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.
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Another important advance was made today in the War Against Terror:
Three men have been found guilty of masterminding a dissident republican bombing campaign in England two years ago which injured several people and caused millions of pounds worth of damage.
Guilty as charged! Whatever the length of their sentence it will not be long enough. Throw them to the dogs, I say. We must give no quarter when dealing with these murderous terrorist scumbags.
Among the targets were the BBC Television Centre in White City, west London.
On the other hand, we should never lose sight of the fact that among the most important characteristics of our civilisation is the quality of mercy and the capacity to forgive.
The crew of the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier Ark Royal have complained so bitterly about the BBC coverage of the war that the captain has removed the news channel BBC 24 from the selection available on board. Ark Royal is one of the few RN ships that receives TV channels directly via satellite.
And just to add insult to injury… the captain has replaced BBC 24 with arch rival SkyNews. Ouch!
(via Biased BBC)
Yesterday was Ba’ath party anniversary. The Iraq Press, opposition press agency, notes that for the first time in 35 years it was ignored as there were no authorities to force Iraqis to mark the founding anniversary of the ruling party in the traditional manner.
Streets were festooned with ribbons and Saddam Hussein’s monuments, statues and murals, found almost at every corner in Iraq, were decorated and hundreds of thousands of copies of his glossy and color pictures distributed.
Radio and television glared with anthems and songs in praise of the great leader. The festivities were only a harbinger of the nation-wide gala celebrations that took place in Iraq on April 28 to mark Saddam’s birthday.
This year, for the first time in 35 years, Iraqis will be not be “forcibly bussed to his hometown of Tikrit for an orchestrated demonstration to show the world how the Iraqi people loved their great leader.”
I do like the sound of these words:
The whole of April was a period in which the authorities were busy unveiling one statue of Saddam after another, one mural after another and one monument after another.
But now no new statues or murals are erected. Instead they are being pulled down and smashed across the country.
The western public will never understand the full horrific impact of a personality cult. They may see the prisons, torture chambers and hear the disturbing discriptions of individual tragedies. But they will not be able to comprehend just how pervasive propaganda of a regime built around an individual can become. My impression is that people imagine it is more of a public affair and if you do not read the newspaper or watch TV, you can more or less ignore it. A sort of celebrity craze that you can laugh off in the privacy of your home. Or filter it out, like the bias of western media.
But it is not like that, regime propaganda is everywhere, at work, in public and communal life. It follows you home, interferes with all aspects of your life – making sense of the world, relating to your family, bringing up your children. It employs personal and innocuous images, hijacks most wholesome and normal features of your life – celebrating birthdays, dating, having fun, making friends with your neighbours…
The coalition forces and western journalists ought to have in mind, when they encounter the locals, the regime’s ‘mind control’ techniques used on the population and habitually backed by force. They should remember that these people have been subjected to Saddam’s propaganda machine for the last three decades. Their way of thinking is not going to change in 20 days although the reality around them will have done. It will take a long time for them to learn to appreciate the kind of freedom we take for granted. I do not wish to insult Iraqis by suggesting that they will not rejoice at the absence of oppression and appreciate their new found freedom. It is their understanding of individual rights as applied to everyone, not only those who can enforce them for themselves by violence or connections, that may take a generation or two to sink in.
But for me that is the whole point of liberating Iraq.
A Reuters journalist Taras Protsyuk from Ukraine, has been killed and three Reuters colleagues injured after a shell from a U.S. tank hit the media hotel where they were working. A Spanish journalist for a seperate news organisation was also hurt, Reuters reports.
The rollcall of good and experienced reporters for organisations like ITN, Channel Four, Reuters, the Atlantic Monthly and others is long and depressing. Yes, I know these folk had a choice to work in dangerous places, but it doesn’t make their deaths any less sad. May these fine news gatherers rest in peace.
The older media generation, particularly those covering the war from comfortable television studios, has not covered itself with glory. Deeply infected with anti-war feeling and Left-wing antipathy to the use of force as a means of doing good, it has once again sought to depict the achievements of the West’s servicemen as a subject for disapproval.
– John Keegan, Telegraph
Members of Sinn Fein/IRA have been protesting against the war in Iraq, both yesterday and today, as President Bush and Prime Minister Blair meet in Belfast to discuss the shape of post-war Iraq and the Northern Irish peace process.
