"Rather than searching in Marx's texts for a condemnation in advance of the Gulag, it is a matter of asking what in those texts could have made the Gulag possible."

Cartoon by Etta Hulme

"The [destructive aftermaths of the] Soviet Union, Maoist China, Kim's North Korea, Pol Pot's Cambodia, Castro's Cuba, Mugabe's Zimbabwe, Chavez and Maduro's Venezuela, and countless other deadly authoritarian regimes and revolutions— all carried out in Marx's name, and celebrated by Marxists at their inception — are casually dismissed and dissociated from Marx's theories ... They are not 'true socialism' or 'true Marxism,' we are told, and it falls to the next socialist regime to implement Marx 'the right way.'
    "A succinct and representative example of this tendency among modern intellectuals may be seen in political theorist Matthew McManus's account of Marx's reputation over time

'But of course the most substantial objection came from Karl Marx, whose epochal critique of political economy remains in some respects the climax of the modernist project...Marxism became the chief theoretical outlook for most of the major socialist movements and parties by the end of the 19th century, with many achieving important reforms. But its reputation was seriously tarnished by the totalitarian movements in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, and elsewhere, which appealed to Marx's legacy to advance tyranny while taking serious liberties with his thought. With the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989, many thought socialisms' days were numbered, though it has since enjoyed a resurgence in popularity as the inequalities and vulgarities of neoliberalism [sic] became increasingly scrutinised.'

"Note that McManus errs in assigning high status to Marx's intellectual following in the late nineteenth century, which, as we have seen, he did not possess at any point in his life or for many decades thereafter. Neither does McManus substantiate his efforts to differentiate the humanitarian abuses of Marx's twentieth century followers from Marx's own revolutionary theorising. 

    "One is reminded of the quip of French philosopher Michel Foucault, who stated in a rare moment of clarity: 'Rather than searching in [Marx's] texts for a condemnation in advance of the Gulag, it is a matter of asking what in those texts could have made the Gulag possible, what might even now continue to justify it, and what makes it intolerable truth still accepted today.' 'The Gulag question,' Foucault continued, 'must be posed not in terms of error (reduction of the problem to one of theory) but in terms of reality'."

~ Phil Magness, from recent writing

Zimbabwe: "classiest coup ever"

A friend posts from downtown Harare, where murdering thug Robert Mugabe appears to have been (finally) overthrown, to observe :

"You gotta give it to Zimbos! They even coup in style. People are out shopping, coffee shops and restaurants are occupied by relaxed smiling people. Even the city of Harare staff are out fixing potholes. The only absence is that of traffic police harassing road users. Even the army which is very present at shopping malls and the CBD are watchful but friendly. That is the classiest coup ever!"

And the opposition's Morgan Tsvangirai posts that Mugabe must now formally stand down, that a "roadmap" be set in place for free and fair elections, and that "SADC, the African Union, the UN and the broader international community be the underwriters and guarantors to the roadmap to free and fair elections."

This is the only assurance to an irreversible path to national freedom, happiness and economic prosperity.
   To our neighbours, you now all know the simple choice you face; either support our rights or our refugees.

Nicely put.
.

"Liberated" Zimbabwe (updated)

When tragedy strikes, it's not enough just to mourn, or to say things like  'that's the way the world goes' -- it's essential to make sense of the world and to guard against future tragedies that lessons are learned from tragedies, and applied in our own context, especially if the tragedies are man-made.

One contemporary disaster that is entirely man-made, and entirely avoidable, is the destruction of Zimbabwe and its people.  Ed Cline describes its demise:

    [O]nce the “breadbasket” of Africa when it was known as Rhodesia (and for a few years after its “liberation” from white rule)[, it] is now a destitute, starving nation whose citizens choose flight to neighboring states in search of food and employment. Nearly a third of the country’s 12 million population has fled.
    The life expectancy of males has dropped from 60 years to 37, and for women, to 34 years. Unemployment stands at over 80 percent...  Over more than a generation, since Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, adult literacy has fallen from 90 percent to about 40 percent...  Inflation is currently measured at 150,000 percent and climbing; it takes a wheelbarrow of paper money to buy a small bag of flour, when it is available...
    Once second only to South Africa as the most prosperous economy in Africa, Mugabe has reduced Zimbabwe to a condition only a slightly better than the Darfur region of the Sudan...

The country has gone from breadbasket to basket case in less than a generation, and there are many, many lessons to be drawn from that.  Ed Cline draws them in a succinct and pointed essay at his Rule of Reason blog: “Liberation” Ideology in Practice.  (If you're impatient, you might like to scroll down to the word 'Obama.')

UPDATE:  From breadbasket to basket case, and stolen election to an election now being stolen -- "a violent crackdown on opposition supporters ... and a cowed judiciary seem to be helping one of Africa’s longest serving dictators to live another day" reports Kenya's Daily Nation -- but South African president Thabo Mbeki insists there is "no crisis" here, nothing to see, move along, move along.  Mbeki made his "no crisis" comment after meeting with Robert Mugabe en route to a UN Security Council meeting that he chaired, and at which he managed to keep the issue of Zimbabwe's troubles off the agenda. 

Mbeki it will be remembered, achieved fame a few years ago for telling global media that

he does not know of anyone who has died of HIV-Aids in his own country, where about 6 million people are living with and are dying of HIV-Aids-related complications.

