Welcome to the Fascist States of America, Australia, Britain, Canada and now New Zealand. Australia, NZ and Canada have yet to experience a terrorist threat, so one might wonder why we need laws which allow the government to 'snoop' into people's emails and hard disks. On this note, we have to appreciate that the terrorists have one. Why? We have become one of them. They might well be envious because they have only guns to control their citizens, but the 'British subject' has his thoughts controlled. Yes, everything I think goes onto my hard disk, and those who don't think live in freedom. Its the perfect fascist state. It will turn us all to sheep, for those of you who have not been turned to sheep already.
Why is this a problem? Well, there are several reasons:
1. The law can be poorly executed
2. The law can result in mis-use or treatment of property
3. The law can result in property seizures and confiscations
4. People who are merely opposed to government can have their property seized and destroyed.
5. People who are political opponents of government can have 'incriminating' files placed on such 'seized' property, and probably be incarcerated indefinitely.
6. It allows the government to identify the 'political threats' to its existence and to 'terminate' them.
The problem of course is that these fears do not register in the minds of the general populous, who would never give a thought to political implications. They live at the level of a sheep, never questioning anything. So, what can we expect? Well, non-registered journalists like myself who have a few blogs under a pseudonym the government does not know about, who talk about a broad array of public policy issues like rape, domestic violence, terrorism, taxation, pedophilia, rights, political persecution, are likely to come up on some database as a threat. Because I am not a registered journalist, therefore for some unthinking bureaucrat a 'plausible threat' I can expect a squad of anti-terrorists to break into my property and seize property. If the contents of the computer do not agree with the government, I might well expect to lose them. There is no reason why they could not plant material on the computer. Why? Because they don't like my political opinions. Because I am not tolerable. Because I am an activist showing contempt for what they believe in.
We might wonder why is terrorism getting so much attention. We have many more babies being killed by domestic violence, but we do search and seizures for parenting classes. We do not take a register of people not attending parenting classes; and yet there is an equally good correlation. The difference is that many more children are killed of domestic violence in NZ than by terrorism; for which the number is zero. That is right, we are considering anti-terrorism laws despite NZ never having had a terrorist attack. Over-reaction? I think so.
It gets worse. Governments are the worst offenders of the law, whether you are talking about 'the rule of law', or simply moral law because 'popularity' or 'emergency provisions' or the 'common good' was considered an adequate (but arbitrary) protection of people's interests.
It gets worse. How can we expect foreign governments to adopt rights if we give token consideration to them. If we look like hypocrites to the developing world, or even our own people, what expectation can be have that those people will respect rights. The reason why government is such a threat is because they are not governed by the 'commonsense' common law. They are only accountable to the statutory law prepared by themselves. That's right, we are protected by them for us, but we are not protected from them. They are subjected to no accountability. The token vote you have at the end of the will mean little because there will only be two parties. How can there be a 'charismatic' alternative leader. He would have had his computers seized and evidence planted on him. You, as an unthinking sheep, will not join the dots. No one will risk joining the dots. We already live in a terrorist state. Some 200 journalists go missing or are assassinated in the Philippines each year, more in Russia, the Western governments say nothing....they do nothing. Why? They join us fighting for rights in foreign countries whilst our own rights are whittled away at home. They are not withdrawn, they are just undermined by statutory law. It defines rights in such arbitrary ways, that they are readily loopholed. They are 'arbitrary' laws that have no correspondence to reality. They are specific and concrete, and allow the government to loophole the law in the same way as companies are efficacious at loopholing tax. Which requires ever-more draconian measures to prevent tax evasion. The reality is that business is always going to be further ahead, but now business simply collects tax for the government. This is fascism at its worst, because now we have business organisations sanctioning taxation.
There are no reasonable grounds to suggest that NZ is under threat. People might argue that this intrusion into our privacy is intended to protect us. It might, but the problem is that it will not protect you from government, and they are a 'sovereign' threat to you. Even America will not invade NZ, because it likes these policies as well. So we will have to look to Iran and North Korea for rights, and they don't have any either.
If you want a sense of just how useless the United Station Declaration of Human Rights is, or the NZ Bill of Rights is, simply look at this law. I have long known that we were trending towards fascism. If you want a comparison consider this. In the lead up to World War II, the biggest exponent of animal rights was Hitler....and the national car plan - the Volkswagen. John Key has not found his 'national plan' yet, except perhaps his national day of mourning (Pike River), but we have today more concern for the rights of farm animals (i.e. the prohibition on pig enclosures - sow grates) than we do with human rights. We might wonder whether Hitler ever intended to elevate human rights, or to diminish the rights or value of the human populous.