For some strange reason,
Ba’athist Socialism’s crimes do not get any mention…
I wonder why?
That the Marxists of Sinn Fein/IRA should be making common cause with Iraqi Ba’athist Socialism should be no surprise, but that they should be publicly supporting them at a time when the torture chambers and corpse filled warehouses of the regime’s victims are now coming to light is very revealing not just of the true character of these people but is a measure of just how out of touch they are. To be honest I can hardly contain my delight at their public display of sheer unalloyed stupidity.
As US and British soldiers fight and die together in Iraq to overthrow a mass murdering tyranny, I wonder how this scene in Ulster will look on television screens in Boston? I look forward seeing what happens the next time someone tries a little fund raising for the Irish Republican ‘Army’ across the water.
Hello America! We love you!
As stories of the Irish Guards operating skillfully in Basra with tactics honed in Northern Ireland are recounted, I hope a few more noisy protests from the Sinn Fein supporters also make their way across the world’s computer and TV screens as they make an interesting contrast.
Irish Guards snipers in Iraq demonstrate the true meaning of Anglosphere solidarity
Irish Guards in Basra
Last night the British television channel, Channel 4, gave us another superb documentary history programme with a great twist – the story of the Dambuster raid on the German dams in WW2. It relayed the story of how Wing Cmdr Guy Gibson (a mere 24 years old) led a squadron of Avro Lancasters to smash two dams using the famous “bouncing bomb”.
The programme makers got a group of present-day serving RAF aircrew, including two women, who work in the very different airforce of today, to try to repeat the feat of Guy Gibson’s men, using a flight simulator and a real-live Lancaster. These modern flyers are used to state-of-the-art navigation technology rather than the old pencil, map and compass techniques that had to be used back in the 1940s, when radar-based techniques were in their relative infancy.
It made for compulsive viewing. And one thought stuck in my head. Most of the flyers are about on average 10 years younger than me (I am 36). Gibson, as noted above, was just 24. I don’t think – as the Iraq campaign demonstrates – that the best of our young folk today are any less capable of performing heroic and dangerous feats than our forbears. And while I would prefer to see such talents used for peaceful purposes like entrepreneurship rather than flying a bomber, I think recent events bode rather well for our future.
That’s something to remember when London gets infested with the usual rag-bag of anti-globalistas and Saddam mourners on May 1.
Another one you didn’t see in the media.
“The demonstration comprised about a hundred protestors demonstrating against the arrest of Vietnamese pro-democracy campaigners. This action was organised by the ‘Alliance Vietnam Liberté’ (Vietnam Freedom Alliance) and various Ngos were invited. A representative of Amnesty International was present as well as Françoise Hostalier, former Human Rights Minister [yes we have one of those in occupied France!] and president of ‘Action Droits de l’Homme’ (Action Human Rights), as well as myself Laurent Muller, president of the ‘Association Européene Cuba Libre’ (European Association for a Free Cuba). The demonstration ended at 17 hours outside the Republic of Vietnam embassy [in Paris].”
It continues with the following:
“I take this opportunity to remind you that tomorrow, 8 April 2003, the AECL is holding a press conference about the latest wave of repression in Cuba. Some 80 non-violent dissidents are currently being tried for ‘treason’ and ‘supplying information to an enemy state’ (the USA). Prison sentences from 10 years to life have been requested [by prosecutors]. It appears that one death sentence has been requested against one dissident.”
The press conference will be held at 15 hours at the aid centre for the Foreign Press, maison de la Radio, 116 avenue du Président Kennedy, 75016 Paris. The best contact I have is Prégentil (Americans will really like the graphics on his front page). Sad note: repression is operating worldwide whilst the eyes of the world are focused on the liberation of Iraq.
What do Stalinists do when they’re a minority in the Party, and they want to oppose pluralist democracy and internal dissent on the grounds of loyalty to ‘democratic centralism’?
Well the French Communist Party ended a chaotic weekend with just this problem. They re-elected Marie-George Buffet as their National secretary, the architect of reforms which allow among other things, several candidates for internal elections, more compromises with the socialists and other heresies for a Party that refused to condemn Stalin until… er, last year, I think. These are the guys that thought Leonid Brezhnev was a crypto-liberal!
