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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Dale‘s points are well made, particularly the one that when Walker joined the Taliban, he could hardly have reasonably expected to find himself at war with the United States! I have a slightly different take on it, however.
I think many of the comments regarding the dismal Walker begs the question of why is he being regarded as having any particular affinity or duty of loyalty to the USA at all? Just because he originated from there, how does that somehow make him irretrievably beholden? People come from all over the world and emigrate to America and the US has no problem with them ‘becoming Americans’. So why is it so hard to see the process in reverse?
For goodness sake, if going to Afghanistan and joining the Taliban does not constitute the complete and utter repudiation of not just the United States but the entire western world, then I guess I don’t know what does. When he was captured, as far as I know he was certainly not yelling “I’m an American! I wanna see the nearest American consulate!” Far from it. There should be no expectation that he still owes the US anything or the US owes him anything.
If it turns out he is a member of Al Qaeda, then he is still very much our enemy and should be treated in the same manner as we treated captured members of the SS or Gestapo or Nazi Party after WWII. If he is just a member of the defeated Taliban’s army, as seems likely, then just question him and then dump his sorry arse back in the hell hole we found him in. Even if he was involved in the death of CIA man Mike Spann, so what? Walker was a soldier with the Taliban and we were the Taliban’s openly declared enemy. People get killed in war. That is what soldiers do. Big deal.
I do not think Walker is ‘just a misguided kid’. I think he is a misguided adult who made his choices freely and should reap the consequences of supporting a vile regime in Afghanistan. But his crimes are again the Afghan people who suffered under the Taliban, not the US. Unless he turns out to be a member of Al Qaeda, leave it to to the Afghans to deal with him.
It’s a hard call without really knowing what Mr. Walker was up to and why. There is little doubt in my mind that he should be tried for Treason; whether or not he is convicted, whether or not there were extenuating circumstances is a matter for the courts to decide. The fact that he was found where he was found is rather damning evidence but is not “beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt”.
What should be done with him if he is found guilty? That again is a matter for the courts. We don’t know what he actually did so how can we decide his fate from in front of our comfortable computer screens? For all we know he could have been dragged along by events and lain cowering in the basement wondering at his own idiocy. Or perhaps he went to fight with the Taliban against the Northern Alliance never imagining he could end up fighting his own country. After all, on September 10th how many of us would have considered US forces in Afghanistan as even the remotest possibility? If that were the case he is a soldier of fortune who got caught up in the wrong war at the wrong time. A few years in prison and a slap on the wrist would suffice.
Of course as Glenn Reynolds has suggested a number of times, we could take it as given he has chosen to give up his US Citizenship. We could leave him to the tender mercies of his chosen enemies, the Northern Alliance. An article about his interrogation in Ananova seems to indicate the CIA men were thinking along these lines just before “the balloon went up”:
On the tape, Walker is seen being brought to the two CIA men for interrogation. Spann is then seen saying to his colleague: “I explained to him what the deal is” and then tells Walker: “It’s up to you.” Dave then says: “The problem is, he’s got to decide if he wants to live or die. If he wants to die, he’s going to die here. “Or he’s going to f****** spend the rest of his short f****** life in prison. It’s his decision, man. We can only help the guys who want to talk to us. We can only get the Red Cross to help so many guys.
If he was there specifically to fight against America, there are no options. He should be put away for a very long time. And if he was actively assisting the al Qaeda… well that is another kettle of sharks entirely. He would, and should, face the death penalty.
Fortunately we have the right President for it.
Me!
You think I jest? Far from it. I have figured it out, I’ve got it sussed, I’ve cracked the code. Yesterday I wrote an article excoriating the Turner Prize judges for their choice in finalists for this prestigious £20,000 ($30,000) award for the ‘cutting edge’ of British art, sneering that one of the entries was just some lights going on and off in an empty room. Well guess who won. That’s right: Martin Creed won with ‘Light going on and off in a room’. I kid you not. Not only is this art, we are to believe it is the very pinnacle of British art!
And so, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I take it all back. What I mistook for incoherence is in fact genius! Not the judges, who are everything I said they were yesterday, but rather Martin Creed, who has also ‘cracked the code’. When asked to explain his creation he replied:
I can’t explain it, except to say that the lights definitely go on and off.
No, I am not making this up. Then when asked what he thought of the fact this prize purports to be the very best of contemporary British art, Creed replied:
It’s a stupid prize.
