2nd Renaissance -34 : Melbourne Indymedia

Stop Voting - Stop Supporting Pseudo Democracies [254]
Just as communicating with the Feds about abandoning the way we live now is a futile process that only buttresses the legitimacy of old ways of thinking and living, continuing to vote within centralised political processes only reinforces their continuing relevance. Citizens who continue to reside within totalitarian-democracies can, at least partly, abandon them by not voting at elections that will never lead to abundance and a better way of living.

Where voting is compulsory, as it is for all three levels of government in Australia, it will be preferable for dissenting citizens to cast informal ballots. If large numbers of citizens do this the numerical legitimacy of the victorious party will be reduced. Whenever the Feds introduce electronic voting machines that do not allow informal ballots it will be time to leave the present nation state, just as it was time for many people to leave Nazi Germany in 1935. Once totalitarianism shows its face openly it is time to go. Leaver-givers who decide to leave their nation in such circumstances are sure to prefer to relocate to a free city or region, where they will be among like-minded people with the same goal of laying down the base for a Level 4 Civilization.

People living in countries that appear to be heading towards a violently totalitarian future should plan their move early and have several options thought out and provided for. In this case not voting will not be enough, there is a need to ensure the safety of loved ones. Those citizens who left Germany before 1933 were generally able to take funds and possessions with them, those who scraped out after 1933 were less fortunate. Many who stayed were dispossessed, imprisoned, raped, slaughtered, or otherwise mistreated by the Nazis or the "liberating" armies. If you're going to leave, do it early.

The War on Terror will quickly become a War on Freedom.

Become Involved In Highlighting Failures Of The Old Order [255]
Before there can be an irreversible transformation to a Level 4 Civilization it will be necessary for a critical mass of people on this planet to come to the full realisation that the way we live now is not the way we are meant to live. Further, the way we live now cannot continue for much longer without destroying, for all time, any pretensions that the human race may have about being the highest life form that has ever existed; a superior and unimpeachable species with both might and right on its side. This section is about helping others to see the fatal flaws in the old, 'Level 3' way of living, and how they personally can play a part in saving the world.

Being involved in the identification and communication of shortcomings and failures in the way our present society functions and how we are governed does not mean taking to the streets. The dialogue must be between ordinary citizens; i.e. Us-2-Us. There is no point in demonstrating and protesting about government programs that have no hope of ever succeeding, or policies that are completely out of touch with new technical opportunities, new spirituality, and the paths to new social and economic freedoms. We might as well shout and wave placards at brick walls.

In Us-2-Us dialogue, groups of people communicate about ways to realise the full potential of advanced knowledge and technologies; how to create abundance and free humans from poverty. But first, people must also discuss the failings of the old order and be clear that this is no way to live. Secondly, we must collectively recognise that there is neither the will to correct the injustices and fix the problems within the present Level 3 Civilization, nor is there the time. People who wish to see the world change for the better have to realise that the aims of the old order and leaver-givers are irreconcilable. They also need to know that there are solutions to the mess that takers have created, and that they, as individuals within a wider leaver-giver collective, can make a contribution and a difference. Individuals have no reason to feel powerless, there is a better life ahead and they can help all humanity to reach it.

The greatest obstacle to progress in finding solutions to intractable problems such as poverty, drug taking, teenage suicide, corruption, violence, and wanton destruction of the many irreplaceable gifts of nature, is new paradigm blindness. Just about everyone is aware that despite the promises of federal and state politicians to the contrary, governments don't have effective solutions to these problems or many others. People keep proposing ways to get around these impasses but, because they seek remedies within the existing paradigms of layered government administrations and rampant capitalism, they can never have any success. New paradigms are required to solve the problems, but few people are, as yet, aware of better ways to think and live.

One of the most dominant and change-defeating notions is that of individual powerlessness. People feel that, on their own, they cannot have any influence in improving the world; they ignore the example of the army ants and assume - because it has always seemed so - that they truly are powerless. Of course, if they believe they are powerless, then they are. A small coterie of federalists and industrialists is then able to manipulate the way a far larger number of people on Earth live, most of them on less than 2 dollars a day. Depending on where such 'powerless' people reside they might be prevented from congregating or demonstrating, or they might not be able to name the people who are either so incompetent or so corrupt that all new government solutions are doomed to failure. Draconian defamation and libel laws might, as they do in Australia, mean that only the relatively wealthy have the luxury of speaking out. All seems lost, the global bullies are in control, nothing can be changed unless 'they' permit it.

However, there are two truths that are ignored in such a pessimistic assessment. One is that while it is easy to control individual citizens, it is impossible for a relatively few officials, police, or whoever, to control many citizens. Try it with some ants, you can use a small twig or a pencil to block the path or a single ant, and you can do so for five or six at once. But once there are 20 or 30 ants, let alone two or three thousand, control of the routes they take becomes impossible. That is why the authorities of the old order fear mobs, and why they always adopt 'divide and conquer' tactics within their national control strategies.

The other truth is also evident in the problems of controlling ants. The fact is that ants are great communicators, even although some types have as few as ten neurons for a brain ants are able to perform amazing feats of communication, that have even been likened to telepathy, They are believed to communicate with scents, although at least one researcher thinks that the mechanism is something much less knowable to us humans.

Whatever the nature of the communication mechanism ants use, the point is that it is collective. Ants are able to resist outside control because they think and act as one organism. Many animals also use the same tactic in order to survive and prosper. It's time we did the same. After all, tribalism is our natural social structure. In future, whoever persecutes one member of a neo-tribe must expect to face the wrath of the whole group, and of their affiliated tribes around the world. There is not only safety in numbers there is immense strength.

