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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Being beastly to jihadis is fear-mongering! Hugh Muir is clearly a nice man, and the notion people might look askance as known salafists returning from Syria after fighting on behalf of the Islamic State bothers him. Although the Royal Air Force is currently bombing said Islamic State, worrying about these people is nothing more than fear-mongering.
Welcome to the United Kingdom of Perpetual Panic, where the crackpot ideas of silly backbenchers fuel our nightmares and sustain our enemies
I am strongly of the view that Hugh Muir should fly to the Middle East and make this very reasonable point to Islamic State members who hail from Britain himself, in person, in Raqqa. After all, we have nothing to fear from these people and this will prove it. How to get a head ahead in journalism in one easy step: I look forward to seeing the video of the encounter and no doubt he will look very fetching wearing red.
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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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Perry is not in his right mind. or he is an Islamic State Terrorist sympathizer. Either way locking him up for his own safety is the best policy.
It wos the gin wot made me do it!
It’s Orange Perry, not Red; Guantanamo Orange… The colour to die for this Season.
Really? Looks rather red is all the pictures I have seen but that does make sence
Actually….
How about starting a Kickstarter campaign to fund Hugh Muir on a fact finding visit (to places and people of our choosing) would elicit some squawking – no doubt.
Cutting humour……..I like it!
Good post Perry.
Did you actually read the man’s article, Perry? It seems to concern whether those Brit citizens going out to the Middle East to support ISIL should be tried as traitors. How about a trawl of the retirement homes for any surviving veterans of the International Brigade, holidayed in Spain in the 30’s?
Far as I’m concerned, one of the nastiest outcomes of the post 9/11 world is the creeping assumption that a country’s legal competence extends beyond its borders to its citizens, where ever they may be. Let’s just abbreviate that to a country’s legal competence extends beyond its borders, period. It wants to go bomb ragheads in black overalls in Iraq let’s leave out the legal justification nonsense. There ain’t any. It’s a demonstration of naked power. Doing it coz they can do it & who can stop them.
When I’m outside the UK I’m in whoever’s jurisdiction owns the pitch & what I do there should be a matter between me & them. Not HMG’s next time I visit.
Indeed I did BiS. And as far as I can recall, the veterans of the International Brigade did not came back to the UK and join groups prone to blowing themselves up on buses in London. You might think jihadis pose no threat to us, as Hugh Muir seems to as a practical matter, but I must say I see it differently. And as I see defending our arses from the Jihad Johnnies of this world as one of the few actual legitimate roles of the state, I really do not have a problem with the hammer of the state being uses against them.
I’m rather mixed on this, but basically agree with BIS.
Every country has a law against treason. It doesn’t really matter how old that law is (England is a rather old country, so some of its laws go back a good while; so what?), and Mr. Muir’s complaint that your 1351 statute speaks about “treachery against Her Majesty” is a silly diversion. Treason is generally defined as making war upon your own country, or aiding and abetting its enemies. ISIS is, without doubt, an enemy of mankind, a plague to be wiped off the face of the earth. But in a strict legal sense I don’t think that it is an “enemy” of Britain (or, for that matter, the United States). So in what sense can British subjects who choose to join its ranks and fight in Syria or Iraq be considered traitors to their own country? The US had aviators who joined the French forces prior to our entry into WWI, and we had people who joined in the Spanish revolution, have fought in various wars in Africa and South America, etc. Some were criticized for it, but to my knowledge no one ever claimed that such participation amounted to “treason” against the US.
It seems to me that the fear here is that such fighters will return to the UK and become Islamic terrorists. Perhaps they would. But so far they haven’t, and I don’t think the law should punish people for what they might do, absent some overt act which clearly evidences a present intent to commit a crime. Treating ISIS participants as traitors to Great Britain seems to be a species of “thoughtcrime” which I am loath to support. Pay very close attention to them, sure, and charge them with any crime which they may actually commit. But I can’t see that treason is a proper charge.
Laird, on balance, as much as the fluffy armchair libertarian approach seems so correct in theory, in reality it would be a better spend of taxpayer money to nail these nutcases at the border than spend it trailing hundreds of them around until they actually plan on doing something, which they will eventually anyway, and also risk they could actually succeed at it.
So what? The material difference is those might be foreign armies but they were not foreign enemy armies. I am all for British Kurds (or indeed English folk, British Chinese, British Indians and British Papua New Guineans) going off and joining the Peshmerga (after a crash course in Kurdish ideally), because they are actually helping and more importantly, the Peshmerga are not a threat to us.
I am with Runcie Balspune on this: it is one of those questions where libertarianism needs to not flirt with intellectual and possibly literal suicide in search of purity. The notion someone joining an active salafist army currently rampaging across the Middle East does not pose a clear and very close to present danger to non-muslims everywhere verges on insane. If some colourful tool such as ‘treason’ is used against them, well… whatever.
