Saturday, November 18, 2006

Beware the Gift of the Ancient Greeks

Who benefits from an Olympic Games coming to Britain? Athletes, sports companies, sports-broadcasting companies, airlines, hotel chains, politicians, hangers-on, leeches, parasites, construction companies, transport companies, Lord Sebastian Coe, His Majesty Ken Livingstone, and Uncle Tom State-Handout, indeed anyone who campaigned to bring the damn thing to Britain in the first place. And who pays? Yep, that's right pardner, me, you, and every other poor sap taxpayer who is going to be pushed up against the wall to have our wallets emptied to pay for all of the above to have their self-aggrandizing party.

And for what? Exactly?

For something most people will hardly be able to summon up the will to switch on and watch, because athletics as a sport is a joke because of the the never-ending speculation about who is on what drug and the question mark over every gold medal winner, with an unspoken assumption that they are all on drugs but somehow managed to figure out how to evade the current batch of drug testers, this time round. Pardon me for daring to breathe, but I have absolutely no interest in any Olympic event, especially now Matthew Pinsent has retired. And yet this still won't stop a motley crue of state-handout merchants helping themselves to my wallet, perhaps for the next fifty years, to pay off a gargantuan debt, virtually all of which they will be trousering themselves, especially that feckless self-satisfied oaf, Sebastian Coe, William Hague's very good friend.

So far the predicted cost of the British Games is £6 billion pounds, and rising, after an initial guesstimate of £2.3 billion; though let's face it, we all know £10 billion is about the least this rotten party is going to cost, and I wouldn't die of shock if it headed more into the £15 billion pound range. With socialist ministers claiming that they won't even know the final cost until after the event is completed - so much for the predictive wonders of socialist state planning - let's add on another £3 billion for fun, and round it up to £18 billion pounds. Every single penny, of course, making the huge £1 billion pound waste on the Millenium Dome look like a mere playful bagatelle of loose change.

Oh well. It's only other people's money. And if they won't pay, I'm sure the Bank of England can print it all up, instead. Thank goodness for state control of the money supply.

No doubt it will also rain torrentially throughout the entire event, and that will be blamed on the global warming brought on by ... errrr ... all the athletes and officials flying to the event from ... errrr ... that can't be right? Well, I'm sure it'll probably end up as my fault. I should be taken out and shot and then my estate should be subjected to a special environmental law claiming 100% death duty tax imposition upon all climate change belief refuseniks.

Oh to be in England.

Sunday, November 12, 2006

How Would You Destroy the Austrians?

I was sitting high on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral yesterday. I was eating my lunch and looking down Ludgate Hill towards Fleet Street when I wondered just how I would destroy the Austrian movement if I was a statist, in the spirit of King Louis the XIVth of France attacking Sir Isaac Newton's pure gold currency at the start of the 18th century to help preserve statism in France (and thereby help create Napoleon and eventually Marx). As we descend into an ever more violent world of ongoing conflict, with inflationism leading to ever more worthless money and worldwide incursions of English-speaking troops into non-English speaking lands eventually causing nuclear bombs to go off in either New York, London, or Sydney, thereby creating military dictatorships in the provinces of England and Australia, or even the Homeland itself, I wondered what a mushroom cloud going off over Trafalgar Square might look like?

Well, from where I was sitting, it would probably look like a blinding white flash followed by instantaneous death; but what if the bomb was a relative dud? What if it only killed most of the parasites of Whitehall and merely left the rest of London dangerously irradiated? Obviously, staring down Ludgate Hill towards Trafalgar Square I would be blinded by even a relative dud, but possibly remain alive. And then once the inevitable military dictatorship took hold I would spend the rest of my life trying to bring down the state which had caused this horror and my personal blindness, as would many others.

And eventually, the truth of Austrianism would take hold, and we would sweep the state away. But only if the state was stupid enough to let us. So how would they stop the truth of Austrianism getting out? How would they prevent their parasitism being rumbled and how would they prevent themselves having to enter the productive sector?

They would have to destroy Austrianism.

So far we've been lucky because we have almost been irrelevant, but so was Von Mises to the Germans before his fellow Austrian Herr Hitler came to power in Deutschland.

The first thing the parasites will do is to destroy Mises.org. At first they will use feeble stories about how Jeffrey Tucker, Mark Thornton, and Lew Rockwell et al are living it up on donations, cruising through life on yachts and first class travel; then paedophiliac materials will be planted onto the hard drives of senior Austrian professors and then drugs will be planted onto anyone else considered of relevance. As individuals, the state will try to disgrace prominent Austrians in the eyes of their fellows and even if they fail to incarcerate them in their modern forms of the Tower of London, they will try to make their words worthless to the general population via the paint brush of manufactured scandal.

So if I'm right, as the western world collapses gently towards a second dark age, expect a greater antipathy towards Austrianism from the state. Because just as emigre Lithuanians, Latvians, and other Eastern Europeans were always the greatest enemy of the Soviets, despite their seeming irrelevance, we Austrians will always be the greatest enemies of the collapsing statists because we know what they're about and we know how to get rid of them.

So are you ready? Are you prepared to be victimised, shamed, outed, and eventually arrested and tossed into a padded oubliette? Because to be an Austrian is to know that when the military dictatorship comes we may not be the first against the wall, but we won't be the last. However, if this sounds a little negative, I have hope. When the dark ages started coming to Rome, the Christians were the first scapegoats placed against the wall of the Colisseum, but eventually Christianity came to dominate the world. And our modern Romans, the creators of Pax Americana, have a revulsion of actually killing citizens just as the Romans had a revulsion against killing citizens as opposed to barbarians, so many more of us will remain around, even in our Newgate gaols, to evangelize the Misesian message.

We also we possess a far stronger rational truth than Christianity, because we believe in the universal truths of Human Action, for all peoples, and for all nations, and for all time, at least in this DNA-driven anthropomorphic Universe.

So perhaps, I thought, one day we will have our own cathedral in London, a tower of ideas built from the proceeds of voluntary contributions.

I heartily look forward to eating my lunch on its steps. But in the meantime, I shall continue, whenever I can, to get onto Sir Christopher Wren's hallowed steps whenever I can, as they are an amazing place to reflect upon every topic under the sun, from quantitative bet spread analysis through to cryptoanalytic identity management. If you get the chance, you must visit Sir Christopher's greatest creation. The views down Ludgate Hill are amazing.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Size Matters

The Big One is on its way, all 875 pages of it. I recently ordered a copy of:

Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles
by Jesus Huerta de Soto

The tracking system in Auburn tells me that it's just been shipped. I have therefore posted my armed guards, 24 hours around the clock, to take delivery! I haven't felt this excited since a man knocked on the door to tell me the truck containing Man, Economy, and State had arrived. Fantastic.

You know, just like my favourite character in Neal Stephenson's Baroque series, Daniel Waterhouse, I sometimes feel that I am getting really very old indeed. Thank goodness for the Sugababes.

SPQW

So, some of the comfortable seats in the Senate of Rome, sorry, Washington, are now being filled by different bums? Yawn. Wake me up, when the American Empire pulls its legions out of Iraq. Or Britain, come to that. Indeed, why on Earth are there still thousands of US servicemen here in Britain, 15 years after the Berlin Wall came down?

Could it be, perhaps, because we in Britain are just the favourite Corinthian satrap of this avaricious world imperial power? No, we're independent. We're not in any way beholden to the Yankee Dollar, or American foreign policy, or merely playing poodle as a rustic trapping of a greater imperial power? No, of course not. How dare you even suggest such a thing; we're British for God's sake. We are free. We can do anything we want. So long as we get the Emperor's permission, obviously. And as long as we don't ask for any American troops to go home. After all, Gordon Brown needs the cash infusion of all of their military bases paying into the British economy, courtesy of the hapless US taxpayer.

America has come a long way since it was founded by insurgents who through guerilla action tossed out the unwanted military presence of a large and hated empire. I'm sure the irony of the Iraqis doing the same thing, 200 years later, would not be lost on Thomas Jefferson. Let's all Hail to the Chief. And say good riddance to Donald Rumsfeld. No doubt he's going to starve in the wilderness, and through pride and honour refuse to take up any of the well-recompensed positions within the US military industrial complex which may come his way. Ho hum.

God Bless America.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Bonfire of the Inanities

A sickening feeling crept across my stomach as my host tuned their television to the BBC, or those Buggers Broadcasting Communism as we austro-libertarian nutcases brand these tax-fed Guardian-reading propagandizing enemies of West London. Ye Gods, I thought; no doubt there'll either be an endless wail about the horrors of global warming or a soporific paean to the wonders of welfare. Alas, I was far from being disappointed.

The screen came up, and yes, there it was, an Iceberg. "I wonder what this might be about," I thought. And yes, less than 30 minutes later I was being bombarded by sob stories about how all those liccle iccle cuddly Polar bears are going to die out if global warming takes hold. If you listen carefully, however, you'll always notice David Attenborough is extremely careful about his use of the word if. I'm sure it washes past most people, but he is always sure to place it in there somewhere amongst all the other horror stories about why most people, except David Attenborough and his friends like Michael Palin, should be banned from jetting around the world.

