North Korean Update: Chinese Take over?

Source: Strategy page
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/korea/articles/20080929.aspx

“The Chinese plan to install pro-Chinese North Koreans as head of a new “North Korean” government, and institute the kind of economic reforms they have been urging the North Korean to undertake for over a decade. The Chinese do not want North Korea to merge with South Korea, nor do they want North Korea to collapse (and send millions of starving refugees into northern China. China and South Korea both want North Korea to stay independent, and harmless.”

You know the world is in a bad way when China become an agent for increasing freedom!

Friends of Charles C. Lynch

As many of you probably know, I’m a strong supporter of all drug legalization on both ethical and practical grounds. However, here’s a story that should tug at the heart strings of even those who are staunchly in favour of prohibition.

Charles C. Lynch is the former owner and managing Caregiver for Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers in Morro Bay. The dispensary opened on April 1 2006 with the blessing of the city and even joined the Chamber of Commerce. In July 2006 the dispensary was granted a Conditional Use Permit from the City of Morro Bay to include a Medical Cannabis Nursery at the dispensary.

On March 29, 2007 the Local Sheriff and DEA agents raided the Dispensary and Home of Charles Lynch. Lynch was not arrested at the time and reopened the dispensary on April 7 2007 with the blessing of the City of Morro Bay.

On July 17, 2007 Lynch was arrested at his home and charged with Federal Marijuana Distribution. On August 5, 2008 Lynch was convicted in Federal Court for operating the Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers.

It’s particularly worrying to note that facts relevent to this trial were barred from the courtroom. For example, Owen Beck a former customer who used marijuana to alleviate his bone cancer pain and nausea caused by chemotherapy, was sent packing by U.S. District Judge George Wu.

Wu decreed there would be no talk of the symptoms marijuana relieves, no references to California’s recognition of marijuana as a medicine, no mention even of the phrase “medical marijuana” in front of the jury.

In short, there would be no explanation of how Lynch came to operate what prosecutors called a “marijuana store” in downtown Morro Bay for a year, openly serving more than 2,000 customers.

See http://www.friendsofccl.com/about.htm

For those interested, the Reason foundation and Drew Carey have been involved with drawing attention to this miscarriage of justice.

The Push

I’m pretty ignorant of Australian political history. And quite frankly I find it pretty boring.
However a friend of mine notified me of this website discussing “The Push“, an Australian political/cultural movement in the 1950s and 1960s in Sydney. And it’s quite interesting. It briefly discusses Sydney’s freethought society, founded by John Anderson and the libertarian society founded in the 1950s.

So for those of you who (like me) are fairly ignorant of Australian political history and/or too young to know much about movments from the 50s/60s, you may find this web-site interesting.

It also may be interesting to hear any thoughts on this movment from any readers who know more about it or may have even been involved.

Incidentally, I am strongly oppossed to taxpayers paying for websites such as this to exist. I definitely don’t think it’s the job of our government to write political history, or to attempt to control or even define Australian culture.

Compassion is Irrelevant to Arguments for Welfare

The reason I am writing this post is because by my judgement of western culture, welfare is often justified by the compassion argument. ie: A society without welfare would be lacking in compassion.

Two recent examples of this line of argument are seen in Kevin Rudd’s address to the CIS and in this Australian newspaper article. However I’ve come across many examples and doubt others would be hard to find.

Firstly I wish to quickly state that I think it’s dangerous to apply human emotions to society. Society isn’t a real living thing like a human and is not capable of emotion. Society is a sum of individuals.

By my thinking, there are two seemingly contradictory ways of looking at issue of welfare in regards to compassion:

1) People are generally not compassionate therefore must be forced to give money to those less fortunate. - This seems false to me. The existence of charities provides empirical evidence that people are quite willing to donate to those less fortunate.

2) People are generally highly compassionate to the point that they are willing to be forced into paying welfare. - This argument would logically make the need for force unnecessary and would therefore be an argument against welfare.

However, to be honest I haven’t thought very hard about the above points because as far as I’m concerned the issue of compassion is an irrelevant distraction.

Ideological Dangers of Environmentalism

I recently came across the ABC’s “planetslayer” website, a tax payer funded educational tool for children, and found it quite typical of environmentalist material.  See, http://www.abc.net.au/science/planetslayer/greenhouse_calc.htm  It has prompted me to attempt to think through my ideological concerns about environmentalism.