Australia

Judge Censors Speech About Affirmative Action and Fraud in Racial Set-Asides

by Hans Bader on September 28, 2011 · 2 comments

in International, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty

Political “commentator Andrew Bolt ‘was found guilty Wednesday of breaking Australian discrimination law by implying that fair-skinned Aborigines chose to identify as indigenous for profit and career advancement.’ A judge ‘said he will prohibit reproduction of the offending articles,’ and ‘Bolt and his publisher must meet with the plaintiffs to discuss appropriate court orders that would reflect the judgment.’”

This is an extremely damaging blow to free speech. The problem of fraud in affirmative action programs is neither new nor rare. People who are not minorities often pretend to be minorities in order to obtain benefits under affirmative-action programs and racial set-aside schemes. (The Massachusetts Supreme Court upheld the firing of two brothers who pretended to be black to receive preference in hiring). And people often push the envelope in claiming minority status when they have only a small fraction of non-white or minority ancestry. (For example, beneficiaries of affirmative action included people who were only one-quarter Hispanic, under a consent decree in the U.S. v. New York City Board of Education case.)

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A French Kiwi wine? New Zealand and Australia say “non”

by Fran Smith on January 13, 2010

in Intellectual Property, International, Regulation, Trade

Nice article in the Wall Street Journal today by Anne Jolis on a trademark brouhaha between France and Australia that highlights some of the absurdities of the French (and other countries’) protection of geographic designations. Usually France is the country protecting its local food, wine and even chickens by ensuring that other countries’ imports can’t use a French geographical or place name description, such as Roquefort cheese or Champagne.

But this time the Australians and New Zealanders have decided that turnabout is fair play.  Acting on a New Zealand complaint, Australia’s trademark office has refused to okay the import of a French wine called “Kiwi Cuvee 2007 Sauvignon Blanc” because using the name could deceive or confuse consumers into thinking it was produced in Kiwi Country, i.e., New Zealand.

France is not alone in its protection of its local and regional products; the UK, Germany, Italy, Poland, and many other countries have their own registries.  The European Union also has its own system of registration and protection of geographic specialties, such as for the Polish Truskawka kaszubska lub Kaszëbskô malëna. Even the World Trade Organization has limited protection for certain geographic designations under the WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. The U.S. has a few such geographic protections in place, for instance, for Vidalia onions, Florida orange juice, and Idaho potatoes.

Jolis provides some of the arguments proponents use to defend the practice but also suggests a private standards-setting alternative to bureaucratic procedures and protectionism:

So the justification for what is effectively a trademark is that a product’s origin partly defines the product itself.

Perhaps there is truth to that. But then, nothing stops producers from these prized regions from simply applying for and defending regular trademarks. This would eliminate the temptation for every local producer in the world to seek privileged status for otherwise ordinary place-names. Producers of Parma ham or feta cheese could very easily certify their products as meeting privately developed standards of quality and brand them accordingly, without the global bureaucracy that has grown up around “geographical indications.”

GW alarmists continue their exploitation of children

by Fran Smith on December 9, 2009 · 1 comment

in Environment, Global Warming, International

This, I think, has to go down as one of the creepiest “editorials” written by global warming alarmists recently. Clive Hamilton, ABC News in Australia’s public “intellectual,” has an open letter to the child of someone who works for the fossil fuel industry. Here are some selections:

“Hi there,

There’s something you need to know about your father.

Your dad’s job is to try to stop the government making laws to reduce Australia’s carbon pollution. He is paid a lot of money to do that by big companies who do not want to own up to the fact that their pollution is changing the world’s climate in very harmful ways.

Because of their pollution, lots of people, mostly poor people, are likely to die. They will die from floods, from diseases like dengue fever, and from starvation when their crops won’t grow anymore.

The big companies are putting their profits before the lives of people. And your dad is helping them.

. . . . .

I am sure it’s hard for you to hear these words, but there is something you can do to help. Why not sit your dad down and have a good talk to him. Tell him you want him to stop helping the big companies that are spoiling the future for you and all the other kids at school. Tell him that the family would rather have less money if he had a different job, one you could be proud of.

Tell him that you know he will feel much happier inside if he is doing something to make Australia and the world a better place, instead of going to work every day to make it a worse one.

Your dad has lost his way, and you might be the only person in the world who can help him find it again. So talk to him.

Yours sincerely”

This is on par with the official opening video for the  COP15 meeting in Copenhagen –  full of nightmare visions of a child caught in a global-warming-produced  catastrophe – producing earthquakes, no less.  (It’s very well-produced, of course.)

