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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From time to time the question surfaces on Samizdata: how come the British Conservative Party is doing so badly? One of the most coherent and convincing answers I’ve come across lately is to be found in Free Life, the (now all electronic) journal of the Libertarian Alliance, from Manchester based libertarian historian Steve Davies, responding to a piece by Sean Gabb. Davies explains how the British electoral system now hurts the Conservatives. But, he says, their problems go deeper.
… Simply, the electoral coalition put together in the 1920s has split into two sharply distinct and increasingly hostile groups of voters. This happened between about 1989 and 1997. So the split in Conservatism today is not just a matter of divisions within the Parliamentary Party or the wider Party. It’s a split in the electorate. That means the issues facing the party are much more profound than a matter of who the leader should be. It also makes everything far more problematic, given our electoral system.
The two groups of ‘right wing’ voters today can perhaps called Tories and Whigs. To use stereotypes, Tories are older, of either below average or well above average income, live in seaside resorts, rural areas and older industrial areas. They are Daily Mail and Telegraph readers, they are strongly socially conservative, very hostile to the EU, dislike multiculturalism and favour very strong controls on immigration, are supportive of the war on drugs. They are hostile to socialism and much of the welfare state but support some parts of it such as the NHS (for now). Although they generally favour free markets this is becoming less true all the time. They increasingly do not like globalisation and dislike large corporations. Whigs are younger, average to above average income, and live in suburban areas including suburbanised parts of the countryside. They are economically liberal, often very much so. They hope that the government is going to sort out the welfare state but suspect it isn’t and are becoming increasingly hostile to it. They are very socially liberal, much less bothered about immigration and dislike anti-immigrant campaigns. They favour relaxing laws against drugs or outright legalisation, they are very relaxed about homosexuality. They don’t like the EU particularly but don’t have the visceral hostility of the Tories and they don’t like appeals to nationalism because they have a very different sense of national identity to the Tories. They like and support many kinds of multiculturalism. Many read the Telegraph but they are also Times and Independent readers. They absolutely hate and despise the Daily Mail.
… The problem is that, increasingly, Whig and Tory voters just do not like each other. Policies and, above all, rhetoric that appeals to or inspires one group of voters will alienate the other. So having a campaign concentrating on attacks on asylum seekers, family values and national sovereignty will inspire the Tories but alienate the Whigs. Emphasising personal liberty via ‘hot button’ issues like homosexual rights and drug liberalisation will please Whigs but enrage Tories.
Davies goes on to speculate about how all this will play out. As far as the Conservatives are concerned, he reckons they’ll be captured by the Whigs, and won’t actually split.
Those who oppose war with Iraq on the grounds that that civilians would be killed fail to understand that people are already dying due to Saddam’s misrule. Saddam Hussein has not earned his name “the Butcher of Baghdad” for nothing. He has been ruthless in his treatment of any opposition to him since his rise to power in 1979. A cruel and callous disregard for human life and suffering remains the hallmark of his regime.
The repressive violence of Saddam’s regime is the norm and not something used by the authorities in exceptional circumstances as it is in many countries. The repression, imprisonment, torture, deportation, assassination, and execution are strategies followed by Saddam’s regime in dealing with Iraqi people. The following are few examples of these crimes:
- The killing of Sunni leaders such as Abdul Aziz Al Badri the Imam of Dragh district mosque in Baghdad in 1969, Al Shaikh Nadhum Al Asi from Ubaid tribe in Northern Iraq, Al Shiakh Al Shahrazori, Al Shaikh Umar Shaqlawa, Al Shiakh Rami Al Kirkukly, Al Shiakh Mohamad Shafeeq Al Badri, Abdul Ghani Shindala.
- The arrest of hundreds of Iraqi Islamic activists and the execution of five religious leaders in 1974.
- The arrest of thousands of religious people who rose up against the regime and the killing of hundreds of them in the popular uprising of 1977 in which Shia cleric, Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Hakim, the leader of SCIRI was sentenced to life imprisonment.
- The execution of 21 Ba’ath Party leaders in 1979 in Iraq , the assassination of Hardan Al Tikriti former defence Minister in Kuwait in 1973, and the former Prime Minister Abdul Razzaq Al Naef in London 1978
- The arrest, torture and executions of tens of religious scholars and Islamic activists in such as Qasim Shubbar, Qasim Al Mubarqaa in 1979.
- The arrest, torture and execution of Shia cleric Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Sadr and his sister Amina Al Sadr (Bint Al Huda) in 1980.
