My Comment on the Childishness Surrounding the Debacle over Jamie Whyte's Incest Statement

As I've commented on Carrie Stoddart-Smith's intelligent and challenging blog post on this topic:

Unfortunately because Jamie’s an honest guy, he can easily be ambushed by every such question, from this to p use. Just because you believe all drugs should be legalised given prohibition doesn’t work, and freedom can only rest on individual responsibility, doesn’t mean you’re advocating p use.

What the haters are hating on this one, the Left particularly, is the concept of responsible adulthood free of the state (ie, the prison of each others minds).

The one good thing is this will set a cat amongst the pigeons in ACT. I like Jamie, but believe ACT is still a stalwart of conservatism I’d have no interest in voting for.

When the incest question was put to him, Jamie allowed sway to his natural instinct for academic honesty by repairing to the first principles of classical liberalism: good on him for that. His later retraction indicates there was political naivety involved, but in that retraction is a problem, being he's already being turned by the mincing machine of party politics into that thing I despise: a politician.

Never lose the principled honesty, Jamie. Don't let an intelligent conversation with the electorate fall to its opposite: electioneering.


Final Clarification.

On another blog I've just seen a Tory announce that Whyte 'wants to marry his sister'. Showing again that the civilised society will not be found from either the blinkered, bigoted Left, or the blinkered, bigoted Right.

The inane agenda-led conclusions this issue has brought about confirms for me that democracy is not in the interests of freedom. (Watch that statement get taken out of context.)

I can state the principle involved here no clearer than this:

Jamie made it very clear he in no way agreed with incest; the classical liberal principle that he was enunciating, and it's a bedrock of a free society, is that it is not up to the state to police incestuous relationships unless there is the initiation of force involved, and thus no consent - remembering that minors, as with those of unsound mind, are not capable of giving consent, so relationships with them, incest or not, will always be criminal behaviour.

Now apply that principle to everything, including taboos and behaviours you (and I) might find repugnant, and that's classical liberalism, the only basis on which consenting adults can transact free, fulfilling lives.

The Kafkaesque StudyLink - Open Letter to Minister of Social Development.

Update to Below Post:

Credit where credit is due, a MSD staff member phoned me this afternoon after being made aware of this post. He was not only competent, but most agreeable. Indeed, he was genuinely disappointed to hear of these problems, most of which have come about because of changes in the way parental income is scoped from 2012 - so politicians again :) So big ups for the phone call, I don't think my clients will be having problems into the future due to processes set in place.

_______________________________________________



It doesn’t matter where you stand politically on the matter of student loans and allowances, if we are going to have such a system, then it needs to work better than under the uber-bureaucracy operating it currently. That department is a working example of why you wouldn’t want a government running anything: labyrinthine - it’s easier doing the paperwork for a million dollar bank mortgage than a $14k student allowance - and as with the public sector, a culture that has no notion of the importance of privacy. The below is simply a letter with names taken out to be an open letter.
 

 ________________________________________________

 

StudyLink

 

To whom it may concern.

 

Re:       [Student Name]

 

Contents:

 

[List of documentation, verified, including taxation summaries, relevant financial statements, et al, relating to student's parental income (parents being my clients).]

 

Notes:

 

Please note I’m at my wits end dealing with Studylink. You have had all of the above information from me, particularly a statement of income with full disclosure as to the nature of the Family Trust, beneficiary income, trustee income, etc. More particularly, that statement of income had my full contact details, and a specific request handwritten on and underlined to ring me if further information is required - as on particular clients I needlessly lose so much time on this process year after year - but despite this StudyLink continues dealing with the student, sending form letters that all have to be relayed to me, and often containing only partial information that is applicable, while relisting as needed all the information that you already have. If you require anything further from this point, can you please ring me direct so any further documentation matters can be dealt with quickly. (Moreover, when you do send form letters to the student involved, please provide a direct dial number to the officer working the application, or even an email address, so that we humans on this side of the Berlin Wall of your telephone system - the worst of any government department I’ve ever dealt with - are not driven to utter distraction. In fact I will not use the StudyLink 0800 number: it is a waste of my time.)

