February 25, 2000
Subject: Three feedbacks + Call to join the Global Women's Strike + Save the Whales, Again - Stop Low Frequency Active Sonar! + "It's Worse Than You Think" + It's time to end corporate welfare as we know it (by Ralph Nader) + Peaceful Protests to be considered SERIOUS CRIME in the UK
Hello everyone
I didn't have much time this week to prepare my usual compilations for you, so this will be the only one. As you will see (after 3 laudatory feedbacks I received - thanks a lot!) I've put together some material that definitely have in common to show that we must continue the fight to save our world from the ever expanding influence and control of the hungry and overwhelmingly male power-grabbers that are despoiling this planet and enslaving so many into serving their bottomless greed.
Much food for thought and motivation for action! Yet in a spirit of Love.
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
ttp://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
From: "The Enlightening Times" <et@enlighteningtimes.com>
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2000
Thank you so much for your outstanding contributions to our global society.
I look forward to receiving your upcoming newsletter and will continue to
link you and post stories at the ET for you..
Warmly,
Tashi Grady Powers
www.enlighteningtimes.com
From: colingajewski@email.com
Subject: Focus
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000
Dear Jean, Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Thank you very much for the mail which I always find very stimulating and inspirational. Now that the date has come - 2000, here are a few points which I am focussing on:
1. ALL ENERGY IS LOVE: Although energy transmutes from one form and level to another, the basic energy in the Universe is, and always will be, Love.
2. IN OUR ESSENCE, we are not only one - we are that Love that is the basic energy of the Universe.
3. IN OUR ONENESS lies our Energy, our Love and our Essence.
4. GIVING AND RECEIVING are the same thing - the direction of the flow does not matter.
5. WHAT WE FOCUS ON EXPANDS - if we focus on Love and Our Oneness they expand infinitely.
6. MEANS AND ENDS ARE THE SAME - to create Peace, give only Peace.
Simple, but true.
Celebrate Harmony, Abundance and Support for everyone
Love,
Colin Gajewski
NOTE FROM JEAN: SIMPLY PUT BUT TRULY, VERILY WONDERFUL! LOVE IS ALL THERE IS...
From: "Barbara Antrobus" <ladihawk@mweb.co.za>
Subject: Re: The Changing Times etc.
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000
Dear Jean
Thank you so much for all your newsletters and for the obviously very hard work you do to gather and send out all the 'stuff'. I appreciate you. But now I am saying a huge, big THANK YOU for the latest - The Changing times etc. It's fantastic. Most items in it I can resonate with because they do not deal specifically with those who live on your continent. And I love that man Ron Van Dyke who is not afraid to speak his Truth!
Blessings of love, light and laughter,
Barbara Antrobus in South Africa
From: "Women's Strike" <womenstrike8m@server101.com>
Subject: Call to join the Global Women's Strike
Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2000
CALL TO JOIN THE WOMEN'S GLOBAL STRIKE ON 8 MARCH 2000.
Dear sisters, we invite you, your relatives, friends and colleagues to join
the Global Women's Strike on International Women's Day, 8 March 2000. You
may already be part of the World March organised by La Federation des Femmes
de Quebec/The Federation of Women in Quebec, Canada. We are too. We have
written to them, and they welcomed our proposal that we combine our events
and support each other. The strike was called almost a year ago by the
National Women's Council of Ireland, and was made global by the
International Wages for Housework Campaign and the International Women Count
Network which Wages for Housework co-ordinates.
MOST OF THE WORK WOMEN DO IS UNWAGED, UNRECOGNISED AND UNVALUED.
The Strike focusses on women's enormous contribution to every society and
every economy. Women make the world go round, and raise and look after its
entire population; but most of the work we do is unwaged, unrecognised and
unvalued. This lack of economic and social recognition is a fundamental
sexist injustice which devalues women and everything women do, including
keeping our wages 25%-50% below men's. In fact, though a few women are now
in highly paid managerial positions, the gap between women's and men's wages
is growing.
