UK: A senior appeal court judge noted as an upholder of civil liberties called for a national DNA database recording everyone living in or entering the country.

The present police database can keep samples from everyone who has been arrested, whether or not a charge or conviction follows.

"This has the unfortunate effect of putting the innocent on a par with the guilty," Sir Stephen Sedley said in a lecture at Leicester University.

"It draws a not very logical line between innocent people who have and have not passed through the hands of the police.

The law lords were told in a recent case that of more than 130,000 retained DNA profiles of unconvicted people, about 6,000 had been subsequently linked to samples found at scenes of crimes.

They included 86 murders or attempted murders and 94 rapes. The burglary clear-up rate almost quadrupled when DNA was found at the crime scene, Sir Stephen added.

Use of the DNA data would have to be restricted, as now, to the purposes of preventing, detecting, investigating and prosecuting crime, he said.

But there was a parallel case, he added, for a separate national DNA register, insulated from the policing function, and maintained for benign purposes, such as identifying disaster victims, tracing lost or abducted children, and perhaps one day for making medical prognoses.

The human rights group Liberty said: "We can't see any case for a national DNA database. Serious crime in Britain is the preserve of about 100,000 people."

Related:

Blunkett's Quest, but is he on drugs?

More:  http://www.geocities.com/nswac14/archive1/BQBIHOD.pdf

UK Government reiterates derelict plan to extend mental heath

More:  http://www.geocities.com/nswac14/archive1/UKGRDPEM.pdf

POSSESSION? OR INVASION?

UK: This absolutely preposterous idea/theory of allowing a person/s to be possibly charged with 'possession', if found to have a drug substance within their bloodstream, just goes to prove such hypocrisies which certain hierarchies feel justifies passing legislation, is another blow for democracy!

More:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/liverpool/2004/11/301818.html

Run Rabbit Run democracy has holes in it?

2nd Renaissance!

The Rabbits And The Wolves

The following parable was written by the great American humorist James Thurber (1894-1961). In his day Thurber aimed his lines at the Nazis, in Germany. As you read this piece consider where he might aim them if he were alive today.

The Rabbits Who Caused All The Trouble

Within the memory of the youngest child there was a family of rabbits who lived near a pack of wolves. The wolves announced that they did not like the way the rabbits were living. (The wolves were crazy about the way they themselves were living, because it was the only way to live.) One night several wolves were killed in an earthquake and this was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that rabbits pound on the ground with their hind legs and cause earthquakes. On another night one of the wolves was killed by a bolt of lightning, The wolves threatened to civilize the rabbits if they didn't behave, and the rabbits decided to run away to a desert island. But the other animals, who lived at a great distance, shamed them saying, "You must stay where you are and be brave. This is no world for escapists. If the wolves attack you, we will come to your aid in all probability." So the rabbits continued to live near the wolves and one day there was a terrible flood which drowned a great many wolves. This was blamed on the rabbits, for it is well known that carrot-nibblers with long ears cause floods. The wolves descended on the rabbits, for their own good, and imprisoned them in a dark cave, for their own protection.

When nothing was heard about the rabbits for some weeks, the other animals demanded to know what had happened to them. The wolves replied that the rabbits had been eaten and since they had been eaten the affair was a purely internal matter. But the other animals warned that they might possibly unite against the wolves unless some reason was given for the destruction of the rabbits. So the wolves gave them one. "They were trying to escape," said the wolves, "and, as you know this is no world for escapists. "

Challenge Restrictions Of Civil Freedoms - Support Secessions

History should surely record that the greatest impact of the 911 and 1012 attacks was not the loss of life or the resultant prosecution of a perpetual war on terror by the CoW nations. The greatest impact has been the loss of civil freedoms in those countries. The excuse of a War on Terror has been used to wage a war on dissent, and to shore up the faltering control of the Old World Order over a failed economic system.

Understandably, there is great concern about draconian 'terrorist' countermeasures being introduced by the US, British and Australian governments. In the US in particular, these additional powers and controls will be equivalent to those of a police state, and all pretence of democracy will quickly vanish. Ominously, the opposition to the changes is being based on the dominant idea of forcing the Feds to relent, and this is doomed to failure. Unless the citizens of the (CoW) Coalition of the Willing nations take a different approach their families, their careers, their businesses and their civil freedoms will be subsumed within a fascist state. This is exactly what happened to the people of Germany it 1933.