 

Concerns as regards privacy:

 

It has long concerned me that the way StudyLink operates constitutes a breach of parents’ privacy. Not all parents are comfortable with their children knowing the complete details of their income – (I certainly wouldn’t be). There are, indeed, some situations where children should not have this knowledge, nor knowledge of family trusts that may have been set up specifically with regard to errant behaviour on their behalf. The Kafkaesque routines of Studylink aside, I guess parents, or myself, could try to supply details of their parental income direct to StudyLink, although the way the loan/allowance application process works this would seem outside the formal route, namely:

 

The statement of parental income has to originally be stapled to the student's allowance application, the rest of which the student completes. Thus the parental income figure, and breakdown of this income, always ends up given to the child/young adult to be sent with their application, meaning in every case the child learns these details.

 

Secondly, as stated, when StudyLink want further information regarding parental income, or information verification, then it never corresponds with me or the parents, but the student.

 

This is not only a privacy breach of confidential information between parents and their children, but when details are needed from parents who are separated, then this quickly devolves to a very difficult situation, as the parent whom the child is living with can use it to find out their ex’s income. That is a charged situation which can lead to pressures and stresses which are unhelpful, to say the least.

 

Although I am the last person, normally, to promote departmental information sharing, because no taxpayer has privacy before the state, anyway, the simple solution to all the issues above would appear to be that StudyLink, as ACC do, get a tape of all applicable parental income direct from IRD.

 

In frustration, yours faithfully …

 

 

Why Are We Discussing Mental Illness As An Excuse to Curtail Free Speech?

Cyber bullying laws are big state censorship laws & an attack on free speech. Every dictator who soc. media has toppled tried to 1/2
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 24, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 ... censor & stop social media: there is no justification for curbing free speech ever, if you present to be a free society.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 24, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 If you are going to surveil, censor or ban Twitter, then you have to abolish every school playground, every text machine.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 24, 2014

 

A wise society, a free society, knows that the principle of free speech is an absolute: the minute you tinker with it, no matter how minutely, the entire principle is lost, and with it, the free society. Thus a wise society, a free society, knows that the emotions and feelings stirred up around a multi-faceted personal tragedy must not lead to the social injustice of curbs on free, unfettered, speech. Twitter did not kill Charlotte Dawson, mental illness did, with its concomitant breadth of unique circumstances, financial, relationships, childhood, et al, the intricate, complex web of a life, as is always the case. At times like this we need particularly to be thinking on the way we live, and our classical liberal ethic that once made the West the best civilisation humans have reached, and not producing policy born of emoting and what ‘feels right’ at the time. It’s about rigour and backbone required by our politicians, for once … (which is why, of course, I have lost hope).

 

Furthermore, to deflect Dawson’s suicide over to curbs on free speech, misses entirely the important issues surrounding mental health in our societies that should be the only issues front and centre here being discussed.

 

No to cyber bullying laws, hate speech laws, and all incursions on free speech, no matter how worthy may seem the excuse or the cause. If Judith Collins's New Zealand cyber bullying law is passed, then so must there be censored and/or banned every school playground and device that can send a text, because otherwise it can only be cynical politicking. I’m disappointed in Judith for championing this law, but then that’s why I’m a classical liberal, not an authoritarianTory.

 

Ukraine Redux: Why Classical Liberals Are Not Tories.

So the authoritarian, cult of leader conservatives are starting to figure I'm not one of them: http://t.co/H1OSnkGeGX
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 22, 2014

 

I’m a classical liberal/libertarian, that is: a laissez faire capitalist, (small, as in tiny, state) minarchist, social liberal who believes in free markets and drug legalisation, euthanasia, a woman’s right to abortion, (wait for it) open immigration; who believes, thus, in individualism over identity politics, because individualism is the opposite of rascism, of sexism, and of bigotry; who believes in freedom over statism, and who believes I should be able do whatever I like, left completely alone by the state, so long as I do no harm. In these views, as my previous post on the Ukraine usefully demonstrated, I’m as far removed from Tory conservatives, as I am from Left collectivists.
 

