Regulating blogging in Australia

So, the Finkelstein Inquiry has recommended regulation of "news" blogs that get 15,000 hits a year. Thats a bit over 40 a day. If more that 40 people read this post, apparently that would mean this post, cross-posted with my Google+ and my facebook page, may qualify me for regulation.

Ignoring the faint sound of marching jackboots, and the dampening effect on anonymous commentary, who the hell is going to pay the armies of regulators to peer over our shoulders.

Please comment so I know if I'm at risk of being regulated for the sin of posting topical and often political material.

Secularism AND Humanism

Secularism says basically whatever your religious position/philosophy, including atheism, it is irrelevant in the eyes of the law. Secularism does not necessarily preclude strange rituals and prohibitions, it does however stand against any group being able to impose their rituals and prohibitions on even their own members and adherents in anything but a voluntary capacity.

Humanism is the idea that just because a holy book or quasi-historical figure or leader (spiritual or temporal) says "Thou Shalt" or "Thou Shalt Not" does not carry any weight above and beyond the deliberations and decisions of rational human beings working together to create a mutually agreed set of rules by which to live. They are often traveling in the same direction but they are horses of rather different colours.

Gods in Wicca

I often explain the Wiccan "belief" in gods as like the western cultural belief in Bugs Bunny .

When I say Bugs Bunny, you have a picture in your mind, and we have communicated much ancillary matter by holding that common cultural icon in our minds. When a historian or Asatru or Marvel comic fan says "Thor" likewise there is an immediate mutual understanding (and grounds for endless dispute, discussion and exploration of the nature of that divine entity).

Individual Wiccan belief in Gods varies from a simplistic adoration of a pair of pseudo-parental Sky Fairies one Male one Female, to a non-theistic interpretation that draws strongly on the work of Jung on Archetypes. WIccans are not defined by a common doctrine, but only by a reverential attitude to nature and the place of human beings in it; acknowledgement of the power of romantic and sexual love and the duality of masculine and feminine natures; and a dual solar/lunar ritual calendar. Beyond that everything is up to individual interpretation.

FOOs

Forces

Of

Occupation.

Doesn't matter if the Jackboot pressing on your neck is worn by an Alien Space Bat; a member of the Bananian Army; an Officer of the Special Police; a regular beat cop or some guy from the department of agriculture, once they strap on those Jackboots they become the Forces of Occupation.

Subject, Citizen, Comrade, it matters not what you used to think of yourself as, you are now just a doormat.

In the 19th Century we could look back fondly at the 18th century revolutions, but from automatic rifle to Predator/Reaper/Avenger drone the asymmetry between "we the public" no matter how well armed and military might has grown from merely overwhelming to defying quantification. The Eureaka Stockade fell to superior training and equipment deployed with the unwavering willingness of Jackbooted thugs to act in a dishonourable manner. The Spanish Civil War saw Franco's triumph in part due to provision of state of the art aircraft by the Italians and Germans and the blockade preventing similar aid reaching the Republicans.

As the 20th Century wore on, we saw the limit of oppression being only the intestinal fortitude of the oppressors. With a few horrifying exceptions, there have been limits to how cold blooded the oppressors are willing to be. Where they have acted without qualms, the atrocities have been devastating and crushing.

In the 21st Century we are forced to confront the fact that where the rule of law loses the power to protect us, the military and the increasingly indistinguishable paramilitarized police can hunt us down and kill us at whim, limited only by their willingness to accept collateral casualties and their own core humanity. The moment they take a page from the history of the SS and start executing random civilians in retaliation for resistance, we are lost.

That raises a new specter. DNA testing means that the families of resistance fighters and revolutionaries can be targeted even where there is no traditional evidence to form links. Perhaps we have reached the point where only an orphan can oppose the might of the state.

When dreams are thoughtcrime

I dream that our children will live in a world where secular and humanist democracy still exists.

A world where everyone is free to have a religion and to change from one religion to another or none at all.

Free to think, to believe, to speak and most importantly to dream.

That dream seems distant some days, unachievable others. We live in an age of dark age theofascists howling at the gates of civilization determined to tear them down. Our votes are all that stand in their way. As a wise man once said, there may not be someone you want to vote for, but there is almost always someone you want to vote against.

Australia Day

Well, it is Australia Day. There are things to celebrate, like Governor Arthur Phillip's formal extension of religious tolerance to Catholic transportees, his assertion of the illegality of slavery and his early attempts to treat the Aboriginal people with respect and extend to them the protection of law.

There is much to regret, from the invasion and enclosure of Aboriginal lands echoing the tragic mistreatment of the Scots and Irish before them to the disgrace of blackbirding compounded by the insult of The White Australia policy.

Australia is still, despite the efforts of some, a secular, religiously and racially and culturally diverse nation of immigrants and outcasts brought together by common belief in a fair go and honest dealing.

Each of us has much to celebrate, and much to contemplate, we can revel in our achievements without forgetting te mistakes made along the way.

Fascism

I've given up hope on Democracy and decided to devote myself to developing jackboot soles that are more comfortable on the neck...

On Corporate Personhood

The idea of a Legal Person in contrast to a Natural Person has its roots in the need for a corporation to be able to to contract and to sue and be sued.

The United States has a strange relationship with the quaint dialect of English they use, with its old fashioned spelling and bizarre proliferation of rules and mnemonics to impose a pretence of order on the chaos of arguably the worlds most dynamic and nuanced language. Their dictionaries don't document the way people use language, but rather legislate on correct usage, condemning inovation as deviation. This is reflected in their culture in many ways: Biblical Literalism, based not on careful study of Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek and Latin, but on Johny come lately English translations, many drawn largely from the King James Bible, which while great literature, at best a peculiar translation of the deeply flawed Vulgate; Belief in the literal existence of not just a personal little-voice-in-the-head Jesus but an equally real (and external) Satan; Belief by half the protestant clergy in a "young" earth, code in too many cases for a belief the world is absolutely flat. This pops up in the most unexpected places, attempting to rewrite reality to confirm with flawed, limited and outdated uses of words.

The US Constitution grants certain rights and privileges to Citizens. It restricts the full privileges of Citizenship to a small minority of the population, and over the last 2 centuries that has been expanded to include many classes of person as citizens and to offer some rights to non-citizens. Fundamental to the contract with the states embodied in the US Constitution is that the Citizen is an Adult, in their right mind, possessed of free will and able to act free of co-ercion or the will of another. What is peculiar is that a Corporation is, fundamentally, not a free adult in full possession of its faculties, but rather has aspects of a slave, or a minor, or a person of limited mental capacity or awareness for whom a guardian has been appointed by the courts or a power of attorney exists created in better days against need.

A Corporate Person cannot decide to sue someone, that decision is taken by the Directors (or at the smallest scale the Proprietor). A Corporation cannot swear an oath standing in the docks, a proxy appears bearing notes and records just as would happen if Grandma were in a facility for the terminally bewildered. A Corporation is owned, fundamentally it lacks both free will and freedom of action.

A Corporate Person has no rights, despite the madness of attempting to apply the rights of a (natural) person to what is in essence a legal shortcut. A Corporate Person does have obligations, both the obvious fiscal ones to pay taxes, debts and compensation for wrongs, and the more nebulous but more important one to work within society towards the goals of society. That obligation can be summed up by Wil Wheaton's immortal words "Don't be a dick."

My Will is a Sword

My Will is a Sword

Wrought in Volcanic Fire

Forged on an Anvil of Ice

Quenched in an Ancient Sea

Sharper than Thought

Stronger than Fear

My Will is a Sword