Category Archives: National Party

Voluntary exsanguination

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There’s been a lot of heartbreak and hostility in recent years over the issue of voluntary euthanasia, which remains illegal in New Zealand—for now.

Euthanasia activism began in New Zealand in 1978 when some secular humanists formed the Auckland Voluntary Euthanasia Society.

In 1995 National Party MP Michael Laws sought to introduce his Death with Dignity Bill. The Bill failed, as did NZ First MP Peter Brown’s Death with Dignity Bill in 2003.

More recently, in 2012 Labour MP Maryan Street submitted her ‘End of Life Choice bill’ to the private members ballot. But then Voluntary euthanasia bill withdrawn. Street admitted at the time that “”the move was simply pragmatism, she said, and she “absolutely” planned to put it back in the ballot after the election.”” Unfortunately, due to Labour’s dire defeat at the polls in 2014, Street failed to re-enter Parliament. Moves by Iain Lees-Galloway to adopt Street’s bill were scotched by new Labour leader Andrew Little.

Last year in June, Parliament received the petition of Maryan Street and 8,974 others requesting

That the House of Representatives investigate fully public attitudes towards the introduction of legislation which would permit medically-assisted dying in the event of a terminal illness or an irreversible condition which makes life unbearable.

The petition asks for a change to the existing law. The closing date for submissions is today, Monday 1 February 2016. You might have missed it.

In October last year, ACT leader David Seymour lodged a private members bill that would legalise voluntary euthanasia, the End of Life Choice Bill. Seymour’s bill may or may not get drawn from the ballot.

So that’s the state of dying in New Zealand. Our deaths remain natural, illegal, or self-inflicted. Or life goes on, sometimes in terminal pain.

Assisted suicide, or assisted dying as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of New Zealand (Inc.) prefers to call it, is illegal in New Zealand.

Can people simply stop eating and drinking to hasten death?

Yes, stopping eating and drinking will hasten a death, eventually. This is the option many New Zealanders use now. However, it is less than optimal, can take days or weeks, and often requires palliative sedation to relieve negative symptoms of the fasting process.

But what if there’s a legal loophole, wider than a gaping arterial wound, that permits the possibility of a quick, painless, assisted and *legal* means of dying for the terminally ill whose ongoing existence does them more harm than good and who wish to end it all prematurely? I think there might be. Here’s why.

1. Giving blood is legal.

2. Taking blood is legal.

3. Refusing a blood transfusion is legal.

Therefore,

Assisted exsanguination is a legal means of voluntary euthanasia.

This simple means of dying with a little help from your friends and family is subject to some minimal legal constraints that must, of course, be observed.

The Human Tissue Act 2008 covers the legalities of taking blood. Read it and you’ll be displeased but not at all surprised to learn that blood is a “controlled human substance”. But you don’t have to be a “qualified person” to take blood, provided it is not “for therapeutic purposes or for health practitioner education or any kind of research” and the blood is not for sale or transfusion.

Libertarians uphold the right of the individual to his/her own life, liberty—and lifeblood.

Live and let live—and let blood.

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We are at war with the ruling class

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For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (KJV)

We are at war with the ruling class.

We want freedom and prosperity. They want power.

We have empathy. They have psychopathy.

In evolutionary game theoretic terms, it’s a Hawk-Dove game. And Western statist democracy is an evolutionarily stable strategy.

There is only one way to progress to a freer, more prosperous society. And that is to upset the Nash equilibrium. Who’s with me?

Prohibitionists are violent

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Prohibition is violence and prohibitionists are violent.

National MP Mike Sabin in police assault inquiry

Police have been investigating an assault complaint against government MP Mike Sabin.

The investigation is related to events in Northland, but detectives working on the case are based in Waitemata, north Auckland.

The investigation was moved south from Whangarei because Sabin was a police officer based there until 2006.

The officer in charge, Detective Inspector Kevin Hooper, refused to confirm Sabin was the subject of an investigation.