Against the clip I posted of a Ukrainian woman explaining that what the protestors wanted was freedom from dictatorship, and freedom from politicians only interested in their own ends, a state of affairs well explained by the accompanying video of unarmed protestors being ruthlessly murdered by Ukrainian government snipers, Tories came out to attack my view in comments, saying:

 

From Andrei:

 

In truth Ukraine is bankrupt and the IMF came up with a plan that would reduce Ukraine's sovereignty and Putin gave the Ukrainian Government a way out of having to be subservient to the IMF and western bankers and that is when these current troubles actually started. … Ukraine is on the brink, it may end up Balkanized the way Yugoslavia was in the 90s - it may end up being even more serious given the utter mediocrity of current Western leadership but let me tell you this some of the opposition "are not fighting for freedom" they are literally facists and these factions have zero interest in peaceful resolutions.

 

From Angry Tory:

 

Get a grip. They aren't protestors, they're communists. Communists don't believe in individual "rights" so certainly don't deserve any. … The fact is the country is choosing between self-determination, economic sovereignty, and yes lower taxes, individual rights, and a much less regulated, more flexible economic system under Putin --- or the open communism of the last communist mega-state, the European Union. … If you want to own a gun; drive a (petrol) car;, burn coal, oil, or gas; smoke, eat, drink, whatever you want; and live free from massive intrusive surveillance you are objectively more free in Russia than in NZ or especially the EU! … Here's a simple test: Ask yourself - who do Russel Norman, Jane Fonda & George Clooney support? then pick the other side.

 

While Andrei and Angry Tory try to sort out amongst themselves whether the protestors are fascists or communists, I’ll posture an alternative position they were largely neither: rather, like the woman in the clip, of whom not one of her words or ideas I disagree with, the protestors are a collection of disparate individuals who understand, like no one born and living in New Zealand can, what the true thug state, and dictatorship, is like. Albeit there will be elements amongst them that are unsavoury, especially thinking of that regions history of a null-headed nationalism and anti-semitism, that changes nothing in what the young Ukrainian said in the clip. Also, if this rabble were communists, why did they celebrate former President Viktor Yanukovych doing a runner today – oh yeah, the rabble won – by toppling Lenin statues all over the Ukraine?
 

 

To Angry Tory who asked me to look at which side Russel Norman was on, then choose sides from that, my rebuttal to him stands: he is thinking only in the straight lines of group-think, just as he (and I) would largely accuse the Left. As a matter of fact, though I believe Green economics would destroy us economically, while tragically growing the Big Brother state, as a social liberal I am yet closer to Norman than National and certainly Colin Craig on legalisation of cannabis, on euthanasia – two issues important to me – on abortion, etc. Classical liberals are ‘liberals’, very definitely not Tories.

So, my spleen vented, this is my slant on the situation in the Ukraine, which works toward my view most of the protestors simply want the same freedoms that I do; and that this issue, therefore, revolves around individual rights versus the authoritarian state.

 

Philosophy cannot be separated from economics. There can be no laissez faire capitalism, where individuals are not left alone by the state. So despite Andrei and Angry Tory’s opinion that Putin and Yanukovych are the path to free economies for Russians and Ukrainians, and the socialist EU is the enemy, as much as I hate the socialist monster of the EU, I have to call bullshit on that. Many of the mixed economies of the EU, as with US and New Zealand, are well down the socialist road to serfdom, but the gains made by the light shining out from the humanism of the Enlightenment as regards human rights and the sanctity of an individual life, are not all lost. A human life still has a value under the rule of law as operating in the West; not so in Russia, plus the clip of the snipers in my last post shows it most definitely is not so in the Ukraine. An individual’s life in those countries is cheap, and for those poor sods who are ‘different’, such as the homosexual community, or many ethnic minorities, as the reportage leading up to Sochi has shown us, life is at best miserable, at worst, lethal. And that comes from the top, from homophobe, KGB indoctrinated, medieval Putin.

