Once again Australians are celebrating ANZAC Day. It seems only yesterday I was writing about it here on this blog but another year goes by and yet again, British and Australian soldiers are on Middle Eastern soil together.
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Somebody (they have chosen to remain nameless) has posted a comment to one of the posts below requesting a ‘plug’ for their Australian libertarian website. Our anonymous commenter describes it as a “meagre attempt to create a Samizdata down under” which I think is an undersell. It looks like a fair dinkum site to me. Anyway, surf on over and crack open a few tinnies with those intrepid (but modest) Antipodean freedom fighters. March 14th, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
 To all those who believe that first-world farming cannot survive without the theft of subsidies, please then explain how New Zealand seems to manage with hardly any help from the state. I second the suggestion by Ross Clark in The Spectator… let’s have a buy-cott of New Zealand’s theft-free farm produce: the Kiwis puts British, European and North American agriculture to shame. January 9th, 2003 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Alas, the ‘British Disease’ appears to have spread to Australia:
Is there still time for free Australians to fight back? If so, then I urge them not to make the same mistake that gun-owners in the UK made by trying to defend gun-ownership as necessary to the continued participation in shooting sports. Minority sports are casually expendable. Not so, the right to self-defence. It is the latter that you must fight for. It also has the benefit of being the truth. Make sure every Australian knows that. Shout it from the top of Ayers Rock. December 6th, 2002 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
It is good to know that in a turbulent world, one can count on our Anglosphere cousins down under to maintain their glorious traditions of brash vulgarity and plain-spokenness (and not to mention the ability to kick ass at cricket). On a gloomy November afternoon, while pondering the latest tragic events in Kenya, I came across this cheeky little news report, which should gladden the hearts of anyone who has less than 100 percent respect for the police, who increasingly seem more intent on social control than beating crime.
Sounds entirely reasonable to me! November 29th, 2002 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
Tim Blair has noted an arkward fact about the Bali bombing for the Australian left to deal with, namely that the Australian left’s (entirely reasonable) campaign to free East Timor from Indonesia was one of the things that provoked the bombing, according to the latest production from Bin Laden Records and Tapes.
Good question. November 15th, 2002 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
What so many of capitalism’s defenders seem to miss is that just because a large company is doing something legally, that does not mean it is ‘kosher’ capitalism. In Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s, companies like Krupp and Seimens remained under entrenched private management in spite of the National Socialist German Workers Party coming to power, or more accurately, because of the new overtly anti-capitalist government. They did this by running their companies in such a manner as to support the objectives of the National Socialists. In return, the state ensured they maintained a privileged position, insulated from upstart new market entrants in their respective fields. These companies, working hand in glove with the state, could ensure that national laws would be adjusted as needed to support whatever business models the entrenched companies liked, and the state could be sure that company strategies would be based servicing the needs and objectives of the Nazi Party, not to mention paying backhanders to leading Party members. Of course, one does not have to look as far back as National Socialist Germany of the 1940’s to see examples of companies trying to manipulate the state to prop up an entrenched way of doing things: for the last few years the music industry in the United States has been trying to use the law of the land to crush challenges to its old physical media based business models. Rather than running their business in the interests of the state, nowadays in modern democratic statist political systems, large companies spend vast sums on lobbyists and on funding the election campaigns of politicians who might as well have an hourly rate for their services stamped on their foreheads. Now in Australia, Microsoft looks ready to try and buy themselves some legislation for much the same reasons after an Australian court declined to stop people modifying XBox hardware:
As usual a pure laissez-faire solution beckons: if Australia refuses to criminalize innovation and therefore Microsoft declines to sell its XBox Games Consols down under, then simply abolish all the idiotic import restrictions and tariffs currently clogging up Australia’s economy and then… who gives a damn where Microsoft chooses to sell their products: if there is a demand for XBox in Oz, a ‘grey market’ will rapidly appear as capitalist importers across the world buy up XBoxs by the container load elsewhere (such as Taiwan, USA, India) and ship them in themselves. If that busts MS’s business model, so what? Let them find another one that actually works without the involvement of police around the world to make it succeed. End of problem. October 31st, 2002 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
A commendably good analysis from James C. Bennett on the strategic decisions facing Australia following the Bali massacre:
He also examines the potentially catastrophic consequences for the Balinese. James has an audacious talent for getting to the heart of the matter without cant or hyperbole and by my reckoning he has hit a multitude of nails squarely on the head yet again. October 24th, 2002 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
October 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed
What do you say to someone whose 20-something daughter has been transformed into a charcoaled cadaver because she was dancing and drinking cocktails? Personally, I have no idea. I really would not know what to say. Some, however, seem to possess the requisite linguistic tools. One such is Abu Bakar Bashir a Moslem cleric who offered this advise in an interview with the Australian newspaper The Age:
Yes, I have no doubt that they will be falling over themselves in the rush to do just that. October 18th, 2002 | 7 comments - (Comments are closed)
From David Harthill:
I have nothing to add October 16th, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
The curious thing about idiots is that they never allow their intellectual disabilities to slow them down; always frightfully quick off the mark, they are. Mind you, it does help if you have the script already written beforehand. As per usual the Guardian is the frontrunner (and I promise that I am not making it up this time):
So now the Australians know who to blame; it was Rumsfeld all along! And he would’ve gotten away with it too if hadn’t been for those pesky Guardianistas! Hot on the heels of the frontrunner, comes the The Subservient:
Freedom for Zionist-occupied..er..Bali.
Oh I’d wager that there are quite a lot of people just aching for a bit of justice, my old chum. You know, in a world of rapidly spiralling uncertainties, there is a perverse comfort in knowing that some things never change. October 15th, 2002 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
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