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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‘Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness.’
– O’Brien speaking to Winston, Chapter 20, 1984 by George Orwell
As three British mechanized battlegroups smash their way into central Basra and the Americans are showing they can intrude into the capital city Baghdad itself regardless of Iraqi resistance, the reports coming out of the Iraqi Information Ministry are starting to sound more and more like the articles which appeared in ‘Der Panzerbar’ (The Armoured Bear) in 1945.
Der Panzerbar was ‘The news journal of the defenders of Greater Berlin’ in the last few weeks of World War II. Right to the end it was filled with increasingly fantastical claims that victory was being snatched from the jaws of defeat, even as Soviet infantry were remorselessly inching their way ever deeper into the Third Reich’s capital city.
That we should hear echoes of Nazi Germany’s dying days from the mouths of Ba’athist Socialism’s doomed spokesmen is interesting but hardly surprising. Iraq has long been Orwell’s ‘Room 101’ writ large, but reality itself is not a matter of opinion, only our understanding of it. Objective reality is coming to Iraq and it is coming at bayonet point no matter how much ‘Ba’athist truth’ and its apologists around the world try to pretend otherwise or wish it out of existence.
There are lots of reasons to hope that this war is nearly over, not the least being that if it does end soon, the civilised world will be able to switch its attention to other bad things now being done by other bad people.
You get the feeling that Fidel Castro, for example, was hoping that this thing would last a lot longer than now seems likely. He’s been rounding up dissidents, and he surely guessed that he’d have two or three months free of major western media interference. But what if Gulf War II fizzles out quickly, and what if the Media then takes a closer look at what he is now doing, say in about a fortnight’s time? Well, we can hope.
The news I’m watching on the TV right now (Sunday breakfast time) is that the British are moving fast into the centre of Basra, days sooner than the media people I’m listening to had been expecting. If they, and the Americans in Baghdad, can make these incursions stick and if there are no big and nasty surprises yet to come, and if they can reduce the whole thing to a few dozen boring little sieges of nutters, the media may soon be toning down its fascination with Gulf War II and be looking for other morsels to feed on. If so, look out Fidel.
How delightful it would be if this opportunistic calculation were to turn Castro into one of the bigger casualties of Gulf War II.
And what’s Mugabe been up to during the last fortnight?
Patrick of Transport Blog links to this story, drawn to his attention by this promising rival/collaborator to/with Transport Blog.
So that, when trawling through the Samizdata archives in 2085 you may learn what this story was about, it is an advert by a car making enterprise called “General Motors” featuring a bus with “CREEPS AND WEIRDOS” on its sign machine instead of saying its destination. (I know what you’re thinking: what’s a “bus”?)
“Truth in advertising” says Patrick. Indeed. This advert says something extremely true and important about public transport, which is that not all of the public are very nice or companionable people. So obviously the advert can’t be allowed and General Motors have been made to withdrawn it. But it looks like the blogosphere will immortalise and universalise the message. Congratulations GM. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if they provoked the row deliberately, in order to help them make their point wihtout having to go on paying for it to be said. And in Canada! The horror.
GM is famous in public-transportophile circles for having bribed and corrupted buses and trams into perdition in the USA and replaced them all with the hated (by everyone except the non-creep non-weirdo public) motor car. The more I study this argument, the more I think that GM is the messenger being blamed for the message, the message being that most Americans prefer cars to buses and trams and for good reasons. Whereas buses and trams are quite good for getting new American places to live and work in started, they are not very good for serving all the people who subsequently go to live in these new American places, because American places are, generally speaking, big dispersed smudges rather than arranged in neat bus and tram friendly lines.
And the rest of the world is now following America into this argument. The only “public” transport issue of import now is not how to replace cars, but how to make the car system far, far better, which can’t happen while the infrastructure remains in “public” hands, which can’t be changed until the public sector is bullied into introducing road pricing, because that way there’ll be an income stream to privatise.
One of the many benefits of the new London road pricing scheme – crude and intrusive though it undoubtedly is – is that London buses now go a bit less slowly.
I hate blogging sometimes. You start out doing something short and frivolous and fun, and you end up with something long and profound and wearisome. It’s a bit like life, isn’t it?
If Mark Steyn is to be believed that we are rapidly approaching endgame as far as the invasion of Iraq is concerned. And, barring unforseen disasters, it does seem as if Baghdad will be in Allied hands within the next few days.
But then we must turn our minds to the long-term consequences. No, I am not talking about the reconstruction of Iraq and the democratisation of the region. That’s all far too prosaic. No, I am talking about the movie rights to ‘Gulf War II’. Surely Hollywood will be unable to resist dramatising these world-shaking events. After all, this was not just a little local difficulty, this was epic reality. We’re talking summer blockbuster here!
And it isn’t as if they are going to have to hire a whole team of scriptwriters either. This story practically writes itself, though, there would have to be some artistic licence employed to herald in a few changes required by Hollywood sensibilities.
