2nd Renaissance -35 : Melbourne Indymedia

"All The Way With The USA" [261]
A former prime minister of Australia (1966-1967), Harold Holt, is widely remembered for his "All the way with L.B.J." endorsement of the Vietnam war. Today, the Australian government continues to unreservedly adopt policies and philosophies emanating from the U.S.A. This copycat behaviour extends to the privatisation of prisons and the overly harsh immigration detention centres that have been criticised by a report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (2002).

The first private prison in Australia opened in 1990. Whilst the US has the highest proportion of its population in prison, the Australian state of Victoria now has the highest proportion of prisoners in its privately run jails. No other state in the world has a higher proportion of commercially housed and managed prisoners. Not surprisingly, in these time of globalised markets, not a single private prison in Australia is run by an Australian company. In truth, there aren't many local firms or brands left in any industries in this country.

Private prisons and immigration detention centres are good business for private operators because there is no financial risk involved. The government foots the bill for the construction of the facilities and then pays private contractors to run them. Since the basis of payment is the occupation rate of each prison, the more prisoners there are the more money the private operator can make. There is a strong incentive to "get em there and keep em there". This is the same model that has emerged in the US.

Amanda George is a community lawyer who has been active in opposing the privatisation of prisons in Australia, particularly those facilities which now hold 80% of the women who are serving time in Victoria. The following excerpts are from an article she wrote during the 1990s, when there was still time to halt the globalisation of Australian prisons.

* "One of the biggest hurdles prisoners and prison activists face is the silencing that occurs around prison issues. The Victorian government has now made it virtually impossible for the media to have access to prisons unless "to improve the public image of the department", according to the Corrective Services Director ... This sort of silencing occurs all the time around what goes on in prisons and is compounded by the pressure that transnational corporations can bring to bear on the media.

In the UK there is clear evidence that private prison corporations lobby governments on law and order policies. And why not? The more prisoners there are, the more business they get. In Junee [Australia] a local council member has won a contract to provide sporting equipment to the [privately operated] jail. Clearly this meshing of financial interest and politics is absolutely improper."

* "Not only is there money to be made in private prisons, there is money to be made out of prison labour. In Victoria prisoner labour brings in $5.5 million per year. In Queensland prisoners are working in the River of Gold Slate Mine. They get $5 a day, with a productivity bonus of $2 a day. The contractors certainly have a river of gold with those sorts of labour costs.

There is a long history of privatisation in prisons which seems to be coming full circle. Private contractors were [earlier] removed from corrections because of the high rates of deaths and abuse. ..."

* "In the US, private prisons are now executing people as part of their contract."

Federal and state governments in Australia don't seem to have been too concerned about who gets the contracts to run prisons here. The organisation that originally managed federal immigration detention centres and a number of state prisons was founded by four former FBI agents in the 1950s. Not only does that corporation, which has grown enormously in the intervening years, have a dubious association with the CIA and the alleged manufacture of high-tech weapons and munitions for illegal export from the US to third-world customers, it has a positively dreadful, and very public, record of mismanagement of prisons and mistreatment of prisoners in its care. (According to an article in the Atlantic Monthly its board of directors has included; "a former head of the FBI, a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, a former CIA director, a former CIA deputy director, a former head of the Secret Service, a former head of the Marine Corps, and a former Attorney General.)

[Their name doesn't particularly matter, it's the underlying thinking and attitudes that are important in understanding prison privatisation]

A second major prisons contractor used by governments in Australia also has an unenviable track record. If the purpose of imprisonment was really rehabilitation and 'correction' it would seen that such a provider should have been eliminated during the tendering process. But no, they got the lucrative contracts anyway, because the purpose of a prison sentence is solely one of punishment. The executive sent to Australia to run private prisons for this contractor had previously come to the attention of US courts. While working as director of corrections in Virginia and Arkansas he was found by the US Supreme Court to have violated the 8th and 14th amendments of the US Constitution, in respect to cruel and unusual punishment. Really just the sort of guy you want if your idea of prison is punishment.

Here are just a few of the prison management incidents (or failures in a duty of care) that have been reported in relation to the US owned for-profit corporations involved in managing Australian jails and immigration detention centres (the latter are really prisons as well, but they are never described as such - prisons are for punishment you see). The excerpts are taken from various reliable sources on the WWW; there is little doubt that the problems stateside were real.

