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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Matthew Maly writes in with a remarkable tale of malfeasance and cover-up from stretching from the Ukraine & Russia to the corridors of power in the United States
Four years ago, I alerted the US Department of Defense about $20M grossly mismanaged and/or stolen from Defense Enterprise Fund (DEF), a US-financed program to convert the former Russian producers of weapons of mass destruction (anthrax, nuclear, etc). A Department of Defense Audit proved the theft, but the guilty American managers were not even reprimanded.
When Vector Plant of Novossibirsk, the Soviet Army’s prime facility for producing militarized anthrax and smallpox spores, asked for just $1M to convert itself – DEF did not have the money. When DEF COO was purchasing his private apartment in Moscow, DEF had a million dollars to finance it.
Just recently, I caused Defense Threat Reduction Agency to lower the number former Soviet WMD scientists said to be converted by DEF to peaceful pursuits from 3370 to 1250, a 66% reduction! But the real figure is no more than 200 scientists, not a good result for a $67M program.
A more complete description is here. For the full story, please go here and then click on “DEF”.
After my letter of concern, I was immediately blacklisted for US-financed assistance jobs in the NIS which was a professional and financial catastrophe for me. I am extremely frustrated that there has been four (!) intentionally inconclusive investigations of DEF, each refusing to look into my allegations. The Pentagon admits that the money is gone and that a $67M program is dead, victim of gross mismanagement, they do not disprove my letter, but they do not remove my name from the blacklist either.
Matthew Maly
Phil Bradley shows us what a wonderful institution that carnival of thieves called the United Nations is
I can hardly turn on the TV without some talking head from the UN, one of its many agencies and adjuncts, or a European diplomat talking about the UN’s legitimacy or credibility. This is a recent phenomena and I am curious as to where the UN has acquired its supplies of legitimacy and credibility. Certainly not from its member states – many of whom can hardly keep the road to the airport open without help from French paratroopers. Nor does it get it from the work of its agencies, which while on paper are well intentioned, in practice are dens of corruption, incompetence and cronyism, relegated to ‘coordinating’ roles because they are incapable of doing any thing useful.
Perhaps it is from the UN’s work in intervening in crises and helping states achieve legitimate democratic government. OK, the UN did pull its troops out of Rwanda prior to perhaps a million people being massacred, failed to anything about Kosovo and left NATO to intervene, and appears to be making a complete mess of ‘helping’ East Timor transition to democracy. A state of affairs which even the UN’s senior person in East Timor admits to. Sorry, no signs of legitimacy and credibility here!
I must therefore conclude that United Nations has discovered a means of manufacturing these precious commodities. This is a major scientific breakthrough, a philosophers stone for the twenty-first century. The UN is keeping tight-lipped on the details of this breakthrough. So it’s not clear as to how much legitimacy and credibility they can manufacture. But think of implications if they can produce a large supply (doubtless it is expensive to produce, but then everything at the UN is vastly more expense than it should be). Clearly the UN and its member states constitute a major market for both products, but the potential is huge, especially for credibility which the recent war in Iraq has shown there is a world-wide shortage, notably in the news-rooms of CNN and the BBC, as well as in some European and Arab capitals.
And to think, I always thought the United Nations was a complete waste of time and money, filled with corrupt bureaucrats only interested in first-class air travel and their expense accounts. Shows how wrong you can be!
Phil Bradley
Peter Cuthbertson discusses the importance of concepts and semantics to defining a political meta-context
If your arguments are irrational and unconvincing, and the consequences of people listening to them harmful and destructive, then you really need to have some other factor on your side to succeed. Sadly, those who advocate socialism, statism, lilly-livered liberalism and an ever-expanding government have just this. For almost every modern political argument is conducted in a lexicon that favours them, every debate being a competition between those who can use leftist language most convincingly – usually the left, unsurprisingly.
Daniel Hannan covered this phenomenon 18 months ago in The Spectator. It isn’t that the language prevents you arguing against the left – it’s that it prevents you doing so while still sounding as kind and as decent as your opponent.
‘Greed’ now means low taxes, while c’ompassion’ means high taxes. ‘Fairness’ means state-enforced equality, while ‘unfairness’ means an individual’s right to better himself. Any discussion of the relationship between government and citizen is perforce conducted in loaded terms. You can still make the case for greater liberty, but not without sounding rather nasty.
The column in question was far more focused on the problem than solutions, though he did note that there was hope for the future. However, the fulfillment of these hopes would require conscious effort to reclaim the political vocabulary. How can we achieve this? → Continue reading: Reclaiming the political lexicon
E.G. Ross, the author of the website Objective American, recently passed away due to complications of an aneurysm.
He had a unique ability to combine reason and optimism in a world in which those virtues are too often lacking. He was very well versed and wrote articles on a wide range of subjects, including self-help, national defense, the drug war, terrorism, economics, government, and theology. His essay, “The Terrible Swift Sword”, can be found on the site and is an absolute classic.
