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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…make sure you have actually read what the person you are criticizing did, and did not say.
Matthew Yglesias called the Croatian reoccupation of Krajina ‘genocide’ and apparently I enjoy it. And where exactly are the mass graves of thousands of this ‘genocide’? Even the much more vicious Serbian cetnic activities in Croatia, Bosnia i Herzegovina and Kosovo were not ‘genocide’ and I speak as someone who was personally on the receiving end of them. They were ‘ethnic cleansing’ to use the modern term. Mass murder for sure. Mass rapes for sure. But genocide? What happened to the Jews in Europe 1939-1945 was genocide, what happened in Rwanda was genocide. What happened in Armenia was genocide. So to call the Croatian activities in Krajina ‘genocide’ is both absurd and idiotarian. Mr. Yglesias’ use of the term makes him Fisk-able, not me.
I never claimed that the Croatian military did not do some bad things (or more usually HOS or someHVO militia groups), merely that the re-occupation of Krajina per se was not one of those ‘bad things’. I know exactly what did and did not happen to many Serbs when we retook our country. But the big difference here was that what some Croatian elements did under people like Tuta in BiH was not a systematic program of centrally directed murder and rape based ethnic displacement in the manner conducted by Arkan, Seselj etc. and backed by the Yugoslav and Bosnian Srpska authorities under Milosevic and Karadzic. The Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam was conducted by US forces and it was ghastly but it was not ordered by the US government.
Were some Croats also involved in ‘bad things’? Yes, for sure. What the Croats who engaged in war crimes did (and I have no problem calling it that) was a series of isolated, not systematic, atrocities and on a tiny scale compared to what was done to us and the Bosnians. There are two Serbian families living directly across the street from my parent’s house in Glina right now! They did not flee on the theory that unlike many others who had looted the homes of absent Croats, they had no reason to flee. That said I (and they) never had an unrealistic view of the Croatian Army and MUPs circa 1995-1996, particularly as many of its members were people who has suffered the loss of family and loved ones in 1991 and had scores to settle. Thus our Serbian neighbours were very glad when my parents moved back and were able to vouch for their definite non-cetnic credentials to the new ‘powers that be’. I do not have a simplistic view of this. However wars in the real world are not just fought from 5000 metres up, they involve people on the ground and so bad things always happen.
Next time someone criticizes my remarks, I hope they read them in order to see what I did and did not actually say and not just attribute views to me based on their ignorant prejudices.
The Daily Dose is a wide ranging newsblog, consistently libertarian in outlook but less likely to assault you with polemics than yours truly. Blogstress Orchid presents numerous brief-comments-with-link entries daily plus the occasional lengthier prognostication. A typical Orchic flowering:
WHY THE DOTCOMS FAILED: Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all before… overinvestment, shoddy business models, the arrogance of 24-year-old CEOs. This rant (scroll down below the images) points out something that most chroniclers of the DotBombs underemphasized: human nature.
(Is chroniclers a word? Oh, well, you get my drift.)
If you like your bloggage in informal quick-fix Daily Doses, then this is the blog for you.
Boy, I take my eyes off Adil Farooq of Muslimpundit for a week and he gets a severe dose of blogorrhea.
As usual his stuff is top notch.
There is an interesting article “Nuke Nerves” over at Jeff Jarvis’ blog today. Unfortuneately he doesn’t seem to have easily extractable links so you’ll just have to search. What grabbed my attention was this “Sum of All (my) Fears” line from the Washington Post:
…the intelligence community, they said, believes that al Qaeda could already control a stolen Soviet-era tactical nuclear warhead…
I mentioned once before, perhaps as far back as October, my worries about several Russian tactical nukes reported missing by a UK newspaper feature article in the early ’90’s. It may have been the Telegraph but it is so long ago I simply do not remember. I do remember discussing it with General Daniel O. Graham of the High Frontier Society at an International Space Development Conference in Washington DC in May 1992. Anyone who has access to the appropriate archives can thus limit their search to the period between September 1989 and May 1992.
