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 current Time Out (print edition) quotes a playwright, Nabil Shaban, attacking the government’s spending on war:
Blair is misusing the democratic process, and taxpayers’ money – which should be spent on health and education at home.
To show that this war is not in his name, Mr Shaban’s has publicly given back to the government a £24,800 grant awarded as funding for one of his plays. This publicity stunt, however, does raise an important question. If Mr Shaban objects to taxpayers’ money being spent on something he deems unnecessary – as opposed to hospitals and schools – why did he in the first place think it right to receive accept taxpayers’ money for his play?
People often say that President George Herbert Walker Bush (the current President’s father) did a very wicked thing – that he called upon the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow the regime and then, when they did rebel, he betrayed them (left them to die in their tens of thousands).
Now I am no fan of the first President Bush (I am not much of a fan of the second one either) – after all this was the President Bush of “read my lips” who then shoved up taxes, and this was the President Bush of the ‘Americans with Disabilities Act’ and all sorts of other regulations.
However, many people say that Mr G.H.W. Bush was a nice man who would not have set out to call on people to rebel and then left them to die.
I do not know whether the first President Bush was a ‘nice man’ or not – but there is a way he might have been, a possibility that has president in American policy.
There is a view common in American (and other) ‘educated’ circles that dictatorships do not rest on force, but are instead based on ‘opinion’. And if ‘the people’ really want to they can overthrow tyranny. So United States government has gone around making calls for populations to rise up against tyrannical rule and when populations do rebel (as they did several times in Eastern Europe) it is found to have no plans to help – it does not need to help you see, ‘opinion’ is what matters. If the ‘the people’ want to do something they can.
Where does this idea come from? It comes from David Hume. → Continue reading: One of the problems David Hume left us
The fact Turkey did not allow a US ‘Northern Front’ to be launched from its territory could in the not-so-long-run prove very detrimental to what it views as its ‘national interests’.
The Turkish state in very uneasy that in the aftermath of a collapse of the regime in Baghdad, Iraq itself may fall apart, with the Kurds in the north declaring an independent Kurdistan. The Turks (and Iranians) fear this as it will greatly embolden the Kurdish separatists in South-Eastern Turkey (and also in parts of Iran).
So, ask yourself which scenario is more likely to lead to the collapse of Iraqi national integrity post-Saddam:
- A powerful heavily armed US force of 40,000 or more rolls into Northern Iraq, assisted by about 50,000 lightly armed anti-Saddam Kurdish guerillas from various factions… Ba’athism collapses eventually but US forces are in position to maintain order in the North and keep a reign on the political situation when Mosul and Kirkuk fall, ensuring that the Kurdish factions which can tolerate the notion of an autonomous Kurdistan within Iraq are not pushed out (or ever wiped out) by those demanding nothing less that Independent Kurdistan.
- or… A lightly armed force of not more that 2,000 allied paratroopers and special forces is operating in Northern Iraq, assisted by 50,000 lightly armed anti-Saddam Kurdish guerillas from various factions. Ba’athism collapses eventually but when Mosul and Kirkuk fall, the majority of the forces which arrive are Kurdish Peshmerga whose political views are very hard to judge.
So hands up who thinks that option 2 is vastly more likely to lead to Kurdish separatists doing exactly what the Turks fear?
If Mosul or Kirkuk fall to the Kurds alone, will the US be willing to shoot their way into those largely Kurdish cities if they are not invited in? What if the local (armed) Kurds politely say “Greetings honoured American soldiers! As we have taken care of the local Ba’athists, your noble, fraternal and well armed presence is not needed here, thank you very much, and have a nice journey home oh glorious brothers in arms”. I really doubt the US wants to fight the Kurds for what is a messy internal matter. Of course if the troops turning up at the outskirts of Mosul and Kirkuk are Turks, get ready for a war-within-a-war from the moment the two forces come within sight of each other.
Only time will tell what the outcome will be but if the Turks do not get their nightmare scenario materializing, they should thank their lucky stars because their actions made it far more likely to occur.
I suppose we will know in a few weeks!
Megan McArdle (linked to by Instpundit) probably speaks for many on both sides of the Atlantic, but especially in the USA, when she asks: what is Chirac up to? She doesn’t know. All he seems to be achieving is to antagonise the USA, to no apparent purpose.
She’s right about what he’s doing. But maybe the answer is that he is doing this deliberately, for local reasons.
It was said after 9/11 that you couldn’t understand Al-Qaeda’s thinking if you thought only about what they were trying to do to the USA. You had to look at their local picture. What if they were really trying to impress fellow Muslims, and to increase their power not so much in the world as a whole but within the Muslim world?
