FIRST SPACE CONSTITUTIONS BEING COMPOSED
As you can tell, I've been focused the past couple of weeks on space matters, but readers should not assume this is a personal whim, although it is certainly a strong personal interest. As most of you know, many people send me articles on all types of topics, and generally, I attempt to sort through these once every week or two weeks, and to try to blog about topics that are representative of the interests reflected in the types of articles being sent to me. The past two weeks have been, for me, a rather interesting window into what types of things people are looking at, and one of the topics heavily represented these past two weeks, more so than the usual amount of articles, has been space. If one will excuse the pun, space has been in the aether, so to speak, and for whatever reason, people seem to be tuned into this.
One of the most interesting and thought-provoking articles I received as from Mr. T.M., which appeared on the BBC's website in July of last year. This concerns the efforts to begin the process of drafting constitutional or governing structures for any future human space colonies:
How to create a bill of rights for Mars colonies
The interesting thing here is the suggestion, or rather, insight, that small colonies in space or on some planet such as Mars might easily degenerate into forms of tyranny, and how one might protect against it:
“The relevance now is that there’s an increasing number of nations going into space, there’s an increasing number of private companies building rockets and with this renewed effort in space exploration it’s becoming very important to think about who’s going to control space,” explains Cockell. “Will it be corporations? Will it be the state? How is the individual to have any freedom in an environment that is absolutely lethal?”
And later:
“We have hundreds of years of experience of drafting constitutions and we should build on that,” says Cockell. And in broadly adopting the US constitution, conference delegates agree on a democratic structure with individual freedoms protected by a bill of rights. They also back an independent judiciary and press freedom. “But,” says Cockell, "there are things about space that are completely different to the Earth environment, in particular the issue of who controls the oxygen.”
Conference delegates decide that having air to breathe is a fundamental right that needs to be enshrined at the heart of any colonial constitution. “A space colony is a tyranny prone environment,” Cockell warns, pointing out that no other constitution has listed the right to breathable air before. “If somebody gets control of oxygen, they could very well have control over the whole population and could threaten dire consequences in return for extraordinary levels of power.”
Among the fundamental problems being discussed is "the right to leave:"
"Delegates also agree that the “right to leave” should be included in the new constitution. But that raises questions over the practicalities of leaving a colony on a planet without breathable air. As going outside is not a viable option, who pays for the trip home? Even more concerning, if the colony is being run by a corporation do they have the right to sack you? To send you back to Earth or throw you out of the airlock?"
This poses unique problems for drafting any such constitution for a space environment, particularly when the US Constitution is taken to be one of the guiding models. Consider: how would one guarantee a just enforcement of such a "space bill of rights" without the right of individual space colonists to keep and bear arms being a component of such a bill of rights? If the oxygen supply is in the control, for example, of a corporation or a technocratic elite, the temptations to tyranny become, as the article suggests, all too credible. And this, of course, like it or not, was the sort of reasoning behind the guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms in the American constitution in the first place.
But on the other hand, in the context of space colonies in a potentially lethal environment like Mars, for example, such a right becomes as problematical as not allowing individuals to keep and bear arms, for an "uprising" or revolt, or even accidental discharge of a weapon, could possibly equally endanger the whole artificial environment of a colony. One need only think of the effects of the accidental discharge of a firearm in an airplane at cruising altitude, should that discharge puncture the fuselage of the aircraft; everyone, in such a circumstance, is endangered, and in the space environment, the results could be equally, if not more, catastrophic.
What's the way around this? One solution would be technological, namely, weapons posing no danger to the artificial environment itself, and yet able to be sufficient to counterbalance whatever force might be present or available to a potential tyranny; stun weapons, tazers, and so on. Another solution might be to have redundant back up systems for food, air, and water supply in the hands of different factional groups.
The point here is, questions such as these need to be addressed in order for there to be any viable long term human presence in space. It's refreshing, in a way, to see that this British-led effort is being undertaken ostensibly in order to deal with the problem of safeguarding individual human liberty in the space environment, and it's equally refreshing to see that this effort recognizes the inherent tendencies toward tyranny in the whole notion of human colonies in space.
