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]
|
Far be it for me to dispute that Perry de Havilland fits the profile for a sinister globalist illuminatus, as it is clear to us all that he is indeed one of those pain-in-the-ass illuminated ones.
However, if this is some sneaky attempt on his part to become the Sinister Globalist Illuminatus Poster Boy of the Month for December 2001, I have news for you… when the Mont Pelerin Society, the Bilderburgers, the Comte de St. Germaine, the Trilateral Commission, the House of Windsor, Henry Kissenger, George Soros and (of course) the Knights Templar vote on that, they always pick someone Jewish… preferably a banker.
Sorry Perry, you are just too damn WASP.
Here are yet more insights sent in by Samizdata reader George Guttman , who has not finished with us yet.
Taliban leader Mullah Omar is planning to give up? Didn’t he tell his people to fight to the death?…I guess he meant their death, not his…
Didn’t Omar want to become a martyr and cavort with 72 virgins in paradise???…Well, maybe he is gay and the virgin stuff is not for him…
It has been widely reported that no sooner does the multi-party conference in Germany select pashtun leader Hamid Karzai as the interim Prime Minister of Afghanistan than a stray 2000lb JDAM bomb from a USAF B-52 comes within a hair’s breadth of killing him. I suspect the only reason the conspiracy theorists are not already in full voice on this one is that three US soldiers were killed in the same incident.
But give them time… once it has rattled around in their heads for a few days, the dark theories will start to emerge. You think I am wrong? Well if an armed prison revolt in Mazar-i-Sharif can be reported in some quarters as a ‘massacre involving US forces’ in spite of the fact a German TV crew caught on video a captured prisoner blowing himself with a hidden grenade (and injuring attractive British ITN reporter Andrea Catherwood) and SkyNew filmed outgoing rifle, machinegun and mortar fire (having a camera man injured in the process), then methinks you underestimate the strangeness of the conspiratorial mindset. When wild and woolly theories about Hamid Karzai’s close call start to appear, I call on all Samizdata readers to e-mail them in to us.
Emmanuel Goldstein and I have crossed swords over this one on the Libertarian Alliance forum. That said, I do not regard Emmanuel as a complete looney tune conspiracy theorist (in spite of some intemperate remarks I may have made in the past), merely someone with a few looney tune theories and his Airstrip One blog is not without it’s perverse charms.
Although I am someone who finds 90% of all conspiracy theories not just bogus but ludicrous, they do have a certain entertainment value. I have my own pet theories regarding the conspiracy fetishists (as I prefer to call them). One of my more sublime discoveries after reading many of them is that they almost all, if you regress them far enough, will be traced back to the Knights Templar.
As Fox Mulder of the X-Files would say, “The truth is out there”… but so is the paranoid bullshit. And so for your edification, gentle reader, I present my semi-serious conspiracy meta-theory:
The vast majority of conspiracy theories tell us nothing about the subject matter of the conspiracy but quite a lot about the mind of the theorists themselves. However the endless procession of conspiracy theories are in fact perpetuated by institutions with real conspiracies to hide on the basis that when a true conspiracy theory actually hits the mark, it will then be dismissed out of hand as the paranoid ravings of a fantasist.
Are you impressed? You should be: that is an anti-conspiracy theory conspiracy theory!
Of course as I fit the profile of a sinister globalist illuminatus myself, you can safely assume I am just saying these things to conceal The Truth.
Christopher Hitchens is in typically ebullient form on The Nation as he writes The Ends of War, in which he makes a remark that I suspect is destined to became a classic quote:
The United States of America has just succeeded in bombing a country back out of the Stone Age.
Outstanding. Just for good measure, he yet again carves up Noam Chomsky in his Parthian shot. In a battle of wits, nauseating Noam is unarmed. This whole article is well worth a read.
I am only just starting to get used to the idea of not reflexively thinking of Christopher Hitchens as the enemy.
There is an interesting article in the Virginian-Pilot called Gun shop owner sues ATF over reports. The owner of a gun shop in Virginia is suing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms because it has demand records of the shop’s used gun sales. The owner says the government is compiling a database of gun owners, which is strictly illegal. I particularly liked:
“While no one has accused me of committing a crime, they’re going on a fishing expedition, and I’m not going fishing with them,” Marcus said in a recent interview from his shop.
Excellent. The state can only tie liberty in knots if enough people are willing cooperate with it. Don’t cooperate.
The deadliest criminals in America call themselves Drug Warriors.
– Dale Amon
Here are some insights sent in by Samizdata reader George Guttman. Agree or disagree, they are reasonable points to make:
So the father of American Taliban member John Walker says “he is just a 20 year old kid”.
Well so are the US Marines we have had to send to Afghanistan to protect ourselves from “kids” like that. Come on, take some responsibility.
Why is September 11th referred to as a “Tragedy?” Let’s call it what it was…A terroristic act of war…kinda puts an angle of reality on it.
Why is a US military tribunal “wrong” for foreign terrorists… when it is also what US military personnel face.
