NEW LIBERTARIAN PARTY - URGENT UPDATE

I've received the following message from Gavin Webb, who is heading up the current initiative to set up a new part that's fit for Libertarians to join:

Today my hosting provider suspended my account for alleged copyright violations. Upon contacting them it transpires that Ian Parker-Joseph on behalf of the Libertarian Party UK had made the complaint on the basis that by using the url libertarianparty.org.uk I was in fact passing off and trading as the Libertarian Party UK. Please can you now direct anyone interest in seeing a new registered libertarian political organisation on the scene to visit www.gavinwebb.com/libertarians. Thanks.

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Note from Stuart: Gavin Webb is one of the more useful members the Libertarian Party has ever had, having been our only sitting councillor and one-time Communications Director. Unlike the sleazy little gang that siezed control of the Party's assets last year, he has actually done a lot to promote Libertarianism through the democratic political process. He's got the backing of what's left of the active membership of the Libertian Party, and if the lying conspiracy theorist Ian Parker-Joseph thinks that a cheap trick like this is going to stop the loyalist faction from establishing the new and more effective libertarian party that this country needs, he's even crazier than I think he is.

A NEW POLITICAL PARTY FOR LIBERTARIANS?

With the assets of the Libertarian Party still in the hands of an unelected gang of liars, conspiracy theorists and conmen, some of us who have been active in promoting Libertarian values via the electoral process in the past and don't intend seeing that effort going to waste are now interested in starting a new Libertian political party so that we can move forwards and do some actual politics. At the moment, the initiative is just at the level of finding out how many people would be interested in supporting such a venture. Gavin Webb - former Communications Director and the only councillor the Libertarian Party ever had - has set up a website where people can register their interest:

http://libertarianparty.org.uk/

If you understand that libertarians have to be involved with the political process in order for this country to progress in the right direction, please register your interest - you won't be committing yourself to anything.

Two More Questions To Ask Andrew Withers

Just in case I don't get there on time, here are two more questions for any loyalist Party members who are attending tomorrow's phony AGM to ask Andrew Withers:

Question 1: Andrew Withers was elected unopposed as a councillor in Clevedon last year. But he stood as in independent. Why did he choose to do this, instead of standing as a Libertarian Party candidate? That would have been an extremely easy win for the Party with no extra effort - our first elected councillor. Withers was still Party Leader when he submitted the nomination papers for his candidacy, and this was prior to the storm triggered by the Anna Raccoon blog. A party leader's job is to promote their party, and having people in elected office (even on parish councils) is generally thought of as being a good thing by small parties on the grounds that it enhances their credibility. So why did Whithers stand as an independent? I did send him a polite email at the time, asking him about this - the reply I got was rambling, incoherent and aggressive in tone. It did include the following statement: "My reasons for not standing as a Libertarian Party candidate in the local elections ? because I would not have secured a seat." And yet the election was unopposed, so what sense does that make?
Why would a party leader who sincerely wants to advance the interests of Libertarianism in this country not stand as a Libertarian candidate?

Question 2: During the run up to the local elections last year, in my capacity as North West Regional Coordinator (and therefore a member of the National Coordinating Committee), I asked how many candidates we had, who and where they were. After all, a small party needs to mobilise its members to support whatever candidates it has. Andrew Withers refused to disclose this information to the NCC. As a consequence of this, the information was not available to put on the Party website so that people could volunteer to help our candidate(s) by leafleting etc. And what else is a political party for, if it's not to support it's candidates? To this day I only have definite knowledge of one Libertarian Party candidate in last year's elections. Despite this betrayal by Andrew Withers, he actually got a fairly decent result.
Why did Andrew Withers betray our candidate(s) in this way?

Don't let Andrew Withers get away with his usual evasive replies and bully tactics. Get straight answers out of him for both these questions, it's your right to know. And don't forget to take a digital camera along to the "AGM" - I can put any digital video footage submitted to me on YouTube easily enough.

The AGM That Isn't, Run By The Leaders Who Aren't

Before the Libertarian Party website was taken down, supposedly “for maintenance”, it was announced – very quietly announced, in fact it was buried in the news section – that there was going to be an Annual General Meeting this coming Saturday. Here are the full details:

Party AGM 24th March 2012 10am
Committee Room 2 Clevedon Town Council
44 Old Street, Clevedon, North Somerset

Membership Card required for entry and £5 towards venue costs apply to membership@libertarianpartyuk.com

Federal Constitution to be approved

New Manifesto for 2012 In Process

There are several things wrong with this announcement:

1. The membership have not been directly informed – at least no member known to me has been emailed about this. Certainly I received no notification, which I certainly should have done being both a regional co-ordinator and long-standing member (Party Membership Number 12).


2. The last Libertarian Party AGM was held in late 2010. The Party Constitution says that AGM's must be held no further apart than 15 months.


3. The venue is extremely hard to get to - the nearest railway station is nearly 4 miles away. Anyone would think the “leadership” didn't want ordinary members attending, especially in view of the early start time.