Do these people have any idea what their fear-mongering is doing to the minds of children – other than making them terrified, anxious, and sleep-deprived?

Cap and Trade Takes a Big Hit in Australia

by Myron Ebell on November 30, 2009

in Energy, Environment, Global Warming, International

Breaking news: At a meeting of the Liberal Party’s Members of Parliament today, Malcolm Turnbull was turned out as Leader and replaced by Tony Abbott on a 42 to 41 vote.  Abbott then immediately called for a vote of his colleagues on the Labour Government’s cap-and-trade bill to ration energy and raise energy prices.  The vote was 54 to 29 against.

A number of Liberal Members have risked their careers to stop cap-and-trade, including Cory Bernardi and Nick Minchin as well as Tony Abbott.  They should all be honored for their courageous stand.

Toppling Turnbull was a necessary step, but it isn’t the end of the story.   It is likely that the Senate will now defeat the cap-and-trade bill for the second time.  However, a few disgruntled Turnbullite Liberal Senators could provide the votes needed to pass it.  If it is defeated, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd could then call a general election of both the House and Senate.  So the fight is still to be won or lost.

England’s “migrant children; US “orphan trains”

by Fran Smith on November 16, 2009 · 1 comment

in Odds & Ends

A little known part of British history is coming to light – its migrant program for young children in England , who were sent to Australia, Canada, and other British Commonwealth countries. Such programs, which began in the late 1800s and persisted well into the 1960s, shipped about 150,000 poor children, orphans, and illegitimate children to Commonweath countries where they were sent to institutions, foster homes, farms, and other places where they worked as laborers.  A House of Commons report published in 1998 noted that “hardship and emotional deprivation were the common lot of child migrants, and that cases of criminal abuse were not infrequent.”

In Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provided an apology for his country, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to issue his own country’s apology for initiating these child migrant programs.

According to the parliamentary report, the shipping out of children was done for a mix of reasons: 1) philanthropic – to remove children from the streets or from parents who posed a serious risk; 2) economic – in England, to lower the budgetary costs of the government providing for neglected children, and in the other countries, to provide a source of cheap labor; 3) racist – as the report states, “the importation of ‘good white stock’  was seen as a desirable policy objective in the developing British Colonies.”  In Victorian England, poor families were moving to the cities, many living in tenements and “rookeries,” or destitute and homeless, in the streets.

The British program mirrors to some extent the migrant program in the U.S. known as the “Orphan Trains,” in which from 100,000 to 200,000 children – mainly from immigrant families in New York – were sent in trains to other states, where they were put into foster homes and institutions or were put to work.  In New York, life for many of the poor, uneducated immigrants was grim, and many children were abandoned because the families could not care for them. The U.S. “Orphan Train” program, begun in 1854 by the Children’s Aid Society, persisted until about 1929. Under the auspices of philanthropic organizations, rather than the government, children, sometimes against the wishes of their parents, were herded onto trains in New York and shipped to 47 other states and Canada.

These programs raise difficult issues.  Does the state or a private entity have a right to remove a child — not yet able to make decisions — from his biological parents or from his environment if the child is homeless or uncared for?  What are a child’s rights and interests in relation to organizations – state or private – that place the child in another environment?  Philosophical and legal questions relating to children and their rights have been debated often in libertarian and other circles.  These issues aren’t easy to resolve with a satisfactory answer.

[Ed.’s note: The mother of one of my close friends was a three-year-old Orphan Train migrant.]

Liability Gone Haywire Down Under

by Ivan Osorio on April 13, 2009

in Environment, International, Legal

An 82-year-old Australian grandmother says she is prepared to go to jail rather than pay a A$1-million (US$731,000) bill to clean up toxic chemicals spilled by her tenant.

Opposition spokesman for the environment David Davis described the EPA [Environmental Protection Authority] as a ramshackle organisation that needed to be overhauled.

He said toxic waste was leaking from the barrels and presented a risk to the local community of the light industrial area.

“Because of the EPA’s failure to act at an early point, failure to enforce regulations and failure to guarantee that toxic chemicals were not stored in capacities above what was allowed by permits, a landlord is now faced with a very difficult position,” Mr Davis said.

“The landlord here is being told she is responsible, despite her telling the EPA at an early point that they needed to act against a tenant who was breaking the law.”

In America, the Australian environmental agency’s initials make this case even more disturbing. (Thanks to Margaret Griffis for the Herald Sun news link.)

Marlo Lewis Debates Global Warming on CNN

by Richard Morrison on February 3, 2009 · 1 comment

in Video

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYpXoMdZqX4 285 234]