hypocritical fuckwit commits gross hypocrisy on televised charity campaign

weapons dealer meets autocratic tyrant

both socialists
both statists
by which of course i mean that this indictment from fellow violent statists at the whitehouse can be leveled at both brown and gadaffi:

"When a leader's only means of staying in power is to use mass violence against his own people, he has lost the legitimacy to rule and needs to do what is right for his country by leaving now,"

this post is pretty redundant from an anarchist point of view but i simply had to get this off my chest.

last night in the uk was the annual televised charity telethon Comic Relief which does come in for some criticism. now i dont want to bash comic relief too much. they are more of a genuine voluntary charity than this little lot who are in truth merely clients/arms of the state. true, comic relief does depend almost entirely on the bbc for extensive and cost free airtime in addition to its cast of coercively funded bbc celebrities. and true, the main man, richard curtis, was behind this much fisked 'humourously' coercive climate scam propaganda video.

but... it is still as near voluntary charity as there is aside from individual direct action and this is an aspect of humanity that libertarian and anarchist thought relies fairly heavily on to defend itself from 'what about the poor?' statists. so i will leave an examination of the dubious benefits of pissing money away treating the symptoms through corrupt NGO's in the third world to other bloggers.

what really shocked the fuck out of me was the horrific appearance of the above pictured saggy faced fuckwit - gordon brown. i know the charity was trying to get 'big names' but isnt it a bit dodgy treading into the political sphere. i have recently realised that the old adage 'dont discuss politics or religion' is true-ish because both rely so heavily on indoctrinated doublethink to hide their coercive control that discussion invariably upsets people as their gigantic cognitive dissonance struggles to cope. involving a former prime minister is sure to piss off a whole load of potential donators so why not just get a non political celebrity?
brown in particular will piss off almost everyone including the vast majority of people that have never considered the ethical inconsistency of coercive government.
he has shackled millions into permanent poverty and dependency upon a crumbling state welfare system. he has price millions out of work through ill advised minimum wage laws and fundamentally mismanaged the state economy. he has continued to embroil the people of the state in foreign conflicts with gigantic costs and above all he famously cannot smile. his comic relief appearance was awkward, unnatural and artificial.

but the insanity of involving this man in a campaign to raise money for Africa is monumental. he, like all statists, actively supports the root causes of the problems whilst charity events like this only treat the visible symptoms.
international trade agreements, the 3rd world financial debt held by quasi-state banks, silence on irrational religious opposition to contraception and other healthcare measures. all these contribute to the problems that comic relief shows us. how the man that channeled funds and weapons to an african dictator can pretend to smile along with such hypocritical worthiness is unbelievable.

Charity?

http://libertarianalliance.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/poor-people-were-libertarians-once-counting-cats-in-zanzibar/

Excellent post and good comment thread too

Perhaps could be seen as an argument against any form of organizational help for the poor. Religion/the state created the idea that we must help the poor to give them access to wealth and power. As evidenced by Steve Hughes here who points out the idea behind charities and by extension state/religious welfare - "dont give him your money - you don't know what he might spend it on. Just give it to us and we'll make sure he gets it!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtube_gdata_player&v=rEnprknuKy0
Coercively extorted 'taxes' justified by welfare for 'the poor' and even voluntary contributions to charity both give the collecting organisation power and wealth. You trust them to pass the wealth along. Of course they need to be paid, or if not they need the trappings (comfortable offices, parties etc) to encourage others to give. The power comes from the 'unarguable' position of 'doing something good' for 'the disadvantaged'. Any extension of their power and wealth grabbing is justified by this centuries old idea. Religion and then secular education have hammered this into us. It is unarguable with most people. The existence and continued growth of the state is justified by this idea. Coercive power, violence itself and all the evils stemming from it are time and again justified by this unquestionable taboo idea.
Also this idea ties in with the social justice / socialweldare / socialism / guardian do gooder we know best position. Don't give your money direct cos those people aren't as clever as us. We know what they want/need better than they do so best we take charge eh? Give us your money and give us the power to tell you what to do cos we're better than you.
Humans naturally care for their family group (whether you call it love or instinct the motivation behind this works at the family level but cannot be extended to an arbitrarily defined society. There is no natural motivation (no love inherrent in strangers) so coercive force is always required and always corrupts the intention. Coercive power cannot be justified on helping the poor based on some kind of social concience innate in humans. It fails an argument from principles (coercion is wrong) and it fails an argument from pragmatism (the coercion will always corrupt such ideas as can be seen in literally ANY example). Yes some humans will feel a desire to help their fellow beings in trouble. This can be argued to be natural but it is voluntary. It cannot be coercive.
I don't think it is natural or human. It is a false justification of coercive power. If you ask an individual who has just trotted out the above propaganda in answer to you challenging their support of a coercive state "given a 40% tax cut, would you give that 40% to charity?" They will either struggle or lie. It is a fact that HMRC will accept voluntary tax over payments. But noone believes the state helps the poor so much that they would do this. This alone proves that "helping the poor" is a false justification for the coercive power of the state.