4. The requirement for membership cards to be produced. I know of only one member in the North West region who has received one. Have the majority of active and formerly active members been blacklisted?


5. The £5 entry fee. The group that is organising this event has no authority to ask for money.


6. “Federal Constitution to be approved”. Not debated, but approved. Again, the group calling the so-called AGM has no authority to do this. This has not even been discussed by the National Co-ordinating Committee – even then it would be up to a vote by the attending members.


7. “New Manifesto” - same as above. They have no authority.

Now the reason that the group organising this meeting has no authority to do any of this is that they're not the NCC. During the internal crisis that was triggered by the Anna Raccoon blog last year, former Party Leader Andrew Withers resigned and has never been re-instated. That's right, the man who currently claims to be both Party Leader and Treasurer isn't even a member. Withers was Party Treasurer until the last AGM, in 2010, then he was elected Party Leader and another member was elected Treasurer. Unfortunately – and for reasons best known to himself – Withers failed to turn over the accounts and control of the Party bank accounts to the new Treasurer. Why would he do this unless he has something to hide?

The upshot of all this is that control of the Libertarian Party bank accounts and – even more importantly – the membership list are no longer in the possession of the NCC. Instead they're in the hands of a small unelected group centred around Andrew Withers, Nic Coome and Ian Parker-Jospeph. This has left the Party completely paralysed since last year, and with no obvious prospects of recovery. People who really want to promote a libertarian alternative to mainstream politics would not act in this way – as a matter of fact, Withers' group did actually try to de-register the Party last year, without success.

So we have an unelected group holding a fake AGM in a place and time that most members will find it difficult to access. This looks very much like Withers and his gang trying to complete the coup they started last year. They won't profit from this.

Here's my advice to any Libertarian Party members who plan to attend this so-called AGM:

1. Don't pay the £5 they're asking for. Withers and his mob have no authority to ask you for any money, and there's no way of knowing how the money is going to be spent. The money raised by the Party prior to last year's implosion has not been properly accounted for, despite the best efforts of honest members to obtain this information.


2. Ask Withers for a full accounting of Party funds. It's YOUR money, you have the right to know how it's been spent.


3. Demand that Withers and his cronies surrender control of the bank accounts, financial records and membership lists to the legitimate NCC without delay.


4. Ask Withers why the IT contractor who was in charge of re-vamping the website doesn't seem to have been paid.


5. Make sure your questions, and any answers you receive, are properly recorded, preferably with a digital video camera. Andrew Withers, Nic Coome and Ian Parker-Joseph all have a history of dishonesty, so it's as well to record the proceedings. If there are two or three people with cameras and/or voice recorders present, so much the better.

I joined the Libertarian Party because I believed that it was necessary to have openly libertarian people taking part in the electoral process and promoting libertarian ideas in order to counteract the statist trend of the last century. I still believe this to be necessary – two years of relative inaction by the current government has shown that just getting rid of Labour was not enough. There's a lot of good work that can be done by an effective Libertarian Party, especially at local level. But the Libertarian Party will never be an effective organisation as long as it's resources are under the control of a gang of crooks.

The Contradiction of Randomness

This is a bit of encouragement for those who want to believe in God but who really believe that to do so would be indulging in wishful thinking. That it would be giving way to a desire to believe in 'fairies in the sky' and all that, instead of being a scientific, rational, 21st century, intelligent person.

I originally posted this as a comment.

All in the name of freedom!

The Contradiction of Randomness:

If we think of time/space and all the events and matter in it as being without direction or design, ie, it all happened by chance, then there are two problems.

The first is that if it has happened that any order that exists, such as life, occurred spontaneously in randomness, then one is actually accepting that it is not order but simply another random set of events that have occurred by chance, and because we live in this fleeting breath of time, we perceive the apparent sequence of events as order. When, in fact, they are part of the pure randomness of eternity.

However. Then the second problem is encountered. Pure chance, randomness as we perceive it, tends to disperse, to dissipation.

A drop of ink in a glass of water tends to dissipate throughout the water. Never has it been known for ink dispersed in a glass of water to randomly come together as a drop of ink.

Pure randomness tends to evenness as all its parts, all of it, merges with every other part and becomes one unified existence.

In fact, pure randomness would lead to absolute nothingness as everything blends with everything else to become an even stillness in which all potential has discharged.

All that we see, experience, know touch and feel, including our perception of those happenings, is based on difference, potential, separation. All structure, whether matter, energy or events, is based on difference such as electrons and protons. Negative and positive. And all difference implies order because without order, if everything was purely random, there would be complete evenness, which would in fact be nothing.

Everything would have submerged into everything else. In fact that is not really correct because it would not have occurred in the first place.

Random events tend to dispersion. And dispersion tends to stasis. Total silent nothing.