Many Societal Failures Can Be Identified [256]
The key word in the heading is 'societal.' These forms of failure are even more damaging than system flaws, such as the economic imbalance and inequality between the rich and poor nations, or the prevalent scientific dogma and Dark Age thinking in most present-day institutions of learning and research.

Societal failures involve the way we treat each other. Failures in this area don't just make us poorer or less knowledgeable than we might otherwise be, they undermine our claim to be a higher form of life.

The following sections discuss just a few of these societal flaws. These are examples of the problems that need to be communicated on an Us-2-Us basis, and linked into our plans to build a Level 4 Civilization that is free of such inhumanities.

This is NOT Civilization! [257]
The little girl in the adjacent picture lives in St Petersburg. Being homeless, she has been forced into prostitution in order to survive. She leans against a wall, smoking a cigarette and waiting for her next client. You can read her story in the photojournalism magazine Eight, it's titled "Karat: Homeless in St Petersburg" (see Foto8.com on the WWW), but you already know the plot. This child is the hapless victim of our so-called civilization. She, and millions like her, suffer in the backwash of socialism, capitalism, federalism, and orchestrated nationalism. Together, these humanly contrived plagues and curses diminished the quality of society in the 20th century, until what we are left with is not fit to be called civilization.

Anyone who disputes this statement has only to seek out victims like the little girl in the picture, to know that our "modern" society is a failure. If this were not so, children in St Petersburg and all around the world would not be forced to sell themselves on the streets.

According to a 2001 survey, some 400,000 children in the US were being sexually exploited, from full prostitution to selling sex at school for cash. Another estimate, by UNICEF, puts the number of under-age prostitutes in India at 500,000. On these figures, the less populous US has a greater child sex problem than less developed and less affluent India.

Tell me that it's the Internet, let alone Freenet, that is the cause, and I'll tell you it is the breaking down of something far more fundamental that is the real problem. The way we treat each other is what has deteriorated. In a world dominated by market centred economics everything is for sale, including the kids.

What can we do about this problem? We can firstly set the right example and begin to live in neo-tribal communities where all children are valued for what they are - the future of the human race. Secondly, we can refuse to abandon mistreated children to institutions, be they state or church. Institutions have too much bureaucracy and politics, and too little heart, to fully nurture and care for these kids. We can 'adopt' them within neo-tribal 'families' that are funded by the Level 4 Civilization movement.

Where's the money to come from? It can come from our foregoing that new wide-screen LCD television monitor or our season tickets to the football or the opera. More significantly it can come from the taxes we won't pay to the Feds, to be otherwise wasted on their many futile child welfare programs. The Feds believe that it's their job to spend our taxes on children, to turn out model citizens (who are easily controlled). We believe that it's our job, your's and mine, to spend sufficient of our wealth on forgotten and disadvantaged children, to turn out worthwhile human beings (who will people a Level 4 Civilization to the greatest effect).

Punishment By Imprisonment Is A Medieval Concept [258]
Although this is the 21st century, the societies of the Level 3 Civilization have not yet abandoned the medieval notion of prisons being places of punishment. Today’s institutions of incarceration are called 'Correctional Centres' and other sanitised terms, but they remain vehicles for revenge and punishment exacted by courts under the Rule of Law.

Author's Note:
Some readers might find the following content offensive, since it deals specifically with sexual acts. If you wish to skip this section STOP HERE .

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- Fight or Fuck -

The following accounts of prison rape are taken from various human rights sites on the WWW that deal with this abuse, which seems to be in epidemic proportions in the US, Australia, and many other countries.

* "I had no choice but to submit to being inmate B's prison wife. Out of fear for my life. I submitted to sucking his dick, being fucked in my ass, and performing other duties as a woman, such as making his bed. In all reality, I was his slave, as the officials of the Arkansas Department of Corrections under the 'color of law' did absolutely nothing."
- M.P., Arkansas Pro Se federal civil rights complaint filed 8/2/96.

* "... I probably have AIDS now, I have great difficulty raising food to my mouth from shaking after nightmares or thinking too hard on all this ... I've laid down without physical fight to be sodomised. To prevent so much damage in struggles ripping and tearing. Though in not fighting, it caused my heart and spirit to be raped as well. Something I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself for."
- A.H., Indiana, 8/30/96.

* "I was raped in prison from February 1991 through November 1991. From that it left me HIV positive."
- T.B., Texas, 9/3/96.

* "The rapes seem to be for two main reasons. 1. They hurt, someone must pay. 2. Being deprived of consensual sex, and self-centred, any hole will do. Power, control, revenge, seem to top the 'reasons' for rape. The person assaulted is either seen as weaker, or gang banged if seen as a stuck up kind of person. You know, refuses to swear, actually admits he is guilty, is seeking help etc. ..."
- D.A., Nebraska, 9/6/96

* "I can tell you that whenever a mother calls me whose son has been sentenced to prison, the first question she inevitably asks is, 'What can I tell him so he can keep himself safe?" said Donna Hamm, of the advocacy group Middle Ground Prison Reform. For the very weak, or the very young, or for homosexuals or females, coerced sexual activity is a very real concern, she said.
- Arizona Daily Star, January 25, 2004.
The ACLU lawsuit details the story.