The above was reported last year. Only two days ago Prime Minister John Key said he was comfortable with Mr Sabin holding the role of chairman of the law and order select committee. But today Sabin announced his resignation from Parliament, effective immediately. (This will trigger a by-election.)

I agree with blogger Cameron Slater that it’s good riddance to bad rubbish.

Whale Oil predicted the coming Northland by-election

The story itself, which National have sat on for weeks, is almost too horrible for words, and there is little doubt that there will be a by-election in Northland.

but stops short of predicting a change of leadership of the National Party.

When full details of what has transpired are revealed then there are going to be some serious questions asked of the leadership.

I expect that the “almost too horrible for words” assault allegations are well founded, but I convict Mike Sabin of being a violent prohibitionist by arguing from first principles and his prohibitionist track record.

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Mike Sabin wants to lock me (and my friends) in cages for no good reason.

Larken Rose, author of the libertarian classic The Most Dangerous Superstition, makes the case against Sabin and his ilk.

[T]hough “lawmakers” are at the very top of the authoritarian hierarchy, even they do not accept personal responsibility for what “government” does. Even they speak as if “the law” is something other than the commands they issue. For example, it is very unlikely that any politician would feel justified hiring armed thugs to invade his neighbor’s home, and drag his neighbor away and put him in a cage, for the supposed sin of smoking marijuana. Yet many politicians have advocated exactly that, via anti-drug “legislation.” They seem to feel no shame or guilt regarding the fact that their “legislation” has resulted in millions of non-violent people being forcibly taken from their friends and families and made to live in cages for years on end – sometimes for the rest of their lives. When they speak of the acts of violence which they are directly responsible for – and “narcotics laws” are only one example – “legislators” use terms such as “the law of the land,” as if they themselves are mere spectators and “the land” or “the country” or “the people” were the ones who made such violence occur.

What the government does is lock non-violent drug users in cages and Sabin was personally responsible for locking non-violent drug users in cages during his time in government.

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Won’t somebody else please feed the children?

I got an email from Metiria Turei, co-leader of the Greens.

Education is the best route out of poverty. But hungry kids can’t learn and are left trapped in the poverty cycle. Let’s break that cycle lunchbox by lunchbox. We can feed the country’s hungry kids, if we work together.

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I have taken over the Feed the Kids Bill which Hone Harawira introduced to Parliament. The Bill is at a crucial stage of its progress – part way through its First Reading – and may be voted on as early as next Wednesday 5 November.

The way the numbers stack up in the new Parliament the Bill will be voted down unless we can persuade the National Party to change its position and support it to go to Select Committee.

If the Bill goes to Select Committee, MPs will be able hear from  parents, kids, teachers and others about what they think are the best solutions for feeding hungry kids at school. There are lots of ideas about how school food could be delivered and who should get it. The key thing is to have the public debate about addressing child poverty, and come up with the best solution for helping hungry kids.

Please help this happen, by emailing John Key, asking that National support my Bill at least to Select Committee.

Because of the potentially short timeframe, you’ll need to send your emails as soon as possible and before Monday 3 November at the latest.

I’m probably not going to email John Key but if I did I wouldn’t be urging him not to support the bill. At least, not on its First Reading. If National Party MPs vote for the bill on its First Reading, it can go to the Select Committee stage. I agree with Turei that

The key thing is to have the public debate about addressing child poverty, and come up with the best solution for helping hungry kids.

Won’t somebody else please feed the children? No doubt the best long-term solution for helping hungry kids is not state food. But as quick-fix statist solutions go this one is surely unexceptionable. Paying state(-funded) schools to feed hungry kids is an advance on paying state(-funded) parents to feed them, isn’t it? The Bill targets the funding for school food at Decile 1 and 2 schools, too. The Feed the Kids program could probably be nearly fully funded by concomitant deductions in the benefits or WFF tax breaks of the parents of those children attending the schools in question. Isn’t this an advance for “a hand up, not a handout” safety net state welfare system? Or am I missing some serious unintended consequences?