Perry and Runcie, my response was not a libertarian one but a strictly legal one. I can’t see how fighting alongside ISIS meets the technical definition of “treason”; ISIS is not an “enemy” of Great Britain in the narrow, legal sense. To my knowledge it has not attacked GB or any of its citizens, but rather is confining its hostilities to the Middle East. If fighting as a member of ISIS can be argued to meet the definition of some other crime, well, we can discuss that. But that’s not the matter at issue here.
Joining ISIS is fundamentally no different than joining La Cosa Nostra: simple membership may or may not be a crime (probably not); activities carried out under its banner may or may not be a criminal (probably are); but in neither case does it constitute “treason”.
As to whether those persons should be interdicted at the border and denied the right of entry into the country, that’s yet another discussion.
Laird,
It might be that the ‘reasoning’ is:
1. The RAF have bombed some of these people, the RAF serve Her Britannic Majesty.
2. The people bombed are therefore (actually the reasoning is ‘thereby’) enemies of Her Britannic Majesty.
3. If you are a citizen of the UK, and are in the bombed organisation, you make common cause with the Queen’s enemies, which is treason.
Or
ISIL are at war with everyone apart from themselves, so your joining it = treason.
Declarations of war, lack of recognised statehood etc. are issues far too inconvenient, so please avoid discussing them.
The reason I rarely discuss legalism is the same reason I rarely write about party politics 🙂
I would actually be just as happy with heaving them out a door mid-flight on their way back ‘home’, but for the fact the state, being the state, might end up throwing Mr. Mohammed the corner-shop cashier out the door because it confused him with Mr. Mohammed the ISIS member. But in principle… So if the state want to use ‘treason’ statutes, well, fine by me. Saves inventing something new.
Declarations of war, lack of recognised statehood etc. are issues far too irrelevant so not worth discussing. But it is amusing to take the Islamic State at its word and just treat it as one, no?
My problem with what you’re saying, Perry, is both a legal & a libertarian one. And personal. I am a British citizen & UK passport holder. I am engaged in activities in Spain that may or may not be against Spanish law. But are against UK law. Am I liable for arrest on entering the UK? What do you intend charging me with?
I’d say I was one of the least of your fluffy libertarians. But I get a really bad feeling on this.
(Wonder what the chances of getting political asylum are)
This is not legalistic, Perry, but legal – precisely as Laird put it. And I could not care less about international “law”, to remove any doubt. But if we are going to use the hummer of the state to pound those who would harm us, we better make sure that the state does that according to a well-defined legal framework, especially when those subject to said pounding are its citizens.
Surely the simplest answer would be to formally recognise the Islamic State, and then immediately declare war on it. That would also nicely put to bed any complaints about bombing bits of Syria or wherever else it might invade, since those areas would be IS territory and therefore bombable.
BiS, I think there important differences between ‘breaking what would be a UK law’ somewhere outside the UK, and siding with a hostile military or para-military force. I understand and do not actually dismiss your worries out of hand, as such things are prone to definition-creep, states being what they are… but I do think they *are* qualitatively different things.
For example, as ghastly as I might think kiddie fiddling is, I think prosecuting people in the UK for doing it outside the UK is madness. But I think it is a mistake to accept that being a pedarist in Cambodia or (say) Syria or being a salafist soldier in (say) Syria should be treated the same way. They really deserve to be seen as a very different category of things.
Sure Alisa, which is why I am really OK with using ‘treason’, as opposed to (say) tax evasion or some new invented category. Treating salafist ISIS folk from Saff London as traitors seems more or less a perfect definition of ‘traitor’ really. Makes it clear that ‘traitor’ involves taking up arms on behalf of the Crown’s enemies, as opposed to just mundane naughtiness overseas, which is none of HMGs damn business.
I understand that, and in principle I’m fine with treating it as treason, too. But we would first need to make sure that it can honestly be defined as such, so as not to set a dangerous precedent – that is how I read BiS and Laird’s point, and if that was it, it was well taken. Again, it may sound like empty legalism, but I don’t think it is. If the current law does not properly allow the UK (as an example – other Western countries face a similar problem) to treat these people as traitors, then the law should be amended after due consideration (if, that is – IANAL, and Laird may be wrong about the legal issue here).
Conversely, maybe recognizing IS as an actual state and treating it as such, including a declaration of war against it, is not such a bad idea after all. In any case, I think this issue should be approached rationally and calmly, as wassisname in the article suggesting (his other, less valid points notwithstanding).
“on behalf of the Crown’s enemies”
Whoo-hoo! That’s a slippery definition, isn’t it?
