Our Governments are clueless, aren't they? The whole idea of progressive government, of political ideas (that's ideology, I suppose) seems to be lost.

There's always two sides. The government and the opposition. No more than that. The Greens and whatever are such minor parties that they count for nothing except for tie breaking sometimes.

And more and more the two sides are virtually identical.

On the radio on Late Night Live I just heard Richard Sennet (?), professor at two universities and writer of some trenchant book declare that the tragedy in England is that they have a Labour government that has no interest in Labour. Very true.

The same in Australia.

In Australia there's a new Labour government which actually went to the people and asked for ideas. They had a 'summit' to discover the best ideas for how the nation should be in the future.

They really came up with nothing. Tweaking. Trivialities. Predictabilities. Mechanical tasks of the moment within the present structure (global warming, carbon sequestration, environment, etc.)

They did not come up with anything at all that looked even faintly like a new way of organising our society for the better.

I can think of two very obvious way immediately:

1. Dispense with Personal Income Tax. PAYE (Pay As You Earn) as it always is. The 'persons' in the country (as distinct from companies etc. ) pay their income tax as they earn. The boss takes it out of their wages. They never see that money. Crudely we could say that at an income tax level of 20% a person working for $500 a week gross is actually working for $400 dollars a week because that's all they ever see.

At the end of the financial year they can attempt to get back some money from the government on the grounds of being overtaxed one way or the other. They may or may not take this trouble. They may or may not be successful.

There is a massive industry devoted to this. To calculating individual personal tax and rebates due to individuals. A massive industry. A pointless, unnecessary industry that wastes millions of hours of work and material.

Far better to let people work for a job advertised as being totally tax free and paying $400 a week. And let the nation profit from the release of all those assets previously bound up in personal income tax claims, assessments, payments and recoveries.

What about the revenue loss to the government? There doesn't need to be any. The employer could be charged with remitting $100 a week to the government for every $400 on his payroll - just, in fact, as he is at the present time. The government's revenue take would increase because they wouldn't have to support this fantastic income tax industry.

2. Give everyone somewhere to live, as a right for a citizen.

So lost are we, so enslaved, so indoctrinated that we no longer expect to have anywhere to live by natural right in our own country.

In Australia we have the heartening presence of the Aboriginal who still believes he should have his own country - jointly 'owned' by the tribe - where he's free at any time to live. To camp. To sleep. To rear his children. To spend his life if he wishes.

That aboriginal is expressing a natural 'right', a natural human feeling belonging to all humans since the dawn of time, shared with all animals and everything else that exists - a natural feeling that they've a right to exist and to have a share of available living space.

That right has been squashed out of us.

We are all born homeless now. You have no right to anywhere to live.

With your parents. You have a right to live with them. But you have, as a natural right, no place within the nation that is yours. You are homeless.

It will be virtually your life's work to provide yourself with a home.

Isn't that what everyone is doing? Working all their lives to pay off a mortgage and all the allied costs that come with that - i.e. the costs of working, such as the car you need to get to work and the transport costs and the child care costs, etc.

And you can see them everywhere - those at the end of their life's work, with the home paid for and now sold and they travel in caravans and such all around looking for pleasure and freedom and doing their own thing at the end of their lives.

And if they've sold the home and now just have a trailer home, let that trailer home get broken, burnt, destroyed, lose it and they've got no home again.

We have no homes. We are homeless and it leads to economic slavery and that's what we are caught in.

So: new idea: give everyone a birthright. If you are a citizen you have a right to a home in the land somewhere. A right that you cannot lose. Now this need not be much more than a plot of ground which you may never ever use. It may not even be a plot of ground, it may be an unlocated share of some common ground such as I assume is the case with Aborigines.

Strange idea? Yes, of course, very strange to us. But not strange to human beings in the first place and not strange to many human beings right now.

And - the point is - what would the effect be upon our society? Vast and dramatic? Small and insignificant? I don't know. But I do know that our whole Western World society with its devotion to money is driven at root by the need to buy a home, to find a place to live, to own some right to live on this planet. Our selfishness is rooted in that. Our lifelong service to someone else in paid work at the expense of our own individual self development and manifestation is based on that.


So there's two ideas that I'd suggest are big enough to be new 'ism's', new political ideologies, new kinds of societal structures.

One of them, the tax thing, falls into the category of mere tinkering with present systems, really, for tax and everything else remains the same. But it is 'big', it is a radical departure from our present system which is devoted to maintaining the status quo and avoiding anything radical at all costs - particularly avoiding any attempt at original thought.

Consider the fuel cost fiasco at the moment. Governments, politicians, journalists, well-know 'pundits' and experts all arguing the pros and cons of 'fuel watch' - a measure that at most might make 5c a litre difference in the price. 5 cents out of 155 cents! Ludicrous. When where we should be is back to about one third of that price. Back to 50c a litre is where we should be. The job is to find a way back to there. Not to squabble over a 5cent measure. That's puny. It's poor. It's sterile. It's ridiculous.

But that's the nature of our thinking. Puny, poor, sterile, ridiculous.

'High prices are here to stay' is all that any 'expert' or 'pundit' or politician can say. Why? Why? There's plenty of oil for the moment. Saudi Arabia claims to be releasing sufficient supply and insists the price rise is not a question of supply and demand - so what is it?

High prices should be temporary because high prices for oil make alternatives - we've always been led to believe - more attractive because now economically viable.

Anyway that's beside the point at the moment. I just meant to illustrate the paucity of our 'leadership' thinking.

