With regard to your article "Jack Straw, Corruption, and the New World
Order" (Free Life No.37, September 2000), perhaps
there is another explanation. If it is a conspiracy per se,
it is an American one.The American government has expended an
enormous and still expanding amount of political capital on the Drug
War; it has created a gigantic drug welfare class (The DEA and all
those associated); as much as they throw at it they cannot make much
headway. But they cannot be seen to have been abject failures for 30
years. To have essentially flushed hundreds of billions of dollars
down the toilet and trashed the constitution for nothing.The new
frontier in their desperation to delay the ultimate payback for their
malfeasance is the international front. This started with
Reagan's full scale invasion of the sovereign nation of Panama
for no real reason other than to arrest the head of state of that
country, a non-citizen acting in a non-American country under
American laws.The same forces are now pushing them to work more and
more outside the US because the electorate of that nation are
starting to become restive and have even caused new measures to be
withdrawn or some old ones to be weakened.So for the reasoning behind
what you see in the destruction of banking privacy and the creation
of extraterritoriality, look to America.And perhaps check old photos
to see which CIA agent is twisting Mr Straw's arm.Yours
sincerely,
Dale Amon amon@vnl.com Sir, With
regard to your last Editorial ("Thoughts
on the DNA Database", Free Life No.37, September
2000), you had me until you suggested legalizing drugs. I agree with
everything else you said. My taekwondo teacher is taking care of an
infant who is addicted to cocaine. Many libertarians assume that
using drugs is a victimless crime. Well, it's not. All I have to
do is look at this little boy to know how false that is. And he's
not the first I have known. All I can say is that we can deal with
crime without legalizing such a dangerous and damaging practice. We
have to. Yours sincerely, Pat Goltz Sir, I found your last Editorial
(("Thoughts on the DNA
Database", Free Life No.37, September 2000) very
persuasive - well said: apart from the somewhat intemperate idea that
slightly deranged rural gentry can pursue wrong-doers and execute
them ... some of us on the Left might, in any case (in relation to
the owners of substantial property), ask: can property, under certain
circumstances, be theft? To what extent was Australia thieved from
its inhabitants ... and could aborigines pursue through terror the
beneficiaries of the theft ? Not in any sensible way of handling
matters - so stealing the prospects for education, healthcare and
basic income capable of raising a family of working people in favour
of property rights based on in-built social and cultural advantages
cuts away at respect for those legitimate property rights. A social
bond weakens and an ethic of banditry, especially amongst the young,
is created which tough sentencing will not eliminate, and, with
de facto popular support, raises vast funds through illicit
trades which build up violent criminal organisations. The
relationship between legitimate social war and crime is fascinating -
after all, some of the Columbian peasantry have no other source of
income than coca growing and if idiot over-stressed corporate
Americans wish to destroy their noses, then surely the balance of
evil lies in failing to legitimise and regulate the trade rather than
let Medellin thugs become working class heroes and so raise vast
funds through illicit trades for criminal organisations. We are
caught between Tory and Third Way stupidity and immorality. Yours
sincerely, Tim Pendry TAPendry@aol.com
Regarding your last Editorial (("Thoughts on the DNA Database",
Free Life No.37, September 2000), I must admit, the proposal
to store DNA samples doesn't get me too steamed up, provided the
arrestable offence is serious enough to warrant it, for example
serious enough to justify taking fingerprints according to current
practice, and is not just a pretext for obtaining as many samples as
possible (for example after an arrest for riding a bicycle after dark
with defective lights!) or, worse still, a step on the way to storing
a DNA sample of every individual in the land.
But this DNA proposal is only one of an endless number of potential
developments in the area of traceability and surveillance, even in
the foreseeable future. For example, at present these security
cameras that are sprouting all over the place can generally only
record grainy images which are retained for a week or two; but in
twenty or thirty years or so, when linked up, they will be able to
effortlessly recognise the same person in various locations, for
example passengers in cars, and (if linked to a photo identity
database) put a name to each face!
Again, in thirty years, electronic tags will seem very quaint, and
instead people on probation will be obliged to wear a miniature
"black box" badge that records the person's each
movement and every sight and sound they perceive. Perhaps others will
choose to wear this, for their security, and eventually its use will
become compulsory (initially for children perhaps , and later
everyone).
Hopefully the above isn't too disjointed (or commonplace -
actually Bill Gates refers to the personal "black box" in
his interesting book The Way Ahead.)