* "... in Texas, a former inmate of the [...] run minimum-security lockup in Lockhart claimed she was raped repeatedly over a four-month period. In July 1998, as reported in the American-Statesman, the former inmate filed a federal suit alleging that, although a prison internal affairs investigation found that the sex was not consensual, [...] officials failed to fire or reprimand the accused guard. The guard later quit after a second sexual assault allegation came to light.

Asked about the many allegations against the company, a [...] official spokesman told the St. Petersburg Times that the cases aren't that unusual, given the company's size. "The lawsuits were filed against us on allegations by inmates who are convicted felons," the spokesman told the Florida daily. "So they have a record of dishonesty and misleading people."

Speaking of which:

* "In [...'s] Lockhart prison there are housed three private manufacturing companies. One of the companies Lockhart Technologies Inc, which produces circuit board assemblies, had a completely new factory assembly facility built by prison labour. When this factory was completed, the owner of Lockhart Technologies closed down his plant in Austin, Texas, laid off his 150 employees and moved all the manufacturing equipment to Lockhart. The prisoners performing this work a Lockhart are paid minimum wages for this highly profitable work, and the prison keeps 80% of that for room and board. None of this comes as a surprise though when you consider that [...'s] board of directors consists of former members of the FBI, CIA and sections of the US military establishment. It has in the past developed quite a reputation [for] strike breaking, and for running covert operations against private individuals who are either - whistle-blowers, environmentalists, anti-nuclear activists and union organisers on behalf of various privately owned companies. It is also the largest provider of security related services to the US Govt."

* "At the Broward County work release facility in Ft. Lauderdale, allegations of sex between guards and inmates, and a successful escape, caused the county sheriff to ask for tighter oversight of the [...] facility. ... In June of 2000, the Florida state ACLU [a union] filed a public records suit against [...] for "stonewalling" access to records. The ACLU said they believed the documentation it sought would confirm ongoing allegations of sexual harassment, abuse, and "excessive profits" taken by the company."

* "Louisiana: In April 2000, allegations of guards abusing juvenile offenders prompted the state to take control of the Jena Juvenile Justice Centre run by [...], the Baton Rouge Advocate reported. The facility, opened in December 1998, was plagued by problems, including riots during the first month the facility was open, allegations of "abusive and untrained" guards, and lack of "meaningful" rehabilitation programs, medical care, and educational opportunities. The paper also reported that inmates also complained of shortages of food, supplies, and clothing. According to the Advocate, juvenile inmates said they would purposely mutilate or attempt to kill themselves, hoping to get away from their tormentors."

* Santa Rosa, New Mexico: "On August 31, 1999, they took the opportunity to run amok, stabbing an inmate, then Garcia, several times. Why was Garcia left alone among the convicts? Let's begin with [...'s] Jails R Us method of keeping costs down. They routinely packed two prisoners into each cell. They posted just one guard to cover an entire "pod," or block of cells. This reverses the ratio in government prisons - two guards per block, one prisoner per cell. Of course, the state's own prisons are not as "efficient" (read "cheap") as the private firm's. But then, the state hadn't lost a guard in seventeen years - where [...] hadn't yet operated seventeen months."

* "On 5 April 2000. [...] agreed to surrender control of its 15-month-old juvenile prison in Jena, after the US Justice Department named [...] in a lawsuit seeking to protect imprisoned boys from harm at the hands of guards and fellow inmates. The government accused [...] of beating boys, throwing tear gas indoors, spraying them in the face with pepper spray, and not providing them with adequate education and counselling.

One incident highlighted the regime at the institution. In March 1999 Judge Mark Doherty had ordered a 17-year old boy - a shotgun victim - removed from the prison. The boy wrote the following testimony.

* 'A Sgt. came to me and said to put shirt in pants, and I told him that I couldn't and he 'put me to the ground and told me to lay face down on the ground. And I told the Sgt. that I couldn't that I have on a (colostomy) bag, and he went put me on the ground. He came with his knee in my stomach'."

The nurse at the prison's infirmary later noted that 5 to 6 inches of the boy's intestines were in the colostomy bag.

