All posts by Richard

ALCP, Jihad on Drugs™, Vote 2011

As the war machine keeps turning

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Police dog killer jailed for 14 years, says the New Zealand Herald.

A Christchurch man who seriously injured two police officers and killed a police dog last year will spend at least seven years behind bars.

Christopher Graham Smith, a 36-year-old process worker from Phillipstown, was sentenced on Friday to 14 years for the attempted murder of a police dog handler, wounding of another officer and killing police dog Gage, with a non-parole period of seven years. The High Court suppressed details of the case until today.

I’ve said this before, here and here, and I’ll say it again.

On July 13 last year Senior Constable Bruce Lamb and Constable Mitchel Alatalo entered Smith’s home on a routine call-out. Smelling cannabis, they announced themselves as police and entered the property.

Smith, who said he initially believed he was confronting intruders to protect the large cannabis growing operation in his home, and only later realised they were police officers, shot Lamb in the face as the officer entered Smith’s bedroom.

The bullet entered below his bottom lip and went out the side of his jaw, smashing the jaw into 15 pieces.

Police dog Gage came to his aid, but was shot and killed by Smith.

Atalo was then shot by Smith as he tried to escape out a window.

Lamb had Gage on a lead, and did not realise until he reached the driveway that he was dragging the dog’s dead body behind him.

The death of police dog Gage is a tragedy, and the injuries suffered by Constables Lamb and Alatalo while fighting the government’s War on Drugs™ are terrible harms. The sentence handed down to Smith is just, but those in government who authorise and continually escalate the War on Drugs™, and those who voted them in, must also shoulder some measure of blame for these violent events.

The government does not send New Zealand troops to die in foreign pest-holes fighting other nations’ misbegotten wars. Nor should the government send New Zealand’s police officers to risk life and limb fighting the misbegotten War on Drugs™. Prohibition does NOT prevent drug-related harms. It causes Prohibition-related harms, including police casualties.

Smith also admitted to charges of cultivating cannabis, a drug which he smoked daily. Police found 26 plants, 18 seedlings, and 400 grams of cannabis being dried, as well as scales and bags in his home.

The Press said a scraggly-bearded Smith stood in the docks during sentencing wearing wire-rimmed glasses and a fawn jacket. He was described in court as an intelligent man with a dry sense of humour.

Justice Whata said Smith had offended against people who were protecting the community and he had not expressed enough remorse to warrant reducing his sentence.

The offending had “profound and long-lasting consequences” for the police involved, the judge said.

The profound and long-lasting consequences of Prohibition are ongoing. Lamb and Alatalo were luckier than Wilkinson and Snee. The double tragedy is that all these police casualties are in vain. Prohibition does not keep our families and communities safer. In fact it makes New Zealand a more dangerous place to live, by giving cannabis growers a reason to defend themselves from perceived threats to their operations with potentially deadly force. Prohibition doesn’t work. If it did, there wouldn’t be 400,000 New Zealanders who currently use cannabis, and people like Smith to supply. Prohibition has not reduced demand or illegal supply of cannabis. Only a sensible drug policy, such as that promoted by the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, can do that.

Vote ALCP – End the War on Drugs™.

Jihad on Drugs™, Old Testament

If I wanted your advice …

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… I’d give it to you!

If you’ve got nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.

If you have nothing good to say perhaps you should be rebuking someone.

Do lines of Meth while reading the Bible.

If you pick up the signs you are getting drowsy, the best thing to do is stop driving. If you have to keep going, take the stimulant drug 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione.

Spouting off before listening to the facts is both shameful and foolish.

Good advice or bad? You decide.

(The first three bits of advice have appeared previously on this blog. The fourth bit of advice is from the latest issue of Directions, the magazine of the New Zealand Automobile Association. The last bit of advice? God knows where I found that!)

ACT, ALCP, Jihad on Drugs™, Libertarianz, Vote 2011

Fitzpatrick Calls on ACT, ALCP for Electorate Vote

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Fitzpatrick Calls on ACT, ALCP for Electorate Vote
Friday, 4 November 2011, 2:03 pm
Press Release: Libertarianz Party

Fitzpatrick Calls on ACT, ALCP for Electorate Vote

“In the 2008 election 487 Ohariu voters gave their electorate vote to the ACT candidate and 1,304 gave ACT their party vote,” Libertarianz Ohariu candidate Sean Fitzpatrick observed today.

“This year ACT has chosen to not stand a candidate in the Ohariu electorate. This leaves a void for those who sympathize with the classical liberal / libertarian side of the ACT party.”

“I call on ACT voters from previous years to seriously consider giving me your electorate votes this year, even if you still intend to give ACT your party vote. There is simply no other alternative that is even remotely satisfying.”

Fitzpatrick points out, “ACT supporters will not want to see Chauvel or Hughes as their local MP. Dunne has openly bagged Dr Brash for his views on the economy, drug law reform and virtually everything else. Katrina Shanks is only campaigning for the list vote.”

“In short, the ACT voter who still wants their electorate vote to count for something this year really only has one choice: Sean Fitzpatrick of Libertarianz.”