I won't spoil you with the details, but if you are forced to endure the BBC's latest dose of global warming propaganda, just turn the sound off. The photography is simply amazing, but aside from the usual global warming blabber, we get all the other typical communoid bananas, for example, "highly efficient predators spotting opportunities and then making a killing by moving in and cruelly exploiting their weaker targets". I wonder what the allegory might be, there, mayhap?

That I am forced to fund this patronizing moronic rubbish is one thing, but could they at least provide a different soundtrack, perhaps Jimi Hendrix or Murray Rothbard cackling over the downfall of the Iron Curtain? Oh well.

Or maybe even provide an alternative documentary about how humanity is currently living in the middle of an inter-glacial period, where it should be expected that the temperature will either be racing up to a hot peak or racing down to another Ice Age. If global warming is taking place, which is a 50% probability given our position inside an inter-glaical, and if mankind's output of carbon dioxide has more than an utterly minimal impact upon it, which is up to 1% of the effect of a single large volcano blowing off a billion tons of carbon dioxide in a single large explosion, then let's thank God global warming is keeping off the next Ice Age, which is almost certainly waiting in the wings to freeze our brass knuckles off. It's a great word that, if.

We really are living in a world of brainwashed fools. Next, they'll be wanting to ban bonfires, to cut down on carbon dioxide emissions. What? You mean there have already been calls for this? We should ship all of these idiots out to Siberia and watch the fools freeze. I wonder how long their proposed ban on bonfires will last then?

Friday, November 03, 2006

Tragedy of the Common Fisheries Policy

So, the policy wonks in the EU, and other mafia bodies, think the fish stocks around the UK will last no more than 50 years?

All seafood will run out in 2050, say scientists

Personally, I'm amazed the fish stocks have lasted this long since the EU set up a typical tragedy of the commons, when the British government joined the Common Market in the 1970s (thank you, Margaret Thatcher). So what do the EU policy wonks think the solution to this tragedy might be? Fortunately, I haven't wasted any time reading what these non-producing parasites think, because I already know what they've suggested: More regulation, more taxes, and more policy wonks. Alas, I also know it won't work, as they would too if they put more than two brain cells together.

There is, of course, only one policy which will save the fisheries stocks around the UK. But hell, and a storm-force high water will never let our Marxoid rulers ever consider it. And what is this nirvana? Yes, that's right, you guessed it, private fishing rights for particular fishing areas to be bought and sold on the free market, with original rights established by the homesteading of particular areas.

Although more statist than my own preference, the Icelanders have shown the way with their 200 mile fishing limit around their island, which has preserved their stocks for their fishermen. And the smaller these private areas go, the more successful they will be. So perhaps we could start with a 200 mile limit around Cornwall, for Cornish fishermen, the same for Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Yorkshire, unserweiter, unserweiter; though obviously it will work best of all for private corporations owning the fishing rights to homesteaded areas.

It won't be tried, obviously, as it's better to let the stocks run down to zero, and surround it in a blaze of stories about greedy capitalist fishermen raping the planet, rather than trying anything that would actually work. But, hey ho. This is the Marxoid world of regulatory idiots and tax consumer charlatans that we live in. As this is Friday, I may partake of a small parcel of fish 'n' chips, for my supper. I should enjoy it while the fish last, under the abysmal regulatory control of our masters and betters in government, God rot them all.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

The System of the World

I had to read the book twice, before I dared write a review, and I kept putting the review off, because of the fear of daring to pass comment on Uncle Murray's last book; but finally, I managed to put something up about what I now consider the non-fiction equivalent of Lord of the Rings. I.e. It is simply magnificent. If you want to read the review, and even better, buy the book, try here:

Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (2 volume set)

It's time to put off getting that iPod upgrade, and do something for your Beta-wave grey matter instead of your Alpha-wave white matter. Buy the book. Read. Learn. Think. Enjoy.

Father Cronos and the Lack of Time

One thing I love about human history is the never-ending chain of coincidences and historical tie-ins that get reflected in modern culture. For instance, we have seven days in a week. Why? Because there are seven objects that move in the sky, that the naked eye can observe. Each one became a major God. And each major God got a day of the week named after it. It's easy to see in the French:

Lundi: The Moon's day
Mardi: Mars's day
Mercredi: Mercury's day
Jeudi: Jupiter's day
Vendredi: Venus' day
Samedi: Saturn's day
Err..., well it should be Soldi, for Sun's day, but our French cousins got it wrong here and made it 'dimanche' instead.

Of course, Julius Caesar invented the English words for the day's of the week by contrasting Germanic Gods with his own Trojan-Greek-Latin derived ones, hence:

Monday: The Moon's day, the major feminine Goddess (think Hera)
Tuesday: The day of Tiu, a Germanic God of War, a corollary of Mars (obviously)
Wednesday: The day of Woden, a horse-riding corollary of the swift heraldic Mercury
Thursday: The day of Thor, a thunderbolt-wielding corollary of Jupiter/Zeus
Friday: The day of Freya, the Germanic Goddess of Love, sister of Venus/Aphrodite, the junior partner to Hera/Juno
Saturday: The day of Saturn, the Latin equivalent of Cronos, a God who later came down to us, alas, as a mere Father Christmas, once Jesus outshone God the Father
Sunday: Oh come on, catch up! :-)

So what has any of this got to do with anything? Well, the most powerful God of early history, the Greek Cronos, also known as Father Time, became subsumed by the Latins and renamed Saturn. He remained very powerful and transcendent within people like the Jews (hence the Jewish sabbath on Saturn's day), but within western people he descended into nothing more than a white-bearded man, last seen busking as either Santa Claus or on the ceiling of the Cistine Chapel (it's the same original God, who also masquerades in British religion as Bran, the God of Crows, whose head was buried at the Tower of London). But he always kept his powers of consuming time, the keeper of capitalistic time preferences, no matter what the Christians did to him with their socialistic Sun-God (The Son of God, just like in Star Trek), a.k.a. Jesus H. Christ, an Apollonic sun-haloed God, a Sol Invictus, whose holy day is, of course, the day of the Sun. Remarkable.

But, alas, the Father, Cronos, has still stolen much time from me in the last few months, hence my total disappearance from these pages. And I may still struggle to make an appearance, because of an ongoing committment to a major client. But I may still pop up for air, every now and again, for everyone who may be interested (which is probably me, and my major client, who may question why I have the free time available.)

Anyhow, that's enough nonsense from me. I hope you're having a great time, wherever you are, if you've read this far, and let us hope the Power of Austria continues to grow. All power to Jeffrey Tucker's elbow.

Auf wieder horen.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Putting the 'Au' into 'Austria'

I've just returned from a splendid trip to Vienna, Austria, the highlight of which was discovering a bust of Carl Menger behind a pile of refit scaffolding in a dusty quadrangle corner of Vienna University.

Alas, business calls this week, and then sunnier climes will claim me for my annual retreat into a land filled with windsurf equipment outlets, gins and tonic, and a range of swimming pools with bar service, but for those who wish to visit the spiritual home of all Austrians, I'll be providing a pilgrimage guide to the holy city of Vienna, once the experience has settled into my bones.

Before I sign off though, I must relay a strange incident; I was watching the James Bond film Goldfinger, on the laptop in my hotel room, when I noticed the numberplate on Auric Goldfinger's car, AU1. The symbol AU is, of course, the Periodic Table symbol for gold, the medium of exchange preference of most modern Austrians, as well as being the first two letters of the word Austria.

Spooky, huh?

There's even a town in Austria called Au, which you can read about here. Ah, the excitement of being an Austrian in Austria; it does funny serendipitious things to the brain cells, you know. But when you stand outside the site of Ludwig von Mises' old home, just down the road from Saint Stephen's cathedral, on a warm summer's evening, before a 25 minute walk to an open air café situated between the University and the Burgtheater, where Von Mises and his friends also used to spend the evening? Now that really does set the psyche tingling.

Obviously, a well-seasoned Wienerschnitzel soaked in lemon and washed down with a particularly fine ice-cold Welschriesling helps, but it is an atmosphere which I feel unworthy even to write about until I can summon up the correct words. I even felt so inspired I tried to order the whole thing in German, to a fantastically Hungarian-looking waiter:

Ich mochte bitte, ein Wienerschnitzel, und vielleicht ein glas von Welschriesling, haben, bitte, und denn, das Rechnung?
I wonder if Von Mises would have approved of my schreckliche Deutsche sprache?

But alas, I must away into the evening. The balmy heat of an Oxfordshire evening in England is insisting that the Bombay Sapphire is iced and lemoned instantly. Jawohl, ich bin ein Wiener. Auf wieder hören.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Service Stations on the Road to Serfdom

Readers of AngloAustria are probably aware that Britain is already pounding down the nightmare boulevard of Hayek's Road to Serfdom. However, it became particularly evident this week when Mayor Red Ken of London proposed a £25 pound daily charge for anyone driving a car disapproved of by the majority.

I won't bore you with a rant about this, as it's far too much like preaching to the converted, but what I found far more disturbing than this typical piece of majoritarian tyranny, was the reaction of Daily Torygraph readers. Unless hordes of socialists are primed to respond to any reaction piece in the Torygraph, it would seem the majority of even Daily Telegraph readers agree with Red Ken's hounding of disliked minorities, on the spurious grounds of catastrophic climate change, or whatever bug-bear it is this week that the Left have attached themselves to.

