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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The European Commission convened an emergency session today to urgently discuss a response to the eruption of the Mount Nyirangongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo
“This is a very serious situation” said Hans-Pieter Blinkenblankenblonken the Dutch chair of the Committee for Pompous Pronouncements. “The Congolese will now have access to the highest quality building materials that could threaten the livlihoods of our European producers” he added
The delegate from the German Green Party, Annaliese Klumpf said: “This volcano has simply erupted without even any consultation process. It is completely unacceptable, undemocratic and flies in the face of all European opinion”
The French Minister of Duplicity, Bertrand Maginot was furious. He condemned Mount Niyragongo as a “shitty little volcano” and called for urgent measures to protect French quarries from what he termed “these unfair volcanic practices”
The Commission agreed that these unregulated volcanic eruptions posed a grave threat to the environment and European jobs. A draft resolution was unanimously adopted demanding legislation to curb unfair volcanic activity worldwide and the setting up of a committee to insitgate and oversee a set of formal consultation procedures to be implemented before any further eruptions were permitted to take place
A picture is worth a thousand words.
But some animals are more equal than others
USS Clueless gives a series of baffling remarks about Somalia. As far as I can figure, Steven seems to think the USA was the primary aggrieved party in 1993 when it tried to carry out the UN’s behest and help impose a central government on Somalia at gunpoint. Forget the daft movie, read the excellent book for a more balanced view.
So if the Somali government is now to be the next target, where exactly is this ‘Somali’ government? Exactly why is Somalia about to be attacked and in what manner? Somalia does not have an army like the Taliban did, it is just a heavily armed society. Does the US attack everyone with a gun? Well, that is pretty much everyone. I expect they will tend to shoot back unless a great deal of political finesse is used.
Unqualified Offerings wrote an article a while ago pointing out why the UN/US actions pretty much guaranteed a fight with the so called ‘warlords’ in Somalia. I have always thought this part of his analysis was spot on
No, the racism of the Somali intervention had more to do with the familiar liberal/left “soft racism of low expectations.” Because the reason some Somalis were starving was that other Somalis, with guns, wanted them to starve. Starvation was a weapon of war. “Warlords” were the root cause of starvation, and starvation was a means to an end, and that end was power. “Warlords” are nothing more nor less than politicians; if the claim offend thee, call them “politicians of a type.” By making it its business to “prevent starvation” the Bush administration put itself in the business of thwarting warlord ambitions. That’s not the racist part. The racist part is that, as was clear at the time, the idea that the warlords would take exception to this took the US government, media and public completely by surprise. Then the US announced its plan to disarm the warlords, which is to say, turn them into non-warlords, which is to say, vitiate their claims to power. Again, it wasn’t racist to try to disarm the warlords as such. But one could only imagine the warlords not objecting to this, and violently, if one somehow couldn’t imagine that these swarthy foreigners took themselves and their own ambitions seriously. One had to believe either that the warlords were attempting to shoot and starve their enemies into submission by mistake, and would be grateful when shown the error of their ways, or that they had made the decision to try to shoot and starve their way to power lightly, and that once US attention turned like the gaze of a stern yet kindly parent upon these errant children, they would cast their little eyes down, mutter “Sorry, mom,” and go play right. In US perceptions, the warlords could have been idiots, children or cowards. What US policy could not have been based on was a sober appreciation that the US was setting itself against serious, adult power brokers who cared more for their own plans than American ones.
Yes indeed. This may have come as a shock, but folks do tend to act in what they think are their own interests, even black folks in Africa. How about that?
I’ve been reading how some NGO’s are worried whether the al Qaeda prisoners held at the Guantanamo Naval Base are being given “culturally appropriate” treatment. They were upset the US military shaved off prisoner’s lice-infested beards. The Horror! And not to mention the mortal fear Americans might commit nightmarishly inhuman tortures like… Allah Forbid! providing a side portion of Bob Evan’s spicy pork sausage for breakfast!
This got me to thinking. In 6 months or a year the trials will be over and it will be time to send the lot of them to their patiently waiting Houris. We really should be culturally sensitive about how we go about this. We wouldn’t want to insult the Muslim Street now would we? So… I’ve a suggestion that should satisfy everyone’s requirements: we send them to Yankee Stadium for a good old fashioned stoning! What could possibly be more culturally appropriate? After all, they do it to women in Saudi Arabia don’t they? So doesn’t that make it an appropriate death for terrorists?