At the last minute a revolt by the anti-democrats was averted by persuading them to withdraw their opposition candidates for the leadership election which they oppose on the grounds of revolutionary discipline. Embarrassingly, France’s major news website doesn’t carry a single comment on this story after more than a day: iron discipline or sublime indifference?
What ‘the comrades’ need isn’t a Marie-George Buffet, but a Warren Buffett.
Allied claims of the fall of Basra and reports of American tanks in the centre of Baghdad were robustly denied this evening by Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed al-Sahhaf.
Attending a press conference before by a rapidly dwindling troupe of Western journalists, Minister al-Sahhaf took the podium to address his audience beneath a solitary, naked lightbulb. In the distance, the crump of tanks shells could be heard.
Despite the gloom, the Minister could be seen standing in front of a map of the world carefully arranging a sheaf of papers that he claimed were messages being relayed from the front lines by Iraq soldiers.
“The so-called Coalition forces have been completely routed by the Iraqi Armed Forces. There is not a single British or American soldier on Iraqi soil”
Pausing only to wipe away the plasterdust that was settling on his head from the cracked ceiling above, the Minister continued:
“In accordance with the brilliant strategy devised by our beloved leader Saddam Hussein, our glorious soldiers have launched their successful counterattack which is destined to end in a great victory for our side. Already the cities of London and Sydney have been laid waste by the bold actions of our heroic and fearless fedayeen”.
Just at that moment, the building was shaken by a heavy rumble coming from outside.
“It is nothing, it is nothing”.said the Minister “Just a thunderstorm”.
Unphased by the interruption, the Minister continued with his address:
“Advance units of our elite Republican Guard have also surrounded the American capital city of Washington and, in the next few hours, they will begin their final push to capture the Whitehouse.”
As he finished his final sentence, a nearby explosion shattered the windows and blew out the single overhead lightbulb, plunging the room into darkness. There was a pregnant silence suddenly broken by the clatter of a chair as the BBC Correspondent leapt to his feet to applaud enthusiastically and shout “Bravo, bravo. More. Bravo!!”.
Determined to prove that there is a bureaucratic solution to every problem, the European Commission has announced plans to set up a European Centre for disease control:
The European Commission is set, by the end of May, to propose that a European centre for disease prevention and control be set up.
The news comes as several parts of the world succumb to new cases of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) the flu-like virus which attacks the young, old, healthy and unhealthy alike – and has caused several deaths.
Cunning and astute as ever, the Commissioners already have a plan to prevent the spread of SARS in Europe. According to Dutch Health Commissioner Willy Van Der Pimp:
“No further cases of SARS will be allowed into the European Union as this disease does not conform to European safety standards”.
However French Commissioner Bertrand Maginot was even more forthcoming:
“We must abandon the idea that disease can be beaten by medical science. This is simplistic and dangerous and will only be the cause of more disease. Epidemics can only be prevented by negotiating with the various diseases as part of the political process.”
The Commissioners are in the process of forming a sub-committee to look into the ‘root causes’ of disease.
Anti-American hatred may be sweeping round the ‘European Street’ more quickly than the Black Death, but the political elites may be secretly grateful to the Great Satan for handing them an opportunity to wriggle off the hook:
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has blamed the Iraq war for crushing global economic growth, as the European Commission prepares to cut its growth forecasts on Tuesday.
“It can already be seen that the war in Iraq has increased the economic uncertainties worldwide, and some of the hopes for economic growth have been impaired, if not entirely destroyed,” Mr Schroeder said in a speech on Sunday night.
And, with a single bound, Gerhard Schroeder was free!! See it isn’t exsanguinating taxes, rigid labour laws, a bloated public sector and a monstrously over-regulated economy that is causing all the problems, it’s those perfidious Yankees and their imperialist war for oil.
Do not underestimate the number of people who will fall for this because they want to fall for it. Remember that Schroeder is the leader who only got re-elected by shamelessly exploiting anti-American sentiment in Germany and I will not at all surprised to see him successfully spin this out until at least the next election.
Meanwhile, our own Chancellor Gordon Brown is due to announce his annual budget on Wednesday following a year of massive tax increases and looming redundancies. He is under pressure for sure but now he has a golden bridge. I can see it now, Gordon will shrug his meaty shoulders, sigh and assure the public that ‘if it had not been for the war…..’.
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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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