One of the Justice Department's consultants. Nancy K. Ray wrote that Jena's difficulties stemmed largely from operating problems. In Jena's first 13 months, more than 600 people 'drifted through 180 positions', including 125 who were fired in 1999, a gross turnover rate of more than 300%. Ray also observed that recreation and rehabilitative programmes were 'grossly inadequate'."

* Coke County Juvenile Justice Centre (Bronte,TX): "Several girls were sexually, physically, and mentally abused by [...] employees, including a man with [a] prior conviction for sexual abuse of a child; a lawsuit settled for $1.5 million (1999),

TYC confirmed allegations that some staff members manipulated a "demotion/graduation" system to coerce girls into giving them sexual favours or dancing naked in front of them; some girls were raped or fondled, while others were made to disrobe and shower in the presence of male employees (1995).

A 15-year old female victim of sexual assault by a [...] employee committed suicide in [the] wake of [a] lawsuit settlement that allowed the company to avoid accepting responsibility (1999)."

* Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Facility-2000: "23 inmates and 6 staff contracted e-coli due to poor kitchen hygiene."

* "[...] runs a 200 bed detention centre, on behalf of the US Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), in Jamaica, Queens (New York) where asylum seekers who arrive without 'proper documentation' are held. [...] has a 5-year $49m contract with the INS. Recently religious leaders from Queens toured the Jamaica facility and raised concerns about the conditions in which the asylum seekers were being detained.

* 'The Jamaica detention centre is an unmarked structure of brown brick with video cameras perched on each corner. Slots 2 inches wide ventilate the centre, which has only a few windows atop one wall. Detainees live in open rooms of 20-30 beds, with communal showers and partially enclosed toilets. Men and women are housed in separate rooms. They eat food brought to them on trays, talk to their lawyers, play Ping-Pong, watch TV, sleep and bathe in the same locked area. There are few books in any language. Detainees get one hour of 'outdoor recreation' a day in a small courtyard. Visits with family and friends happen in guarded rooms through Plexiglass booths with telephones.' (Newsday, New York [Queens Edition], 3.6.01)"

Given their record of abuse allegations and incidents of mismanagement, it is not at all surprising that the multinational (US owned) 'corrections' companies that Australian governments chose to run jails and detention centres on Australian soil have delivered much the same results here. For example there is the siting of the first privately run women's prison outside of America, at Deer Park in Victoria.

* "Fairlea women's prison (a state government run prison in the centrally located suburb of Fairfield, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) [is to be] closed in June 1996 and the women there shunted 27 kms out of the city to the newly multinational-built Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre, a new private prison, at Deer Park. A primary reason for the move is so the government can sell the valuable real estate Fairlea prison is on.

[...] got the land at Deer Park cheaply from the former owners Defence Industries of Australia. The site is known to be contaminated by rocket fuel and other military contaminants."

Other examples are:

* "The family of an Iranian boy said to be severely traumatised by 15 months in an Australian detention centre will today take legal action against the Federal Government and the operators of the detention centre. Josh Bornstein, of the law firm Maurice Blackburn Cashman, will seek damages from the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and [...] which ran the Woomera and Villawood detention centres. A spokeswoman for the law firm said the claim would be for a substantial amount." (The Age, October 26, 2003)

* "Australia's treatment of refugees in detention centres was the harshest in the world, federal human rights commissioner Sev Ozdowski said today. Dr Ozdowski said the billion dollar system removed basic liberties from refugees, resulting in levels of despair unseen in detention camps elsewhere. 'It (Australia's system) is the harshest - the harshest mainly form the point of view of the length (of detention),' he told seminar guests at Monash University. 'I've never seen the level of despair (in camps anywhere) that I've seen in Australia.' He said the longest a child had been held in detention in Australia was five years, five months. By April this year, 50 children had been detained for more than two years. Dr Ozdowski ... said the social implications of indefinite detention were shattering. Family life disintegrated, people became suicidal and he had seen children as young as 10 with signs of self-harm. He quoted from one detainee who said "it's 16 months since my detention. My life has been taken away from me ... I've become a useless person who wishes for death every day." ...

Dr Ozdowski, who was once himself a Polish refugee, also said the government's system of temporary protection visas (TPVs) was "ill conceived" "I personally believe that the TPV system is a disaster and we'll be paying for it for a long time." ... He said the biggest human rights abuses had occurred during riots at the centres. "(It happened) where basically control was lost and gas was used and physical force was used." he said. "You just don't keep people imprisoned for a long time with no good reason."