Cuba will survive :-)

Sat with my tea, after a long days toil, I decided to watch the news and catch up on the days events. One story in particular riled me more than any other, even more than Rob Andrews refusal to quit. There was a five minute package on what a terrible place Cuba is under the Castro's. Being a man on a low income, living in the UK, I found this particular package almost laughable to the point that it was borderline propaganda. Some filthy stinking rich Tory scum International Development Minister then came on and continued the tirade against Cuba calling the Castro's "tyrants". The question I wanted to pose to this revolting tory was "are the Cuban people liberated from most of the misery that afflicts most of the people of the third world?" The answer to that would be yes, people in Havana live longer than people in Washington DC and they receive free education from primary school to PhD. But all this particular minister cared about was the fact that the people of Cuba couldn't vote. But we all know that Tories and capitalists in general don't recognise health, longevity and free education as basic human rights. All they care about is that we turn up every four years and endorse their antiquated political system. Elections in the UK are more like the Oscars.
I firmly believe that if it were not for the 50 years of siege, assassination attempts and invasions, from the United States, then democracy could have been achieved in Cuba. The United States has done everything it could to destroy the Cuban Revolution, the CIA has made 600 known attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. America have done this precisely because Cuba is an inspiration to the poor of the world. So Washington is to blame to the absence of democracy in Cuba. Because sadly when a nation like Cuba is under constant threat, like Britain was during WW2, democracy has to be suspended in favour of a stable government. There were no elections in Britain between 1935 and 1945, British political parties did not fight each other throughout the course of WW2. Cuba, like Britain during WW2, has a rather powerfull and aggressive country that has a proven track record of kicking the shit out smaller countries, right on its door step. The United States is a mere 75 miles from Cuba and has been trying to destroy the Cuban and the Revolution for over 50 years and thus universal suffrage has been suspended. Also if one analyses the current political climate of Latin America it would appear that the only way to get elected is to profess admiration of Fidel Castro and opposition to capitalism and US foreign policy (see Hugo Chavez, the worlds most popular politician).
However, despite the fact that Fidel is no longer President, I firmly believe that Socialism will survive, the free health service will survive, free education will survive and the Cuban Revolution will survive. In spite of pro-capitalist propaganda Cuba will continue to be an inspiration to the poor of the world, and Fidel will always be an icon to people who want liberation from bone the grinding poverty and back breaking toil which has been inflicted upon them by a brutal and opressive capitalist system. Anyway, until next time comrades. Peace and Love!

Libertarian Left or Right?

Libertarianism, if it be the promotion of individual liberty and individual responsibility, is neither left nor right. In the British context it is neither Conservative nor Labour. It is not, essentially, about a political form at all but rather the removal of 'politics', of controlling power and coercion, in the life of the individual. (If only the directors of the now almost deceased Libertarian Party had embraced that!)

Insofar as the Conservative Party has its roots, and demonstrates its adherence to those roots, in the old aristocracy that ruled and controlled day to day life, it is anti libertarian. However in the 21st Century, and in much of the 20th, it has been Labour that has been the party of centralised control and intervention in the daily lives of the people.

In fact the Conservatives of Thatcher would probably have had more in common with the Whigs of old, and the Labour control-freaks and micro managers more with the old control-centred Tories of two centuries ago.

For the last 50 years or so both parties have indeed been different flavour of the same stuff. Today even, Cameron is less conservative than Blair was when he came to 'power', which he did by appealing to the popularity of conservative sentiment in the voters more effectively than the 'depleted-Conservatives' did in 1997.

During the 20 or so years before Labour's return under Blair, and for some years after, freedom did regain that bit of a breathing space because individuals within the Conservative Party had seen the individualistic beliefs they held dear, as well as simple, survivable reality, being dangerously eroded under old Labour. The changes in sentiment the Conservatives introduced after being elected in 1979 were not eradicated by New Labour until the collective public memory of why the Conservatives had been voted in had been obfuscated, re-written, and had faded. To repeat, the policies did not hit the buffers, the Party did after it abandoned those policies.

And now the forces that rolled back centralised control have been largely contained and neutralised and that breathing space for freedom is closing up very, very fast. The spirit of centralised controlled as exemplified previously by the USSR rides again with a whole new dimension on totalitarian terror from a different quarter; out of the Middle East and Middle Ages.

Politics is a shifting game and will always be open to deception. It is inherently dishonest being as it is, about power, and the manipulation, coercion and control of others.

Further, all too often one sees political debate revelling in tricks of thought and speech rather than with substance. It's about winning rather than addressing the truth.

However it would seem there would be more hope to promote libertarian agendas within the Conservative Party than within Labour. There is a spirit that has flourished from time to time amongst some of those in the Conservative Party that is far more libertarian than could ever be expected in Labour, unless that party were to go beyond the robust addressing of reality that occurred during Blair's first few years in power, and that probably actually came from Alistair Campbell, whatever his world view, and Labour actually seriously committed itself to the truth.

Self reliance, responsibility for one's self and actions, is far more in keeping with those who have built the nation rather than those who have used it to fund themselves, their programmes and their Utopian hopes