I went to primary school in the U.K. in the early ’70s. We had school milk at morning break and school dinners at lunchtime. Morning milk was a third pint of silver top, and lunch was typically a dollop of mince meat, a dollop of mashed potatoes and a spoonful of (mushy?) peas. Followed by a serving of stodgy pudding and watery custard. All lovingly served by the matronly school dinner ladies. It all seemed perfectly normal, because it was. (But then came Thatcher the Milk Snatcher …)

Dinner ladies serving lunch at a school in Derby.

While our MPs debate the merits or otherwise of the bill, and alternative statist approaches such as the existing “income management” regime, my thoughts are with the children who continue to go to school without breakfast or lunch. Children like the early John Banks who grew up in poverty in the 1950s. “Of course, I support sandwiches and food in schools,” says Banks. “I would have loved some sandwiches and some food in schools, but that is not the answer.”

So what is the answer?

According to Banks, the way out of child poverty is children living in homes “with unconditional love, and I never knew anything about that,” and having access to a world-class education. But the state cannot provide unconditional love.

According to the Bible, it comes down to us. James tells us simply

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. (NIV)

Children whose parents send them to school sans breakfast and lunch are, in effect, orphans. Won’t somebody please feed the children?

Vinny’s back! Scumbags in High places BEWARE!

vinney

From Facebook…
“Please Help Vinny Eastwood rebuild his YouTube Subscriber base!
His Channel With 16,000+ Subs (NZ’s Most Subscribed News Channel) Was Deleted Without Warning 2 Weeks Before The New Zealand Election!
This link will take you to the new channel http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-kt7gUEoTqWj1qMrT8td6w?sub_confirmation=1
Please Subscribe and SHARE THIS POST EVERYWHERE!
Help Vinny get back on his feet!”
*****

Now Vinny is a Door in an abandoned shack being blown back and forth by a Hurricane!… and that’s a frightening thing!…. yet to my mind what is more frightening is that the powers that be and their little demonic minions busy themselves manipulating companies like Youtube, and facebook into shutting down Vocal dissenters and Critics like Vinny.
Thus it is in the name of Free Speech that I am doing my bit to help Vinny recover from the grievous injustice he suffered loosing his Youtube Channel.
Tim Wikiriwhi.
Christian Libertarian.

Am I evil? Yes I am.

I’ve been honoured once again to have received Liberty Scott’s endorsement of my candidacy in his 2014 New Zealand voting guide for lovers of liberty.

Statue of Liberty

 
 
Mana – Safe Labour – Richard Goode Kris Faafoi or Hekia Parata? To hell with them both, vote for libertarian Richard Goode standing under the ALCP banner. He believes in more than just legalising weed, he believes in a smaller state and so your vote will be principled.

It’s true. I do believe in a smaller state and I am principled. Well, mostly.

I had intended to post my own series of Eternal Vigilance electorate candidate endorsements. In the end, I posted only two, one for Grant Keinzley and one for Alistair Gregory. Why only two?

I ran out of time, as I so often do. More exactly, I ran out of time to do a proper job. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, you see. And that brings me to the other reason I posted only two endorsements in the end. The paucity of perfect candidates, indeed the paucity of anywhere-near-perfect candidates. As far as candidates worthy of a Christian libertarian’s endorsement go, Alistair Gregory is about as good as it gets. But I have since had serious qualms about my other candidate endorsement and I resile from it.

Here at Eternal Vigilance we champion principle over pragmatism. Two of us (me and Tim) are former Libertarianz activists, candidates and spokesmen. Libertarianz was New Zealand’s only Party of Principle, and Tim and I actively carry on its proud tradition of promoting more freedom and less government. As do some other former Libz members, two of whom are running as candidates for the pseudo-libertarian ACT Party this election. (Although at least one former Libz activist is beyond giving a shit.)