Hitler seized power from a minority position in government in 1933. He was not elected by a majority of the German people. On 30 January, a mysterious fire burnt down the Reichstag, the German Parliament. The very next day, Hitler acted to deny all guarantees of personal liberty, freedom of speech and the right of assembly. An only moderately intelligent Dutch communist, Marinus van der Lubbe, was immediately depicted and tried as the perpetrator of a terrorist plot to destabilise the nation, but there were other victims and scapegoats. Communists, Jews, trade unionists, homosexuals, and other innocents, were made the 'enemies' of the German state. One thing led to another, and in due course, 55 million people died in World War II. Today, there is a widespread belief that the Nazis themselves burnt the Reichstag. But no one is left alive to explain what really happened.

February, 1933, was the right time to have left Nazi Germany, with or without personal possessions and funds. For many Germans there was a life and death decision to be made that year, and most got it wrong. They stayed, and they paid the ultimate price. Now is the time to 'leave' the US, Great Britain, and Australia.

But today, 'leaving' does not mean fleeing abroad. The events in Nazi Germany took place in different times. In 2004, there is no need for citizens to physically leave the land of their birth, simply because a totalitarian, fascist regime, makes a grab for power there.

This is so because secession is now a more practical option than it has been at any time in the past. At first, this is an improbable notion to most people. How could it be easy to opt out of a fascist state, when the regime controls everything? The answer lies in the breakdown in the power of traditional control mechanisms, due to a growing abundance of information, scientific knowledge, new technologies and new ideas. Such unprecedented abundance has the capacity to dissolve the long standing power of scarcity and enable free city states and regions to flourish independently of a centrally managed economy.

Legal actions against individuals and groups proposing secession will certainly be taken by the Feds. But, everyone has an intrinsic right to freedom, and, to the extent that new legislation and powers remove or greatly diminishes that right, there is a clear argument for leaving federalism behind. The ability of city states and regions to opt out, and win the moral argument, is a very different situation to one in which individuals are prosecuted for breaching new security laws within a federation.

In the latter circumstance, in the US, individuals could soon be prosecuted for the 'crime' of 'attempting to influence public opinion'. Besides individual citizens who might post comments on the WWW or speak out in public places, the proposed new powers will give the US Feds the 'legal right' to prosecute environmental, human rights, and anti-globalisation groups. Such controls will be highly effective against activists, journalists, academics, and the like. However, they are totally useless against cities and regions that might choose to abandon the US Federal system completely, and go their own way. This is because, in the latter case, the argument is not about 'crimes' within the federal system, but abandonment of it by a defined collective of people.

When a US city or region abandons federalism, the laws made in Washington, and the self-granted powers of the Feds to prosecute 'terrorists', 'witches' and other menaces, become irrelevant. This is also true for Britain and Australia.

The Fed's War On Dissent

As it is used here the term 'Fed' does not refer to that privately owned institution that controls the US currency and financial system, The Federal Reserve. The term is applied to the federal governments of the CoW nations. The nature and failings of the US Federal Reserve are another story, and one that is already told on several sites on the WWW. Here, we are concerned with the efforts of the US, British and Australian Feds to suppress dissent within their borders, in the name of 'protecting' their populations from shadowy terrorists, radical Muslims, and an allegedly drug-crazed Tooth Fairy.

In the US, the original 'Patriot Act' that was passed by the Congress, in 2001, without having been read by members, was draconian enough. The subsequent Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, also known as 'Patriot Act II', went all the way to a complete totalitarian rule by federal authorities. Most protections of the United States Constitution were removed, and the new police state was given powers that are even beyond those seized by Adolf Hitler in 1933.

The real war in the US today is on individual rights. It is a war on dissent. Dissent against the total domination of the federal administration in all matters: civil, military, social, economic, cultural, and religious. More than that, it is a war on free thought, new ideas and truth. If this seems improbable to you, take the time to read the Patriot Acts (I and II), they are available on the WWW. Most of the new provisions in these documents are only superficially aimed at terrorists, their real targets are individual rights and freedoms. The Members of Congress who were asked to pass the first of these acts did so without having any opportunity to read it. There's a war on, you see.

