Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Rise of the Warrior Cop … Evidence Says Culture Well Established in New Zealand Too.



I’m sadly succumbing to a theory, or rather, to the weight of history, that once the state gets to a certain size, and a certain penetration into our lives, it starts to subconsciously militarise its police against its own citizenry, who become cast as the enemy in a necessary Orwellian forever-war, and thus the justification for use of force and pan-population surveillance for no other purpose than the state's own continuation. We’re there, I think. By this ‘theoretical’ stage enough proles have been brain-washed into thinking in terms of a state theocracy to be obeyed in all things, or at least are reliant on the state for their living, therefore the government law enforcement agencies begin to leave a secular peace keeping role and take about them a religious fervour protecting mindlessly all things in the name of the state. Nihilism trumps philosophy; there’s no going back to a free, peaceful classical liberalism. Following so many of my other posts, it’s paradise lost, again.

When I see some of what is happening – much of it farcical, but deadly serious – in the United Police States of America, and cast my mind over recent happenings in New Zealand, the above conclusion is inescapable. The below quotations are from a piece largely behind the pay-wall at The Times:


 AT DAWN a dozen masked police officers, grenades strapped to their hips, smashed through the gates of the designated “crime zone” in rural Pennsylvania in an armoured car. 

A helicopter hovered 300ft overhead, packed with more officers ready to abseil down and swamp the enemy. 

Their target, Daniel Allgyer, an Amish farmer, was surrounded before he could reach for his deadliest weapon — a pitchfork. 

His crime: selling unpasteurised milk across the border to customers in the Washington suburbs, illegal under federal law. 

Fearful of being “Swatted” again, the farmer promised to desist. “These big guys in black, with weapons he had never seen before, terrified him,” said a friend. “Dan always thought the police were on his side, but they behaved like an occupying army.”


Funnily enough, by which I mean sadly, again, I’ve blogged before on this heavy-handed authoritarian approach to milk sales; in that post regarding milk sales in Australia. Apparently we must be saved from ourselves, even if that means the state intimidating, raiding, and locking up adults for wanting to drink unpasteurised milk. In some type of state-mad state-made parody, what is happening is the war on drugs is morphing into the war on milk, pets, and organic vegetables. The Times article continues:


Radley Balko, … author of a new book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, says President Obama has revived funding schemes that encourage the police to militarise – plans that were abandoned by his predecessor, George W Bush.

“For some it’s now easier to get Pentagon military surplus … than conventional policing tools like up to date computers, so obviously police chiefs grab them,” Balko said. “Then they have to use them.” He said that many federal agencies were using powers originally granted for the war on drugs to launch armed assaults on organic farmers, firms that breach environmental laws and to clamp down on illegal immigrants.

The first move by Swat teams is to ‘clear’ buildings of people and their pets: they routinely shoot not just guard dogs but poodles, lapdogs and, in a raid in Missouri that netted a single marijuana cigarette, a family’s corgi.’


Sounds like too many ‘boys’ in the police force. And look at New Zealand. We already have the entire infrastructure of the surveillance state in place; the sanction first legislated via the Tax Administration Act. The broadening of that to total population surveillance happens very soon when National and its muppet, that ‘willing seller’ of our right to be left alone, Peter Dunne, put the GCSB Bill into law. And noting while I support the principle of intellectual property, there was yet that ridiculous show of inappropriate force called the raid on Kim Dotcom, and the more I read of Tame Iti and the Urewera raids, the more I grow uncomfortable with that whole episode also. But the Dotcom raid especially: from the very first when watching the news footage my mind leaped to boys and their toys having a great day out, even getting to fly in the choppers. Remembering that raid was essentially at the behest of the United Police States of America, there must have been many boys-own fantasies fulfilled in the months planning up to that one. The manner and over-reach of that raid was an insult, and a wake-up, to all of us. Again from the article:


In 2008 Swat officers raided the home of Cheye Calvo, the mayor of Berwyn Heights, a Washington suburb, after a political rival posted a bag of marijuana to his house and tipped them off. During the raid they shot dead his two Labradors. The Washington Post called it ‘a Keystone Kops operation from start to finish.’     