The point of the article was that 2-3 advanced low yield Russian tactical nuclear weapons, artillery shells I believe, were unaccounted for. Iran was believed to have acquired them. I have heard not a peep about this story in the last 10 years.
Some weeks ago Glenn Reynolds commented on an article in Nanotechnology Magazine. The author claims there is a nanobacteria so small it slips past our defenses. It creates Calcium deposits in virtually every organ of the body when it encysts itself for further protection. It reproduces very, very slowly due the inefficiency of its’ tiny molecular machinery, takes about 40 years to do noticeable damage… and is the cause of virtually all degenerative diseases. He claims it is cureable and his organization is running trials already, using FDA approved drugs in special prescriptions.
Glenn readily admitted passing judging on these claims was out of his area of expertise. Had it been a lesser claim, I’m just enough of a know-it-all to have judged it within mine. But given the earthshaking nature of what was on the table… I decided to hold back and wait for reinforcements. I really don’t like to make a complete fool of myself if I can help it. I am a firm believer that when something seems too good to be true… it probably is.
I contacted Christine Peterson and Eric Drexler at the Foresight Institute and ran it by them.
While Eric did not entirely dismiss it, he did point out a very troubling issue which would require explanation before one could take the paper seriously:
I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to find that the medicos have overlooked a class of small, unusual bacteria. Evidence for such things has been trickling out for a while now.
On the other hand, any nanobacterial researcher who claims to have found a bacterium only 20 nm in diameter has no idea what a bacterium is. (It helps to have room for both a ribosome and a cell membrane, and maybe even some DNA and enzymes just to round things out.)
I wouldn’t suggest you throw away your “remedies” just yet.
If you are a registered Independant or Libertarian, or are willing to be so registered (or re-registered if you are a Demopublican), please contact the Carla Howell For Governor organization and sign her ballot petition. Just follow the quick and easy instructions I’ve excerpted from her campaign mailing:
Who can sign?
1. You must be registered to vote in Massachusetts.
2. You must be registered as an “Unenrolled” (Independent) or “Libertarian” voter.
3. If you are registered as a “Democrat” or “Republican” voter, we can re-register you as “Unenrolled” or “Libertarian”, so that you may legally sign our petitions. (Democrats and Republicans are legally forbidden from signing our petitions.)
4. If you’re a Massachusetts resident and you’re NOT registered to vote, we can register you as an “Unenrolled” (Independent) or “Libertarian”. Then you can sign our petitions.
What do you do next – if you meet these requirements?
5. Send us your name, home address, city, zip code, and phone number at petition@carlahowell.org
6. If you are registered “Democrat” or “Republican”, or if you are NOT registered to vote, please tell us in your email message, and whether you want to be registered “Unenrolled” or “Libertarian”. We’ll send you a voter re-registration form.
Here’s what we do: we mail you the petitions with quick and easy instructions.
Here’s all you have to do:
7. Sign the petitions the way the instructions tell you to. (If your signature or petitions are filled out wrong, the government will disqualify your signature.)
8. Put your signed petitions in the return envelope we provide, put a first-class stamp on the envelope, and mail it in.
Less than 60 seconds to sign. Quick and easy. Saves our campaigns money. And you will be part of the biggest Tax Revolt in Massachusetts since the Boston Tea Party.
Please send us your name, home address, city, zip code, and phone number immediately at petition@carlahowell.org . And if you are enrolled “Democrat” or “Republican”, or if you are NOT registered to vote, please include the information requested in #6 above.
Massachusetts state law forbids us from accepting petitions printed directly off the internet. The law requires us to use Secretary of State Certified hard copies printed from flaw-free templates.
By supporting Carla’s candidacy you are also assuring a high profile for the ballot initiative to end the state income tax.
Are we at Libertarian Samizdata partisan? What on Earth would ever make you think that?
Does your blog lack a certain zip? Does it fail to reach other parts other blogs reach? Does Glenn Reynolds treat your blog like a bidet? In short, does your blog suck? Well perhaps your problem is that your refreshments, so essential to good blogging, are in pedestrian porcelain… your crockery is a mockery!