Alternative Rights - Very Different Freedoms

In 2001, the United States of America ceased to be the republic the Founding Fathers intended, and became, instead, a democracy. This is so because Patriot Act I overrode the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution on many points of individual freedom. Patriot Act II converts the US again, this time to a dictatorship and police state. To understand this, one has only to read a few of the explanations that the author and commentator, G. Edward Griffin, gives about the difference between individualists and collectivists, and between republics and democracies.

With admirable clarity of thought, Griffin cuts through the plethora of labels that are used to describe politics and reduces the difference in approaches to citizen's rights to a single question. Where do the rights originate? Individualists believe that such rights are intrinsic, they come with birth. Collectivists believe that the group is more important than its members, and that rights derive from human institutions, from governments and government law making processes. Here are some of the points that Griffin makes about the difference between individualists and collectivists beliefs about rights.

* "First of all I should tell you that, from my observation, collectivists and individualists, for the most part, are good people. They want the best possible for their families, for their countrymen, and for the world - for mankind. They want peace, prosperity, and justice....Where they disagree is how to bring these things about."

* "The collectivists believes the group is the most important element of society; that all solutions to problems are better solved at the group level than at the individual level; and that the larger the problem is, the larger the group should be to solve the problem. And so they believe in collective action....The collectivist sees government as the solution, because government is the ultimate group, and so the collectivist mind can be easily recognised. It always has an affinity to government as the solver of problems. The individualist, by the way, is more sceptical. He tends to look at government as the creator of problems."

* "Collectivist solutions gravitate from local governments to state government, to national government, and finally to world government. If there is a really big problem, such as the environmental issue involving the whole planet, the collectivist is convinced that it cannot be solved except through the action of world government."

* "The collectivist believes that the group is more important than the individual and, if necessary, the individual must be sacrificed for the group. Sometimes that is expressed in terms of 'the greater good for the greater number.' It's a very appealing argument."

* "The individualist on the other hand says. 'Wait a minute. Group?' 'What is group?' That's just a word. You cannot touch a group. You cannot see a group. All you can touch and see are individuals. They make up the group...So the individualist sees that, if you sacrifice the individual for the group, you have made a huge mistake. The individual is the essence of the group. He is the core of the group. The group has no claim to sacrifice its own essence."

* "The view of individualism was expressed clearly in the United States Declaration of Independence, which said: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men.' Nothing could be more clear than that. 'Unalienable Rights' means they are the natural possession of each of us upon birth, not granted by the state. The purpose of government is, not to grant rights, but to secure them and protect them."

* "By contrast, all collectivist political systems embrace the view that rights are granted by the state. That includes the Nazis, Fascists, and Communists. It is also a tenet of the United Nations. Article Four of the UN Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights says: 'The States Parties to the present Covenant recognise that, in the enjoyment of those rights provided by the State....the State may subject such rights only to such limitations as are determined by law.'

The reason this is important is that, if we agree that the state has the power to grant rights, then we must also agree that it has the power to take them away. You cannot have one without the other. Notice the wording of the UN Covenant. After proclaiming that rights are provided by the state, it then says that those rights may be subject to limitations 'as are determined by law.' In other words, the collectivists at the UN presume to grant us our rights and, when they are ready to take them away, all they have to do is pass a law authorising it.

Compare that with the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution. It says Congress shall pass no law restricting the rights of freedom of speech, or religion, peaceful assembly, the right to bear arms, and so forth - not except as determined by law, but no law. What a difference there is between individualism and collectivism."

* "The collectivist says you have to force people. That's why he has an affinity to government. Government is the embodiment of legalised force. You can always spot a collectivist because, when he confronts a problem, his first reaction is to say, 'There ought to be a law.' His attitude is that we must force people to do what we think they should do."

* "By contrast, individualists say. 'We also think we are right and others are wrong, but we don't believe in forcing anyone to comply with our will because, if we grant that principle, then others, representing larger groups than our own, can compel us to act as they decree, and we will have lost our freedom."

* "As an individualist, I am not opposed to collective action. Just because I believe in freedom of choice does not mean I have to move my piano alone. It just means that I renounce the right to compel someone to help me. Individualists seek cooperation based on voluntary action, not compulsion.