 

Given this, the Russian and Ukrainian states are not capitalist, as in laissez faire. Indeed, they are so far down the road of the corrupt, crony state that their economies more closely resemble gangster and mafia stand over societies, with governments ruthlessly exercising their power to fleece populations. Whether you’re the richest of oligarchs, or a Pussy Rioter, if Putin wants you in one of his labour camps, then in a labour camp you’ll soon find yourself. Perhaps one of the Tories could explain to me where labour camps for political dissenters fit into a free society based on free markets? As far as I know there are no political labour camps in EU countries. In Russia, Putin has slaughtered thousands, if not more, in the name of his war on terror, many of them just happening to be ethnic minorities.  

 

Ukraine’s crony state is every bit as bad as Putin’s. Over the three years of his Daddy’s corrupt reign, Oleksandr Yankovych, son, trained as a dentist, availed himself of a massive change infortune:

 

 

While in 2010, the year before Viktor became president, Oleksandr was worth $7 million US dollars, by the end of 2013 he was worth $510 million: that’s an increase in wealth of 7,285% in three years. Please don’t take it personally, dentists, but ‘yeah right’. On one of the CNN clips I saw today, the protestors upon entering the presidential palace, hastily vacated by Viktor, were stunned at the opulence their taxes had paid for while they were living brutal and hard lives. I'm on their side.

 

To sum up, I don’t think the protestors who were murdered in the Euromaiden were all fascists, communists, or rabble. I reckon it’s far more likely they were me. Though quite apart from all that, the Tories seem to think the crime we all witnessed in that sniper clip was justified by the hope of self-determination and free markets under Putin, rather than falling into the perfumed clutch of the EU. I made a comment to the NBR thread on the events taking place in the Ukraine, and it’s all I need to say on that:

 

All that aside, a government that commands professional snipers to clinically murder unarmed protestors, on that alone, loses any mandate it has to rule, and those who made the command, with those who carried it out, should be tried and judged under the rule of law. I would even call, from the video clip, that particular action a war crime.

 

Evil means, and evil bastards such as Yanukovych, Putin, and those snipers, never justify ends, especially when those ends are societies as far removed from liassez faire markets and the free society, as communist ones are.

 

Finally, here's a question for you: where do you want to live, Russia or Ukraine, alternatively, France, Italy or Germany? Yeah right. You can't separate philosophy from economics.

 

Ukraine: You Bet It's About An Individual's Freedom from the Dictator-State.

In the words of a Ukrainian at the protest:

"We want to be free from dictatorship, to be free from politicians ..."





This is how the surveillance thug state always ends, when we inculcate the vicious notion that individuals are mere servants of the state, their property and lives to be redistributed at the whim of politicians and bureaucrats. It ends, always, in bloodshed. Warning, this is an horrific clip of Ukrainian government snipers killing unarmed protestors last night (New Zealand time):





By the way, here's the socialist utopia of Venezuela at the moment, yet a further example of how Marxism ends only in poverty and dictatorship:

And you bet in the tax surveillance state of New Zealand the ethic you exist only for the state, to have your life sacrificed on the bloodied altar of the common good, reigns. You have no rights against the tax take, no right to be left alone by it - even though you have harmed no one - and you have no privacy from the redistributionists: not one jot. We had a new Privacy Commissioner take up his role yesterday, begging the fact you only need a Privacy Commissioner after your privacy has been taken from you, which it thoroughly has. The job of that commissioner is a deflection overlaid on a joke: try complaining to the current incumbent next time IRD lifts all your financial data from your bank; you'll very soon see how ineffectual and pointless he is.

And though this doesn't sound related, you can bet it surely is; pretty soon sugar is going to be taxed, then probably banned, and all sorts of fats. Wake up and smell the coffee, before that is banned or taxed out of reach also. I don't understand how there isn't a revolution, here, when even our diets have become a plaything of the state (or at least its food fascist disciples at the University of Otago).

I am owned. You are owned. We are all prisoners of each others minds.





PSA and Animal Testing – We’ve Been Sold a Mutilated Pup, Again.

Many would think my libertarianism doesn’t sit well with my animal welfare posts: I couldn’t care less. Animal welfare comes first, albeit I could say the minarchist, voluntary society will only exist where humans have inculcated a humane treatment of animals … join the dots as you wish, I've written enough in here for you to do so.