WE ARE CALLING FOR A MILLENNIUM WHICH VALUES ALL WOMEN'S WORK AND ALL
WOMEN'S LIVES.
(CLIP - there is MUCH much more to read!)
NOTE FROM JEAN: I received many updates on this initiative. Strikes and actions will be taken in numerous countries around the world. It appears it will be a massive event. I recommend anyone interested to visit the strike website at http://womenstrike8m.server101.com to find out more.
THIS BELOW IS ANOTHER ISSUE WE HAVE BEEN MONITORING FOR SOME TIME. IF YOU ARE A U.S. CITIZEN, IF YOU CARE ABOUT THE SURVIVAL OF ALL MARINE LIFE AND IF YOU CAN DEVOTE SOME TIME TO ASSIST IN PREVENTING AN HORRENDOUS TRAGEDY, I RECOMMEND THAT YOU CAREFULLY LOOK INTO THIS (at http://welcome.to/stopLFAS) AND ACTIVELY AND FINANCIALLY SUPPORT THE LITIGATION UNDERTAKEN BY A SMALL GROUP OF COURAGEOUS U.S. CITIZENS TAKING ON THE MOST POWERFUL GOVERNMENT ON EARTH. SINCE THE MEDIA WON'T DO ANYTHING TO BRING THIS ISSUE TO THE ATTENTION OF ENOUGH PEOPLE TO HELP STOP THE DEPLOYMENT OF THIS LETHAL TECHNOLOGY, THIS IS PERHAPS THE LAST LINE OF DEFENSE WE CAN COUNT ON.
From: CHERYLAMAGILL@cs.com
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2000
Subject: Save the Whales, Again - Stop Low Frequency Active Sonar!
This message is sent to those who have been part of the network receiving
information about the U.S. Navy's low frequency active sonar system, known as
SURTASS LFA, and the threat this system poses to marine life and humans
within the marine environment. Please copy this message into a fresh email
and pass this message on to your networks.
Litigation will be filed shortly to stop the U.S. Navy from spending any more
money preparing to deploy SURTASS LFA and to stop deployment itself, until
the environmental impact statement is finished and a court review of the
adequacy of that statement is completed.
The litigation will also seek an injunction to stop the National Marine
Fisheries Service from processing the Navy's application for a five year
deployment letter of authorization.
The litigation will be filed in federal court in Honolulu, Hawai`i. Numerous
national and Hawaiian environmental organizations have agreed to be
plaintiffs in this suit.
I am writing to ask you to become a supporter of this litigation by taking
the following actions:
(1) Please ~ Send a contribution TODAY to support the litigation. The
attorney for the plaintiffs is donating his legal time. Nevertheless, there
will be thousands of dollars in expenses for copying, travel, long distance,
etc. I am asking those who understand what is at stake here to step up and
support this litigation.
If you wish to receive a tax deduction for your contribution, you can make
your check or money order out to "ISF/Stop LFAS". If you wish your funds to
be made available for tax exempt AND non-tax exempt activities to stop
deployment of this system, you can make your check or money order out to
"Stop LFAS". Send your contributions today to: Stop LFAS, P.O. Box 944,
Hilo, Hawai`i 96721. Please provide your name, address, telephone, and
email with your contribution (or use a money order, if you wish to remain
anonymous).
(2) Spread the word far and wide. If you have your own network of people
with whom you have been sharing information about SURTASS LFA, please forward
this message on to that network.
The Stop LFAS Worldwide Network will be a plaintiff in this law suit. If you
would like to formally associate yourself with the Network for purposes of
participating in this litigation, please send an email with "Associate" in
the Subject line to <A HREF="cherylamagill@cs.com">CHERYLAMAGILL@cs.com</A>.
Associates will not be revealed in the litigation and will not have any
obligation.
The time to stop the momentum for deployment is now. This litigation is the
best step we can take at this point to create that possibility. PLEASE join
in making that step a reality.