And what will become of the £20,000?
It is going straight in the bank.
Quite so, Martin. You will note that Creed makes no pretentious claims that his work is imbued with any meaning at all, other than a means by which he convinces the Brahmins of British art to enrich him to the tune of 20,000 pictures of Her Majesty the Queen.
Next year, however, that money is coming my way. I will enter my work called ‘Pervasive Space’. When the judges ask to view it, I shall gesture to the Tate Britain gallery. When they look and say that they see nothing, I shall reply:
Exactly! I knew that people such as yourselves, breathing only the rarified air of the art literati, would understand. Ladies and Gentlemen, I present you with ‘Pervasive Space’ by Perry de Havilland. A dynamic space of variable proportion and indeterminate location, unconstrained by bourgeois limits of form, colour, space and time.
Cash, cheque or credit card are all just fine by me, thanks.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed and thus clamorous to be led to safety by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary
– H.L. Mencken
Now I do not want worthy yeoman blogger Dawson to start thinking we at Samizdata are picking on him, but over on Random Jottings, there is a hysterical exchange regarding delectable überpundit Ann Coulter. A ‘must read’.
On 8 December, I wrote an article in which I was quite mean to Tania Kindersley and Rachael Jones because they were so uptight about pornography. I pointed out that just because I like to look at things, that does not detract from my willingness to experience things for real… quite the contrary in fact.
Well, maybe these nervous women were correct after all. When I buy one of these wonderful new Apple dMac computers, I might stop going out all together! I am in Prague tonight and it just so happens I know where there is an Apple dealer shop. I will be on their doorstep when they open for business tomorrow morning.
However I must confess that I am tempted to get a biMac instead. I like variety. Isn’t technology wonderful? Predstavujema biMac!
Now I am not one of those people who thinks the term ‘modern art’ is an oxymoron. I have been to the superb Tate Modern several times and find much to commend it. I was a great admirer of Louise Bourgeois’ Spider and there is a wonderful piece of kinetic art (the artist’s name eludes me) that involves an upside down piano that, well, disembowels itself every few minutes, for want of a better description. A ‘hidden life of pianos’! Very surreal and quite enjoyable.
Yet when I see the nominees for the inexplicably prestigious Turner Prize, to be presented by Madonna in the Tate Britain gallery right about the same time as I am writing this article, I am at a loss to explain what the judges were thinking when they picked the finalists. The most astonishing entry is ‘Light going on and off in a room’. This as a piece of ‘installation art’ in which a light goes on and off in an unadorned room. And nothing else. Art?
My theory is that some people develop theories of essential meaninglessness, and as a result take meaningless positions in art (and politics, philosophy, epistemology, fly fishing etc). Sometimes, when another person encounters some manifestation of these meaningless theories, they are filled with a complete lack of comprehension. As the proponent of that manifestation seems to take it all quite seriously, the hapless person then adopts the view that the seeming lack of comprehensible meaning is merely a profundity beyond their current understanding, sort of the way many react to counterintuitive quantum theory.
In many cases, that which is true is also entirely counterintuitive. Much of physics and economics falls into this category: our intuition may (or may not) point us in the correct direction but it cannot lead us all the way to the truth. However, in many other cases, that which is counterintuitive is a complete load of bollocks. The hapless person’s first impression, that of an inability to divine any coherent meaning, was in fact quite correct: there is no meaning and there is nothing to understand beyond that fact. The Emperor has no clothes… and neither do the judges of the Turner Prize, intellectually speaking, of course.
I was going to wait a few minutes before writing this article to see who actually won the prize…but then I realised it really doesn’t matter. For some rational thoughts on art, check out Unexpected illustrations of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of aesthetics by Christian Michel on the superb Liberalia website.
I have had several e-mails taking me to task over my remarks in A matter of geography and culture. Methinks some people took me a tad too seriously.
I also am a great admirer of:
Czech beer (real Budweiser)
Italian clothes (Armani is God)
French wine (St. Emilion Grand Cru)
Lebanese food (Just call me Shawama dude)
Herzegovina baklava (nectar of the Gods)
Croatian women (sublime…mad, but sublime)
Some months ago Carla Howell and the Libertarians of Massachusetts set out to do more than just talk about making government smaller. They decided to act. They decided to give the people of Massachusetts an opportunity not to slow the rise of taxes, not to freeze them, not to index them… but to roll them back. They penned a ballot initiative to abolish the Massachusetts Income Tax.
