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  In Venezuela, state violence directed towards dissent has significantly intensified. Arbitrary detentions, attacks on opponents, and the persecution of those who support candidates not affiliated with the regime have become common tools for population control and perpetuation in power. These actions fuel the list of state terrorism acts perpetrated by the government, characterized by the systematic use of state terrorism to suppress opposition and strengthen its dominance. The Venezuelan state violates multiple international treaties by threatening, disappearing, and disqualifying opposition candidates or social activists. It is important to note that Venezuela is a signatory to the Rome Statute, which prohibits torture, kidnapping, war crimes, and aggression against individuals. Likewise, it ignores the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, having signed but not ratified this treaty. These commitments oblige Venezuela to respect the human rights of all its citizens, regardless of their political affiliation. Recent events involving the Venezuelan state repeatedly demonstrate its lack of willingness to comply with signed international agreements. Therefore, it is difficult to argue that there is truly a rule of law in Venezuela. The irregularities in the Venezuelan process are too significant, with the most recent case being that of human rights defender Rocío San Miguel, who was detained on Friday, February 9, 2024, along with several family members. Her arrest was only confirmed on Sunday, the 11th, and on Monday, the 12th, the charges against her were announced, including attempted assassination and treason. Although the defender’s daughter, siblings, and ex-husband were released on Tuesday, the 13th, under certain conditions, such as the prohibition of speaking to the media and the restriction of leaving the country, this is part of a repressive escalation against citizens who disagree with government policies. This pattern has been accentuated since 2023, evidenced by the implementation of the «Bolivarian Fury» plan, which is nothing more than part of the escalation against the population that does not wish to continue with an authoritarian regime that has generated a holodomor and one of the largest mass exoduses in the region of citizens fleeing conditions of modern slavery experienced in the country. Alianza Libertaria Venezuela.

    From IALP, we want to express our congratulations to Milei and La Libertad Avanza, for the remarkable result obtained in the recent Argentine elections on November 19th. Milei, with a titanic effort, first in his media participation and later in his foray into politics, has succeeded in spreading the message of freedom among the Argentine people. These citizens, for many years, were affected by statist ideas implemented by the Peronist party and other opposition parties, plunging the country, which was once an example of progress and economic freedom, into a lamentable situation. It is important to emphasize that libertarian ideas encompass freedom in all areas, a concept that Milei understands perfectly. Therefore, we hope that right-wing leaders seeking to capitalize on their election do not distort the true purpose of these ideas. At IALP, we sincerely wish great success in their management, with the hope that it contributes to the emergence of libertarian thinking in as many countries as possible.

Our Candidates (from left to right) Jan Hensen, Jens Alter, Michael Bienek, Markus Mieth, Irakli Betchvaia, Dirk Hesse, Thomas Flach, Dr. Regine Tuckermann, and Rudolf Mayer. For Freedom and Individual Self-Determination in Brussels Next year marks the election for the 10th European Parliament. The PDV intends to position itself early on to give a consistent voice to the values of freedom and individual self-determination. To this end, our nomination party congress took place in June. In total, we selected 13 candidates for our joint federal list. Leading the list are our Federal Chairman Dirk Hesse (NRW), our Deputy Federal Chairman Thomas Flach (SN), and the Lower Saxony State Chairman Markus Mieth (NI). Starting from list position 4, we have our Federal Board members Irakli Betchvaia (NI), Rudolf Mayer (BW), our Federal Managing Director Jens Alter (SN), Friedrich Dominicus (BW), our Federal Finance Director Michael Bienek (SL), Dr. Regine Tuckermann (SH), Jan Hensen (NI), Frank Albrecht (NRW), Georg Semmler (RP), and Florian Schulte (NRW). Further details about the European election and the upcoming PDV election campaign will follow soon.

