The Crime of Protest

Just a quick note on the Asian Economic forum in Sydney.
Sydney will be shut down, at least three blocks of the CBD. A helicopter will block mobile phone coverage. Protesters who are arrested can be held for the duration of the conference.
Is this Australia or the USSR?
When the Berlin wall came down nearly twenty years ago the feeling was that totalitarianism was coming to an end. Democracies had prevailed against the terranical oligarcies of Eastern Europe and soon the other Communist states would fall as well.
The advent of the terrorist menace has put an end to this hopeful moment, the moment when it seemed possible that all the countries of the world could be bastions of liberty.
But has the rise not of democracy but of capitalism, itself now possing a threat to democracy? Has the very Draught Horse who pulled democracy to the pinicle of political systems, now begun to threaten its very survival? When corporate power, infringes on the populations right to know, when governments can suppress information to the public, when libel can shut down the truth, capitalism is biting the neck of democracy.
As China and modern Russia are now proving, capitalism does not require democracy in fact China is proving to be a success without a change even in the ruling regime. The same murderous regime which the world watch on in disbelief as they moved down thier own people in Tianamin square is priciding over the worlds fastest growin capitalist economy.
We are in real danger of falling into totalitarianism rather than pulling other countries out of it. If we continue to create more rules to protect the powerfull from the powerless in opposition to the founding ideals of democracy we will fall into the same despair that swept Eastern Europe and still effects it to today.
Protest is not a crime. Protest is a cornerstone of our freedoms.
Democracy is not to be taken for granted, we live in a time unusual in the extreme, oligarcy, tyranny and at best monarchy are the norm. The jew in the crown of political systems, liberties daughter, she must be protected from those who would restict her, corrupt her, manipulate and distort her and especially those who would sell her into slavery.

Are We Loosing The Freedoms Our Ancestors Won?

Let me ask you a question. Do you think we in the West are more or less free now than we were in the past? With the rise and rise of big governments and sometimes even bigger corporations are the big loosers the individual Australians, English, Americans? I guess that over the last few years some disturbing changes have occured to the liberal democratic societies of the west. I aim to look into this over the next little while to discover weather as we strike a blow for democracy in places like Iraq and Afghanistan (Not withstanding the failure to achieve the desired result espcially in Iraq) have we at the same time lost some of our own freedom?
Were we ever really polically free?
In my own country there are only two meaninnful polical parties, while the retoric is load from the Left and Right in the media on issues close to thier hearts, governments have grown ever larger, jails have become ever more numerous and crowded and the people are spending more and more of thier daily lives being electronically monitored. Some countries are now requiring those who enter to be fingerprinted. Is that not a violation of some sort?
The rights of media organisations are now being manipulated or hampered by litigation, the free press which for so long has been a defender of free speech is being more and more hampered by laws restraining where and when they can comment.
As Rome fell from its high calling as a republic and become a great teranical machine can or will this happen to the domocracies of the west?
Alot of small things have been happening, I guess I am asking the questions
Liberty, fraternity, egality? Or Chains, Solitude, Caste and Class?
The time is now to stop the abuse of the law, the wielding of unchecked power and to prevent us falling into the trap of complacency and allowing the freedom our ancestors won to be ripped away in the name of safety.
Anyway maybe im overconcerned, I dont want to be a labeled with those who hate the West and spew out venom and vitriol in thier rush to opposed capitalism and all it stands for. Im actually quite happy with the way things are working out since the globalising nineties. I worked for a while in a union run government utility job, it was a soul destroying experience because of the lack of any motivation to be a success, to be more.
I do however think that thier is more than economics, the traditional Left and Right see things through the lens of Karl Marx and Adam Smith, but today that battle is over and we need to look deeper at the causes of totalitarianism and how to prevent it from coming to us who have been so fortunate to avoid the devastation of governments with too much power. Combined with a citicenry with not enough.