Over on Mind over what matters, fellow bloggista Jay Zilber makes a remark that caught my eye whilst I was surfing the mimetic waves looking for interesting tubes and eddies in the zeitgeist:
TOUGH CHOICE? I’ll make it easy for you. Aaron Sorkin without crack is like a day without sunshine — and besides, The West Wing is, and ever shall be, so September 10th.
Interesting. So September 10th. Yes, I know exactly what he means.
Reading the post below by our esteemed Samizdata Illuminatus, I have just realised what a ‘broad-based government’ means… a government with broads in it!
Throw away those burquas, ladies! It’s time to get your snouts in the pork barrels with all the guys!
Oops… maybe we need a different expression other than ‘pork barrels’ when describing government funding boondoggles in Muslim countries.
There is an interesting article by Matthew Edgar on Politics.com called The Solution to Post-Taliban Afghanistan: No Government. Whilst I do not actually agree with all its contentions, the central thrust of the article is insightful and realistic. It is a very different approach from the ‘received wisdom’ that various pundits and government talking head have been declaiming as the preferred ‘solution’ to Afghanistan’s woes (mumble, mumble, broad-based government, mumble, mumble, democracy…).
British sporting ‘hero’ Sir Geoff Hurst is too afraid of terrorism to fly on a British Airways aircraft. He joins the list of cricketer ‘heroes’ Robert Croft and Andrew Caddick and movie action ‘heroes’ Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwartzenegger in The Chickenshit Files.
My theory is that sports and media personalities such as these people are so astonishingly egocentric that they think any terrorist wishing to harm the USA or the UK must surely regard them as the very embodiment of that nation, hence they are a prime target. I hate to break this to you guys, but I do not think Osama bin Laden ever thought that US foreign policy was drafted by card carrying members of the Equity Actors Union, or he would have arranged for one of those hijacked aircraft to have been flown into Hollywood Boulevard.
In my first article on November 7 about these ‘heroes’ with feet of clay, I contrasted them quivering behind the walls of their mansions, with Ellen Degeneris, who stood up and taunted the Taliban live on television. Similarly, I would like to tip my kevlar battlebowler to Mariah Carey.
Now Mariah has been going through a rather bad patch in the last few months, with a nervous breakdown, erratic behaviour and visits to rehab gleefully reported in the press. Yet in spite of that and although she is a nervous flyer at the best of times, she flew to Kosovo yesterday and entertained US soldiers involved in the peacekeeping operation there.
So although Mariah Carey is not my usual taste in music, next time you see Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwartzenegger or sundry inconsequential sportsmen described as ‘heroes’, I invite you to blow a raspberry and go out and buy a Mariah Carey CD. She is got it where it counts… and I am not just referring to her more obvious charms. Good on you, girl.
Following the horrors in Israel, it is entirely reasonable and justified for the Israeli security services to do what the Palestinian Authority of Yassir Arafat has singularly failed to do, namely go after the psychopathic Hamas and Islamic Jihad organisations.
Israel is also quite right to demand that Arafat make a serious effort to suppress Hamas himself. This very point was made by an Israeli minister on the BBC this morning. In response however, the BBC reporter asked the minister
“If you want Arafat’s security services to do their job as you demand, then why are Israel’s attacks primarily directed at Arafat’s security services themselves?”
The reply can be best described as no reply, other than to insist that Arafat was responsible for arresting members of Hamas and he was not living up to his part of the bargain. The BBC reporter rephrased the question, asking:
“Why is Israel destroying the very force that you are demanding Arafat order to crush Hamas?”
The minister replied
“Israel is sending Chairman Arafat a message and if he does not understand that message, we will send it again.”
Well I sure as hell hear Israel’s message and it has very little to do with what that minister was saying. It is entirely reasonable for Israel to go after Hamas, given the Palestinian Authority’s abject failure to do so. But how does destroying Arafat’s assets achieve this? It would be rather like the USA striking the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan because they were not attacking the Taliban with enough gusto. Clearly that is absurd. If you want to understand what is going on, you have to ignore what the Israeli government is saying and just look at what they are doing.
The reality is that Palestinian Authority is a deeply corrupt, tyrannical, factionally riven organisation which could not control Hamas or Islamic Jihad even if it was inclined to. My analysis is that as well as going after the elusive Hamas, Israel is attacking the Palestinian Authority partially because internal Israeli outrage demands ‘action’ and requires someone been seen to pay big time (and the Palestinian Authority is a nice easy visible target) but mostly because Sharon sees this as his best chance to destroy the Palestinian Authority and reshuffle the deck whilst the world’s attention (meaning the USA) is focused on Afghanistan. Israeli colonisation of the occupied territories will continue (25 new settlements under the Sharon government) and the Palestinian west bank bantustans will not be allowed to expand into a proto-nation. Governments by their very nature are vast engines of deception: watch what they do and subject every utterance to skeptical but rational analysis. The target is Arafat’s ‘government’ with Hamas only being struck en passant. For reasons that are a mixture of Jewish colonial expansion and reasonable self-defense of Israel, Sharon wants to destroy the existing order in Palestine and replace it with something more to his liking. That is the reality.
|
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.
|
Recent Comments