Senator Vanstone issued a statement saying Australia was 'one of the great immigration success stories.' 'We have a generous, robust and ordered immigration system.' she said. (The Age, October 10, 2003)

* "The Commonwealth Ombudsman's office has confirmed it has received several complaints from detainees, particularly those put into detention centres with pre-existing medical conditions, claiming they have been denied treatment. ... One case being investigated by the Ombudsman involves a 37-year-old Lebanese man, Samir Abbas, who suffers from a heart condition known as Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome. He was put into Villawood in February after overstaying his visa. His lawyer, Stephen Hopper, says Mr Abbas has been refused permission to have a heart operation which doctors say would control his recurring heart palpitations. Mr Abbas has offered to pay for the operation. It is claimed Mr Abbas suffered an 'episode' with his heart on Friday, but despite repeated requests to be taken to hospital, Villawood guards refused to act until his lawyer went to the ABC [media]. After media broadcasts, he was taken by ambulance to Bankstown hospital and kept overnight. Villawood management was rebuked by the deputy state coroner last month over the death of a Thai prostitute in September 2001. Villawood medical staff had refused to take her to hospital." (Sydney Morning Herald, May 16, 2003)

* "The Government has been hiding the real reasons why a private company lost the contract to run six immigration detention centres. ... Also covering up the poor performance is the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (Dima), which is acting in the commercial interests of [...]

BRW has discovered a serious contractual breach relating to [...] and its handling of an escape that the department is keeping secret. Despite the seriousness of the breach - and the amount of about [AU]$90 million in taxpayer's money paid to the company for each year of the contract - the Federal Government refuses to disclose details about why a default notice was served on [...]. The disclosure of Dima's default notice adds to continuing revelations about [...'s] poor operating performance at the six centres. It also brings into question the Government's claim that [...] lost the contract to manage the detention centres because of poor value for money rather than poor performance.

After a lengthy freedom-of-information request that began in May 2002, BRW has established that the department secretary, Bill Farmer, or his agent, issued a default notice to [...] under the contract. ... As a sign of the seriousness of the breach, Dima is not letting BRW see the document because of the harm it would do to [...]. The assistant secretary of unauthorised arrivals and detention services, Jim Williams, wrote to BRW on September 5: "I believe that there is a real risk that disclosure of the document would cause unreasonable harm to [...'s] business reputation and potentially prejudice its ability to perform competitively in its industry." (Business Review Weekly, September 26, 2003)

Mr Williams need not have worried about [...'s] business fortunes though, the company that replaced it in 2002 as the contractor for Australian immigration detention centres is now the subject of a conditional takeover offer by a renamed and rebadged [...]. If the truth were known, he probably had more reason to be worried about the safety of his family or his personal reputation and career. He was dealing with the biggest, toughest and most highly connected corrections corporation in the whole American Military Industrial Complex (AMIC). Those 'Good-ol'-Boys' don't muck around, and few Australian bureaucrats have ever had to deal with anything like [...] before. They are putty in its hands.

While none of the global private prisons contractors now operating in Australia were involved in the following incident it is indicative of the industry that has developed in the US. The case is also quite revealing with regard to where the torture techniques recently reported at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad might have originated.

* "Another incident of brutality captured on videotape has sparked an investigation against a Texas prison and a lawsuit against the county that contracted with it. A video surfaced depicting guards brutalising inmates at the Brazoria County Detention Centre who had been recently transferred from overcrowded prisons in Missouri. The detention centre is owned and managed by a for-profit corporation, Capital Correctional Resources, Inc. (CCRI) under contract with Brazoria County. The video, which had been taped during a routine drug search, showed guards kicking the inmates, forcing them to craw on the floor, sicking guard dogs on them and prodding prisoner's buttocks with a stun gun."

The interrogators at Abu Ghraib were CIA but the guards were mainly contractors from the US prisons industry, perhaps some came from Brazoria County, Texas.