Instead of rocks, we’ll use baseballs. After all, this is an American-style stoning we’re talking about here. Baseballs are also better because each person can write witty little messages on them. It’s really, really hard to print legibly on your average rock.
There are problems of course. Where do you come up with a couple hundred thousand baseballs? And what do you do for people who are just too far away? But these are problems I’m sure good old Yankee ingenuity and mass production can solve.
First toss at tickets must of course be reserved for the family and friends of the victims. Remaining tickets would be auctioned, with all proceeds going to the New York Fire Department and charities they endorse. Why, the Fraternal Order could build an Historically Correct (HC) memorial statue with only a fraction of the money raised!
Imagine the cheers as President Bush throws the first baseball! Just to be inclusive Hillary or Bill (depending on which one can throw a baseball) get to throw the second ball. (The reasons why they can’t cast the first baseball should be obvious even to the retarded). Even more money can be raised by auctioning off a few other early throws. Grandma’s get to take turns on batting practice machines with laser sights. Think of the fun of smacking your favorite al Qaeda in the gob with a Bob Feller fastball! Imagine what new meanings will be injected into quaint old Bronx colloqualisms like “In your ear!” or “Up your nose!”
The mind just boggles at the possibilities.
Here’s something to ponder: just as there are boobs on the far-left, there are also boobs on the far-right. You know, they do come in pairs.
– unknown
Hawkish G.I. pundit Sgt. Stryker replies to my views on Steven den Beste’s article. His remarks are essentially an expansion on Steven’s thesis and amount to a quite accurate detailing of what is the received historical wisdom from the American point of view. I don’t really have any grouse with Steven’s assessment of why the US rightly tends to ignore European views, it is his historical analysis I disagree with and the same applies to my views of Sgt. Stryker’s. It is quite a lengthy post so I will only address what I think are the most egregious bits.
1. There wouldn’t be any Poles, Chechs and Hungarians were it not for Wilson’s supposed, “trashing all vestiges of the potentially stabilising old order.”
That is a gross misreading of the nature of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire… it was not called the ‘dual Kingdom’ for nothing: the Hungarian part jealously guarded its Magyar identity and Imperial areas of administration from Austria. Likewise the Czech and Croats and Slovenes and Slovaks may have been administered from Vienna or Budapest but were always quite distinct ethnic groups within the Empire.
2. You seem distraught that these peoples lived under 50 years of Communist rule; yet having them live under the rule of a foreign Hereditary Monarchal Empire is just fine with you because it would bring stabilization. Yet the Communists, for all the wrongs they committed, did stabilize Eastern Europe. All those Eastern Europeans were for all intents and purposes under the domination and influence of a non-democratic foreign power. So what, I ask, is the difference between Communist foreign domination and Monarchal foreign domination that makes the latter more pleasing to you and the former an abomination?
You presuppose that a democratic-republic is by definition a preferable state to that of a monarchy with local government. Your views were of course shared by Woodrow Wilson, but not me. Britain evolved into a true democracy quite successfully, but an attempt to force the pace resulted in the proto-fascist Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell. Democracy works where it evolves naturally, which is why in the long run I am so pessimistic about Europe now. The Great War was just a territorial dispute and did not truly become an ideological one until the arrival of the Americans. The rise of fascism was as a result of unstable alien democratic regimes being forced on nations that did not even have traditions of being independent nations, let alone democracies and for that Woodrow Wilson was the prime mover. It was hardly surprising that democracy in the 1920/30 was a fiasco in much of Eastern and Central Europe as it was imposed rather than evolved. The last echo of Woodrow Wilson’s folly was the recent Balkan Wars.
It was not even the American military involvement in the Great War that was so damaging but Wilson’s disastrous ‘Fourteen Points’. If the USA had been content to assist crushing the Central Powers in response to its U-boat attacks and then go the hell home, history might have been very different and probably not worse. I would take the Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns over the Nazis any day.
Ah yes, the time of Dr. King’s celebration is here again. The time when young commies that I attend school with distort and lie about King’s message to the “African-American” community. So, let me get started right away with debunking the commies distortion of his message.
Lie 1: Dr. King supported government intrusion in the market to make things more equal.