 

If you search this blog for PSA (Psychoactive Substances Act), or look at some of the animal welfare links on my right-hand menu, you’ll see I’ve written post after post against the 119 members of the Fortress of Legislation who voted for this Act and its barbaric principle that it is acceptable to cruelly test animals so that teenagers can get stoned Friday night on toxic, synthetic cannabinoids (when simply legalising cannabis, which I support, would have achieved the same results safely - cannabis isn’t toxic - and without a single animal being harmed.) It was heartening that for once, when the PSA was still in bill form, Kiwis rose up and took to the streets in protest against its animal testing component, the result of which we were told by Minister McClay there would be a special commission of experts set up to ensure no animal would be tested under this ludicrous legislation. At least that's what we thought we'd been told, so the protest stopped.

 

Well I think it better start again. It appears Minister McClay was only trying to placate us, hoping we would forget. Back to a central theme of this blog, never trust politicians.

 

From the below Twitter exchange, just this last Friday, with Green member Mojo Mathers  -and despite her party’s luddite economics of the slave state, I like Mojo for the work she is doing for animals, and despite still being one of the 119 infamous bastards voting for this pointless Act, (never trust politicians) - I am one hundred percent convinced there will indeed be animals tortured, before they are killed, for what amounts only to our human recreation, smoking this dreadful, synthetic crud legal under the Act, while harmless cannabis remains criminalised.

 

Given Minister McClay is Mr Invisible, can any MP give an update on where we're at with animal testing and the PSA? @mojomathers
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 14, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 good AT experts on advisory committee, still working through the tests required. Sticking point reproductive tests
— Mojo Mathers (@mojomathers) February 14, 2014

 

@mojomathers thanks Mojo. I assume no testing done yet under Act?
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 14, 2014

 

@mojomathers Hang on, you're saying no matter what, there is definitely going to be animal testing under the PSA? Not deal we were sold.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 14, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 don't know yet, MOH originally weren't going to require reproductive testing so still under discussion
— Mojo Mathers (@mojomathers) February 14, 2014

 

@mojomathers Gutted. We could've legalised #cannabis with not 1 animal harmed, but looking like there will be animal cruelty. @PeterDunneMP
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 14, 2014

 

If animal testing 4 human recreation results from this, then your career  @PeterDunneMP has been a travesty. #cruelBastard
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 14, 2014

 

 

Note two things from Mojo’s posts:

 

Firstly, I read her replies to mean there will definitely be animal toxicity testing:

 

 

 

… we just don’t know if this will include reproductive testing. Perhaps Mojo can dissuade me of that one if false.

 

Secondly, reproductive testing is also definitely on the table. If you don’t know what that is, it’s this:

 

Reproductive toxicity includes the toxic effects of a substance on the reproductive ability of an organism and the development of its offspring … Animal tests include evaluating the effects of prenatal exposure on pregnant animals and their offspring [OECD Test Guideline (TG) 414]. … The test substance is administered orally, the pregnant animals are killed just prior to delivery, and the fetuses are examined for toxic effects. … [In] Reproductive/Developmental Toxicity Screening Assay) … the test substance [is] administered orally for 4-9 weeks. Pathological effects are determined by daily observation, necropsy, and microscopic histopathology. … Offspring are evaluated for neurotoxic effects including "gross neurologic and behavioural abnormalities, and the evaluation of brain weights and neuropathology during postnatal development and adulthood."

 

As for the instigator of this obscene Act, which I don’t see as having achieved anything of value, the conflicted and contradictory PeterDunne, he does not deserve to be given his seat again this election.

                  

I know there are more than two readers who follow my animal welfare posts: please link this and spread the word. And when you get a moment perhaps it might be a good idea to drop Minister McClay, aka, Minister Invisible, a line letting him know nothing has changed for the many opponents of this Act, and that we are still here watching: start your email or letter with any form of animal testing for human recreation is unacceptable, especially legislation legalising a toxic synthetic slugde, when a harmless cannabis is kept criminalised. Finally, in a properly functioning democracy, the results of the Advisory Committee would be known by this year's election, so Kiwis can hold the minister responsible in the voting booth for any animal testing under the PSA. Politicians need to understand the PSA will be as toxic to them, as it's going to be to those animals put to torture, then death, by it.