That old bete noir, Guy Verhofstadt, is at it again, celebrating an Indian order for Airbus of 500 aircraft, which was brought about of course by Europeans working together. This of course flies in the face of all of his other green pronouncements. This is the new kind of politician , not leaders but followers. Following anything that is vaguely ‘popular’ irrespective of the inconsistency of what they are saying. The corporate PR lobby is in there too everything has to have ‘green‘ plastered over, and multi-cultural ‘normal‘ families adorn the nations adverts. “In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person’s actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person’s belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.” Socialism is predicated on a belief the everything the government does is free and beneficial , whereas government is just the worse vehicle to manage or deal with anything. We all know that spending more than we have is ruinous , yet millions demand more and more spending of other people’s money if it’s in their interest. There is a finite point that this can carry on. Inflation is eradicating wealth at an enormous rate. Andrew Withers FRSA

Exactly 70 years ago, the young GDR state experienced the formative trauma of its entire existence. More than 1.5 million people unequivocally signaled through their protests on the streets that they were not ready to recognize socialism as the only valid form of society. What was particularly shocking was the realization that ordinary workers, who were actually the main addressees of the SED, were the first to withdraw their trust in the government. The delegitimization of the state had begun and could only be averted with the help of Soviet tanks. Only the crazy investments in a surveillance machine, the imprisonment of the entire people in an open-air prison and the unconditional willingness to suppress any dissenting opinion and to make the lives of obviously nonconformist people more difficult or even to destroy them could ensure the temporary survival of the GDR. The uprising of 1953 resulted in a total of 55 documented deaths. An estimated 15,000 people were sentenced by East German courts. We should think about these personal fates today when we measure the value of freedom. Original link: https://parteidervernunft.de/zum-gedenken-an-den-aufstand-des-17-juni-1953/

To get to Net Zero is expensive, complex and difficult. You need – at an affordable price – a secure energy supply able to cope with peak demand on still, cold, damp, overcast English days, the kind of weather for which our country is famous. Capacity, reliability and affordability are essential and cannot be compromised. How will that be delivered? What are the sources of power? It may be that there are civil servants who think they know but frankly I am absolutely certain that if there were, the Government would be shouting it from the rooftops. So, much more likely is that all established politicians, our entire political class are flying by the seat of their pants and hoping that the electorate won’t notice that this is a massive threat to their household budgets, their standard of living and their quality of life. And anyone like me and other libertarians who have the temerity to ask the difficult questions is shouted down as an uncaring climate denier, intent on destroying the planet. That response is irrational, abusive, messianic zeal worthy of Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition or Putin and the FSB. Yet this not yet achievable level of load has to be delivered concurrently with ever rising demand for electricity arising from the many Net Zero measures. Look at transport. The plan involves virtually the entire national fleet of every kind of vehicle becoming an EV. First, there are the vehicles themselves. Vehicle production has to be switched from technology where Europe and Japan have been massively successful world-beaters to one where the US and China are the pioneers. We are scrapping an entire area of competitive success to replace it with one in which, so far at least, we are an ‘also-ran’. And long-distance lorries are even more of a problem with a usage attern totally incompatible with current battery range and charging times? We all learn as toddlers – or should do – that wanting something is not the same as having it, however extreme the trantrum of rage that it is not so? All these EVs have to be charged. How much infrastructure is required? How much will it cost? Who will pay, already hard-pressed taxpayers? The average new car in the USA sold for $49,507 at the end of last year, but the average electric car sold for $61,448. As of last year, there were about 46,000 charging stations in the country, compared to about 150,000 petrol stations. Second hand EV values do not compare with those of petrol vehicles. Battery scrappage is a big problem as are perfectly good vehicles with a dead battery which is too expensive to replace by comparison with the value of the vehicle. In short there is no proper second hand market, there are massive obstacles to its creation and scrappage is a huge issue both in terms of doing it and sunk value lost. A recent study by EY/Eurelectric asks whether we can build all the infrastructure essential for all the fully electric cars we are being instructed to buy – (remember the Government telling us to buy diesels!) EY estimates that by 2040 Europe will have 239 million electric vehicles, requiring 140 million chargers. In Britain, we’ll need some 20 million chargers, with 88 per cent of them in homes. With delightful understatement, EY’s Maria Bengtsson, says: “The infrastructure challenges facing the UK’s EV transition are significant.”: challenging indeed! The opportunity cost is vast. So is the premature scrappage of perfectly serviceable vehicles and infrastructure which in other circumstances would still have many years of useful life. It is difficult to see how this is being forced upon the public in the name of the environment. Tony Brown – Libertarian Party London Mayoral Candidate

