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After much poking around, I cannot find any particular significance about 11 Sept 1970 that Natalie was wondering about. The dates of any significance I found were:
On 6 September 1970 the PFLP carried out one of the most memorable hijackings in history prior to September 11 2001. This was the simultaneous hijack to Jordan of a Swissair DC-8 and a TWA 707.
On 12 September, this was followd by the hijacking of a BOAC VC-10. All aircraft were forced to land at Dawson Field, outside Amman. At the same time another group of PFLP hijackers hijacked a Pan American 747 to Cairo and blew it up there. The Jordanians were deeply divided on what to do about the hijackers. The day after the destruction of the hijacked planes King Hussein declared martial law and sacked his pro-Palestinian prime minister.
As far as I can figure, it was 14 September when it all finally went horribly pear shaped. The Jordanian army and Palestinians directly came to blows when the Jordanians attacked the Palestinian base at Zarqa.
On the 19 September, Palestine Liberation Army and regular Syrian army armoured units invaded northern Jordan, driving towards Amman, with Arafat declared northern Jordan a ‘liberated area’. After initially loosing ground, the very professional Jordanian army counter-attacked the Syrian/PLA forces and pushed them back.
On 22 September an Arab League delegation arrived in Amman to broker a deal between the Jordanians and Palestinians.
On 24 September (or 25 Sept in one accounts I found) no sooner had the Arab delegates returned to Cairo to announce a political deal than Arafat rejected the settlement and renews his calls for the overthrow of the Jordanian Hashemite monarchy (in spite of the fact the Jordanian Army was now starting to get the upper hand throughout the country).
On 27 September King Hussein arrived in Cairo for more peace negotiations with Arafat. These came to nothing and eventually Arafat’s forces were finally completely crushed and ejected from Jordan by July 1971.
Does any one else know if there was anything special about September 11 1970 that I might have missed? If so, e-mail and tell us.
The demented Hollywood Investigator reports on the fact that due to the marvels of modern technology, Britany Spears has been ‘upgraded’. As you can see in the pictures, they are talking about her, ahem, microphones.
I wonder if David Deutsch is aware of Miss Spears’ less well known talents in the field of Quantum Theory?
Never forget, even for an instant, that the one and only reason anybody has for taking your gun away is to make you weaker than he is, so he can do something to you that you wouldn’t let him do if you were equipped to prevent it. This goes for burglars, muggers, and rapists, and even more so for policemen, bureaucrats, and politicians.
– from Hope by Aaron Zelman and L. Neil Smith
David Deutsch points out the bizarre logical knots into which the so called ‘Arab Street’ is tying itself
There is an interesting BBC article about the latest tape of Bin Laden discussing the September 11 attacks
The BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Frank Gardner, says that at street level in the Arab world, many believe the tape is a fake, a PR gimmick dreamed up by the US administration.
To believe Bin Laden innocent despite the overwhelming evidence of his guilt, one must have an overwhelming psychological incentive.
This incentive comes from a deep admiration for, and identification with, Bin Laden.
This admiration and identification are derived from the fact that Bin Laden has succeeded in hurting Americans, which is the epitome of what people in that category compulsively yearn for.
In other words, it stems from those people’s belief that Bin Laden is responsible for the September 11 attacks.
They believe he isn’t responsible for the attacks because they believe he is.
I therefore guess that Frank Gardner’s men-in-the-street who believe, after seeing the videotape evidence, that Bin Laden had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks, are to very high accuracy the same ones who celebrated the attacks themselves.
David Deutsch
I couldn’t resist throwing this BBC News 24 historical morsel into the stew of debate about possible cooperation between Jordan and Israel. King Hussein wanted Israel to bomb Syrian forces during the Black September crisis of 1970, according to British Government documents released thirty years later. Notice Mr Heath being as wrong about Hussein’s prospects as about everything else.
BTW, my post of earlier this afternoon now appears quite loopy. I often think this about my own past writing but to think it after a delay of hours rather than years is unusual.
There is an interesting piece on the Afgha website about US and British Special Forces moving around Kandahar openly and the curious rather than hostile reaction of the local Pashtun population.
I have had a wave of interesting e-mails from Samizdata.net readers about the fallacious Jonah Goldberg missive ‘Freedom Kills’ and my reply to it. Whilst there were a variety of incoming views on the matter, it does seem everyone is queuing around the block with their baseball bats eager to take a swing at the dangling Goldberg piñata.