Thank you.
Cheryl Magill
Coordinator
Stop LFAS Worldwide Network
P.S. If you would like to have a shirt, mug, or mouse pad carrying the
beautiful stop LFAS logo and our message, please visit
http://www.cafepress.com/stoplfas
If you would like further information about LFAS, please visit http://welcome.to/stopLFAS
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000
From: "Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D." <jackie@deepteaching.com>
Subject: New Healing Our World available - "It's Worse Than You Think"
Dear all,
The British and French were fishing off the New England coast years
before the arrival of the first Pilgrims to America in 1620. It is
likely that they came in contact with the Indians at that time. The
native inhabitants had no resistance to the diseases brought by the
Europeans and within three years, a plague wiped out between 90 and 96
percent of the inhabitants of coastal New England!
This piece of history is usually omitted from most textbooks, yet these
plagues, which ravaged the Indian population for the next fifteen years,
set the tone for our relationship with the natives. So it was a
psychologically and physically devastated people that for the first 50
years of British occupation presented no real opposition to the
invaders.
Few of us really know about the horrible truths that have shaped the
values of our western culture.
The lies we were taught as children may be directly responsible for the
destructive environmental and social ethics we practice today. If we are
to have any chance of healing our relationship with the natural world
and each other, we must acknowledge them and work to transform them. I
explore this theme in this week's Healing Our World commentary on the
Environment News Service, hosted on LYCOS. This week's piece, "It's
Worse Than You Think" can be found at
http://www.ens.lycos.com/ens/feb2000/2000L-02-14g.html on the Internet.
I wish you peace as you challenge the assumptions that have crafted the
questionable values of our nation.
Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.
AS YOU'LL REALIZE, MUCH OF WHAT RALPH NADER SAYS BELOW ABOUT THE PERKS AND PRIVILEDGES ENJOYED BY BIG CORPORATIONS IN THE U.S. CERTAINLY APPLIES TO NEARLY EVERY OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH. THE WEALTHY MINORITY CONTROLLING THESE CORPORATE EMPIRES HAS PLAYED SO WELL THE SYSTEM IN ITS FAVOR - A BIT LIKE IN A PLANETARY GAME OF MONOPOLY - OVER THE YEARS, THAT MOST OF THE REST OF US ARE LEFT WITH MERE CRUMBS OF THE COLLECTIVE PIE. PERHAPS THE TIME HAS COME TO DO A GIANT "RESET" AND START ALL OVER AGAIN WITH NEW RULES THAT WILL ALLOW BOTH FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND AN ECOLOGICALLY SUSTAINABLE USE OF WHAT IS LEFT OF OUR RAPIDLY DETERIORATING GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT...
From: Sue <spotter@yournet.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000
Subject: Corporate Welfare?
From: http://www.earthisland.org/journal/f96-36.html
It's time to end corporate welfare as we know it
by Ralph Nader
The issue of concentration of power and the growing conflict between the civil society and the corporate society is not a conflict that you read about or see on television. So unfortunately, most of us grow up corporate; we don't grow up civic.
If I utter the following words, what images come to mind: crime, violence, welfare and addictors? What comes to mind is street crime; people lining up to get their welfare checks; violence in the streets; and drug dealers -- the addictors.
And yet, by any yardstick, there is far more crime, and far more violence, and far more welfare disbursement (and there are far more addictors) in the corporate world than in the impoverished street arena.
The federal government's corporate welfare programs number over 120. They are so varied and embedded that we actually grow up thinking that the government interferes with the free enterprise system. rather than subsidizing it.
It's hard to find a major industry today whose principal investments were not first made by the government -- in aerospace, tele- communications, biotechnology and agribusiness. Government research and development money funds the drug and pharmaceutical industry. Government research and development funds are given freely to corporations, but they don't announce it in ads the next day.
