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We’re all Danish now The book is now officially open…
Muslim radicals burned an effigy of Queen Elizabeth Tuesday as Pakistan summoned the British ambassador over Salman Rushdie’s knighthood and Iranian hardliners turned their fury on the monarch.
…so time to place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.
Will the British government buckle? Yes or No?
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Definitely not. But be prepared for a British version of the “American Hostages in Iran” show. Get your diplomats out now.
They better not.
As a query I know HMG recommend for honours but don’t they officially come from the Queen?
While Labour bend in the gentlest breeze I’m not sure I can imagine the Queen buckling no matter what storm occurs.
No JayN, the Queen merely signs her assent.
She is allowed to object in theory, but this is like all of her other supposed powers. Theoretical.
The Queen is said to be tamping mad about it.
Mainly because, like the rest of us, she tried to read the Satanic Verses, started it several times but never got beyond page 5 before hurling it against the wall.
That Lord Archer may be a charlatan and a lousy writer, but at least you can understand what he is banging on about… Said a spokesperson close to the Palace.
So the answer is NO
Rushdie is way too NuLab.
They will always protect their own.
‘Queen Elizabeth Tuesday’?
Never heard of her. Should I have?
Considering the award came from the government and considering they were probably informed that he was the one who had upset the Muslims a little bit in the past I think it quite likely they know what they are doing.
Why they are doing it is another question entirely.
It’s unlikely that HMG will reverse their decision. I don’t think there’s any precedent for un-awarding honours. Now we should consider the possibility that Mr Rushdie will turn it down, as that seems to be quite a fashionable thing to do these days, for any number of reasons. We shall see.
J
J, the fact that there isn’t any precedent has never stopped this government before. On the other hand, I agree with Bernie. Unless they’re even more brainless than I give them credit for, they were well aware of what the reaction would be when the honour was bestowed.
Well, Thaddeus, I always have been “Danish”. I was born in ’73 just around the time those fun-loving sheiks hoicked the oil price stratospheric helping cause a global recession. Just because they’d been howked (yet again) by Israel I grew up during that.
Then, there was the Iranian revolution, Lebanon, antics in the Persian Gulf, “Mad Dog” Gaddafi, Saddam (twice!), countless kidnapping, hijackings, beheadings, Salman Rushdie (twice!), London, Madrid, Bali, Beslan, the MoToons of Doom, Al Queda, suicide bombs, IEDs, Honour killings, Katyushas…
And people ask me why I’m Islamophobic!
It’s been going on my whole life and I’m just pig-sick of it. It’s been impossible throughout my entire life to turn the sodding news on and not see a bunch of fuckwits amongst dusty ruins ulutating and firing AK-47s into the air with gay abandon.
So I have two words for the Umma:
FUCK OFF!
because I, for one, am bored senseless.
They won’t back down. For some reason HMG decided to provoke this now. Good. More like this. No heckler’s veto for our entire civilization.
I have suggested upgrading his honour. On principle.
Chance of backdown would have to approach 0%. If they do back down, then wow. I’ll have to sign up to the usual gloomy assessment of the UK on here (i.e. that it is essentially fucked).
No objection to giving the man a knighthood but I do object from the somewhat cynical notion that Tony Blair did this deliberately knowing what the result would be, and also knowing that Gordon Brown would have to pick up the pieces. Rushdie, unlike most people being knighted for whatever reason, was apparently not even notified in advance.
I fear that as usual the people who will bear the brunt of Muslim anger will be our sorely tried troops in Afghanistan and Iraq and not the filthy, lying politicians who play with their lives as though they were chess pieces to be discarded at will.
“Tony Blair did this deliberately knowing what the result would be…”
I second that !
I always thought Tony Blair was smarter than you usually depict him here.
Yes, HMG has removed honours in the past: Anthony Blunt’s knighthood for one.
Having said that, either they knew what they were doing or NuLabour are so stupid they would make a goldfish look bright.
I don’t think they’re that stupid.
I, for one, second Nick M’s sentiment; but I worry that, after what we saw in the Iran-Royal Navy kidnap fiasco, somehow this government will manage to screw this one up as well. Never underestimate the ability of man’s idiocy to surpass itself.
canker,
Yup, I know about Blunt but he was a traitor. They stripped Archer of his Lordship but he was (is?) a crook.
The worst I’ve heard here is that Rushdie bored RAB. Hardly the same league now is it? Who of us here haven’t bored RAB sometime? Has he issued a fatwa (possibly in Welsh) against us?
I’ve read a few of Rushdie’s Op-Ed pieces and his debut Midnight’s Children and bits of “Ground beneath her feet”. He’s an ace writer. He started off as an advertising copy-writer and produced the tag-line, “naughty, but nice” for British cream. I see no reason why, if we’re gonna honour any bugger for services to literature he shouldn’t be in the mix*. So therefore, when the loose, watery stool hits the J-79 compressor plate, this is not our problem.
Nope it ain’t. If they want to behave like a bunch of hyperactive-kids and make arseholes of themselves over a bloke meeting the Queen in an uncomfortable suit then quite frankly I couldn’t give a monkey’s chuff.
*My personal feeling is that the greatest “honour” a writer can achieve is to be able to live happily on the proceeds of his or her craft. I’m sure (non-Dame) Joanne Rowling would agree.