Let me address just two of the e-mails. Sarah Walker from New Zealand writes (excerpt):
The way I see it, you let him off easy. Rather than just pointing out his glaring errors, you need to emphasize that what he is objecting to is the libertarian antipathy to civic coercion and his implicit authoritarianism. Libertarians such as myself who take the rational ‘fallibilism’ approach, think that whilst truth is objective, it is also conjectural, therefore realise the foolishness of imposing by force what can only ever be conjecture. That is ‘cultural’ libertarianism. It means that we do not accept every demented belief just because it makes us feel good, merely that we reject dogmatism and its political manifestations, such as conservatism and socialism. A libertarian may say ‘if you want to go join the Taliban/become a Christian/believe the moon is made of cheese, I am not going to stop you doing that’, yet that is not the same as saying ‘because all ideologies are the same’. I think the Taliban are evil tyrants, that Christianity is irrational superstition and that the moon is not made of cheese, and I will strongly argue my views, ridiculing the Taliban, Christianity and the idea of cheddar cheese moons. Yet I have no problem tolerating these idiotic beliefs in others (unless they intend to do violence to me) even though I believe I am correct and they are not.
Mark Wells similarly bristles at the Goldberg article but he also takes issue with one of my remarks in which I said “Almost everything [Goldberg] ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis”. Mark writes (excerpt):
Maybe not. What Mr. Goldberg calls “find[ing] whichever creed or ideology fits us best” seems to be common among libertarians: evaluating creeds and ideologies and finding one (or a combination of several) that fits our experience, instead of just committing to one at random. “You want to be a ‘Buddhist for Jesus’? Sure, mix and match, man; we don’t care.” His objection is not to moral relativism; it’s to independent thought that cuts across the boundaries of tradition. Goldberg makes this clear in his attack on Nick Gillespie: Gillespie keeps going beyond [disdain for identity politics], and argues that people should be able to be whatever they want.” What does Goldberg think they should be able to be? Why can’t one be, for example, a ‘Buddhist for Jesus’? In Goldberg’s analysis, it’s not because he believes there’s a logical contradiction in such a worldview but because he thinks it’s disloyal. Different traditions ought to remain separate, so as to spare people like Goldberg the trouble of thinking about them. Goldberg writes: There are no universal truths or even group truths (i.e., the authority of tradition, patriotism, etc.)–only personal ones.” If Goldberg’s idea of a ‘universal truth’ is the authority of tradition or patriotism on a grand scale, many libertarians would indeed reject it.
I think both Sarah and Mark make good points even if not all libertarians would subscribe to all their views (many libertarians are indeed Christians). One of the reasons I said “Almost everything he ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis” [emphasis added] is that he is correct about a few things but grossly misinterprets what they actually mean. Libertarians do not view all ideologies as equal, however they take a non-dogmatic approach (at least the Popperians like Sarah do, pace Ayn) and as free thinkers are willing to examine a wider variety of cultural influences than Goldberg seems to think is healthy, seeing as we view choice as having intrinsic value. For example when Goldberg claims:
Virginia Postrel can write triumphantly that the market allows Americans to spend $8 billion on porn and $3 billion at Christian bookstores, because she isn’t willing to say that one is any better, or any worse, than the other.
Yet it is clear Virginia Postrel is indeed making a judgement, just not the particular one that Goldberg thinks is at issue. What she is saying simply does not pertain to either Christianity or porn and contrary to what Goldberg thinks, that is far from being a lack of “willing[ness] to say that one is any better, or any worse, than the other.” Au contraire, Jonah. I do not know Virginia Postrel personally yet it is abundantly clear what she means. It is a clear statement that what is of value here is not the porn or the Christian books but the value of a society based around having THE CHOICE. It’s that whole liberty thing again.
When I first heard – at the school gates where I ought to be now – that some spectacular act of terrorism had taken place in America, some chime of memory struck about the date. I did wonder whether September 11 was the thirtieth anniversary of some event in Hussein’s expulsion of the Popular Front? I never did track it down, though.
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.
– Edward R. Murrow
Interesting predictions from both Jay Zilber and Glenn at Instapundit that Israel is setting the stage for the Jordanian reoccupation of the West Bank as the means by which Israel can avoid becoming host to what is well on the way to becoming a permanent state of Palestinian Intifada.
It is certainly a fascinating idea but I have one big question for these two esteemed blogpundits… what on earth is in it for Jordan? It seems to me that the Hashemites would have to be out of their minds to want to take on the responsibility for several million pissed off, radicalised, impoverished Palestinians.
Do not forget that in 1970-71 the Bedouin Jordanian Army forcefully crushed the PFLP after years of Palestinian agitation and violence, ejecting them from Northern Jordan at bayonet point (and leading to the creation of ‘Black September’). Do they really want to go through all of that again? Somehow I doubt it.