- The war against Iran in 1980 in which hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were killed, and many more were handicapped or reported missing.
- The arrest of 90 members of Al Hakim family and the execution of 16 members of that family in 1983 to put pressure on Agha Mohamad Baqir Al Hakim to stop his struggle against Saddam’s regime.
- The occupation of Kuwait which resulted in killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and injuring many times that number in addition to the destruction of Iraq.
- The assassination of many opposition figures outside Iraq such as Haj Sahal Al Salman in UAE in 1981, Sami Mahdi and Ni’ma Mohamad in Pakistan in 1987, Sayed Mahdi Al Hakim in Sudan in 1988, and Shaikh Talib Al Suhail in Lebanon in 1994.
It is well documented that Saddam’s regime has produced and used chemical weapons against the Iraqi people and against neighbouring countries. Here are some examples of his use of such weapons:
- It is widely known that Saddam’s regime dropped chemical bombs by air fighter on Halabja in Northern Iraq in 1988. The reports of the UN, other international organisations and Western governments confirmed that more than 5,000 thousand civilians were died within a few hours. Eye witness accounts, photos and films have verified the horror of this attrocity.
- Saddam’s regime used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers during Iraq-Iran war. Many of them were sent to Europe to receive medical treatment and they were seen on TV across the world.
- General Wafiq Al Samarae, the former director of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, admitted in his book Eastern Gate Ruins that Saddam’s regime used light chemical weapons against Iraqi people in the cities of Najaf and Karbala to crush the popular uprising of March 1991 which followed the defeat of Saddam after his invasion of Kuwait.
- After the crushing of the uprising, large number of people took sanctuary in the Marshes of Southern Iraq. In 1993 Saddam used chemical weapons against those hiding there in order to crush resistance.
 
Now tell me again that Bush or Blair are worse than Saddam…
I have no time for the those who took to the streets this weekend, de facto, in support of Saddam’s murderous regime. These are people who feel the need to soothe their morally atrophied consciences deafened by political correctness, the modern obsession with emotion and the life of comfort and material excess1.
Their act of protest is a far cry from a reasoned consideration of facts, the reality of international politics, of Iraq and the suffering of its people under Saddam or Iraq’s threat to the Western world. Theirs is a response based on emotions only, without thinking of the consequences of such action. Hate America? Join the protest. Hate Bush and the Republicans? Join the protest. Hate Tony Blair and the government? Join the protest. Hate Israel? Join the protest. Hate politicians? Join the protest. Hate the fact nobody takes you seriously? Join the protest. Hate your mediocre existence? Join the protest. Hate rational discourse? Join the protest. Miss the marches of the communists, peace movements, anti-Vietnam protesters etc of the Cold War era? Feel inadequate or need to feel important? Join the protest.
In fact, ‘peace and motherhood’ have very little to do with the global protests against the US and UK determination to remove Saddam. What is the point of peace, if the price paid for it is someone else’s pain and suffering? Proclamation of support for all things pink & fluffy and for general concepts of ‘goodness’ is the perfect anchor for those drawning in moral vagueness unable to reason their way out complex issues that defy simple solutions.
How much easier it is to look away, or to hastily cover the offending sight with excuses, defensive answers and idealistic slogans or level accusations against those who try to point out unpleasant facts. This type of anti-rationalism prefers slogans to serious consideration of complex reality.
However, this is a luxury not afforded to those who battle for their survival – physical and moral – wrestling the remnants of their humanity from the daily tyranny, whether they live in Iraq or Iran, North Korea or China. It is a fight that they are almost certain to lose without help, their oppressors poised to pounce on any expression of integrity and purpose as a sign of defiance. No-one can undo the suffering already inflicted on them. I protest against those who deny them the chance of living like humans for the rest of their lives.
Note1: I have nothing against comfort and life of excess, the point is that those who have it should not claim the moral high ground in deciding what is better for those who have to face different and starker kind of reality.
It is a strange experience finding myself supporting Tony Blair, the man who presides over my ongoing robbery by the British state, let alone quoting his remarks of yesterday approvingly, but I suppose these are strange times:
There will be no march for the victims of Saddam, no protests about the thousands of children that die needlessly every year under his rule, no righteous anger over the torture chambers which, if he is left in power, will be left in being.
I just wish the people marching yesterday would spare us the nauseating claim to the moral high ground and, if they still oppose the war, just acknowledge that theirs is an emotional rather than a moral argument and that the reality of their position is that if they get their way, Iraqi people will continue to die at the hands of murderous Ba’athist socialism in Iraq whilst they smugly congratulate themselves on their ‘having prevented a war’.