First of all, the current US administration just have to go. There is no way any Hollywood director could portray Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et al with even a hint of sympathy. So they will just all have to be airbrushed out and the team from The West Wing drafted in.
The movie opens with President Bartlett deeply troubled by all this talk of war. All he wants to do is quietly get on with the business of extending emission controls and increasing pension benefits for social workers but he simply cannot ignore the growing chorus of extreme right-wing talk radio hosts calling for an invasion of Iraq.
In his desperation, he turns to the only man he can trust for counsel and advice. That man is the French President (Roberto Benigni) whom President Bartlett knows to be a man of boundless integrity, profound humanity, great learning and foresight. The French President urges Bartlett to be strong in the face of war pressure and embrace European wisdom and humility.
Bartlett knows that the French President is the voice of sanity. He wants to negotiate a peaceful solution and let the UN deal with terrorist-sponsoring states but he keeps getting outmanoeuvred by the ‘war-hawks’ in the Pentagon (led by Tommy Lee Jones) who, in turn, are sponsored by a shadowy cabal of ruthless oil barons (personified by Anthony Hopkins). → Continue reading: Gulf War II: The Movie
Bags and coffins piled deep bursting with skulls and bundles of human bones; catalogues of photos of corpses, burned and swollen and mutilated; a shooting gallery complete with bullet-hole-riddled wall and custom-made drainage ditch…
Those Ba’athists were nice people, alright.
But these days we are no longer forced to brood over each new tragedy, “How awful, Christ, what a world.” Instead, we can think, “Someone is doing something about this shit at last. Thank God.”
Thank God and thank the British and American soldiers and their leaders. The world is changing.
Mark Steyn is in good form in today’s Telegraph. Reading the opening paragraph of his opinion piece whilst having afternoon coffee, I had to struggle to contain its flow…
This war is over. The only question now is whether a new provisional government is installed before the BBC and The New York Times have finished running their exhaustive series on What Went Wrong with the Pentagon’s Failed War Plan and while The Independent’s Saddamite buffoon Robert Fisk is still panting his orgasmic paeans to the impenetrability of Baghdad’s defences and huffily insisting there are no Americans at the airport even as the Saddam International signs are being torn down and replaced with Rumsfeld International.
And another dig at the blogosphere’s favourite punchbag:
As I wrote back then, apropos Robert Fisk’s massive bulk loo-paper purchase in the run-up to war, “I can’t say this strikes me as a 25-roll war”. By the time you read this, Tariq Aziz and the last five Ba’athists in Baghdad may be holed up in Fisk’s Ba’athroom, and he’ll be hailing the genius of their plan to lure the Americans to their doom by leaving his loo rolls on the stairwell for the Marines to slip on.
Or in this case, the Shatt Al Arab waterway. The ever flexible and innovative Royal Marines have taken to small fast boats to show it dominates even the waterways right around Basra, at one point helping out an astonished local fishermen who was having engine troubles.
This and other tactics show a couple centuries of colonial experience are serving the British military well, illustrating the way to ‘hearts and minds’ is a mixture of well armed ferocity when challenged and common helpfulness otherwise. Keeping the focus on the fact this is an anti-Ba’athist war, not a war against Iraq, UK forces in Basra are reacting cleverly to propaganda targets of opportunity, as reported in the Washington Times:
In another incident, when an Iraqi colonel was fatally shot in his vehicle, British troops found a thick wad of local currency. Instead of handing it in to officers, the troops decided to dole the cash out to wide-eyed local youngsters, a monetary variant of candy handouts.
Nice one!
Update: British mechanised forces are now reported as fighting Fedayeen irregulars 7 km inside Basra!
Patrick Crozier has some views on our cousins across the Big Pond
America is a great country. Yes, I know they never stop reminding us of the fact and it can become a bit irksome but it is still true and perhaps we should take the time to remind ourselves from time to time.
For starters America is a rich country. Not only is the average wage higher but the cost of living is lower. The average American has a bigger house, a better car and more consumer durables than just about anywhere else. Healthcare for the vast majority is excellent and an astonishing proportion of Americans attend college.
America is a land of opportunity – still. Just ask Anthony Hopkins or Catherine Zeta-Jones or Tracy Ullman or Jane Leeves or Henry Kissinger or Andrew Sullivan (he is a Brit isn’t he?) or Tina Brown (likewise?) or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Colin Powell’s dad. And that’s just the foreigners. America is a country where the “can do” attitude prevails and dreams can come true.
America has contributed massively to the rest of the world. From Hollywood movies to McDonalds to the personal computer to, well, closer to home, blogging. America has been responsible for 80% of the world’s rock music and 95% of its dance music. Oh, and ending two world wars. OK, so they weren’t decisive in the first (that was the Canadians and Australians) but I think we can credit them with the second. And then there’s the Cold War.