Not true! Dr. King and other similar civil rights activists were smart enough to realize the oppression came from and was authorized by the state. Most KKK members either were or had connections to high powered lawmakers and were therefore able to evade harassment charges. The Supreme Court cases that came down the channel, Brown or Keyes for example, were about eradicating government intrusion in allowing “separate but equal” policies. Not to mention the fact that “separate but equal” was allowed by the Supreme Court decision in Plessy, written in the 1890s.
Lie 2: If you do not support affirmative action, you are a racist, and do not understand the message of Dr. King
Dr. King sated, quite clearly and quite loudly, that he wanted equality for all. Affirmative action gives unfair advantages to certain groups of people (women mostly) and discriminates against Asians and us white folk. Dr, King also would support a highly productive society, where things were judged by merit, not by the color of your skin. Cleary, affirmative action judges by skin color and not merit.
Furthermore, Dr, King would, I assume, be ashamed that people using his name are crying that they should not be forced to work hard for what they want. If you want to go to the best schools or to the best jobs, you have to work hard, and should not, Dr, King argued, be allowed to just claim your race as a reason for hiring.
Lie 3: You better take off Dr. King day, or else you are a racist.
Dr. King constantly worked, and therefore to honor him, I too am going to work. (Not really to honor him though, I just have to get work done.)
Lie 4 (the big one): Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are the reincarnation of Dr. King
If anybody, they are the re-birth of Malcolm X, who by the way was a racist. Dr. King wanted to decrease government and those clowns want more government. Dr. King wanted more equality, whereas Malcolm X, Jackson, and Sharpton want inequality in favor of the black race. Which one is racist?
These lies are too easy to refute. The teachers and commie students do not bother to think and thus they are commie-like, Jackson supporters who lie for their cause. Pray for me this week as I attempt to not say any of this in class, so as to stay alive!
Over on AintNoBadDude, our pet pinko Brian Linse makes an excellent case for why TV cameras have no place in a court house.
If I were on trial for my life, I’d want to be sure that the prosecutor wasn’t campaigning for DA on my time. I’d want to be certain that the judge wasn’t auditioning for a syndicated series. And I’d want to be damn sure that the lawyers weren’t trying to get booked on Larry King. If there is even the slightest chance that a citizen might be deprived of their life, or even their freedom, then the possible impact of cameras must be seen as a threat to the Sixth Amendment. The impact on the press and the public of keeping cameras out of courtrooms is insignificant by comparison.
It is pretty hard to argue with that.
Over on Dodgeblog, there is a short post about a panel of guests on a talk show who had much sympathy for the Taliban and Al Qaeda but none for their victims.
Can any rational human living in Britain who is not a 24 hour somnambulist have failed to notice the overwhelming support for the USA by people across this country?
I am all for airing a wide range of views, I am a libertarian after all, but why is it that such a high proportion of views shown on television of the various talking heads is so at odds with the views of society at large? If the show Andrew Dodge was referring to was just on some commercial channel then that would be alright… after all, I can always surf off to another channel.
But it is not just another commercial channel, it is the channel that the British state uses the force of law to make me contribute to financially for the ‘privilege’ of owning any television in Britain. It is the tax funded BBC. The official state media. The voice of state establishment. I am being forced to pay for the propagation of this poisonous shit and that is not alright.
I note that I have been ever-so-gently upbraided for my lamentations over the apparent pacification (and pansy-fication) of marxist rebels; more particularly the FARC of Colombia who appear to have retired after a long career spent decapitating villagers and moved to the negotiation table
Surely, this is a step in the right direction, no? Surely, pursuing peace is better than pursuing a savage war? I regret to say that my answer is no. As for it being the ‘right move’, well, I’m sure that the FARC consider it to be the ‘right move’ as the negotiating table will assuredly take them far further then their AK-47s ever did; from fetid jungle encampment to lording it up in the halls of Colombian power within 10 years at most, I’d say
The FARC have learned these lessons well from their European and American comrades who made this transition 30 years ago and just look how far it’s taken them.