Vultures circling over "fibre future"

State worshipper David Skilling of the NZ Institute proposes the government establish and partially fund a coercive monopoly called FibreCo to "roll out" national broadband and deliver dividends to rent-seeking crony capitalists who participate. "For now, this country's fibre future remained reliant on investment decisions taken by Telecom," says the Institute, which faces "weak incentives" to invest significantly in a fibre access network. The whole panegyric to rent-seeking cronyism is here.

Those "weak incentives" by the way include the continued support for local loop nationalisation from the likes of Skilling and David Farrar and of course Obergruppenfuehrer Cunliffe himself -- not to mention all those competitors of Telecom who wish to take advantage of its networks without any investment themselves -- and of course the dismemberment of Telecom forced upon it by Cunliffe in an effort to boost his ministerial ranking. 

In other words, the faces of those "weak incentives" are themselves and others like them who support the ministerial jackboot being applied to Telecom's private property, and the sort of coercive resnt-seeking proposed by Skilling.

People like Russell Brown, who while continuing to celebrate the ongoing nationalisation of Telecom's existing networks,  regularly celebrates how the faster broadband he's now getting in Pt Chev is already allowing him to steal even more films and TV from the internet.

Good to know why he's so keen on faster broadband, anyway.

Perhaps these luminaries could read and reflect on the comments of Telstra's Sol Trujillo last year when a similar public-private partnership was proposed by Kevin Rudd -- Trujillo called this a "kumbaya, holding hands" theory he wanted no part of;  said Trujillo: "We are only going to participate in the things that we own and control."  And how else could you justify the sizeable investment involved? What incentives are there?

Perhaps too they could reflect on Morgan Tsvangirai's argument for the importance of reinstituting property rights in Zimbabwe and think about the importance of drawing up such a programme for New Zealand, instead of continuing to bang the drum for their destruction.

UPDATE: Paul Walker comments at his blog: "Its not clear to me how a state guaranteed monopoly would speed up anything... Competition gives the best incentives, especially in rapidly changing, innovative markets."  Perfectly correct.  Doesn't stop Rod Drury and, lamentably, Bernard Hickey (who should know better) joining the chorus in praise of the corporatising/nationalising state. "It goes against the grain for me to recommend that a government effectively nationalise a private asset," says Hickey, who doesn't let the splinters slow his slide into the nationalisation chorus.

Genuine hope for Zimbabwe

Several years ago, Robert Muldoon observed accurately that Robert Mugabe was famous only for running around the jungle shooting people.

The three decades since his emergence from the jungle have shown him ruthlessly capable of doing anything to remain in power, so the announcement by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai following the weekend's poll that "Zimbabwe will never be the same again," seems premature, if not wholly optimistic.

That said, it's worth wondering what change if any would be represented by a change of power in favour of Tsvangirai's opposition Movement for Democratic Change.  An article by Tsvangirai in a recent Wall Street Journal suggests the change would be profound -- not only is his he more aware of the reason's for Zimbabwe's collapse than are those African leaders who seem mystified at the basket cases they've made of their own countries, but Tsvangirai knows precisely what to do about it:

Out of the many reasons for Zimbabwe's decline, three stand out. First is the ruling regime's contempt for the rule of law...  The government of Zimbabwe must be committed to protecting persons and property; and the restoration of political freedom and property rights is an essential part of MDC's economic recovery strategy...

The second reason for Zimbabwe's decline is the government's destruction of economic freedom, in order to satisfy an elaborate patronage system.

The MDC is committed to slashing bureaucratic red tape and letting domestic and foreign entrepreneurs improve their lot and, consequently, Zimbabwe's fortunes. We will open economic opportunity to all Zimbabweans. Unlike the ZANU-PF dictatorship, which has destroyed domestic entrepreneurship, we consider the business acumen and creative ingenuity of the people to be the main source of our future growth.

The third factor responsible for the country's decline is the size and rapaciousness of the government. Today, that size is determined by the requirements of patronage...  The MDC plans a complete restructuring of the government, including a reduction of the number of ministers to 15. The government will have to live within its means. It will not be allowed to inflate its way out of trouble...  Most state-owned companies are woefully inefficient, a strain on the budget and a much-abused vehicle for ZANU-PF patronage. They will be privatized or shut down.

And he's been saying this for years - here he is in 2003 making the case that freedom and prosperity are linked:

The key to starting an economic recovery is the restoration of the rule of law, a peaceful situation in the country, a situation of law and order. Confidence-building measures have to be carried out so that all the potential players can be reassured that recovery is intended and under way. There needs to be a clear signal that respect for individual rights and for property rights has returned.

Hot damn, there's hope for Zimbabwe yet.  Based on those words, and presuming that he means them, if Tsvangirai can't get the authority and the support necessary to implement his programme in Zimbabwe, I'd be damned happy to have him implement it here.

"Nothing to hide"?

Tame Iti returns home to the plaudits of a fawning media and announces " I have nothing to hide."

Fine then, let's take him at his word -- except we can't. It would mean ignoring the efforts of his lawyers, his co-defendants and his supporters to shut down and suppress the evidence of what he was up to with his 100 trainees in those six camps with all those munitions.

If he truly has nothing to hide, then instead of patsy interviews with braindead interviewers eager for nothing more than a pat on the head and a signed photo with their hero -- the same sort of braindead fawning these same analysts did with David Bain -- let's see him instead agreeing to the release of all the evidence that's been compiled of his and his co-defendants' actions over the last two years.