Preventing the overthrow of the people who did…
this…
and…
this… 
… to the people of Halabja with a weapon of mass destruction (poison gas) is the reality what those marchers are trying to achieve.
Regardless of how you feel about George W. Bush or Tony Blair or capitalism or Israel or the Palestinians or globalisation or anything else, that does not change the fact that the continuation in power of the murderous Saddam Hussain and his Ba’athist thugs will be the consequence of appeasement. Is that what you want? Is it?
The entire world, apart from a few evil American warmongers plus Tony Blair, took part in an anti-war demonstration in London yesterday with millions of inter-galactic aliens joining other peace protests around the galaxy. Organisers claim that the march is sure to topple well-known right-winger Blair, allowing him to be replaced by the cuddly lovable Ken Livingstone, Mayor of the People’s Republic of London.
“We never liked Blair in the first place,” said some bloke in a scruffy jacket with corduroy arm-patches. “The whole way he managed to get elected was always suspiciously un-socialist. But now we are really hoping the country will rise up in revolution and institute Ken in his rightful role at last. If the Houses of Parliament spontaneously fall today, maybe the Americans can get rid of their president tomorrow and let Hillary Clinton take over the world! Erm, their insignificant burger-ridden country.”
“But don’t Americans like their president? I mean, they chose him in an election, right?” asked a reporter for extreme rightist media propagandists, Fox News.
“No, the whole American electoral system is rigged by right-wing Capitalists to help them win despite having only a minority of the vote,” explained the corduroy guy. “Real democracy would prove that the people want Marxism, obviously, as Marxism is for The People; it’s self-explanatory!”
In his speech at the Labour spring conference later yesterday, Mr Blair told delegates that if they want to send him to the Tower of London and let Saddam have his way and produce the bloody nukes and give them to Al Qaeda then, fine, he is sick of the lot of them, and he just hopes their bunkers will hold if they get enough warning to climb inside before the bombs start flying. He stressed that if they want to support evil dictators why don’t they all bloody well go and live in Baghdad and see what it’s like, or they could try Iran, or Saudi Arabia, or that Korea place whichever one it was, any one of a number of countries on the US’s list for upgrading sometime when they get round to it.
Mr Blair then requested a large bowl of warm soapy water water, and washed his hands on the rostrum, while everybody watched not knowing quite what to think. Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, called on the entire party to get behind Mr Blair and give him “full support” as he is worried about what might happen to his own job if Blair is beheaded.
Yesterday Downing Street urged the protesters taking part in the anti-war demonstrations around the country and the world to remember the brutality in Saddam’s regime and see how they would feel about having their civil servants routinely executed, before realising this was not a very good argument, and going back indoors for toasted muffins.
The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said that if a million people turned out to march against the Government – as some are claiming – they would equal the number of Kurds who fled Iraq after the Gulf War because they were being oppressed by Saddam. However, he assured the British people that they would not be gassed by their own government at this stage.
Last night Downing Street denied reports that Mr Blair was angry at the protesters and rejected claims that he was trying to avoid them. “He believes that they have an absolute democratic right to protest and if they want to they can,” a spokesman said. “He just wants them to f*** off.”
Hurrah for remainder shops. A week or two ago I found a copy of Tom Wolfe’s little book of essays entitled Hooking Up, after the first essay in it (which I thought was the least good one), for £2.99. It is crammed with interesting and very readable stuff, including a wonderful piece called “My Three Stooges”, in which the Wolfe man rips the pants (first in the American sense and then in the British) off three critically acclaimed but not much read (compared to him) novelist rivals of his (John Updike, Norman Mailer, John Irving). I do love a good literary row. Lots of hits below the belt. Lots of quasi-military calculation, on both sides. These Stooges, by the time Wolfe has finished devouring them, come across, to switch metaphors, as giant structures that occupy the spaces that ought to be occupied by real writers of real substance, but with nothing inside them, like that design to replace the Twin Towers with giant empty children’s climbing frames. By going for Wolfe in a gang the stooges hoped that they’d flatten him. By counter-attacking against all of them instead of just picking on one and ignoring the others, Wolfe comes over as Errol Flynn, as the outnumbered hero, rather than just as a rougher and tougher bully.
