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

The Australian Dream

It used to mean that everyone aspired to home ownership of a detached dwelling in the suburban fringe. In the 90s various factors reduced it to maybe a semi-detached or a flat. In the 21st Century the meaning of the word dream has switched from aspiration to dim hope.

This means in practice that 50% of the current generation of new entrants to the workforce will never own a home. They will be tenants, for life.

In Queensland, various reforms to the rental environment coupled with a sort of institutionalized land-lord sneer mean that leases are short, 6 or 12 months and are often not renewed (churning tenants lets them raise rent more than 5% or so a year that is considered reasonable on a renewal). Additionally tenants live under rules that are more like those that apply to guests in hotels or boarding houses. No hanging pictures, even with Blue Tac. No redecorating, no leaving one's imprint on ones home. No permanence, which means effectively no accumulating more possessions than you can afford to move every year or two.

There is no right or even expectation of pet ownership. There is no right to run even a hobby business from home. Many leases ban parking commercial vehicles on the property. Inspections are often every 3 months, and passing or failing is often subjective and arbitrary.

Legislation is overwhelmingly in the landlords favour. House washed away by flood, tenant pays rent until they lodge the forms to terminate the lease due to the premises being uninhabitable. Basic maintenance not done, the default response of the regulator is to offer the Tenant the option to terminate the lease without penalty, rather than enforcing minimum standards of habitability.

Australia needs to overhaul the concept of residential tenancy over the next decade to give the growing underclass the opportunity to establish roots and connections to their community.

Corporationism

Someone in the US has noticed, but doesn't seem to have heard of National Socialism. The fascists in Germany in the 1930s called their party and system National Socialist. Like Mussolini in Italy, Hitler felt that the Government needed only the rich and the working class... Don't blame socialism which is working quite well in Australia where the AUD is high, crime rates are low and there is universal unemployment payments without time limits and a universal healthcare safety net. From a government that costs no more than that of the US.

Dylan Ratigan writes:

The Cost of Corporate Communism