“In similar fashion, the Aotearoa Legalize Cannabis Party is also not standing a candidate in Ohariu this year. ALCP voters can be assured that I back their view on drug law reform,” Fitzpatrick concludes.

For more information, see www.libertarianz.org.nz or contact:

Sean Fitzpatrick
Libertarianz Deputy Leader
Ohariu Candidate
Phone: 021 1699 281
Email: sean.fitzpatrick@libertarianz.org.nz
Website: http://seanfitzpatrickonline.com

Libertarianz: More Freedom, Less Government
www.libertarianz.org.nz

Onya Sean!

Freedom, Robert Anton Wilson

Little Tony

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Little Tony was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after another. After the 6th candy bar, a man on the bench across from him said, “Son, you know eating all that candy isn’t good for you. It will give you acne, rot your teeth, and make you fat.”

Little Tony replied, “My grandfather lived to be 107 years old.”

The man asked, “Did your grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time?”

Little Tony answered, “No, he minded his own fucking business.”

[Reprised from beNZylpiperazine, March 2007.]

Jihad on Drugs™, Peter Dunne, Vote 2011

If you’ve got nothing nice to say …

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… don’t say anything at all.

That was my mother’s advice (and her mother’s before that). It’s good advice.

In a recent comment, my co-blogger Tim had this to say

The Randoids are so foolish as to forget that when Welfareism is overthrown that Fraternal Charity must step up to the plate… That Freedom can only flourish when you have caring communities whom ‘love their neighbors as themselves’… are rich in charitable deeds and good works and have a sense of civic duty. This is the glue of society.

This is a very important point. It’s one reason among many why Christianity does a better job than Objectivism of providing libertarianism with a philosophical and practical underpinning. And it’s on the topic of charity that I found something nice to say about Peter Dunne. Actually, I’ll let Peter speak for himself.

OK, now to flush the Dunney!

ALCP, Ayn Rand, Freedom, Jihad on Drugs™, Libertarianz, Live Like It's Legal, Meta-ethics, Philosophy, Slavery, Tax, Vote 2011

A top tax rate of 39 minutes

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I’m inordinately fond of this quotation from comedian Katt Williams.‎

If you ain’t got no job, and you not smoking weed, I don’t know what the fuck you are doing with your life, I really don’t.

Some people seek to spend their every waking hour hard at work. Some people seek to spend their every waking hour hard at play. And some people seek an elusive “work/life balance”. Are you keeping busy?

This post is a bit of a follow-up to why I am a libertarian. I am a libertarian because one cannot consistently argue for personal liberties and at the same time be opposed to economic liberty.

I have been a drug law reform campaigner my entire adult life. I joined NORML over thirty years ago – or tried to. I was told to wait a year or two until I turned 18. The idea of persecuting people for choosing to smoke a herb that makes them feel happy and relaxed, and enhances their appreciation of food, music and sex always seemed to me both ludicrous and wrong. There are too many smokers to arrest!

The fact that there are too many cannabis smokers to arrest makes cannabis prohibition ludicrous, but it does not make it wrong. At university I once attended an introductory lecture on critical thinking. The lecturer devoted his time to demolishing most of my long cherished arguments in favour of drug law reform. I was aghast! And chastened. I realised that deploying bad arguments for good causes is not a good idea. I also realised that I needed only one good argument in favour of drug law reform. That argument is the argument from human rights. I have a moral right to smoke cannabis! It ain’t nobody’s business if I do! The state should leave peaceful people alone to enjoy smoking weed, if that’s how they choose to spend their time.

It wasn’t until a few years later that I realised that my one good argument was actually an entire political ideology. That’s when I realised I was a libertarian. I have a moral right to earn money! It ain’t nobody’s business if I do! The state should leave peaceful people alone to enjoy earning money, if that’s how they choose to spend their time. And it should leave peaceful, productive people alone to enjoy the fruits of their labours. Prohibition is violence and taxation is theft. Both institutions depend, ultimately, on coercion by the state. Both are wrong, and for the same reason. Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive.* So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate—do you hear me? no man may start—the use of physical force against others.

But, from a governmental perspective, there are differences between smoking pot and earning money. Time is money. The government can tax your money, but it can’t tax your time. Unless you try to combine smoking pot with earning money. Then you run the risk of a tax bill of several years in jail. This happened to one of the great heroes of New Zealand’s drug law reform movement, Dakta Green. Right now, he should be out campaigning for the ALCP vote in New Lynn. Instead, he’s rotting behind bars. Dakta Green says

After you’ve spent a little time in jail for growing a little weed, it tends to focus your mind on whether or not that’s a fair and proper response from authorities to our citizens. I, along with millions of others around the world, have decided that cannabis should be legally available for adults.

I’m one of those millions of people who’s decided that cannabis should be legally available for adults. That’s why, this election, I’m standing for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party. I’m the ALCP candidate for the Mana electorate, and #9 on the party list. Tick, tick!

[Cross-posted to SOLO.]

(*This is the Objectivist version of the NIOF principle, due to Ayn Rand. Christians may not sanction, but they must forgive. Yes, even the tax collectors.)