Needless to say, I will miss his writing tremendously.
David R. Beatty
Nigel Meek has been doing some digging around in the archives.
Having flicked through a digest of British politician’s speeches about the war, and looking at just the contributions from some members of the Labour Party, four themes seem to stand out.
- Devotion to the United Nations as the only real legitimising agency before, during, and after the war.
- That because of the various dealings that we may indeed have had with the regime in the past, it is therefore unacceptably hypocritical of us to tackle them now.
- Pessimism about the eventual outcome.
- Irrespective of the outcome, a belief that it will be extremely costly not least to our own side.
Iraq in 2003? No, the Falkland Islands in 1982.
For reasons that I won’t bore anyone with, earlier today I was puttering around the Latin American section of the University of London’s library at Senate House. My eyes fell on a dusty tome entitled “The Falkland’s Campaign: A Digest of Debates in the House of Commons, 2 April to 15 June 1982” published by HMSO, London.
By a remarkable coincidence, the book fell open at a speech by none other than that master of decisiveness, Robin Cook. Randomly dipping further into the book, it was eerie to read the ‘usual suspects’ such as Cook and Tony Benn making the same speeches then as they’ve been doing two decades later. It’s as if they’ve had their secretaries scan in their old speeches from Hansard, convert them into Microsoft Word documents, and then use Word’s find and replace facility to swap ‘Argentina’ and ‘Iraq’.
There was even dear old Tam Dalyell using the words ‘South Atlantic’, ‘mire’, and ‘Vietnam’ in one speech!
Patrick Crozier has some views on our cousins across the Big Pond
America is a great country. Yes, I know they never stop reminding us of the fact and it can become a bit irksome but it is still true and perhaps we should take the time to remind ourselves from time to time.
For starters America is a rich country. Not only is the average wage higher but the cost of living is lower. The average American has a bigger house, a better car and more consumer durables than just about anywhere else. Healthcare for the vast majority is excellent and an astonishing proportion of Americans attend college.
America is a land of opportunity – still. Just ask Anthony Hopkins or Catherine Zeta-Jones or Tracy Ullman or Jane Leeves or Henry Kissinger or Andrew Sullivan (he is a Brit isn’t he?) or Tina Brown (likewise?) or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Colin Powell’s dad. And that’s just the foreigners. America is a country where the “can do” attitude prevails and dreams can come true.
America has contributed massively to the rest of the world. From Hollywood movies to McDonalds to the personal computer to, well, closer to home, blogging. America has been responsible for 80% of the world’s rock music and 95% of its dance music. Oh, and ending two world wars. OK, so they weren’t decisive in the first (that was the Canadians and Australians) but I think we can credit them with the second. And then there’s the Cold War.
America is a free country. More than just about anywhere in the world American citizens are free from arbitrary arrest, torture and arbitrary punishment. The right to free speech is even enshrined in the constitution. And then, unlike most places, honoured. In America you can hold on to more of the property you have worked for than just about anywhere else and once the government has taken its cut you are more or less free to do whatever you like with it.
America is not without fault but even there many of America’s alleged faults are not faults at all. It is often accused of racism and racism certainly exists but racism exists everywhere. The Russians hate the Chechens, the Romanians hate the Hungarians and the Japanese hate everyone. What is remarkable about America is how little racism there is and how deeply its governing classes want to do something about it. The fact that so many Hollywood movies nowadays have a black in a leading or main supporting role speaks volumes for this desire.
People also complain about the crime rate but they are behind the times. With the exception of murder America’s crime rate is lower than that of the UK. That really ought to fill us with shame.
We Brits often get a bit snooty about American English but should we? I have this dreadful fear that my UK v US English competition will end in a US victory. US English does the job just well as our own version – it’s just that the words are different, that’s all.
People say that Americans are rude and pushy – just like the one out of Fawlty Towers. Some are for sure. But so are many Britons. And vast swathes of middle America contain some of the nicest, friendliest people you could ever want to meet.
It can be bruising to come face to face with the American corporate steamroller but is it really all that bad? American firms from Ford, to Oracle, to Mars and McDonalds have provided good jobs for thousands in Britain and millions around the world. Lest we forget, it was American money that built most of the London tube and the Ford Cortina MkII 1600E. And if American corporate dominance is such an issue, rather than getting angry, wouldn’t it be better to get even?
Actually, this is a general point. If we want to be as rich and as free as the Americans (and surely we do) rather than fume and rage, get snooty about things and bind up America in stupid international treaties wouldn’t the smart thing be to work out how they got that way and then do it for ourselves?
Well, wouldn’t it?
Nigel Meek is a British libertarian, a Samizdata reader and an executive officer with both the Libertarian Alliance and the Society for Individual Freedom.
I work in a state-sector Further Education college in the London suburbs. Most of our students are 16 to 19 year old full-timers taking A-levels or vocational equivalents, but we also have a large number of part-time adult students, mostly doing evening classes of one sort or another. We have a fair number of overseas students, and indeed enough of them to warrant the College employing a part-time International Students’ Officer.
