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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It seems that ‘People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA) feel that to be a good Christian, one must refrain from eating meat. There is even a Christian Vegetarian website.
Now as a libertarian, I regard vegetarianism as a totally acceptable life style choice for other people and I am not knocking it…however it is not something I choose to follow myself. I shall stick to my omnivorous ways.
I just have one question… if vegetarianism matters one jot to Christianity, then why did Christ perform the miracle of turning five loaves and two fishes into many in order to feed the multitude (Matthew 14)? Why not five loaves and two tofu cubes?
Now Dawson is certainly entitled to his opinion that the Colt .45 “has never been surpassed as a combat weapon side arm”, but I think times have moved on. Sure, it is a fine choice, but I cannot see any real advantage over more modern .40 cal weapons like the excellent SIG 229 but I can see several disadvantages. The SIG has 12 rounds in the magazine (vs. 7 in the Colt), is a smooth double action out of the box and just as reliable as the venerable 1911-A1 (and it’s various grandchildren). To be honest, I think the Colt is only really competitive these days if heavily modified (polished feed ramp, extended slide release etc.). Most importantly, I just don’t like a Colt style lock safety in a combat piece… it is just too easy to forget that it is on at the moment of truth and too dangerous to leave it off in the mean time.
Don’t get me wrong, the Colt .45 is a great weapon and fun to shoot but when the chips are down and it is time for business…I want a 40 cal SIG 229…Don’t leave home without it.
I just felt like posting this short piece from the inimitable P. J. O’Rourke that he wrote a few years ago.
Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It’s not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It’s not an endlessly expanding list of rights–the ‘right’ to education, the ‘right’ to health care, the ‘right’ to food and housing. That’s not freedom, that’s dependency. Those aren’t rights, those are the rations of slavery–hay and a barn for human cattle. There’s only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
Quite so.
Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.
– H.L. Mencken
Now I realise that the concept of an Objectivist-with-a-sense-of-humour (or even humor) might be straining the bounds of credulity for some readers of the Samizdata, but I beg to differ. After all, if you listen to just about anything Leonard Piekoff has said since September 11, it indicates a man with immense comedic talent and superb comic timing. He even keeps a straight face whilst indulging in collectivist whimsy like advocating lobbing nuclear weapons at various unspecified Middle Eastern cities. See what I mean? Now is that man a jolly funster or what?
And so in that spirit, take a look at Modern Humorist (ignore their ghastly American spelling for a moment… there is a u shortage over there), and read ATLAS SHR: A glimpse into alternate universes where Ayn Rand’s books are all 400 pages shorter.
I particular liked:
ALAN GREENSPAN finished reading Ayn Rand’s complete works seven years earlier. He advanced more quickly into Rand’s inner circle, began his career as an economist in the mid-1960s, and became chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in 1971. Thanks to his earlier leadership, there was no oil crisis or recession in the 70s. As a result, widespread vilification of Arab culture by working class Americans never came to pass, and the professional wrestling scapegoat known as The Iron Sheik was never created. This allowed wrestler Bob Backlund to retain the WWF championship belt in 1983.
Excellent.
Cheers and a funny handshake to the sinister Matt Drachenberg for pointing the Samizdata at Modern Humorist.
Then read this article Too many cooks about the multiplicity of players involved and their differing agendas. The article also suggests that the Taliban execution of Abdul Haq might have been due to him being set up by the ISI:
The USA’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which reportedly attaches greater importance to the co-operation with the United Front than to that with Pakistan’s intelligence establishment, and is distrustful of the ISI. This has been particularly so since the capture and execution of Abdul Haq, the CIA’s mole in the Pashtun community, by the Taliban in October.
However, do keep in mind that as the author is a member of the Indian establishment, a rather jaundiced view of Pakistan as the font of all worldly evil is to be expected. That said, just because he is Indian does not make him incorrect and the whole article is an interesting piece of analysis.
There is also an interesting take on the ‘Konduz airlift’ that suggests it was carried out by Pakistan in the confusion rather than with US complicity. I have my doubts on that but only time will tell what really happened. I fully expect that incident will become fodder for conspiracy theorists for years to come.