To its great credit, and the credit of all in the party at the time, Libertarianz never compromised. Even to the point of promoting the practically unworkable Tracinski’s ratchet. The Libz recognised that the greater good is never a moral defence of government action, and voting for the lesser evil is always morally indefensible. (Are you ratcheting evil?)

Sensing the Libertarianz Party’s impending demise, I jumped waka and joined the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party. Legalising cannabis is a libertarian policy, and it was the policy of the Libertarianz Party for which I was the Spokesman on Drugs, so there was no cognitive dissonance for me and no ill-feeling from any of my fellow libertarians who all wished me well with my open infiltration of the ALCP. (Check out the ALCP’s ten principles and tell me if you see a libertarian influence.)

But the devil is in the details. While I steadfastly stand by my party’s policy of regulating cannabis Colorado-style, I recognise regulation for what it is.

Regulations are actually prohibitive – if government defines the one way they will allow something they are really prohibiting all other ways.

Thus I fail any libertarian purity test.

1. Is there a positive candidate to endorse?

But so does Liberty Scott. As a libertarian, does he really have any business asking questions 2 and 3?

2. Is there a likely winner worthy of tactically voting to eject because he or she is so odious??
3. Is there a tolerable “least worst” candidate?

It’s no secret that I consider Peter Dunne to be New Zealand’s most evil Member of Parliament. Evil in an utterly banal way, like Adolf Eichmann. Dunne now faces the very real risk that he will lose his Ohariu electorate seat to Labour Party challenger Virginia Andersen. So I hope and pray that Virginia Andersen is Ohariu’s new MP when the votes are counted tomorrow night!

I admit I was even tempted to get out on the streets and help Andersen with her electorate campaign. But I didn’t, and in the end I couldn’t even bring myself to endorse her candidacy explicitly when I spoke at a recent Meet the Candidates evening in the Ohariu electorate. Compared to Dunne, Andersen is the lesser evil. But what about the even lesser evil on the Ohariu voter’s ballot paper, fellow libertarian Sean Fitzpatrick? He’s explicitly stated he’s seeking only the party vote for the pseudo-libertarian ACT Party. Perhaps he, too, secretly hopes that Ohariu voters will give their electorate vote to Andersen? But aside from that, Fitzpatrick’s party has no cannabis policy. That’s why I call it pseudo-libertarian. Drug legalisation is the litmus test for being a libertarian. The ACT Party fails on that count. What’s more, post-election the ACT Party may enter into a coalition agreement (to provide confidence and supply) with the National Party. How evil is that?

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? (ESV)

Jamie Whyte & co. are believers in individual freedom and personal responsibility at least.

They’re lesser evils. But what about my own candidacy? Am I evil? Yes I am!

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (ESV)

but some fall shorter than others. I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion that I’m a lesser evil just like all the candidates in the list below. I’m standing to give Mana voters the choice to vote for a lesser evil. Am I evil? I’m your man!

Without further ado, here are my candidate endorsements. I’ll spare you the details.

Christchurch East Robert Wilkinson (ALCP)
Dunedin North Abe Gray (ALCP)
Dunedin South Julian Crawford (ALCP)
Epsom Adam Holland (Independent)
Kelston Jeff Lye (ALCP)
Mana Richard Goode (ALCP)
New Plymouth Jamie Dombroski (ALCP)
Ohariu Virginia Andersen (Labour)
Palmerston North Iain Lees-Galloway (Labour)
Te Atatu Adrian McDermott (ALCP)
Te Tai Tokerau Kelvin Davis (Labour)
Te Tai Tonga Emma-Jane Mihaere Kingi (ALCP)
Tukituki Romana Marnz Manning (ALCP)
Upper Harbour Stephen Berry (ACT)
Wellington Central Alistair Gregory (ALCP)

Politics is a dirty, worldly business and we know who is god of this world. Should Christians, who are in this world but not supposed to be of it, even get involved in politics?

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.

