2nd Renaissance -39 : Melbourne Indymedia

An Age of Double Standards and Unfairness [270]
The going down of the old Level 3 Civilization should not be regretted. It has been an age of hypocrisy, inequality, and double standards within the rule of law and its associated justice and corrections systems. If you consider this statement to be incorrect examine the following contrasts between the justice that murderesses like Karla Faye Tucker and Jean Lee received and the treatment accorded to victorious, and powerful, war criminals. There just isn't any balance whatsoever. There is one justice for the ruling elites and another for women like Karla Faye Tucker and Jean Lee.

The contrasts are right here in this freesite. Look back at the pictures of the DU babies in Afghanistan and recall the senseless slaughter of innocent civilians there for no real outcome and with no good reason. Think about the unprovoked invasion of Iraq on grounds that have since been shown to have been false. Recall the torture of captured Afghanis and Iraqis in places like Camp Xray and Abu Ghraib prison, that nobody at the top knew anything about. How many innocent people were killed or maimed or irradiated in the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq? Yes there were many, but the only casualties officially reported were those of 'coalition of the willing' soldiers, the civilian deaths, injuries, and ongoing illnesses aren't even being counted.

Then look at the crime of Karla Faye Tucker, she used a pickaxe to kill two people. That's right two. So no mercy for her from the Texas Board of Criminal Justice or the then Governor of Texas, George W. Bush. Karla, of course, very was unlucky: she was unlucky to be an attractive woman, she was unlucky to be a powerless member of society, and she was unlucky enough to live in Texas.

No other state in the Western world executes as many people as Texas. During the term of Governor Bush, between 1995 and 2000, one hundred and fifty two (152) people were executed in Texas. Karla Faye Tucker was one of them. But then, the people of Afghanistan and Iraq have been pretty unlucky too.

Earlier, on the other side of the Atlantic, Ruth Ellis had the dubious distinction of being the last woman executed in Britain (for the time being). There is no doubt that Ruth Ellis was guilty of murder, in 1955 she shot her lover David Blakely outside a pub in Hampstead, London. Having shot him once with a 38 calibre revolver she pursued him around his car and shot him again, as he fell to the ground she emptied the remaining four rounds into his body and was then arrested by an off-duty policeman, while still holding the smoking gun. A jury took just 14 minutes to convict her of murder and, because a mandatory death sentence then applied to this crime, the judge in the case directed that she be taken back to her place of confinement, Holloway Prison, and there hanged by the neck until dead.

Despite a huge public outcry this order was carried out expeditiously and Ruth Ellis was executed just three weeks and two days later, on 13th July, 1955. As a result of her case and the considerable pressure of public opinion the Homicide Act was subsequently amended (1957) to allow for the lesser charge of manslaughter to be applied in circumstance where there was a 'diminished responsibility' of the accused.

There was certainly diminished responsibility in Ruth Ellis' case. It was known at the time of her short trail, at which she appears to have pleaded 'not guilty' in order to have her side of the story told, that the man she killed regularly assaulted her. Just 10 days prior to the murder she had suffered a miscarriage and ended up in hospital, after Blakely had punched her in the stomach. It was also known that an unnamed man had not only provided her with the 38 calibre revolver she used to kill her unfaithful lover, but had also taken her to Epping Forest and showed her how to use it. Finally, this man is alleged to have driven Ruth to the pub in Hampstead where David Blakely was drinking, and where she shot and killed him.

Although Ruth would not name the man to her defence team his description, provided by witnesses at the scene of the shooting, fitted that of another of her lovers Desmond Cussens. Despite the fact that this new information was provided to the Home Secretary before the execution of Ruth Ellis, it appears to have been disregarded, and certainly Cussens subsequently lived out a natural lifespan and died many years later, without ever having been charged with any role in the murder of David Blakely.

At a 2002 hearing before the Court of Appeal, instigated by Ruth's family and supporters to try to clear her name of murder and have the lesser charge of manslaughter recorded, it was alleged that Ruth had been sexually abused by her father and that she had been beaten by her husband as well as David Blakely. It was also argued, on the evidence of a midwife who saw Ruth in the street the night that she shot Blakely, that she was "stressed and weeping". Ruth was alleged to have told the midwife: "It's my boyfriend. He's in there with another woman. He won't let me in!" On the basis of this and other evidence it was alleged at the appeals hearing that Ruth Ellis had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, even though this condition hadn't been medically defined at the time of her trial. As one commentary on the WWW puts it:

* "Her crime was at least somewhat understandable unlike those who rape and murder small children and are outside the understanding of most of us.