Corporate welfare has never been viewed as debilitating. Nobody talks about imposing workfare requirements on corporate welfare recipients or putting them on a program of "two years and you're out." Nobody talks about aid to dependent corporations. It's all talked about in terms of "incentives."
At the local community level, in cities that can't even refurbish their crumbling schools -- where children are without enough desks or books -- local governments are anteing up three, four, five hundred million dollars to lure very profitable baseball, football and basketball sports moguls who don't want to share the profits. Corporate sports are being subsidized by cities.
Corporations have perfected socializing their losses while they capitalize on their profits. There was the savings-and-loan debacle -- and you'll be paying for that until the year 2020. In terms of principal and interest, it was a half-trillion-dollar bailout of 1,000 savings-and-loans banks. Their executives looted, speculated and defrauded people of their savings -- and then turned to Washington for a bailout.
Foreign and domestic corporations can go on our land out West. If they discover gold, they can buy the acreage over the gold for no more than $5 an acre. That's been the going rate since the Mining Act of 1872 was enacted. That is taking inflation-fighting too far.
There's a new drug called Taxol to fight ovarian cancer. That drug was produced by a grant of $31 million of taxpayer money through the National Institutes of Health, right through the clinical testing process. The formula was then given away to the Bristol-Myers Squibb company. No royalties were paid to the taxpayer. There was no restraint on the price. Charges now run $10,000 to $15,000 per patient for a series of treatments. If the patients can't pay, they go on Medicaid, and the taxpayer pays at the other end of the cycle, too.
Yet what is the big issue in this country and in Washington when the word "welfare" is spoken? It is the $300 monthly check given a welfare mother, most of which is spent immediately in the consumer economy. But federal corporate welfare is far bigger in dollars. At the federal, state and local levels there is no comparison between the corporate welfare and poverty welfare programs.
We have 179 law schools and probably only 15 of them (and only recently) offer a single course or seminar on corporate crime. You think that's an accident? Law school curricula are pretty much shaped by the job market, and if the job market has slots in commercial law, bankruptcy law, securities and exchange law, tax law or estate planning law, the law schools will oblige with courses and seminars.
One professor studying corporate crime believes that it costs the country $200 billion a year. And yet you don't see many congressional hearings on corporate crime. You see very few newspapers focusing on corporate crime.
Yet 50,000 lives a year are lost due to air pollution, 100,000 are lost due to toxics and trauma in the workplace, and 420,000 lives are lost due to tobacco smoking. The corporate addictor has a very important role here, since it has been shown in recent months that the tobacco companies try to hook youngsters into a lifetime of smoking from age 10 to 15.
When you grow up corporate, you don't learn about the reality of corporate welfare. The programs that shovel huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to corporations through inflated government contracts via the Pentagon, or through subsidies, loan guarantees, giveaways and a variety of clever transfers of taxpayer assets get very little attention.
Knowing What's Ours
We grow up never learning what we own together, as a commonwealth. If somebody asks you what you and your parents own, you'd say: homes, cars and artifacts. Most of you would not say that you are owners of the one-third of America that is public land or that you are part owners of the public airwaves.
When you ask students today who owns the public airwaves you get the same reply -- "the networks," or maybe "the government." We own the public airwaves and the Federal Communications Commission is our real estate agent. The radio and TV stations are the tenants who are given licenses to dominate their part of the spectrum 24 hours a day, and for four hours a day they decide who says what.
You pay more for your auto license than the biggest TV station pays for its broadcast license. But if you, the landlord, want in on its property, the radio and TV stations say, "Sorry, you're not going to come in." These companies say they've got to air trash TV -- sensual TV, home shopping and rerun movies.
We have the greatest communications system in the world and we have the most demeaning subject matter and the most curtailed airing of public voices (known in the trade as the "sound bite"). The sound bite is down to about five seconds now.
