Liberal Road Blog Individual Freedom and Equality

When I started blogging I knew that blog spamming (writing spam comments) existed,but I never imagined that it was so terribly common. Pretty much every day I have about 100 spam comments in moderation. And the worst thing is that every day there seem to be more and more spam.

All the spam comments come to “only” about 3-4 posts with my post about health care being the most common target. Not surprisingly most of the spam are ads for different drugs.

Anyone blogging been surprised about the amount of spamming?

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With the first prisonier of Guantanamo being trialed concerns can be raised about the fairness of the trial. This first prisonier has pleeded quilty apparently in order to get a shorter sentence. The fairness of Guantanamo Bay trials is a joke.

After several years in the harsh conditions (involving torture) in Guatanamo Bay quite a lot of people would be ready to pleed guilty just to get out of there. Whatever the outcome of the trial is it’s hard to give any credibility to its results.

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An estimated 100 million animals are used in laboratory tests every year. Tests are done on all kind of animals: mice, rats, rabbits, apes but also dogs and cats.

5 reasons to ban animal testing:

- Animal testing is cruel. Many animal tests lead to pain on animals and a part of the tests are performed without any pain killers. Some tests lead to permanent injury or death. The toxicology of some products are tested by putting it in the eyes of a rabbit for days.

- Animals have rights too. Animals have rights as well and they shouldn’t be violated. Human beings are just another species of animals. Most of us wouldn’t accept that 100 million people would be submitted every year to non-voluntary tests (many leading to pain or death). Why do we allow it with animals? Animals are non-volunteers in tests when tests could be done with alternative methods.

- Animal tests aren’t reliable. People and animals are different and that’s why a medicine or cosmetic ingredient that is safe on animals may not be it on people or vis-versa. For example aspirin is toxic to rats and mice but not to people (source: BUAV)

- There are alternative to animal testing. These includes for example embryonic stem cell research. Also using volunteering people instead of non-volunteering animals is one of the alternatives.

- Animal tests are often unnecessary. As results from animal tests are often considered commercial secrets, it happens that the same products or ingredients are tested many times by different companies. The necessity of animal testing for cosmetics can be also questioned. Furthermore alternatives to animal research could be used.

[Update: I've written more about animal testing on a newer post, feel free to check out here.]

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The last days we have been able to read in the press about human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. Probably the pictures of beaten politicians woke up the interest of the Western World media (one beaten politician CNN and anotherBBC). One of the pictures shows the opposition leader with his head inflated as a result of the beating.

It’s good that the media speaks about human rights abuses in Africa. Africa is the continent with enormously human right abuses, yet Africa is pretty much the forgotten continent. Africa is rarely in the news in Europe or the America. Politicians pay much more attention to other parts of the world as Africa. When a war begins in Africa it is barely noticed in the rest of the world.

It wouldn’t be a bad thing if Africa was more often in the spotlight in European and American media and people’s attention. So little about Africa is actually known in the rest of the world.

It’s time for the leaders committing human rights abuses in Africa to start respecting more basical rights. It’s time for Mugabe’s regim to stop using torture. The West could be much more active in putting pressure for human rights in Africa.

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Today a Swedish TV station told that the Swedish troops in Afghanistan are spying on civilians as well as the local police and military.

Phone lines of whole towns are listened to at times, which is especially worrying and wrong. It’s not the first time that Sweden doesn’t care about the privacy of private people, unfortunately. Even in wars we should care more about privacy and human rights; these rights are too important to be lost.

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Once upon a time there was a prohibition time about alcohol. Well, it failed. But nowadays there is still a prohibition on drugs. Prohibiting the use of drugs when the use doesn’t harm others is an unacceptable limitation of the individual freedom (because no one else is harmed).

I believe that as long as using drugs doesn’t harm others it should be legal. Everyone should be free to do whatever they want to as long as it doesn’t harm others. However if someone harms another as a result of using drugs, she or he should be sentenced to treatment and be forbidden to use drugs in the future. The same thing would be the case for the drugs that are already legal: tobacco and alcohol.

Instead of criminalizing drugs the state should rather regulate them. By regulating I mean taxing them, informing about the potential harms and offering help to drug users. The state could also have a monopol on the drug market and it would manufacture and sell drugs itself. This way we could ensure that the quality of drugs is controlled and thus avoid deaths and major health problems that are due to unclean drugs. Furthermore by having a state monopol on drugs the number of selling places could be regulated (thus limiting consumption).

Those opposing the legalization of drugs often argues that drug consumption almost always leads to other crimes. This is not the case just as it is not true that drinking alcohol always leads to crimes. Furthermore if the drugs were legal and sold in state owned stores consumers would no longer need to be in contact with dealers belonging criminal gangs. An exception to legalizing drugs could be made for those hard drugs that have a very high likehood of leading to harms on others.

It is probably true that legalizing drugs would lead to some increase in their use, but at the same time legalizing them offers better possibilities to control their damages.

Shortly: forbidding the use of drugs when it doesn’t harm others is a violation of the individual freedom and of individual rights.