The truth is that hardcore bloggers prefer their bourbon toddies in a Bitter Princess mug. It is not enough to just hang out with a ‘Mittle European’ fixated Bitter Girl… to feel the full effects that are so efficacious to superior blogging, only a Bitter Girl mug will do! I find that running my tongue along the edge and thinking of Shannon greatly enhances the creative processes.
I have been labouring under the impression that the growth of Home-Schooling is a purely US phenomenon.
Not so. A refreshingly illuminating documentary programme was shown last night on UK’s Channel 4 about the rapidly growing popularity of Home-Schooling here in Britain. Sorry, it was a TV show so no link.
Actually, this should not come as a surprise given the current educational choices faces parents in Britain. Whilst private schools are widely available in Britain they are ferociously expensive so people of modest means have no choice but to process their precious charges through the state meat-grinders that HM government so kindly provides. The repute of the latter plumbs lower depths with each passing year.
The Home-schooling parents were all interviewed at length and, unanimously, they declared that their motivation was entirely due to the way they felt their children were being harmed or hindered by being sent to school in the ‘traditional’ manner so they just upped and decided to take matters into their own hands. Judging from the kids they were gloriously right; without exception these children were articulate, bright, curious, well-behaved, ambitious and highly-motivated. Furthermore, the time-worn prediction that Home-schooled children would grow up shy and withdrawn was proven to be egregious nonsense.
Now it might be said that the documentary-makers wanted to put a positive slant on things but programme-makers and TV producers in this country are notoriously hostile to free market ideas so if there was any bias it would most certainly tend towards the opposite.
Watching this show was a revelatory joy for someone like me but I almost had to be peeled off the ceiling when I heard some of the things these parents were saying. One mother said:
“I wouldn’t want any money from the government because I wouldn’t them involved in any way in what I am doing. That’s what’s so nice about what we’re doing; the government has no juristiction over me….They have no involvement in what I do and I’d like to keep it that way”
And another mother said:
“What tends to happen is that when parents grow more confident they question not just the type of schooling we’re given but also the type of health care we’re given and how Councils are run. It leads to you saying, hang on, if I can take this large amount of responsibility back into my own life, why can’t I live in a different way?”
Why indeed?
When he is Irish of course! Well according to Democratic Representatives in US Congress this seems to be the case.
Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York seems to have allied herself with the Provisional Irish Republican Army (P-IRA). She attempted, with some of her Democratic colleagues, to push through legislation in praise of dead P-IRA terrorists. In this amazing act of stupidity, these Democrats are trying to use the American House of Representatives to further their support for the P-IRA. This group of people obviously do not share most Americans new found distaste for terrorism of any kind. This disgusting legislative act should be widely reported to all who will listen.
Oh yes, and one more point, Ms. McCarthy is a staunch anti-gun zealot.
Surely this is not the best message to send to the US’s staunch ally, Britain. Reports on this in the British press will not make it easy for Blair to convince his reluctant back-benchers to stay quiet, when and if the US/UK coalition goes after Iraq.
Either the Democrats need to do some house cleaning/reprimanding or else anyone who loathes terrorism should campaign to make sure all those Democrats who supported this bill are defeated at the next opportunity.
Lagwolf
The name Hollings rang some bells, but I just couldn’t place it. I Googled him and nearly drew a blank… except I found his name is Ernest “Fritz” Hollings. That clicked. I dug back into my old email queues and notes from the days when I ran Pittsburgh L5 and found a cryptic lead. I had angrily called Hollings office on February 21st, 1986. All I could tell from the phone log was Hollings had done something I’d considered utterly despicable at the time and that it had to do with the Challenger disaster.
What else to do but call on friends like Glenn Reynolds to do a quick Lexus search? And now I’ve got it.
Senator Ernest “Fritz” Hollings (D, Times-Warner) tried to grandstand on the corpses of 7 dead astronauts. While submarines were still looking for key bits of debris on the ocean floor and the Rogers Commission was starting the long difficult job of sifting the evidence, Hollings was trying to grab headlines by calling for Senate Investigation. As reported in the MacNeil Lehrer Report transcript of that day:
LEHRER: Key members of the U.S. Senate went to war today over the shuttle Challenger investigation. Democrat Ernest Hollings fired the first round, holding a news conference to call for the resignation of NASA chief William Graham and for a Senate investigation of the Challenger accident. Hollings also had critical words for the presidential commission which is already investigating.