Then we might be able to agree he has nothing to hide. Until then, then you know his word is worth as little as John Minto's.

UPDATE: Speaking of Iti's lawyers and milking the gullible, as I was, Annette Sykes, "the woman who clapped and cheered when the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed is now running to an international body that treats North Korea, New Zealand, Syria, Sweden and Burma as moral equivalents." Notes Liberty Scott in 'The Immoral Plead to the Amoral,'

Sykes (who for some inexplicable reason can still command some respect in the media) is going to go to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Peoples. A body which has as its full time, Western taxpayer funded job, to criticise Western governments for treatment of Indigenous peoples, whilst treating the corrupt ridden tinpot quasi-democracies of Africa as being great models of decolonised empowerment. You know, the type of body that throws stones at New Zealand but ignores Zimbabwe, because (after all) Robert Mugabe is indigenous...

How do you spell 'opportunism'?

Murder in Myanmar

Here's the end effect of Mao's infamous dictum on political power: Power, he said, comes out of the barrel of a gun. He might have added that murdering authoritarian thugs will only reluctantly cede such power. The Burmese are the latest to feel the force of that dictum. Reports the Daily Mail:

Thousands of protesters are dead and the bodies of hundreds of executed monks have been dumped in the jungle, a former intelligence officer for Burma's ruling junta has revealed.

Murdering bastards.

UPDATE: Says Christopher Hitchens at Slate, "Burma's foul regime depends on Beijing," and is perhaps a warming that the benevolence of the Beijing Government can be too easily overestimated, as is the benignity of religious resistance in Rangoon.

Some people write to me [says Hitchens] to say that I must be mistaken about religion, because the opposition to the gruesome dictatorship in Burma is led by Buddhist monks. This seems to be wrong twice because a) the photographs of the demonstrations also show large crowds of Burmese wearing ordinary civilian garb; and b) the dictatorship is itself Buddhist and has expended huge sums on building temples to witness to the fact. It's fine by me if monks join the opposition... One is not hoping for a future Buddhist republic in Burma but for a country that is emancipated from totalitarianism in all its forms...

I thought President Bush was quite correct in listing his least favorite regimes during his address to the United Nations last week and in trying to ramp up the international pressure on the goons in Rangoon. The governments that he singled out were the uniquely repellent ones that consider the citizen to be the property of the state and the uniquely boring ones that have remained in power until their citizens are positively screaming for release. I do not need to specify these senescent gangster systems individually, except that they all have one thing in common. They are all defended, from Cuba to Zimbabwe, by the Chinese vote at the United Nations.

Those who care or purport to care about human rights must start to discuss this problem in plain words. Is there an initiative to save the un-massacred remains of the people of Darfur? It will be met by a Chinese veto. Does anyone care about Robert Mugabe treating his desperate population as if it belonged to him personally? China is always ready to help him out. Are the North Koreans starved and isolated so that a demented playboy can posture with nuclear weapons? Beijing will give the demented playboy a guarantee. How long can Southeast Asia bear the shame and misery of the Burmese junta? As long as the embrace of China persists. The identity of Tibet is being obliterated by the deliberate importation of Chinese settlers. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a man who claims even to know and determine the sex lives of his serfs (by the way, the very essence of totalitarianism), is armed and financed by China...

A warning, perhaps.

Revolution in Rangoon?

The spirit of freedom is abroad, and has landed momentarily (and we might hope, permanently) in Myanmar/Burma, in the person of thousands of Buddhist monks who are defying the thugs in the ruling military junta and staging the biggest anti-government protests in nearly two decades.

Let us hope the military junta don't repeat their murder of 3,000 protestors in those student protests two decades ago.

Let us hope too that if the anti-government protests are successful in overturning the military dictators, the spirit of freedom will be guided more by rational political philosophy than feel-good Buddhist bromides, or else Myanmar/Burma will remain as mired in poverty and authoritarian rule as it has been for most of the modern era. Let us hope.

But don't think you can go there and help the monks overturn the thugs. Liberty Scott reminds us that if you and your friends wanted to help confront the dictatorships in Burma (or in Zimbabwe or Syria for that matter) as a private citizen, then Helen Clark and the Labour government, supported by the pacifists in the Greens have banned you doing that.

After all, the state is sovereign isn't it?

Background to Green's Fijian expulsion

Take it for what it's worth since it appeared on Ian Wishart's website [hat tip Whale Oil], but with all the mainstream media wringing their hands in unison on Michael Greens' expulsion from Fiji, this offers some of the background to the expulsion that the MSM's pathetic coverage has completely failed to provide: a letter from one Thakur Ranjit Singh, Fiji human rights campaigner, Fiji Sun columnist and a former general manager of Fiji's Daily Post.

If NZ Government claims that the expulsion of Michael Green came as a surprise then it is a white lie. This is because the NZ government was warned about Michael Green's behaviour some four months earlier by members of Fiji community in Auckland...

[A public] meeting was told about Michael Green's behaviour towards the military regime as well as people of Fiji seeking services from NZ High Commission. It was reported that Michael Green was very close to Qarase regime and could not fathom the fact that he would no longer be in the cocktail circuit after Qarase's removal in December last year...

He failed to appreciate the reality of the situation and has now paid a heavy price for it.

