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]
A scrimmage in a Border Station — A canter down some dark defile — Two thousand pounds of education Drops to a ten-rupee jezail — The Crammer’s boast, the Squadron’s pride, Shot like a rabbit in a ride!
Here and now, I am glad to see an expensive defeat inflicted upon one of Putin’s warships at little cost to the Ukrainians. But the new arithmetic of war will not always give results that I like.
Today Moscow repeats its crime by invading Ukraine, by denying the existence of a Ukrainian nation. Think also of Russia’s accomplices in the West — those monstrous liars and accessories after the fact, who say that Ukraine and NATO are responsible for the war in Ukraine, or say that we must (for our own sake) allow the Ukrainian people to be butchered and oppressed again. It was shameful enough that the world stood by and believed the lies and tolerated Stalin’s genocide against Ukraine. But now, today, it unfolds again! And the dictator in Moscow finds no shortage of apologists and helpers in the West. They misrepresent those, like myself, who think Ukraine should be assisted, by calling us warmongers — as if we are advocating war with Russia. But there is no such advocacy. Ukrainians are already fighting because they have been invaded. It is their war, not ours. But we do have a moral obligation to help them. Furthermore, the evil they are fighting also wants to destroy us.
This surreal turn in the 2023 plotline is a bold stroke, but if the writers can pull off the swivel from tragedy to black comedy, I could get to like it.
Both those links go to constantly updated blogs, so the headlines will almost certainly change in the next few minutes.
Update 10:30am BST: the BBC’s rolling blog now says “Russian sources are now saying that Wagner fighters have taken control of all military facilities in the city of Voronezh, a halfway point between Rostov-on-Don (where Wagner also says it’s in charge) and the capital Moscow.”
Tara Reade, the woman who accused Joe Biden of having sexually assaulted her when she worked for him as a Congressional aide, has “defected” to Russia.
I first noticed her direction of travel when I saw a tweet by her in praise of Vladlen Tatarsky. Plenty of people had concerns about his killing without gushing over him in the way she did. I cannot find that tweet now. It was there. Perhaps she deleted it when she read the replies. At any rate, she has now gone fully Putinite.
And her accusation against Joe Biden should still be taken seriously by the authorities. Note that “taken seriously” does not mean “automatically believed”. #BelieveWomen is a literally prejudiced sentiment on a moral par with #BelieveWhitePeople. Nor does it mean “automatically disbelieved”. As a woman and a Putinite, Tara Reade’s report of a crime being committed against her should be taken seriously, because as an anything whatsoever anyone whatsoever should have their report of a crime taken seriously.
The gross disproportion between the way the media lined up not merely to cover but to profess their unquestioning belief in Christine Blasey Ford’s unevidenced accusation of sexual assault against Justice Brett Kavanaugh yet refused to even look at Reade’s considerably more detailed accusation of sexual assault against Joe Biden will never be anything other than a disgrace.
As for Ukraine itself — yes, it’s complicated. History always is. It’s true that ever since independence, the country’s politics have been horrendously corrupt, as evidenced by Zelenskyy’s recent crackdown on venal ministers and officials. It’s also true, by the way, that its politics have long had an unpleasantly nationalistic, indeed openly neo-Nazi fringe. But I don’t think this is the devastating trump card that professional contrarians and Putin apologists think it is. If we were to withdraw our sympathy from every European country with unpleasant far-Right political elements, then we wouldn’t have any friends left. On that basis, would we still have supported Poland in 1939? Would we intervene to help Italy today, or France, or even the United States? Presumably not.
The really striking thing about the war in Ukraine, it seems to me, is that at a fundamental level it actually isn’t complicated. And for all the cheap and tawdry attractions of contrarianism, the right conclusion is the obvious conclusion. Ukraine didn’t attack Russia; Russia attacked Ukraine. Zelenskyy isn’t perfect and Putin isn’t Hitler; but one really is on the side of the angels, and the other will surely rank alongside the villains of history. One appeals to European solidarity and common humanity; the other to xenophobia and national chauvinism. One defends his own territory; the other seeks to seize somebody else’s. One is right, the other is wrong.
The Ukraine conflict has merely demonstrated that Mearsheimer’s realism is as ineffective at understanding the present as it has been at predicting the future or explaining the past. Fitting Putin’s misbegotten imperial adventure into a realist framework requires a conception of international relations that awards Western democracies the power of choice but reduces their enemies to victims of circumstances. And it demands an understanding of Russian aggression so indulgent that it is indistinguishable from appeasement.
“The U.S. and NATO, in their innermost sanctum, should be asking themselves a question and probably are: Would this war already be over if they had sent a couple dozen F-35s to assert mastery over the skies of at least Western Ukraine on or about day 14?”
Today is the 31st anniversary of the dissolution of the USSR, one of the most delightful events in history. Hopefully within the next 30 years Russia will be back to its 1263 borders 😀
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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