I believe that something similar applies now to France. France’s main concern now is to get the sort of Europe it wants, namely a centralised European state, with France playing a very prominent part. → Continue reading: What France is playing at – a conjecture from and about L’Europe
A follow up on the yesterday’s article about the EU constitution. In today’s Telegraph’s opinion section, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is concerned that “while we liberate Iraq, Europe is busy planning to enslave us”:
The EU will no longer be a treaty organisation in which member states agree to lend power to Brussels for certain purposes, on the understanding that they can take it back again. The EU itself will become the fount of power, with its own legal personality, delegating functions back to Britain. Draft Article 9 puts Brussels at the top of the pyramid. “The Constitution will have primacy over the law of Member States,” it says.
The new order may also be irreversible. Article 46 stipulates that the terms of secession from the EU must be agreed by two thirds of the member states. In other words, one third can impose intolerable conditions.
We can already see the impact of the EU fiasco in handling the Iraq crisis:
The EU will have the power to “co-ordinate the economic policies of the member states” and – showing some chutzpah given what happened over Iraq – “define and implement a common foreign and security policy, including the progressive framing of a common defence policy”.
And there is a bit about, Tony Blair, our hero:
Tony Blair was slow to see the threat. Downing Street at first dismissed the convention as a talking shop, but woke up when the French, Spanish, German and Italian governments gave it irresistible authority by appointing to it their foreign or deputy prime ministers.
The Government then fell back to a second self-deception, imagining that France and Spain would join Britain in blocking any major assault on national prerogatives.
[…]
None of this has happened. France has abandoned Britain, and her own historical attachment to a Europe where national capitals always have the whip hand over Brussels. They seem to be accepting federalism as the price of relaunching the broken Franco-German axis. As for the Spanish, they are silent.
Scary stuff, please go and read the whole article.
A pal close to our hearts (and purses) comes into conflict with the authorities. More specifically, on-line auction company eBay said its PayPal auction payment unit is being investigated for possible violations of the USA Patriot Act. Shock! Horror!
Last month eBay received a letter from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Missouri about the alleged violations. The letter states that PayPal’s earlier practice of providing payment services to online gambling merchants violated provisions in the Patriot Act that “prohibit the transmission of funds that are known to have been derived from a criminal offense or are intended to be used to promote or support unlawful activity.”
Sound dangereous. I am so glad Americans are now protected by the Patriot Act against PayPal wretched practices. Apparently, the ‘crime’ happened almost 2 years ago, before eBay acquired PayPal. Part of the transaction was a committment to stop using the PayPal unit for gambling business. You can breath out now, it is not as if they were secretly raising funds for terrorists.
The authorities offered to “rescind the allegations if PayPal pays the amount of money it earned by handling online gambling transactions from October 2001, through July, 2002, plus interest.” So justice will be done and the American public can sleep safely again.
If I remember correctly, the Patriot Act, passed after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., was to give law enforcement authorities “expanded tools for investigating and deterring future terrorist acts”. We live in dangerous times, when on-line auction payment units can commit crimes under anti-terrorist legislation at will…!
Forgive this interruption to your scheduled programme of dark forebodings, war worries, terrorist threats, police state and impending civilisational collapse but I am taking a short break in order to bring you some good news.
It would appear that the political landscape of Britain is not quite as barren as I had hitherto imagined it to be. Indeed, little oases of life-giving sanity are starting to spring up amidst the arid desert of top-down, tax-and-spend socialism.
Case in point being Reform Britain, a campaign group consisting of loads of big-brained luminaries who describe themselves thus:
Reform is an independent campaign to promote new directions for public policy based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, and individual liberty.
As I reflect upon the lowly and squalid state of public debate in this country over the last few years, the above words wash over me with all the fragrant and orgasmic tingle of a cool spring zephyr.
And, as if that was not enough, these wonderful people have launched a related website called ‘Down the Drain’, a perfectly appropriate domain name for a site which is devoted to disclosing just how much money HMG syphons off of its productive citizens every day and, more pointedly, where it all ends up.
Broadcast your seeds with gusto, you Great Sowers of Hope, and may those seeds be nurtured, fed, watered, grow and cover all the land with a golden harvest.
Your normal service of doom, gloom, despair, gnashing of teeth, wailing and general despondency will now be resumed. Thank you.
[My thanks to Stephen Pollard for the links.]