This is actually a very good site and I shall be keeping an eye on it in the future.
Thanks to Samizdata reader Bob Van Andel for pointing us at the Afgha.com site (availible in English and French).
It is remarkable when a man such as Christopher Hitchens makes the transformation from Prince of Darkness of the Socialist Left to something pretty damn close to a libertarian. He is on excellent form in this article in The Nation.
He even favored us with the most witless and fatalistic of the recent naysayings, to the effect that if we kill Osama bin Laden then others will rise to take his place. I actually think this proposition is an unsafe one: Bin Laden looks like one of a rare kind to me (and increasingly flaky in recent guest appearances). His deputies are obvious goons and would probably start knifing one another if the holy one stepped on a mine. But leave that to one side–does it never occur to anyone that tens of thousands of people would also rise up to rid the world of bin Laden all over again?
This is good stuff. Read the whole article.
Some interesting observations from the good folks as Fevered Rants regarding the prospect of unmanned aircraft being the wave of the future. Is the manned combat aircraft soon to be a thing of the past?
I agree that we will be seeing more and more of a role for UAVs but there are also some serious weaknesses in the theory that they will completely supplant manned fighters. Against the likes of Iraq, Serbia and Afghanistan circa 2001, UAV’s have much to commend them. Yet sooner or later (probably later) the USA will have to fight an enemy who will have access to technology much closer in quality to that which is available to America itself…which means high quality sophisticated electronic warfare (EW). One of the realities of EW is that you can never be quite sure of what the enemy can do until he does it and it is a hell of a lot cheaper to jam the controls of a UAV than it is to fire a missile at one. However the only way to completely jam a manned aircraft is with a fast moving object (like a missile or cannon shell).
Prostitution is a combination of sex and free enterprise. Which one are you against?
– Unknown
Calling all pedantic obsessives who read the Samizdata.
I have had two e-mails from eagle-eyed blog readers with way too much time in their hands. Both asked me why I have been referring to Northern Alliance General Daoud Khan as General Daoud whilst calling other Generals by their surnames (i.e. General Dostam, General Musharraf, General Franks)?
Well, because everyone else has been calling him General Daoud.
But that got me thinking…why?
Then I realised the answer: the surname name Khan in that part of the world is rather like Smith in the English speaking world. There are two Generals called Khan in the Northern Alliance: The Tajik Daoud Khan from the Panshir Valley (who just captured Konduz) and the Herati Ismail Khan from Herat in the north-west of Afghanistan (who captured Herat from the Taliban a few weeks ago).
So now you know.
… don’t leave home without ’em.
For many years, some elements within the US military have argued that due to the range of modern jet fighters and the advent of in-flight refueling, the era of the aircraft carrier is over. The resources for these vasty expensive assets would be better spent on the USAF. Similarly the US Marine Corps is a force without a mission. Why bother with seaborne forces when Rangers etc. can be flown to a target from land bases?
Well, as we can see, it was the USN F-18 and F-14’s that gained air superiority over Afghanistan, not the USAF… and it is the USMC, which is part of the Navy, that has been airlifted off aircraft carriers and helicopter carriers into a land locked central Asian theatre of operations. This was in fact the longest range combat helicopter insertion in military history.
Hopefully this will once and for all put paid to the idea that either large aircraft carriers or the US Marine Corps are a waste of resources. For strategic, operational and tactical flexibility, with the ability to respond to unexpected threats in unexpected places, the USMC and the aircraft carrier are the perfect tools.
…with advance apologies to a certain nameless Reuters reporter who occasionally posts his own articles to the Samizdata.
This little gem was pointed out to us by Mathew Drachenberg on the hilarious satirical U Thant.com site (recommended). As you might know, Reuters have been heavily criticised for refusing to call Al Qaeda ‘terrorists’:
NEWSFLASH! 12:00PM 11/20/01
Reuters Journalists Die in Taliban Ambush
Reuters reports that “so-called murderers” may have “in the opinion of some Westerners, killed” individuals that “Reuters claims were journalists.” Witnesses say that the journalists had no warning of the impending irony before the terrorists shot them.
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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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