The piece I’ve just finished reading is the one called “Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died”, which is about the collapse and replacement of Freudianism and Marxism by “Neuroscience”, as Wolfe terms it. Neuroscience is the catch-all name he gives to the fact that Neuroscience (minus inverted commas) is, he says, the new hot scientific frontier, together with the claim that it and other closely related theories (such as Evolutionary Biology) explain everything that people think and do. → Continue reading: Tom Wolfe on Nature, Nurture, Individual Responsibility and How to Write Novels
My recent posting Can we agree? appears to have proved a point. No, we cannot. Consider this extract from Elliot Temple’s contributions to the discussion that flowed from my piece:
Also, I think it’s Perry’s position that government is a threat to our liberties. Whereas, I disagree again.
I think Mr Temple will find that the view that government is a threat to our liberties is more widely held than by Perry de Havilland. Every form of anarchist would agree. So, presumably would the 55,000,000 people killed in the Second World War. The 1,000,000 murdered by the Soviet occupiers in “liberated” Eastern Europe. The Jews (3,000,000? 6,000,000? 10,000,000?) murdered by the Nazi German government. In Communist China is it “only one hundred million”? I remember one government official once claiming that “only one per cent” of his country’s population died in labour camps.
Even where states are not deliberately violating freedom, governments are a threat simply by the scale of their power and the unintended consequences thereof. The US government in the 1960s did not set out to create a crime epidemic by offering welfare to single mothers, reducing prison sentences for juveniles, criminalizing drugs and introducing wage controls. Yet if the policy had been to force-feed children with crack cocaine, to napalm-bomb certain districts of major cities, to introduce the death penalty against men with low-incomes for staying with their pregnant girdfriends and to make it illegal for a shop-keeper to hire a student, the effect would have been pretty much the same by the mid-1970s.
If there is a reason why some states are less horrendous than others, it may just be that the better places are where more people are wary of the state as a vehicle for creating goodness, and in the worst, the state is busy “doing good”.
To be a libertarian does not necessarily imply that one favours anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-syndicalism or anarcho-communism. But it does imply a generally sceptical attitude towards any claim that the state is an institution to be entrusted with ever greater power.
On that point at least, we should all agree. On this basis, some libertarians can support a U.S. attack on Iraq – for a variety of reasons. But if they are not letting their emotions cloud their judgement (especially fear and the desire for revenge) they should look beyond the war and ask themselves how much damage to freedom in the US, and elsewhere, the war will cause.
To give but one example: the US has rejoined UNESCO in an attempt to buy votes from other states for their support in a war against Iraq. If this process doesn’t frighten you, ask yourself what governments wouldn’t trade. The US is also paying subscriptions back-dated to UNESCO. This means that an organisation which is dedicated to the destruction of free-market education worldwide is about to receive a massive financial windfall, plus the official blessing of the US government. Goodbye private education in India. Hello global permanently subsidized illiteracy.
Bianca Jagger addressed the Anti-War protesters assembled in London this evening thus:
No matter how terrible a nation is, the UN charter forbids just overthrowing the regime. The war against Iraq is unjustified.
In other words, if the National Socialist regime has confined its programme of genocide against the Jews to Germany and had not invaded other countries, war against Nazi Germany would have been unjustified.
And there you have it… THIS is where collectivist thought takes you. To hell with an individual’s right not to be murdered by the state, because the state, the NATION, the collective, is what matters more.
Evil. Truly evil.
Having managed to wangle a couple of front-row seats, my fellow reviewer Perry de Havilland and I made our way eagerly to Central London to witness the latest production of Lefties Labour’s Lost presented by the Stop The War Theatre Company.
I always enjoy open-air theatre, especially when it’s high farce. But, from the opening curtain, I had the uncomfortable feeling that this effort was not going to live up to my expectations.
I was impressed by the large, ensemble cast made up of a motley collection of old communists, new communists, greens, Islamists, socialists, peaceniks, beatniks, trade unionists, padres, cadres and a troupe of folk dancers from Somerset. As the drama unfolded, I thought I recognised some of the faces in the Chorus and, indeed, upon checking my notes, I was pleased to be able to confirm that much of the cast had been recruited from the highly successful ‘Anti-Globalisation World Tour’.
Doubtless bonded by that experience, the director must have hoped that this cameraderie would add an extra dynamism to this production but, if that was the intention, then I regret to report that it was not achieved. The cast ambled through their paces determinedly but without much in the way of conviction leaving the audience with a sense of spectacle but nothing memorable.
The script was a total let-down. Directors of future productions should take note that drearily familiar lines such ‘No war for oil’ and ‘Drop Bush not bombs’ have to be delivered with pep and brio in order to have any impact at all. As it was, the cast opted for mere dismal repetition. This will not do. I was left with the impression that, perhaps, the best of their energies had been left in rehearsal.