Hikois from hell

Hikoi-foreshore

It’s National Party policy to abolish the Maori seats but John Key says not on his watch.

Dropping Maori seats would mean ‘hikois from hell’

Abolishing the Maori seats would rip the country apart and attract “hikois from hell”, John Key said.

Speaking to the Herald last week before the release of Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics, the Prime Minister said that while it remained National Party policy to abolish the seats, even if he had enough numbers to do so, he would abolish them only with the agreement of Maori.

“It would divide the nation,” he told the Herald’s Hot Seat series . “Despite the fact that a lot of people say they don’t like it and they were there for a particular reason, actually it would be an incredibly divisive thing to do to New Zealand and New Zealanders.”

“Do you really want to rip a country apart? I’ll tell you what would happen – hikois from hell.”

Whether you were on the Maori roll or the general roll everyone got two votes.

While abolishing the seats has been long-standing policy for National, Act and United Future policy, the Maori Party’s confidence and supply agreement with National saw it parked as an active issue. But even if the Maori Party were not in the next Parliament, Mr Key has in effect protected them.

Political party 1law4all isn’t happy. On Facebook they posted

 
But I agree with John Key.

Having a Maori electoral roll as well as a general electoral roll is not, in itself, racist. It is merely arbitrary. Everyone gets two votes, regardless of which roll they’re on.

What’s racist about the Maori roll is that only Maori get to choose whether to be on it or to be on the general roll. If we opened up the Maori roll to non-Maori, there’d be no racism.

And no problem. Because we have to divide the country up into electorates somehow. (Or do we?!) Dividing the country up geographically is arbitrary. We might just as well divide the country up according to the age of the voters. It would be instructive to do so. Who would win the 20-year-old’s seat? Who would win the 60-year-old’s seat? Now we’re talking ageism, instead of racism!

But isn’t our current system geographicalist? I’d love to be enrolled in the Ohariu electorate so that I could vote for someone other than Peter Dunne. But I can’t. I’m stuck with Mana. (It’s like school zoning, I’m against it.)

Key’s more important point is that abolishing the Maori seats today would lead to “hikois from hell”. That’s a euphemism for blood on the streets. Do we really want to trade a harmless anachronism for violent civil unrest?

Retaining the Maori seats is the small price we pay for keeping a lid on the simmering resentment of some Maori towards the descendants of the colonials whom they believe inflicted a holocaust on their ancestors leaving them disadvantaged to this day.

Retaining the Maori seats is a good social insurance policy. Much like retaining the dole. The dole costs [from memory, I might come back and edit this figure] $18,000 per year per beneficiary. Incarceration costs [again, this figure is from memory] $90,000 per year per inmate. If we abolished the dole, there’d be a crime wave tsunami as an army of unemployed, suddenly bereft of income, found thieving (and worse) ways to make ends meet. Kiwis, beneficiary and non-beneficiary alike, would suffer. So let’s not abolish the dole, mmmkay?

Let’s be clear. The productive and colour blind are being held to ransom. In paying the dole and retaining the Maori seats, we are complicit in perpetuating unjust systems of social welfare and racist democracy. But what choices do we have?

Remember, too, that people’s welfare is a consideration that must temper considerations of justice. Okay, now I look forward to my co-bloggers dumping on me from a great height. See the comments section below.

Where was Jamie Whyte while Laila Harre was getting high?

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So Laila Harre has seized the initiative… and the high ground on Cannabis Law reform.
Good for her!
I chuckle because this will test the bonds of the Internet Mana Marriage.

Will Hone Harawera do a ‘Hone Banksy’ on her?

We all witnessed last election ‘Righty Hone Banks’ knife his dear leader, Don Brash for publicly expressing his views that Cannabis should be de-criminalised.
We all know this treacherous disloyalty cost the Act party and Don Heavily … though Banksy still got his Baubles of power.
Consequently Acts support under ‘National Banks’ sunk to absolute Zero.
(Did Banksy and his Fascist Faction really think Freedom lovers would support such a Carnie side show?)