One immediately imagines, of course, a self-righteous Guardian-reading London businessman taking a taxi to Heathrow and then a quick flight to Edinburgh to smooth over a property deal, before flying home again in the same day, getting self-righteously angry about CO2-producing people driving 4x4s around London; planes and taxis, naturally, producing nothing more than flowers and smiles. Yes, there are stupid people everywhere. However, it is now becoming acceptable for majorities to persecute minorities, even to usually freedom-loving Torygraph readers.

"Tax them more," some of the readers were saying. "Ban them completely," said others.

No doubt these readers will be equally pleased when their little pleasures in life are removed. They will call out and nobody will hear them and they will have no-one to blame but themselves.

So another national socialist click tightens in the ratchet...

Sunday, July 02, 2006

Shuffled Off This Mortal Coil

It would seem that England will only win the world cup when they host the competition themselves again, back in England. Why? Here's the conspiracy bit: Because FIFA need to maintain a healthy client list of governments willing to shell out billions of tax dollars on stadia and so the remarkable coincidences of home wins in the World Cup must continue if FIFA is to continue taking home truckloads of gold back to Zurich every four years.

And here's the cock-up bit: Alas, I did predict before the Equador game that England would lose in the quarter-final, but it gave me no great joy to witness my prediction bear full fruit. To see eleven great players minced around by a terrible system and a worse manager, with the simply dreadful Steve McLaren huffing and puffing along the touchline, boded even worse news for the future, unless perhaps Alan Shearer can step up to the plate and persuade Alan Hansen to become his defensive coordinator.

Yes, England losing yesterday was more cock-up than conspiracy, but any half-decent manager would have swapped out Hargreaves, Beckham, and Lampard, and started with Crouch, Lennon, and Carrick, and then played with a 4-4-2 system. However, it would have made no difference. Germany must win the final and Germany would rather face Portugal in the final, so England had to go, just as Argentina had to go.

Seven teams have won the world cup and six of them have done it at home. Whenever a home team wins the world cup the host government gains enormously from patriotism and FIFA gains enormously in the long line of governments begging to spend billions of their coercively collected taxation revenues on stadia, to be given the chance to become winning hosts.

Strangely, the only champions who have failed to win at home are Brazil. Which is remarkable, though not quite as remarkable as South Korea making it to the semi-final in the last world cup. I don't recall the referees who helped South Korea get there, but no doubt their private Zurich bank accounts were a lot healthier after the tournament, than before; you'll also notice that South Korea appear to have done less well this time, in their world cup campaign.

FIFA need to make a lot of cash to help them in their bid to break into the lucrative US market, and so expect the pattern of hosts winning world cups to continue, with occasional forays into North America, until eventually even the USA team can be gifted a world cup champions victory, in around 2030. AngloAustria prediction: Germany will win the world cup, next weekend, because although South Korea or the USA winning the final would be too much for most to believe, at the moment, it is an entirely believable story for Germany despite the shaky start and the last minute goals keeping them in the competition.

But do gain some comfort, if they do win, from the fact that I'm not a betting man and won't be winning any money. If they lose to some bizarre Thierry Henry wonder goal, impossible to rule offside, also feel some comfort for those bent match officials and their nervousness on starting their cars for the next ten years. Personally, although I'm certain Germany will win, with my heart I want France to win. Why? Because I just love Thierry Henry wonder goals, plus the frozen look on Sepp Blatter's face at the end of such a game, with the host's losing, will be a joy to watch. With such a public spectacle, FIFA match fixing can sometimes go a little awry; witness Italy stupidly allowing themselves to play in Naples, in 1990, rather than where FIFA wanted them, Rome, and then losing to the Argentinian team of Naples hero Maradonna. But six out of seven ain't bad, and hopefully Germany can win the tournament for the second time at home, after their 1974 victory in Munich.

Back in 1966 it was really good of the FIFA official to say so, but did that ball really cross the line in England's final game against Germany? I'm starting to place it in the same mental league as the 1969 moon landing; or should I say the 1969 New Mexico landing? I've got to get out more.

Which is good, really, as I'll be in Vienna for most of the week. Hier wir kommen. Österreich über alles.

Friday, June 23, 2006

Bank of England Independence

George Trefgarne, of the Daily Torygraph, usually writes splendid pieces for this least bad offering of the English statist press, but for some reason he seems to think the Bank of England is in some way independent.

Chancellor is pulling the Bank's strings

I hate to ever say a bad word about the redoubtable Mr Trefgarne, but the Bank of England is a wholly owned and controlled subsidiary of the British government whose only purpose is to continually increase the money supply of fiat paper in this country to enable to British government to keep stealing our money. That's it. It has no other reason to exist.

If Mr Trefgarne doubts this, he really ought to read some more Murray Rothbard:

What Has Government Done to Our Money?

Buy Dreamliner, Sell Airbus

And so it begins...

The all-seeing eyes of AngloAustria strike again.

I predicted in an earlier piece, that the Airbus A380 was a shambolic statist dam waiting to burst. Airbus is usually portrayed by politicians as a triumph of international cooperation, but if you examine the slush funds and soft loans which make up its financing, its true nature becomes clear as that of a Great White Elephant crushing the growth potential of millions of small private businesses. Corporation taxes are sucked from these private operations, crippling their investment futures, and then pumped into this gargantuan beast so that Airbus can continue building the wrong products for the wrong markets. If in the process the pockets of various politicians and cronies involved in this wretched shell game operation become lined with money or votes, or both, so be it; this is the nature of the art of politics.

Yes, I predicted the A380 would be a financially corrupt shambles, which would never break even. I just thought it might take a little while longer before the symptoms appeared:

Crisis over A380 deepens with leasing threat

Oh dear.

Let's take a look at that, perhaps, in a little more depth.

Airbus faces a mounting crisis after the world's biggest leasing company threatened to axe orders worth up to $3bn for the A380 superjumbo, a move that could trigger an exodus of customers.

Excellent.

International Lease Finance Corporation (ILFC) said it was "not happy" about fresh delays in the delivery of the $300m double-decker and believed it now had a legal case to scrap its 10 orders.

Splendid.

"We are considering cancelling all or some of our A380 order," said the group's chief executive, Steven Udvar-Hazy.

It keeps getting better.

ILFC, based in California, has the fourth-biggest order for the A380 after Emirates, Lufthansa and Air France.

Air France has a large order for Airbus A380s? What a remarkable coincidence that EADS, the maker of the Airbus A380, is also based in France. Here's an interesting snippet. A major shareholder of Air France is the French Government. I know, it's remarkable isn't it?

The blow comes days after Airbus stunned investors with a €2bn profit warning and an admission of delays dragging on until 2010.

Oh look, a government-led program is over-running with costs and time delays! Program staff are also complaining about unreasonable quality demands from customers! Who'd a thunk it?

In Paris, there was continued fall-out yesterday from last week's crash in the share price of EADS, which owns 80pc of Airbus.

And who is a major shareholder of EADS, the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company, with at least three separate arms holding different share blocks? Yes, that's right. The French government. Amazing.

The French prime minister Dominique de Villepin erupted in fury in the French parliament after Socialist deputies called for the head of 'Monsieur Airbus' and co-chief of EADS, Noël Forgeard, a protégé of the ruling elite.

Pots. Kettles. Black. Etc. I wonder if Monsieur De Villepin has a private bank account in either Geneva or Luxembourg?

"I denounce your cowardice," he screamed at the socialist leader, François Hollande.

I always find it so refreshing to see ones masters and betters behaving in such a civilised way, in a manner to which we mere tax-paying proles can only aspire.

M Forgeard is under investigation by French regulators for possible insider trading after cashing in stock options for himself and his family for €6.7m last March, shortly before the A380 problems came to light.

Corrupt? A political favorite of the French government? Shurely shome mishtake, m'lud.

His position has become untenable after his German counterpart, EADS co-chief Thomas Enders, said he had chosen not to sell his stock. "Of course it would have been lucrative to exercise the options in March but I decided it wouldn't be opportune to do so," he said.

Well, at least one person in this whole sorry mess has been brought up by decent parents.

Yesterday's warning from ILFC confirms the worst fears of Airbus executives that customers will exploit the legal loopholes caused by the delays to pull out of a project already losing appeal due to higher oil prices.

And higher oil prices are due to the American government, no doubt. Therefore it's all George Bush's fault. Sacre Bleue, mon ami.

Airbus has racked up just 159 orders for the A380 so far, with almost no new takers since crude prices began to surge. The company needs at least 250 sales to cover the €11bn launch costs.

Not forgetting what €11bn could have earned just sitting in the bank collecting base interest rates, or what it could have earned if corporation tax around Europe had been slashed by €11bn Euros and then re-invested or spent on other private products by all of the small private businesses which generated it.

But here's the best bit:

Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner, a super-light design of carbon composites, will use far less fuel.

You see. All you billionaire air moguls out there, yes you, the ones morally bankrupt enough to do business with government, I did warn you. But did you listen? No. You just had to let the taxpayer-fed €-signs floating in your eyes spoil your long term view. Should've listened to your Uncle Jack.

There is still a way out, however. All you need to do is get hold of a copy of Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson, a book inspired by the greatest Frenchman who ever lived:


Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Should the World Cup be a World Club Cup?