* "For eighteen months ... Mr Johnson was subjected to a system of gang-run sexual slavery. ... Gang members routinely bought and sold Mr Johnson as chattel, raped and degraded him on a virtually daily basis, and threatened him with death if he resisted. ... (Prison officials) were well aware of his plight, but ... made clear by words and deeds that they took sadistic pleasure in his victimisation. They also repeatedly expressed contempt for non-aggressive gay men, and made it explicit that it was their practice to refuse to protect such inmates from sexual assault, at least until such inmates were savagely beaten or 'guffed."

"We don't protect punks on this farm" Johnson says he was told.
"Fight or fuck."

Raped first by a member of the Gangster Disciples gang, the first of seven gangs that would assert their ownership of him at Alfred. Johnson was assaulted again and again - in cells, stairwells, and showers - sometimes by as many as eight convicts at once. Gang members sold Johnson among themselves for $5 and $10 which convicts paid for with commissary items, at one point fighting among themselves over who owned him.
- Austin American-Statesman, January 11, 2004.

* Gardesani's willingness to gather evidence on Anderson sparked an investigation by the Colorado Department of Corrections into numerous allegations of sexual misconduct by male staff at the Pueblo women's prison. ... A native of Brazil who speaks four languages but is less than fluent in English, she admits she was reluctant to come forward at first. She was too shocked she says - and then too afraid of what the officer could
do to her.

"Sergeant Anderson was such a cop - go by the book and everything," she says. "People were kind of scared of him because he was mean with inmates. He write you up for anything. I was real surprised it happened because he was the last person I expect it from."

According to Gardesani, she was reading in her cell one day when Anderson came in and "started running his hands over me. I couldn't believe what was going on." He then left as abruptly as he arrived, she says.

On three subsequent visits over the next few weeks, Gardesani says, Anderson took her to the one area of the room not visible from the cell door, bent her over a chair, and had intercourse with her. "I didn't say a word" she says, "I was thinking, If I scream he's going to tell them I'm crazy and they're going to put me in the hole, put me in special needs, like happen with other inmates. So I let him do it. I was almost paralysed. He didn't say too much. He just pulled me to the chair. Then he had sex with me without no protection at all."

... Throughout it all Gardesani says, she believed any complaint she might make would lead to retaliation. "He told me several times, 'I can't lose my job, so you don't say nothing." she says. "But he has the power, right? He can tell things that I done, and I didn't do it, you know what I mean?"
- Westword, May 6, 2004.

That was the US, now for Australia.

* There is something seriously wrong when the NSW prisons are too dangerous even for those convicted of violent crime. Yet that is how the prison system appears to no less a figure than the District Court's acting Judge Donald Stewart (former chairman of the National Crime Authority, former royal commissioner and former Supreme Court judge). Judge Stewart has decided not to send a young carjacker to jail to await sentencing because "what might and probably will face this young man ... does not bear speaking about." And so Ali El Etri will remain on bail after pleading guilty to charges including aggravated carjacking which carries a penalty of up to 14 years in jail. El Etri and a 30-year-old accomplice had lain in wait for a Sydney solicitor then stolen her Porsche Boxter at gunpoint.

The community may well feel that those who terrorise others in this fashion should be off the streets. However, Judge Stewart was clearly apprehensive about what might befall a good-looking 20-year-old in a NSW jail. Judge Stewart said he wanted to dispel "any romantic ideas people have about jail. It is not a cushy number", and noted there had been a weekend newspaper report on rape in prisons.

His Honour may well have been referring to the Good Weekend cover story which painted a horrifying picture of jails where the rape of prisoners by other prisoners had become routine. A NSW magistrate, David Heilpern, told the magazine that up to 25 percent of young men in NSW jails had been raped, some every day. Other experts interviewed by the Good Weekend thought Mr Heilpern's figure was conservative. Yet those who were sexually assaulted are reluctant to complain to authorities for fear of retribution from other prisoners. And all this in a state which jails more than 15,000 people a year - almost twice the per capita rate of Victoria, for example.

"People are not sent to jail to be punished, they are sent to jail as punishment," Judge Stewart said on Monday when continuing El Etri's bail. It is not clear what the Judge may do when the time comes to sentence El Etri on December 13. Meanwhile, he has made a valid point. While governments may introduce tough laws against crime, respect for the law also means that they must accept full responsibility to protect criminals from punishment beyond what the law prescribes.

While Judge Stewart is to be commended for taking his lonely stand against the inhuman conditions in NSW jails and the failure of Correctional Services officials to provide full protection for prisoners, he clearly states the principle that "People are .... sent to jail as punishment". This is the flaw in present-day justice systems, prisons are still intended to punish offenders, just as they were in the Dark Ages. Nothing has changed.

Given that this is the case, it is misleading and erroneous to label prisons as 'Correctional Centres'. These facilities are not designed or operated to 'correct' or rehabilitate the unfortunates who are incarcerated within them. The aim is to punish people for their perceived sins.

Colonial Australia was founded as a penal colony, to get felons who were crammed into prison hulks on the Thames out of the sight of genteel Londoners. Those unfortunates who were transported to Australia, often for petty thefts, were worked hard and treated with extreme brutality. Today, federal and state governments, and the majority of the judiciary who administer the rule of law in Australia, are inclined to perpetuate this principle, while giving only lip service to notions of reform and rehabilitation in the public rhetoric of the justice system.

As things stand, police who arrest offenders such as El Etri, lawyers who prosecute them, and judges or magistrates who sentence them are knowingly sending these people into situations in which they have every chance of being routinely subjected to sexual abuse and physical assault. No valid defence can be afforded by claiming that the end responsibility for the protection of prison inmates lies with Correctional Services authorities.