From all the rhetoric I have herd from ‘lefty’ Hone Harawera… he is as anti- Decriminalisation as his Pakeha counterpart to his Right.
Things could get ugly for Laila… just as they did for Don.
This could be an interesting week in politics.
As a Libertarian, I am always hoping that more, and more parties adopt policies in favour of ending prohibition on Cannabis because to achieve such reforms through parliament and maintain them requires a broad multi-party consensus.

jamwy

And thinking more about this one must ask the obvious question as to where the hell is Act’s new Brash-man Jamie Whyte on this Issue?

What can voters infer from his silence that either he doesn’t give a shit, or that the great Fraudulent Liberal prohibitionist Banksy still wearing the Pants in the Act party?

Why is it that all we hear from James is all about *Business*…. nothing about individual freedom and responsibility?

Why the hell has he allowed The Lefty Freaks of Internet Mana seize the High ground on this fundamental issue of Personal freedom?

Am I the only one who thinks this is farcical?
It’s quite embarrassing for Act… or should be.
How can Act claim to be the part of Personal Freedom and Anti- Nanny State when they are being out shined on this important matter???

Come on Jamie….
Are you going to let the Lefty Freaks win all the support that is out there for Cannabis Law Reform?
Are you only concerned with Business interests?
Where is your stuff on Freedom and getting rid of Socialist Nannyism?

Why Do You think silence is the best policy?
I think you are letting one of your greatest opportunities slip through your hands…

Rather than standing tall like a Beacon in stormy Seas you appear to be just another Grey suited politician whom calculates that conservatism on such issues is the best way to ‘win a seat at the table’.

I should not have to point out what a monumental *Fail* such Compromises have historically proven to be for Act.
Power without principles is hopeless.

That sort of wet flannel politics is why they have achieved absolutely *Zero* for all their time in parliament (worse than zero actually if you count the Super city fiasco)… and it is why Act have no credibility today.
How about growing a pair and showing some Brash principles… rather than playing possum on such a vital, yet contentious issue!
Brash was onto something great.
His biggest mistake was getting John Banks into the Act Party.
John Banks has achieved nothing but being the flunky for John Key.
Is a vote for Jamie Whyte’s Act *still* nothing more than another vote for John Key’s National party?
It seems that way from where I’m sitting.

Tim Wikiriwhi.
Libertarian Independent.

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Read>>>> GLOBAL COMMISSION ON DRUG POLICY

Read about Laila Harre’s press release >>>> Here <<<< Read more from me .... Tick…Tock… Tick… Puff Puff. Where does Act’s Jamie Whyte stand on Cannabis Law Reform?

Open letter to Act’s new leader Jamie Whyte … Stop being National’s Lapp-dog.

Norml J Day Protest Hamilton 2014

Ross Meurant: The case for decriminalisation

Memories of Peter Dunne

Wednesday night last week I was at the Backbencher pub on Molesworth Street, across the road from Parliament Buildings, for the filming of the first episode of the 2014 season of Back Benches.

Back Benches is a political panel discussion show. Hosted by Wallace Chapman and Damien Grant, it airs on Prime TV 10:30 pm Wednesday evenings, having been filmed earlier in the evening. It’s a great show. (You can watch it here.)

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Last week’s political panel featured Labour MP Trevor Mallard, National MP Mark Mitchell, Green MP Jan Logie … and Peter Dunne. Topics included cannabis law reform … and animal testing.

Animal testing has been a hot topic in New Zealand in the last couple of years because of the Psychoactive Substances Act. The Psychoactive Substances Act, which became law in July last year, made provision for the testing of new psychoactive substances on animals. Peter Dunne, the National government’s Associate Health Minister, was the bill’s main architect and front man.

Earlier this month, in a surprise (to some) move, Parliament enacted the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. The amendment, drafted by Peter Dunne himself, rules out the prospect of any testing of psychoactive substances on animals being incentivised by the government. This is very good news.

