a.k.a. How did the Labour Party come to this?

The present Home Secretary, the former teacher called Jacqui Smith, is desperately trying, at all costs, to implement laws that would allow events such as the law that is title of this post, to easily occur at some future date.

Let’s state my case;

• I’m (still) a member of the UK Labour Party and have been since the dark days of Michael Foot. He was a very nice, principled man, who I felt sorry for, so one day, while walking down East Reach in Taunton, I popped into the local Labour Party office and asked if they’d like some money from me. The guy fell off his chair. (Membership was at an all-time low and Labour were the pariah’s of Europe ). Since then the Direct Debit system has periodically siphoned a small amount from my personal money stash. In a small way it has helped win elections.
• If the 42 day lockup that Jaqui is forcing through parliament right now comes to fruition
  • NO MORE CASH LEAVES ME FOR Victoria Street
• If the Identity Card system is forced through to implementation
  • NO MORE CASH LEAVES ME FOR Victoria Street

But Hey! But if you want to give your money to a party that leaves the way open for Fascists, Communists and Totalitarians of the worst kind to overrun our green and pleasant land, then please click here. The key to the future lies in the past.

Jaqui Smith went to a standard comprehensive school and thence to Oxford. Her college has an original signed copy of Leviathan. It’s an interesting tome, fashioned not long after we chopped off the head of the tyrannical Charles I who thought he was a god and his powers handed down by “god”. I think she’s read it and taken a lot on board. It’s from this book that the phrase

Life in the state of nature is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”

is derived. Well just because something is written down does not mean that it is true! We can aspire to better things.

The gist of the book is that to end civil war, and to ensure strife doesn’t arise, ever, a country needs a strong hard person – a monarch (Hobbes didn’t like democracy). The overall tone is very militaristic, much like loony US republicans like Bush et al and it’s very “if I’m attacked I have an absolute right to blast the person/group/country out of existence” biased.

The thing is, it would be. There’d just been the hideous civil war followed by an equally disastrous “commonwealth” in England. Hobbes was used to full-on aggression and yearned for stability. He also came up with the term “social contract” where your general plebs all release some of their absolute freedoms to do absolutely anything they like in return for the protections and peace under a higher authority.

Anyway, where we are now is that the Labour Government wants to take away all our hard-won liberties of ages (they’ll be “protected” by “safeguards” they say ) so that we don’t get hurt by mad people (they are calling them terrorists.) Despite the tory supposed opposition to this law, all the right-wing loonies must be laughing up their sleeves at this moment.

As an aside, the word “Tory” comes from the Irish abusive word for outlaw, derived from the Latin for ……. TERROR! The Tories thought it was so funny that they took the word to call themselves out of pure upper-class spite…

So far they’ve caught less than a hundred, panicked the nation into xenophobia and shot one person “accidentally”, eight times.

Meanwhile, although our “Military Intelligence” have been watching people for ages (including the London bombers) and the now recent Exeter bomber, they’ve singularly failed to be any good at stopping anyone. There’s precious little hope that they’ll get any better in future, in fact, it makes one wonder if the failures are deliberate to make sure that the populace stay frightened. There have already been news leaks for ALL the “terrorist” events, that each of the suspects had been watched for months – how else could they be caught so quickly?

Since the 28-day rule came in (bad enough!), they’ve arrested hundreds of people and charged about sixteen. Next stop the GULAGs in Shropshire. meanwhile, the real crime continues – like a teenage girl getting killed by a stalker while the police, like Pilate, do nothing.

How Does the Past Relate to all This?

If someone can get someone else locked away on their say-so for an increasingly indeterminant period, we have a police state.

If that person is a policeman, we have a police state.

If it’s against the law to tell anyone that someone has been locked up under these laws, we have a police state.

If the police pick and choose which laws to enforce, we have a police state.

That’s what it’s like now. The powers aren’t used much – but how would we know. If you hadn’t seen your friend for a year and no-one knew where he was, then who could you ask?

Would you dare ask?

The police state is here now. Our freedoms are removed and distractions are invented to hide their true impact. Here, bizarrely, is what Herman Goering had to say about it all to a prison psychologist called Gilbert while in his cell during the Nuremberg trials.

Göring: Why, of course, the people don’t want war. (…) Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Goering did and said some stupid, horrible things in his life; but this wasn’t one of them. This quote was even used by the longest ever serving US Senator, the former KKK member, Robert Byrd, who since his youth has now had a complete volte-face and used it to try and stop Bush’s war in Iraq.

Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defense

This is what happens when political opposition is eliminated

This is what it was like after the Night of the Long Knives, and subsequently. In this period, Hitler got rid of most of his political enemies. He then retrospectively passed the above law to legalise his act and any future ones he did.

The law is very similar in it’s terms and scope to the projected law of Jaqui Smith. It’s a bit like the US Dept of Homeland Security too. It’s final outcome was systematic genocide of peoples and races, World War II, the deaths of tens of millions of people and the invention of the atomic weapon that we still have to live with now. Interestingly, the German population as a whole were broadly in favour of the Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defence. They were persuaded that the “enemies of the state” had to be expunged. The legal establishment gave in to Hitler’s demands and all the “checks and balances” that Jaqui is fond of quoting disappeared into thin air like a mirage.

There is a direct parallel to this in the US following the twin towers fiasco…the patriot act, dept of homeland security…etc…etc News today is that I can’t go to the US without being fingerprinted! So sorry Arnie – I shan’t be visiting. Fingerprinting isn’t foolproof, especially in the US where people have been executed on wrong fingerprint evidence.

It’s shite. Half the UK can see it’s absolute shite and half seem hypnotised into walking into the abyss of a future dark age. Meanwhile, while these fundamental changes are being instigated, they’ve got the country all het up about teenage drinking as a distraction. Because that’s all it is. Nothing will happen about it.

Bastards.

Nichiren Daishonin, the great Buddhist thinker from 13c Japan, said:

Emperors and kings have their foundation in the state and bring peace and order to the age; ministers and commoners hold possession of their fields and gardens and supply the needs of the world. But if marauders come from other regions to invade the nation, or if revolt breaks out within the domain and people’s lands are seized and plundered, how can there be anything but terror and confusion? If the nation is destroyed and people’s homes are wiped out, then where can one flee for safety? If you care anything about your personal security, you should first of all pray for order and tranquillity throughout the four quarters of the land, should you not? - Nichiren Daishonin: On Establishing the Correct Teaching for the Peace of the Land – WND1, page 24

What this does NOT mean is that the country should be militarised up to the teeth and everyone should spend their lives in fear and panic. Our lands have not been seized and plundered – far from it. If some of our current actions lead at some future date to people’s homes and lives being destroyed, it’s the current actions that need to change to avoid future calamities.

These draconian laws will lead to actions that hurt our people, nation and the very fabric of our society. If you care anything for your personal security (and I do), it’s tranquillity we should be aiming for, harmony with our surroundings. That’s what Nichiren means.

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