Terrifying.
|
|||||
|
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] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
Battleground Melbourne Documentary ‘FRIENDS & FAMILY’ Pre-ReleaseJanuary 17th, 2022 |
 23 comments to Battleground Melbourne Documentary ‘FRIENDS & FAMILY’ Pre-Release |
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. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
So many of us failed. I failed in March 2020 when I did not, at once, denounce the lockdown – when I was taken in by the lie that it was only going to be for a couple of weeks to “flatten the curve”.
All we (the failures) can do is to repent, and try and do what we can now.
The video was depressing because throughout people keep talking about fighting the oppressors but never do any fighting that is actually effective. One guy even said he was saddened that some police were knocked down and injured. Jesus wept!
Street protests count for nothing. Neither does skirting some police blockade or hanging around on the sidelines videoing happenings with your cel-phone
Aussies lost the war years ago when they handed over their firearms because the government told them too.
I suppose with hindsight you could see in Australia with its compulsory voting, that the seeds of tyranny had been sown and were sprouting. Perhaps the only proper thing to do is for Taiwan and Australia to swap populations, leaving the Taiwanese at a safer distance and Australia getting that extra push on the road to absolute tyranny. Let’s face it, Australia isn’t worth the bones of a single Great White Shark.
I’m 100% sure this government wasn’t enabled by the complete lack of private gun ownership in Australia.
100%. Sure.
-XC
PS – Loading Jews out of a synagogue into a van is a bad look.
Honestly, it’s just coincidental. 😉
(Not really a cause-and-effect relationship. More like two effects from a common cause.)
And yet despite all the lockdowns there haven’t been so many people falling ill in Melbourne since the last reel of ‘On The Beach.’
Henry Cybulski – they were finished when the agreed to “register” their firearms, years before confiscation.
Never tell the government what you have, whether it is physical gold (remember 1933 – and the despicable U.S. Supreme Court Judgements of 1935), firearms, or anything else.
But then you, and everyone else here, know this.
As Perry says – the state is not your friend.
Australia has been held up as a model by a lot of leftist/progressives that I know and read. For instance, there was the firearms registration, the safetyism (Australia introduced compulsory crash helmets for cyclists, I think, some time ago); its environmentalist policy gets lots of plaudits but the idea of letting the forests grow untended arguably created conditions for the terrible fires of more than a year ago, which was then blamed on “climate change”.
I liked former PM John Howard, and he presided over a robust economy, but subsequent administrations have been poor. And now the whole covid nightmare.
How did things reach this pass? I guess that Australia, protected to some extent by its links to the West and American naval power, has been very prosperous for a long period of time, with a few bumps along the way. The standard of living that many people enjoy there appears high. We Brits, watching TV programmes about Australia while the grey skies hold over the UK, imagine the place to be a glorious country to live in. (Of course, it is home to several of the most dangerous species on the planet.) That prosperity has arguably made Australians go a bit soft in the head.
Sadly, the foundation of Australia is a dark one – there’s no way to skirt the subject – and it was founded as a penal colony. Unlike the US, it doesn’t have the sort of classical liberal origin story (which remains potent notwithstanding the antics of the 1619 Project). Australia does, however, boast an outstanding history around military exploits, sports and adventure, entrepreneurship, and a sort outdoorsy ruggedness. So again, the slide into authortarianism, a sort of “Karen” culture of screeching scolds, does seem very odd.
I have relatives in Australia and several friends, and would like to go there, but I’m hoping for better, and less oppressive times.
Just for the sake of argument, lets forget about 51% of the population.
Rank the following countries’ governments from least oppressive for men to most oppressive for men over the last two years:
Australia, Austria, Canada, Egypt, France, India, Israel, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Turkey
My ranking:
(least oppressive) Japan, Russia, France, South Korea, India, Egypt, Turkey, Israel, Canada, Austria, Australia (most oppressive)
A better way may be tiers:
Japan, Russia, France, South Korea have been overall the more free countries for men
India, Egypt, Turkey, Canada, and Israel have been overall the medium free countries for men
Austria and Australia have been overall the less free countries for men
Yes in certain ways Austria is more free than Russia, but overall over the last two years….
Hey, the real cause is over 100 years of Democracy!. Democracies may start with low levels of government, but politicians promise to expand government powers, so that voters will elect them into power. So we become accustomed to governments solving problems. All democracies suffer from this.