Yeah. We’re there alright. What was the Dotcom raid other than Keystone Kops? So New Zealand organic farmers, you had better hold onto your private parts, or at least encrypt your private conversations, ‘they’re coming for ya’. Buggered if I know why, trafficking in vegetables or some damned thing, though I suspect it’s more because you dare to live your own lives, think for yourselves, you’re often a bit ‘out there’ aren’t you, a bit ‘alternative; definitely seditious. We can’t have difference in the bland, creamy and homogenous society, a GCSB spook in every computer and phone. What did you think this was? The free society?


And lock up your pets: the West isn't safe for them anymore; if we're not shooting them we're applying pain to them. Re that last, to Minister McClay who would not front up to the 'stop animal testing for party pills' protests yesterday: that's not good enough. In fact it was gutless, and I still want answers to my questions please.



Monday, July 29, 2013

Labour’s Parody Account – Restrictions on Foreign Ownership.



Monday Headline: Labour Protest Surveillance State While Leader Announces Command Economy.


I understand at the end of QandA over the weekend the bloke who writes satirical blog, The Civilian, announced plans for launching a political party? I only saw the start of that show and was too busy laughing to view beyond the Labour Party leader interview. I further assume  such a new political entity to be a parody party?

I wonder, did that nice young man stay for his interview at the end of the show, or did he slink off after watching Mr Shearer also?

This is Labour’s stunning strategy for the 2014 campaign: to implement policy that will destroy the value of New Zealand held assets.

That’s it.

There will be a capital gains tax on investment houses – at least that’s how it will start, this is how it will end – plus Chinese foreigners will be restricted from buying our existing housing stock, as Chinese foreigners will be restricted from buying our farms.

In this country with its tiny population - smaller than many cities - with our limited capital pool, and often skills shortages, Labour are going to campaign 2014 on making New Zealand an unattractive place to invest your money.

For all the farm and house owners in New Zealand, to give clarity here, Labour want to destroy the value you have built up in your homes and farms. Say if you’re on struggle street and have been using your Working for Families and tax transfers, perhaps your DPB, to repay, say, $20,000 off your mortgage over the last five years, in the sweep of a statute Labour want to write that value off your house, so you’re back to where you started.

Hilarious.

Labour actually want to create a country-wide Christchurch earthquake that will hit every city and every rural enclave, and the punch line is, there’s to be no insurance you can take against it this time – other than perhaps getting your money out of the country first.

And why did Mr Shearer announce this policy on Sunday morning? In a shocking revelation he looked down the camera at every home owner, every farmer, and voice lowered spoke of how in South Africa he’d witnessed, first hand if such is to be believed, some sort of clandestine trade show where businesspeople were advising South Africans that New Zealand was a great place to invest. Why leave their savings in South Africa for South Africans when they could give their savings to a Kiwi house or farm owner for them to invest and perhaps even retire on, so helping to fix New Zealand’s part of that world-wide problem of baby boomers selling their homes into shrinking markets to retire.

That’s the stunning economic policy announced by Labour this Sunday morning. If only this were a laughing matter, but of course it’s not. They mean it.

For the record, I’ve explained on this blog why foreign investment is not only nothing to fear, but a matter for us to rejoice in, certainly economically, but also culturally: there are many posts that touch it, but read especially this one, and then this one. And I challenge any Labour MP to take the challenges given on those two posts.

Our lives are ruled by these inappropriately named representatives of ours in the Fortress of Legislation, and they are first incompetent, economic illiterates, but secondly, most importantly, philosophically bereft. Turning to that other topic, look at the contradictions coming out of the Fortress over just this weekend again:

Labour MP’s on the street protesting the GCSB Bill, while their leader announces the planned economy: all seemingly unaware that a planned economy can only happen consequent on planned lives, and planned lives can only happen when our rights are taken away from us, including our right to be left alone by the surveillance state necessary to separate us from our property and income. Shearer’s announcement for the economy this weekend, is the economics, therefore philosophy, therefore politics, of the surveillance state.

And then there’s this clown again, posting from his parody account:



To the guy at the Civilian, do you see what I mean yet? Just give up mate: the competition is too stiff in your part of the market.


