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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G’day

· Aus/NZ affairs

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)

Theft-free Farming

· Aus/NZ affairs

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)

Going under Down Under

· Aus/NZ affairs

Alas, the ‘British Disease’ appears to have spread to Australia:

“Australia is set to ban more than 500 types of handguns and will give people six months to hand in their arms or risk going to prison.”

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)

The incorrigible spirit of Oz

· Aus/NZ affairs

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.

Lawyers for an Australian man who “mooned” a police car claimed it was his constitutional right and part of the larrikin Australian character.

Sounds entirely reasonable to me!

November 29th, 2002 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)

Bali bomb bind

· Aus/NZ affairs

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.

They are in a bind; how now do they blame the Howard government for making us a terror target by aligning with the US when their own pet issue seems to have done the same thing?

Good question.

November 15th, 2002 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)

Big Business is often the enemy of capitalism

· Aus/NZ affairs · Economics, Business & Globalization

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:

Microsoft would be forced to reconsider selling the Xbox video game system in Australia, or seek changes to the law, following the acquittal in July of a Sydney man alleged to have sold chips that modify a Sony PlayStation 2 to play imported games, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said yesterday.
[…]
“Given the way the economic model works, and that is a subsidy followed, essentially, by fees for every piece of software sold, our licence framework has to do that,” Mr Ballmer said. “If there are aspects that are not allowed, it would encourage us to require a change in the legal framework. Otherwise, it wouldn’t make economic sense.”

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)

Matilda’s Waltz

· Aus/NZ affairs

A commendably good analysis from James C. Bennett on the strategic decisions facing Australia following the Bali massacre:

“In Australia, there are two competing interpretations of the Bali attacks. Which one prevails will be critical to the security of Australia and Australians, and important to the United States. One interpretation sees the attacks as a consequence of Australian support for the U.S. policy in Afghanistan and on the issue of Iraq. Its conclusion is that Australia should cut and run, and hope not to be attacked again.

The other sees the attacks as evidence that Australia has no options in this war; that Australians were attacked not for what Australia had done, but for what Australians were. They see, quite correctly, that if radical Islamists conclude that the easiest way to change Australian behavior is to kill a substantial number of Australians, then Australians will be murdered in large numbers again and again.”

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)

Help the Australian Red Cross

· Aus/NZ affairs

If you wish to help, you can send contributions to the Australian Red Cross Bali Appeal here

October 21st, 2002 | Comments are closed

Grief Counselling

· Aus/NZ affairs

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:

“Asked if there was anything he wanted to say to families who lost relatives in the bomb blast, he said: “My message to the families is please convert to Islam as soon as possible.”

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)

And at the going down of the sun..

· Aus/NZ affairs

From David Harthill:

“We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields”.

I have nothing to add

October 16th, 2002 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)

Not crawling out of the woodwork, sprinting

· Aus/NZ affairs

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):

“Short-sighted politicians in Washington, notably Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, are putting it about that there are links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. They have been trying desperately to come up with evidence to prove it, a task which they have singularly failed to achieve. But in trying they have diverted the resources of their intelligence agencies, including the CIA, and worse, they are trying to manipulate intelligence-gathering for political ends.”

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:

“But some of the pool of grievances on which al-Qa’ida draws are real injustices – in particular the failure of the US to use its influence to secure a fair settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. These injustices ought to be resolved anyway, but resolving them may well reduce the supply of potential martyrs to murderous causes.”

Freedom for Zionist-occupied..er..Bali.

“The response of world leaders to this weekend’s attack should be to act to ensure that there is more justice in the world, rather than to deepen the sense of injustice that is the breeding ground of terrorists.”

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)

Something to do with the Australian occupation of Palestine perhaps?

· Asian affairs · Aus/NZ affairs · Middle East & Islamic

183 people at least are dead, probably more as 220 Australians and 20 or so British remain unaccounted for. All the victims were civilians, mostly young backpackers on holiday or the Indonesian staff serving them. Yet judging by what I seen written by John Pilger or Robert Fisk or Noam Chomsky since September 11th of last year, I thought the reason terrorists are attacking ‘us’ was something to do with injustice in Palestine? Is Bali part of Palestine? How many Palestinians have the Australian Army killed?

I recall hearing that the WTC was attacked because it was a symbol and centre of exploitive capitalism and the US military industrial complex. And what exactly was the Sari Club in Bali a symbol of? Will the people on WarbloggerWatch or at New Stateman tell us how the forces of US imperialism have been thwarted by the death of so many young Aussies and others in a holiday resort?

What was that you said? It is all about oil? Ah, silly me.

Evil-white-male and immodest un-Islamic
Australian woman flee Bali attack last night

October 14th, 2002 | 28 comments - (Comments are closed)
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