There is no reason to think that the World Rugby Cup will pose any greater threat than any other event. After all, why would you attempt to blow up a stadium. You will have far more collateral damage if you blog us a shopping mall. Less security, more contained, less immediate threat. The malls are open every day, thousands of people to search, multiple entries, emergency exits. Few if any police. Why would you target a stadium. Better to blow something up when foreign journalists are in town; but does it really matter, as all media is syndicated these days. By todays standards, its the number of deaths which matter. A shopping centre would actually have a greater fear factor....as we all go shopping at least once a week, compared to attending the football.
The reality is that the intent to enact these laws is not about justice, its about political control. We never really left fascism. The 'New Deal' of Roosevelt after WWII was not the end of political tyranny, it was the start of a new form of it.
I really think people have to start fighting for their rights, because there is no place left on the planet to hide. I am giving serious consideration to becoming a mindless 'hobo'. Having a mind these days is inclined to give you a bad case of anxiety. Its too late. People carry to much, where its through evasion, psychological repression or simply rationalisation. They will do this to the grave because they do not think long term. They are not interested in the intellectual or political legacy they are leaving their children...they are thinking about the next year tops.
What they do not realise is that...the repudiation of the mind is sending us back to the Dark Ages. We are already close to this point. We are controlled by a mindless majority. Specialisation of industry has delivered vast wealth, but it has left our lives controlled by compartmentalised thinkers performing mindless 'specialised' routines without any thought for politics or morality. Why? Because they have no real vote....just the pretense of one. No one expects their vote to make a difference, so they just turn off. Unless voters turn back on and start protesting, things are going to get worse. It is far worse than they know. It is not the misery of war. It is the misery of centuries of silent defeat and stagnation. This email might well be your last beacon of light. If this legislation is past, anyone who writes such material will disappear, they will be arrested for homosexuality, child pornography. It does not matter. Anything which you can make us, stick evidence on their computers, and arbitrarily detain them in a gaol, and no one will care. We have got to the point where people don't care. There is no empathy. People will say, "He's rich, he can afford taxation", or they will say "If he didn't want to go to gaol, he should have just kept his mouth shut". These comments herald the decline of society into moral relativism. It follows moral scepticism or ambivalence. People do not need to be moral, they need to discover what morality entails. Principles....common law...not arbitrary statutory law.
This law is probably be the most important one in terms of marking our transition to a police state. After NZ, there are less regulated states one could go to, but those options like the Philippines or Thailand are probably going to see you tracked down by local assassins. Its cheaper for the government. If you think this is not happening, consider what is happening to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. The US government is using hackers to undermine his interests, they have discredited his reputation with accusations of rape....by two women no less...because who would believe it if it was one....despite the fact that he had no previous sexual offences....suddenly he has multiple offences. In the Philippines, there are about 200 journalists who have been killed under the Aquino Administration. The West might be just about to see its first one...but it will not be the last. Any appreciated blogger could be the next target. We are also witnessing a new form of corporate complicity....the server administrator who will do anything to stop the government hacking its web site. The government of course does not need to acknowledge that it is the government...it acts stealthly....just as those traceless 'radar-proof' planes that fly into foreign territories....with much to hide and without accountability.
The implication is that censorship is outmoded. Today, you might well be identified before you can even 'think' about matters contrary to government policy. Governments will have plenty of support from nationalists. In NZ, it will be mostly the old people. The young will just be indifferent and morally ambivalent. In the US, the military, religious nutters will be foot soldiers for the government, hacking into the websites of people whose values are contrary to the interests of the government. You will still live in a democracy; the term will just simply come to mean something very different to what you thought. You probably did not associate democracy with tyranny, the right of the majority to expunge the minority, but that's what you voted for. You just didn't think. Rights were supposed to be a protection. They were 'natural laws'. They have been supplanted by 'obligations' or conditional rights. Of course gradually there are more conditions, and those rights seem to mean even less. Censorship? Its a think of the past. The media is aligned with the government because they want the press release, and bloggers who get a certain number of hits are subjected to 'warnings' or simply their website is hacked by former military personnel. That is your future.
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Author
Andrew Sheldon