Perry. I’d go with this sort of thing for maybe a brief period from the early to late C20th, when the Crown’s enemies were broadly speaking the British people’s enemies. Otherwise the Crown’s enemies slip to being the Crown’s best buddies with bewildering regularity. Remind me. Is the Boy Assad enemy or friend this week? I may have missed something
The Crown’s enemies and the British people’s enemies are the one who blow themselves up on buses in London. Salafism is as much our enemy as Nazism ever was, with the added joy they can recruit in UK rather than Hamburg, and with vastly more success than Oswald Mosley ever could.
You must have missed the vote where that was settled in Parliament. Sometimes (and quite correctly) the enemy of my enemy is… none of my damn business. This was one of those rare moments when the politics got it all largely correct.
Perry. People who blow themselves up on buses are, definitely, the enemies of the British people. But it’d help if the agents of the Crown hadn’t been giving aid & comfort to their associates for years. And protecting them from the British people. It hasn’t gotten called Londonistan without reason.
You have to start asking yourself which side is the Crown & who’s being who’s traitor.
For some reason, Perry, you seem to have a hard on for the “Brave Kurds”. Living in N. London’s Haringey, for a few years, gave opportunity to see quite a lot of the Kurdish community.
Iraq’s gassed them. Syria & Turkey’s shot them. Seems a definite four to zero majority to me. More time these folk give to murdering each other, the less there are. What’s not to like?
That would be because their culture does indeed do the ‘brave’ thing quite prominently. The fact they are whack each other is true but… so what?
I know quite a few too and they are highly factionalised. Marxist YPG and PKK (Marxist, albeit waning on that score, Kurdish nationalists), Salafist Kurdish Islamic Front (enemies of ISIS but salafist and ideologically indistinguishable, enemies of Kurdish nationalism), Kurdish United Front (politically amorphous nationalists in Iran), KDP (centrists currently in coalition with the leftish PUK in Erbil in Iraq), Gorran Movement in Iraq (aggressively secular and essentially informed by classical liberal notions)… etc. etc. yes they are a factional bunch. But the important thing is that mainstream Kurdish politics almost everywhere is not Islamists and the Kurdish Islamists are marginalised and increasingly actively abominated in ways I wish the west would emulate. That really is quite important when evaluating the Kurds circa 2014.
My views on that are fairly clear really. The governmental and supporting media class are actually the problem, rather than the cultural-Islam-within they have tirelessly enabled.
“Declarations of war, lack of recognised statehood etc. are issues far too inconvenient, so please avoid discussing them.”
That’s exactly the sort of facile “logic” and “ends justifies the means” reasoning which has lead, for example, to the functional evisceration of much of the US Constitution. We just ignore the law and do what we damn well please because it’s expedient and the law is too confining. Do you really want to start down that slope? I certainly don’t. The state is far too powerful, and too blunt an instrument, not to keep it under clear and defined controls. It (generally) doesn’t matter to me if you decide to ignore your own internal moral compass. But it absolutely does matter if the state does. That way lies tyranny.
Now, the idea of taking ISIS at its word and recognizing it as a “state” does indeed have some superficial appeal (as well as comedic value). It would certainly lead to properly treating UK citizens who join it as “traitors”. But I suspect that would be festooning vines of unintended consequences sprouting off that action. For starters, we would then have to treat captured ISIS “soldiers” in accordance with the Geneva Convention rules, whereas at present they are merely illegal combatants whom we can simply kill at will. I rather prefer that approach. (And that, by the way, is the best answer to your “returning fighter” problem: kill them all on the battlefield and the problem is solved.) I suspect that there would be many other complications under international law, too, including conducting diplomatic rations, recognition of (and immunity for) ambassadors and emissaries, etc. That game is likely not worth the candle.
Laird, I hope that you realise that I was reporting my view of the current prevailing rulers of the UK, not my own.
The Sir Thomas More ‘Devil Speech‘ in the film A Man for All Seasons sums up the acid test for all politicians, all those I can think of would fail it.
Sorry for the misunderstanding, Mr. Ed. I had indeed interpreted that as being your position. My apologies.
This kind of moral preening irritates me. He knows it’s not going to have any effect on what happens, so he gets the cheap grace of advocating an unworkable policy without having to answer for anything when it fails. Reminds me of all those nutters who want to abolish private property.
What I’ve seen of the “Brave Kurds”, Perry, they seem to combine a bit of terrorism back in Turkey with their main interests of drug dealing, smuggling & protection rackets.
You’re coming over like one of those holiday brochures tells the punter “The islanders are cheerful, friendly people who extend a generous welcome to visitors” When their not picking their pockets & padding their restaurant tabs.
