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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When I was a boy, soldiers communicated by yelling at each other, and with big boxes which they yelled into and also listened to, carefully. Each bunch of soldiers had one box through which all orders came, and through which they sent all their news back to their superiors. Remember those boxes which malfunctioned in A Bridge Too Far, to the disgust of Sean Connery. Those.
Fast forward. On TV I’m now watching our soldiers, and they all seem to be wearing headsets to talk into, like in a Van Damme SF movie. Every infantryman has become like a fighter pilot. Mostly they seem to observe radio silence. I guess they don’t want to be jabbering all at once.
When did this happen? It’s a big change, and surely a big, big step forward and a big, big difference between our guys in this war and the other poor fellows, who do not have headsets unless I’m much mistaken which is of course only too possible.
That’s it. No links, because if I had a link to something on this I’d probably have the answer. Just questions. When did this change occur? What did it consist of? And what does it mean? A lot, I’m guessing. Commenters please let rip.
‘Chemical Ali’ is dead at the age of 64, killed in a true ‘coalition’ attack: blown apart by an American bomb called in by a British forward air controller. He has now gone to join the unquiet ghosts of the 200,000+ Kurdish and Iraqi people whose murder he was personally responsible for supervising. Two hundred thousand people… that would be as if Janet Reno had ordered about 2,600 Waco massacres.
There are several intellectually viable reasons for opposing this war but I assume that the anti-war protestors who marched against it on the grounds that the cost to Iraq’s people would be intolerable will be distraught to learn of his death, as this fine specimen of humanity would still be alive today if they had gotten their way, continuing to ply his dark trade across that unhappy land called Iraq.
I would spit in a million of their faces if I could because the perpetuation in power of ‘Chemical Ali’ and his evil brethren was the reality of what they were marching for.
In Iraq, ordinary people begin to appear and cheer the liberators. In France, the pro-Saddam mob is disappearing as fast as a Republican Guard tank brigade.
I use the French TV station TF1 as my weathervane of authorised French opinion.
The Free French… in exile in London yet again!
Since Samizdata, along with the rest of the Anglosphere, seems to be in us-Brits-great-or-what? mode today, please permit me to mention here that over on my Education Blog, I did a piece about the British Army as a teaching organisation, based on a conversation with a friend who is a captain in it. If what you’re now thinking is: “Wow, those Brits, how do they do it?”, well, I think this little piece goes some way towards answering that question.
At the centre of the piece is an accronym: EDIP. This stands for: Explain, Demonstrate, Immitate, Practice.
The other key principle “embedded” – to use this month’s mot du jour – in British Army practice is that the best way to learn something is to teach it. Quite junior officers start the “high powered” bit of their army careers by instructing at Sandhurst, and Sergeants and Corporals do most of the day-to-day training of the soldiers. At the end of it the soldiers may not be completely in command of what they’re doing, but the men who’ve been teaching them have it ingrained into them. Soldiering can be taught, and so can leadership, and this is how.
The thing I remember most vividly about that conversation was, well, how vivid it was. The question “Education – How about that then? – How does the army go about doing that?” is just about the best way for a civilian like me to get inside the head of a soldier that I could possibly have picked. “So, what’s it like killing people?” is useless by comparison. (a) It’s insulting. It makes it sound like that’s the thing they most like doing. (b) Half of them don’t know. (c) Those that do have no way of really telling you. And above all (d) they don’t want to talk about it. But asking them about how they teach is, as I said in my original piece, like taking the cork out of a shaken champagne bottle.
I want to do a lot more pieces like this one, about actual teachers and how they set about it, for my Education Blog, but so far have only done one more, about my friend Sean Gabb. So if any Samizdata readers are doing any teaching, of any sort, in the London area or near offer, and of a sort they wouldn’t mind me sitting in on and/or writing about (I promise to accentuate the positive – almost all teachers are doing some good things), please get in touch.
On Saturday I spent the morning helping out with canvassing for the town council elections (not seeking votes for me this time – I was in another ward seeking votes for another couple of candidate of my party).
Instead of going straight home (after the morning canvass) I visited first the town museum and then the town library. I have visited both places many times over the years, but I still sometimes go (perhaps my senile brain means that each time I visit I find things that have long been there, but which I do not have a clear memory of).
In the museum, amongst other things, I looked at a stuffed red fox and was impressed by the size of the beast. In life it would have clear threat to the nice cats I had met in the morning – how can anyone oppose fox hunting? I know I was supposed to be talking to voters in the morning, rather than to talking to cats, but….. Also I know that cats are very cruel to birds and other such – but I do not much care (I like cats).