There is something disturbingly schizophrenic about being an Austrian, in the philosophical sense, and being an England supporter, in the football soccer sense, because all the usual faults of the state are fully apparent within the current international football set up:

  • FIFA, the UN of football, is diseased to the core, being at best incompetent and at the worst, terminally corrupt.

  • Handing out 3,500 tickets for the England game on Sunday, when there are at least 35,000 fans who would pay at least £300 pounds a ticket to see the game live, so that FIFA officials can rake off the private profits from selling 31,500 tickets on the black market, has Soviet-style nomenklatura duplicity written all over it.

  • The way international football associations ride roughshod over the private football teams who are compelled to supply their players, smacks of all the sins of state conscription, with Alex Ferguson being reduced to praying that the England management don't wreck his premier sporting asset, Wayne Rooney, in their haphazard bid to win a trophy.

  • And then we look at the England team itself, which operates at a level far less effective than the sum of its parts, with massively overpaid management producing shoddy performances from players who, at the private club level, would walk into most of the best private teams in the world.

  • Nobody wants the next England manager, Steve McClaren, except the FA themselves, because they see him as infinitely malleable. This smacks of central bank appointments, where politicians appoint non-entities so that the banks can achieve a patina of independence while at the same time the politicians can pull the strings of a grateful supplicant. McClaren will receive £3.5 million pounds a year, which is about £2.5 million more than he could command on the open market. Expect more blundering incompetence over the next four years, from this managerial boob.

  • The more obvious choices for the England manager's job, Sam Allardyce, Stuart Pearce, and Terry Venables, are far too competent for the FA's liking, and would dare to answer back and do a decent job for the money. It sounds more and more like government all the time.

  • The players themselves receive relatively scant reward, in comparison to both what they earn for their private clubs and what the FA will receive in fees for England's attendance at the World Cup. I never begrudge these players a penny of what they earn, except perhaps when they start slating capitalism at Bono-inspired press events; their share of the World Cup booty is simply derisory compared to what their skills, talents, and hard work, are generating.

  • And then of course we have all of that patriotic nationalist nonsense with all those dreadful national anthems, hands on hearts, and olds-scores-to-settle fervour whipped up by the various media outlets.
Okay, so maybe I am a hypocrite on this - I admit it, both hands up. But there is something about having been raised an Englishman, which affects my nervous system on this primal level as much as it appears to have affected Wayne Rooney. But standing back and trying to view it more rationally, I think I would prefer a World Club Cup with 32 of the best private teams in the world playing a tournament every four years instead of the current international FIFA-based setup.

There would be less nationalism, more competent team management, and better ticketing arrangements. The players would also be properly rewarded for their input, there would be less organisational corruption, and the risks of the games would fall fairly on the competing private teams, rather than being passed on to someone else, as at present; I certainly wouldn't like to be a Newcastle United shareholder at the moment, having watched a £17 million pound investment, in the shape of Michael Owen, dispatched to a physiotherapist's table, perhaps permanently, by poor pitch preparation and incompetent pre-match warm-up training.

And after sampling the joys of the England team in the previous three games, I'm certain that watching Chelsea play Boca Juniors would provide far more footballing entertainment than England versus Paraguay, unless of course watching a Keystone Kops shambles is what you enjoy, as part of the secret masochistic life of the typical England supporter.

Obviously, I wouldn't want to force a World Club Cup on anyone. But how far down the current premier league would we have to go before we found a team that would fail to beat England? Would England even feel comfortable taking on Blackburn? Maybe the World Club Cup will spontaneously generate itself, from a growing European Cup, franchising itself into a world event? If and when it does, perhaps the World Club Cup will gradually come to overshadow the World Cup, diminishing it to the level of, let's say, FA County football, as at present. I can but hope.

Meanwhile, back here in the real world, let's go for a prediction: England to beat Ecuador on penalties and then to go out in the next round - Sven Goran Eriksson must be laughing all the way to his Swiss bank account in Zurich, which incidentally, is the home of FIFA - funny that. Though yes, I still dream of that last minute Wayne Rooney hackle over the line, against Brazil, in the final. You just never know with football. That, perhaps, is the problem.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

An Anagram to Die For

I'd like to thank David Farrer of Freedom and Whisky for unearthing this one:

An anagram of Conservative is...

Craven Soviet


Give Sir Sean What He Wants

There has been a lot of talk in the last few days, in the UK, about the West Lothian question. Essentially, this question asks how can it be right for Scottish MPs to vote on parliamentary matters which fail to affect their constituents. In Gordon Brown's case, this question mutates into how can a Scottish MP become Prime Minister, if most of the policies he wishes to pursue fail to affect his constituents?

With a Scottish parliament in place, New Labour hoped to assuage their Scottish power bases. But they also hoped that the West Lothian question would simply disappear, while they continued to use these Scottish power bases to further their numskull statist plans for the socialisation of England.

But the West Lothian question absolutely refuses to disappear, and instead grows stronger by the day, to the point where we have that fat toad Gordon Brown pretending to support the England football team at the World Cup, even flying out there last night to watch the game live and thereby denying a true England fan a seat in the stands.

I watched the England vs. Trinidad and Tobago game last week surrounded by a host of Scotsmen. The entire Hogmanay lot of them, bar one, were blatantly anti-English, making for a fabulous atmosphere. But why the holdout? "Because I spent 25 years in the military, and we always used to think of ourselves as British, rather than English, Scots, or Welsh." Fair enough.

I did notice, however, that when Peter Crouch's winner went in for England, this "British" Scot remained thoroughly unexcited, while all the Englishmen around him leapt out of their seats.

You may also have seen pictures of Gordon Brown watching the England football team, far too sickening to reproduce here, as he smiled like a corpse stitched up for the cameras; these photographs simply prove, of course, what a charlatan and a fraud he has become. I regularly travel to Edinburgh to visit my business partners from that fine land. I would even move there in the future, if the land of Adam Smith adopted a freer way of living than England and they would be prepared to let me in. And except perhaps for the odd ex-military type, Gordon Brown must be the only man from Scotland who smiles when England score a goal.

He is becoming increasingly resented in Scotland because of this "Sucking up to the Hun", and every Englishman with a pulse knows his actions are as fake as fiat five pound note; well, they would if they understood how the government has stolen our money!

So where does this lead us? In precisely the direction I wish to go. Because even if Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister, which is becoming increasingly less certain by the week, this West Lothian question just keeps getting bigger and bigger, dwarfing Gordon Brown as he drowns himself in a ridiculous funk of Britishness; it may grow even STRONGER if he does become Prime Minister, which may prove a silver lining, but I would rather chop off my own right arm with a small fruit knife than wish for that particular shop of horrors.

I also think it's more than coincidence that the whole of England becomes regularly awash with Crosses of St. George, these days, rather than the Union Jack, when the £412 million pound Scottish parliament building continues to suck in £10 billion English pounds every year, as a Danegeld downpayment for the continuing New Labour votes of Scottish MPs.

Ireland has already managed to become independent. Scotland is going that way too. Then we can free Wales, and then Cornwall, and then Oxfordshire, and then finally my own little house on the chalk downland prairie.

Secession. It's only a little word. But its power is immense. The Founding Fathers of the Unites States fought a war to achieve it. Abraham Lincoln fought a war to destroy it. And we must fight to promote it too, in every which way we can, except for perhaps wishing Gordon Brown to become Prime Minister. Let's give Sir Sean Connnery what he wants. Let's give him a free Scotland, and then one day we may all get what we want too; a free world.

Spleens Vented, Etc.

Although Simon Heffer could at best be described as a Minarchist, he does occasionally write a splendid piece in The Torygraph. Yes, obviously, it would be better if he were a SEK3 Agorist or a Hoppeian Paleolibertarian or a Murphyite Ancapite, or even a proto-Rothbardian, but nevertheless it's good to hear at least one voice in the mainstream British press speak out against the Gramscian correctness of the orthodox Guardian Reader ruling class.

Wrong, defeated, humiliated: why the Left still hates Lady Thatcher

And he does also attract some of the finest comment writers around, ahem! :-)

Monday, June 19, 2006

Thomas Jefferson - Doctor Who in Disguise?

I often get the feeling that Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, must have been a real life Doctor Who, travelling through time as a conglomeration of many different men. How come? Well, surely it must be impossible for so much wisdom to have been condensed into the liberal thoughts of just one man, thoughts which fit as easily into the modern age as they did into the age in which Mr Jefferson allegedly lived.

For instance, here are his thoughts on the BBC:

To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical


On the NHS:

Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now

New Labour's tenure in government:

I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious

The sanity of Tony Blair:

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others

The current political malaise and voting slump in modern Britain:

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not

The continual re-invention of Madonna's pop career:

Every generation needs a new revolution

On our invasion of Iraq:

I abhor war and view it as the greatest scourge of mankind

Guardian readers:

In every country and every age, the [technocrat] had been hostile to Liberty
Ok, so I hacked that one a bit and changed priest to technocrat. But I've got to have a little fun.


ID cards:

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty

John Prescott:

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct

And of course, Professor Hoppe:

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine

What a man Jefferson was. Or is? I hope he beams down to help us again. His return can't come a moment too soon.