Kurds tend to look after Kurds. Quelle surprise & good luck to them. It’s a practice I could recommend to Brits & their government.
Wierd! Put something in “french” single quote marks & it vanishes without trace. Must be some html confliction.
Above should have started:
Perry, you seem to have a hard on for the “Brave Kurds”.
That would be because their culture does indeed do the ‘brave’ thing quite prominently.
But gives the opportunity to add:
The Kurds can be “Brave Kurds” when Kurds kicking asses in Kurdish interests coincides with whatever interests you’re advocating this week. A Kurdish Kurdistan extending over a geographical area the Kurds would prefer would, no doubt, end up with the Kurds ethnicly cleansing any inconvenient Turks, Iraqis & Syrians it included. Using poison gas if they could get their hands on some.
It is, unfortunately the nature of this part of the world. And a lot of other parts
BIS, that may indeed be true. But given the record of all the other monsters in that region, I’m quite prepared to give the Kurds their turn at bat. They just might surprise you, and they certainly couldn’t be any worse that those they replace.
Dunno Laird. But I’d be wary of going out there, giving them a hand. Could find oneself on the Crown’s & Perry’s Enemies of the Realm list, when the winds of sympathy changed.
Couldn’t be worse? But maybe, couldn’t be better? I’ve long suspected this radical Islamism stuff is more effect than cause. There’s a sort of cultural hardwiring to be a conniving, murdering, raping bunch of shits & a great deal of effort then gets expended looking round for justifications. Islamism just happens to be the plat du jour. They’d do the same in the name of Mickey Mouse (pbuh) if they’d got their hands on the Disney Annual AD694 edition. Make the whole cartoons hooha tricky though. Maybe you’d get fatwa’d for not drawing Goofy.
I’m with BiS on this. That said, cultures can change, and they can also die out.
BTW, no one here is suggesting going out there and giving them a hand – the most we can do is watch from afar, and occasionally contribute to the changing/dying-out process if and when opportunities arise.
That will only happen if Kurdish nationalists start blowing themselves up in London. It has nothing to do with sympathy but rather a lot to do with not collaborating with the manifest enemy. Hence is matters not a fuck if the YPG are Marxists or the Peshmerga commit crimes against fashion with those baggy pants, just as long as they are not doing it to us.
Oddly, for such self interested bunch, the Kurds do have a history of suicide bombings, Perry. Although, as they mostly got their women to do the self-detonation, Kurdish culture always wins through (Gotta wonder why, haven’t you? It’s not as if they’re going to be short of 72 Kurdish virgin lads this side of paradise). But mostly they exit the area intact, before the bang. Turkish embassy in Strasbourg, for instance.
The differece is were one of ours commits suicide we give rhe a Victoria Cross. But if mere nationalist terrorism is the problem for you I guess you must take a similar view of the Irish
@Alisa
“That said, cultures can change, and they can also die out”
I’ve a pet theory that certain behaviour is tied into tribalism. The tribe requires a them to differentiate from the us & internal pecking orders within tribes ferment antagonism against the thems to gain status.
There’s a measure of tribalism within most cultures, but some keep it down to football team supporting/morrisdancing appreciation. At least on a local level. And others don’t.
Problem with high levels of immigration & mingling but not mixing of cultures is it reinforces tribalism. Story of the middle-east isn’t it? Which has always been a hotch-potch of cultures moving in or passing through, down to geography.
My feeling for W.Europe at least, immigration’s pushing towards the rebirth of tribalism rather than it dying out.
The problem is not tribalism per se Bloke, but the lines along which tribes are determined, and the rules by which those tribes function (or dysfunction) inwardly as well as outwardly. Namely, with regard to the former: on the basis of what criteria are people selected and accepted to a tribe – is it ethnic, or racial, or cultural, or philosophical, or economic? With regard to the latter: can a member of a tribe form his own tribe with the larger tribe (such as a family, or a commune, or a church, or what have you)? Can a member leave the tribe freely? According to what sort of rules and customs do members of the tribe interact with each other? Etc., etc. Saying ‘we are all tribal’ is certainly true, but does not begin to touch on real issues involved. It is way too simplistic.
Should read ‘within the larger tribe’ – sorry about that.
I was reminded today that jihad means not just armed struggle, but anything that advances the cause of Islam. When Muslim parents achieve a pork-free dinner hour or art lessons where children are not allowed to draw faces, or Muslim women in a niqab are able to enter places where others who cover their faces, such as hoodies, are banned, they’ve done their little bit of jihad.
And, of course, the ultimate form of tribalism is communism. Everybody owns everyone else. I suppose Socialists are tribalists, which explains why they often don’t like Israel. After all, Israel was founded on egalitarian principles, with all those kibbutzim- and what happened to them? Mostly gone.