Update 1:

And if there were not enough parody in all this, Rob Hosking now reports Labour haven't even done the basic proofing homework on the statistics that are informing this policy: paid link, so get a subscription, but:

It is a mark of how bogus the housing debate has become that Labour’s figures about foreign owners of New Zealand houses almost definitely include former leader Helen Clark and her four houses.

The current Labour leader and Miss Clark’s successor as MP for Mt Albert, David Shearer, claimed at the weekend there are "more than 11,000 overseas investors [who] own properties here that they don't live in".

What Mr Shearer did not say is the figure comes from Inland Revenue’s numbers about “non-resident” taxpayers who pay taxes on houses they  own in New Zealand.

"Non-resident" taxpayers are largely made up of expatriate New Zealanders and in this context are those who have gone overseas and who have rented out their properties here.





Friday, July 26, 2013

Tweeting on Surveillance, GCSB Bill, Statist (Labour/Green) Hypocrisy.



There's no such thing as a contradiction, so good on Labour for taking a stand against the GCSB Bill, the state has no moral mandate for such surveillance about to be passed into law, but at the same time, what are they, and the Green Party, thinking when their every policy grows the tax surveillance state, and thus the powers of the most ruthless, powerful arm of government against which you have no right to be left alone, though you harm nobody?

Below are simply some of my (almost randomly copied) tweets, and tweet exchanges, during last nights ‘stop the GCSB Bill meeting’, present:

Sir Edmund Thomas (chair);
Dame Anne Salmond
Dr Rodney Harrison QC
Kim Dotcom
Thomas Beagle

Note the embedded tweets that I’m often responding to are the important ones, mainly from Labour MP Clare Curran, whom I like, a lot, but these contradictions do my head in:
















I'll repeat that last one: how have my civil liberties somehow changed as between stopping government spooks listening to me talk to my mum, electronically, (Labour are against this), or stopping bureaucrats coming right into my home, into my bank accounts, my business, taking my income (Labour promote this) … what’s the difference please?

More precisely, to the Labour MP’s voting against this GCSB Bill, and good on them, what is the difference in my feeling of trepidation and rightful moral indignation about having everything I do snooped on by GCSB, or, by IRD? We have become a country where I can’t express my opinion on public media, disclaimered up to hell (see bottom of page please) - I’m no martyr - without the government department I am voicing my concerns over, actively seeking out and reading my posts: how would you feel in my place? Despite in this earlier post I was writing on how IRS were planning to analyse social media, that being the first post I saw IRD enter this blog, I can only assume ‘our own side’ are scouring social media already, and the only reason for that can be looking for thought-crimes. So, yeah, I am worried. I pay my taxes, but there is nothing more invasive that can happen to you than an income tax audit, right from that first two or three hour interview in Room 101, which you have no legal right not to attend, and no legal redress against. And after the ‘interview’, called interrogations in some countries, a complete stranger then spends weeks, months, reading through every aspect of your life. If you work for a salary or wage, you won’t have thought about that, but the man or woman taking the risk to run the business that employs you, could be called up any day, randomly: a strange thanks to get for providing you a job, and every public service that you use.

The Fortress of Legislation has become an evil place; but most Kiwis aren’t equipped philosophically, anymore, to feel the water starting to bubble around them. And it’s too late to turn the hob off. This GCSB Bill, really, is nothing compared to the surveillance state we already live in: read my blog.

In closing, I'm a capitalist, and thus hate crony capitalism which is to capitalism what sea horses are to horses: to the New Zealand company, Wynyard, about to list its shares publicly, the main business of which is selling software to security agencies world-wide to help them analyse big data - and I can guarantee IRS is one of their many ‘secret’ customers - never have I wanted a company to fail so much. But of course you won’t: you’ve entered one of the fastest growing industries there is now: the Orwellian state. The Free West has absolutely no meaning as of 2013, and it ceased to have meaning quite some time ago. There’s nothing civilised about the power of state anymore.

Now if you need something else to read, try my earlier post this month, how via retrospective legislation and application, IRD can now re-write your personal history. Not a dicky bird from Labour on that one either. After that, please excuse me, I’ve got work to do, some large tax bills to pay.

Stop the press, a twitter exchange occurring as I type this reminds me of possibly the most important post on this blog: what the ANZAC's were fighting for.