One of my jobs is as the first point of contact with people submitting general email enquiries to the College. Mostly these are requests for prospectuses or other straightforward matters that I can deal with myself. Sometimes I have to pass them on to others.
It took me some time to realise – or at least to hypothesise – how illustrative emails were about the differing cultures that people come from. Emails from youngsters wanting a full-time prospectus are nowadays often written in mobile phone text language and/or are simply semi-literate. Emails from adults wanting a part-time prospectus are often just old-fashioned letters – “Dear Sir/Madam, blah blah blah, Yours faithfully” – sent via a new medium. The point is that in either case they tend to be quite short and direct: This is who I am, where I live, and what I want.
Emails – and indeed still the occasional letter – from overseas are often very different. And by ‘overseas’ I mean a very limited number of countries that between them supply the majority of such enquiries to the College: Pakistan, Nigeria, and The Gambia. The most noticeable feature about them is the quite astonishingly flowery, sycophantic, and obsequious tone in which they are often written. “Esteemed Sir, I have heard about your outstanding institution from many sources… It will fulfil a dream for me to come there… I would be truly honoured if you would provide me with information… Your humble servant…” I make this up by way of example, but believe me, it does not begin to do justice to how some of them are written.
At first, I thought that this was merely a rather quaint, if excessive, courtesy. It took me some time to consider that there might be another interpretation, and one that if correct offers an insight into the nature of the societies from which the authors come – and therefore also about our own. → Continue reading: E-mail and culture
Della writes in with something that proves Saddam Hussain and Ba’athist Socialism are not the only ghastly regime around
Robert Mugabe, refereshed from his meeting with M. Chirac in February annouced March 21st that “I am still a Hitler“. He clarified this by saying “let me be Hitler ten-fold and that’s what we stand for.”
In unrelated news the leader of the Zanu-PF party said late November 2002 “We would be better off with only six million people”.
The current population of Zimbabwe is 12 million.
Nice Mr. Chirac’s favourite African mass murderer
Editors note: When the British forces are finished in Iraq, perhaps they need to return home via Harare…
Tom Grey writes in from Slovakia with a summary of a ten page article from the NY Times website about Sayyid Qutb, The Philosopher of Islamic Terror… It is a very reasonable explanation of the power of Islamic ideas – and it is, in its implications, quite scary.
The vigilant police in many countries, applying themselves at last, have raided a number of Muslim charities and Islamic banks, which stand accused of subsidizing the terrorists. These raids have advanced the war on still another front, which has been good to see. But the raids have also shown that Al Qaeda is not only popular; it is also institutionally solid, with a worldwide network of clandestine resources. This is not the Symbionese Liberation Army. This is an organization with ties to the ruling elites in a number of countries; an organization that, were it given the chance to strike up an alliance with Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath movement, would be doubly terrifying; an organization that, in any case, will surely survive the outcome in Iraq…
And at the heart of that single school of thought stood, until his execution in 1966, was a philosopher named Sayyid Qutb – the intellectual hero of every one of the groups that eventually went into Al Qaeda, he was their ‘Karl Marx’ (to put it that way), their guide… → Continue reading: The ideologicial roots of terrorism
Earlier this year, Britain refused to supply crucial parts for Israel’s aging Phantom aircraft. So what one might ask? Its hardly the most nimble of modern warplanes. It is, it should be noted. reputedly the backbone of Israel’s nuclear capability.
Tough call for Samizdatistas… I am a great supporter of Israel, but I am not sure Western interests would not be complicated by the mere potential of an Israeli nuclear offensive. However, something tells me that the Israelis would not be hampered by missing British ejector seats. There is the legendary tear jerking story of the request to the 1981 Israeli Air Force Academy intake for what was possibly a one-way ticket to bomb the Osiraq research reactor in Iraq. It was not certain whether the Phantom’s would have the range to return. The commanding officer called for volunteers for what he frankly admitted was possibly a suicide mission. When volunteers were asked to step forward, to a man, all did.
Paul Staines
Malcolm Hutty spots someone taking a frequent ‘Samizdata.net’ position…
An article in the Telegraph argues that Britain should seek maximum political capital through institutionalising a re-invigorated permanent alliance with America. France and Germany should be left to take care of the neccessary fence-mending; since when has it been in Britains interests to increase French political influence?
So far, so very Samizdata. And not at all suprising for a Telegraph op-ed. However, down at the bottom of the web page is this significant byline:
David Frum was President Bush’s speech writer and author of his ‘axis of evil’ speech.
You do not have to believe in ‘argument from authority’ to realise that sometimes who is making an argument is as important as anything they say.
Malcolm Hutty
The Cuban Human Rights Commission reports 65 dissidents, mainly independent journalists, have been arrested in a three day crackdown.
Castro, as cynical as ever, is taking advantage of the world’s attention being focussed on the overthrow of another Socialist military dictator.
Paul Staines
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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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