Another One Bites the Dust

Until this morning, if Kendra Okonski had asked me to marry her, I would have had to decline her otherwise fully understandable offer. Why? I hear you ask. Because until this morning I had been carrying a rather large torch for Sabine Hérold, who, purely on account of her policies you understand, is perhaps one of the most attractive and certainly one of the best known classical liberals in the world.

So what's the problem Jack, my old son? Why have you spurned this Maid d'Orleans, this barricade temptress, this stormer of the statist Bastille?

Well, it would appear that Mlle. Hérold has fallen directly into the same self-aggrandizing trap that seduced the otherwise brilliant classical liberals of the American Revolution; she wants to enter into constitutional democratic politics to help liberalize la France.

Somebody? Anybody! Please rush Mlle. Hérold a copy of Democracy: The God That Failed, toute de suite, before it's too late; though I fear the Ring of Power may already have sucked her in. Creating freedom through democracy is almost as oxymoronic as Military Intelligence. To give Sabine her due, democracy is a candle of fools' gold that has sucked in plenty of other sensible moths, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and even Ludwig von Mises. But I had held out greater hopes for Mlle. Hérold; I had thought she would be able to overcome its almost irresistible allure and prove to remain a modern-day Galadriel. Alas, my fool's hope would appear to be dashed on the rocks of misguided personal ambition.

The ruling classes have long recognised the truth that if they are to survive, they must keep open some comfortable berths for the most articulate of their opponents in the ruled class. Some historians even date the beginnings of the end of the Roman Empire to the start of the rule of the Emperor Trajan. His immediate predecessor, the Emperor Nerva (96-98 AD), was the last imperator to use the Tribal assemblies to help pass laws. From Trajan onwards, the rule of law was provided by imperial ordinance alone. This closed an important upward trapdoor. To catapult themselves upward into the equestrian Patrician class, ambitious and powerful Proletarians, unhappy with their lot, had always used the Tribal assemblies to become Tribunes first, and then Patricians afterward. With this route to power shut down in 98 AD, it was only a matter of time before these these trapped ambitious men would use mob rule to bring the core of Patrician Rome down to its knees, leaving it easy prey to the tax-hating Germanic tribes of the north. The same thing, of course, happened to the French Royal Court in the French Revolution.

It would seem the French Establishment, who I suspect still see themselves as the Carolingian and Napoleonic bearers of the western imperial mantle of Rome, have learned their lesson. If you see any member of the mob getting stroppy, for God's sake, let them into the club to shut them up. Give them a fat tax-fed salary, give them first class air travel, and then give them something really important to do, such as counting paperclips in a government bureau. If that fails to work, you'll have to kick them upstairs and make them President, but once they're in the club they'll come round. They'll see the benefits of chauffeur-driven travel, the benefits of important international conferences in Hawaii, and the benefits of Five-star hotel rooms in Dubai. But for God's sake, whatever you do, get them away from the Proles before they infect them with any more anti-ruling class nonsense!

Sacre Bleue, Sabine, what have you done?

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

If the Jackboot Fits

It would seem an Englishman's Home is now the source of all the major evidence against him. As this benighted land of former freedom falls further under the jackboot of the socialist nomenklatura who rule it, it failed to surprise me this morning when I read the following in the Torygraph:

Coroners will be able to break into people's homes and seize evidence under a draft Bill published by the Government yesterday.
Superb. What joy it must be to start off as a young caring socialist, like that cretin Harriet Harman, and end up as the foot inside the jackboot smashing down on people's faces, Gestapo style.

Typically, being New Labour, the greedy morons have to steal not only more of my freedom but some more from my wallet too, to achieve a splendid double-whammy extension of their own powers to cripple my life.

Coroners will be able to fine witnesses up to £1,000 if they refuse to answer questions in court or to produce evidence.
If in doubt use force, if that doesn't work, use theft, if that fails too, use both. That's right, Britain will apparently become a better place by the government extending its use of force and theft against its cowed tax slaves. Just like Germany did in the 1930s.

Permission will be required from the Chief Coroner, a new position to be appointed by the Lord Chancellor
Oh Christ, another hugely expensive snout in the trough, no doubt on not a penny less than £250,000 a year, plus an outer office of other useless jobs-for-the-boys acolyte bureaucrats costing not less than £50 million pounds a year. You've got to hand it to New Labour. They really do know how to rub it in that they are the masters now, and that they can achieve colossal waste on the scale of Pharoahs.

The Coroners' Society said it would do its best to work with the Bill, but adequate resources were needed.
Let's just add another £100 million pounds a year to the cost of this Gauleiter legislation. At least we know now why they call them Government Bills.

I very rarely agree with Torygraph editorials, but this one I did like. Here's the highlight, which I couldn't have put better myself:

Giving more state agents the right of entry will not merely erode liberty: it will undermine the basis of citizenship itself. We obey the government because it is limited government. When it is no longer limited, there will be nothing to make us behave but abusive proclamations, backed up by arbitrary force.
We are standing on the edge of a precipice. Let's just hope we survive the slide right down to the bottom and back up the other side to a future of liberty. Assuming of course that we don't just slide right down into a socialist abyss without any way back.

Ich bin ein Wiener

Splendid news! A client wants to pay me to visit him in Vienna, for a week, all expenses paid!

Is he joking?

Obviously I'll have to do a little work while I'm there, but I nearly bit his arm off and almost forgot to negotiate for my usual extortionate rates.

After my libertarian pilgrimage around New York recently, what could be better than a trip around Vienna? Thank goodness Mises.org have a guide.

What fun! :-)

Monday, June 12, 2006

Blood Brothers: England and Somalia

Wearily staggering from one World Cup barbecue to another, I managed to get five minutes alone on a friend's laptop to see the distressing news that United States government funding of Somalian warlords has helped create a quasi-government in Mogadishu; now the CIA has someone it can finally do business with, even if this particular 'government' may make the Taliban look like girl scouts.

But while reading the usual statist rhetoric about nature abhorring power vacuums, as if a personification of nature cares a scrap about the petty scrabblings of puny naked apes, when she's quite busy enough, thank you, moving tectonic plates around, I was struck by the nature of this jolly country of ours, this jewel set in a silver sea, this England.

We must be one of the few nations left on Earth, outside Somalia, that doesn't have a government. Que? I hear you ask. Well, yes, it's slightly cheeky, and yes, we are ruled here by a British government, composed mainly of Scotsmen, but there is no actual English government, except for perhaps a solitary member, the Queen of England, as head of state. Even Herr Professor Hoppe would surely approve of such an arrangement. The Scots have a government, the Welsh have a government, and John Prescott tried and failed to foist a serious of other such pointless and wasteful overarching bodies onto the English, but, and here's the more serious point, if nature so thoroughly abhors a vacuum, why don't the English appear to need a government, to feel in control of their own destiny? Even the Romans always had a government and a governor for each nation they controlled, much as those modern-day Romans do, the Washingtonians, with the 50 separate nations that they currently milk as a tax base to fund their growing empire of violence.

But we in England seem to have rubbed along now for over three centuries without a government of our own. And yet we know who we are, even when abroad, we know what flag to wave, even if it's made of plastic, and we know that Wayne Rooney is going to win the World Cup for us, with a glorious winner struck off the fourth metatarsal of his right foot, in the last minute of extra time against Brazil.

We are a nation without the need for a government and I, for one, think that this is a splendid arrangment.

If only we could think of some way of throwing off the twin parasitic yokes of the British Scottish Mafia and the European French and Italian Mafia, and then we could get some private security in to get this nation back to becoming a green and pleasant land once more.

Well, it's just a thought.

PS> AngloAustria will be coming to you sporadically this week, from Cambridge, England. If you see any strange men wandering around down by the river Cam, thorougly soaked after attempting to punt, and wearing a Ludwig von Mises polo shirt, there aren't that many SEK3 Agorists around, so it'll probably be me. Otherwise, I'll see you at Parker's Piece on Thursday, watching the game against Trinidad and Tobago, if someone manages to get another big screen up. Come on England!

Monday, June 05, 2006

The International Policy Network

These people seem to have been getting a lot of airtime recently, even on the dreaded BBC. I'm not entirely sure what they're about, or who is funding them, but anyone who has a Bastiat Prize must surely be on the side of the angels.

Their ruling out of weblog pieces for this prize, as possible entries, is a little harsh, but the more important question is, do you think their Kendra Okonski would agree to marry me if I asked her?

The Other Side Of The Same Coin

Okay, so I may have got a little side-tracked on Tony Blair recently (not that he doesn’t deserve it), but what about the other side of the coin; the glorious shiny haired leader of the Stupid Party? Well, I think after his outburst in the Torygraph today, we all know exactly where we are. Strapped with yet another feckless puffed-up politician whose only claim to greatness is that he hasn’t been in power long enough to become completely corrupted, yet. So what exactly is the difference between Tony Blair and David Cameron? Ideologically speaking I have absolutely no idea. So, let’s Fisk the article, for fun.

David Cameron will today make a further decisive break with the Tory past by demanding that his party abandons its traditional hostility to public services and the "lazy assumption" that the private sector is always best.