America is a free country. More than just about anywhere in the world American citizens are free from arbitrary arrest, torture and arbitrary punishment. The right to free speech is even enshrined in the constitution. And then, unlike most places, honoured. In America you can hold on to more of the property you have worked for than just about anywhere else and once the government has taken its cut you are more or less free to do whatever you like with it.
America is not without fault but even there many of America’s alleged faults are not faults at all. It is often accused of racism and racism certainly exists but racism exists everywhere. The Russians hate the Chechens, the Romanians hate the Hungarians and the Japanese hate everyone. What is remarkable about America is how little racism there is and how deeply its governing classes want to do something about it. The fact that so many Hollywood movies nowadays have a black in a leading or main supporting role speaks volumes for this desire.
People also complain about the crime rate but they are behind the times. With the exception of murder America’s crime rate is lower than that of the UK. That really ought to fill us with shame.
We Brits often get a bit snooty about American English but should we? I have this dreadful fear that my UK v US English competition will end in a US victory. US English does the job just well as our own version – it’s just that the words are different, that’s all.
People say that Americans are rude and pushy – just like the one out of Fawlty Towers. Some are for sure. But so are many Britons. And vast swathes of middle America contain some of the nicest, friendliest people you could ever want to meet.
It can be bruising to come face to face with the American corporate steamroller but is it really all that bad? American firms from Ford, to Oracle, to Mars and McDonalds have provided good jobs for thousands in Britain and millions around the world. Lest we forget, it was American money that built most of the London tube and the Ford Cortina MkII 1600E. And if American corporate dominance is such an issue, rather than getting angry, wouldn’t it be better to get even?
Actually, this is a general point. If we want to be as rich and as free as the Americans (and surely we do) rather than fume and rage, get snooty about things and bind up America in stupid international treaties wouldn’t the smart thing be to work out how they got that way and then do it for ourselves?
Well, wouldn’t it?
We have belatedly started adding additional links to a great many interesting blogs in the Samizdata.net sidebar (31 added so far today). More will be added later tonight as well as culling a few inactive ones.
Reports coming in on the wires that about 2,500 Republican Guards have surrendered to American forces, while other US forces are closing in on Baghdad. Interesting to see that gold and oil prices are skidding down while stock markets are chugging higher.
Amazingly volatile state of the financial markets. My prediction – if this war really looks to be won, expect the Dow to hit 9,000 by Labor Day.
Meanwhile, shares in Robert Fisk plc are suspended, pending Chapter 11.
Next week we are due for the annual ritual of watching the British government’s finance minister (Chancellor of the Exchequer) tell us how far he intends to stick his fingers into our wallets. No doubt funding the cost of military campaigns in the Middle East will provide a convenient excuse, although I would guess that Gordon Brown’s huge public spending increases on health and education have more to do with it. Remember he made such increases against a backdrop of crumbling stock markets.
A good article in the British weekly, The Spectator, lays out the lunacy of where public finances are currently headed.
And an article at Reuters suggests that owners of property can expect another kick in the shins from Labour.
Some nice things have been said about Premier Tony Blair in recent weeks from the right-wing side of the political tracks due to his hard-edged realism about dealing with Saddam. We all knew it could come at a cost in blood and treasure. But on pretty much everything else, this government, like 99 percent of them, remains a menace to liberty and property.
Of course, non-interventionist libertarians would say that war is the health of the state and therefore advocates of military action vs Iraq like yours truly can have no complaints about the size of my tax bill. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper. Domestic spending, much of which is wasted, dwarfs UK spending on the military as a proportion of the total budget.
Longer term, of course, any overhaul of public spending (ie, a stonking big cut) must include a willingness to look at private sector options in providing for our defence, including use of mercenaries, even. I’d be very interested in what readers have to say on the latter point. I’d guess even opponents of the current war might want to say how minarchists or even anarcho-capitalists should look at how military forces should be paid for.
I do believe that we may be witnessing the final days of Cuba’s squalid communist regime:
The first wave of dissidents rounded up in a nationwide crackdown went on trial Thursday as Fidel Castro’s government moved to wipe out growing opposition. Prosecutors sought life sentences for 12 of the 80 defendants.
“While the rest of the hemisphere has moved toward greater freedom, the anachronistic Cuban government appears to be retreating into Stalinism,” department spokesman Philip Reeker said in Washington.
When governments start incarcerating their political opponents for life, it is because they are frightened and deeply worried and usually with good reason. I suspect the game is nearly up.
And, just as an aside, doesn’t this show up the juvenile, publicity-seeking, egocentrism of the ‘Bush is Hitler’ mob in sharp relief? While genuine freedom fighters risk their very lives by taking on ‘Il Presidente’, the likes of Michael Moore can pose as ‘oppressed heroic victims’ while being chauffeured around to their various awards ceremonies and public speaking engagements.
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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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