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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More juicy goodness from Michael Totten If you are not a regular reader of Michael Totten’s truly outstanding Middle East Journal (and why not?), I recommend his latest offering The Rings on Zarqawi’s Finger.
Michael is going to be able to dine out on this time in the Middle East for a very long time, methinks. Damn, I wish blogs were around in the 1990’s.
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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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A line from the November 27th dispatch struck me:
“The trash is picked up once a week by a Fallujah garbage collection company. ”
Weekly bin collection, huh? I have a distant recollection of that being provided to the British taxpayer. I believe the state scrapped it after NHS dental care, tuition fee grants, state provided eye check-ups and childrens milk. We also paid 10p less in the £ on tax!
What wonderful, efficient, well-targeted and cost-effective public services we have now…
As a reader of Toten’s Reports, I have noted his (as well as others) references to the realities of the social order structure in most of Iraq.
David Petraus made use of that reality during his first tour, in Mosul.
I publicly criticized my somewhat younger classmate, John Warner for his dictum to Petraus in mid 2007 that civic order in Iraq had to come “from the top down;” and referred him to the earlier advices of Richard Pipes, which despite Pipes’ proven sagacity in policies (he headed the famous “Team B” at the CIA when Bush I was Director), were ignored. Whilst there are other (some earlier) examples, there is one from FrontPageMag.com back in January ’04 (before the election):
I tried to no avail to put in a link. Anyway, you can Google Richard Pipes Iraq, and find the reference.
Paragraphs like this support the conclusion that there is both a lot of reason to be optimistic, and a lot of potential for things to get really bad if we and the moderate majority fail. We really do have to get this right and the Islamic world could experience its own enlightenment. Get it wrong and their dark ages will spill into our western lives.
Well I get weekly bin collection… Of course last time I checked it was pretty much all the local council have ever done for me.
Paragraphs like this support the conclusion that there is both a lot of reason to be optimistic, and a lot of potential for things to get really bad if we and the moderate majority fail. We really do have to get this right and the Islamic world could experience its own enlightenment. Get it wrong and their dark ages will spill into our western lives.
This is why “getting Iraq right” is one of the major factors determining who’s going to get my vote come November. Unfortunately, the MSM seems to have decided there isn’t much worth reporting on happening in Iraq, and the debates are focusing on ‘domestic issues’.
“Damn, I wish blogs were around in the 1990’s.”
Did you nevertheless keep a diary during your time in Bosnia Perry?
Not really but I got to hear alarming things whizzing through the air, got to see my tax money getting put to good use for once (damn I love the sound F-16s and GR7s make), drank an insane amount of Loza and Slivovitz, acquired a taste for burek and fell madly in lust with a lot of intense Slavic ladies, some of whom I am still in contact with. Hmm, maybe it is just as well blogging was not around then as I don’t think I was quite as ‘business-like’ and focused as Michael Totten.
Time well spent nevertheless 🙂