I recall reading an article a few months ago – I think it was either in the Guardian or the Independent, I’m not sure which- bemoaning the low standards of British TV comedy.
Neither am I able to remember precisely the conclusions drawn in said article or, indeed, if any conclusion was drawn at all. Personally, my prognosis is that British comedy is failing to inspire because life in Britain has surpassed any attempt at parody:
A convicted murderer who tried to attack a work colleague with an axe, while out of prison on licence, is to receive compensation for unfair dismissal.
James Robertson, 50, learned of the employment tribunal’s decision from jail, where he is now serving two life sentences.
On Wednesday, the tribunal ruled the council was wrong to sack Robertson without notice after the incident, and ordered the authority to pay him £800 compensation.
I wonder what type of ‘notice’ would have satisfied the Employment Tribunal?
“Dear Mr.Roberston,
It has come to our attention that you tried to murder one of your co-workers with an axe. We take the view that such behaviour is inappropriate and not conducive to a happy working environment.
We must ask you to refrain from such activities in the future, failing which we shall have no choice but to consider further disciplinary action.”
Or do you think that such a letter might be construed as too judgemental?
The result from tonight’s European Soccer Championship qualifying match between England and Turkey:
England 2 Turkey 0
On the battlefield, on the football field: Rosbeefs rule!
Yes, I am alive and well. Reality is an omnipresent force for those of us who survive in the financially iffy feast and famine world of consultancy. Sometimes you are 3 months behind on your rent and then there are times with so much work you can’t take time to come up for air. This is one of those head down, get the money while you can times.
I’m presently in an office deep in darkest Connecticut over looking a picture postcard river scene with colonial style houses and lawns facing it. I’m working 12 hour days to finish up one project before I go on to another in Manhattan and then San Francisco. I’ll not see Belfast again until June.
I don’t really have time to write this, but I’m doing so anyway because I’ve become so fed up with the ignorance of the “professional” punditry. I obviously never went to journalism school. Perhaps thankfully. Instead I have studied technical subjects and delved deeply into history, particularly that of WWII.
Where are the pundits with a real perspective? Why not a comparison with Omaha beach at +14 days? I’ve not time to check the numbers right now, but I know as a certainty there were more Americans dead in the first hour of the landing than we have lost in the entire war in Iraq to date. There may even have been more dead getting out the door of a single landing craft but I cannot prove that without research that would be very costly in terms of billeable time.
We certainly had not reached Paris in two weeks. If you turn things around and look at the opening days of Blitzkrieg after the end of the “Phoney War” period, not even France fell in two weeks of fighting.
One might look at the time and cost in lives of Iwo Jima, a tiny and otherwise rather useless spec on the Pacific map. A thousand US Marines died in the first wave. More followed. The surf ran red with American blood, bodies and body parts filled the surf like jelly fish. It took a very long bloody fight before that dismal spec was secured. It was not a job of hours or days.
The instant a journalist asks the question “Why is it taking so long?”, I write off their intellect as nonexistant. I read the DOD press briefing transcripts and I see these moronic queries on a daily basis. I know such people are full of self-importance. I doubt they realize we are actually laughing at them.
Let us look at the reality of the war. This snippet from DefSec Rumsfeld on “This Week with George Stephanopoulis” is one of the better summaries I’ve seen of exactly how amazing this campaign has been:
He’s got one of the most powerful coalitions that could be fashioned against him. Nine days ago, they entered the country. They are now closing on Baghdad from the north, from the west, and from the south. They have total air superiority. They control the southern oil fields. They control the ports. And they’re bringing in humanitarian assistance. They have been able to capture some 4,500 prisoners. And we know that there are people fleeing from the senior regime leadership’s family. And we haven’t seen Saddam Hussein or his son in close to eight days.”
I am not going to suggest the war is easy, or that it will be over quickly. There is still Baghdad to be dealt with. There will be many months clearing pockets of resistance by people who will have nothing to lose because their remaining mortal life span in a democratic Iraq will be quite limited.
When all is said and done, this campaign is one for the history books. Never before have so few defeated so many so quickly.
I now return to professional work, still in progess.