But there is perhaps also a hidden implication here, one which invites our usual high octane speculation: just as with the stories we've seen covering the development of this or that technology, with the implication that the technology available in the black projects world is much further advanced than that being publicly revealed, then the same might also be the case with this new emerging theme of space-based constitutions of government: perhaps they are much further along than meets the eye. It is here that the article also has another subtle implication. Most constitutions of democratic states - including, and especially, that of the United States - were created by oligarchical elites, meeting, and deliberating, entirely in secret. The Philadelphia convention of 1789 was precisely such a group. And let it be noted, they not only met in secret, and vastly exceded the mandate with which they were charged, springing an entirely new constitutional arrangement on the thirteen original states, but that they also were not planning a constitution for a "future but as yet unrealized" United States, but for an actually and already existing society and community. It is this factor, that should give one pause.
See you on the flip side...
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VROOM, The Power Of The Coming Race (for Martian taxpayer farming)
“You see,sweetie, the mongrels can do the OOPART hunting and/ore gathering, and, of course, thanks to the gift of so very long ago of the Annunaki legal system and state apparatus, we’ll be the politicians of spacial honor.
It ever serves us well, this myth of ‘The State’.”
– Pres. Nuland’s Aetherograms to Her Granddaughter, No. 1,723
Wasn’t one of the scientists who recently died in a plane crash in LA was the one who did ground breaking work in discovering water on Mars? Odd.
The colonization of such harsh celestial environments will no doubt go hand in hand with the development and promotion of transhumanism. Modified Borg like humans will be required to build and maintain infrastructures that no human could contend with while the elites kick back on their Martian beach biospheres and pay homage to their God of War.
This is way off base. But, the NE Navy could be exterminating the native population Mars and we’d never know it. That’s the problem, we don’t know what our Gummint is really doing.
Government sure is more open than Citibank, Google, Lockheed, Honeywell Dow, etc, but right when the two sides cooperate things get worse.
No doubt, for the elites umbilical cord care an be stressful.
Especially if some “colonists” were to become independent of such umbilical oxygen-rich nutrients, by developing a “sustainable ecology”. Why if “that” were to happen, on some off-world colony, “they” would have to pollute it all-to-hell, where extinction was all but inevitable.
Fortunately, the elites have that kind of experience in-spades
& necessary insanity required to implement it.
P.S.
The TPP is another nail in the coffin of liberty
[The Federal Reserve Act was nailed in 1913]
The TPP is coming soon to a constitution near you.
Before 1913 private banks had even more control of the US than now.
On the other hand that TPP is a big problem, for all sorts of people and basic laws passed for the good of citizens, just ask Mexico what NAFTA did to Mexican corn/maize farmers and small towns in Mexico.
Private money verses public money has a long history. On could get into the gold vs silver aspect as well.
The church vs state aspect. Suffice to say in the U.S. the American Revolution was fought to get back to the Colonies issuing their own currencies again. The War of 1812 was over the same issue of “public” vs private/U.S. vs the Bank of England. Jackson vs Biddle. !(!# just made it “official”
As I’ve said this is a long story of CONTROL.
The TPP is as well, one of corporate intl’ governance. An alphabet soup of NAFTS, CAFTAs etc., etc.
The Federal Reserve Act of 1913
just made of “official”
Lost, here’s a 21 Century update:
http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/254201-episode-max-keiser-751/
If anything the act of 1913 made private money more accountable, than it had been in say 1880.
Perfect, no. Corrupt yes. But there is some government input and control. Or lack of control–see the NY Fed Bank and derivatives today or in say 2005.
The stuff from early 19th century is a different story.
Anyhow even if the government entirely controls the amount of currency in circulation, there’s all sorts of room for insider dealings and money itself has little value–the way gold has little value.
They can make all the rules and regulations they want, but until we get a lot of people up there, this is just wind. The backbone of all space travel in the near future is a change in technology, in other words nobody is going anywhere soon until they let the cat out of the bag on anti-gravitic “saucers”. Sure there has been a lot of space news recently, but it’s just “ink”. I’ll sit up and listen when Lockheed Martin starts to make some loud noises but until then, it’s “read only” stuff.
Just getting the jump on conditioning any Earthling colonies into slavery they think is “freedom”.
This blog once again makes me think heavily about Dr. Farrell’s books on the Vipers of Venice and Thrice Great Hermetica and the Janus Age. Based on the activities of the elites during the day the “discovery” of the American continent(s) was more of a rediscovery that was carefully stage managed. One of the methods for stage-managing migration to the new world was to harass and imprison peoples who dissented with the old world’s policies were simply offered new homes in a new world with greater opportunity and autonomy promised after a period of servitude was satisfied. The Western half of the United States was settled in a similar fashion. If fear at home becomes the primary motivator for emigration to another place, then immigrants to that place are coming because they fear the devil they don’t know more than the devil they do.