The lazy assumption? How about an assumption borne out of theory, experience, and two hundred years of Conservative politics? If the public coercive sector was so good, we would all pay for it voluntarily rather than being forced to pay for it against our will, as at present. Has this never occurred to Mr Cameron? What a load of old bananas.

It would seem the Stupid Party really has elected a leader with absolutely no ideology whatsoever, other than the ideology of becoming the caretaker king and temporary owner of the keys of Camelot, to bleed us dry in yet another myriad ways.

I suppose it was always going to come to pass, but once 51% of the any morality-free population gets 51% of their income from the other 49%, it becomes absolutely impossible to do anything, under a democracy, than to cave in to all of their parasitical whims. Step forward, David Cameron, an obvious choice as the ambitious parasitical goat who can deliver. Step forward too the end of democracy as a serious ideology worth continuing with. Obviously, it’ll take another hundred years or so (or maybe less?) to founder completely, but the game for democracy is clearly up. Oh how wise those Greeks were to abandon it so soon after they first invented it.

Tearing up another chunk of Conservative policy that he helped to champion before the last election, he will say it is time for the Tories to stop attacking bureaucrats and civil servants, most of whom are dedicated to the "high ideal" of community service.

It’s like reading the ramblings of a man trapped alone with a hot bong and five pounds of Moroccan Black. Unfortunately, for my sins, I know (or at least used to know) a large number of civil servants. And every man jack of them was in it for themselves, their holiday rights, their pension rights, and retiring as early as possible due to stress. One high idealist turd I used to know, from the Inland Revenue, even managed to retire due to stress at the hilarious age of 41, on a full salary, until he properly retires at 60, on a full government pension, courtesy of J. Maturin Esquire and everyone else who does something useful. Laugh? If the man ever dies a horrible death due to mutilation and torture, I expect to be placed right at the front of the queue of suspects.

Although, I suppose, everyone who, ahem, 'works' for the Inland Revenue (in the same way that Frankie Four Fingers 'works' for the Mob), should really expect the same when the Agorist revolution comes.

"Anyone working in the public services could easily have heard a pretty negative message from my party: 'there's too many of you, you're lazy and you're inefficient'.

Correct. Yes. Excellent. That’s more like it. Well said, that man.

This is far from how I see things," he will say in a speech to a National Consumer Council summit.

Well then, David, you’re obviously an idiot.

In their desire to achieve value for money, Mr Cameron will argue that the Tories have too often portrayed public servants as "burdens on the state" rather than people dedicated to improving the lives of others.

He just hasn’t got it, has he? These people aren’t a burden on the state. These people are the state and it is the state that is a burden on the rest of us.

Targeting doctors, nurses, teachers, the police, members of the Armed Forces and other public servants fed up with Labour, he will add that in many areas the private sector has lessons to learn from the public sector.

What? In how to beg, cheat, lie, steal, and thieve? I must admit, I am a fan of the Godfather movies, and I have learned much from them. Such as how to murder my brother when my mother dies. But once again my vain residual hope that the Stupid Party has anything to offer other than yet more crass theft and duplicity, has simply evaporated.

Democracy really is a God that has failed.

It would seem the only difference between the Stupid Party and New Labour is one of managerial competence. They both propose the same statist plan of continuing to steal our properties and our liberties until there is nothing left but a socialist ants' nest, but now they're merely arguing about the colour of ant we will be.

Even if I was still stupid enough to be a democrat, I cannot see any point whatsoever in voting. The only real difference is that if you don't vote for one lizard, the other lizard will get in. Poor old Douglas Adams. I wonder if he ever thought it would come to this? I get the feeling that he did.

Wir lieben Der HoppeMeister.

Saturday, June 03, 2006

The Temptation of Power

A rather fine Daily Telegraph reader, with the intelligent sounding name of David Whelbourn, has passed the opinion, in reply to a comment I made to an Andrew Gimson commentariat piece, that I should be made Prime Minister! What sound judgement.

Alas, my first act as Prime Minister would be to sack myself for being an immoral coercive tax parasite. But it's the thought that counts. Thank you Mr Whelbourn.

Heraldry Revisited

It seems every organisation needs a brand, so I thought I'd try my hand out at creating an AngloAustrian logo. Here's the beast, below:

We have the black flag of Anarchism and Agorism, the anglo-heraldic badge of England, and upon the black flag, emblazoned, the double-headed golden eagle of Austria with a superimposed shield of the Duchy of Austria. I've tried to follow the heraldic rules of not juxtaposing metals ('argent' and 'or') against each other, or colours ('sable' and 'gules'), and I quite like what has emerged. Well, it'll do for the moment, anyway.

The All-Seeing Eyes of AngloAustria

Apparently, Tony Blair is looking a new job at the UN. Well, any AngloAustrian readers would have known that a week ago, but obviously not enough world rulers twigged his speech, so our Lord and Master has found it necessary to get his flunkies to repeat the message more directly.

In case the deadbeats in the world's ruling classes don't get it again, here's a no-holds-barred AngloAustrian translation of Tony Blair's speech:

Please kick out that fool Kofi Annan and make me boss man instead. If you help me get what I want, the deal is I will get your feckless country onto the Security Council or the G8, or whatever international pelf-making body you prefer. Once I'm World Controller, help me ramp up my powers to go invading anywhere I damn well fancy, to help out my neocon mates in Washington, and who knows what pelf I'll be able to send your way. And my CV? Well, I've killed more innocent civilians in the last ten years than anyone except old Georgie boy, I've broken more UN resolutions and international laws than even Joseph Stalin managed to do, and I know where all the bodies are buried. You know it makes sense. If you don't, I'll send the boys round. Know what I mean?
Pure class.

PS> Here's another AngloAustrian prediction. Kofi Annan leaves office on the 31st of December, 2006. Tony Blair will therefore resign as Prime Minister of the UK at a short period before this, to leave Downing Street one day, and pop up as UN Secretary General after a quick tour of the world to pick up enough votes to do it. At least, that will be the plan in Blair's mind. Personally, I don't think he'll make it, as it's Asia's turn for the secretaryship (or Australasia), plus international personalities, for want of a better phrase, such as Bill Clinton et al, are usually hated by enough people to be blocked, so non-entities usually get the job. But because he has God and Cliff Richard on his side, never ever underestimate Tony Blair's capacity to get himself in where he's not wanted. I don't know what tricks he will play, but I'm guessing that the big one will be to bring the US back on-side, by getting them to agree to pay the fees and play the rules of the UN club. If he does make it, the World Government we all dread will almost certainly come one step closer, along with the increasing death and chaos, and progressive pre-emption, that this will entail. Watch this space.

Friday, June 02, 2006

The Apes of a Cold God

Well, if I am to become a fully-fledged SEK3 Agorist, I had better start writing some libertarian fiction. Here's the first chapter of the bare bones of an idea. If you think it's worth me pursuing it as a novel and trying to get it published somewhere, please let me know and I'll see what I can do:

The Apes of a Cold God

Book I

Chapter 1:

And we, we Apes of a Cold God, still cherish,
With frenzied pain upon our loving breast,
The viper so voluptuously warm,
That it as Universal Form rears up,
A curse shall finish what a curse conceived


17:8, The Book of Stars, The Bible of Social Justice

Pope Jean-Paul Stalin bent his stiff neck down from looking up at the stars, and faced James Wilde. It was below freezing on the northern heath overlooking Karl Marx City, and Wilde was unsure whether the ancient holy man's lips were trembling from cold, old age, or nervousness. Stalin's cloudy breath began to rise in a silver moonlit glow.

'It's impossible James. I can see no alternative.'

'But millions will die.' Stalin paused for a second, and rubbed the back of his shaven head. Throwing the briefest of glances upward again, he shrugged his narrow shoulders.

'It's for the greater good.' With nothing more to be said, James bent and kissed the emerald ring on the Pope's proffered left hand. Stalin then scurried back towards the beckoning warmth of his nearby horse carriage, his black velvet cloak rustling over the dark clumps of rain-soaked grass. Once the carriage's door thumped shut, a pair of black Holstein horses started pulling the mahogany coach out from its muddy ruts, as their driver shook bell-studded reins.

The large iron wheels rumbled back down the track towards the People's Palace, where the twenty-year-old Empress awaited her orders. James wished she could live longer. But it was only one more year before the cardinals would flay her alive on Eurania's Salisbury Plain, just like all the others. Her necessary sacrifice would also be for the greater good.

Archbishop James Wilde lit a cigarette with a small golden lighter monogrammed with a tiny imperial eagle. Virginian peasant girls had rolled this cigarette on their tanned thighs from a special blend of his own devising; Moroccan cannabis to deaden the senses and Turkish tobacco to sharpen the mind. He looked up again at the tiny star Atlas, as it sparkled on the left side of the distant Pleiades star cluster; this stellar group swam just above, and to the right, of Taurus the Bull. Around Atlas swung the enemy planet.

At least fifty million misguided souls lived there, and Wilde was charged with killing them all. It was his duty. But after five minutes, in the gloom, he'd failed to convince himself it was his honour. The bright star twinkled as a sigh of wind brushed over Wilde's upturned eyelashes. Did this little pinprick star know what he was planning? Was it daring him to try?

