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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 latest antics by the Iranian Pasdaran in the Strait of Hormuz doing their damnedest to get the USN to fire on them has me a tad baffled. In this era of near omnipresent video footage, the chance of this being a questionable ‘Tonkin Gulf’ incident is greatly reduced (so please, if you have Bush Derangement Syndrome, resist the urge to comment), therefore it does seem like this was a real action by the Iranians… so presumably they are doing this for a reason rather than some desire to get themselves shot full of holes just for the hell of it. But what reason is that exactly? Or even approximately?
So what is the upside for Iran in this in military or political terms? This is not a question I have an answer for. If they actually want to start a war, all that will take is a single Silkworm missile launch, so what is this idiocy setting out to achieve? Also whilst the USN clearly showed commendable restraint, I am astonished that they did not fire on the Pasdaran boats given the descriptions of what they did and given recent memories of what happened to the USS Cole.
I have quite liked the music of Joe Jackson but I did not realise he had such sound views on things like personal liberty. Check out his site.
Imagine telling somebody twenty years ago that by 2007, it would be illegal to smoke in a pub or bus shelter or your own vehicle or that there would be £80 fines for dropping cigarette butts, or that the words “tequila slammer” would be illegal or the government would mandate what angle a drinker’s head in an advertisement may be tipped at, or that it would be illegal to criticise religions or homosexuality, or rewire your own house, or that having sex after a few drinks would be classed as rape or that the State would be confiscating children for being overweight. Imagine telling them the government would be contemplating ration cards for fuel and even foods, that every citizen would be required to carry an ID card filled with private information which could be withdrawn at the state’s whim. They’d have thought you a paranoid loon.
– Samizdata commenter Ian B. We do not have to imagine these things any more, alas. The only problem with his quote is that he omitted to mention assault on jury trials, Habeas Corpus, double-jeopardy…
I just heard that blogger and soldier Andrew Olmsted was killed in Iraq last Thursday. Very sad news indeed. I used to read him quite often back when he posted on his own blog, before DOD policy put a stop to that. I only knew him slightly (we exchanged a few e-mails) but he seemed like a great guy and he shared my long standing dislike of a certain left wing US blogger.
Heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.
I am prepared to believe that there may be some things (though not many of them) that are of such public benefit that they should be provided at the general expense. That is not to say that I think that if something is good it should be compulsory. Let alone that if it sounds like a good, that is justification for its being compulsory.
But when you are dealing with the state, “free” does not mean ‘free as in free speech’, nor does it mean ‘free as in free beer’. It means ‘compulsory’. If the government is advertising free beer, it wants everybody drunk; prepare to have your head held under if you don’t feel like a tipple just now.
Hence this Guardian headline, a classic of pusilanimity against spin:
Plan to give every child internet access at home
The actual story is somewhat, er… more nuanced:
Parents could be required to provide their children with high-speed internet access under plans being drawn up by ministers in partnership with some of the country’s leading IT firms.
[…]
The initiative is part of a major push which could also see the parents of every secondary school student given access to continuous online updates on their child’s lessons, performance and behaviour as early as next year. So-called “real-time reporting”, which was first mooted in the government’s children’s plan last month, could be extended to primary schools within two years.
A sub less versed in the cult of the benign state might have abstracted that as:
“Big business bonanza: Parents must pay for children to be watched at home by online officials.”
As you might expect, vegetarians will have a somewhat rough time here. For most people in Argentina, a vegetarian is something you eat.
– Idle Words in Argentina On Two Steaks A Day
Bonus quote: Upon reading the article Mr de Havilland announced that he’s booking a ticket to Buenos Aires…
Instapundit has linked to this story, but I am not yet wholly convinced. I am happy to add to the general blog-yell that may or may not now be going up everywhere in the non-pro-Islamic blogosphere, but suspect – although I could be entirely wrong in my suspicion – that this may turn out to be a bit of an exaggeration:
I am currently out of the Country and on my return home to England I am going to be arrested by British detectives on suspicion of Stirring up Racial Hatred by displaying written material” contrary to sections 18(1) and 27(3) of the Public Order Act 1986.
This charge if found guilty carries a lengthy prison sentence, more than what most paedophiles and rapists receive, …
At the risk of being pedantic, what precisely happened? Did Lionheart get a letter? If so, what, precisely, did it say? To be even more pedantic, the phrase “This charge if found guilty” It does not fill me with confidence. Nor does it that, on what is obviously such an important matter, Lionheart has allowed a pair of inverted commas to go awol. But maybe that is to read too much into what is merely some stressed-out grammar.
I suspect that, if any ruckus does now occur, there will in due course be an announcement to the effect that Mr Lionheart has entirely misunderstood the situation and has nothing to fear, free speech is sacred, blah blah. If that does happen, it may then be hard to know how much this official clarification will be a true clarification of what had, truly, been the attitude of the authorities, and how much it will be a tactical retreat in the face of an Instalaunch, and of any blogosphere and mainstream media fuss that follows from it. But whatever has been and turns out to be the true story here, I would now like to know a bit more.
Lionheart’s central claim, albeit floridly expressed, is one I have come around agreeing with, having started out (on 9/12) believing the opposite. The enemy is not “Islamic extremism”. The enemy is Islam. Although please note that this says nothing about the manner in which this enemy should be responded to. I daresay I might disagree somewhat with Lionheart’s ideas about that.
But even if I disagreed with Lionheart about everything, I still agree with Instapundit’s attitude:
I don’t know much about the blogger, but I don’t need to – people shouldn’t be arrested merely for blogging things that the powers-that-be don’t like.