So one of the ideas is tinkering. But the other is really nationally, societally, political. A real fundamental question of public policy, the philosophical, ideological basis of our society. It really is worthy of some handy 'ism' word. 'Naturalrightism' or something.

The great difference between aboriginal Australians and non-aboriginal Australians is this very question which gets expressed as the aboriginal's insistence upon their need to have their land, their special relationship with their land, their love of the land, their right to the land, etc., etc... What it all really means is that they always feel they have a home there, as long as they've got the land, some land. And it's true, of course. Of course. They have a home. Somewhere to go. Something to call their own.

It is very easy to understand because it is a need shared by all human beings. It is a natural need. And a natural right. But it gets indoctrinated out of modern humans who are indoctrinated from the age of 3 to accept a place in modern society that places them in the role of dumb worker drone doomed to devote their whole lives to simply, in the main, trying to get somewhere to live.

The question of what human life is and could be is never addressed. That is why we cannot give a satisfactory story, explanation, guidance, direction, to the aboriginal - because we don't have one to give ourselves. We dont' address the question. We are not conscious that the question can be asked. We think 'human beings' are this thing we've created after years of indoctrination and nurturing in a slave society. We think it is natural to have to work all your life in order to buy your home. We think it is natural to be unable to move because of the demands of work and schooling for your children. We think the world we have built is natural.

But, of course, it is not. This is indisputable, this is not disputed. When anyone comes to think about it. Our human being of the present time is manufactured. Cultivated. Grown. Made. Created. By schooling and guidance and laws and regimentation and direction and example and whatever - it is no way a natural thing.

The 'natural' man is such as the aboriginal. Or as the aboriginal was. I guess full bloods and the full blood way of life is gone now, I guess. But recent enough for it to be well remembered, well known to some and easily conjured up for examination if required. And and it is required.

The natural man doesn't want to spend all his life working for someone else in some dumb job just to pay for his home and his children's 'education'. As simple as that.

And we need some serious thought put into what the natural man does want to do and would be best doing.

That's the kind of thing we need to be doing. Those are the areas into which our Governments should be leading us, if they were to lead.

But, I guess, when you come to think of it, Governments don't lead, in this sense, do they? Governments always fall before the attack of radicals, revolutionaries, who bring the new ideas, the new concepts, the new societies.

But I guess there's always a chance.

Guantanamo Trials: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his friends are on 'trial' in Guantanamo for terrorism.

Being tried by military tribunal.

It is not difficult to find a lawyer or similar person-who-should-know to denounce the trials as mock trials, kangaroo courts or whatever.

The prisoners have been tortured. The evidence is mostly confessional or anecdotal obtained under duress, not acceptable, admissible in a normal court.

It is a mock, it is a sham, it is a disgrace, they are disgusting events, not to be tolerated in an enlightened democracy.

So why are they tolerated?

Because America is NOT an enlightened democracy. The proof of that pudding is in the eating. It is a simple fact. It does NOT behave like an enlightened democracy. The more you investigate this simple fact the more evident it becomes.

And because people have a simple rationale: "These people are terrorists anyway, we know they are guilty, so they don't deserve a fair trial and it wouldn't change anything if they had one."

That rationale is generally 100% convincing. It is an argument stopper. It is in fact the total consideration towards justice that almost any accused person gets in the popular mind.

Or even in the unpopular mind - that is, in the mind of magistrates, judges, policemen, journalists, politicians.

Prejudice rules the day. Prejudice is the norm. Prejudice decides the course of our society, our justice, our direction.

Such prejudice allows such kangaroo courts. Allowing such kangaroo courts and the allied processes - torture, imprisonment with charge, held incommunicado, etc., etc... - totally erode civil rights, civil liberties, everything that a modern democracy supposedly stands for. EVERYTHING.

The nation is destroyed by such things. America is destroyed by this process. It is debased, it is rotted to the core.

America's enemies see this unfairness and hate America and take up Terrorism. America sees the terrorism and increases these hysterical unfair measures. The terrorists see the unfair measures increase and..... so it goes.

All permitted by the mass mind, the mass populace, which considers the situation and pronounces on the basis of prejudice and decides to do nothing.

Little realising or apparently caring that their own lives their own freedoms their own rights their own country has been diminished or destroyed by this.

What's fundamentally wrong? They don't think it can ever happen to them. That's what's wrong. A failure to put yourself in the shoes of another. A total lack of empathy. A failure to understand that you are your brother.

It CAN happen to you. The further this process goes: the abrogation of human rights - the more certain it becomes that it WILL happen to you. The odds get shorter.

The purpose of having fair trials is to protect YOU should you ever be unfairly accused. We give fair trials to people who don't deserve them (as it turns out, as we might think, when we find they're guilty) in order to ensure that YOU will get a fair trial if ever you are accused.

It is a question of what is the procedure. It seems the population at large naively think that fair trial is the norm and will be granted to them should they ever be accused and it is of little importance if unfair trial (and torture etc., etc ) are dealt to a terrorist. Because knowing you are not a terrorist you never expect that treatment to come your way.

But what is happening is that unfair trial (and all the rest) is becoming the norm.

Prejudice is becoming the norm. So that once accused, once arrested you will be considered to be guilty, immediately.

The heartless way we consider the plight of 'terrorists' (in commas because they should be considering innocent until properly proven guilty) in Guantanamo is the heartless way we ourselves will be considered in due course.

How we treat them is how we are asking for ourselves to be treated and we'll probably get our wish.