The other Michael also came into prominence. The supposedly expert in Pacific affairs, Michael Field was detained at Nadi on the eve of marching orders to Michael Green and deported the following morning to New Zealand.

On 20th December, some two weeks after the removal of Qarase regime, Coalition for Democracy in Fiji held a panel discussion on Fiji affairs in Auckland. Apart from Suliana Siwatibau and NZ MP Keith Locke, I was also one of the speakers. Michael Field also attended this forum. In my presentation which was reported in Fiji as well as NZ papers, I revealed the ills of Qarase regime. The theme of my presentation was that: democracies that are devoid of or lacking in granting freedom, rights and equality to all its citizens and those without social justice are not worth defending. Qarase's regime that Bainimarama removed was an epitome of such a democracy. Michael Field did not report any part of my presentation. I am not cross that he did not report me but he displayed acute case of dereliction of media ethics in not telling Kiwis what they deserved to know...

If Michael Field was indeed the veteran journalist then he should not have abused his position and status in keeping Kiwis ignorant about what was really happening in Fiji. My experience shows that like NZ Labour Party, New Zealanders generally are still ignorant about Fiji and this had to do with a journalist like Michael Field who while occupying an influential position indulge in news selling reporting rather than informative reporting...

And it is so important for New Zealand mainstream media to have Pacific or Fijian journalists reporting on Fiji issues and informing the ignorant Kiwis on local politics, so that they get the correct picture.

But unfortunately, the mainstream media in New Zealand is in no hurry to use Fiji journalist who have migrated to New Zealand, and will depend on jaundiced views from parachute journalists from New Zealand. Unfortunately, such views appear to get copied as New Zealand's foreign policy in the Pacific.

For the full letter, see Thakur Ranjit Singh: Fiji Problem.

Singh has been critical for some time of the performance of NZ media and their "parachute journalists" in covering events in Fiji (as have some bloggers, such as this one). Speaking in December, for example, Singh told a public forum that "NZ media was ignorant about Fiji affairs and naive about the post-coup reality."

"They shoot their mouths off through parachute journalists who relish in rubbishing things happening in NZ's neighbours without first appreciating the fact that Fiji is not a model of democracy," he said.

Singh said military commander Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama had saved Fiji from becoming "another Zimbabwe" with serious abuses of human rights and social justice.

He said New Zealand's government and media had lost sight of the basic balance of "democracy and justice".

I think he's right. Not for the first time, the failures of the Fourth Estate assist and inform the failures of the First Three. What Helen Clark has seen in Bainimarama is simply another scapegoat to draw attention away from her Government's failures, one allowing her to strut imperiously on a world stage -- and the media's pathetic coverage has allowed her to get away with it.

UPDATE: Here's the sort of analysis I would have expected from local journalists, but which (if it has appeared) I haven't seen: Elizabeth Keenan writing in January's Time magazine:

When military commander Frank Bainimarama seized power in Suva on Dec. 5, he was instantly denounced by Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., the E.U., the U.N. and the Commonwealth. Exiled Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase continues to vent outrage by phone from his island village, but his countrymen don't seem to be rallying. Soldiers at checkpoints receive abuse, but also smiles, handshakes, food and flowers. Some staunch democrats who condemned George Speight's botched coup in 2000 find themselves endorsing the aims of this takeover, if not the assault rifles that made it possible. The Methodist Church and the Great Council of Chiefs, bastions of indigenous society, have urged Fijians—including Qarase—to support the multiracial interim government "for the betterment of the nation." Writing in the Fiji Times, Catholic Archbishop Peter Mataca called Australia and New Zealand's shunning of the Bainimarama administration "regrettable and shallow." Some Fijians, he wrote, believe democracy and the rule of law "were abused and circumvented long before the military ousted the Qarase government."

In Fiji, it seems, not all coups are equally offensive...

Qarase's elected government was seen as caring most about the happiness of indigenous Fijians. Bainimarama's force-backed government aims to make Fijians of all races happy. If—and it's a huge if—he can implement his idealistic program, he might just have pulled off the coup to end all Fiji coups.

And here's an article and and photo essay from March's Time magazine (both of which have been blogged here before) drawing attention to the tragic existence of Fiji's squatters -- mostly dispossessed Indo-Fijians who racist law has barred from owning land, and who previous governments have left at the mercy of shifting racial, economic and political tides.

Annan UN disgrace

Kofi Annan has now gone from the top UN job, a post he held for ten years. Does anyone know anything he's achieved in all that time.

Amongst the genocide, corruption and hand-wringing ineffectiveness of the world's biggest bureaucracy, can anyone list any one, single achievement of Annan's rule? Anything? Srebrenica, Rwanda, Bosnia, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Kosovo, Darfur ...
Isn't it true that genocide, corruption and hand-wringing ineffectiveness are simply endemic to the United Nations -- on whose board have sat some of the most corrupt dictatorships known to man, and whose actions often amount to little more than standing aside while aggressors kill people, while feeding the dictators and stopping any action against their aggression that could perhaps prove effective.

“To judge by what is happening in Darfur, our performance has not improved much since the disasters of Bosnia and Rwanda,” Annan said as he pissed off. He sure got that right.


"Is there blood on his hands?" asks the Sunday Times? There's blood all across the whole damned UN. Screw the whole corrupt, bloody organisation, I say.