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The problem with giving more powers to law enforcement to monitor people is that these powers are often abused. That’s why I’m not surprised that the FBI has been repeatedly abusing the law to get phone records and customer records (sources: Los Angeles Times, ACLU).

According to a published report, the FBI has sent letters requesting companies to give it personal information such as phone and email records and education information in cases it is not allowed to do so. The Patriotic Act passed after 9/11 gave the FBI more powers, powers that the FBI has been abusing.

Spying and illegally obtaining phone and other records is nothing new for law-enforcement authorities in different countries. Unfortunately often when they are given wider rights to monitor people, they abuse these rights. We should be very careful about what rights are given to the police and the intelligence agencies and there should be a much stronger control of these agencies.

Many countries have some kind of spying programs (on domestic or foreign citizens). The United States is also participating with some other English-speaking countries in the Echelon program which is listening to phone calls worldwide (probably by picking automatically the phone calls to be listened to based on keyword of the conversation). We may well wonder: are you too being spied upon?

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The United States. Lawsuit, courts, a justice system. Well, the United States has been considered long as a country with a justice system. The reality is different.

The pentagon has announced it will start the hearings of some detainees in Guantanamo to determine if they can be trailed as enemy combatants, thus depriving them of their rights (source: New York Times). No lawyers will be allowed in the procedure.

Enemy combatants are trailed in special courts and they don’t have the right to lawyers. The right to a lawyer is a basic necessity to a trial being fair and here the United States is violating human rights. Trials such are planned for those in Guantanamo Bay are more typical for countries like China or Russia than for the country pretending to stand for freedom (ie. the United States)

It is a pity that the Bush administration doesn’t seem to care about human rights and freedom. The worst thing is that Bush is limiting freedom in the name of freedom!

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One option that I think should be much more discussed is the world state. Of course it’s definitely not something that could be realized in a few years. It’s something to create on the long run.

Why a world state? Well, now that we have about 200 nations the world is very unequal and not coordinated. In a more and more globalized world, states lose power if they stand alone. It is also easier for international criminal organizations to take advantage of the fact that countries are not cooperating enough.

What would the world state do? Well, the world state could be a federation, without too much power, coordinating the states. It would have simple principles; it’s goal would be to guarantee the individual freedom and equality between people. Thus it would take care that no state takes measures violating individual freedom or equality.

The world state would also take hand of the taxes and it would redistribute the tax incomes so that the world would become more or less as wealthy overall. The local states could still decide to some extent about for example how they organize the services (health care), but the financement would come from the top. This is a way to ensure that poorer areas are equal toward richer areas.

The world state would also take measures so that the systems of all states are more or less compatible with each other. It means that people would be able to move anywhere without the natural limitations of having different systems (for example having 200 different education systems that are often NOT recognized abroad and so on).The world wouldn’t actually have borders like it has nowadays and everyone would be free to move anywhere he or she wants to.

As I know that these kind of proposals have a lot of critics it may be good to treat some of them. One common critic is that a world state is too utopist. Well, as said, it’s not something that would be realized in a short time. It’s something that could be realized with a lot of time and it also requires that rich countries help poorer countries much more than now. It’s also good to remember that only fifty years ago the European Union would have been something of an utopia.

Another critics is how could different cultures decide together about anything as different cultures and different religions have different perceptions about the society. Well, as long as we try to force other people live like we live we’ll have conflicts. But if we let each individual decide themself how she or he wants to live and don’t require others to live in the same way, we have much less conflicts. Actions hurting others or limiting their freedom need to be forbidden, but otherwise individuals should be allowed to do what they want to.

The world state wouldn’t thus decide how people should live (what religion they follow, if they follow traditions or not etc). The world state would guarantee that everyone can choose themselves their way of life.

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Earlier this week the Immigration court in Sweden decided that some Iraqi refugees can be deported to some parts (mainly north) of Iraq. According to the court there isn’t a military conflict in Iraq as defined juridically. That’s why some deportations are possible. This decision has been criticized and even the minister of foreign affairs has expressed some concerns over the issue (source: Svenska Dagbladet, in Swedish).

I’d like to point attention here to one thing that hasn’t been debated that much. The critics have been about whether or not Iraq is safe enough, but not about why in the first place we are deporting people.

I believe that deporting people is very discriminating: if you are a citizen you can stay, but if you are not you don’t have this right. This puts people in different situations based on where they were born or who their parents are.

Moreover when the deportation is due to crimes committed in the country, it is actually a second punishment you get because you are a foreigner. First you are punished for the crime and if you are a foreigner you get this second punishment: deportation.

Some people argue that the deportation of criminals are right because it protects the country from further crimes. But this is only a way to move the problem to foreign countries, not to solve it. And if we are deporting non-citizen criminals, shouldn’t we actually deport ALL criminals, even citizens, to be consequent? I believe that no: we shouldn’t deport anyone at all.

Basically everyone should be free to go to whatever country they want to and even settle there. Country borders and immigration laws are artificial boundaries violating our individual freedom.

Any opinions about the subject?

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