Crash helmets for cyclists – reduced injuries to cyclists, but mainly by reducing the number of people who cycled: occasional cyclists couldn’t be bothered with helmets and others, rightly, objected to them.
Years later, Melbourne introduced a bicycle hire scheme – wonderful idea? Everyone carries around a cycle helmet just in case, esp. tourists who have flown in from half a world away.
I always say that was the moment I realised something was rotten in the Commonwealth of Australia. Bicycle helmets may or may not be a good idea, but their use is simply not the business of a sovereign government.
Wish I’d thought of this:
Nicholas – not really.
That is not the story of democracies – it is not that politicians promise people benefits and then get elected because of that.
On the contrary – it is normally an intellectual elite who tell the politicians that XYZ policies are good, and then the politicians impose the polices (having said nothing about them at election time).
For example, Disraeli won the 1874 elections by promising to end the recently imposed regulations on pubs (he did not end them – the “Licensing Act” remained), and he also promised to get rid of Income Tax – he then increased it.
Franklin Roosevelt promised to CUT taxes and government spending in 1932 election – he even denounced Herbert Hoover as a socialist.
George Herbert Walker Bush did not campaign on INCREASING taxes in 1992 – quite the opposite.
And on and on.
For example, do you think that the people who voted Conservative in the most recent election, December 2019, wanted the ever-bigger-government policies that Mr Johnson then followed (and it started BEFORE Covid).
I assure you they did NOT.
So it is not so much that people vote for statism – they get statism even if they vote AGAINST it.
Hands up – who thinks that Richard Nixon promised vastly increased government spending and wage and price controls in the election of 1968?
Who thinks that Edward Health promised semi totalitarian control of society in the British elections of 1970?
Hands down – because what they did was just about the opposite of what they promised to do. And, please remember, the betrayal of the voters occurred long BEFORE the “Oil Shock” of 1973.
What happens is that the politicians are either “educated” people themselves – or they followed the “advice” of “educated” people.
It is nothing to do with ordinary voters. Democracy is only real if the power of the “educated” Collectivists is broken – if the “J.S. Mill trap” (essentially – you can vote for whoever you like, but basic policies remain the same regardless of who you vote for) is defeated.
To reverse the language of Rousseau – the “General Will” (the will of the “Lawgiver”) must be defeated by the “Will Of All” (what ordinary people actually want).
Indeed the struggle against the “educated” Collectivist Totalitarians goes all the way back to Plato.
Australia is not really part of the western world anymore.
Don’t let the fact that its peopled predominantly by White people of British descent fool you.
Australia has become over the last two years far more China-like than any country in Europe and far more China-like than most countries of Asia.
I feel badly for anyone living in Australia. Not a place I want to visit and certainly not a place I want to live.
That country is not really a part of the West anymore.
All the systematic, horrific, inhumane, and evil violations of human rights and civil liberties and basic freedoms that have happened in Australia over the last two years – all these in response to COVID-19 (allegedly).
But COVID-19 is eminently treatable. There are a wide array of safe and effective treatments for COVID-19, spread the word.
https://c19early.com/
Me too, many relatives in fact. That’s why I never had much urge to visit Australia, and I now have none whatsoever 😉
Off topic, I know, but I always considered the origin stories of the two countries to be very similar – both populated by people who were told by their home countries “go on, get out! But we’re still in charge of you!” Much of the early history of both countries revolved around cast-off people striving to reduce the power that Home Country insisted it still had over them. To me, that shared narrative has always made something of a bond between us.
But now, 80% of Australia seems to live in enclave liberal cities and suburbs and vote accordingly. We in the US have a smaller proportion in such places – not by much, but smaller – but we’re headed there fast. So I see Australia fall and take it as a harbinger of our doom should we not correct course.
In a conversation with the late Brian Micklethwait in which I am pretty sure he was referring to Australia he said words to the effect that the provinces were always early adopters of trendy nonsense. Whether it was because they didn’t want to look like a bunch of hicks, I don’t know. See also Scotland and Wales.
[…] Battleground Melbourne Documentary ‘FRIENDS & FAMILY’ Pre-Release — Samizdata […]
. Whether it was because they didn’t want to look like a bunch of hicks, I don’t know
I think there may be something to it: local leaders fancy they can “stand out” by taking policies in a more extreme direction in some way. For most of the time, that means being more authortarian (although not always). The behaviour of the Welsh government in trying to go one notch up the fear scale over covid is an example.
I finally watched the Australian film about Victoria. What has gone on there is terrible.