She showed remorse and willingness to accept responsibility for her crime having made no attempt to run away or hide the truth of what she did or of what she had intended."

* "Ruth had many qualities that engendered great public interest, she was an attractive, sexy young woman, a mother of two small children and a murderer whose victim was probably seen by most people as not entirely blameless. Her crime could hardly be described as "evil", a subjective concept admittedly, but a very important one in the minds of the general public in determining the justice of a case. She also behaved with great courage at all times, which no doubt, earned her considerable respect."

* "Although she was found to be legally sane she was also clearly not entirely "normal" in any accepted sense of the word. Normal people do not have such complete disregard for their own lives and more particularly for the lives of their children (Her son ... later committed suicide.)"

The execution of Ruth Ellis was, nevertheless, a foregone conclusion in 1955. The jury had no option to find her guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter because it didn't exist at the time. Similarly, the judge was obliged under the Homicide Act to apply the mandatory death sentence. Only the Home Secretary could grant her clemency, as had been done for ninety percent of the women convicted of murder in Britain that century. But he choose not to do son in Ruth's case, even though he had reprieved the death sentence for a woman who had murdered her next door neighbour with a shovel, just one week earlier. He had also reprieved two male murderers, one at the same time as the woman and the other some 3 months earlier.

Circumstances might also have conspired against Ruth because it happened that when the new evidence of a male accomplice came to light and was tendered immediately to the Permanent Secretary, he was out at the races that afternoon and her new statement was left with another official, who simply did nothing with it.

In keeping with the medieval notion of severe punishment for violations of the Rule of Law, Ruth Ellis' execution was a brutal affair. The following excerpts of an account of the rituals performed in Holloway Prison that July morning in 1955, make grim reading.

* "On the Tuesday evening, the eve of the hanging, the Governor at Holloway was forced to call for police reinforcements because the crowd of more than 500 who had gathered outside the prison's gates singing and chanting for Ruth for several hours. some of them broke through the police cordon to bang on the prison gates, calling for Ruth to pray for them.

Inside the usual preparations had been made. Ruth had been weighed and the correct length of drop calculated. The gallows had been tested on the Tuesday afternoon using a sand bag of the same weight as Ruth, which was left overnight on the rope to remove any stretch. Around 7.00 a.m. on the morning of the execution the trap was reset and the rope coiled up so as to leave the leather covered noose dangling at chest height above the trap. A cross had been placed on the far wall of the execution room at Ruth's request."

* "In her cell Ruth wrote a letter to David's mother apologising for killing him and finished her letter to Leon Simmons [the lawyer attending to her will]. She was given canvas pants to wear which had been compulsory for female prisoners since the Edith Thompson debacle [it had been rumoured that her underwear was covered in blood after her hanging in 1923,]. She was also given a large brandy just before 9.00 a.m. by the prison doctor to steady her nerves and was attended by a Catholic Priest."

* "A few seconds before nine o'clock [the executioner] entered her cell, pinioned her hands behind her back with his special soft calf leather strap and led her the 15 feet to the gallows. [The executioner] recalled that Ruth said nothing at all during her execution. When she reached the trap a white cotton hood was drawn over her head and the noose adjusted round her neck. His assistant, ... , pinioned her legs with a leather strap and when all was ready stepped back allowing [the executioner] to remove the safety pin from the base of the lever and push it away from him to open the trap through which she now plummeted.

The whole process would have occupied no more than ten or twelve seconds and her now still body was examined by the prison doctor before the execution room was locked up and she was left hanging for the regulation hour."

* "Ruth's body was buried within Holloway prison around lunchtime, in accordance with her sentence, but later disinterred and reburied in a churchyard in Buckinghamshire when Holloway was rebuilt in the 1970's."
Regarding the decision not to grant a reprieve of execution for Ruth Ellis the Home Secretary is said to have noted:

* "Our law takes no account of the so-called crime passionel, and I am not prepared to differentiate between the sexes on the grounds that one sex is more susceptible to jealousy than the other. In the present circumstances, the woman was as unfaithful to her lover as he was to her. If a reprieve were to be granted in this case, I think we should have seriously to consider whether capital punishment should be retained as a penalty." [Amen to that.]

The Home Secretary then revealed his prejudice:

* "On meeting Blakely and realising that his class was very much above her own, and finding he was sufficiently interested in her to live with her, it seems she was prepared to go to any lengths to keep him. Finding this impossible, she appears to have decided to wreak her vengeance on him."