This is how it started in Zimbabwe

Remember when Zimbabwe was still counted one of the world's semi-civilised countries? When it could still feed itself. When it wasn't a chaotic hell. It wasn't that long ago.

This is how the collapse started in Zimbabwe, now described in a report from South Africa:

REUTERS - White South African farmers could have land seized
13 August 2006

POLOKWANE: South Africa has warned white farmers it may seize their properties under the land restitution programme if they fail to agree a selling price within six months...

Oh dear. That was exactly how it started in Zimbabwe.

RELATED: Politics-World

Arise Sir Bob, and piss off.

Arise Sir Bob, and piss off. Why do I say that? Well, like Lindsay Mitchell,

[I] heard him on radio lambasting New Zealand for our governments 'pathetic' contributions to international aid. Good. Governments give away taxpayer's money willy-nilly. Has he looked at New Zealander's support for private agencies like World Vision and CCF?

We put our money where we know agencies are getting results because they account to us. Govt to govt aid is probably the most likely to be subject to corruption.

Geldof is well-intended I know, and likeable to boot but... talk about a statist.

Yes. He is. Good intentions aren't enough. Good thinking is as important, if not more important. Geldof needs to be asked of the money's he himself raised: "What Happened to the Fucking Money?" In fact, he has been asked, by one Daniel Wolf in The Spectator and as I mentioned here at the time it turns out that most of it went to the corrupt governments that had been starving the people Geldof had been wanting to help. David Rieff expained in Prospect Magazine:

The millions donated to Ethiopia in 1985 thanks to Live Aid were supposed to go towards relieving a natural disaster. In reality, donors became participants in a civil war. Many lives were saved, but even more may have been lost in Live Aid's unwitting support of a Stalinist-style resettlement project ... The standard argument is that to do nothing is to acquiesce in whatever horror is unfolding, from Saddam Hussein's Iraq to the mass killings in present-day Darfur.... Yet an alternative case can be made: in the global altruism business it is, indeed, sometimes better not to do anything at all.

As Mugged By Reality said at the time, "People were not starving they were being starved." And giving was not saving them from being starved, it was helping to starve them. It was feeding and succouring their oppressors. People want to help, and to feel better about themselves they sometimes give until it hurts -- but in this case its the ones that were being helped that the giving hurt. As Daniel Wolf says, "The story of Band Aid is the story of us, not them."

If your or Sir Bob truly wanted to help the starving of Africa and he really wanted to think about it, he might realise that what the have-nots haven't got is freedom, and capitalism, and he might want to get active to get more capitalism and more freedom and better property rights for those he wants to help.

He could start with Zimbabwe.

UPDATE: Whinging in New Zealand has a lighter take:

Geldof slams NZ third world efforts?
That's what the news announcer said: "Geldof slams New Zealand third world efforts". Obviously Geldof has not been paying attention - in the past six years, New Zealand has made fantastic strides toward becoming a third world country. Sir Bob ( artist , humanitarian and major ego) has not done his homework on this one.

RELATED LINKS: How Band Aid came unstuck on reality of relief - Spectator (via The Scotsman)
Dangerous pity - David Rieff, Prospect Magazine Sorry, but... - Lindsay Mitchell
Altruism: It's about us, not about them - Not PC (Peter Cresswell), May 2005
Debt relief on bFM and elsewhere - Not PC (Peter Cresswell), June 2005
Live-8 losers - Not PC (Peter Cresswell), June 2005

TAGS: Politics-World, Ethics, Politics

Nik Haden - Property rights: When governments attack!

The party's treasurer ona subject dear to most libertarian hearts, and the violations of them so dear to Government hearts.

Most grievous recent violation worldwide is Robert Mugabe's in Zimbabwe. Confiscation used as a political tool. The kind of blatant confiscation now the exception around the world, rather than the rule. [Telecom, anyone?]

The dire consequences ar obvious even to idiots. So now governments prefer partial confiscation, eg, Morales's partial confiscation of oil fields. Voluntarily. "Agree," he said, "or we'll throw you out anyway." [Telecom, anyone?]

Venezuela, Ecuador have followed suit. Sending troops to the oil fields was argued as "Bolivians taking back their own fields." Morales argued full nationalisation woudl hoever deprive Blivians of the necessary expertise in oil exraction and production.

Closer to home, Telecom has had about $3 billion wiped off its value in recent weeks by government attack. 'Unbundling.' 'Voluntary' separation. Oversight by govt of all commercial contracts.

Vodaphone too is being told it has been "too successful," and is being readied for attack by government. Woosh is having it radio spectrum threatened (by govt) to be sold from under its feet.

Why is this happening?

Socialists are becoming smarter. Post-Berlin Wall collapse, even socialists have realised socialism doesn't work. So they wish to keep the facade of private property, while controlling the production.

Too, the government can take a 'hands-off' all-care-and-no-responsibility approach if they don't completely nationalise.

So why are businesses accepting this? Why don't they rear up in response? Or shrug?

They can't.

Only shareholders can do that. CEO's are obliged [says Nik] to keep producing in whatever regime they find themselves in. It is up to the shareholders to rear up and take action. And it is here that Libertarianz and libertarian arguments can perhaps have their greatest success. Both economic and moral arguments.

Remembering three dictators

Today is Robert Mugabe's 82nd birthday, and the government-controlled Zimbabwe press is celebrating. As LibertyScott says, "May he never reach 83."