The Nuremberg trials of 1945-6 rejected similar arguments from those who were part of the chain that arrested, transported and finally exterminated hordes of innocent people whom the Nazis disapproved of.

At Nuremberg it was not accepted that the soldiers and guards were 'only following orders'. If they had forced people into cattle trucks bound for Auschwitz, Belsen, Dachau or similar destinations, the officials, police and military were judged to have been as guilty of crimes against humanity as those who planned and directed the holocaust.

A very strong argument can be made that the abuses that are being allowed to happen in jails in Australia, the US, and other places, are nothing less than crimes against humanity - a justice holocaust. Thus, when a judge sentences an offender to prison the true punishment is far greater than a number of years of loss of liberty. It is repeated rape and, in all probability, a lingering death from AIDS.

Most of the people in NSW jails don't even need to be confined for the safety of the general society. They are in prison for drug use offences, minor breaches such as not paying traffic fines, or for defrauding the social security system of quite small amounts of money. Certainly, there are violent rapists and armed robbers who do need to be confined until such time as they can be rehabilitated, if that is possible. However, there is absolutely no justification for allowing even these people to be subjected to additional, unofficial, punishments of the most vile and brutal kind.

Without wishing to be crude about it, the justice system sucks. And the faults trace back to medieval notions of revenge and punishment that have no place in a truly just society. Again, without wishing to labour the comparison, it is a fact that tribal peoples dwelt in Australia for tens of thousands of years without constructing any jails or severely punishing or abusing wrongdoers. The emphasis in many tribal systems of justice is on rectification of the harm done to victims, rather than torturing the perpetrators of the crimes.

The appalling failures in the systems of justice and imprisonment within the old order cry out to be discussed Us-2-Us. Wide awareness and indignation in the public arena will be significant factors in decisions relating to secession and the establishment of a Level 4 Civilization that is free of such flaws.

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Crime Rates Are Falling But Prison Numbers Are Rising ! [259]
The following selection of prison population rates per 100,000 of the national population are drawn from an Amnesty International source. They capture the situation as at January 11, 2004.

Australia had 115 prisoners per 100,000 people, China was similar, with 117. Many European countries were lower. Germany had 98, Denmark, Sweden, and Switzerland all had 72. Norway had 64.

Many Asian countries have relatively low prisoner rates. In the Amnesty International study Japan had 53, and India and Indonesia both had 29 prisoners per 100,000 people. England and Wales had a higher rate of 140, while Brazil had 160, and Cuba had 297 prisoners per 100,000 people.

The incarceration rates in the US dwarfed those of all other nations. At the date mentioned above there were 701 prisoners per 100,000 people in that country. Only the Russian Federation came close, at 606 prisoners per 100,000 people.

The levels of imprisonment are rising in both the US and Australia, and this is happening at a time when many serious crimes, such as break-ins and armed robbery are falling. Here are some excerpts from the Australian Coalition Against The Death Penalty web site. It uses the above Amnesty International study.

In the US:

* "Almost 6.6 million men and women made up the correctional population at the end of 2000.

* One in every 32 U.S. residents were on probation or parole or were held in a prison or jail. More than ten million people (1 in 148 people) are incarcerated each year in the U.S. - the incarnation rate being 704 per 100,000 people. Besides executing prisoners on almost a weekly basis, the U.S. also has some of the toughest prison sentences in the world which include life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Each year, there are approximately 3,000 deaths in custody in the U.S."

* "The prison boom has exacted a tremendous social cost. Since 1985, the increase in money spent on U.S. prisons nationwide topped $20 billion. That is almost twice the increase in dollars spent on colleges and universities, according to a recent report titled, 'Cellblocks or Classrooms."

* "Prisons have not expanded because more crimes are being committed, but because more people are now being arrested for minor offences - more people prosecuted and more people given lengthy sentences, as lawmakers consistently compete with each other to re-introduce ever-harsher penalties. It is not that crime has increased; it is the punishment."

The above point is also borne out in prison statistics for Australia. The following excerpt from an article by Cheryl McDermid titled "A precipitous increase in Australia's prison population" (November 2000) makes this clear.

* "In 1982 the incarceration rate was 89.9 per 100,000; by 1998 this had climbed to 139.2 per 100,000 - a 55 percent increase. The rate is over 30 percent higher than Britain's at 94 per 100,000 and almost seven times higher than Indonesia with 22 per 100,000. The annual growth rate in prison numbers is twice that of England and Wales, although only half that of the United States.

Such figures indicate profound changes in society and demand an analysis. But their publication has been met with virtual silence in the media and official circles. There have been no headlines, no debates. Nor has the AIC [Australian Institute of Criminology] attempted to explain the roots of the phenomenon, despite issuing a series of related reports from August 1999 to April 2000.

The perception created by governments, the police, the judiciary and the media is that society is under siege by crime, and everyday life proceeds under a cloud of fear. Yet the figures compiled by the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal that between 1993 and 1998 there was no statistically significant increase in the main crime categories - household break-ins, attempted break-ins, motor vehicle theft and sexual assault."

In her article Cheryl McDermid quotes from a submission that Justice Action, a prison reform group, made to the New South Wales (NSW) Select Committee on the Increase in Prison Population. It said:

"Murder is perhaps the offence most likely to be reported, least amenable to statistical manipulation and most indicative of the likely level of violent crime in society. The murder rate in NSW remains essentially unchanged since the 1970s and is around the same rate as it was at the time of federation (1901)."