Within that context the log entry for my phone conversation with Gary Oleson (head of the Washington DC-L5 chapter) makes it clear why I was ticked off enough to call a Senator in another state:
Gary Oleson: looks like a setup. Jesse Moore is from S. Carolina, knows Hollings, and just moved to JSC [Johnson Space Center] post, puts him in line for running NASA if Graham gets the boot. Graham is evidently being fed incorrect info and the commission is being told that he’s going to give them incorrect info. Hollings, with GHR [Gramm-Hollings-Rudman] amendment under his belt is headline grabbing and has nothing to do with investigation. We have already notified chapters in SC. We’ll try to nail Hollings.
So this isn’t my first run in with this…. person.
And by the way… there’s a new Hollingsgate article over at Instapundit.
Joshua Micah Marshall makes some pretty strange remarks about some recent history on his blog.
But let’s go back to 1992 and ’93. Back then, one of the contested areas was the part of Croatia called the Krajina. This was essentially an ethnic Serb enclave within the borders of Croatia and as you might imagine this became a volatile crisis point in the fighting between Serbs and Croats. In any case, United Nations peace-keepers were sent into the region in the beginning of 1992 to maintain the peace. And did a reasonably good, though by no means perfect, job at it. For a while, the matter was thus placed in suspense, until 1995 when then-Croatian President Franjo Tudjman gave the UN Mission an ultimatum to leave. Eventually the Croatians rolled in and retook the region with some quite ugly consequences.
Let me set him straight on a few points: The UN had nothing to do with the reduction in fighting in Croatia in 1992. The reason the fighting died down was that the Croatian National Guard (ZNG) and the Serbs had fought each other to a standstill. The front line stabilised because that was as far as the Serbs could get once Croatia’s ad hoc army was able to dig in. However the Croatians, due to the criminal and immoral arms embargo that favoured the heavily armed Serbian Yugoslav Army, lacked the ability to mount offensive operations to retake Krajina…therefore stalemate. The UN was utterly irrelevant to that outcome.
Thereafter, the Serbs shifted their attention to Bosnia i Herzegovina whilst the Croatians used whatever means they could to build up their army, now called the HV. The UN did not ‘keep the peace’, it just presided over the stalemated front line in Croatia while Croats armed and trained their army and Milosevic, Karadzic, Mladic, Arkan, Seselj etc. and the people who were willing to follow their orders got on with raping and murdering their way across Bosnia i Herzegovina whilst the international community subjected them to grimaces and intermittent clucking sounds.
So the fact that the Croatia, subjected to the criminal arms embargo that had impaired its ability to defend us, took measures to ensure that political forces in the USA would not continue to act against our interests, is bad exactly how? I assume Joshua is equally against Israel’s vast lobbying efforts in the USA as well. Does Joshua expect Croatians to accept that we were not entitled to retake Krajina? Sorry but I see it rather differently. I am from Glina and one of the ‘quite ugly consequences’ of the Serbian cetnic’s arriving was Croats like me getting killed in their homes because they were Croats. I didn’t see this on CNN or read about it in the newspapers, I saw it out of my fucking bedroom window before my family and I managed to get out of town and ended up as refugees.
So if Joshua expects us to feel bad about taking Krajina back and trying to manipulate US political forces which were originally a party to the embargo against us, he is going to be disappointed. Certain US political forces helped keep us weak so why should we not try to change that given the harm we suffered as a result? I wonder if Joshua thinks the nice Mr. Arkan and nice Mr. Seselj would have eventually admitted it was all just a big misunderstanding and let bygones be bygones if only us mean old Croats had not come back with guns blazing and tanks rolling? One of the ‘quite ugly consequences’ of the Croatian Army expelling the UN and then the Serbian Army from Krajina was my family and I got to go home. I take this matter a little personally. If you have a problem with that, go fuck yourself.
We believe in God and the Mauser
– Boer saying circa 1895
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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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