Today is also the day in 1956 that Nikita Kruschev came out against Stalin and his still thriving personality cult. Scott has a short summary of Kruschev's speech and of Stalin's bloodthirsty career -- one which cost between twenty- and thirty-million Russian lives.

Kruschev was somewhat self-serving in his denouncement -- it allowed him, he hoped, to publicly divorce himself from blame for the murderous shambles of the country and regime he was leading, and to lay the blame for all iniquities at the feet of his predecessor. As Ayn Rand once pointed out, Soviet Premiers were always self-serving and manipulative: their new Five-Year Plans for example were always announced to great fanfare and with the firm commitment that, although the last Five-Year Plan was a failure, this latest one would be a glorious success. Five years later of course, the same stament was made, the past was once again repudiated, and the lies and nonsense recycled again.

There is the less-than-artful deception of a conjurer in this, just as there is in Krushev's Stalinist repudiation.

LINKS: Mugabe's last birthday (please) - LibertyScott
Kruschev & Stalin - LibertyScott

TAGS: History-Twentieth_Century, Politics-World

Free speech goes so easily

Here's an example of how government control increases incrementally.

As most of you know, the High Court yesterday took it upon itself to command a private broadcaster to include two politicians on a programme belonging to that broadcaster. The politicians' reactions to the decision ranged from the "Oh, well" to the smug. The public reaction to this dictatorial legedermain ranged, for the most part, from "Oh, well" through to "Oh, what?"

Here was a blatant violation by a court, acting at the behest of two politicians, of a broadcaster's right to its own private property (its programme, network and broadcast spectrum), and to its right to free speech across that network. And in response to this violation the public barely gave a shrug. Such is the way new violations are welcomed day after day. With a shrug. Such is the way liberty yields, and government authority gains ground.

To the credit of some commentators, bloggers and broadcasters, there was at least some resistance. Most bloggers, to their credit, realised the significance of the decision and were opposed. No Right Turn was one who seemed happy at the court's bullying, however, calling it "good for democracy" while still trying to straddle the issue by agreeing the bullying "is a prima facie violation of [the broadcaster's right to free expression." There's clarity for you.

The Herald reasoned the judge's focus should have been "the freedom of the media to cover political events as they see fit, and the right of private companies to make their own decisions about their operations." Quite right. Tim Pankhurst of the Media Freedom Committee called it "a dangerous precedent for the democratic process when judges are allowed to dictate which politicians should be included in specific programmes.” Bernard Darnton of the Libertarianz, who some were saying should perhaps have joined in the application to the courts, replied that "Libertarianz... is taking a moral stand by setting aside narrow self-interest, as in the long run, we are all better off with a free press." Quite true.

And TV3 itself, fearful of the precedent this has created, has announced it will be fighting this ruling. Thank goodness for that. "[TV3's Mark] Jennings told the Herald after the decision was announced that it was the first time judges had "decided our editorial policy for us. You'd have to think 'what's next? Where does it stop?'"

Where indeed.

Where it will probably stop is with people like the vacuous announcer on the Breakfast Show at Radio Live this morning who can't tell the difference between a dictator and someone who pays her wages, and wants to be told by someone else what to do in her job. Bernard Darnton had just repeated his assertion that "state direction of the media through the courts is something that would not be out of place in countries such as Zimbabwe. These politicians have criticised the regime in Zimbabwe, but are now demanding that totalitarian policies be implemented here."

Her response: "If we let private broadcasters choose who they have on then aren't we replacing one dictator with another?"

Galt save us from vacuous idiots who would give up their liberty so easily.

Zims lose twice over

After all the furore over NZ's cricketers going to Zimbabwe, at the close of the First Test (won inside two days by NZ in a canter) it is apparent the tour is not just wrong morally, but a complete failure as any kind of meaningful sporting contest.

Zimbabwe's plummeting fortunes in world cricket mirror their plummeting fortunes politically, socially, individually, agriculturally and economically -- and the responsibility for all these can be sheeted home to Robert Mugabe, Thug.

Cricinfo sums up the cricketing mood, suggesting

the time has come for a change of tack and a rethink about what is being achieved by ploughing on regardless. Nobody benefited from this [cricketing] massacre, and the pitiful attendance showed that even the locals have tired of such wretched fare. This was a match of interest to nobody but the statisticians.

So why did they bother going?

Mugabe begins confiscating guns ... what's next?

Robert Mugabe has begun confiscating guns. Why do you think that would be?

Authorities in Zimbabwe have ordered civilians to surrender their firearms, with police sources saying the move was a precautionary measure following the government’s action against informal dwellers and hawkers.

The police said licences for certain categories of guns had been revoked in terms of the Firearms Act, reports ZimOnline. The government last cancelled firearm licences during the peak of its farm seizure programme in 2000. That move was targeted at white commercial farmers who at that time held a number of assault guns for self-protection.

And we know just what happened to those white farmers, don't we? It's worth remembering that the primary reason the US Founding Fathers wrote the right to bear arms into their Bill of Rights was to allow citizens to protect themselves against tyrannical government. This is precisely why. [Hat tip Gun Control]

And it seems the Guardian is now coming in behind Mugabe ... "The vilification of Mugabe is now out of control," it says. Nothing like a socialist rag to support Forced evictions, brutal land grabs, slum clearances and murder. [Hat tip Samizdata.net]

Best this week here at Not PC

Best of the week on Not PC. All this and great art and cartoons too!