Over the next hour, as it lifted up from the eastern horizon, a near-full Moon draped the Pleiades in a growing milky glow. Wilde took comfort from this. Imperial engineers had long ago emblazoned the Empire's black eagle, in scattered carbon powder, for thousands of miles across the Moon's surface. This lunar bird of prey dominated the sky; its wings spread from Mare Tranquillitatis to Oceanus Procellarum, its curved talons sliced the craters of Schickard and Janssen, and its beaked head razored the lunar sea of Mare Imbrium.

Wilde took a long last drag on a last long cigarette, crossed himself, and then flicked away the plain white stub into the wet grass. Before the cigarette's bright orange life had fizzled to a close, he'd turned his back and was marching down back into Karl Marx City, shoulders hunched, and mind focussed. As the Empire's crack general, of its crack legion, James Wilde had decided to remain unafraid of imaginary bad omens. He had a job to do.



Though she'd long forgotten her original name, Empress Rosa IX had trampled the grass as a five-year-old girl among the millions of Earth worshippers at the last sacrifice, when Empress Germaine XII had soaked the turf of Stonehenge with her own fresh blood; a peach sun had just risen, on the summer solstice of Germaine's twenty-first year.

In her last act of renewing the Empire's fertility, the skinless, sliced, and dying Empress had thrust out a left arm out towards the temple's northern Heel Stone. Pope Stalin, in a purple toga, had waited for that moment before breaking open her ribs with a golden hammer and a golden sickle; he'd then gouged out the imperial heart. Rosa could still hear the screams.

As the last clottings of blood splashed over the ancient stone altar, and the quivering muscle heartbeats faded in Stalin's wet raised hand, a line of shaven-headed and saffron-robed cardinals had snaked past the Heel Stone.

They'd crossed towards the Salisbury Plain Cursus, while acolytes strummed gilded harps, and others slapped goat-skin tambourines. The crowd parted in a frenzied wave at the cardinals' progress; it was the God-given task of these imperial elders to find a new empress.

And from the thousands of young girls pressed towards them, by thousands of feverish, naked, and wine intoxicated child guardians, they had selected Rosa for her sharp black eyes, flawless pale skin, and waist length ebony hair. Clothing her in Germaine's last blood-spattered ermine cloak, they'd strewn Rosa's path with pink rose petals and prompted her to begin the pilgrimage towards Avebury, the giant ring of Earth stones which lay across the plain towards the north-west. Once there, they enthroned her upon the Devil's triple-stone altar, at sunset, inside the centre of the temple. Since that day her duty had been to live and then to die for the Empire.

End of Chapter 1

The real question is, of course, would you pay in hard gold cash to read more? Please let me know.

Self Discovery is a Terrible Thing

Oh my God. I've just discovered that I'm a SEK3 Agorist. What the heck is a SEK3 Agorist? I'm not entirely sure yet, but I do think I am one. This will take some more investigation.

Dammit! I had thought I was developing into a LeFevrian proto-Rothbardian Raicoian, with added Hoppeian tendencies plus a smattering of Kinsella-ism. But no, it turns out all along I was mutating into a fully-formed SEK3 Agorist.

Libertarianism can get really tricky, sometimes.

How to Become an Insurgent

With his insatiable need to drop cluster bombs on innocent people, Tony Blair has often been accused of being a military adventurer, particularly by yours truly. However, even from a purely military point of view his constant aggressive wars since he came to power have made Britain less safe defensively. Yes, the SAS are particularly well-honed, having been on active duty constantly since this blood-thirsty murderer came to power, but you can't defend the whole of Britain from a sustained attack with a single special forces unit, no matter how well-trained or motivated. What you need, when the EU Wehrmacht eventually invades, are muck-and-bullets infantry slugging it out in the hills.

But would you join the infantry? Now? After basic training you'll be straight onto a plane to Iraq, given shoddy personal armour, and then constantly shot at and bombed by an inflicted population who hate you. What puzzles me, of course, is why we call them insurgents. We are the insurgents, and it is their land we have insurged. And then when your coffin gets shipped back home, a junior government minister, who would rather be engaged in Ugandan discussions with his secretary, will drape a Union Jack over you at Northolt. What fun!

It may be one thing to serve the Queen and defend your own land from socialist invasion; many young men in Britain are quite prepared to do that. But to defend a hare-brained Washington-hatched plot to take over the world and make it safer for neoconservative social democracy? Please, as the Americans say, give me a break.

Hence the ramped-up advertising campaigns here in Britain to get young men to volunteer to be killed to sustain Tony Blair's career to get rich in America. Every time I turn round I get hit by another army advert, but now I know they're getting desperate because they're starting to fill these adverts with pictures of beaches in Cyprus and scantily-clad female soldiers on close-contact recreational duty. Oh dear.

The army spent £25 million pounds of your money on recruitment advertising last year, and this year will spend much more to try to fill up the increasing shortfalls. My advice? If you do want to serve the Queen and defend these shores, join the Navy or the RAF instead. They don't need to advertise and they don't get shot at by invaded people defending themselves from foreign insurgents calling themselves the British Army.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

A Warm Dollop of Socialist Heaven

In case you missed it, there's a great article over at Mises.org on socialism in Sweden, which has attracted at least one particularly highly intelligent and civil comment, on the related blog page.

It's always good to see pieces on the European experience, on the Mises.org site. It may be me, but there do seem to be more such articles, these days, than there were a year or two ago, so top work Jeffrey Tucker!

BTW, Jeffrey, if you're reading this, if ever you need anything on the English experience of socialism, I know at least one source where I could get hold of something for you? Have you ever heard of Gordon Brown? He's going to be the next British Prime Minister in the next twelve months or so, and if you ever need anything on this particular closet Marxist, I'm sure my source will be able to knock something out for you.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

My Dad The Corpse Is A Welfare Bum

This morning, I discovered a great new way for Labour voters to get money off other people. For one of your elderly relatives, you arrange to collect all of their government benefits , that is, the wealth stolen from other people like me and then handed over to you if you promise to keep voting Labour, minus 15% off the top, which the bureaucrats keep for their transaction expenses in arranging this theft.

You then wait for said relative to die, but you forget to stop collecting the benefits. Apparently 3,000 elderly relatives have been receiving pelf like this, while in the unfortunate state of being dead. So if we multiply in Milton Friedman's government inefficiency factor of around three, that takes us to about 12,000. Personally, I prefer Jack Maturin's more accurate government inefficiency factor of about 10, which usually proves a more realistic measure for how corrupt and useless governments become in any situation, given a head start and a fair wind.

This means that in the glorious sceptred isle of God's own country, the United Kingdom, there are now 33,000 corpses wandering about claiming UK government handouts. Whoever even thought that the land of King Arther wasn't still literally alive with magic? The welfare state is not only good for us tax slaves while shuffling about on this mortal coil, apparently it keeps us going well into the afterlife too! Those ancient Egypticans were obviously wasting their gold building pyramids. They should've been building welfare states, instead. Marvellous.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Save a Horse - Ride a Cowboy

I was being driven up from a night-time visit to the Iwo Jima memorial south of the Potomac, in Arlington Virginia, back to a hotel near the concrete people-mover horror of Dulles airport, when my driver asked me what I thought of country music. 'Isn't it some kind of Appalachian Mountain amalgam of Ulster Irish and English West Country folk music supported by a blend of African rhythym unwittingly brought up the Mississippi by slavers from New Orleans?'

'Have you heard of Dolly Parton?' he asked, ignoring my attempt at historical revisionism. Before I could answer he plugged his MP3 player into the car's dashboard and said, 'This ain't Dolly Parton.'

He then proceeded to play an album by Big & Rich, the starring track of which was 'Save a Horse - Ride a Cowboy'. After plugging Orson below, I thought I better try to restore some kind of North Atlantic balance.

If you ever get the chance, I heartily recommend 'Big & Rich', which is sort of like Stiff Little Fingers meets Crash Test Dummies meets the Banjo player from Deliverance.

If you ever get the chance, do have a listen. It really ain't Dolly Parton.

Bring Our Boys Home - Now

Two more poor bloody squaddies dead, and still Blair remains in office. That's 113 British soldiers dead now, all sacrificed on the altar of Tony Blair's evil ambition. How many more must die before this revolting man is removed from political office? As a former squaddie myself, who signed up because he believed one day he would get blown up in West Germany trying to stop an east european socialist onslaught, I want every single British serviceman and servicewoman to be given orders to leave the horror of Iraq before the end of the week. It is one thing to sign up and die defending your country from socialist invaders. But to die in a remote unwelcoming land on the basis of deliberate spin and lies to further the monetary greed of a vainglorious politician, who needs a U.S. post-prime ministerial lecture circuit to prop up his parasitic lifestyle and pay for the mortgage payments on his £3 million pound home, disgusts me beyond mere typewritten words.

As your last act on leaving office, tomorrow Tony, sign the order bringing our troops home. Do it now before another 100 die. Do it now before another one dies. And then in the name of God, get on that jet plane to the United States and never come back.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Orson - No Tomorrow

Okay, so I'm about seventy five billion nano-years behind the the times, but what a great track, from the American band who came to Britain to gain an audience! :-)

I nearly spontaneously danced down to the Ceroc dance classes we have here in Henley on a Wednesday evening, to meet a lively divorcee or three.

I hope Orson's new album, Bright Idea, due out next week, lives up to their promise contained in this single.