It is not easy to get an initiative on the ballot. It costs a great deal of money and untold hours of labour. Libertarians from all over pitched in with donations of cash; Carla and her crew lived and breathed petition from 6am to 12 midnight day after day, week after week, month after month.
And they did it. 75,516 Certified signatures were delivered in 10 shipping boxes to the Elections Division Office of the Secretary of State on Tuesday, December 4th. The event was covered by local and national media and garnered significant publicity for the Libertarian Party. Carla reports coverage by the Associated Press, the State House News Service, The Boston Globe, The Lowell Sun, Berkshire Eagle, NPR, WBZ, WBUR, WTAG, WSAR, WHMP, WHAI, WHYN, BNN TV, Free-Market.net, The Chicopee Herald, Reminder Metro-West, Providence Journal, Fox News and CNN Banner Headline.
Our modern day Sons of Liberty delivered 101,139 raw signatures to 343 town clerks; 75% were validated. Only 57,100 were required to put this measure on the ballot for November 2002. It was unreported whether they are saving the Indian war paint for next year’s post election party.
The implications are beginning to sink in. Howls of anguish and even fear that voters might actually vote for $3000 a year back into their own pockets are rising from the snouts of the public trough class. You can be sure the next phase will be neither quiet nor behind the scenes. The porkers will be out in force from here on out, inventing tax cut horror stories, trundling out their pet talking head victims, putting career bureaucrats on TV to tell how they will cut their most important services first… Oh it is going to be glorious to watch.
It has already begun. Michael Widmer, Director of Communications and Deputy Chief Secretary of former Governor Michael Dukakis(D) and currently the President of the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation is one of the first to voice his fears:
“It would decimate state government.”
Awww…. I’m soooo sad about that Mr Widmer. In fact, ending the income tax would leave a state budget of $14 Billion. That’s 40% higher than Michael Dukakis’ last bloated budget.
Mr. Widmer also noted that ending the income tax would cause “the lay-off of tens of thousands of government workers.” He neglects to add it would put $9 Billion back into the Massachusetts economy. That’s enough to create 400,000 new jobs in the private sector. More than enough to put those government employees to work doing something productive, Mr. Widmer. Next Question?
It’s going to be a bloody war for the next year and the opposition is going to bring enormous resources to bear to hold on to their $9 Billion a year tithe from the working people of Massachusetts. Carla’s little tribe are going to need help. I highly recommend that all who can afford to do so donate and continue to donate. Money is the armament of political warfare and we have to keep our braves in arrowheads if we expect them to take on the Leviathan.
It’s going to be an absolutely magnificent tea party.
I was cruising the besotted Dawson‘s blog whereupon I saw this little paean to one of the delectable Capitalist Chicks:
Tara (‘that’s Tear-ah, not Tar-ah’), let that lovely word roll off your tongue…Tara, just emailed me a very intimate note. I should not do this, but I’ll (sigh) share it with ya’ll: “Glad to see you like the site! We’re going through a major rennovation at the moment, so expect to see a more dynamic bit of site coming up in the next week or two with some new content. I’ll let you know when it’s up! ~Tara J.” Think she likes me? (The Site in question is Capitalist Chicks btw, and since I go there ALL THE TIME, I’ll let you know when she let’s me know, you know…)
I hate to burst your bubble Dawson, but that is the e-mail she sends to everyone who sends an enquiry to the site.
They are rather delectable, though.
The Capitalist Chicks site is very much ‘under construction’ (it does not work properly with IE and has various layout problems), but like the moon-struck Dawson, we shall report loudly when the site is presented in a ‘combat ready’ form.
Just out of curiosity, I e-mailed our own delectable contributor, Natalija Radic to get some female feedback on the Capitalist Chicks site. Her last e-mail of the exchange was:
Oh, shame on you. Why you surprised I like it? Am I not a capitalist chick too? You nickname me ‘Versace babe’ but can only be a Versace babe with lots of MONEY. Not all Capitalists have fat tummy like you.
Ouch.
The triumph of capitalism is living proof that you can’t beat the laws of supply and demand. Drug prohibition is proof that some people will try anyway.
– Unknown
i>Enough of this po-faced punditry. Time for some fun!
Almost too terrifying to post, here is the apocalypse of the future’s true architect: Dr. Rand!
Follow the investigation into this sinister figure and discover…The Truth!
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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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