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]
|
One of my very favourite blogger quotes of 2005 was this, just after the July 7th London bombings:
A friend of mine visits a strip pub, once a week, down by the Gray’s Inn Road. Despite the bombs, he went along this afternoon, as usual, and was the only guy with four strippers. But, he told me, he had to go – ‘otherwise the terrorists would have won’.
In that spirit, I will tell you, not about how I feel about Those Cartoons – no need for any link, see just about everything else here at the moment – but about the Six Nations. Rugby. American Football without the poofy protective clothing. Or: “All those men’s bottoms”, as my now very elderly but still just about functioning mother put it to me yesterday, explaining why she prefers regular football to rugby football. → Continue reading: The first weekend of the Six Nations and the first upset
The ever industrious Dissident Frogman was toiling into the wee hours last night to produce some splendid graphics for blogs and other websites who want to show their support for Denmark. We now sport one of these graphics in our sidebar because we need to defend our imperfect but hard won rights to free speech in the western world.
The fact that a group of intolerant Muslims in South Africa, where they are a minority, have use the force of law to both prevent freedom of expression pre-emptively should make it clear that complacency is not an option.
Certainly we cannot just assume the media will defend itself… listen to this (mp3 sound file… may take a moment to download) and contrast the snooty BBC journalist with the Danish gentleman (a member of Parliament) who defends liberty regardless of the cost in economic terms.
“They won’t publish cartoons, but they will run anything they can get out of Abu Ghraib. Both sets of images provoke Islamic anger; note how the media behaves when that anger is directed at them.”
– Tim Blair, referring to the Australian media – although the same could be said of the British, in contrast to those papers in Europe that have showed solidarity with their Danish colleagues.
Tehran, Feb.05 (ISNA)-Following the insults of some western countries’ media to Holy Prophet of Islam, Iran’s President, Dr. Ahmadi Nejad ordered Commerce Minister to set up a council on “reviewing and cancellation of economic contracts and commercial exchanges with these countries”.
Excellent! Who needs sanctions when these guys will impose them on themselves. Wow, with enemies like that, who needs friends?
If I were a Dane I’d be getting more than a tiny bit sick of this whole “plucky little Denmark” meme that is evolving in line with current events. I cannot help but think of some small but tenacious dog – perhaps a Jack Russell – when anything is described as both “plucky” and “little”.
This does not compute. As we all know, in the canine world Danes are rather greater.
Techie and futurism magazine Wired has a delightful article about how the toy company Lego is harnessing the best minds of the computer software industry to make its toys even cooler and intricate than before. I used to love playing with the stuff back when I was a small boy and generations of kids have had fun playing the brightly coloured building blocks, fashioning them in to planes, cars and houses, rather as an earlier generation used to play with Meccano kits. In its way, it helped probably fire enthusiasm for a whole generation of engineers and builders.
And the kicker is that Lego is Danish. If you have children or friends with youngsters, perform a nice gesture and buy them a pack.
The ever-rational, ever-eloquent, ever-humane Matthew Parris in The Times:
Many faiths and ideologies achieve and maintain their predominance partly through fear. They, of course, call it “respect”.But whatever you call it, it intimidates. The reverence, the awe — even the dread — that their gods, their KGB or their priesthoods demand and inspire among the laity are vital to the authority they wield.
Against reverence and awe the best argument is sometimes not logic, but mockery. Structures of oppression that may not be susceptible to rational debate may in the end yield to derision.
Just as newspapers around Europe and beyond are coming to the support of Jyllands-Posten in Denmark, US State Department spokesman Kurtis Cooper has said that freedom of expression in a European country is “not acceptable”.
Firstly, who the hell asked the US State Department to opine on something in a newspaper in Denmark? Secondly, if they are going to take a side here, are religious extremists so deeply entrenched in the US political establishment that they cannot understand the importance maintaining secular rights to free expression in the face of attempts at religious censorship and overt intimidation?
Land of the free, home of the brave, eh? Not in Washington DC it seems. Rather than face down the intolerant face of radical Islam, the US State Department is pandering to it. This is a national disgrace and I hope some US newspapers will show how they feel by supporting their colleagues in Denmark and publishing the damn cartoons themselves and telling Kurtis Cooper where he can stick his political master’s craven opinions.
The (Free) French Resistance has cause for joy because The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Blogosphere is back!
Let’s hear it for The Dissident Frogman!
cliquez ici Soon he will be back blogging regularly. I feel like I am in the final scene of Casablanca when I say “Welcome back to the fight”.
The two acronyms that we hear concerning the twenty-first century are GRIN (Genetics Robotics Information Nanotech) to describe the wave of new technologies and BRIC (Brazil Russia India and China) to identify the new heavyweights. In foreign policy, media commentary has focused upon China, the earliest power to emerge an cast its influence across the globe.
Not far behind is India. With its longer demographic growth, this country is considered as the most powerful power in the longer term, since it will not have to deal with a rapidly aging population. Yet, because some of the people speak English, play cricket and vote, they are not considered to be a potential enemy, with whom we may come to blows. We forget at our peril that democracies can marshall the power of the majority and there is no guarantee that India will be on the side of the Enlightenment. Hindu chauvinism is a powerful counterweight to the Anglosphere. According to Immanuel Wallerstein, India has played on these assumptions to its advantage:
Was then the new Indo-U.S. joint statement a victory for U.S. diplomacy? In it, the U.S. for the very first time legitimated India’s role as a nuclear power, by promising India that it “will work to achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India as it realizes its goals of promoting nuclear power and achieving energy security.” This of course undermined enormously the already weak position of the U.S. in opposing Iranian nuclear ambitions, since what India has received from the U.S. is precisely what Iran has been claiming is its right, “full civil nuclear energy.”
And in return, what did the U.S. get? – a promise “to combat terrorism relentlessly.” Since India was already doing this, it wasn’t very much. Meanwhile, India is maintaining its close relations with Iran and Russia, and even (on paper) a strategic alliance with China. More importantly, India is proceeding with Project Seabird, aimed at turning it into the major military power in the Indian Ocean. This does not make the Chinese too happy, to be sure, but it shouldn’t make the U.S. too happy either, since at the moment, it is the U.S. that is the major military power in the Indian Ocean.
Let us remember that India will, rightly, consider her own interests paramount. They may not coincide with ours.
Here is a photo taken of the march by Muslims protesting against Jyllands-Poster and the ‘Satanic Cartoons’ saga in London earlier today.
click for larger image The placards read Behead those who insult Islam & Butcher those who mock Islam & Slay those who disrespect Islam etc. etc.
Freedom of expression is quite literally intolerable to them. And we cannot and must not tolerate that. It makes no logical sense to tolerate intolerance.
With thanks to H for the picture
And for those of you who say “It’s just a protest”…
And so as Palestinian gunmen surround the EU mission in Palestine…
Tonight at Samizdata.net HQ, dinner will include…
A trivial thing for sure but it is the thought that counts. The UK newspapers may be too craven to republish them but we always have the internet… and here are the offending cartoons again.
|
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.
|