They handed in their guns, bombs and incendiaries and equipped themselves with altogether more stealthy (and infinitely more lethal) weapons of inclusivity, diversity and sustainability. So ended the the dream of revolution and began the grim determination of the long march. The fiery radicals of yesteryear became the outreach workers, counsellors, legal-aid lawyers, community activists, environmental campaigners, journalists, professors, social workers, teachers and union delegates. Carlos the Jackal became Charles the Educator and he lives next door to us now. He wears a well-tailored suit, expensive shoes, drives a car, sends his kids to private schools and writes a column in the Guardian
Thus many of us, nay, most of us were fooled into believing that the marxist rebs had finally grown up and ditched their war with civilisation. Tosh and horsefeathers, I say. We were merely blinded by the brief incandescent light of Thatcher; deafened by the noise of tumbling bricks in Berlin. The Third Way was not so much a coming-to-terms with reality but, rather, a tactical realisation that reality had to be upended by other means. The programme remains on course; it is merely the method that has changed
And, in a sense, they were right. Now it is they who rub shoulders with those in power while we squat in our cyber-camps, seething and scheming. Hell, in many cases they are the ones in power. What an extraordinarily successful application of the black art of cognitive jiu-jitsu that left the rest of us lying spread-eagled on the mat, bruised, dazed and wondering how that happened. Well, now we know how that happened; the marxist radicals chose peace instead of fighting
So I say, let us return to the bad old days when the interminably neurotic children of the bourgeoisie were yomping around the countryside blowing up electricity pylons. It made it so much easier to put their lifeless bodies on display to a grateful public without so much as a hint of equivocation. They were them, we were us and the only decision anybody ever had to make was to pick a side. We knew exactly upon whom we had to set the dogs and, more importantly, why
The triumph of civilisation has always lain the in the vigourous trumping of stupidty by reason and it is only the purblind obsession with ‘peace at any price’ that has caused us to forget this biblical simplicity. ‘Stop making wars’ they implored. What they meant was ‘Stop making wars we can never win’
Come back, Che Guevarra. Lead your comrades out into the jungle again. You can have back your sweaty T-shirts, your ghastly berets and your molotov cocktails. We’ll have back our moral certainty, rule of law and our armed citizens. You can be free again to shout Long Live the Revolution and we can shout Let’s Roll
USS Clueless has a lengthy article about US unilateralism which makes some interesting points. He also makes some rather dubious ones.
We gave Europe one chance, after WWI, to dictate their own terms and the result was another bloody war. So the second time, we did call the tune — and the result was a hell of a lot better.
As for Britain and France dictating its own terms, what about Woodrow Wilson’s role in dismembering the Austro-Hungarian Empire and trashing all vestiges of the potentially stabilising old order? America shares some of the blame for the instability in Europe in the 1920’s and 1930’s. And the ‘second time’ was better for who? I don’t think too many Poles, Czechs and Hungarians would agree with Steven as they ended up with nearly half a century of communist rule. Does Steven think Yalta was America’s finest hour?
But that’s because we are willing to try the unconventional. For example: after WWI, France insisted that Germany, with its ruined economy, pay drastic reparations to France. The result was hyper inflation, collapse of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of the Nazi Party.
All of which may never have happened if the US had stayed out of the Great War and a negotiated settlement had been reached in 1917 or early 1918.
And even in the recent past the Europeans have proved that their counsel sucks. That’s what we learned in Yugoslavia, something I’ve discussed here at great length. Years of dithering where the US lobbied for military action and the Europeans counseled diplomacy and sanctions, and what it got us was years of slaughter and civil war there. Finally the US issued an ultimatum; and after 6 weeks of bombing, and the war there ended. Milosevic was deposed, and the Serbs went back to democracy and ceased to be imperialistic. And it’s been reasonably peaceful there ever since.
Yeah, and they all lived happily ever after dreaming good dreams about nice Uncle Sam. That is an… interesting… analysis of the intricacies of the recent Balkan Wars. Whilst I am not fan of European diplomacy (to put it mildly), US actions in the Balkans were at best only half right and Kosovo was a rather more ambigious matter than you seem to think. Do you not think the fact the Croatian and Bosnia Armies (not the USAF) had defeated the aspirations of a Greater Serbia might have had more than a little to do with Slobo’s declining political fortunes? He was politically very vulnerable due to the fact he had lead Serbia to catastrophe, horror and defeat in Bosnia and Croatia, unemployment was running at over 30% (50% by some estimates), the currency was fast turning into toilet paper and so is it really so surprising that he collapsed after yet another military defeat, this time at the hands of the largely US strategic air offensive that resulted from the Kosovo affair?
I am afraid Steven’s analysis contains some grossly simplistic elements and seems to ascribe almost magical qualities to the application of US military force: the USAF turns up and shazam… peace breaks out all over the Balkans. It is rather more complex than that.
[Editor: Link fixed. Now goes to correct article on USS Clueless]
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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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