Sending a message. It’s that simple.
All good.
Sorry Nick but I must have missed Lord Archer being stripped of his Peerage.
When did that happen?
Not to be confused with kidnapping a dozen people off of a ship in the territorial waters of another sovereign territory, or forcibly occupying an embassy and kidnapping the occupants in violation of the Treaty of Vienna or sponsoring rocket attacks and suicide bombings against innocent people on the soil of yet another sovereign country.
Nothing provocative there at all.
People are “striken from the roll” of membership of honours all the time – usually following a criminal conviction, although various honours and titles were revoked from certain German princes during The War (WW I) which was no doubt embarassing when the royal families were (and still are) all cousins.
It is my understanding that Sir Salman can use that title from the date it is published in the London Gazette and that the investiture is not required for the title to “vest” as it were.
I can’t imagine the folks deciding were unaware of the commotion it would cause. They may be a bit slow and a bit out of touch at times, but they are not dumb and are certainly not blind.
I’ll call the Rushdie knighthood the thumb in the Iranian eye that it is for the sailor grab a while back. And I have little doubt the ambassadors have all gotten their response talking points for just such reactions.
All that doesn’t mean that they have underestimated the reaction. We’ll just have to wait and see, but even then how will we know. The islamonuts have previous grievances a mile long to choose from to justify any action they attempt.
I doubt it will be rescinded, though.
I’ve read Guenter Grass’s Die Blechtrommel in German (even the boring third part) but I’ve still never made it through either Satanic Verses or Midnight’s Children. Will try again, I suppose.
Currently reading the rather easier Shantaram, by Gregory Roberts. Kiwi prison escapee in India. Wonderful.
I don’t think they’ll back down, but they’ll keep very quiet about it.
I doubt they will back down on this one. Even Labour at their most cowardly would not want that kind of embarassment right before Brown takes over.
I was pleased by Rushdie’s Sir. Not something I can say is common with actions of this government. (To avoid praising them I have merely praised the Queen instead.)
Ooops RAB!
You’re right. They never did take the bugger’s peerage off him.
Nick M,
1)Good point re Blunt being a traitor and all. Substantial naughtiness seems to be the sole reason for removing honours (even if the naughtiness is `being German whilst ruling’).
2) I have no complaints about the honour. I thought Midnight’s Children was very good (and Shame was awful).
3)If it is (in part) revenge for the sailors/marines then that’s inappropriate (IMHO) but with Iran, you could argue that low blows are the best ones, so I’m not going to complain.
For what it’s worth, both Nicolae Ceausescu and Benito Mussolini were CGB, later revoked (Ceausescu awarded 1978, revoked 1989; Mussolini awarded 1923, revoked 1940). I guess in Mussolini’s case there was that leeeetle mitigating factor of war with the UK, though…
I can’t wait to see banners in Dirty Mo’s world demanding “Kill Salman Rushdie!” so that we can very properly (and with a typically British straight face) point out their error. That, old chap, should be “Kill Sir Salman Rushdie!” now.
if there’s one thing to teach the Iscum masses it is a sense of decorum.
LOL, your point hit the nail on the head for me, Freeman.
A question I have for the hate-the-rich crowd is this: what do you imagine the rich do with their money? Stuff their matresses with it? Burn it, just to spite the poor? Or do you think they employ people with it, invest it, and otherwise trickle it down into your savings accounts and pension funds?
The answer should be obvious; I just don’t think the left have the imagination to ask the question.
Rob Fisher,
Well, hopefully, the rich employ the likes of me and if enough of them do it then I can be rich and employ the likes of, well, whoever. Your point is so utterly bleeding obvious yet so frequently missed that it’s actually quite poignant.
canker,
Yup, it devalues any honours system to use it in an explicitly political manner. But, as far as the raving mad mullahs of Iran are concerned I’m in favour of striking blows so low they’re subterranean. And by that I don’t mean knighting novelists, I mean real dirty tricks fiendish in their in-trick-a-sies. Or we could just nuke Qom. They really are richly deserving a fall of some description. And BTW I’m vastly more concerned by our lads and lasses getting killed and maimed by Iranian IEDs than the brief imprisonment of the hapless 15. If only we had a C21st V-Force…
Although, as an American, I’m against the concept of royalty, I’m all for this knighthood. These fanatical muslims need to get it into their thick skulls that the rest of us have the right to do what we damn well please, and included in that is the right to criticize religions, or anything else.
Has anyone noticed the similarity between Dame Jade Goody and Sir Salmon?
Both have brought a lot of money to media interests, both get death threats, both induce burning protests in ex-colonies, both went to elite universities, both get considerable coverage of what they do in public, both have interesting “partners”, both have rudely challenged “sacred cows”.
Jade Goody?
University?
Bovine University?
When does she graduate?
Televise that!
of course they will……..
Of course the British won’t buckle!!! The Iranians have just expressed anger, and haven’t actually asked them to do anything! So there is no need to buckle, because there is no threat!
Sky is reporting some more rioting in Pakistan over the Rushdie affair. At least Benazir Butto has said it would be a good idea for that idiot Foreign Minister to resign.
“The “I” in Islam ain’t not the same as the “I” in Inglish, innit?”. Dame Jade Goody.