It wasn't just sex and morals that reared their head in Ruth's case it was class distinctions as well. Had she been a blue blood she might have fared somewhat better.

Just as Karla Faye Tucker was many years later, Ruth Ellis was unlucky. She was unlucky to be an attractive woman, she was unlucky to be a powerless member of the British nation state, and she was unlucky enough to live in a class-conscious society with barbarous, mandatory laws and penalties.

But then, the people of Dresden and the large numbers of refugees that filled the city, were similarly unlucky just over 10 years before Ruth met her fate at the hands of the British establishment. Recall that the registered number of deaths at Dresden in 1945 totalled some 480,000 of which 46,000 were school children and 37,000 were infants and toddlers.

Ruth Ellis killed one man who had been sleeping around, and who had violently assaulted her on many occasions.

In Ruth's case the judge was not primarily to blame for the brutal outcome of her execution, he had no option but to apply the death sentence because it was mandatory at the time, (he could, however, have declined to serve as a judge in such a mandatory system). The law that hanged Ruth Ellis permitted no consideration of any diminished responsibility or special circumstances.

Whether to grant a reprieve was the decision of the Home Secretary; at the time a military man and later a Lord of the Realm. He had been brought up on killing and class barriers and he was disinclined to extend mercy to a person of Ruth's status and morals. He pretty much said so in his note on the decision to let her hang.

The judge might have erred in deciding that there was insufficient evidence to support a verdict of manslaughter on the grounds of provocation (which is really what Ruth's crime was), but he faced the dilemma that she qualified for a conviction of murder on the two legal grounds that had to apply. The prosecution had to prove, firstly, that Ruth actually killed David Blakely (called "actus reas" or the "guilty act") and secondly that she fully intended to kill him (termed "mens rea" or the "guilty mind"). Ruth had clearly killed her victim and she had freely admitted her intention to do so. There was nowhere for the judge to go.

After the judge denied the submission of the defence for a manslaughter verdict Ruth's lead defence counsel, in protest, declined to sum up the evidence for the defence, saying: "In view of the ruling which your Lordship has just pronounced I cannot now in propriety address the jury al all, because it would be impossible for me to do so without inviting them to disregard your Lordship's ruling." Ruth was thus denied her wish to have her story of the events surrounding the killing of David Blakely aired in court.

Contrast the killing of David Blakely by Ruth Ellis and the firebombing of Dresden on the orders of the British High Command in World War II. Did the high command intend to kill Germans, including the many civilians who took shelter in Dresden believing that it would not be targeted? The answer is obviously yes, Britain had been first to declare war on Germany in September, 1939 after their various ultimatums for a Nazi withdrawal from Poland were ignored. The legal point is clear, Britain declared war and in so doing displayed an intention to kill ('mens rea').

Secondly, hundreds of thousands of German civilians were killed by the R.A.F and the U.S.A.F. as a result of the deliberate creation of fire storms across Dresden. There is not a shadow of a doubt that horrendous incendiary weapons, consisting of phosphorous, magnesium and petroleum, were rained down on Dresden causing an enormous death toll. It is a fact that 1 n 5 German non-combatants who died in WWII met their deaths as a result of the firebombing of Dresden - 'actus reas' the guilty act is undeniable - The British and Americans did kill those people.

No one has been or ever will be charged or convicted for the Dresden war crime. Victors of wars are never tried, they are rewarded with medals and titles instead. They are murderers nevertheless, and far worse human beings than Ruth Ellis and Karla Faye Tucker ever were. Moreover, despite their titles, medals and other honours, those perpetrators of the Dresden raid are not real men. Real men don't kill women and children.

The problem with capital punishment is that it is never applied in a fair and balanced manner, nor is it ever likely to be. In these circumstances there is only one decent thing to do, abolish the death penalty and remove mandatory sentencing from the statute books. There is of course an even better thing to do; abandon the flawed and brutish civilization that espouses the Rule of Law while tolerating double standards in its application. Build a new, Level 4 Civilization that has no such injustices.

Interestingly, nation states have ceased making declarations of war; perhaps on the advice of their war crimes lawyers, that they leave themselves too open to 'mens rea' interpretations. None of the COW nations declared war on Afghanistan before they invaded it, nor did they declare war on Iraq. They simply attacked and assured the world that their murderous actions were justified and 'legal'. It might, depending on the depths of dishonesty that the various legislatures of nation states are prepared to sink to, be deemed 'legal' to blow the limbs off infants in front of their parents or rain radioactive matter over dwellings, cultivated land and water courses. But it will never, ever, be moral.