In some respect I do think the whole “emigration” of Europeans to the Americas was a bit of social engineering–with the Vatican putting into place the architecture to ensure the Christian claim before the settlers arrived. The modern world seems a lot more like the Middle Ages now in a new technological form. Its managers also appear to be using the same strategies and tactics to plan for its colonization. If the goal is emigration to other worlds, you would put into place an apparatus for ensuring future colonization by building the infrastructure and increasing internal pressure–including legal frameworks at both ends–for supporting it. Are we now witnessing the new East Dutch Indies Company, or the new Hudson Bay Company? It sure looks like it to me. Unwittingly or not a failure to understand the currents of history makes it easier to repeat it–or to engineer it by those who do take the time to study!
I should have edited. “One of the methods for stage-managing migration to the new world was to harass and imprison peoples who dissented with the old world’s policies, then offer them new homes in a new world with greater opportunity and autonomy promised after a period of servitude was satisfied.”
Gee, I don’t know about “high-octane speculations” and the like. But the obvious implication of all the misanthropic speculations should be clear, I think:
Humanity is too immature to project itself out into the cosmos.
If we are talking about ridiculous things like “who controls the oxygen”, then it seems obvious to me that we have much bigger problems than which knuckle heads get to call themselves “King of the Universe”.
Let’s see, we are destroying our home-planet, the only one in the universe that is ideally suited to us. We cannot get along for any length of time – and thus are perpetually at war with each other. Capitalism has brought our innate selfishness to new lofty heights of idiocy. Our short-sighted views on the innate rights of the individual have made the rights of the collective (everybody else) a golden-ring positioned far from our puny reach.
We are too immature for outer space. We cannot get along here on earth. You wouldn’t give a toddler a book of matchers to play with. And we shouldn’t be projecting our clueless selves out into space for the same reason: it is a recipe for disaster.
Anyway, this story says much bigger and more worrying things about us than it does about how a space constitution might “protect” us from our own misanthropic stupidity.
The main problem is the European colonist were slave-serf addicted societies to begin with. And they have not changed the stripes in centuries. Between Christianity and barbarians are us and Corporation preference for (cheap)labor they have conspired to destroy free associated societies around the World beginning in Europe and spreading to the rest of the World. A plantationcracy has been their wet dream. And do you think our masters will allow their bonded debt slaves to escape via a Star Trek future you have to be kidding. If we do colonize space think of the History Channel series “Vikings” of what our elites are planning.
You can just see the psychopaths running the Cabal slavering over the thought of having their itchy fingers on the central oxygen valve.
As the transgenically and preternaturally sprightly Dr. Henry Strangelove is wont to point out with an evil smile: Control the food and you control the population.
And so it goes.
What an apt metaphor for the currently de-Constitutionalized USSA which is also in the throes of working out ways to keep its citizens – and their financial assets – from leaving the bubble of the USSA.
I’ll see your speculation and raise by a few octanes. The unspoken factor lurking behind oligarchies is heredity, the main way they perpetuate, with the occasional co-opting of “new blood” – a very apt expression in this context. Just think of the uproar if they came out directly and said, well, let’s find an unemployed royal and start dynastic expansion into space. It’s so much more politically correct to talk about individual rights.
But why is it that a “space colony is a tyranny-prone environment”? The answer is that the push to space itself has been based on the interests of small power-seeking elites who try to obfuscate their real actions and motivations. In some way analogous to previous human expansion, but with some big differences.
Anyway, like the Vatican with its megalomaniac push to “baptize aliens” (“aliens” who might be “genetic cousins” but also earthling colonists…), these people may run up against some problems.
The first of which is consciousness, which is showing some interesting trends “down here”. And who knows how it will develop as we leave our planet’s electromagnetic sphere and approach that of other celestial bodies.
As below, so above and visa versa. They made a mess of earth and are headed in the same direction with mars. A change in consciousness is humanity’s only hope for a brighter future.
With all the space news and new technology
they are putting out, it reminds me of the new kid on the block. He/she is so proud of what they made, invented, accomplished or controlled, they just can’t hide it. I can imagine them sitting around a table in a conference room up on mars, writing a new constitution filled with light, love, peace and the right to pursue happiness.