However, the point about the range of abuses listed is not who was responsible nor who was ultimately to blame. The truly concerning aspect is that governments throughout Australia have chosen to take prisons and detention centres in this country down the same privatisation path; to the same awful conditions and human rights abuses. There is so much documentation available on the failures of for-profit prisons in the US that the Australian decision makers would have had to be both uninformed and incompetent not to be aware of the facts about the records of the contractors they appointed.

Why then did they do it? We can only speculate, but it is likely that the inner circle of political and business 'heavy hitters' in this country feel comfortable with their own kind from America. Both groups feel threatened by the looming changes due to the digital revolution, and they both want to hang onto control at all costs. These people are not philosophers, they aren't deep thinkers, they are militarists, industrialists, and political warriors. Brutality and coercion appeal to them as means to keep the lid on the mega-change pressure cooker which this freesite terms the 2nd Renaissance.

In pursuing their goal of absolute control of every aspect of society these federal fascists will erode any vestiges of civilisation that remained at the end of 20th Century Dark Age. We need to discuss these trends on an Us-2Us basis, before they can take hold and do damage to innocent people in Australia, America, and other totalitarian-democracies.

A New Market In Body Parts - "Killing The Chicken To Scare The Monkey" [262]
While it has not yet happened in Australia or the US, there is a disturbing trend in other countries, notably China. There, body parts from executed prisoners are being offered for sale on the world market. Many of these harvested organs are going to American clients - that's globalisation for you folks, gruesome isn't it. Of course, China is an outright totalitarian state and such atrocities are to be expected there. However, the US and Australia are rapidly moving towards totalitarianism, under the cover of 'the war on terror'.

Presently, it is a felony to sell organs in the US, and there are fines up to US$50,000, and prison terms of up to 5 years. Nevertheless, Dr Thomas Diflo who is director of the renal transplant program at the New York University Medical Centre, has reported (in 2001) having seen a number of patients who had admitted to paying around US$10,000 for a replacement organ from executed Chinese prisoners. He said they showed little remorse regarding the source of their new kidneys, and were "ecstatic" to be taken off dialysis. So there's a need and there's a market. Since the US and Australia are already being run "by capitalists for capitalists", an unofficially sanctioned trade in organs harvested from prisoners could happen here, and sooner than we might think.

An article on the Village Voice web site, by Erik Baard and Rebecca Cooney, reports on reactions to Dr Diflo's revelation of the illegal trade in death row organs:

* "The trafficking of human organs from Chinese executions to American residents is "something we've always known was going on but something we've never been able to document," says an American investigator working for the Laogai Research Foundation, a group founded by renowned human rights crusader Harry Wu and named for the gulags of China."

* "When told that an American doctor was revealing his experiences, the laogai investigator, who asked that she not be identified because it would make her work in China impossible, pointed out that the opening comes at a critical time. Executions in China have surged to 400 in April alone as the Communist government conducts another of its periodic "strike hard" crackdowns on crime. ..."

*"It's for scaring criminals and scaring [and] controlling society," the investigator says. The approach is known as "killing the chicken to scare the monkey."

* "Executions come in floods, usually around the holidays, according to the investigator. This week, with the Labour Day celebrations that started May 1 is viewed by Chinese doctors as a particularly good time to get an organ, but there's no better time than the Lunar New Year, she added.

Most, "perhaps 70 percent," of the hospitals performing procedures are run by the military, which has the best connections, she explains. Money from patients purchasing organs is dispersed among those who provide access to the prisoner's body. Hospitals even pay judges to tip them off when they sentence a suitable donor to death. "The money goes to officials all the way up the line," she says. "It goes to the courts, the people in charge of the prisons. It goes to the doctors, the hospitals, everything."

* ".... the laogai [gulags] turned into Execution, Inc. less than 20 years ago after the introduction of cyclosporine, an immunosuppressant drug that prevents rejection of organs by the recipient's body."

* "Young, non-smoking prisoners are given blood tests and medical exams to assess compatibility with arriving patients, the investigator explains, and courts set execution dates accordingly."

China is one of several countries that presently executes women (the US is another). The number of cases of female executions is not easily determined, it is difficult enough to pin down the overall number of executions each year let alone the gender composition of those punished.

The Chinese government does not publish figures on executions but estimates from various human rights and other activist sources range between 3,000 and 15,000 pa. But by any measure, no regime executes more of its citizens than China does.