Yes folks, I am a Rock God, and I have my finger on the, errr..., pulse of modern Britain.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Gissa Job: Blair Makes His Pitch As World Controller

Although it makes no difference to me whether the pink lizard of Tony Blair rules Britannia, or the red and blue lizards embodied in Gordon Brown and David Cameron, it is amusing to watch their reptilian struggles for supremacy. And the boy Blair? He knows the game is up. In the Third Way of life, he is now the Third Man; hence, his pitch for a post-prime ministerial job, which you can read about here. I must say, to be so public in his pleas for tax-fed dollars, once he's turfed out of Downing Street, is a little demeaning for this self-styled Colossus, but what is a Doctor of Death to do, once the game is up? Swallowing his pride is the least of his worries. My only real surprise is that he didn't break spontaneously into the lyrics for My Way, at the end of his speech.

Just for fun, though, let's examine his Yosser Hughes style pitch, to see whether he'll get the position he deserves, however this time lifting wealth out of the pockets of the entire world, not just those of us unlucky enough to have him thieving off us in Britain:

Tony Blair last night challenged the world to unite around a policy of "progressive pre-emption" as he sought to shore up his legacy by linking the invasion of Iraq to a range of problems, from global warming and poverty to immigration.

Progressive pre-emption? I think a certain Austrian gentleman with a moustache couldn't have put a better argument for the needs for a World Reich, with supreme power granted to a single man representing the will of the world's Volk.

It's also heartening to see that he's falling back to the usual socialist excuse that because joined-up socialist government has failed in Britain, this is because it needs the whole world to be joined-up in a vast socialist enterprise to really work.

In a speech in Washington just hours after he and President George W Bush made strikingly frank admissions of mistakes in their handling of Iraq, the Prime Minister called for the world to help the new government in Baghdad. On his visit to Iraq on Monday he had seen a "child of democracy struggling to be born".

Ye Gods, what a sickening analogy. What we are witnessing, of course, is a massive civil war being born, with the two midwives of Britain and the United States looking on in horror as three nations emerges from the ruins of one imposed upon them by the French and British colonial powers in the early part of the twentieth century. Once the Kurds have their own country, we'll then witness a Kurdish-Turkish war, and once the Sunnis and the Shias have their own countries, the Shias will amalgamate with Iran, and then we'll have a real Middle-East war to die for, between the Persians on one hand and the Arabs on the other. No doubt the Israelites will find themselves embroiled to create a real imbroglio for War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. Oh what joy. Well done George and Tony.

He also called for radical reform of the United Nations and its sister bodies, the IMF and the World Bank, arguing they were out-of-date and incapable of confronting the financial and security threats facing the world.

I would have just said incapable. And left it at that. No doubt though, Tony has someone in mind to lead this reform. I wonder who this could be?

"Occasionally I look at our international institutions and think as I do about our welfare state: the structures of 1946 trying to meet the challenges of 2006," he said.

So why the haven't you done anything about it in the last nine years, such as abolishing the whole rotten edifice and freeing us from the welfare state's chains of poverty, dependency, and despair? Honestly, Tony. Why are you intelligent enough to see that the Welfare State is a crock, but too cowardly to do anything about it, except make it even more intrusive and even more insatiable for taxation theft? You're even stupider than I thought you were.

Mr Blair was clearly trying to move the domestic and international debate on from the rifts over Iraq to how to tackle future crises.

Yes, and when I was a small boy, if I knocked a plant pot over, spilling wet soil all over a white shagpile carpet, I was always keen to move the debate on too, perhaps to what was for lunch?

But the setbacks in Iraq inevitably overshadowed his visit to Washington, which may be his last as prime minister.

Well, we can but hope.

In a joint press conference at the White House on Thursday night, both leaders briefly dropped their usual staunch defence of the Iraq policy and expressed contrition for some past utterances and actions.

I wonder if this has anything to do with both men taking a kicking in appovals polls? They'd do better to follow Queen Victoria's advice, which helped her remain in political office for over sixty years: Never complain and never explain. (She'd probably still be Queen now, if she could've lived that long.)

Mr Bush said he regretted his "tough talk" conceding that his "bring it on" dare to the insurgents in the summer of 2003 and his "wanted dead or alive" taunt to Osama bin Laden in late 2001 had sent the "wrong signal to people".

It certainly sent the wrong signal to the London Tube murderers, of last year. But I digress.

Mr Blair conceded that they had underestimated some challenges. In an implicit dig at the Pentagon he criticised the decision to bar members of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party from the Iraqi government after the fall of Baghdad.

So you spend untold billions on removing the Ba'ath lizards from power, only to reinstitute the same lizards afterwards? Was the whole thing really then just a bid by Blair and Bush to change the tutelage of the socialist tyrants of Iraq, from Saddam Hussein to themselves? So what was all that cant about freeing the Iraqi people from the Ba'ath party? I give up.

The most concrete proposals in his speech at Georgetown University yesterday concerned the UN. He called for more powers for the UN secretary general, and increasing the number of permanent members of the security council.

Here, we get to the meat inside the sandwich of his speech. I wonder who Blair thinks would make a good UN secretary general? Perhaps someone with prime ministerial experience, able to converse with presidents, used to jetting around the world's trouble spots, as an angel of mercy dispensing aid, hope, and justice? Hmmmm...it's a tough one.

In psychology, there's an effect studied in baboons where one baboon who wants to be the group leader will flag with his eyes to potential supporters, behind the back of the current King baboon. The aspirant baboon then tackles the current King, with the aid of these supporters, who on his victory then take up the newly vacant privileged positions in the group, as his lieutenants. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Tony Blair really is a baboon. You read it here first.

A council with no fixed seats for India, Germany, Japan and no representatives from Latin America and Africa was no longer "legitimate in the modern world" and must be changed, he said. "The danger of leaving things as they are, is ad hoc coalitions for action that stir massive controversy about legitimacy; or paralysis in the face of crisis." The G8 summits of industrialised nations should now also include China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Mexico.

In a free world, of course, there'll be no need for power blocs, as each and every one of us will be trading with billions of other people, as individuals. But if you do subscribe to the power bloc view of the world, what is the point of including everyone? That's like having a football team with 22 players and no opposition.

Tony Blair really is quite incredible. In one sentence he criticizes the UN for being too unwieldy and prone to paralysis. And in the next, he institutes a plan to make the G8 group more unwieldy and prone to paralysis. Quite simply incredible.

He said his vision was shaped by two crises early in his premiership - the war in Kosovo and the 1997 collapse of the Asian markets. "What these two crises taught me was that the rule book of international politics has been torn up," he said.

Well, in the first, it was Blair who tore up the rule book. In the second, this was just economic reality tearing a chunk out of the Keynesian idiots of Wall Street and the City of London, and their Galbraithian friends in government, who thought the laws of economics had changed to provide for unlimited growth forever. To mix these two entirely separate issues, of Kosovo and inflationary bubbles, however, is a stroke of genius by Mr Blair. Confuse, obfuscate, divide, and rule, has been the succesful ruling stratagem of all bandit tyrant classess since time began.

He may be an evil, dangerous, selfish and debauched man, but Tony Blair is really good at it.

Challenges such as global warming and mass migration "can only be tackled together. And they require a pre-emptive not simply reactive response".

Remove welfare states, and privatise all government property, and the migration problems between states, simply disappears. All you'll have then are people moving around the world to help make their lives better, usually by helping the lives of other people, by providing them with remunerated products and services. That's that problem solved.

And global warming is a chimera invented to provide politicians and their state clients, such as environmental lecturers in state-sponsored universities, to legitimise their control over the rest of us proles. Even if global warming does exist, which I doubt, the climate on Earth has always changed, and always will change, and so we should just get on with it and deal with whatever is thrown at us by nature, as it arises. So that's that problem solved.

What on Earth do we need politicians for? We just need a really good healthy dose of anarcho-capitalism. And it only really needs to be in one tiny part of the world, let's say the state of Alabama, or even just the tinier city of Auburn. If successful, the domino effect of the totally voluntary society could then cascade around the world, if left unchecked.

No doubt if Auburn or Alabama did manage to secede bloodlessly from the United States, Mr Blair would quickly send his UN troops in to make them sign up to his Global Warming, Human Rights, Drugs War, and Welfare State protocols, thus negating the whole experiment. But we can only live in hope that one day the shoot of anarcho-capitalism does manage to break through the morass of western government, at least in one part of the western world.

Mr Blair will face scepticism, in particular over UN reform which is bogged down. He stressed, however, that in nine years as prime minister he had become convinced that the traditional distinction between foreign policies driven by values and interests was wrong.

The only interests Tony Blair is concerned about are the interests of Tony Blair. And that dreadful West Wing puppet-controlling harpie he lives with.

Since the September 11 attacks "the greatest danger is that global politics divides into "hard" and "soft", he said. The idea that the "hard" get after the terrorists, the "soft" campaign against poverty" is dangerous and misleading. "We have to be prepared to think sooner and act quicker in defence of (those) values - progressive pre-emption, if you will."

It's official. Tony Blair is a fascist. And if you don't like it, once he's secured his aspired-for job as World Controller, be prepared to be on the end of some progressive pre-emption. You have been warned.