If Lionheart’s claim that he faces arrest just for blogging his mind are correct, then of course it is everything-and-the-kitchen-sink time. Let battle be joined. But for now, I would like just a little more reconnaissance.
There is a powerful strain of thought in the United States which sees the world as essentially capable of reduction to a series of legal processes, and more specifically American legal processes. Acts of war by foreigners are seen as ‘crimes’, legal infractions, rather than acts of war, and anything that happens anywhere can be a source of legal action (and income) for American lawyers.
A case in point is the strange Biom case. David Boim, a 17 year old American, was murdered in Israel by some Palestinian psychos associated with Hamas and this ends up as the subject of a civil lawsuit by his parents in Chicago.
The actual details of this case are not what concerns me and gawd knows I am far from sad to see bad things happen to Islamist groups in the United States or anywhere else, but the logic underpinning this sort of thing strikes me as being based on a great many questionable and downright dangerous assumptions.
David Boim was an American, but he chose to leave America and go to another country with its own laws and courts, so surely Israel is where any legal issues should be sorted out as that is where he was murdered. Moreover, as the case in Chicago seems to be based on suing people for their political support of Hamas, if those organisations in the USA are legal, is allowing them to be sued for their political views really acceptable? If however they are declared to be proscribed organisations by the American state, surely they should not exist at all within the USA and that would presumably be a criminal matter, not a civil one.
Would it be regarded as acceptable in the USA for American organisations in some third country with links to the Republican Party or just the US government generally, to be sued by people critical of US foreign policy? Can the relatives of people killed by US troops in Iraq sue US commercial or political interests in Europe based on their presumed support for US policies? It strikes me as a ludicrous notion much like the preposterous ‘libel tourism‘ used by the odious Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz to silence US author Rachel Ehrenfeld (amongst others) by using British court rulings.
Yet as long as people in the USA are sanguine about US courts being used to sue people for things that happen outside the USA, they can hardly complain if others use foreign courts against US citizens for things they do in the USA (such as publishing a book, for example).
Former Governor ‘Mitt’ Romney ran a series of ‘contrast ads’ against former Governor Mike Huckabee in Iowa.
The ads claimed that Mike Huckabee had vastly increased government spending and taxation in Arkansas (whereas he claims to have cut taxes) and that he went around handing out every possible government benefit to illegal immigrants – whereas he pretends to be tough on illegal immigration. Every word of the Romney attacks on Huckabee was true – so why did they not work?
It is a simple matter – the source of the attacks. ‘Mitt’ Romney also increased taxes when he was Governor of Massachusetts, although he called the taxes “fees” (hence one of his nicknames, Governor “Fee Fee”). True he did not increase taxes nearly as much as Mike Huckabee did, but…
And on government spending – Governor Romney left Massachusetts with a new entitlement program. Universal health care – the costs and fines connected with this program will go up and up over time, as such things always do. And “but my plan is not as bad as the Hillary Clinton plan” is not really a good defence.
As for “tough on illegal immigration”. Governor Romney was indeed tough on illegal immigration – for about two weeks before he left office. Governor Romney ordered the State Police in Massachusetts to enforce Federal immigration law as a move to impress Republican voters as he was already running his campaign for President – and knowing that the incoming Democrat Governor would drop the whole thing. Governor Romney also made a great show of vetoing some State government spending – knowing that these “cuts” would be reversed by the incoming Democrat.
So why did not Romney’s attacks work on Huckabee?
Simple – people who are not wearing any clothes do not get any credit for pointing out that other people are naked.
In some of the recent understandable moans about the sheer awfulness of Britain’s state-controlled rail network – please don’t try and tell me it has much to do with laissez faire capitalism – several commentators have complained about the dearth of people entering the fields of engineering. Jeff Randall in today’s Daily Telegraph does so. Various reasons are given for this lack of talent: the education system, an anti-science, anti-technology culture, etc. While some of these factors have a part to play in this, I do not think these explanations get to the core of the issue. If railway engineers do not earn large salaries and the job is not seen to be worth the hassle compared with say, becoming a hedge fund manager in London’s West End, it is not a surprise to see what will happen. If or when the remuneration for being a new Brunel rivals or even exceeds that of being a Goldman Sachs derivatives dealer, we will get more engineers, and of higher quality. It is that simple.
Or maybe one problem is that railways, perhaps because of the problems now facing the UK industry, are seen as just plain dull. As Randall says, confessing to being a railway engineer may not always be a great move at a dinner party, or for that matter, on a hot date. I am not sure how one changes that.
It’s ultimately kind of sad that the controversial person in the race is Ron Paul rather than Huckabee.
– Jonah Goldberg, who is no fan of Ron Paul, discussing ‘Liberal Fascism’. Seeing as we, well I, have ‘diss’ed’ Jonah in the past on Samizdata, let me plug his new book.
A smaller state in Victorian terms isn’t on the cards. The electorate would take flight at such talk. What the electorate is after, however, is a redrawing of the state’s boundaries. There is no fall in demand for collective services like health and education but voters are seeking two clear advances in their freedom from such a redrawing exercise. The first is to gain greater freedom from a centrally run ration book-type state service where there is a set menu, often a single item, that has to be consumed at a certain time. The second demand is for taxpayers to use their own money to run their own services.
– Frank Field, Labour MP. He is probably right, but once people get into this habit of choosing to live their lives as they please, who knows where it may end up.
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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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