Recently the pace of executions has been accelerated and the procedures have been modernised. An article by the noted Australian journalist, Hamish McDonald (from Beijing, in March 2003), reported as follows.

* "China is equipping its courts with mobile execution vans as it shifts away from the communist system's traditional bullet in the head, towards a more "civilised" use of lethal injection.

Intermediate courts of the southern province of Yunnan were issued with 18 new execution vans on February 28 and a court official said some have already been used."

* "China's legal system allows only one appeal and lawyers say that less than 20 percent of defendants have professional legal representation. When appeals against the death penalty are rejected, the sentence is carried out immediately, sometimes within hours."

* "In Yunnan, as well as in the cities of Harbin and Shanghai, death on the road has replaced death row. The execution vans are converted 24-seater buses. The windowless execution chamber at the back contains a metal bed on which the prisoner is strapped down. A police officer presses a button and an automatic syringe plunges a lethal drug into the prisoner's vein. The execution can be watched on a video monitor next to the driver's seat and be recorded if required. ..."

The Village Voice article by Erik Baard and Rebecca Cooney adds:

* "The Chinese government published regulations in 1990, "On the Use of Dead Bodies or Organs From Condemned Criminals" stating that for a prisoner to be a donor, prior consent must be given by that person or remaining family, unless the body is unclaimed. Human rights activists scoff at that statement, noting that since prisoners are often kept from communicating with family members, there is no one to claim the body, which is harvested and cremated immediately. The government also requires that medical teams involved in the procurement of organs act stealthily: "Surgical vans must not display hospital logos; surgeons must not wear hospital uniforms when at the execution site; guards must be present until the organ is removed; and corpses should be promptly cremated following the removal of the organs."

* "The harvesting enrages physicians like Dr Diflo. "I think it's a gross violation of human rights and very much at odds with what the transplant community tries to promulgate as the way to go about things. This does not involve appropriate consent. I don't think prisoners are given the option of donating or not donating. It's not done from an altruistic point of view," Diflo says. Even putting aside his reservations about the death penalty, Diflo says, "The central issue is the nonconsensual taking of organs and making human body parts a commodity."

The Laogai investigator agrees. "It's very obviously profit-motivated because if the person can pay extra then they might be able to move up an execution date, or have it arranged for later," she says."

Don't think for a moment that what is happening in China today; "killing the chicken to scare the monkey" cannot happen in the USA or Australia. Federal and state governments have unenviable records on the privatisation of prisons and increasingly close associations with for-profit operators in both detention and health care. Australia has been condemned by the UN Human Rights Commission for its inhumane treatment of asylum seekers in detention facilities run by private contractors. Specifically, Australia's treatment of children in detention is the worst in the developed, and supposedly civilised, world. The Australian Feds say they are acting legally, and that they have laws in place to regulate private contractors and to cover themselves; just as the Chinese have laws regarding the "donation" of organs by executed persons, together with procedures and arrangements that enable a thriving industry in organ harvesting to circumvent those laws.

It is not a question of whether particular governments are communist, socialist or whatever. The truth is that once a regime becomes totalitarian, as China already is, it will choose to disregard the rights of its citizens and subject them to whatever atrocities suit its purpose.

The US and Australian feds are rapidly moving towards totalitarianism. It would seem to be only a matter of time before the death penalty is reintroduced in Australia and, once that happens, the way will be open for executions to be integrated with the harvesting of organs and body parts - as pioneered in China. Such trends need to be discussed urgently within an Us-2-Us process. More ordinary people need to be made aware of the prospects of their countries evolving into openly totalitarian states and of their present option of seceding from federal governments and setting up free cities. Obscenities such as organ harvesting from convicted persons will not occur in free cities, but there is a growing possibility that they will happen in totalitarian-democracies like Australia and the US.

But, before considering the implications of the death penalty, there is reason to consider how we already treat each other in relation to the imprisonment and punishment of women and their families. Great barbarity is going on right now in this area; within the ambit of the rule of law and the revenge and punishment systems of our "civilized" societies.

Related:

2nd Renaissance -34

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.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113003.php

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

The Chinese government does not publish figures on executions but estimates from various human rights and other activist sources range between 3,000 and 15,000 pa. But by any measure, no regime executes more of its citizens than China does.