Anybody who has studied the European Renaissance should not be surprised by the rise in prison populations now, at a time of similar technological and social transformation. Five or six hundred years ago the crime that put many unfortunate people in jails and torture chambers across Europe was heresy - having an opinion contrary to orthodox religious doctrine. Because the Roman Church had no capacity nor willingness to deal with a flood of new knowledge and scientific ideas, it simply locked up those it feared and it also made examples of them.

Victims, for that is what they were, were publicly put to death - disembowelled, torn apart by horses, burnt alive, and so on. This happened not only to males but to whole families, women and children alike. Nevertheless, in the end, nothing could stop the transformation of Europe and the loss of the secular power that had been wielded by the church. All those people suffered for nothing. The old guard lost anyway; defeated by new knowledge and ideas.

One of the major changes in society that authorities do not fear is the burgeoning substance abuse industry. Illegal drugs are big business and governments and their agencies are used to 'regulating' such interests, be they from the underworld or the overworld. Governments promise new programs to fix the drugs problem while blaming drug addicts for 'rising crime rates'. New government programs never seem to work and the drugs problem continues unabated. Moreover law enforcement and court systems are encouraged to 'crack down' on relatively minor offences, while leaving the main causes unaddressed.

It is the drugs industry that is the root cause of many of the convictions that are leading to increased incarceration rates and expansion of the prisons system.

US statistics show that the proportion of prison inmates serving time for drug offences has risen dramatically during the past three decades. In 1970 the percentage of drug offenders in the US prison population was 16.3, by 2002 it had risen to an astonishing 54.7 percent. And the proportion of drug offenders in US prisons continues to rise, there seems to be no stopping it.

More prisons, larger prisons, are being built to accommodate the flood of offenders sentenced by the courts; construction costs average US$100,000 per cell and the cost of accommodating each inmate is about US$20,000 pa. In 2002 prisoner accommodation and related services cost governments in the US some US$40 billion; that's big business and it is attracting private sector corporations.

The Next Big Thing - Prison Labour As A Competitive Advantage [260]

The following excerpts are taken from an article by Kathy Kelly of Voices in the Wilderness, its title is Privatising Hell, and it draws on stories from an online edition of India's national newspaper, The Hindu, and from Business Week's online editions.

* "In the U.S., a number of states have passed laws that allow commercial organisations to use convict labour. Prisoners get much less than the minimum wage. Retrenchments are not a problem, there is no sick leave, vacation or overtime, and unions are non-existent. The result, says noted journalist P. Sainath, is that American corporations are on to a good thing."

* "Welcome to the new slavery. Privatised prisons in the united States run by for-profit corporations. And Federal or State-run prisons that allow - often invite - private enterprises to use that labour. Quality control made easy. Unions non-existent. And workers don't get more disciplined than this. Even if the prisons are not private, the State can hold down prison labour for private gain and its own benefit."

* "These days (says Business Week online) prison labour is as close as your cell phone. Jail-based customer service centres have fielded 800-line requests for airline reservations. According to news reports, prisoners have also wrapped software for Microsoft, produced electronic menu boards for McDonald's, and stitched clingy lingerie for a manufacturer."
In the past 20 years, more than 30 states have passed laws that allow commercial outfits to use convict labour. Such programmes now exist in 36 of the 50 American states.

* "The corporations that use prison labour at far less than minimum wages include Fortune 500 giants and other famous 'brands'. Starbucks and Nintendo Game Boy systems are just two of the big names that have done so. ... It allows you to massively undercut any rivals who have qualms about human rights and the treatment of prisoners. And it helps push down wages across the industry."

* "Honda has paid inmates $2 an hour for doing the same work an auto worker would get paid $20 to $30 an hour to do.
Konica has used prisoners to repair copiers for less than 50 cents an hour.

Toys RUs used prisoners to restock shelves and Microsoft to pack and ship software.

Clothing made in California and Oregon prisons competes so successfully with apparel made in Latin America and Asia that it is exported to other countries."

* "Stan Saunders of the Colombia Theological Seminary writes that 'prisons for profit now generate $30-40 billion of revenue annually. The corrections segment of our economy today employs over half a million full time workers.'
That's more than any Fortune 500 company except General Motors. ...

And in some towns across the U.S., the prison is now the mainstay of the local economy. Crime rates have dropped in the U.S,. Violent crime is down by one-fifth in the last three decades. But incarceration rates, Saunders points out, have quadrupled. Creating a state of siege mindset in the public has helped. Both media and lawmakers have done that."

* "The result? As Alan Whyte and Jamie Baker write in an analysis for the World Socialist Web Site: "thousands of public sector jobs have been lost to convict labour. And thousands of private sector jobs have been lost as a result of firms that now utilise prison labour."

* "It's the new slavery," says Randall Robinson. "It's destroying the younger generation of Black people," he told us at Trinity College in Connecticut earlier this year. This leading African-American thinker points to "the built-in bias and discrimination of the system. It ensures this huge pool of labour. In our democracy, we have private prisons. When as private corporations you own prisons, the only way you can get your stocks to go up is to get more prisoners."

Another article, The Celling of America, is quoted from the Covert Action Quarterly.