Mandatory Laws Are Proliferating [271]
People need to be aware that not only is the punishment system that is called justice, unfair and inhuman, it is rapidly becoming harsher and even more unjust. Mandatory sentencing in the form of 'three strikes' 'zero tolerance" and other legislation and policies devised to 'crack down' on crime are filling the prison factories. The people being incarcerated are the ones with 'unlucky' profiles; poor people, powerless people, illiterate people, drug addicted people, jobless people, homeless people, itinerant people, black people.

Not only are more people going to prison, they are going there for longer terms. Nor is it hardened street criminals and drug pushers who are being increasingly incarcerated, it is young people out of their luck, it is single mothers struggling to bring up children, it is ordinary people who are finding it harder and harder to cope with the impacts of globalisation on employment, it is sick people who can't afford health care, it is people whom you wouldn't have thought would ever end up in jail.

This trend in the imprisonment of misfits has happened before - long ago in Renaissance Europe. it is sure to get worse before it gets better. It is a growing threat to anybody and everybody who can't quite 'catch the wave' of globalisation; farmers who can't afford to pay multinational corporations for new seed for every crop because the last crop they grew used seeds that had been genetically modified to produce only sterile plants, native people who can't even produce and use their traditional remedies anymore without paying royalties to some 'researchers' in the US or Europe who have patented them. There are many other examples, but you get the idea.

Don't dismiss the problem of harsher laws and mandatory sentencing as something that affects 'them' but not you and your children. The record from Renaissance Europe suggests that as the ruling elites feel their grip on power being eroded by new technologies and the spread of information and ideas, they will react with torture, imprisonment and death. 'Killing the chicken to scare the monkey' will become a standard federalist tactic for maintaining control over increasingly restless populations in the West's major democracies.

Borders will be tightened, surveillance will be increased, death penalties will be reintroduced and made mandatory for a wider range of crimes, torture will be sanctioned (the 2nd Inquisition), prison terms will be lengthened and parole options will be limited. The practice of contracting executions out to for-profit corporations will grow, with a nice little earner on the side in the marketing of body parts.

We are living through the downfall of a whole system of civilization, and growing chaos is inevitable. All the while the snowmen and the parrot people will trumpet the 'advances' being made in the War On Terror (aka War On Freedom) and lionise 'good' citizens such as federal agents, police, border guards, and the like. Citizens will be encouraged to inform on each other to 'keep our country safe'. This had already started to happen. It will accelerate as the threat of people breaking away from the control of the old order increases.

Related:

2nd Renaissance -38

The prison system has never been reformed except in name. The prison system is, by now, incapable of reform, and the same can be said for the law enforcement and justice systems which feed it. This reality applies in most nation states within the old Level 3 Civilization, it is not confined to Australia, Britain and the USA. But that doesn't make it right for those administrations to be engaging in the incarceration of women and children. The practice is barbaric wherever it is practiced and by whomever it is authorised and administered.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113687.php

2nd Renaissance -37

The World Organisation for Human Rights USA site also documents another innovation that enables guards to control greater numbers of prisoners, with consequent savings in operating costs.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113467.php

2nd Renaissance -36

It is not fanciful to believe that criminals can be rehabilitated or that the harm they have caused might be repaired, various tribal societies managed to achieve such outcomes for thousands of years. It can be done, and discussing the presently catastrophic regimes of justice and incarceration will lead people to fathom ways of doing so again, within a Level 4 Civilization.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113284.php

2nd Renaissance -35

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.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113143.php

New Strategy for an Autonomous Politics

My aim in this article is to present some hypotheses on issues of strategy for anti-capitalist emancipatory movements. The idea is to rethink the conditions for an effective politics, with the capacity to radically change the society we live in. Even if I will not have the space to analyze concrete cases, these reflections are not a purely "theoretical" endeavor, but spring from the observation of a series of movements I had the chance to be part of -the movement of neighbor's assemblies in Argentina, some processes of the World Social Forum, and other global networks- or that I followed closely in the past years -the piquetero (unemployed) movement also in Argentina, and the Zapatistas in Mexico.

http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2006/05/113147.php

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

Borders will be tightened, surveillance will be increased, death penalties will be reintroduced and made mandatory for a wider range of crimes, torture will be sanctioned (the 2nd Inquisition), prison terms will be lengthened and parole options will be limited. The practice of contracting executions out to for-profit corporations will grow, with a nice little earner on the side in the marketing of body parts.