Following the debates in the UK Parliament surrounding the new Online Safety Bill [1] which, while it has it’s good intentions on tackling some issues like children accessing bad material, promotion of self-harm (centred primarily around the case of 14-year-old Molly Russell who committed suicide after finding material encouraging her to cause herself physical harm & posted online publicly about her bad depression [2]), internet fraud and cyberflashing, it officially proposes that Ofcom, the British regulator of postal & telephone communications as well as radio & television broadcasting, regulate the entire range of the internet as well. As part of the process of setting up a new radio or television station to please any genre of your choice, so must you also please the regulator by following it’s Broadcasting Code [3][4][5] when operating it. Part of the broadcasting code involves not broadcasting material that isn’t suitable for children to see and/or hear between the times of 5:30am and 9pm, otherwise known as The Watershed. Should you choose not to follow these rules, the regulator will come down on you hard with warnings and/or fines levied your way along with the ability to shut you down. Can you imagine what will happen when these rules are applied to social media companies, art-product-selling websites, video gaming platforms and third-Party website hosts with threats of fines targeting 10% of the company’s annual turnover? Will it therefore be possible to criticise the government & any other person or organisation about certain issues without it being deemed ‘harmful’ or ‘misleading’ or even ‘grossly offensive’ by the regulator and many of the aforementioned providers having no choice but to tow Ofcom’s line or else in order to maintain relevance? What happens if video gamers decide to get a little too edgy in the audio chats for both the multiplayer gaming platform and the regulator’s likings, with similar consequences possibly applied to sports fans on other platforms? Before OFCOM first started to emerge via the Office of Communications Act 2002, with full authority being granted to it via the Communications Act 2003, both of which were pushed under the Blair Administration at Number 10 Downing Street, and came online on 29th December later that year, five different regulators existed in the UK which included: All of them were set up to regulate several specific areas of communication of their own accord. On 20th June 2001, Queen Elizabeth II in her speech to the UK Parliament announced the Blair government’s agenda for the creation of Ofcom. The new body, which was to replace several existing authorities, was conceived as a “super-regulator” to oversee media channels that were rapidly converging through digital transmission. On 1st October 2011, Ofcom took over responsibility for regulating the postal services industry from the Postal Services Commission (or Postcomm which was established in the year 2000). The Digital Economy Act 2017 passed under the May Administration extended Ofcom’s remit and powers. Ofcom were given powers concerning the minimum broadband speed provided by Internet service providers, the ability to financially penalise communications providers for failing to comply with licence commitments and the power to require public service broadcasters to include a minimum quantity of children’s programming made in the UK. The act also transferred to Ofcom the regulation of the BBC, a duty previously undertaken by the BBC Trust. The rest of the actions including the Online Safety Bill all came despite then-leader-of-the-UK-Conservative-Party & PM David Cameron pledging in 2009/2010 to cut back some areas of OFCOM’s powers, particularly wanting to limit it to licensing only, but wanted policy-making functions to return to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Amongst the channels formally sanctioned by Ofcom include PressTV of Iran in 2012 [6], CGTN of China (whose host country then subsequently banned BBC World from being broadcast there in 2021) [7][8] and Russia Today (RT) as of last year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine [9][10], the latter of which in particular would allow a mixture of progressive, libertarian & Conservative voices to be aired with much less interruptions, though it is fair to say not everyone had the time of their lives on air with RT’s Presenters! Nevertheless, it didn’t stop politicians and public figures from being blasted by the establishment & those doing it’s bidding for daring to guest on the network’s shows, with the main criticisms aimed at the fact that RT is funded by the Russian Government with Vladimir Putin in charge. Yet strangely not a single ounce of proof has ever been produced of guests being told to forcibly never criticise Putin at all costs to this day but the pro-government-run morally superior attitude of showing how we are better than him because we are the Wonderful West persists. Following the frustrations of many people across the UK who felt the traditional big mainstream press was already proving itself to be a disgrace, GBNews got launched in 2021 to provide alternative voices primarily from a centre-right to right-wing perspective but also airing voices of commentators & experts who have differing viewpoints. With the hiring of presenters including comedian Andrew Doyle, Beverley Turner (former LBC Radio host), former Sun Newspaper Bizarre Showbiz columnist Dan Wooton, actor & leader of the Reclaim UK Party Laurence Fox, Mark Dolan (former host of Channel 4 prank show Balls of Steel), Political Commentator Mark Steyn, Former Brexit Party MEP Michelle Dewberry, Nana Akua, Neil Oliver (notorious for presenting the BBC’s Coast programmes), former MEP and leader of UKIP & Brexit Party Nigel Farage, Patrick Christy, etc, things seem to look on the up for at least the silent majority of the public who voted Leave in 2016 and the Brexit Party & Conservative Party in the 2 elections of 2019, that looked more keen to tune out of consuming the press at all. That is until you think back to the aforementioned rules including the Broadcasting Code and you realise Ofcom can get involved anytime they want to should they get complaints from any member of the public, which was exactly what they did with