* "Some of the country's largest and most profitable corporations have quietly begun to use prison labour forces, at wages up to 80% below the national minimum wage. Among those reportedly contracting to employ prisoners, either directly of through their subsidiaries: AT&T, Bank of America, Boeing, Chevron, Costco, Dell Computers, Eddie Bauer, IBM, Konica Business Machines, Microsoft, Starbucks, Texas Instruments, TWA and US West."

The next excerpts are from an article titled When Corporations Rule the World, by David C. Korten.

* "Corporations profit not only from committing and facilitating crime, they also profit from punishing street criminals. Prison operators such as Corrections Corporation of America, Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, and Sodexho SA aggressively promote prison privatisation globally.

J.C. Penny, Victoria's Secret, IBM, Toys R Us, and TWA are among the U.S. corporations that have augmented their profits by employing prisoners who reportedly earn as little as 11 cents an hour with no benefits - a rate competitive with the worst of China's sweatshops.

Under a new law that took effect in July 2000, Kentucky prisons began billing prisoners up to $50 a day for room and board. Other states are expected to follow.

Combine long mandatory sentences for minor drug offences, a strong racial bias, prisons run by corporations for profit, the sale of convict labour to corporations at sweatshop rates, and a charge for prison room and board and you have a modern system of bonded labour, a social condition otherwise known as slavery."

Related:

2nd Renaissance -33

The natural, some would say instinctive, organisation model for humans is the tribe. But there is no suggestion here of attacking or harming the less numerous members of big government and big business organisations that are structured along institutional and militarist lines. Any physical attack on the forces of the OWO would not only violate the sixth commandment, it would fail to advance humanity or benefit society in any way. No, the conflict between the OWO and the rest of us is a battle of ideas and, as such, it holds great potential as a transformational force that will benefit all of humanity - even those people who are presently on the side of federalism, capitalism and a creeping totalitarian control of the many by a few.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112747.php

2nd Renaissance -32

Then the penny drops, literally. The earthlings are selling water, they are treating it as a commodity. For the sellers of water this means that the scarcer fresh water is the higher the price and the greater the profit. There is still CAPITALISM on Earth; a system that became redundant in most galaxies aeons ago. No wonder water is scarce here.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112562.php

2nd Renaissance -31

The dissemination of information about the end of the 20th century scientific Dark Age and the advent of wondrous new spike technologies is something we can all do. It is not yet illegal to write or talk about such matters. In order to help raise general awareness of already existing opportunities to end economic scarcity it is necessary to first discover and absorb information that is never presented by the OWO controlled media. Then it is time to spread those alternate perspectives of science and technology at the interpersonal level.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112310.php

2nd Renaissance -30

"Near-Spike technologies will ensure that everyone could have access to this cornucopia, and while different cultures and moieties within those cultures will respond idiosyncratically to the great change, we might expect a general drift back toward the ancient codes implanted by evolutionary pressures. Humans have evolved in a million years and more of moderate ease, each tribe's small numbers drawing modestly upon the self-replenishing bounty of the earth. We will slip easily back into that blissful state, spared its occasional murderous bouts of uncontrollable fire, flood, drought, plague and infestation.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/112101.php

2nd Renaissance -29

There is a simple answer, however, and that is to set up the bomb, and arm it to go off when the Sun passes through the required geometric point. The newspapers warn us that the tests will be carried out over a series of months, so we sit back with a set of astro tables and paper on which to calculate Sun positions, and wait for the results. When the first start coming in, we must confess to a certain excitement. What began as a theory is proving in actuality to be perfectly correct. We have cracked a code that the atom bomb countries have long tried to hide. "

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/111933.php

2nd Renaissance -28

Far Out Ideas For a Far Out Century [226] This freesite is not concerned with the existence or otherwise of aliens or UFOs, nor is it concerned with what such beings might be doing in our skies. There are thousands of web sites and publications that deal with UFOs and aliens. This freesite is concerned with far more serious threats to the freedom and well-being of humanity than extraterrestrial visitors. These threats have already been identified as takerism, nationalism, capitalism, and militarism. The iron grip of the OWO on the world's resources has far more serious consequences than the alleged activities of aliens and UFOs.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/111733.php

2nd Renaissance -27

At first impression this might seem a good thing, but the real price of such a concealment has been more than seven decades of denying the means and capability to bring abundant energy to the whole world. Not only could the release of such knowledge have ended all militarism and the related suffering caused by wars, it could have enabled presently 'developing' countries to feed, house and clothe their populations to levels that would have freed them from poverty, disease, and the burden of debt they currently 'owe' to the capitalist West.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/111574.php

2nd Renaissance -25

This diagram is not reproduced here to suggest that the absolute amount of energy that can be obtained from matter is known, Cramp points out that it is theoretical. The purpose of the diagram is to drive home the realisation that energy is by no means scarce. All that is required to tap it is the right knowledge. Tesla and many others have already shown that such knowledge exists and that it is practical to draw energy from beyond matter - from the ether itself.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/111235.php

2nd Renaissance -24

The defection of large numbers of people from federal citizenship, and the establishment of free cities that will run on free energy, can and will break the hold of old ideas and false scientific notions that held us back during the entire 20th century. That 2nd Dark Age is now behind us and the way to a better, Level 4 Civilization, is open. How soon the transformation is accomplished is now in the hands of ordinary folk, it has very little to do with our federal 'representatives', the industrial councils of big business, the parrot press, or the dogma specialists of orthodox science.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/111028.php