Nothing 'great' about Tax Debate
I saw nothing great at all about last night's Great Tax Debate on TVNZ. A lot of people bickering about how they would spend someone else's money…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/07/nothing-great-about-tax-debate.html

Lions win the spin
London's 'Independent' newspaper questions the spin-doctoring of the Lions Tour…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/lions-win-spin.html

Hostage hunts down arseholes
News in of the Swede held hostage in Iraq for 47 days who has "hired bounty hunters to track down his former captors, promising to eliminate them one by one…"
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/hostage-hunts-down-arseholes.html

Batman Shrugged
I'm not a fan of Batman, but I do like a good camp movie review. Quoth a Boston Indymedia reviewer of the new Batman movie: "What if Ayn Rand and Mussolini got together to write a Hollywood movie?
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/batman-shrugged.html

Brian O'Driscoll: Whinging Pom
When the test match finished on Saturday night my friends and I turned to each other and said, "What could Tony Blair's spin doctor possibly do to explain away that comprehensive thrashing?"--or words to that effect…. What he apparently decided to do was to turn Brian O'Driscoll from a felled Paddy into a whinging Pom…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/brian-odriscoll-whinging-pom.html

Live-8 losers
Like Live Aid, Bob Geldof’s Live-8 is more to do with making you and Bob Geldof and Bono feel better about themselves than it is about effecting real help...
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/live-8-losers.html

Bulldozing homes--and this is not Zimbabwe
The Supreme Court's agreement that people can be thrown out of their homes so that a shopping mall and a research centre for Pfizer can be built in New London, Connecticut has opened the floodgates…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/bulldozing-homes-and-this-is-not.html

Fed Farmers win property rights battle. War still ongoing
I was just going to blog on Jim Sutton's temporary, pre-election backdown on screwing farmers' property rights over the access issue when I found that Julian Pistorius had already said what I wanted to say…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/fed-farmers-win-property-rights-battle.html

Evicting the Justices opposed to property rights
News that one US libertarian is seeking to use the Supreme Court's new anti-property-rights ruling-- which allows the eviction of people from their own houses so that other people can build shopping malls and marinas over them -- to evict one of the Supreme Court justices that handed down the decision in order to build a hotel…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/evicting-justices-opposed-to-property.html

African debt relief on bFM, and elsewhere
Just got back from bFM and a very enjoyable interview with Simon Pound covering the counter-intuitiveness of African debt relief and Bob Geldof's Live Aid and Live-8 phenomena. Where did the "fooking money" go from the first Bob-Fest, and how is the latest feel-good frolic any different?
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/debt-relief-on-bfm-and-elsewhere.html

School sucks
Tibor Machan wonders why so many kids at so many schools seem so sick:
“The varieties of Attention Deficit Disorders in records boggle the mind, even as many of us have managed to pass through the system reasonably unscathed. Or have we? There are those who do not buy into this medical approach to assessing the problems with contemporary education. I am one of them…”
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/school-sucks.html

Education: £1 billion. "No impact."
Does just throwing money at education buy success? Um, no it doesn't…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/education-1-billion-no-impact.html

Govt bullying another school
The Ministry of Education has a new victim…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/govt-bullying-another-school.html

Cue Card Libertarianism -- Population
Rises most rapidly in areas least able to sustain it –- unfree, pre-industrial, semi-feudal, collectivist societies hostile to capital formulation and investment, where children are treated as a substitute for it…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/cue-card-libertarianism-population.html

Bulldozing homes--and this is not Zimbabwe

The Supreme Court's agreement that people can be thrown out of their homes so that a shopping mall and a research centre for Pfizer can be built in New London, Connecticut has opened the floodgates. The white-shoed big-noters of Freeport, Texas have just declared this is the "last little piece of the puzzle" allowing them to throw people out of their homes so they can build a marina.

Sit back and watch the announcements tumble in, and realise that bulldozing people's homes for 'the public good' is not just something done in Zimbabwe.

Here's a further round-up of news and commentary on the original decision from Yahoo News, from David M. Brown, Edward Hudgins, George Will, Don Boudreaux, Tyler Cowen, and my own post on the matter, and a number of posts by Todd Zywicki and others at The Volokh Conspiracy.

And if you'd prefer not to sit back but to fight back, check out the The Castle Coalition, a project of The Institute for Justice.

[Hat tip SOLO and Stephen Hicks.]

Best of Not PC for this week (to 24 June)

Here’s just some of what you might have missed if you haven’t been visiting Not PC every day this week (shame on you!). All this, and great art too! Please feel free to visit and read the posts, to leave comments and insults, to forward suggestions for future posts to me-- and of course to forward blog-posts you like to everyone you’ve ever met. :^)

Confiscation beyond any reasonable doubt
No Right Turn is rightly concerned at the outrageous asset forfeiture laws being introduced by this Government which, if introduced, would allow assets to be seized on a civil ("balance of probabilities") standard of proof. As Idiot/Savant says, "if the bill becomes law, we won't just be seizing the property of those who are probably criminals, but that of those who might be…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/confiscation-beyond-any-reasonable.html

A black day for property rights everywhere
Property rights are under attack everywhere. New Zealand home-owners and farmers are given the finger by planners, mayors and Jim Sutton; Zimbabwe shop- and shanty-owners are given their marching orders by the urban planning bulldozers of Robert Mugabe; and now American home-owners have just been told to bugger off by no less an authority than the US Supreme Court…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/black-day-for-property-rights.html