Having voted to leave the protectionist bloc known as the European Union, was it too much to expect our politicians to carry out the wishes of the people? Fearful of the public response, once again, it is all being done in a devious way, using the need to avoid a hard border in Ireland. The Windsor Framework is a complete betrayal of UK sovereignty and leaves the border in the Irish Sea. Giving EU law primacy in Northern Ireland is going to affect the whole of the UK, incentivising the shadowing of EU laws. We are on the verge of handing back our powers to the EU all over again. Unelected Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, may claim to have been a Brexiteer, but he was one that was so quiet that no one can remember anything he said on the issue. Now he is showing his true WEF colours. Meanwhile, the EU themselves disbursed another €1.5 billion to Ukraine, with Unelected (notice a theme here?) President Ursula von der Leyen saying “(it) puts Ukraine firmly on its EU path by supporting reforms – good governance and financial stability, for example. Together we’re writing Ukraine’s future.” The common problem here, apart from being shackled with leaders that none of us voted for, is the EU’s relentless quest for territorial expansion. It will not just see the biggest democratic vote in this country’s history overturned, but also extend the eastern border right up to Russia. On the day that our puppet Prime Minister decided to send depleted uranium shells and Challenger 2 tanks to Kyiv, when UK forces are struggling for numbers, EU expansionism is proving very dangerous indeed.

The LNC will meet in person over the weekend of March 11-12, 2023 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The LNC Secretary will be updating the OneNote for this meeting with the supporting documentation and other information at: https://tinyurl.com/March2023LNCMeeting. Any further questions should be directed to the LNC Secretary Caryn Ann Harlos at 561-523-2250 or secretary@lp.org. Hotel Information Book by Feb 20 for savings Ramada Plaza by Wyndham Albuquerque Midtown – 2020 Menaul Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM 87107 Join us at our Ramada Plaza Albuquerque Midtown hotel for comfortable accommodations near I-25 and I-40. We’re just a few miles from the Albuquerque International Sunport (ABQ) and offer a free airport shuttle. Amenities for the Libertarian Party include complimentary parking, free hot breakfast, free high-speed WiFi in rooms & meeting spaces plus use of our fitness center & indoor pool to help you get the most out of your stay. Reserve early by 02/20 & you’ll get a free drink coupon for Dukes Bar & Grill! Hotel Info | Sleeping Room Info: Highly discounted $81 per night for S/D Rooms. Thank you to Robert for working his magic! Reservations: By calling (505) 884-2511 & asking for the Libertarian Party Meeting Rate Group Code 030823LIB or preferably by reserving online using this link: https://tinyurl.com/LNC0323 Full Reservation Link: https://www.wyndhamhotels.com/ramada/albuquerque-new-mexico/ramada-by-wyndham-albuquerque-midtown/rooms-rates?&checkInDate=03/08/2023&checkOutDate=03/13/2023&groupCode=030823LIB

The EU is in crisis. The prices of emission allowances are still rising. The price of the emission allowance exceeded the threshold of 100 euros. This is a record amount and a big risk for the current industry. Our newly elected vice president, Robert Vlášek, sees the cause of the energy crisis precisely in emission allowances. The increasing price of emission allowances has a large share in the final price of electricity and other energies. At the same time, increased production costs are reflected in food prices. It turns out that the European Union’s climate protection attempts are contributing to the current economic crisis. Further plans within the so-called Green Deal could bring European market competitiveness to the freezing point. As Svobodní, we propose withdrawing from the Green Deal. We believe that banning internal combustion engines and increasing the price of emission allowances will cause significant damage to the economy. In the long term, we consider the European policy for climate protection to be insufficiently transparent and ineffective. Do you see it the same way? Join us! Become our supporter and support us in our work. We will always defend a leaner and more economical state that does not throw sticks under the feet of hardworking people.