2nd Renaissance -23

While it is far less radical than Tesla's idea of 'broadcasting' power to everyone on earth, the Christie/Brits generator could revolutionise domestic power supply, if it were ever allowed to do so. Once a household had one of these devices it could not only meet all its own power requirements, it could also feed around 10 kW of energy into the local power grid each day. When a family moved home, it would be practical to take the generator with them to their new residence. Given the long service life of the device, many generations of the family would inherit it, and it would continue to pump out 24 kW of clean power every day.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/110786.php

2nd Renaissance -22

Tesla was arguably one of the most outstanding geniuses of the late 19th century. But he was never astute in business, being far too naive and trusting. Tesla thought that everyone would readily support a discovery that would make energy available to all, and do much to end poverty and scarcity in the world. The capitalist/militarist establishments of the US thought quite differently.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/110212.php

2nd Renaissance -21

Who Is Running The Universe? [205] There is a common piece of street wisdom that describes how to determine who is really running any strange town that you come to on a journey. The advice is to listen to who is mentioned in conversations about the affairs and administration of the town. It is never the people who are talked about in connection with town matters or politics who are actually running things. The rule says that it is always the people who are never mentioned who are in real control. If you want to know who has the power, find out who is never mentioned as having any. When you begin to learn about and debate science with other non-scientists like yourself, remember this piece of street wisdom. Nothing is what it seems to be. The mayor or the police chief might seem to wield the power but, in reality, the power lies elsewhere, and that truth is seldom mentioned.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/04/109956.php

2nd Renaissance -20

Who are the most imaginative and lateral thinking people in our present society? Are they the scientists, or possibly the high IQ individuals employed to find new products and markets? Are they the entrepreneurs of the world, or are they advisors and consultants to industry and government? The answer to this question is known, and it is surprising to most people.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109767.php

2nd Renaissance -19

A key principle in such situations will be to limit the time that any individual can serve in political office. One or two terms should be the limit, there should be no opportunity for people to make a career out of politics. Nor should it be possible for generation after generation of any family to be employed in politics or as politicians. One only has to look at the distortions and inequalities that some of these political dynasties have introduced to the course of legislation in Australia and the US to know that long-term careers and generation to generation successions are not a good idea.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109519.php

2nd Renaissance -18

It is worth learning geometry as the ancients taught it because music is geometric. It is worth studying music in a geometric sense because this uncovers truths about vibrations and patterns of vibrations, Vibrations are important because all matter is formed from them. The 2nd Renaissance involves an explosion of knowledge and discovery that is taking humanity beyond the old 'drop in on your foot' materialistic and mechanistic view of the world and the universe beyond. The 21st century talent collectives that will build new technologies to defeat scarcity and create abundance will do most of their work in the realms of invisible vibration patterns. All young people, both boys and girls, now need to learn within these fields of knowledge, because humanity's future will be built there.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109198.php

2nd Renaissance -17

Education systems in free cities and regions must be very different to those of nation states. It is not just the methods of encouraging learning that will distinguish education in free cities from that of nation states, but the truth that the knowledge is rooted in. There is no point in swotting to pass examinations in subject knowledge that is wrong. Yet, that is exactly what young people in state education systems are doing. Neither they, or their parents, or their teachers realise this fact, but it remains the case.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/109002.php

2nd Renaissance -16

Supporting secessions and the formation of free cities and regions is going to be crucial. Only in these new beachheads of tomorrow’s society will such innovations as home-schooling, and a lack of state censorship and media spin, enable young people to discover the truths they will need to know to build a Level 4 Civilization.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108722.php

2nd Renaissance -15

Historically, there have been periods when legal distinctions between animals and humans have been blurred. For instance, in medieval Europe, in the 14th and 15th centuries, numerous trials and executions of animals occurred. One source identifies 34 recorded instances of pigs having been tried and cruelly put to death. Besides pigs; rats, chickens, goats, and bees were similarly tried. Some of the pigs were fully dressed in human clothes at the time they were, inevitably, found guilty. In one case a vicar excommunicated a flock of sparrows that infested his church. All this happened despite the theological stance that animals had no soul, and no morals or conscience. They could not really be guilty of transgressing the Rule of Law.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108557.php

2nd Renaissance -14

Withdrawing Support For Militarism [179] The problem with revenge is that it lowers the humanity of those who exercise it down to the same level, of even below, those who committed the original crime. Although we can't yet know who was responsible for 911 or 1012, we do now know that forces of the Coalition of the Willing (CoW) have, on occasions, been just as barbaric as the people who killed on those dates. This has been amply demonstrated in Afghanistan and again in Iraq. If you doubt this, seek out more facts about the CoW's use of DU and NDU weaponry and cluster bombs. These horror weapons continue, to this day, to put young children and adult civilians at risk of injury or death from unexploded munitions, radiation, and toxic substances in the ground water and the food chain.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108373.php

Surveillance

It is up to ordinary people to raise the level of debate about the undemocratic surveillance practices of the many faceless and unaccountable agents who make daily intrusions on individual privacy, and about the apologists and propagandists for the War nn Terror who applaud every new attack on human rights and freedoms as "prudent" or "necessary". If there is no discussion of reverse surveillance in the national media, create it on the streets on a citizen to citizen basis. If nobody is talking about the outrageous assaults on privacy and human rights embodied in the new antiterrorist acts forced through US, UK and Australian legislatures, start talking about it to your neighbours and friends.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/108175.php