Section 12 replaced (Duty of advisory committee relating to use of animals when evaluating psychoactive products)
Replace section 12 with:
12 Advisory committee not to have regard to results of trials involving animals
“(1) In performing the function set out in section 11(2)(a), the advisory committee must not have regard to the results of a trial that involves the use of an animal.
“(2) However, the advisory committee may have regard to the results of a trial undertaken overseas that involves the use of an animal if the advisory committee considers that the trial shows that the psychoactive product would pose more than a low risk of harm to individuals using the product.”

Wednesday night last week, Peter Dunne made the following remarks.

Can I just say two things.

I’m in favour of testing for medicinal purposes on low down the stratum [sic] sets of animals.

With regard to psychoactive substances I ruled dogs and that level out as long ago as November 2012. They were never, ever in the frame. The debate subsequently was about rodents and more latterly rabbits …

Well, that’s not how I remember it. I remember a headline from December 2012 which told a very different story.

Last year hundreds marched against animal testing. With their beagles. It’s not how they remember it, either.

Peter Dunne is a sick puppy.

Is still my opinion.

But how do we best square what Peter Dunne said last week with what he apparently said and thought back in December 2012?

Let’s canvas the possibilities.

1. The Sunday Star Times misreported.

2. Peter Dunne misspoke.

3. Peter Dunne is in denial about what he said.

4. Peter Dunne is trying to rewrite history.

Politicians lie. We know this because their lips move. Peter Dunne is a consummate politician. So I’m rooting for option (4). Otherwise, it’s hard to explain why Dunne is so specific about the date. “I ruled dogs out as long ago as November 2012.” Except that he didn’t.

Here’s what I think really happened. I think Peter Dunne lacks empathy. Otherwise, how to explain this? And he simply forgot to remember that normal people consider the gratuitous poisoning and killing of household pets to be morally unacceptable.

Legal Heroin Ban: PSA and the Evil of Politics.

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It’s a great relief to me that at least one of my libertarian friends gets it.

This compelling piece on the diabolical Psychoactive Substances Act by atheist blogger and fellow freedom fighter Mark Hubbard is so good, I’m syndicating it.

Be sure to check out more of Mark’s blog. I wish I had more time to read his posts.

Legal Heroin Ban: PSA and the Evil of Politics.

I wish I had more time to write this post.

Search this blog for the Psychoactive Substances Bill, animal welfare, or animal testing, and you’ll see around the time that 119 of New Zealand’s 120 members of Parliament were enacting infamy, their egos driving them for a world first, I was warning them of the inhumanity they were about to force on us. Although now that the results of legalising synthetic, toxic poison – on the heinous principle of animal testing for our human recreation- has been in place for less than a year, even I am left breathless at the devastation and misery that has been caused.

This is what the 119 that I declared a philosophical war upon, have done. They legalised a line of hardcore addictive drugs in the league of P or heroin, nothing similar to the non-toxic, non-addictive, medicinal cannabis that many other countries are sensibly legalising, and then by keeping cannabis criminalised they successfully addicted possibly thousands of mainly young Kiwis to the equivalent of heroin, because by taking the legal heroin they would not face the force of the law, or lose their jobs, unlike smoking cannabis for which they would be convicted in the government war on drugs. So government policy addicted them to heroin, and I’ll keep making this point, heroin, which is what I’m calling it from now on, because that’s what this drek is: these MP’s have been hiding behind the euphemisms legal high and synthetic cannabis for too long. They legalised a hardcore, psychosis forming, addictive drug while keeping the harmless option criminalised.

And then much worse. Because it’s election year, and Campbell Live has been exposing the ruined lives that have been addicted to legal heroin, Labour decided it would be a vote catcher to announce a policy of banning it. Not to be outdone, merely minutes before Labour announcing its ban yesterday, the instigator of legal heroin, Peter Dunne, whose son, remember, is the foremost legal representative to the legal heroin industry, in a knee-jerk political action announced his own ban of all 41 legal brands of heroin currently on sale, from two weeks hence.