You and your parents also may be part owners of $4 trillion in pension funds invested in corporations. The reason this doesn't get much attention is that although we own it, corporations control it. Corporations, banks and insurance companies invest our pension money. Workers have no voting mechanism regarding this money. If they did, they'd have a tremendous influence over corporations that have major pension trust investments.
Not controlling what we own should be a public issue, because if we begin to develop control of what we own, we will marshal vast existing assets that are legally ours for the betterment of our society. That will not happen unless we talk about why people don't control what they own.
All of the reforms require a rearrangement of how we spend our time. The women who launched the women's right-to-vote movement decided to spend time -- in the face of incredible opposition. The people who fought to abolish slavery also decided to spend time. The workers who formed trade unions gave time.
The Power of Civic Action
Historically, how have we curbed corporate power? By child labor prohibition, by occupational health and safety rules, by motor vehicle standards and food and drug safety standards. But the regulatory agencies in these areas are now on their knees. Their budgets are very small -- far less than 1 percent of the federal budget.
Their job is to put the federal cop on the corporate beat against the illegal dumping of toxics. But these laws do not get high compliance by corporations, and the application of regulatory law and order against corporate crime, fraud, abuse and violence is at its lowest ebb. I've never seen some of these agencies as weak as they are now. President Ronald Reagan started it and President George Bush extended it. And now we have "George Ronald Clinton" making the transition very easy.
The dismantling of democracy is perhaps now the most urgent aspect of the corporatization of our society. And notice, if you will, two pillars of our legal system -- tort law and contract law.
The principle of tort law is that if you are wrongfully injured, you have a remedy against the perpetrator. That's well over 200 years old. And now, in state legislatures and in Congress, laws have been passed, or are about to be passed, that protect the perpetrators, the harm-doers -- that immunize them from their liability.
When the physicians at the Harvard School of Public Health testify that about 80,000 people die in hospitals every year from medical malpractice -- a total larger than the combined fatalities in motor vehicle accidents, homicides and death by fire each year in the US -- it raises the issue of why our elected representatives are vigorously trying to make it more difficult for victims of medical malpractice to have their day in court. [Note: President Clinton vetoed one such far-reaching tort reform bill.]
As in the Middle Ages, 1 percent of the richest people in this country own 90 percent of the wealth. The unemployment rate doesn't take into account the people who looked for a job for six months and gave up, and it doesn't take into account the under-employed who work 20 hours a week. Part of growing up corporate is that we let corporations develop the yardsticks by which we measure the economy's progress.
Democracy is the best mechanism ever devised to solve problems. That means the more we refine it -- the more people practice it, the more people use its tools -- the more likely it is we will not only solve our problems or at least diminish them, we also will foresee and forestall risk levels. When you see corporations dismantling democracy, you have to take it very seriously and turn it into a public political issue.
Among the five roles that we play, one is voter-citizen, another is taxpayer, another is worker, another is consumer and another is shareholder through worker pension trusts. These are critical roles in our political economy. Yet they have become weaker and weaker as the concentration of corporate power over our political and cultural and economic institutions has increased year by year.
We're supposed to have a government of, by and for the people. Instead we have a government of the Exxons, by the General Motors and for the DuPonts. We have a government that recognizes the rights and liabilities and privileges of corporations, which are artificial entities created by state charters, against the rights and privileges of ordinary people.
Jefferson warned us that the purpose of representative government is to counteract "the excesses of the monied interests" -- then the merchant class; now the corporations. Beware of the government that doesn't do that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Adapted from a longer version published by The Washington Spectator [The Public Concern Foundation, Inc., London Terrace Station, PO Box 20065, New York, NY 10011. Subscriptions: $15/year for 22 issues]. Nader's 390-page handbook, Civics for Democracy, is available for $17.95 from Essential Information, PO Box 19405, Washington, DC 20036.
Ralph Nader, a pioneering consumer advocate who calls himself "a small 'd' democrat," is the Green Party candidate for president. This essay is excerpted from a speech Nader delivered at Pennsylvania's Haverford College.