Jonah Goldberg over on National Review Online writes in Freedom Kills, one of the least informed articles about libertarianism I have read in a long time. Frankly I have read better from the ghastly Noam Chomsky, which is just about the biggest insult I have written in a very long time. The sheer depth of his complete and utter lack of understanding of what underpins libertarianism is summed up thus in two paragraphs:
In this sense, cultural libertarians are less bigoted than their liberal cousins. The libertarians think all ideologies – so long as there’s no governmental component – are equal.
Huh? So let me get this straight. People who are profoundly influenced by Ayn Rand or Karl Popper or Murray Rothbard or Hans-Hermann Hoppe et al, think all ideologies are the same? Has this guy ever actually met a libertarian in real life? What breathtaking ignorance of the subject about which he opines. If anything, libertarians only think all non-libertarian ideologies are the same in so far as they reject them as just so much morally subjective crap. Libertarians are the very antithesis of what he calls ‘liberals’ in that respect, hardly what he sneeringly calls “cousins”.
But of course, the flip side of this is that cultural libertarianism is essentially a form of arrogant nihilism. There are no universal truths or even group truths (i.e., the authority of tradition, patriotism, etc.) � only personal ones. According to cultural libertarianism, we should all start believing in absolutely nothing, until we find whichever creed or ideology fits us best. We can pick from across the vast menu of human diversity – from all religions and cultures, real and imagined � until we find one that fits our own personal preferences.
Now due to the fact libertarianism comes in many hyphenated forms, it is risky to generalize about ‘what all libertarians think’, but overwhelmingly they operate on the basis of objective epistemology (look it up, Jonah), typically of the Randian or Popperian type. As a consequence they strongly advocate objective morality as the only basis for legitimacy, rather than subjective prejudice-based state centred coercion of the sort Goldberg seems to think holds American culture together. If you hold that morality can only be valid on the basis of objective knowledge, how can we also be “believing in absolutely nothing , until we find whichever creed or ideology fits us best”? Almost everything he ascribes to libertarianism is in fact its antithesis.
At one point Goldberg says about himself “if I were smarter and more patient […]”, well Jonah, there is little chance any libertarian reading your incoherent rant would have thought otherwise on either point. Try actually reading Ethics of Liberty first (gawd knows there is enough about Rothbard to criticise, just not the on the grounds Goldberg does).
Addendum: Will Wilkinson on the enigmatically named The Fly Bottle also has no less that two excellent skewerings of the ignorant Mr. Goldberg’s dismal offering.
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Thanks (sort of) to Hannah Biel for pointing me at the Goldberg article. I have been grinding my teeth as a result for the last few hours.
On the evening of September 23rd 1999, Harry Stanley, a 46 year old Grandfather, was returning to his home in Hackney, East London. He had spent the afternoon at his brother’s house helping him to repair a coffee table
Harry took one of the table legs home with him to work on. He wrapped it up in a plastic bag
On the way home, he stopped off at a pub for a drink. As he left one of the other patrons rang the police and reported ‘an Irishman carrying a shotgun’. (Harry was actually Scottish). The oblivious Harry continued on his journey home until he was some 50 yards from his front door when two policeman from the SO19 Armed Response Unit opened fire on him. One bullet hit Harry in the temple and he died instantly
Today, after a 12 month long enquiry, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that the police officers who carried out the shooting acted in ‘reasonable self-defence’ and would not face any charges
In the absence of a private prosecution by the Stanley family, we will never know quite what occured on that evening and why Harry is dead as police and witness statements and reports will remain filed away in the CPS cabinets. However, one doesn’t need to be privvy to these documents to ask some pertinent questions about why Harry Stanley was so ruthlessly gunned down outside his home
Harry was neither a terrorist nor a criminal and it seems highly unlikely that he would not have responded to some shouted warning. It seems even less likely that, confronted with the police, he would have tried to run or fight it out given that he was recovering from surgery for cancer. Is it all plausible that, acting on an unsubstantiated allegation, armed officers made a decision not to take any chances and simply executed him?
We shall never know for the officers in question will not stand trial. What should stand trial though is the policy of victim disarmerment which has left Britain with a duopoly of fire-power between state agents and criminals. If you’re not one you must be the other and holding something that could possibly be interpreted as a weapon gives said state agents a carte blanche to rub you out and call it ‘self-defence’. After all, as far as they are concerned you must be a dangerous criminal, right
The British police have advertised the fact that anyone found in a public place with a gun or something that looks like a gun will be met with lethal force. But such is the depth of anti-gun hysteria that this policy of extra-judicial execution is not only tolerated but demanded and will clearly be acted upon in the event of rumour/allegation/sniff/hint/outright lie. No chances are to be taken and no questions are to be asked
For us in Britain it is now too late to change this state of affairs but for those Americans reading this please remember Harry Stanley when the victim-disarmers tell you that guns are dangerous. Tell them that over here in London, table-legs can get us killed by the very people we pay to protect us
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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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