Now, hands up those who understand addiction, who believe that these new government created addicts are going to miraculously stop taking their heroin fix in two weeks? Of course they’re not: they can’t. No what Dunne has done with the ill-thought out ban, as the solution to his incompetent, ill-thought out legislation, is deliver a brand new customer base to organised crime; the violent gangs whom will happily take up supply at some magnitude of the current price, meaning a burglary crime wave is also headed our way. (Perhaps young James Dunne better line up his legal aide application.)

Has there been a better example of the evil transacted by government in New Zealand in our recent history? Noting an important point made by one tweeter that opposition to the Psychoactive Substances Act, is still consistent with the belief I hold that prohibition does not work: it’s just that in this case government policy actually forced users to take the most harmful of drugs, by keeping harmless cannabis criminalised. As I write in too many of my posts; you can’t make this stuff up. Thousands of lives ruined chasing world first law-making – that is, one man’s ego – which is a disaster, and yet still, despite the evidence world-wide, including the states in the US seemingly experiencing no problems with cannabis legalisation, not a single MP in New Zealand talking of legalising non-toxic, non-addictive cannabis, to perhaps keep some of these new heroin addicts out of the clutches of the gangs while the ban is on. (Or forget the PSA, at the very least, to look at putting cannabis into hospitals to help manage the side-affects of cancer treatments, and many other of the medicinal uses cannabis has.)

I revise my former oft used epigraph by saying we’re something a lot worse than a kindy of a country.

There are some questions I will quickly recite to end, but first another principled point. This post is all about ethics, but the MSM and majority of the political blogs will cynically write this up as part of the political game: who announced the ban first, how will it affect election chances et al. Most, other than John Campbell – and good on you John – will forget the addicts. This blog is probably considered by most as a political blog, which is ironic, as I hate politics, and politicians who are taking us all at pace from the free, civilised society, to their brave new world of politick, which is a slave pit where the masses are kept chilled with legal heroin. Aldous Huxley got it right. Was Peter Dunne concerned with the addicts here? Hell no, his reply to Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway on that party’s proposed bill:

There’s no victory here Peter, we’re all losers. If there is one bit of justice out of this it will be your disappearance after this year’s general election.

Questions for the 119 MPs:

Dunne has stated all current 41 heroins will be banned until they pass the test of ‘low or no risk’: however as the legal heroin industry pointed out last night in a tweet, there are still no guidelines set out by our inept law makers as to what constitutes low or no risk. So what is this criteria? And after that, show factually why the plant cannabis does not comply, because I’m willing to bet it does, and you won’t need to test a single animal for that, just look at cannabis use by humans over the last 6,000 years, with not one recorded death from toxicity.

I originally wrote on this Act when in bill form from the point of view of the cruel animal testing it proposed, which via a series of nationwide protests, Kiwis thankfully showed themselves to be implacably against, to the extent that to this stage no animals have been tortured for our recreation under the Psychoactive Substances Act. However in the last tweet from Mojo Mathers to myself, she stated that the expert advisory panel set up to look at the testing of this heroin was still stuck on – the barbarity – of using animals for reproductive testing, thus animal testing is still on the laboratory table.

I suspect there will now be huge pressure to use animal testing as a way to get one of these heroin brands back into the shops, and the economics of this has been changed. Formerly the cost of testing was prohibitive, however that cost is now tempered by the carrot of getting a single heroin to market, and so a legal monopoly.

Will every one of the infamous 119 MP’s who voted for this monstrosity, please put on record if you are going to allow a single animal to be harmed under the Psychoactive Substances Act. Don’t you worry responding Peter Dunne: I’ve realised via this you’re a vainglorious, ego driven man who couldn’t care less about an animal’s welfare (or a human’s as it has ended up.)

Signing off in my usual disgust.