Kudos must be accorded to the costume designer for splendid authenticity. Everywhere we looked there were muddy browns, washed-out blacks, dull greens and quite the most dizzying array of woolly caps imaginable. Many of the costumes were so profoundly soiled that , I do declare, they stood up and marched about on their own. An eye for this kind of detail is always appreciated.
Alas, it was not enough to rescue the piece which from terminal mediocrity. A flat and pedestrian rendition from an institutional cast lacked the oh-so important quality of spine-tingling zest necessary to truly move an audience. The kindest thing I can say about the direction is that is was formulaic; utterly devoid of anything approaching a radical innovation.
By the interval, both Mr.de Havilland and I were hard put to stay awake and, indeed, we both slipped out quietly before the final curtain.
Notwithstanding the plethora of pre-publicity, this performance fails to live up to its billing. There is some sound, surprisingly little fury and, in the final analysis, it signified nothing. I predict a short run.
Kudos to Steve “SteKwack” and his friend for passing these enhanced images along to me. In Steve’s words:
“I saw your weblog entry relating to the shuttle damage, and saw a long range photo which I suspect was taken by one of these targetting systems. A buddy cleaned up the picture and vectorised it. The pictures clearly show some form of plasma streaming off the left wing, along with what may be turbulence caused by damage on the front of the same wing.”
Now let’s see what he is talking about. First we have a “solarized image”.
We are seeing the shuttle from below, so the wing at the bottom is the port (left) side where the problems occurred. The double delta wing plan shows up clearly on both sides of the fat and blunt-ish fuselage; the squared off thing at the stern is the body attached elevator which sits directly underneath the SSME’s (Space Shuttle Main Engines). The OMS pods may be the cause of the apparent rounding of the elevator; the tail is either hidden in this view or too thin to show at this resolution.
What leaps out at you is the double bump at the boundary between the two parts of the double delta. Given the level of detail I see elsewhere this is a huge break not only in the leading edge, but in the front wing structure itself.
The more amorphous deformation of the trailing edge is a plasma trail that should not be there and which shows only on the damaged port side.
Next we see a vectorized version of the same image:
The green line faithfully shows the fuselage center line. For control to be possible, the centers of Lift, Thrust, Drag and Mass should lie along this line. The blue vectors show a flow line through the damaged leading edge to the plasma tail coming off the trailing edge.
Finally, they put them all together:
Whether the break at the division between the two delta planforms is entirely structural or a combination of damage and turbulence, it should be apparent to anyone this spaceship is already deep into its’ final death throes. I do, in fact, expect the deep notch is plasma on either side of a structural break in the wing at that point. 2000 degree Fahrenheit plasma is most likely ripping through the wing interior from the tip of the notch. Wires are burning, aluminum frame members are weakening and total structural failure is imminent.
Note: If Steve would like credits added for himself and his friend, I’d appreciate it if he would comment and give me full names to use.
Not much commentary is needed really about his protest in London, but judging from the placards, more people seemed interested in Palestine than Iraq.
A rolling river of political incontinence
I guess they want to give Saddam time to develop nuclear weapons, thereby giving themselves someone else to protest against
… but Saddam Hussain not wanted for murder by Socialists Workers apparently
At least this one is amusing
I wonder if they could find Iraq on a map?
Hell, I wonder if they could find Britain on a map
Actress & pro-totalitarian activist Vanessa Redgrave
One protester made the serious tactical blunder of assuming David Carr was in agreement with the marcher’s objectives. He explains the error of her ways.
I have never seen so many Arabs in London
This chap wants the world to look like that paragon of human rights and civic virtues, the Palestinian Authority
Socialist Dictators of the World Unite! And another guy was waving a Soviet flag (the picture of that did not come out unfortunately)
No, war will cease when men no longer stand up to fight against tyranny
Your intrepid blogger can feel his brains being sucked out…
All the usual people really. Yawn.
The French prime minister, Jacques Chirac, had visited Baghdad in December 1974 amid much pomp. Vice President Saddam offered to take care of Chirac’s visit and in their several meetings the two men enjoyed an unexpected rapport, much to the surprise of the traveling French entourage. At the end of the visit the French prime minister warmly embraced Saddam, calling him ‘a personal friend’, a returned home with a sheaf of lucrative contracts (for weaponry) worth 15 billion francs. One of them was the deal to supply the brand new reactor.
– Brighter Than the Baghdad Sun,” published in 1999, page 74
[Thanks to The Invisible Hand for the quote]
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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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