In the town library I looked through the main encyclopaedia (the one that is not going to publish any more editions in paper form). The section on Sweden told me that compulsory education was imposed there in the 1844 a few years before the guilds were abolished and the trade monopoly taken away from the special towns that had long held the monopoly. The encyclopaedia article also told me that in the mid 19th century it was decided that the Swedish state was to control all main line railways. Over the centuries it did seem that the state owned vast areas of the country and could steal private land at will – and there were all these detailed facts and figures on everything (in this country the first census we had in recent centuries was in 1801 and the Birth Marriages and Deaths registration act came in 1836 – other than that there was nothing much).
I thought about how this compared to what I had seen in my local town museum. In Kettering there was no town council till the the late 19th century. There was a church Vestry, but the local people had rejected a town council. In 1872 a local government board was imposed and in the 1890’s a Kettering Borough Council was created. Within a year or so the new K.B.C. was out doing wicked things (such as taking over the town water and gas supply). → Continue reading: What we have lost
Ode to British Armed Forces:
Yesterday, in Basra, we were reminded. Our soldiers conducted themselves with courage, patience, discipline and, when necessary, appropriately directed violence. They were splendid.
[…]
…as they advanced through Basra’s suburbs, our Servicemen had to rely on older attributes: unit cohesiveness, steadiness under fire, controlled aggression, trust in each other. Strip away all the artefacts of modern war and we are left with an undeniable truth: man for man, our soldiers are better, braver and deadlier than theirs.
By yesterday afternoon, American commentators were hailing the pacification of Basra as a model for what should happen in Baghdad. To have occupied a city of 1.2 million people with negligible casualties to the attacker is extraordinary; to have done so without incurring the hatred of the inhabitants is little short of providential.
Britain’s standing in the United States is as high as it has ever been, and with good reason.
As a former prime minister once put it: “Rejoice – just rejoice!”
A Civitas report on crime, ominously called The Failure of Britain’s Police, argues that forces of law and order have lost control. Police in Britain are so overwhelmed by the sheer volume of crime that even recent extra recruits are making no difference according to the report published today.
The comparison with New York figures is startling. In 1991 there were 22,000 robberies in London. In 2002 there were 44,600, an increase of 105 per cent. In 1991 there were 99,000 robberies in New York City. In 2002 there were 27,000, a decrease of 73 per cent. To draw equal with New York’s achievement, London would thus have to gain no fewer than 178 percentage points in its fight against street crime.
The report concludes that to halt the rising levels of street crime, substantial increases in numbers of policemen, as seen in New York, are necessary. Zero tolence policing is called for to set clear boundaries and re-take the public places from anti-social elements.
However, that has not been the Home office’s priority. Their approach is predictable:
In the face of staggering volumes of crime, the police and the Home Office are reduced to ‘bringing crime under control’ by legalising or decriminalising many offences on the grounds that they aren’t so bad after all.
Oh, and here is the government’s story about crime figures. Crime is 9 per cent down and believe this, if you can:
These figures show Government measures to reduce crime are working. Crime is continuing a downward trend and the risk of being a victim remains at its lowest level for 20 years.
I know whether I feel safe in London or not. How about this radical solution – allow people defend themselves!
The latest reports on SkyNews are showing large crowds of ecstatic Iraqi civilians greeting the British mechanised troops deep inside Basra. One clip showed jubilant Iraqi children and young men clambering over a Challenger 2 tank and shaking the hands of the vehicle’s bemused commander and driver.
On a less happy note, one British soldier was killed earlier by a booby trap, so it is too soon to regard the Basra operation as completely ‘done and dusted’ but it seems clear that to all intents and purposes, the city has indeed fallen.
I have no idea – no idea whatever – whether or how much of this is true, or made up, or what. But here it is, for whatever it may be worth – it being from a website run by something called Bikesport, “Michigan’s largest road and triathlon store”. I kid you not.
I’m guessing that not all of the blogosphere has seen this yet. If it has and I was the last to hear about it, apologies. Thanks to Boris Kupershmidt for the link.
[EMBARRASSING UPDATE: It’s fiction, as commenter number two has just pointed out. Oh well. Maybe something approximately like what follows has been happening. Follow this link for the background to all this, which is definitely a story, if not anything like the story I thought it might have been.]
It’s a big night for Mike. He’s at work tonight. As I mentioned his clothing is wet, partially from dew, partially from perspiration. He and his four co-workers, Dan, Larry, Pete and Maurice are working on a rooftop at the corner of Jamia St. and Khulafa St. across from Omar Bin Yasir.