Taking On the Corporados
* "It has the world's resources at its disposal. It gobbles whole mountains and forests, drinks rivers dry, spews toxic wastes and enslaves whole populations. It has all the rights of a citizen, but few of the limitations. It can cross national borders as if they were cobwebs. It controls the newspapers, radio and television, and so it controls the 'truth.' It controls human access to food, water, shelter, employment and energy." So reads a description of the modern corporation, as rendered by Earth First!
* "Can we pursue democracy and social justice when corporations are allowed to control so much power and wealth?" That is both the question and the challenge of the Corporations and Democracy Teach-In [731 State St., Four Lakes, Madison, WI 53703, (608) 262-9036.], a grassroots event set to run from October 13-19 at more than 100 universities and community halls across the country.
* October 29, an International Day of Action to End Corporate Dominance, will be marked with protests at corporation headquarters and toxic waste sites. [EF! Austin, PO Box 7292, Austin, TX 78713, (512) 320-0413.]
From: Sh0shanna@aol.com
Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 10:01:39 EST
Subject: Peaceful Protests to be considered SERIOUS CRIME
Activist Mailing List - http://get.to/activist
Peaceful protest is a "serious crime" in the British government's Bill to
intercept private email communication
Statement from GreenNet
In September last year, at a conference on British government plans to give
police and intelligence services the right to read private email, Patricia
Hewitt, the minister for e-commerce, claimed these plans were necessary
"because crime has become global and digital and we have to combat this".
What she omitted to mention was that one of the "crimes" the government was
setting out to combat was the kind of peaceful protest actions that took
place in Seattle at the WTO meeting. This has now been made crystal clear
in the proposed Regulation of Investigatory Powers (RIP) Bill. Continuing
with a definition first brought in by the Thatcher government to allow
police to tap the phones of union members in the 1985 British miners'
strike, the Bill specifically designates "conduct by a large number of
persons in pursuit of a common purpose" to be "a serious crime" justifying
an interception of their private email correspondence. The police requested
that this measure be introduced in a report into the demonstration that
took place at the City of London as part of an international day of protest
actions on June 18th last year. There were violent clashes between the
police and this initially non-violent demonstration.
The group that organised the June 18th demonstration is a GreenNet user and
much of the organisation for the international protest took place using
GreenNet Internet facilities. If the RIP Bill had been in place last year
there seems little doubt that the police would have applied for an order to
force GreenNet to give them access to the private email of people involved
in the June 18th events. The police would almost certainly have wanted a
similar order over protest activities planned to coincide with the Seattle
WTO meeting. Under the RIP Bill, they will now be able to obtain such
facilities to spy on the activities of protest groups. Internet Service
Providers (ISPs) will have to build "interception capabilities" into their
systems. When served with an "interception warrant" they will be forced to
intercept private email and convey its contents to the police or various
intelligence services. Refusal to comply with a warrant will carry a
maximum jail sentence of two years. "Tipping-off" someone that their email
is being read is punishable by up to five years jail.
This also applies to informing anyone not authorised to know about the
interception warrant. The warrant will initially be served on a named
individual within an ISP. They may inform only those other people they need
to help them implement the warrant and these, in turn, face the same
penalties for tipping-off. The only exception allowed is to consult legal
advisors.
A separate section of the Bill deals with encryption. This provides for
"properly authorised persons (such as members of the law enforcement,
security and intelligence agencies) to serve written notices on individuals
or bodies requiring the surrender of information (such as a decryption key)
to enable them to understand (make intelligible) protected material which
they lawfully hold, or are likely to."
Such an order can be served on anyone "there are reasonable grounds for
believing" has an encryption key. They could face two years jail for not
revealing the key and are also subject to the same possible five year jail
sentence as ISPs for informing someone that attempts are being made by the
authorities to read their email. This section of the Bill has been widely
condemned by civil liberties lawyers as reversing the fundamental right of
a person to be presumed innocent until proven guilty and will almost
certainly be challenged using the European Convention on Human Rights.