Teaching honesty
I don't like government employees teaching children about things like honesty and other virtues they would know nothing about, which is why libertarians oppose this 'values-based' teaching programme, and are and in favour instead of a separation of school and state.
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/teaching-honesty.html

Morally-blind cricketers head to Zimbabwe
If it's true as Martin Snedden says that New Zealand cricketers "unanimously agreed" to tour Zimbabwe then, sadly, that says little for New Zealand's leading cricketers.
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/morally-blind-cricketers-head-to.html

Sprawl is good
People are at war with town planners everywhere. The high priests opposed to sprawl and the apostles of high-density have joined hands with the bossy busybodies of politics to force people to live in ways they don't want to, all in the name of 'sustainability' and knowing what's best for you -- and because voters let them.
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/sprawl-is-good.html

The Mozart effect
A new report now says that the Mozart effect is a fraud. Playing Mozart for your designer baby will not improve his IQ or help him get into Montessori school.
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/mozart-effect.html

Posturing poseur alert
I do love it when posturing poseurs are skewered. One leading practitioner of what I call neutron-bomb architecture (ie, architecture to kill the spirit of human beings) has been exposed by a client as a pretentious fraud. Speaking to a gathering to celebrate the completion of $15.8 million of repairs to Peter Eisenman's decade-old Wexner Art Centre, director Sherri Geldin took the opportunity to list, to the obvious chagrin of an increasingly crimson Peter, exactly why the building sucks:
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/mozart-effect.html

Cue Card Libertarianism -- Government
Ideally, the agency that protects our freedom; in practice, the agency that most routinely violates it. If freedom is the absence of compulsion, then a free society must have laws defining and banning compulsion…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/cue-card-libertarianism-government.html

Whaling
The vote on Japan's bid to overturn the International Whaling Commission moratorium on whaling may be over, but there is still lots of talk to come. Whatever happens at these meetings there's always lots of talk, particularly about "our whales" as Chris Carter keeps calling them.
I proposed a solution to the 'unowned resource' of whales a few weeks ago…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/whaling.html

Tax cuts writ large
TVNZ report: Labour says tax cuts are not affordable. Prime Minister Helen Clark says she couldn't look the electorate in the eye and say significant across the board tax cuts can be afforded, while maintaining spending in critical areas.
Perhaps we can give her some help…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/tax-cuts-writ-large.html

RMA reforms a lane-change, not a U-turn
The Government's proposed changes to the Resource Management Act are not so much a U-turn as a 'lane-change,' as even with the changes the RMA still proceeds in a direction that destroys property rights. This is minor tinkering, not major reform….
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/rma-reforms-lane-change-not-u-turn.html

Reforming superannuation the Reisman way
The problem of superannuation -- what Americans call Social Security -- is what predicated the 'Cullen Fund.' As baby boomers get older and there are fewer and fewer people in the workforce to pay for their pensions, the system begins to get into difficulty.
Invested wisely (as governments will always do) the 'Cullen Fund' is supposed to start picking up the tab at this point, just as President Bush's 'privatised' Social Security is intended to do in the US.
But as George Reisman says of the US system, the "problem is that implementing the President's proposal would almost certainly mean a major increase in the government's power over business...
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/reforming-superannuation-reisman-way.html

Jared Diamond collapsed again, and again
Jared Diamond's influential theory of societal collapse 'attributes the demise of societies such as Easter Island principally to environmental degradation and destruction.'
I pointed to one critique of Diamond's thesis here some weeks ago, saying that his analysis ignores the historical importance of culture and of property rights in protecting against such 'degradation and destruction.' Here's another…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/jared-diamond-collapsed-again-and.html

Big Brother is bullshit
Fans of Penn and Teller's 'Bullshit'* will probably appreciate their 17min. debunking of America's PATRIOT Act, ostensibly introduced to fight terrorism in the US…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/big-brother-is-bullshit.html

Immigration -- agreeing with Jeanette
It's not too often that I agree with Jeanette Fitzsimons, but aside from the usual feel-good buzzwords there's not much to complain about here…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/immigration-agreeing-with-jeanette.html

Freedom, through thick and thin
As some of my blog readers will be aware, I have been engaged in a debate with Richard Chapple from the Philosophy et cetera blog who’s been enjoying bashing what he thinks to be libertarianism… I posted a reply to the so-called 'problem of initial acquisition' below, and here is a link to my second lengthy sally, 'Freedom, through thick and thin'…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/freedom-through-thick-and-thin.html

The ‘problem’ of initial acquisition
Philosopher and academic Gerald Cohen has a problem with how values come into the world; how they came to exist. He calls this ‘the problem of initial acquisition.’ I call it trivial idiocy, but he and his supporters set great store by it.
Cohen argues that all the world’s resources were originally ‘jointly owned’ and therefore like Proudhon he claims that all property is therefore theft….
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/problem-of-initial-acquisition.html

Cue Card Libertarianism -- Force
The precondition of a civilised society is the barring of physical force from social relationships…
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/cue-card-libertarianism-force.html

Coalition options
The Fairfax poll released this morning suggests 68% of people polled say they want coalition preferences known before the election.
As I've said before here, in my opinion the presumption of coalition is not necessarily a good one for a minor party.
http://pc.blogspot.com/2005/06/coalition-options.html