Mike is looking through the viewfinder of a British made Pilkington LF25 laser designator. The crosshairs are centered on a ventilation shaft. The shaft is on the roof of The Republican Guard Palace in downtown Baghdad across the Tigris River
Saddam Hussein is inside, seven floors below, three floors below ground level, attending a crisis meeting.
Mike’s co-worker Pete (also an Ironman finisher, Lake Placid, 2000) keys some information into a small laptop computer and hits “burst transmit”. The DMDG (Digital Message Device Group) uplinks data to another of Mike’s co-workers (this time a man he’s never met, but they both work for their Uncle, “Sam”) and a fellow athlete, at 21’500 feet above Iraq 15 miles from downtown Baghdad. This man’s office is the cockpit of an F-117 stealth fighter. When Mike and Pete’s signal is received the man in the airplane leaves his orbit outside Baghdad, turns left, and heads downtown.
Mike has 40 seconds to complete his work for tonight, then he can go for a run.
→ Continue reading: Hell’s athletes
British forces have overrun Basra, with 16 Air Assault Brigade taking the north of the city, 7 Armoured Brigade taking Central Basra and 3 (Royal Marine) Commando Brigade taking Southern Basra.
Although the British military authorities are studiously avoiding actually saying that ‘Basra has fallen’, it seems clear from all the reports I have seen from the journalists inside the city itself that this is indeed the case, bar the inevitable mopping up of isolated die-hard elements. Fedayeen Saddam resistance is being described as sporadic and uncoordinated and at one point a reporter with SkyNews said several thousand jubilant people mobbed the British as they pushed deep into the city.
Although fighting is continuing, it seems clear that Ba’athist Socialism is dying with a frightened whimper rather than a defiant roar. The Fedayeen are discovering that two decades of murdering civilians has not prepared them for fighting some of the most fierce and professional troops in the world.
Just to say, in my capacity as the self-appointed Senior Samizdata Sports Commentator, that the best Oxford University versus Cambridge University boat race ever has just finished. When it did finish, they were not sure who had won, so close was it. Unbelievable.
Personally I don’t care anything about the Boat Race, or I didn’t until about one minute ago. It just happened to be on the telly while I was composing this for my Culture Blog, which has now gone daily.
Usually it is clear who is going to win the Boat Race in the first twenty seconds, and from then on it’s a procession. In this one the lead changed about four times, including just before or just after the finish because Cambridge were closing so fast.
It was the kind of sporting event where, as the commentators said just afterwards, all eighteen will be brothers for life. But get this: four of them already were brothers, the Smiths and the Livingstones, each pair in opposite boats.
Official verdict: Oxford by ONE FOOT. Closest race ever, apparently, because the “dead heat” they had in 1572 or whenever it was wasn’t really. It was just that the umpire that day was drunk.
I overheard another interesting titbit in among the preparatory waffling. Apparently 90% of these oarsmen go into “banking”, by which I think they meant “merchant” banking. I don’t know what this proves. It could be that rowing is a fine preparation for financial titans. Or it could be that the financial services industry contains a lot of people with more ex-brawn than current brain. A bit of both, I should guess. They don’t get paid anything to be in this race, but it seems that they clean up afterwards. Investment in networking. Speculate to accumulate. Apparently they were racing for the “Aberdeen Asset Management Trophy”. It figures.
Some things the BBC does do well. They had this report up within minutes.
Not everything at or linked to by b3ta.com is fun, but a lot of it is.
I liked their picture of the Dalek on a chairlift. As they say: problem solved. This is a reference, I believe, to a cartoon from years back, in which a Dalek confronts a staircase and says: “There goes our plan for dominating the universe.” And they had a good “What if Hitler had won?” graphics competition. (“Reich Crispies” packet, etc.) But I couldn’t find these any more so you’ll just have to take my word for them. I think part of the idea of b3ta.com may be to make money, or to help some people to make money, or something like that, hence the way things get switched off. Elucidating comment welcome.
But you can always dig back in their blog archives and find links to other things, links which don’t go away. I did, and found a link from this page (lower down) to these rather fine teddy bears. Knock them over and up they get again, every time.
Actually I suspect that children may prefer the teddy bears to adults. Let me try again. I suspect that children may like the teddy bears better than adults like the teddy bears. Of course children prefer teddy bears to adults.
I know what you’re thinking. What have jumping teddy bears (for they do indeed jump) got to do with The War? Well, The War has now got to the stage where irrelevant joking around now seems like an appropriate thing to be doing, along with noting the war’s progress with due solemnity, i.e. some. Well, I suppose there could be a Republican Guard version of these bears, where they march towards you with their paws up as soon as your mouse pointer gets anywhere near them. But then what? Ah, that is the big question. Time to end this post.
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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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