What do you think these are?
feg – jes – vok – gop – ruch – dez – thob – cag – shug – wiss – miff – sleck
Words that used to exist, but which have fallen out of use? Words that ought to exist, to describe things that exist, but now have no word attached to them so that we can talk about them? Douglas Adams produced a little book called The Meaning of Liffe, or something similar, full of such concepts, with suggested words to describe them. “Pimlico – the pool of stale beer into which the barman deposits your change” etc. etc. Ruch – to vomit or cough violently, while still trying to rush for a bus or appointment. Sleck – to refrain so ostentatiously from performing one’s duties that even very, very posh people, who hardly do any work themselves, notice. And miff? Well, isn’t that a word already? Are we not “miffed” if things don’t happen as we wish? So miff must be the verb of that, surely. And “gop” is the Republicans, isn’t it?
sprell – creld – splind – fland – blim – flut – smez – shrid – sprund – shrong – brost – flamp
Still don’t know? Clue: it’s to do with learning to read. These “words” are to be found on page 17 of the latest Newsletter, No. 50, from the Reading Reform Foundation. → Continue reading: “… doilible … snoiggal … wacespink … disclorping … thription .. illarptacture …”
An interesting debate has been going on about one warblogger’s reporting in particular and about bloggers and source attribution in general. Apparently, Stratfor accused Sean-Paul, the Agonist warblogger providing minute by minute coverage, of plagiarising their news that are available by subscription only. There are various threads to this discussion. Here is the Agonist one, here Metafilter is asking some pertinent questions about blogs and copyright, and here is the latest from Strategic Armchair Command.
Most comments on the Agonist are adoringly supportive of Sean-Paul, encouraging him to carry on providing what they see as an invaluable service to them. Most comments on Strategic Armchair Command who positioned themselves against the Agonist are sufficiently abusive to make someone stop blogging. There are a few comments that break the rank and this one comes from a supporter who sees beyond the gung-ho attitute of some parts of blogosphere in taking on the mainstream media.
Actually, I am an attorney. There isn’t a problem if SP is just reprinting headlines that Stratfor provides on its site for free. But if he was republishing wire reports that Stratfor sells by subscription, that’s a serious problem and SP should have known better.
This all reminds me of littlegreenfootball’s assertion that his site broke a story of WMD suits found in Iraq, when all he did was link to the newspaper that actually did break the story. Bloggers are confusing what work belongs to someone else and what is their own.
And another reasonable sounding voice:
I can understand why alarms have been raised. *If* a lot of content is being posted from a subscription site without mentioning the source, some might be lead to believe the author of this site was trying to infer he had unique or personal sources that don’t exist.
In plain terms: anyone can scour sites and post links to the material he finds, but if that’s what you’re doing you should provide sources. Otherwise, when the curtain is pulled aside, folks may be disappointed to find the little man working the levers. If you do have your own unique sources, highlight those somehow, so no confusion can arise.
People post an awful lot of value-less material out on the net; this site has provided some interesting material though. Understand though, that when a site like this grows in popularity, it’s likely to be scrutinized by many who are well-equipped to discover any cracks in its integrity.
Perhaps there are better or more illustrative comments in the threads I link to above, but I have not had the time to go through the hundreds of comments on the Agonist alone. Some are quite surreal in attacking the very idea of copyright from angles that boggle the mind, invoking anything from Dark Ages to free ideas for all.
My view on the controversy is straightforward. For me, good blogging is one based on credibility. Audience is, for most part, discerning and it does not make for good practise to make yourself look bigger & better than you really are. If you can’t come up with new interesting ideas, there is nothing wrong with using someone else’s as long as it’s clear. In fairness, Sean-Paul posts were not meant to be creative, but to be on the ‘breaking edge’ of news.
Another essential feature of blogosphere is linkage. Not linking to sources is a cardinal sin for a blogger, in my opinion, and I am often annoyed by the pseudo-blogs that have started to emerge, namely the BBC Reporters’ Log or ComputerWorld blog that do not link and individual posts cannot be linked to.
Also, when something as controversial as the war in Iraq becomes the focus of the news, objective reporting and information are not the only factors at play. People’s allegiances, emotions and self-interest often outshout voices of reason and objectivity. And as the commenter in the first quote points out “cracks in integrity” become more apparent. On the other hand, I can understand the race to breaking news as I share the bloggers’ desire to become more influential vis-a-vis the maintream media.
We have a few simple rules here on Samizdata.net. A very lenient editor whose occassional editorial spankings are a gentle reminder that minarchy rather than anarchy is the game… Links to and/or attritbution of any quotes and text lifted from elsewhere and although we occassionaly nick a picture or two, we try not to make a habit of it. I would certainly consider it good practise to be careful about using paid subscribtion sources, let alone not crediting their material. And I would certainly not want to see a backlash against bloggers from the traditional media, especially if it is triggered by careless rather than bad practice.
I am sure this is not the first or last controversy about copyright and blogs and I will welcome any contributions to the debate.
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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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