And so here we have a second distinction between the collectivist and the individualist. The collectivist believes in coercion. The individualist believes in freedom."

Further, Griffin explains, that whereas a republic is designed on individualist principles, with strict limitations on the powers of law makers to impinge on human rights and freedoms, a democracy is built on collectivism, and the state can grant and remove rights as it sees fit.

When the CoW forces invaded Iraq, the senior US Military Commander in the field announced that the aim was to bring the Iraqi people democracy and the rule of law. That was undoubtedly the plan. The US did not, and still does not, wish to see an Islamic Republic replace the regime of Sadam Hussein. It wants a collectivist government that can remove rights by majority vote and enforce its injustice through the rule of law. Here are some of the key distinctions that G. Edward Griffin makes between a democracy and a republic. He says.

* "We have been taught to believe that a Democracy is the ideal form of government. Supposedly, that is what was created by the American Constitution. However, if you read the documents of the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution, you find that they spoke very poorly of Democracy. They said in plain English that a Democracy was one of the worst possible forms of government. And so they created what they called a Republic. The bottom line is that the difference between a Democracy and a Republic is the difference between collectivism and individualism."

* "In a pure Democracy, the concept is that the majority shall rule. That's the end of the discussion.....A Republic is simply a limited Democracy, a Democracy with limits on what the group can do, with limits on what the majority can do. Republics are characterised by written constitutions that say the government - even though it represents the majority - shall not do this; the government shall not do that; and it shall be prevented from doing that also. We have individual liberties and rights that stand higher and are more important than the group."

Griffin also crystallises the concept of the political spectrum, which purportedly has 'left' and 'right' orientations, but in reality is only a measure of how much government there is. He says.

* "We often hear about right-wingers versus left-wingers, but what do these terms actually mean? For example we are told that Communists and Socialists are at the extreme Left, and Nazis and Fascists are on the extreme Right. Here we have two powerful ideological forces pitted against each other, and the impression is that somehow, they are opposites. But, what is the difference? They are not opposites at all. They are the same....Communists believe in international Socialism, whereas Nazis advocate national Socialism. Communists promote class hatred and class conflict to motivate the loyalty and blind obedience of their followers, whereas the Nazis use race conflict and race hatred to accomplish the same objective. Other than that, there is absolutely no difference between Communism and Nazism. They are both the epitome of collectivism, and yet we are told they are, supposedly, at opposite ends of the spectrum."

* "There's only one thing that makes sense in constructing a political spectrum and that is to put zero government at one end and 100% at the other. Now we have something we can comprehend. Those who believe in zero government are the anarchists, and those who believe in total government are the totalitarians. With that definition we find that Communism and Nazism are together at the same end. They are both totalitarian concepts. Why? Because they are both based on the model of collectivism. Communism, Nazism, Fascism and Socialism all gravitate toward bigger and bigger government, because that is the logical extension of their common ideology. They cannot help becoming what they are. More government is needed to solve bigger problems, and bigger problems require more government. Once you get on the slippery slope of collectivism, once you accept that ideology, there is no place to stop until you reach all the way to the end of the scale, which is 100% government. Regardless of what name you give it, regardless of how you re-label it to make it seem new or different, collectivism is totalitarianism."

* "We need government, of course, but the concept of what kind of government must be built on individualism, an ideology that pushes always toward that part of the spectrum that involves the least government necessary to make things work instead of collectivism, which always pushes toward the other end of the spectrum for the most amount of government to make things work. "

It is by no means certain that Griffin is right about the last point - the need for some government - but the rest of his analysis and reasoning is sound.

Instead of needing some government to make things work it is possible to have new-tribalism and a Leaver-Giver model instead. Then there need not be any government at all.

This would not have been possible during the 20th century when Communism, Nazism and Fascism were so much in evidence. At that time the new science and technology needed to support a new society and a Level 4 Civilization did not exist. Managing scarcity was the central principle of economics, and governments were the dominant political force in nation states. However, none of those conditions still apply. Now the game is about managing the distribution of the fruits of abundance, to ensure that maximum good is first done in areas where it is most needed - in the poorest places on earth. Free city states and talent collectives are inherently small enough to operate along tribal lines, and there is no need to have any traditional government to fulfil a political function. Surprising as it might seem, we are on the threshold of an age of rampant individualism and world wide peace.