inconclusive investigations of DEF, each refusing to look into my allegations. The Pentagon admits that the money is gone and that a $67M program is dead, victim of gross mismanagement, they do not disprove my letter, but they do not remove my name from the blacklist either.
Matthew Maly
Now, you simplistic burger-munching Americans, you’d better pay attention and start trembling in your cowboy boots because Timothy Garton Ash of the Guardian has got a stark warning for you:
America is on probation. That, in four words, is my verdict on Gulf war II.
Did you hear that? Is that anything less than crystal clear? You’d better just watch your step, that’s all. Otherwise you’re going to be in really, really, really, really, really, really BIG TROUBLE!!
There are times when I suffer an acute sense of embarrassment when I tell people that I am a lawyer. The discomfort is usually at its worst when stories like this emerge:
New York’s attorney general Eliot Spitzer has demanded changes to the way Wal-Mart sells toy guns in its New York stores.
Mr Spitzer says the guns don’t carry a number of distinctive markings required by state law, meaning they could be confused with real firearms putting people at risk of being shot by police officers.
When I first read this, my immediate response was to wonder who exactly the Plaintiff is until I realised that, as Attorney General, his client is the the City or State of New York (I believe that is right but I am happy to stand open to correction).
Okay, fair enough. Mr.Spitzer would probably respond by arguing that he is only doing his job. However, leaving aside the rather comical image of Mr.Spitzer traipsing around his local Wal-Mart examining the toys for regulatory compliance, would the good burghers of New York not be entirely reasonable in asking whether their Attorney General has anything better to do?
I suppose of most significance is the threat of legal action against this retailer based not on what they have done or even allowed to happen or failed to prevent happening but on what Mr.Spitzer claims could happen. This is an unfortunate trend. State enforcement procedures are a big enough nightmare for most merchants without introducing a precautionary element driven by febrile imaginations.
According to a poll taken in the last few days, 71% of Americans just want to get the damn thing done and over with.
What’s that old saying? ‘A week is a long time in politics’? If that’s true then what about 6 years? That must be a really long time in politics. But, maybe, not long enough:
“Hillary Clinton is emerging, among Democrats and political observers, as the favourite to be the candidate for the 2008 presidential race.
Until recently, Senator Clinton had maintained a fairly low profile in Washington but she is now being identified as the most likely opponent to the Republican challenger.”
Now Democrats I can understand but who are these ‘political observers’? Just a polite euphamism for the Independent editorial staff? I smell a bit of early British-left campaigning.
“Most observers worry, however, that Mrs Clinton, who has been manoeuvring to portray herself as a centrist, remains a highly polarising figure. While she may have won the affection of many New Yorkers, in more conservative corners of the country she attracts emotions verging on outright hatred.”
It’s those ‘observers’ again. The ‘worry’ is a dead give-away. That combined with the understatement. If our US readers are anything to go by then the above-mentioned emotions go way beyond outright hatred.
Still, can anybody put their hand on their heart and tell me that the thought of Hilary Clinton in the Whitehouse doesn’t send a cold shudder down your spine?
You’ve heard the name Al Arian recently I’m sure: the Florida professor alleged to have assisted with Islamic Jihad fundraising? It seems he also has some connections to the “Not In Our Name” fundraising as well:
“For its fund raising, the Not In Our Name Project is allied with another foundation, this one called the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization. Founded by several New Left leaders in 1967 to “advance the struggles of oppressed people for justice and self-determination,” IFCO was originally created to serve as the fundraising arm of a variety of activist organizations that lacked the resources to raise money for themselves.
In recent years, IFCO served as fiscal sponsor for an organization called the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (their partnership ended when the coalition formed its own tax-exempt foundation). Founded in 1997 as a reaction to the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act, the coalition says its function is to oppose the use of secret evidence in terrorism prosecutions.
Until recently, the group’s president was Sami Al-Arian, a University of South Florida computer-science professor who has been suspended for alleged ties to terrorism. (He is still a member of the coalition’s board.) According to a New York Times report last year, Al-Arian is accused of having sent hundreds of thousands of dollars, raised by another charity he runs, to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The Times also reported that FBI investigators “suspected Mr. Al-Arian operated ‘a fund-raising front’ for the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine from the late 1980s to 1995.” Al-Arian also brought a man named Ramadan Abdullah Shallah to the University of South Florida to raise money for one of Al-Arian’s foundations – a job Shallah held until he later became the head of Islamic Jihad. “
The courts will have to decide if the charges against Al Arian are true, but the connections are interesting nonetheless. The far left looks to be nearly as incestuous in its’ interconnections as the spacer community…
And that’s going some.
Currently watching on Sky News a massive fire on a propane barge which exploded off New York’s Staten Island. So far it is not clear what the cause is, either an accident or something more sinister. So far no reports I can link to on the Web.
Andrew Sullivan has some rather sharp things to say about George W. Bush and the ballooning budget deficit.
About time! Sullivan has tended, I think, to give the President a fairly easy time on a lot of issues, perhaps on the basis of natural loyalty to a conservative pol and hatred of the other side. But there’s no getting away from the fact that the US budget deficit is set to grow at an alarming pace.
At the core of the problem is the raft of domestic programmes Bush feels obligated to support or which the GOP in the House and the Senate refuse to kill off. At least the defence spending aspect to the budget can be justified by the war. But although I support Bush’s tax cuts, especially the abolition of tax on dividends because of the economic benefits, he could be storing up trouble unless some discipline is imposed.
Why am I, as a Brit, fretting about the US deficit? Well, given the enormous importance of a vibrant US economy, it is in my interests that Bush doesn’t fall asleep at the wheel on this issue. There are no excuses.
A Canadian Samizdata Reader writes in to alert us about the state of privacy & civil liberties in Canada.
The Canadian Privacy Commissioner yesterday released a damning report of the Canadian federal government with respect to its approach to the privacy of the citizens of Canada. According to him, fundamental human rights are at stake and September 11th is being used as an excuse for the infringements. Frankly, as a Canadian, I have been consistently dismayed with Ottawa’s response to all matters related to September 11th.
There are articles in the major Canadian newspapers – including the National Post.
“The government is, quite simply, using Sept. 11 as an excuse for new collections and uses of personal information about all of us Canadians that cannot be justified by the requirements of anti-terrorism and that, indeed, have no place in a free and democratic society.”
[…]
Mr. Radwanski also took issue with proposals that would allow the government to monitor Internet activities and cellphone calls, stating: “I do not see any reason why e-mails should be subject to a lower standard of privacy protection than letters or phone calls.”
[…]
Mr. Radwanski’s complaints about anti-terror measures relate primarily to “function creep,” when information collected ostensibly to stop terrorists is subsequently used for a host of other purposes.
Additionally, you can go directly to the source, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
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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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