 

Odd Future ... No, A Police State Future, Here We Go Again.

Some of the most dreadful dreck to fill the minds of generation airhead is that noise called rap. In my opinion it has no saving graces and I would love some day to learn its angry, hate-filled, misogynist words and imagery have been consigned to history. But those words and images are created from these tax surveillance welfare states we've had forced on us in the West, so should the words of these young cretins be banned?

No, of course not, but of course they have.

Ask yourself about the nature of the society you live in where a bureaucracy can ban freedom of expression like this. Or a particular political/cultural elite can do so because we have become so philosophically bereft in the West, such as Giovanni Tiso's campaign against radio announcers Willie and JT (from paragraph beginning 'coincidentally, half way down blog post).

Now for those of you left with a dreadful taste in your mouth, something beautiful to clean the palate:





And why not click over to read classical liberal Jamie Whyte's great piece against plain packaging in New Zealand, in which more words and images are to be banned by the false messiahs and wowsers in our Fortress of Legislation.

Of Pies, Plonkers, Wowsers and Tossers.

We libertarian types believe in something very simple: freedom. That an individual human being can do whatever they damn well like, so long as they do no harm, and bear the consequences of their actions.

 

Statists of the nanny left and authoritarian right, with as little grasp of philosophy as of language, call this selfish.

 

No.

 

As Oscar Wilde noted, selfishness is not living your life as you would want, it’s making others live their lives as you would want: the very modus operandi of wowsers and why I’ve had a gutsful of them, both in the voting booth, and the Fortress of Legislation. Wowsers are always statists, because they believe the role of state is to modify your behaviour in the state’s favour. And wowsers are always hypocrites, either incapable, or too dogmatic, to admit the generality of a principle. Case in point.

 

Tariana Turia told me today she will advocate in this year's Budget for smokes to go up in price by another 30% over 3 years. Agree? I do.
— Duncan Garner (@Garner_Live) February 11, 2014

 

@Garner_Live No. No. No. Just get state out of health, and get stop meddling in peoples choices. Taxes on sugary foods within 5 years.
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 11, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 Yeah those private hospital ambulances pick u up on the side of the road eh??
— Duncan Garner (@Garner_Live) February 11, 2014

 

@Garner_Live Shallow, Duncan. What do you feel about taxes on sugary and fatty foods? On dairy?
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 11, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 Tax is working on cigarettes... It's being proven
— Duncan Garner (@Garner_Live) February 11, 2014

 

@lrmunro First they came for the ciggies. @Garner_Live thought good. Soon they will b coming for Duncan's fatty pies. What will he say then?
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 11, 2014

 

@MarkHubbard33 @lrmunro And he gets personal - Hubbard the chief tosser of the evening. Over and out. Plonker.
— Duncan Garner (@Garner_Live) February 11, 2014

 

@Garner_Live Pardon? Using a pie analogy is getting personal? Wait a minute: you enjoy pigging out on pies? Hilarious! #TruthHurts @lrmunro
— Mark Hubbard (@MarkHubbard33) February 11, 2014

 

 

So, you can’t have your ciggie, but Duncan will have his pie and eat it too, all the while wagging his authoritarian finger at you. My pie tweet, though half in jest, committed the sin of forgetting these plain-packaged wowsers are humourless.

 

To continue how the broadcaster left off: tosser. Over and out to a once great Free West, now gone, utterly, you plonker. You bet this gets personal: what do you expect when you’re telling others how to live their lives?

 

Taxes on food and lifestyle choices are taxes on choice, period: are attaxks on freedom. Hope you enjoy your pies on the road to my serfdom, Duncan, at least, that is, until they are made contraband also. See you in the black market there'll then ludicrously be, in pies.

And while you’re angry, watch this clip from Seven Sharp last night, and ask your MP – no, really, ask your MP – why at the very least in this cruel kindy of a country, the cancer victim interviewed doesn’t have legal access to medicinal cannabis. Denial of it to her is barbaric.

  

Statement of Non-Interest:

I stopped smoking over fifteen years ago, not because of the tax, but because of the facts. Statist wowsers like Duncan, however, make me want to start again simply on the principle of it.