The British Bill is part of long term plans that have been developed since
1993 to give law enforcement bodies around the world the ability to
intercept and read modern digital communications. In that year, the FBI
initiated an International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar
(ILETS) for that purpose. The ILETS group has operated behind the back of
elected parliamentary bodies and within the European Union its plans have
been implemented through secret meetings of the Council for Justice and
Home Affairs (CJHA).
An essential part of these plans involve international collaboration
between law enforcement bodies. Large sections of the RIP Bill deal with
"International mutual assistance agreements" to intercept communications.
Particular reference is made to a "draft Convention on Mutual Assistance in
Criminal Matters" produced within the CJHA. This Convention lays out plans
for communications taking place between individuals in one country to be
intercepted in another. The RIP Bill includes specific legislation "to
enable the United Kingdom to comply with the interception provisions in
this draft". The Bill's Explanatory Notes go on to say that "Although no
similar agreements are currently under negotiation, this subsection will
provide flexibility for the future".
In fact, Hansard records of a debate on the draft Convention in the House
of Lords reveal that "it is hoped that in due course substantially similar
provisions will be adopted by members of the Council of Europe and that
there will be co-operation on similar lines with the United States and
Commonwealth countries" (Lord Hoffman. Moving a report on behalf of the
government. 7 May 1998).
The Council of Europe has 41 member states and includes many countries with
extremely dubious democratic credentials and some very partisan "law
enforcement" bodies (Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Turkey, Russia, etc). At
the same time, the ILETS group at the centre of the plans for international
co-operation in communication interception includes Hong Kong, now part of
mainland China.
In many of these countries, opposition to the government or just fighting
for democratic rights is regarded as "serious crime". Yet the RIP Bill
proposes open ended legislation to allow interception from the UK of
"communications of subjects on the territory of another country according
to the law of that country" at the request of "the competent authority" in
that country. It even proposes that "Since no decision is being made on the
merits of the case...it is considered appropriate for these warrants to be
issued by senior officials rather than the Secretary of State."
The RIP Bill is an extremely reactionary piece of legislation dressed up
with New Labour "spin" to make it appear as if it limits state spying on
citizens when it actually extends it dramatically. The Bill represents a
serious threat to the rights of those who use the Internet to campaign on
social justice issues, both in Britain and internationally. Representation
to the Home Office from GreenNet over this was disregarded. Although
GreenNet's submission was included on the Home Office web site, the points
we made were totally ignored in the Home Office summary of submissions. We
have been one of the most active ISPs within the Internet Service Providers
Association (ISPA) in expressing a viewpoint on the Bill, yet we were not
included in the 20 strong ISPA delegation that the Home Office selected to
meet.
GreenNet intends working with sympathetic civil liberties groups, lawyers,
politicians and Internet policy organisations against the passing of the
Bill. We call for the widest possible international support for this
campaign from ISPs and user groups using the Internet for social
campaigning purposes. The RIP Bill represents a serious threat to us all.
Campaigning against it will be an important part of the Association for
Progressive Communications (APC) European Civil Society Internet Rights
Campaign, which GreenNet is playing a major role in.
Anyone who wants to help in this campaign please contact ir@gn.apc.org
-------------------
"We are not for names, nor men, nor titles of Government, nor are we for
this party nor against the other… but we are for justice and mercy and
truth and peace and true freedom, that these may be exalted in our nation,
and that goodness, righteousness, meekness, temperance, peace and unity
with God, and with one another, that these things may abound." (Edward
Burroughs, 1659)
THE FREE RANGE ACTIVISM NETWORK
Facilitators -
Paul Mobbs - mobbsey@gn.ac.org, tel./fax 01295 261864
Tim Shaw - timshaw@gn.apc.org, tel./fax 01558 685353
Website - http://www.gn.apc.org/pmhp/rangers/