2nd Renaissance -13

Such a development is part of the phenomenon of reverse surveillance that will come to characterise the 2nd Renaissance and a rapid transition to a Level 4 Civilization and a truly free society. You can learn more about reverse surveillance at the 'Surveillance' freesite. Reverse surveillance principles extend well beyond the use of ubiquitous digital imaging technologies, and include audits of all aspects of federal government operations, by randomly selected teams of citizens. The Feds and the parrot people will be quick to pronounce that such monitoting is "not in the national interest," but it will definitely be in our interests, and those of future generations of humanity.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/107989.php

2nd Renaissance -12

There are reports that in one Balinese kampong that provided labour to the clubs in Kuta Beach, seven empty coffins were buried, because there were no identifiable remains of the missing workers. It was as if they had been vaporised. Scores of people, mainly locals, are thought to have disappeared without trace.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/03/107756.php

2nd Renaissance -11

Fortunately, the power and control of government and military elites is illusory in the 21st century. The world no longer works the way it did, and there is nothing to compel people to support failed, outdated systems any longer. This is an understanding that must be widely and quickly shared. The future of our children and the planet depends upon our changing our thinking about governments, and our support for them.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/107560.php

2nd Renaissance -10

In the Afghanistan turkey shoot the CoW forces used vast numbers of hard target weapons and other munitions containing depleted uranium (DU). This substance is almost twice as dense as lead. When it punches through concrete bunkers, armour, or mud huts, DU disintegrates into a chemically toxic and radioactive dust. In contrast to the earlier DU weapons used in Gulf War I, the newer ordinance produced deaths and deformities within weeks of the start of military action by the CoW. Between 1990-91 and 2001 the US arms manufacturers are thought to have "improved" the DU technology by introducing milled uranium ore to their warheads. This non-depleted uranium (NDU) is - wait for it - cheaper to produce and far more potent than DU. It poses massive health risks to civilian populations exposed to it, and constitutes, in every sense of the word, a weapon of mass destruction, or WMD. "Hey they're hunting them in Iraq, aren't they?"

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/107216.php

2nd Renaissance -9

The Old World Order will not do anything to smooth the path to a Level 4 Civilization, and a better world. On the contrary, they will do whatever they can to make it difficult. The police, the military, the media, the financial system, the rule of law, and all the mechanisms of civil control and surveillance will be mobilised in defence of the status quo. But, once they understand their options, the people of the world will not engage in a battle with the forces of the OWO. They will simply abandon the old way of living under national rule, for a better, freer, life in new tribal societies. Kinship mechanisms will help people cope with the pressures of official opposition to radical changes that will finally enable them to escape the invisible prison that the OWO had fashioned around them.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/107047.php

2nd Renaissance -8

Ultimately the old order will lose the battle to preserve their privileged way of life, based on all prevailing scarcity, pseudo-democracy, and the rule of law. But in the interim, hundreds of millions of innocent people might lose their lives in bloody resistance to the changes being made by the Old World Order (OWO).. If such a terrible thing happens, it will all have been for nothing, because:

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106816.php

Tales of Adam
Daniel Quinn*
http://ishmael.com/index1.cfm

2nd Renaissance -7

When coupled with the introduction of artificial scarcity and taker concepts of property ownership and legal tender, Western death-fearing religions played a significant role in subduing, otherwise independent, tribal peoples.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106537.php

2nd Renaissance -6

The second route involves the setting up of entirely new living spaces on tribal lands that were previously seized by colonising governments that espoused and followed Taker philosophies. This route has greater credibility, in the sense of secession rights, where clear historical ownership of the land can be shown.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106327.php

2nd Renaissance -5

Quinn contends that while governments can imagine a revolution they can't imagine abandonment. As he puts it, "..even if it could imagine abandonment , it couldn't defend against it, because abandonment isn't an attack, it's just a discontinuance of support."

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/106136.php

2nd Renaissance -4

In due course, there is one achievement of overriding significance that Caral might well provide. One great contribution or lesson that can be applied to the 2nd Renaissance. How to live in peace, with spiritual meaning, and without warfare, for a thousand years.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105935.php

The New Renaissance
Daniel Quinn*

http://www.mnforsustain.org/quinn_d_new_renaissance.htm

2nd Renaissance -3

Plichta writes of this model as follows. "There was a time I used to make fun of the Apocalypse of St John and believed it to be a totally unreliable historical source. Today I am filled with deep humility, perhaps because I am now able to give a concrete description of the foundation of the world as seen by St John with my mathematical discoveries, and thus possibly open a new way to all of humanity which has now reached a dead end."

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105799.php

2nd Renaissance -2

Georg Cantor (1845-1918), by his origination of modern set theory and his studies of the nature of infinity, left science a valuable legacy. Cantor was regularly admitted to a psychiatric clinic within the University of Halle, in Germany, where he lectured and worked as a Professor of Mathematics. On each occasion that he became ill he had been thinking about infinity and the continuum hypothesis. Such intense thought, at the boundaries of his comprehension, caused Cantor to suffer repeated mental breakdowns. Infinity drove him mad.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105634.php

2nd Renaissance

This story was published in September 2004 and it was a big secret. I received it on disk but I think it should be public by now anyway. It is interesting to look back at it and in terms of today's world some two years on. I will link each chapter as I go along over the coming weeks.- The Old World Order - Happy reading!

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/02/105519.php

Fight Iemma - Debnam

All they can say is 'lock em up'

It seems we are in the thick of it again - the stupid, heartless "Law & Order" auction.

Premier Morris Iemma and Opposition leader Peter Debnam are trying to outdo each other with idiotic "tough on crime" policies.

Original Article
http://oldsydimc.cat.org.au/front.php3?article_id=64701